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In the summer of her 27th year, Louise came to know one Ward Jenkins, Avian Pathologist of Greenwood Heights. Having just completed a short stint as an assistant gardener, Louise took a receptionist position at Mr. Jenkins's home practice in his Victorian mansion, which had been passed down to him from his great grandmother Cecile Jenkins.
When, on interview day, she ambled up the wooden steps and met the eyes of Ward Jenkins, she sized up his dapper countenance, with dress shirt and tailored pants, and instantly detested him and his kind. That too-sure-of-oneself attitude, conventional good looks, inflated ego. She could tell right away.
The interview went well, even though she couldn't stand the the thought of working for this man, or boy, really, and since no other jobs turned up, she reluctantly accepted his offer when he called the next week.
Her desk sat awkwardly on the parlour floor, just to the right of the front door. The dead birds were usually carried in shoe boxes, or sometimes still in their elaborate cages, by their teary-eyed owners, who demanded answers as to why their beloved birds had crossed over into the world of the dead.
Louise would come to learn that Ward, just one year her senior, was highly regarded in town as an exceptional professional in his field. He gave speeches at seminars almost every week, and received numerous accolades for his research. Aside from his professional success, he was wittily funny, kind, and off kilter in an approachable way. Needless to say, everyone in town loved him, and Louise detested him even more, for his success compared to her lack thereof.
Ward Jenkins had decided upon his life's work early on, at the age of eight, when, one sunny day, his pet cockatiel named Marty had begun making choking noises in his large domed cage. When Ward came to see to his precious Marty, the poor bird abruptly released its foothold on its perch, and for the first and last time in his glorious, pink-feathered life, Marty fell through the air to the bottom of the cage where he lay motionless, breast side up, curled and twitching talons in the air. Apparently, little Ward Jenkins screamed with such wild, helpless despair so loudly that he gave his grandmother Cecile, upstairs sewing in her bedroom, a heart attack.
After the funeral, Ward gave Marty the Cockatiel a proper burial as well, sobbing in fear of what other misfortunes the world would rain down upon him. He wanted answers to explain Marty's death, but Avian Pathologists didn't exist in those days, and that fact fortified Little Ward Jenkins with the resolve to help others who had been through what he had been through.
When Louise learned his story, her hard heart developed a soft spot for Ward Jenkins, and over the months, it grew. One day in the Spring, Louise came down into the basement examination room, where Ward was hunched over the carcass of an Upper East side socialite's deceased macaw. Under the solitary yellow light triangle of the ceiling lamp, she caught his warm brown eyes, shimmering the reflection of parrot blood.
From then on, Louise could think of nothing other than Ward Jenkins, star Avian Pathologist.
Louise, Queen of Greenwood, sat serenely, ringed fingers pressed firmly together on the armrest of her high-backed chair. It was an antique, from her Great Aunt's estate, once commissioned by some King of Belgium. Through the large window of her living room, she gazed below, surveying the roofs of all of those who lived below her; which was everybody in a 50 block radius, hers being the highest dwelling, a 5th floor walk-up on the tallest hill in Brooklyn next to the the old Victorian cemetery. High and mighty, she reigned over that Windy Hell, seeing all the way to the sea and its ships on her throne of mahogany and velvet.
Louise wore only the finest silk blouses and cashmere skirts from Bergdorf's, bought for her by her Great Aunt back in the 70's when she was still a young and beautiful woman, all now threadbare and moth-bitten but still luxurious on her skin. In the quiet of her palace, the hostile wind that swept unrelenting over the land battered the hanging Swedish Ivy on her wrought iron balcony, so hard that that it knocked impatiently against the glass of the french door. She wished that plant would just finally fucking shatter that glass into a thousand shards and land in a crash of crystal upon her impeccable varnished wood floor, so that the whirl of dead leaves would barge in with the wind and take her with it, back out over the lowlands, the roofs full of satellites and cell phone towers, through the street canyons alongside plastic bag tumbleweeds, down the hill, out to the sea.
It was a cool sun that shone down on Bowery. It was not nearly noon yet, though the streets were already crowded with delivery trucks and taxi cabs. Suddenly, the corner of Chloe's eye caught a red object barreling down towards Grand Street. She turned to look just in time to catch a woman in a red dress tumble off her bike, the contents of her bicycle basket spilling out on the road, chief among them a whole rotisserie chicken, which continued rolling, sans its clear plastic shell, with such force that it hopped the curb and stopped at Chloe's now-stopped feet.
Not sure what the proper social protocol would be in such a situation (that is, one that involves a bicycle accident, some produce, and a rotisserie chicken), she went to help the woman, who appeared to be in her mid-40s, with straight brown hair and a huge straw hat. But she had already gotten up, and so Chloe picked up the herbed bird carcass in her bare hands, its homey fragrance an alien amid the noise and chaos of the street.
She stood there as the woman walked her bike to the curb and sat down there, laboring an exasperated "thank you." Chloe sat down next to her in solidarity, her hands outstretched and dripping with chicken fat, as they both stared in silence into the middle of the street where the taxis and trucks made garbage of the woman's lettuce and Gouda.
Once, Chloe asked Ewan how she and him met (she and him being, of course, not that famous singing duo, but Ewan and his girlfriend, Heather.)
"That's a fine story!"
They were sitting at the bar at Clandestino, awaiting the arrival of said girlfriend.
[How nice it must be, thought Chloe, to be called upon, somewhat regularly, to tell a personal story that is so upliftingly positive, emotionally, for the teller, that his eyes become one thousand percent more bright and his posture that of a proud robin on a spring morning. To say the least, Ewan certainly did enjoy telling the story.]
"The fact that she was once Laurel's roommate was not by accident!.."
"Really?..." [How was Chloe unaware? She had just thought it mere coincidence..]
"Absolutely, you didn't think it was mere coincidence, did you?"
At this, Chloe thought that "mere" was a strange word. After a moment, she thought to answer him, which came out in a rather dejected tone, "yes."
"Well! So, you know that Laurel and I were friends (quite platonic, you understand, for quite some time)..."
[Yes, and I also know that meantime Laurel fell in love with you and your charming ways and still is to this day, much to her detriment.]
"..Well, you see, the first time I came to visit her at her apartment, I had the first inkling of Heather. Laurel played that Magnetic Fields album The Wayward Bus while she made me some dinner. I had asked, ' is this your music?,' because, really, I didn't believe Laurel would be playing Magnetic Fields.."
[It was true, in all honesty, Laurel rather preferred bands like Animal Collective and TV On the Radio. Chloe hated this about Laurel.]
.."And she said, no, it's Heather's. And I thought, 'Heather, who is that?' Heather, who was not home at the time, was, as I quickly discovered, a ghostly roommate, and I did not see her the next ten times I visited Laurel, even though I tried to make it happen. The next time I visited, I peered into Heather's room and caught sight of her guitar hanging on the wall next to her bed, and the various incarnations of owls strewn about her room. I loved the things she owned. The artwork, the furniture, the kitchen utensils, I would come soon to find, were all hers, and I loved it all! And it all just snowballed from there. I believe it was the fourth or fifth time, when I saw that Eric Rohmer VHS sitting on a shelf under the TV, that I felt a strong connection to this person I had never met. I knew that the Rohmer movie wasn't Laurel's, and I didn't even have to ask her this time, because I now felt that I knew Heather, and I was in love. Can you believe it? I could even picture her, without ever having seen a photo of her! I kept this all to myself, you understand, because I wasn't quite sure how to bring it up... So really it's a story not about how we met, but about how I met her."
Chloe was speechless. It must have shown in her face, because Ewan went on... [or maybe it didn't show in her face, and Ewan was as self-centered as Chloe feared him to be...]
"And the craziest part about this whole long, drawn-out story, is that, when I finally met Heather, in human form, not as a summation of all her belongings and tastes, she was exactly as I imagined her. And at that moment, I knew. I knew that there was, and there would be, no one else for me."
And with that, Chloe quickly requested the check from bartender and promptly made a gracious exit out the side door.
Chloe and Laurel walked down Baxter Street, on the sunny west side. It was a bitingly-cold day and Chloe couldn't wait for it to be over. The compacted ice from the snowstorm had formed islands of peril around every street corner, and Chloe thought it was dreadful. But she had needed to buy these lychees and bok choy, and it was good to get out. Their red plastic shopping bags weighted them down towards the sidewalk, their arms outstretched to form four straight vertical lines.
Laurel suddenly realized it was four o'clock. She needed to "go make her peach cobbler so that it will be ready in time for the seven-thirty dinner party at Jody's house. [pause]... Are you sure you don't want to join us?"
[Just as she said this, Chloe glanced over to catch that expression on her face that said, "I half want you to come because you're my friend, but I half don't want you to come because I only have enough peaches to make a cobbler for six."]
"No, thanks," responded Chloe. "I think I'll have a relaxing night at home with some red wine and shumai dumplings."
"Ah! Another Chloe-evening!," exclaimed Laurel, clearly exhaling a relief-ridden breath. She bade goodbye as she crossed the street into the cold shadows.
The sun was beginning to set and Chloe turned to face south again, to carry on their walk's trajectory alone. "Just to feel the sun on my face, " she said to herself, as if Laurel were still there.
Between Canal and Bayard, next to the State Detention Center, the sunny yellow sidewalk was met with the ominous shadow of the towering courthouse. Here, Chloe spun around on her heel and went home.
Chloe awoke peacefully early on Saturday morning, just as the sun was breaking over the tops of the Lower East Side high rises. Sunlight flooded her bedroom, and she lay there, well rested and relaxed, luxuriating in the soft cloud of her bed covers, like she used to do as a child on similar Saturday mornings in Florida. There, she would lay until the smell of the pancakes her mother was making for breakfast wafted into her room. But there would be no pancakes today. Only a baked pork bun and 60 cent coffee in a paper cup.
Chloe and Laurel strolled arm in arm around the clay track in the park on Chrystie and Canal, like the teenage Chinese girls who shuffle lazily down sidewalks in patent leather heels with hands at their mouths to stifle their giggles about boys. They circled the green astroturf, populated by a few tai chi groups, a practicing boys' soccer team, mothers with their babies in strollers, and old men contemplating the birds. It was late morning on the first warm day in April, and the sun shown down warm on their countenances.
Laurel had been, for a good fifteen minutes now, harping on a recent scientific study that reinforced the notion that red wine prolongs life, based on the administration of loads of the sweet poison into the mouths of poor, unsuspecting mice. She was now knee-deep in detail about the various controls and variables presented in the study, explaining how remarkable the positive results were. (Laurel was taking her facts directly from the JAMA. The chief topic of her personal interest was wine, and she often spent a long afternoon in the library in order to add to her knowledge.)
"That reminds me," said Chloe, "did you read that really entertaining short story in the New Yorker by Noah Baumbach? It was based on that study, I think."
"No, who's Noah Baumbach?"
This was typical Laurel. Chloe had always been fascinated by Laurel's ability to know everything and nothing all at once. Like a full encyclopedia with surprise blank pages here and there.
"You know, the director of The Squid and the Whale, one of your proclaimed 'favorite movies of all time'?"
(Of which there were many.)
"Oh, right... I knew that name sounded familiar. Did I tell you about the boy I saw in the subway the other day?"
That was another thing about Laurel. Not only did she simply fail to answer posed questions, she also possessed an uncanny ability to jump from one disparate topic to another with great ease. Chloe figured this was the way it went in Laurel's brain, that her mouth was simply the funnel through which every thought in her head simply poured out as it was produced. "No, you didn't mention it."
"Oh! Well... I was standing on the N train and in walks this tall, handsome boy dressed in a rumpled plaid shirt and jeans. He had this great messy brown hair and green eyes and was reading N + 1..."
(Her favorite magazine.)
"...But then my eyes had the misfortune of finding his shoes...oh, his shoes!"
"His shoes?"
"They were those leather dress shoes that are pointy-toed and square-toed at the same time!"
Chloe knew these well, a curious phenomenon of unexplained, insufferable ugliness.
"And then it was ruined!"
Certainly, this struck Chloe as very superficial, but legitimate, nonetheless. To Laurel, this knight in shining armor was not so anymore, ten seconds into seeing him, all because of his unfortunate shoes. He was at once enticing and grotesque, like a bowlful of delicious, creamy chocolate ice cream with a generous sprinkling of asparagus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Baumbach
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/01/26/090126sh_shouts_baumbach
