The Lovebird (15 page)

I wondered what little conciliatory gift Jack Dolce had waiting for me in his bicycle basket when he’d returned to the flat and found I had gone. I was sure he had brought one. He called me on his old rotary telephone that night and for many nights thereafter, letting the rings number into the sixties, the seventies. He typed me letters on the Underwood and sealed them shut with a drop of green wax embossed with an
M
. But I stayed away. I knew that if I tarried with Jack Dolce, I would never save anything again.

I ORDERED STRANGE MANUALS AND HANDBOOKS
off a few obscure websites and learned there were many ways to start a fire. (My guides were cheaply xeroxed, haphazardly stapled, full of spelling errors and typos, and, in one instance, personally inscribed by the author: “Good Luck!” he had written above a winking smiley face.) It was hard to decide on just one method, but I did. I prepared a presentation consisting of a series of illustrated poster boards that summarized my findings about all things fiery. My final three posters explained how to construct what some of my slightly more academic resources had termed an “incendiary device.” During our next Operation H.E.A.R.T. meeting, the crew crowded into my studio to watch the presentation.

I used a telescopic pointer I’d swiped from Professor Weatherbury to gesture toward my pictures. My charm bracelet clinked softly with my every point, so that while I told the crew about fires and clever ways to start them, the two charms told the story of one brokenhearted bird.

“But Margie …” Ptarmigan searched for the right words
when I was through. “A firebomb? It all seems … a bit … excessive.”

“I expected that reaction,” I said, swilling from my wineglass. “However, the point is not to hurt anyone. And we won’t. The point is to make a statement.”

“Which is?” said Orca, one eyebrow raised.

“Which is,” I said, “what it has always been, and what all of us gathered here tonight”—I swept my arm theatrically across the studio, where my five companions sat smooshed together on the floor and Charlotte chewed rapturously on the wooden leg of my desk chair—“know to be true: that animals are sentient beings; that they are worthy of our protection; that their rights must be respected; and that those who dare to disregard the rights of animals must receive a message—”

“A message,” Bear interjected. “But that could be, like, a letter, or—”

“A letter doesn’t do anything!” I snapped. “People need to be shocked into paying attention.” I took another swallow from my glass.

“It’s okay, Margie,” Bear said soothingly. “I was just thinking out loud is all.” Bear spoke to me in the same mild tone she must have used with her bevy of baby brothers and sisters, and I was instantly contrite for being sharp.

Still, I was glad when Raven said, “Margie’s right. People do need to be shocked into paying attention. That’s why I started dyeing my bangs green in junior high.”

“Listen,” I continued, “we can keep repeating ourselves. Or we can evolve. We, as Operation H.E.A.R.T., can embark on a novel journey in a new direction.” I paused and made eye contact with each crew member, one at a time, before adding, “Say you’ll make the journey with me?”

Bumble nodded. “It’s time,” he said. “We’ve made good progress in the past. We’ve got some momentum going. Let’s keep moving forward.”

“I’m with Bumble,” Orca said. “I think Margie has made some good points tonight. Even if she is kind of drunk.”

“Friends,” Ptarmigan said, “I am in agreement about momentum and moving forward. But I am only on board if no one gets injured.”

“I’m sure nobody will be around if we go late enough,” conceded Bear. “The whole staff always goes out for drinks together after closing. Except for Zac.” Her face clouded. “He likes to come home with me. But it’s time for me to let him go, anyway.” She shook her head. “Outside of loving, we have very little in common.”

Bear spent one last night with the chef. And while Zac snored in the way only a man with a belly full of meat can, she stole his restaurant key.

THERE WAS SOMETHING UNREAL
about the burning. It had the feeling of a fairy tale, a story Rasha, had she lived, might have read to me one night in my girlhood room, in bed, beside the porcelain palm holding the rose-scented rosary. Yes, when it was over, it had the quality of something I had read, but had not done. The heroine and her friends conjured flames as if by magic. They moved in the earliest morning hours, when all was dark and the air was full of the scent of shy night-blooming flowers that would soon close themselves again, all at once like a choir going silent, in defense against the smoke. Long-tressed Bear unlocked the door using the stolen key she had strung on a silk ribbon around her neck. It glinted under the light of the moon. She disengaged the alarm system, pushing a secret code. She took one last look around her lover’s palace and went weeping to wait in the getaway van with Ptarmigan, who perched like a sovereign in his ebony chair, and Orca, who waited behind the wheel, her fedora pulled down low, her mustachioed mouth stoic and still, as if manning a charmed chariot. Across the street, Raven painted
a purple message on the sidewalk in her best calligraphy. The heroine and Bumble B. stepped into the darkness of the kitchen, where a hundred bodies—once feathered, once furred—lay stacked in the freezer. The two whispered things to one another, things neither of them would remember, words that would become ash. They touched hands, laid down their strange instrument. It would make a music of hisses and crackles after an initial percussive pop. And only the heroine, who was under the spell of a prince, a miller of wheat, could coerce it into singing. She had a stick in her pocket that came all the way from a star. She scratched that stick, and it sparked into five points like the white blossom of an orange. Then she ran with her friend. She ran. We ran.

12
FRUIT FLY
(Drosophila melanogaster)

ZAC WAS ON THE NEWS LATER THAT MORNING
, tripping sleepily through the smoldering remains of Untamed. “We will rebuild,” he said, coughing. The camera panned over the words Raven had painted in her careful cursive on the sidewalk across the street, where we knew the fire would not erase them.

“Zac, do you have any idea what—or who—could have caused this?” a reporter asked him.

“No, I really don’t,” he said.

“It’s true, he really doesn’t,” Bear sniffled, snuggling her head into Orca’s shoulder. “He’s not very smart.” We were all squished on the couch in Ptarmigan’s apartment, where we had gone after leaving the restaurant. His mom hadn’t noticed we’d borrowed her van, and she looked surprised to see us when she departed for work at seven, widening her heavily mascaraed eyes in our direction before kissing Ptarmigan goodbye. “Love you, William,” she said. He straightened his glasses sheepishly.

The fire had been featured on three morning news programs. And, had we not known otherwise, we might have thought Ptarmigan’s TV was an old black-and-white model, because as we flipped from one channel to another all we saw was the
dark, charred skeleton of the restaurant against the white sky—completely overcast with clouds—of a San Diego morning. I thought of Simon in his black-and-white-checkered trousers and wondered if he was watching.

The
Sun
printed an article the following day. For the first time, Operation H.E.A.R.T. had made it to the front page: law
ENFORCEMENT FINDS RESTAURANT FIRE SUSPICIOUS, OPERATION H.E.A.R.T. AT WORK
? “A popular local restaurant called Untamed,” the article read,

This publicity excited the crew, but I thrilled at the thought of just one person seeing the article. We had done something big,
and we had done it completely. I slept soundly. I had a dream in which I wandered through an unfamiliar house, opening doors and discovering one room after another, each of them different from the others (one had orange-tree wallpaper, one had jasmine vine drapes, one had a carpet of red poppies standing strong and straight), and they all filled me with a sense of possibility, of delight.

“WE’RE ON A ROLL NOW,”
I said during a merry meeting on the roof of the old Victorian. “Let’s keep growing. Maybe it’s time we brought in some new people, so we can accomplish even more …” A plane droned overhead and zoomed toward the tarmac, taking the rest of my sentence with it. No one seemed to mind.

“We
don’t
want Jack Dolce on the crew,” said Orca. The others echoed her.

“That isn’t who I mean,” I said, and my elation dimmed when I thought of him, the tenderhearted Tuscan, learning of my exploit. I shook my head as if doing so could dislodge the image of his disappointed face. “But consider who else might be out there, and the contributions they might be able to make.”

“But it’s always just been
us
,” Bumble said.

“My point exactly,” I countered. “And Simon said change is necessary, remember? And he had big dreams for the Operation. He told me about them.” Did he remember telling me, I wondered, remember touching me? “We just took a big step, and we succeeded. If we continue to allow ourselves to change, the animals will benefit. They
need
us.” Before the sun sank, I convinced the crew of the correctness of my view and was secretly surprised at the ease with which, once again, they followed my lead.

Bumble designed a flyer that we distributed throughout the city. It featured a drawing of Charlotte, who we decided would
henceforth be our mascot. “Are you a friend to animals?” read the thought bubble that floated above Charlotte’s head.

On the night of the information session, the entire upstairs of Gelato Amore was packed with prospective crew members, most of them college students. Some smoked slouchily with suspicious faces while others prepared to take notes. They crowded around the usual café regulars, including the man in the newsboy cap, who hid his head in a book with his trademark timidity and appeared undisturbed by the invasion.

The crew and I faced the crowd from a makeshift stage of sorts. We sat in front of a rolling chalkboard purloined from an empty classroom at the university. Much to my own surprise, I was not nervous. I, who had been forever shy, who had been Always Alone, was actually excited by the prospect of talking to a room full of unfamiliar faces. I was making a difference, I thought.

I wrote on the chalkboard with professorial zest: “Operation H.E.A.R.T.—Inaugural Information Session—Welcome!—Your Host, Margie.” I smoothed the front of my strawberry-printed sundress and peeked at my lucky red Chinese shoes.

I cleared my throat and addressed my audience. “Hello and thank you for coming.” The crowd applauded. Behind me, the crew applauded, too. “Operation H.E.A.R.T. is a small group of passionate activists who love animals. We were established by a local intellectual who has since retired from the organization.

“As you know, we hope to welcome some new members into our existing crew, which includes myself and the five individuals you see seated behind me: Raven” (she strummed a single chord on her guitar), “Bumble” (he saluted, military style, and then looked embarrassed), “Bear” (she flashed a peace sign), “Orca” (she tipped her Little Tramp derby hat), “and Ptarmigan” (he smiled wide, as if for a photograph).

“After a few more comments from me,” I continued, “I will take your questions. I will do my best to answer them, but please know I cannot reveal any information that would compromise the success of our future campaigns.”

A pair of chocolate eyes melted into me. In the very back of the room, leaning against the wall, stood Jack Dolce, arms folded across his chest, dishrag dangling. I had not seen him in weeks. I had avoided Gelato Amore since our fight and, tonight, had forgone a ginger ale and marched purposefully upstairs without checking to see if he was working. There he stood, missing his usual red-mouthed radiance. Unlike every other face in the room, his looked so sad, so sorry. A bit of the spark seeped out of me, and, disconcerted, I went on.