No One Knows Us Here(64)

“Over there.” The bird had taken Sam’s arrival as an invitation to settle down. It had landed, tucked back its wings. I could see his chest vibrating, his heart beating a million beats a minute. “On the lamp.”

Sam’s narrowed eyes surveyed the scene. Then he looked back at me. “I thought he was attacking you.”

“He was.”

“I mean—” I had successfully avoided Sam for more than a month, since that night at the symphony.

He had changed, shed some layers in the warmer weather, like a snake. Hair a little shorter. Barefoot, in a soft gray T-shirt and faded jeans. They were the jeans he’d let me wear, way back when. I could tell by the way they were worn at the knees.

“It’s just a bird,” I said unnecessarily.

“I can see that.”

The bird watched as Sam approached him. It may have been my imagination, but the bird’s heart began to beat more slowly the closer Sam got. Sam reached out his arm, toward the bird, and the bird didn’t fly away. He watched Sam with trusting, unblinking eyes.

“What are you going to do?” I whispered, tiptoeing behind Sam.

“I’m going to let him out.”

And then, like the kid in My Side of the Mountain, Sam extended his index finger to the bird. The bird cocked his head and then climbed aboard like a man stepping onto a train.

Slowly, Sam walked, the bird perched on his finger, over to the window. He stepped onto the chair I had left there, reached his hand out the open window, and made a quick shooing motion.

The bird took off, flapped his wings rapidly, testing them out. We watched until he disappeared from view.

“He’ll probably die out there,” I said. “They’ll smell you on him. Your human scent.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Where’s Wendy?” he said.

“It’s the middle of the afternoon. She’s at school.”

“It’s Saturday.”

“Oh.” A wave of concern washed over Sam’s face. I laughed nervously, trying to come up with something. “I forgot,” I said. “She’s—she has a study group. A group project for school.”

“Okay.”

Our eyes met for a moment. Sam looked as if he were about to say something but had decided against it. He started toward the door.

“Are you going somewhere?” he asked. We’d reached the entryway. He saw my suitcase, the one I’d just brought up from basement storage.

“France,” I said, because it was the truth, and I didn’t have the wherewithal to come up with a convincing lie.

“France, huh?” He was shaking his head, as if he couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to go there.

“Thanks for rescuing me,” I said. “Again.”

Sam’s lips parted, then closed again. Then he started speaking, the words coming out in a rush, a what the hell expression on his face. “Listen, Leo Glass—he’s not who you think he is. Have you read about the working conditions in his factories in China? Who knows how many international labor laws he’s— And then there are the environmental issues. Privacy violations.” Sam ran his fingers through his hair. His words picked up speed. “You know he’s selling surveillance packages to unstable governments. They’re already using Glasseyes to arrest dissenters in Singapore. You have to have read about this . . .” He stopped, midstream, pausing for air.

“Wow,” I said. “You’ve really done your research.”

“This isn’t some top-secret information; it’s practically common knowledge. God, Rosemary, just google him.”

“You’re making him sound much worse than he is. When he found out about those factory conditions he—” I remembered reading something about this, but couldn’t quite recall how the situation resolved. “He’s trying to change that,” I concluded. “And he just donated like a million dollars or something to—”

“I can’t believe you’re with this guy. I can’t believe you’re voluntarily with this guy. Whatever arrangement you have with him—”

“It’s not an ‘arrangement.’ He’s my boyfriend.” I put my hand to my forehead and squeezed my eyes closed for a moment. I didn’t know what to do or what I wanted. Looking back, it seems like what I wanted was for Sam to rescue me. He saw me, he saw me flapping my wings and banging my head against the glass, he was telling me this, but I wasn’t listening. Maybe I wanted him to save me, to swoop me up and into his arms and tell me he would take care of everything. But why would he? We were just neighbors. We had spent what amounted to two days together.

“I know he’s not your boyfriend.” Sam rested a hand on my shoulder and gave me a sad, knowing look. I wondered what he would do if I collapsed onto his chest, or if I smashed my lips onto his. I wanted to. I wanted to let him whisk me away from all this. I could feel the heat from his hand radiate down through the fabric of my shirt and onto my skin.

Sam inched closer to me. “Because I know you.” He was staring at me with an intense focus I’d never seen in him before. “And I know what you want.”

I stopped breathing, and in one split second, a wild fantasy spooled out of my head—that I’d tell him everything, that he’d say he understood, and he would tell me how to fix it, this mess I was in. Or he would just fix it for me, the way he climbed out his window and walked along that ledge to open my door, or ushered that bird out into the spring sky. He would fix it, and I would be grateful, and we would fall into each other’s arms and live happily ever after.