The Whole World Over (21 page)

A piano player. Imagine being a piano player. All those zillions of
notes, like daisy chains, garlands and garlands all wound through your
head. Even in Saga's former life, her brain could not have managed that,
no way.

She unzipped a pocket on her knapsack, took out her notebook and a
plastic bag of oatmeal cookies. She ate two while she looked at her list.
She could go by the veterinary clinic where she'd taken the puppies; she
should thank the vet, too, though she hadn't brought him a present. If she
did something like that, Stan would probably yell at her. He liked things
done his way. But she could say thank you. He couldn't object to that.

She took one of the notices about the puppies and wrote a note to
Alan Glazier on the back, telling him she would come by the next morning.
She taped it to the bottom of the intercom box. Then she took out
her notebook and, under
THURSDAY MORNING
, wrote, "Visit Alan
Glazier, Thirty Five Bank St." As she walked down the steps, the sun
dipped below the roofline of the buildings across the street. The quick,
surprising chill of evening rippled through the air.

Saga was slightly relieved to find the veterinary clinic closed. She
started back east, in the direction of the subway she would take, and
found herself, after turning a corner, once again on Alan Glazier's block.
She'd come the opposite way this time, and she saw something new: a
tiny shop at the bottom of a very skinny house. A bookshop.

A string of bells jangled on the back of the door and, like a cuckoo
springing from a clock on the hour, a man's head protruded from behind
a bookcase. "Hello," he said quietly. "Lovely day, isn't it?"

"Hello, yes it is," said Saga.

"Please let me know if I can help you." The man had a pleasant
accent of some British variety (like the jazz tune, familiar yet fuzzy). He
crossed the shop with an armload of books and went about his work as
if he were all by himself. Except for Saga, he was.

Whenever she entered a shop, Saga was almost always happy to be
ignored. Relaxing now, she looked around. On a wall toward the front
of the shop hung several large, stylish pictures of birds (Audubon; this
one she knew without effort, as he was a favorite of Uncle Marsden's,
two of his birds in the dining room). The most colorful one showed
green and yellow parakeets. She looked them over closely. They were
gorgeous.

All of a sudden, she heard a loud squawk. "Oh!" she exclaimed.

At the back of the shop, a door stood open to a garden. Through it
Saga saw an armchair, on the back of the armchair a big red parrot.

"Oh my. Is that your bird?"

"She's called Felicity, and no, I am hers." The man with the accent
walked through the door ahead of Saga and held out his arm. "Had
your spot of sun?" he said to the parrot. She jumped right on and sidestepped
rapidly up his sleeve, coming to rest on his shoulder. She leaned
forward, like a bird dog, pointing toward Saga with her beak, and
squawked again. The tone (if birds could have a tone!) was imperious,
as if she were saying "You there!," about to give a command.

"I'd call her Marie Antoinette. Or Sheba. She seems like a queen,"
said Saga. "Can I touch her?"

"Scratch her just here." He scratched Felicity behind one of her
downy, unbelievably scarlet cheeks. To Saga's delight, the bird allowed
her to do the same.

"Who could look at books with you here?" Saga said to Felicity.

Felicity accepted her affection without comment.

"It's a trade-off," said the man. "She's an attraction but also a distraction.
Some people come by just to see her—after a while they feel
guilty enough to buy a book or two. She's not the most efficient marketing
tool, but she gives us a certain reputation. People walk in and say,
'Oh so
this
is the place with the parrot.' " He stood still for a few minutes
while Saga stroked the bird on his shoulder.

"You're lucky."

"I am indeed," the man said. He did not realize that Saga had
been talking to the bird. What a life she must have, this beautiful creature.
Pampered, unthreatened, nothing to do but entertain and be entertained.

"Maybe you could teach her to say, 'Spend a little money!' " said
Saga.

The man laughed. "A clever student—that's one thing she's not."

"Can she fly?"

"Yes."

"She doesn't fly away?" Saga looked at the sky.

"She never has. I'm not sure why."

"Maybe this is all she knows?"

"Oh, but she strikes me as the kind of lass who leaps before she
looks." The man put a hand up to his shoulder; the bird stepped on.

Lass.
Saga turned away to hide her smile. How like a fairy tale, that
word. Rapunzel. A tall tower by a deep emerald lake. A dark green
word,
lass.

As she turned, she saw the bookcase beside the armchair—right out
there in the garden! It was filled with paperback books that looked as if
they'd been read about a hundred times each. She saw
Pride and Prejudice,
she saw
Middlemarch
and
The Quiet American.
Titles she had seen
forever on the shelves in Uncle Marsden's house.

"What if it rains when you're not looking?"

"These are the books everyone likes to read again and again, books
you can lose because they'll reappear the minute you turn your back.
They replace themselves," he said. Saga pictured this man with the
dashing accent as the rescuer of Rapunzel. It wasn't outrageous in the
least. He was handsome enough, though neither tall nor dark. His skin
and hair were faintly golden, or they had been once upon a time, and his
hands were long and slim like the hands of a prince. Piano hands, Aunt
Liz would have said. He looked to be several years older than Saga,
maybe not too much older than Michael.

"Can I sit here?" she asked.

"Last I knew," said the bird prince, "that's what chairs were for."

"I don't know any bookstores with chairs in gardens," she said. "Or
any gardens with bookcases." She would have to tell Uncle Marsden
about this place.

"So now you do. Make yourself at home." He left her alone
then, carrying his glorious bird back into the shop. He needs a crown,
thought Saga as she watched him go. He wouldn't look the least bit silly.
Even his posture was regal. She leaned back in the chair and looked
straight up. Branches waved calmly; a few thin clouds flowed along like
blossoms fallen in a stream. She would have to ask the bird prince for a
card, to make sure she could find her way back. She reached toward the
bookcase and took out a pink book with a water-stained jacket, poems
by E. E. Cummings. She opened the book and let her eyes alight on random
lines:
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing / than teach ten
thousand stars how not to dance.
She read the entire poem, but then
that sad leaden feeling descended, the reminder that reading was a labor,
not a reflex, something she had to do with a conscious will, as if she
were eight all over again. She remembered enough to be certain she'd
never read anything terribly difficult, but she had been a fast reader. She
would be again, Uncle Marsden assured her. Uncle Marsden knew a
great deal, but the rest he bluffed. He'd never say he didn't know. That
was his biggest flaw.

She closed the book. She did not want to leave, but just the thought of
reading disturbed her right now. She looked around and saw, at the edge
of the garden, a row of stone planters—old ones coated with moss.
Beside them stood several plastic pots containing geraniums and orange
pansies, waiting to be planted. Red with orange: odd but nice.

Saga went to the door of the shop. "Excuse me?" The interior now
seemed murky and obscure, her eyes were so accustomed to the sun.

"Yes?" The bird prince appeared from behind a row of shelves, just
as he had when she'd come into the shop.

She pointed back at the flowers. "Do you need these planted? I could
do that for you . . ." The bird prince approached her, smiling, but he
looked puzzled. "I have this time to kill," she said. "I'd like to."

He came out into the sun. "That's jolly kind of you. All right then."
He went back into the shop and emerged with a pair of gritty work
gloves, a trowel, and a plastic container. "Bonemeal."

"I know about bonemeal from my uncle," she said. "He says it's not
good outside because it attracts rodents." Suddenly, she worried that
she would sound like a lunatic to this stranger, though his kind expression
did not change. "My uncle's a professor of horticulture at Yale."
The truth was, people always relaxed when she mentioned Yale.

"Fortunate fellow, to have a knack with plants," said the bird prince.
"I have to choose the easy ones, the ones nobody can kill. So thank
you." He took back the bonemeal. "I tell you what. Why don't you
choose a book when you leave? Any book." He was about to go in but
turned again. "What's your name?"

"Emily." Somehow, with this man, she felt self-conscious about the
name she used everywhere else. She knew he would have asked about
it—he was that kind of attentive—and she wanted to be alone with the
plants and the parrot and the waving trees. He would leave her alone,
she figured, only if he thought she was perfectly normal.

He shook her hand. "I'm Fenno," he said, and then, of course, hearing
his odd name, she wished that she had told him hers. He was the sort
of person who (unlike Stan) you wanted to find a connection with,
something to keep his interest or earn his respect. Not because it looked
like a hard thing to do; in fact, because it looked so easy.

STAN LET HER GO TO BROOKLYN
and visit the puppies. In just a
week, they'd grown so much bigger. It was becoming obvious they were
part wirehaired something, part something with short legs and maybe
something with tall pointed ears. They were white, with brindled spots,
their coats (thanks to Stan's care) clean and shiny as party gowns. Stan
fussed with papers at the kitchen table, sighing loudly, while Saga sat
and played with the puppies on the floor. "I'm only letting you do this
because they need the socialization," he said when she lay on her back
so the puppies could climb across her breasts and lick her face.

"Thank you," she said. "I appreciate it."

"Well, what else do you have to do with your stunted life?" he said in
a voice that was, for Stan, good-natured.

When the doorbell rang, he went to the front door. He returned to the
kitchen with a girl holding a carrier that contained a yowling cat. "Third
and Thirteenth," she said, handing it to Stan. "I'm double-parked, so I
can't stay long." She saw Saga on the floor with the puppies. "Hi. I'm
Sonya," she said, the introduction of someone who needed nothing in
return.

Sonya's hair was dyed black to make her skin look shockingly white.
Piano keys, thought Saga.

She was about to stand up and introduce herself, but Stan was
already talking. "I'll have to keep him out back. I've still got this litter in
the small room. Can you come back tomorrow, leaflet the block where
you found him?" He put the carrier on the kitchen counter and bent to
see the cat through the small, prisonlike window. "Hi there," he said
softly. "You are freaked out, I know that, yes I do. Sorry, fella."

"Yeah," said Sonya. "Yeah, sure."

"I'll do the Polaroid and copies," said Stan. "Go before you get a
ticket. Thanks." He touched her on the back, a friendly touch.

Sonya gave Saga a circular wave, still no smile. "Next time," she said.

In just those few minutes, Saga noticed how much more humanely
Stan spoke to Sonya than he did to her—how he expressed real
gratitude
to Sonya. Sometimes Saga felt, even after all these months since
they'd had sex, that she deserved his contempt. Sometimes she looked at
him when she thought he wouldn't notice and asked herself if she could
ever be this man's girlfriend. What would that be like? What would it be
like, now, to be anyone's girlfriend?

"Okay, I'm closing up," he said after Sonya left. "So back to the
burbs, Story Girl. Want me to call you a car?" Where Stan lived, you
couldn't hail a taxi on the street.

"I'm fine on the subway," she said. She helped him carry the puppies
upstairs. As soon as she left, Saga knew Stan would attend to the panicky
cat on the kitchen counter, make the guy a soft place to sleep and
give him some food, maybe cook him something warm and meaty.

She went back to Manhattan. She had plenty of time to catch the last
train home, but the night was mild, and she liked the idea of staying, of
sleeping outside in her special place. She got off the L train at the end of
the line. She wandered south through the part of the city where meat
was sold, where the streets were still cobblestoned. She walked carefully
when crossing these streets; not long ago, forgetting herself, she had
fallen and skinned both her knees. She followed Hudson Street several
blocks south, till she got to the café with the umbrellas, turned west and
then south again, down Washington. She liked this part of town best,
because only a few of the streets were named for numbers. Most of them
had real
names,
like Charles and Leroy and Jane.

That first night alone in the city the year before—ashamed and
stranded, having fled Stan's bed and house—Saga had taken the subway
to its last stop and wandered, aimless, along this very route. On a corner,
in a neighborhood of dark, sleepy buildings, here was a tall iron
gate, left open a sliver, that led into a shallow patio in front of a restaurant.
At first, Saga went into the patio just to sit and think, to calm
down. She found herself secluded from the street by a pair of enormous
flowerpots—tree pots, really—that held two tall, thick evergreens. She'd
sat there a long time, uncertain what else she could do, till she fell into a
doze against the wall. She awoke at dawn when a street sweeper came
hissing by a few feet away, scattering dust and broken bits of dead leaves
through the patio gate. Alarmed, she stood quickly, but she was alone.
She saw her reflection in the plate glass window of the restaurant;
through her reflection, a menu.
Tagliatelle, pappardelle, perciatelli
. . . If
she cupped her face against the glass, she could see a sleek, fancy interior:
red velvet benches, coppery modern lamps on the walls, light wood
tables.