La Pigeon

by Dawn Wendt (Winner of the Editors’ Award in Prose)

Paris felt the way cold water goes down a parched throat— refreshing, with a slight hint of desperation. The thick air smelled like marzipan and expensive perfumes. It was a beautiful Friday night with a vibrant strawberry sunset that everyone else seemed to be captivated by, dancing under the rising moonlight to songs they’d heard a million times, cheeks and bodies red as the horizon.

She was looking up instead of at him. He was on his fifth or sixth, maybe, she’d stopped counting after three. Her first glass was still half full. The party raged on around them, but they remained untouched on the deck outside unnervingly stuck the way they always were—a kept-to-themselves kind of couple. The isolated, outdoor deck was fitted with a wooden railing and tables with stools, ashtrays, and the little glass of popcorn that came with every drink order. It was the popcorn that drew the pigeons, shooed off by women’s’ stilettos and men’s loafers back into Parisian oblivion.

When their conversation ran dry, she piped up to fill in the silence. “You know bananas are going to extinct in a few years?” She

tried. He turned to her, and frowned. “What?”

“Never mind.”

He nodded and turned back towards the setting sun, taking its time to get there, unusually later than she was used to. He always claimed that her sense of humor was off-beat, although lately it seemed that word was becoming less and less of a compliment.

A woman came up to them, speaking in fast French, greeting the boy-whose-touch-was-now-too-much and then herself. The way she looked at him made it look like she wished they could trade places.

The girl actually with him wished the same. He made no point of introducing either of them. He didn’t need to.

Next to them, she watched a small, particularly brave, pigeon trotting mindlessly around the deck, avoiding other partygoers taking a smoke break or requiring a breath of much-needed air, looking for any popcorn reminisces on the wooden floor. Parisian pigeons were, surprisingly, not at all any different from American ones. They still trudged through crowds expecting people to move for them, and seemed to miraculously avoid flying and crashing into someone no matter how increasingly short the possible moment of impact was arriving. They could wiggle themselves out of anything.

The second wish of the night—she wished she was a pigeon. They were signs of a dirty environment, probably very disease ridden, and weren’t all that pretty to look at, which made them the perfect candidate for the next reincarnation. She could be avoided, free to search for breadcrumbs whenever and wherever she pleased. Maybe she would choose to fly to Paris, and an image of a pigeon’s transatlantic flight came into mind. She wondered if it would even be possible for a bird as lazy pigeons seemed to be. But then again, pigeons were always busy living for the next breadcrumb closest to them, they certainly wouldn’t be interested in crossing the Atlantic for the same sort of thing.

When the fast-speaking, red-lipped woman left, he started smoking a cigarette. He was telling her about a concert he’d like to go to, a band she’d never heard of, and she only pretended to be listening. Her eyes were on the brave little pigeon, who was still traversing on the deck, strategically avoiding footwear intended to shoo it off. It seemed he found some nachos plastered to the wooden deck after a high heel and a few Long Islands got the best of three girls in cocktail dresses. He carefully avoided the jalapeños.

“Hey, are you listening to me?”

No. She was watching intensely, the bass of a rap song booming all around them as the pigeon started to get adventurous with the ground it was maneuvering through. It was getting a bit cocky as it tried to traverse through an increasing density of shoes that could provide an unfavorable outcome for the poor guy. A loud laugh rang through the crowd, and then a horrifying yelp. She watched the pigeon’s curiosity bring about the brutal end. What had been a joke that left a girl doubling over in laughter ended in an unexpected stabbing. Right through the heart, it appeared, although she was no expert in pigeon anatomy. The pigeon-stabber removed the talon from the de- ceased bird’s body, but made no effort to clean up after her deed. She retreated inside with her friends, perhaps a little paler than before.

The pigeon died because it was somewhere it didn’t really belong. Suddenly the arm around her waist felt slimy to the touch, and she wiggled out of the closeness. She looked at him and thought up all the excuses she could make. Bathroom. Need Some Air. Have to Make a Call. He would believe any of them. He would let her go. And yet she knew she would just have to turn right back around, step right back under the heel of his stiletto-shaped arms that would leave her the same as they had been for three whole years, with a big needle shot through the middle of her stomach. Liver gorged, stomach impaled, entrails sprawled out on the floor of the outside deck of a nondescript Parisian bar. And then, she looked at him for the first time that night, and she thought of her third wish.