Hummingbird Salamander(17)

The hummingbird gave me what I can only describe as an imperious or even contemptuous look, hovering there weightless. It pierced me. Found me wanting.

Then, with a slight leftward tack, the hummingbird veered off, disappeared, and I woke with a start. Sweating. The ticking of the bedroom clock, too loud.

In the neighborhood we had an unidentified drone. Not a delivery drone. One of the new small ones. Could perch on a branch so you almost didn’t register the presence, because you thought it was a bird. Then, I loved drones. I loved how I could order something and it would be there immediately. I would toss the plastic in the recycling bin and never questioned the magic of how I had received yet another gift. We could do drones well, but we could not stop pouring plastic waste into the ocean.

And, still, I was lost in the dream.





[24]


In a rush: of a sudden, the end of the week. Gasping from that. Yet also euphoric. Trying to be calm on the outside. I locked my office as I left Thursday night. Didn’t want Larry in there. But he could get in if he wanted. Anyone could.

The weather had turned a sour lukewarm with pockets of chill, unfamiliar for the season. Glittering gutters. Tinkling gurgle of water passing through shards of ice. Now we had flood warnings instead of sleet warnings. Flowers bloomed that should have waited until spring. I took my own car, telling my husband short-term parking was more convenient than him having to take me. Not that his grumbly offer had been convincing; I’d sprung conferences on him before, but it always unsettled him, and him being unsettled made our daughter grumpy. Even if most days she would’ve hardly known if I was home or not.

On the way to the airport, I had two stops to make. First, the gym. It wasn’t to work out. Just to check that the hummingbird was safe. Maybe that was me not thinking straight. Maybe it was me worrying too much. I guess I thought I’d get a few sets in, too, in my street clothes. Settle my nerves.

The box was there. The hummingbird was in the box.

The new thing was Charlie coming over to talk. Instinctively, I put my body in front of my locker so he couldn’t see the box.

“What’s up?” Thought I’d broken some gym rule.

“Someone followed you here,” Charlie said. “Two men—in a black SUV in the back of the parking lot.”

I laughed. That sounded ridiculous. Why did it sound ridiculous? A pinprick of alarm, but I didn’t know the source. The information or my reaction?

Then I took a look, frowned. No one in the parking lot. “I don’t see anyone.”

“No—last time. This time, who knows?”

“Are you serious?” Like Charlie was paranoid. Like some quirk of his past was surfacing. Me playing amateur psychologist to deflect.

“Think I’m talking to you for fun or something?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Somebody is onto you.”

“I haven’t done anything.” Blurted out.

He chuckled, like I’d told a joke. “You must’ve done something.”

“No one’s following me. No one’s there, Charlie.”

It came down to this: I wasn’t ready to believe some online searches had spilled over into the meat world.

Charlie looked at me like I was na?ve, then shrugged. “Okay, then. No one’s following you.”

He went back to his chair, picked up the newspaper, gave it a stiff shake to straighten the page he was reading. Didn’t speak to me again. Wasn’t going to waste more time on a fool like me, said the economy of his body language.

In the end, I left the hummingbird in the locker. Because I’d extracted what I needed. Because I didn’t have time to do anything else with it.



* * *



Next stop was the coffee shop, where I’d gotten Silvina’s message. I hadn’t gone the whole week. “Safe” or “unsafe”—these weren’t the words. But something had been broken and it didn’t feel like a sanctuary. Or even a respite.

Only one reason to go back. And I almost didn’t, except I checked the whole way. No black SUV following. No one following that I could tell, trying to remember all the bullets in PowerPoint about tailing someone from a past conference. Old-school stuff. New to me.

I slid into a chair at a rickety table facing the register. Returning to the scene of some crime. Except I didn’t know what the crime was yet.

Did I have a heightened sense of my surroundings? Yes. Was my heartbeat rapid? No.

The barista who had given me the note stood behind the counter, trying to ignore me. Half expected he wouldn’t be there. Different shift than usual or just disappeared. A gangly young man. A shadow beard. He wore a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, with a coffee shop apron over that. Though the place wasn’t much warmer than outside.

When he was free of customers, I beckoned to him. For a moment, he looked like he might flee out the back. Then what? Would I try to retrieve him?

But, instead, he asked a bored-looking woman with a nose ring and fiery red-orange hair to take over. He slid into the chair across from me, smelling of clove cigarettes. A kind of confused defiance lit his features. As if trying to get behind a cause but didn’t know what he’d signed up for.

“I told you already—the envelope got dropped off for me along with the money. No one remembers who dropped it off.”