I did not go out birding with Lewis the next morning before hospital rounds because I did not dare. And, quite frankly, because I thought it would mean being disloyal to Lewis. I had spent the night dreaming of the bird man, the hawk king. I had even fantasized about him while Lewis and I made love. Normally I just kept my eyes open and watched Lewis who goes through the mechanics of love-making with his eyes closed, without a single change on his beautiful face. This time I closed my eyes—not that Lewis would have noticed the difference—and fancied he had wings and feathers on his chest. It made my breath come quicker, and I climaxed as soon as he entered me, which was unusual enough for him to open his eyes and say, “Something’s different.” Lewis likes things to be the same.

  “Pre-menstrual,” I said.

  “Oh,” he answered. And that was all.

  He went off birding with his friends and I lay in bed thinking about nothing. Or trying to think about nothing. Burying my face in the feather pillow. Trying to remember if any of my close relatives had recently gone mad. Then I got up, took a long, leisurely shower, and dried myself in front of the window. Not that anyone could see me. The bathroom overlooked an old abandoned tobacco field. The house was surrounded by trees.

  I saw many specks in the sky, some easy to identify, some too far away for casual naming. But nothing that fell to earth like a feathered star.

  So I put on my terry-cloth robe and made myself a cup of coffee, went out onto the deck to drink it, though the morning was even colder than it had been the day before. I was hoping, you see, for something. I was trying to keep alive the belief that I was not crazy. I was afire, giving off signals I suppose. Pheromones, they’re called. I put my head back and tried to imitate the sound the hawk man had made right before diving to earth. “Kreeeeeeee!” I cried. But I was embarrassed to call out very loudly even though the nearest house was about a quarter mile away. “Kreeeeee!”

  I turned to go back into the house when I heard something above me, looked up, and saw the speck, my feathered hallucination, falling out of the sky to my feet. I opened my arms to him and, without more foreplay than that, he embraced me with his wings, the shafts scraping my back, and then thrust himself in me. First from the front, a hot searing pinning, leaving me still weak with desire. Then he turned me around, pushed my robe up, and mounted me from behind. The feathers of his breast emblazoned themselves on my back, sticking into the raw scrapings his wings had made. I felt the pain and yet it was sweet, too, as if I were growing wings.

  Then he lay me down on the cold boards and did it twice more, front and back, and I was hot and wet with him and cried, a sound more like the call of a loon than a hawk, throaty and low. He gave me love bites on the neck and shoulder and buttocks.

  Then he stood, shook himself all over, pumped his wings, which covered me with wind, and fled into the sky with that defiant, triumphant cry.

  I lay on my back, my robe half around my waist, till I shivered with the cold. When I got up at last, I found a feather he had dropped on the deck. Whether it was from our love making or after, when he had gave that odd shaking, I didn’t know. I held the feather so tight, the shaft made a mark on my palm.

  I went back inside and took another long shower, called in sick to the hospital, and went to bed. I dreamed the hawk man fucked me over and over and over, and as I dreamed, I ran the feather across my breasts and over my stomach and between my legs. The dreams were so real, I had an orgasm each time.

  When Lewis came home, he didn’t seem to notice anything, not my flushed face, not the marks on my back and neck and arms. He heard me when I said I thought I was pregnant. He insisted he wanted to marry me. He did not understand when I moved out.

  I live now on the top floor of the highest building in Springfield. An aerie, I call it. I have made a bassinet and lined it with down. I am a doctor, I will know how to attend to my own delivery. I do not trust anyone else, for my child might look like his father. I am not certain that the attending physicians at Cooley Dickinson are ready for a baby born with pin feathers. I have practiced lullabies, especially the one about the baby in the tree tops. It seems right, some how.

  I am alone now. But that does not matter. I am sure the hawk man will come back next season. One thing Lewis taught me: The big hawks mate for life.

  And so do I.

  So do I.

  Bird Count

  Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers, fantasy anthology edited by Terri Windling and me was the recipient of what Terri dubbed the drowned mermaids cover. The book, published in 1998 contains a choice assortment of erotic stories.

  Jane Yolen, a prolific national treasure, is not known for writing erotic fiction, yet here is “Bird Count.”

  Anamorphosis

  by Caitlín R. Kiernan

  (From Lethal Kisses, 1996)

  Deacon was walking, ragged boots slapping concrete, not even noticing cracks or a quarter someone dropped. Just keep walking, marching, letting the red shit behind his eyes bleed off with the Atlanta April heat, and what’s that Mr. Eliot? Sorry, man, no lilacs, just bus-fart diesel and the shitty, sweet stink of kudzu. In the east, the sky had bruised down to dull indigo, and there was still orange towards downtown, and Deacon, pressed in twilight.

  He didn’t want to go back to his apartment, one sweaty room and a thriftstore Zenith, always the same snowy channel because the knob broke off. Didn’t want to stop walking and have a beer, two beers, even though he still had the twenty Hammond had shoved into his hand when no one was looking. No way he wanted to eat. Might never want to eat again.

  “Yeah, well, Lieutenant Hammond says this one’s different,” the greasy cop with the neck like a dead chicken had said as they climbed the fire stairs, seven flights because the elevator was busted. And the stairwell choking black because the lights must have been busted, too, and Deacon had just kept his hand on the rail and followed the cop’s voice and the tattoo of his shiny policeman shoes.

  This one’s different, and he almost stepped in front of a big ugly Pontiac, Bondo and some paint on its shark snout the color of pus. The horn blared, and behind the wheel the driver jabbed one brown finger at heaven. And Deacon stepped back up onto the curb, This one’s different, Deke, okay?

  They had stood in the long hall, yellowy incandescence and scrubby green carpet, Hammond looking old and sick, hatchet-faced and yesterday’s stubble sandpapering his cheeks. Deacon had shaken his head, yeah, man, whatever, didn’t know what else he was supposed to do, what he was supposed to say, but Hammond really looked like cold turds, and he’d said, almost whispered, Just be cool, man, it’s real rough in there, but just be cool.

  Deacon watched the Pontiac until it turned and headed down Edgewood. The streetlights along Hilliard buzzed like giant bugs and faded on.

  Hammond had opened the door, and then there’d been other voices inside, other cops, muttering navy shapes past the detective’s wide shoulders. The air that spilled out into the hall had been cool and smelled the way hands do after han­dling pennies or old keys, meat and metal, and Deacon had known that there weren’t going to be any handker­chiefs or dog-eared snap­shots this time, no pacing back and forth over a weedy, glass-crunchy vacant lot where someone had said the missing husband or girlfriend or daughter had last been seen. Once Hammond had even made him hold a tongue some old lady had found in her garbage can, a dried, shriveled tongue like beef jerky or some Viet Cong’s misplaced trophy, and Aren’t you getting anything, Deke?

  but this one was going to be different.

  Just stay cool, Deke,

  He was alone on the street now, except for the sound of cars on other roads, and low voices through the opened door of a bar with its rusty sign that read Parliament Club, Ladies Always Welcome. Deacon walked on past the bar, dark in there with little pools of neon, and someone laughed, deep and threat­en­ing enough that he didn’t turn his head to look.

  Hammond had looked at him one more time, apologetic, before they’d stepped through the unnumbered door, and Deacon had slipped, skidded and would have gone down on his ass if chicken neck hadn’t been back there, caught him under the arms. Christ, man, what the—but by then he could see for himself. The carpet had ended at the threshold, and the floor was just hardwood and something on it that looked like Karo syrup. Except that it wasn’t, and what the hell, Hammond. I don’t need this kind of shit. But the door had clicked shut behind them, safety bar snug down across his lap and the rickety little train was already rattling into the fun house.

  The apartment had been bigger than his, cavernous studio and a kitchen off to one side, a hallway that probably led to a bedroom. One wall entirely of dirty awning windows, hand­cranked open, like that was gonna help the smell. He’d wanted to cross the room and stand there, stare out at the city rooftops and catch mouthfuls of clean air, not look at the syrupy maroon floors or the brighter smears down the plaster walls. But instead he had just stood, staring, tasting the acid ghost of the diner eggs and hash browns from break­fast hanging at the back of his throat and waiting for Hammond to say something, anything that would make sense of this.

  You okay, Deke? I know, Christ I know, man, but

  Deacon had done his hangover morning counting trick, backwards from twenty-five, and the room, impossible Jackson Pollock nightmare, shreds and things hanging, draped from furniture and lampshades. Disemboweled sofa cushions and crisp slivers of shattered glass.

  just tell me if you feel anything, anything at all.

  I feel sick. And he’d gagged, covering his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Hammond’s frown had deepened, careless thumb gouges in wet clay, and to chicken neck—Cummins, why don’t you see if you can find Mr. Silvey a glass of water? But Deacon had raised one hand and shook his head to stop Cummins, hadn’t dared open his mouth again to speak. Breakfast and bitter bile tang and the room, getting in past clenched lips, slip­ping through his nostrils.

  Deacon had closed his eyes, swallowed, and when he opened them it had all still been there, and Hammond, running fin­gers through his thinning hair.

  He looked up from the sidewalk, disoriented, no street signs in sight and for a moment the buildings, the bill­boards, meant nothing. And the unreliable certainty that if this amnesia could be generalized, made complete, but then the world tilted back; vicious recognition, a derelict beauty salon, windows and door plywood scabbed and bandaged with movie ads and election bullshit. Almost full dark, and there were better neighborhoods.

  What do you want me to do? as he’d taken one step towards the center of the room, the gutted sofa and belly-up coffee table, shoes smacking like cola-sticky theater floors.

  Anything you got, Deke, as he’d lit a cigarette, one of his stinking menthol Kools, exhaled gray-white smoke, but even that hadn’t disguised the red smell. Do that voodoo you do, and to chicken-necked Cummins, linger­ing somewhere too close, I want to know the second forensics shows up down there. You understand? The abso­lute second.

  Deacon had looked up at the high ceilings, just bare concrete and exposed plumbing, hovering fluorescent fixtures on taut chains. Jagged butt-ends of shattered tubes. And ropy garland loops dripping thick blood and shit spatterings below. The video tape, glossy brown in the morning sun and shadows, had reached down to the floor like streamers.

  Who was this, Hammond?

  He hadn’t felt the breeze through the open windows, but the lights had swayed a little, rust creak and whine, and the tape had rustled like dead leaves.

  Small-time porn operator, and the detective had sucked at his cigarette, guy named Grambs. Pause as the smoke whis­tled out of him, and Hammond had inhaled loudly, chewed at his lower lip; eyes cloudy with the fa­mil­iar indecision that Deacon knew meant he was weighing how much to say.

  Anyway, looks like Mr. Grambs had bigger enemies than us,so that was all he was getting today, but really Deacon hadn’t given a crap. His head had begun to throb, rubber band winding itself up at the base of his skull and dull sinus burn. And hadn’t he read something somewhere about poison fumes from broken fluorescent bulbs? Mercury gas. Neuro­toxins. Mad as a fucking hatter.

  Deacon sat down on the metal bench inside the plexiglas bus stop shelter, alone, and here the tubes were shielded behind dirty plastic and hummed like a drowsy memory of wasps, electrons danced, and he blinked in the ugly greenish light.

  I don’t want this one, he’d said to the detective, but that had been later, after he’d stepped over or around crimson rags and the expensive-looking chair toppled over on its side, after he’d noticed all the mean little gouges in the dark wood. And there behind the sofa, hiding in plain sight, such perfect circumference, an architect’s anal-retentive circle traced in tattletale gray and argent feathers, egg­shell, sharp teeth, and the pencil shafts of small, bleach­ed bones. And the mushroom clumps, fish-belly toadstools and fleshy orange caps, sprouting from the varnished floor. Maybe five feet across, and nothing inside except the fat pinkish slug of the penis, the scrotal lump, a crinkly bit of blonde pubic hair.

  Slow seconds had passed, time seep, and no sound but a garbage truck loud down on the street and the cellophane crackle of a police walkie-talkie.

  I don’t want this one, Hammond. Go find yourself another skull monkey, but maybe he hadn’t said the words aloud, be­cause no one had seemed to hear, and his mouth had been so dry, tongue and palate snagging at each other like worn-out velcro.

  In the bus stop, Deacon closed his eyes, shut out the shitty light and the translucent reflection of himself in the plexiglas, tried to swallow, and his throat felt twice as dry as it had in the dead man’s apartment. But, hey kiddies, we got a cure for that, yes sir, that’s something we can most definitely fix.

  Hammond had been suddenly swearing at everyone then, for not having seen, for not being able to find their assholes with a flashlight and a roll of Charmin, and Deacon had sat down on the edge of the sofa, not minding the stains, the wet that had soaked right through his threadbare jeans.

  Nobody fuckin’ touch it! Hammond had growled, Don’t even fuckin’ breathe on it! He’d shouted for Cummins, but Cummins had already been talking, had stopped and started over again. Forensics is downstairs, sir. They’re probably already on their way…

  But Hammond had interrupted, Take Mr. Silvey out the way you brought him in. And then, If I need to talk, Deke, I want to be able to find you. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the thing on the floor, the thing within a thing. And he’d pushed the sweaty, crumpled bill into Deacon’s hand.

  And try to stay halfway sober.

  Then Cummins had led him back across the room to the door, ride over, this way, please, and watch your step, hadn’t said a word as they’d followed the darkened spiral of the stairwell back down to the sun-bright street.

  Deacon had the job at the laundromat thanks to Hammond, and Tuesdays and Thursdays and weekends he sat on the wobbly bar stool behind the counter, watched street lunatics and traffic through the flyspecked windows. Read the paperbacks he picked up at the Salvation Army or Goodwill for a quarter apiece and tried to ignore the incessant drone of washers and dryers. Just make sure no one steals anything or writes on the walls or craps on the floor. Sometimes, the machine that sold detergent and bleach would break down, or one of the Maytags would stop running and he’d have to make an out-of-order sign, red Magic Marker on ripped-up Tide boxes or pages torn from the phone book.

  Late Saturday morning, and the hangover had faded to the dimmest brown pulse of pain in his head, but things could be worse, he thought, the handy credo of the damned, but true, nonetheless. The laundromat could have been full of the fat ladies in their dust-stained pink house shoes, every dryer roaring, tumbling loads of towels and boxer shorts like cotton-blend agates. The hangover could have had a little more backbone, could have done the dead soldiers proud.

  There was a Ben Bova space opera beneath the counter, and a coverless collection of Faulkner short stories, but the eleven-thirty sun hurt his eyes too much for reading. Deacon pushed his sunglasses tight against his face and sipped at a warming can of 7-Up.

  When the pay phone began to ring, he moaned, glared through his tinted drugstore lenses at the shrill metal box stuck up below the sign that read “The Management Assumes No Responsibility…” Thought about slipping out until it stopped, maybe going across the street for a fresh soda. Or perhaps he could just stay put and stare the fucker down.

  Fifth ring, and the only customer in the laundromat, a Cuban girl in overalls and a Braves cap, looked at him. “You gonna get your phone,” she said, not quite a question and before he could answer it rang again. She shook her head and went back to her magazine.

  Deacon lifted the receiver halfway through the next ring, held the cool plastic to his ear. “Yeah,” he said, and realized that he was actually sweating, had all but crossed his fingers.

  “Jesus, Deke. Does Hennessey know you answer his phone like that?” The detective’s voice was too big, too friendly; behind Hammond, Deacon could hear the station-house mutter, the clatter of tongues and typewriter keys.

  “Hey,” and Deacon wanted to sit down, but knew that the cord wasn’t long enough for him to reach his stool. He leaned against the wall, trying not to notice that the Cuban girl was watch­ing him.

  “We gotta talk, bubba,” Hammond said, and Deacon could hear him lighting a cigarette, hear the smoke exhaled and hang­ing thick around the detective’s head.

  “I think,” pause, and so quick then that the words seemed to come from someone else, “I think I’m gonna sit this one out. Yeah, man, I think I’d rather sit this one out.”

  Heavy silence pushing through the phone and a woman’s faint laughter, Deacon’s heart and sweat and the dark eyes of the girl across the laundromat. And when Hammond spoke again, his voice had lost its big, crayonyellow sun cheeriness.

  “I thought we had an understanding, Deke,” then more silence, skillfully measured and strung like glinting loops of razor wire against his resolve. And he wanted to ask when there’d ever been an understanding, what Hammond could possibly think he understood, how much understanding you could buy for the odd twenty bucks and this shitty job.

 

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