In her head, Anastasia thought smugly, The wild women weren’t enough?
To her horror, he shot back as she walked out, “Keep it up and you might be next!”
He was done, truly done with everyone, every last man in his life: his father, Rhodes, and now Silber. Silber was, sure, barely physically in his life, but he had never left Zal’s thoughts. He was on a roll of shooting down every man that had meant something to him at some point. He had nothing, suddenly, but a woman who was locked up a hundred miles away, whom he wasn’t even sure he could handle.
He had received an e-mail from Willa letting him know Asiya would be back for the holidays, but she’d be with her mother first and then her father — her abandoners suddenly recognizing her on the brink of total disintegration, as good abandoners often redeem themselves — and then just in town for New Year’s.
Zal realized it was their one-year anniversary, her homecoming. How the hell had it been a year? He tried to see the poetry in that, some bit of beauty, and yet could not get over the big side of him that dreaded the whole thing, the very idea of her, especially now.
What would she be like? A medicated robot with no worries, but no feelings, either? A presto-chango overfed Willa-esque entity, but without the lovely, indescribable Willa-ness to pull it off? Or, worst of all, maybe herself, just herself, the self she promised she’d return to once she was back with him? That was, by far, the thing that scared him the most.
She had hit the bottom of the well, he had thought, which was, for the most part, considering everything, a relieving thought. But the possibility that her breakdown and hospitalization were not the bottom, or that the well was bottomless, made him feel like he couldn’t go on. Couldn’t go on with her, at least.
So he decided to immerse himself more fully in that soothing, dumbing thing: work. He paid attention to the store more than ever, compulsively asked patrons if they needed help — until one old lady complained, swearing she’d been asked at least a half-dozen times in the half hour she was there — swept, cleaned, folded, washed, and tended to every animal or human that he was supposed to tend to. He became a superworker of sorts and found a surprising amount of pleasure in that. It was simple, he was good, the contract was clear, the end.
There was one creature he took a special interest in, more and more so as Asiya’s return began to nag at his very soul. She was a tiny blonde, tiny but still voluptuous, round in all the right places. She was particularly feisty, quick, hot-tempered, and sassy. He was around her all day — she never left his sight. She’d sing once in a while, and it was the sweetest singing he thought he’d ever heard.
She was, he hated — downright detested, resented, abhorred — to admit, a bird. A canary, to be exact.
He. Could. Not. Help. Himself. Zal saw those words on his tombstone. And he knew it was certainly time to quit his job when he started to develop feelings for, of all things, a canary.
Luckily, he didn’t have to quit. He was fired, just ten days after he confronted his infatuation. He was given a warning for taking the bird out of the cage for no one but himself, then for unsuccessfully sneaking her in his pocket during his lunch break, then for attempting to take her with him to the bathroom. Zal, I don’t know what’s going on here, the manager had said,but I need your hands off the goddamn bird. If you want to buy it, it’s one thing. . He had considered it, of course, but he knew, like a former junkie before a free bag of heroin, that if he went there, it really would be the beginning of the end—Goodbye normalcy, goodbye new life, hello yesterday and all its infinite sicknesses. He said it would never happen again.
Until one evening, during closing, whether he meant to do it or not, he took her out and let her go into the night sky. He claimed it was an accident, that he would pay for it, that they could take it out of his paycheck—
“Sorry, Zal,” the manager said. “I’m probably crazy for thinking you got obsessed with a bird, but you freed the same one you kept playing with. I’m in this business because it’s just a bunch of animals, no drama. The thing with you and that bird was weird. What’s it gonna be next, the iguana or the rat terrier? I can’t have employees that get all attached. I love animals, too, and I’d love it if they were all free to rule the world, but I got to run a business.”
Zal nodded and nodded and nodded. He was grateful for the interpretation.
And in many ways he was grateful to go through it: another human step: Being Fired from a Job. It was fine. He could get another one.
For a second he thought about calling Silber, but he knew he had, as they say, burned that bridge, maybe for good.
That night, he went home happier than usual. He gazed at the sky as he took those automatic steps and thought to himself, Somewhere a beautiful creature is free. He missed her a bit, but he reminded himself that he didn’t even know her, couldn’t know her. He reminded himself that she had entered his life — like the skydiving, like the job in the first place — to test him. And he had failed, but the beautiful thing about failure and humans, as he was realizing over and over, was that it was not just permitted but in many ways supported. Failure was part of the condition of life.
Many years later, Pet’s Delight, on the Upper West Side, was shut down because the owner was caught selling dozens and dozens — possibly more than a hundred — canaries to a ringleader of a canary-fighting ring upstate.
Canary fighting was a shock to most people, but not to Zal, who had grown up around them. They could fight indeed. But it all reminded Zal of his canary and her rescue, on the last day of his work. Sometimes, as they said, things really did happen for a reason.
He felt that mixture of heartbreak and relief that had defined all of his life’s many near misses.
Heartbreak and relief, also, when he saw Asiya come up his stairs — Zal had told her an abbreviated version of why it was too risky to meet at her place — and to his open door, and finally his open arms. Heartbreak, relief, and of course some fear and anxiety, but also, he thought, as his heart raced in the good way, maybe honestly love, too.
She looked more beautiful than he remembered, wearing what the old Asiya would never have worn: a floral silk blouse, of all things. Her hair had grown a bit, to a little-girlish bob, and her body of course had filled out just enough to still err on the side of slender but a healthy slender. She had on a tiny smile, like a schoolgirl with a secret. Zal couldn’t believe this was the girl he could call his.
“Look at you,” he gasped as he took her in his arms, squeezing her tight to convince himself she was indeed real.
“I missed you so much,” she whispered into his chest, as if communicating directly with his heart.
He felt the cliché of his heart melting. He led her to where she was going and they did it, in some ways, for the very first time. They surpassed sex — that duty Zal felt he had to perform for her sake — and made actual love.
“Is that it?” were the first words Zal said to her as they lay there in the dark, naked.
“Is what it? Why are you making that weird face?”
“I thought maybe I was smiling. God, I really feel it inside me, like it wants to come out. Not it either? Look, here. .” He made a grimace.