When Daniele got her first job out of college, her brother drove several hundred miles to help her move into her apartment. The day before he headed back home, he bought her a parakeet. "You'll need company," he said, "since you'll probably hang around here reading every night." He softened the criticism with a wry smile. It worried him that Daniele had so few friends and such a lack of interest in men. She had taken a job so far away from him or any of their family, it seemed like a deliberate ploy to cut herself off from their love and support.
She inspected the tiny bird crouched miserably on the bottom of his cage. His feathers, white and arctic blue marked with gray shell patterns, made her think of northern fjords. "I don't think they allow pets here, Michael."
"They do birds," he said. "I checked with your landlord."
Her eyes met Michael's with the tenderness and hostility that had made their love a wrestling match during childhood and a contest of wills ever since. "Running my life again, huh?"
"Saving your life," he said. "If you'll let me. Just give the bird a chance, okay. Then if you really don't want it, we can take it. The kids would love another pet and Jennifer won't mind."
"Do I Federal Express him or what?"
"Just bring it as a Christmas present when you come home."
"I'm not coming this year. I have to save money, you know, if I'm going to take care of myself." Avoiding the wounded look in her brother's eyes, Daniele unlatched the cage door and lowered her hand inside. She figured the bird would bite or thrash his wings in a stupid panic, giving her an excuse not to keep him. Instead he watched impassively until her hand got close enough then hopped on. His claws gripped her finger with confidence as though he found himself at last on familiar territory. "He's tame!"
"Yeah, fed by hand, so it thinks the human hand is Mama."
"Not it," she said. "He."
Michael grinned. "Guess that means you're keeping him. So what's his name?"
"Yubi." The name sprang out of nowhere, as though waiting in secret all along for the parakeet that Daniele hadn't known she wanted.
Daniele began work at Farr & Dey, Incorporated, a company that prepared tax returns, took inventories, performed audits and handled other bookkeeping chores for businesses too small to need an accountant of their own. She spent her days tapping the plastic keys that controlled the millions of circuit gates that crunched the numbers on the spread sheets before her. Sometimes the data blurred and she found herself staring into the depthless eye of the monitor, her own eyes full of tears that had nothing to do with weeping. Daniele neither liked nor disliked the job. Its salary allowed her to save money and live in comfort, and she wanted nothing more.
Her coworkers soon began to think of her as strange. Though she worked hard and did what she was told, Daniele seemed as impersonal as a piece of equipment. She never blushed at rebukes from gruff Ronald Farr, the perfectionist senior member, known among the staff as Mr. Clean. Once he praised her work, which raised eyebrows and dropped jaws among the astonished onlookers. A compliment? From that antiseptic bastard? Somebody gasped in disbelief, but Daniele murmured a thank you as though the boss had passed her a paperclip. When the staff joked among themselves about Sanji Dey's munchkin accent or his dollish feet so adorable in itsy-bitsy black shoes, she never laughed.
She never joined in their gossip about Cameron Bowers, the firm's dashing junior member. They claimed that Farr thought bachelors were flighty and refused to put Bowers on the company letterhead unless he got married. Every available woman at Farr & Dey had dreamed of being Mrs. Cameron Bowers; each had suffered through his routine. He would single out a woman and flirt until she splurged on chic and ridiculous clothes, simpered and posed for his attention, dropped crude hints in his lap, or otherwise made a fool of herself. Then, abruptly, he would ignore her. His victims usually left the company in humiliation, but two Cassandras had stayed on, warning newcomers. "He makes you feel invisible," said one bitterly. "He's a fag," said the other.
One afternoon Daniele glanced up and caught Bowers studying her. He winked then flashed a polished smile. Absently Daniele smiled in return before dropping her gaze back to the monitor.
"Playing it cool, little girl?" said one of the Cassandras.
"There's no point in being rude," Daniele replied.
In weeks to come, Bowers favored her with lewder winks and brighter smiles and invented reasons to lean over her shoulder. Even then, Daniele's courtesy never faltered. She treated Bowers as an unfortunate victim of disease, not responsible for grimaces and twitches over which he had no control. Her coworkers began calling her the ice queen. As much as they despised Bowers, most of them would have leapt at his stale bait.
Away from the office, Daniele seldom thought about her work or coworkers whose names it took her months to learn. Her real life unfolded inside her head, and her only companion was Yubi. She often paged through National Geographic at dinner while the bird perched on a nearby saucer, a paper napkin spread underneath to catch his droppings. He supped on morsels from her plate – a few drops of lukewarm soup, a spinach leaf, a sliver of pasta or chunk of carrot. An ideal dinner partner, he never rehashed newspaper stories or pestered Daniele about finding a boyfriend.
Later Yubi nested on the armchair where she curled to read library books. One week Daniele would check out only books with naked in the title; another week, only novels named after the hero; another week, any volume with a red cover. She sampled every book, tossing it aside the instant she got bored. The few that she finished, she entered in a diary with marbled end leaves and creamy blank pages. She figured it would hold a lifetime of reading.
As she entered Naked Lunch one evening, Yubi clung to the forefinger of her writing hand. He was angled head down, almost vertical, chirping a pattern of throaty, ascendant notes over and over, and drumming his beak obsessively against her fingernail. Yubi looked so cute with his ruffled feathers and pupils shrunk to pinpoints, so fierce and fluffy that Daniele had to laugh. She bobbed her finger, letting him ride until he started snapping and gnawing at her knuckle. In a frenzy he bit down hard. Daniele howled and shook him off, then glared after him to the curtain rod where he retreated. "Don't you bite me, you little beast!"
Hunkered low, his feathers slicked to a frosty sheen, Yubi peered beneath droopy eyelids that were almost translucent black. He looked as bold and sultry as a movie sheik.
"What is it you want?" Daniele almost shouted.
Yubi cocked his head insolently as if to say, "You really have to ask?"
From then on, Yubi devoted himself to winning Daniele's hand. Nothing discouraged him. Every time she dumped him off her finger, he flew back to resume his serenade. Locked in his cage, he fluttered his wings and panted as though overwhelmed by passion. He cried and plunged to the cage bottom and pined away in a corner until she took pity and released him. Yubi's desire was wrongheaded and comical, yet he touched Daniele as no human suitor ever had.
She had tried sex with the neighbor boy she almost married to please both their families, and with the college junior she dated before understanding that she was only doing what everyone else did. Sex left her cold and sticky. It escaped her how any woman could enjoy being crushed beneath a sweaty male while his groin plunged relentlessly at hers. Daniele preferred the vague pleasure of a warm shower or a brisk walk.
In Yubi she saw the male sexual urge writ small. The bird acted like the college junior after he’d treated her to three Tom Collins, the seafood combo at Red Lobster and a slasher movie at evening prices. Yubi hadn't even bought her a drink, but he was just as baffled and outraged by her rejection. She finally got tired of shaking him off and began to ignore his courtship except when he bit too hard. Yubi learned fast not to bite. Instead he began throwing up seed from his crop and feeding her fingernail as though it was another bird. Daniele put up with the ritual as long as the food stayed in his mouth. When clumps of moist seed dropped onto her clothes, she reached for a Kleenex with Yubi's hand, dislodging him for a moment. He always flew back to her. Sometimes he tried to impress her by soaring in wide circles then veering suddenly down or upward with a rumble of feathers and a screech of exhilaration.
After one such flight Yubi made his move. He hunkered on Daniele's finger and started sweeping his tail back and forth against her knuckle. In the brush of his rump feathers she felt hints of flesh. He was soon fluffed with excitement. His pupils almost disappeared, his chirp grew ardent and demanding. "Stop it now," Daniele said, but it seemed cruel to bring him this far and no further. Tentatively she bobbed her finger. Yubi turned and pecked her other fingers and knuckles, her whole hand, not biting but kissing with such wild abandon that his tail feathers fanned open.
A smell of dried grasses and pungent wild flowers rose to her nostrils, the smell of meadow on a hot summer day. That was Yubi's scent. She lowered her head to breathe it in. His claws tightened on her bobbing finger. His tail swept harder and faster, angled downward for more contact with her knuckle, and now she clearly felt moist flesh beneath his hind feathers. He spread a wing across her hand as though embracing it. Daniele was amazed by the intricacy of his icy-blue wing feathers, so beautiful and capable of flight. She thought his chirping was pitched as high as the human ear could register, but Yubi ascended to a higher note as his other wing unfurled and his tail bent so acutely that he seemed to be wrapped around her hand. With a shudder he came against her. Afterward he swayed a moment on her finger, eyes squeezed shut, their dark lids like bruises. He was much smaller now that his feathers had lost their fluffiness.
Yubi flew to the curtain rod. On Daniele's knuckle a drop of yellowish liquid glistened, threaded with traces of blood. She felt guilty without knowing why. After all, their unnatural act had been the bird's idea. Then she became aware of her heart thumping and her lungs dragging air as though she had sprinted upstairs. Her insides felt warm and loose in an altogether new way. It was more than a physical sensation. Whatever had maintained her balance, the inner tension of her being, was broken. Daniele caught herself staring at bird semen like a gypsy trying to read her fortune in a minuscule crystal ball.
Launching into reckless flight, Yubi whipped through hairpin turns and sang out in shrill exultation. Then he alighted on Daniele's hand and stood with his breast swelled proudly, his gaze level and serene. She felt his triumph as though it were her own, welling inside her, and understood that she was responding to Yubi as she never had responded to another human being.
Later he preened Daniele's hair and face. When she understood what he wanted, she removed every trace of makeup and held him close while he nibbled the tender folds of her eyelids and stroked her lashes with his beak. His sweet meadow scent filled her head like a dream.
Cameron Bowers approached her desk with a sheaf of computer paper in hand. Daniele held her fingers poised on the keyboard to signal that she was busy and forestall any accidental brushing up against her. He found a page and bent closer as if to confer. She caught a whiff of sandalwood cologne, a fleeting smile on lips that were almost too chiseled. Sometimes Bowers struck her as a parody of a handsome man – his profile too refined, his dark hair over-groomed, the silk handkerchief in his breast pocket too deliberately jaunty.
"Will you have dinner with me?" He managed to sound casual while keeping his voice low enough not to carry to nearby desks.
Daniele intended to say no. She looked straight into his eyes so he would see that she meant it. Instead she saw confidence and frankness that had nothing to do with his expensive clothes or handsome face, the need for challenge, the willingness to take a risk. She knew how much he wanted her to say yes. She finally said, "Okay," less to spare his feelings than to experience them secondhand: his happiness made her happy. Daniele spent the afternoon puzzling over her empathy for Cameron Bowers, of all people, and hoping that she hadn't made a mistake.
To avoid office gossip, Bowers suggested they meet at a wine bar an hour after work. Daniele insisted on two hours, saying she had to freshen up. She was really thinking of Yubi. He expected her home at the usual time, and she worried about abandoning him for the whole evening. At least they could spend an hour together. As Yubi chirped a raucous welcome, hopped onto her hand and began making love, she felt like a Jezebel. She had to remind herself that he was only a bird.
"My friends call me Cam," Bowers said, holding a chair out for Daniele. She doubted if they were friends yet, and she had little occasion to call him anything that evening. Throughout dinner at the restaurant and drinks at a wine bar afterward, he did most of the talking. His favorite opener was "you won't believe," delivered with hushed intensity, as if his experience lay beyond the comprehension of someone like Daniele. "You won't believe the way that bastard Farr's been screwing me over," he said. His name would appear on the company letterhead within a year, he vowed, or they could find themselves another chump. Strictly in confidence, he was already putting out feelers and the headhunters were showing interest. "You won't believe what goes on at that office," he said. He could not smile at a woman without her mistaking it for a proposal. According to him, the only female with a sense of proportion or selfhood ever employed at Farr & Dey, Incorporated was Daniele herself.
She found his flattery crude and embarrassing, his egotism repulsive. Every word seemed chosen to bolster his image. The restaurant with candle-lit tables, the wine bar with its ostentatious French menu seemed designed to show off his savoir faire. Daniele was hardly surprised; she had encountered other men like him. Unlike the others, though, Cam held her interest. As he sang his own praises, she sensed his relief at finally being able to talk. She heard echoes of her aloneness in his boastful voice and recognized in his eyes the keenness she had glimpsed in Yubi's. But not the certainty and calm. She wondered if those would come afterward for Cam too – if things ever progressed that far between them – which was unlikely.
Cam parked alongside her apartment building and angled his Hollywood profile toward her, waiting for an invitation to come inside. Daniele was afraid. She had already stepped beyond herself, breaking rules that until now had defined her, rules that should have prevented Cameron Bowers from getting this far. "I'm not asking you in," she said. "I don't know you well enough."
"Oh yeah?" His amused sniffle was almost inaudible. "Well, I don't know you either. I took a big chance on you. You still haven't convinced me that I made the right choice."
"I wouldn't want to," Daniele said. "I have no way of knowing what's right for you." She climbed out of the car, a sporty model slung low to the ground, then leaned against the open door to peer in at him. "I had fun tonight."
"That's nice. Glad it wasn't a total waste of time."
Daniele watched him drive off without regret. She guessed that was it for their minute romance.
The moment she turned her key in the door, Yubi began to scold her with indignant clucks. She opened his cage immediately, but he glowered from his perch as though defying her to put her hand in. Offering her finger just outside the entrance, Daniele murmured over and over that she loved her Yubi and she needed and wanted him more than anything. Finally Yubi hopped from perch to cage door, then onto her hand. His head ducked and his beak snapped closed on the loose skin over her knuckle. She yelled and involuntarily shook him off. He flew to his favorite spot on the curtain rod and stared at her with hooded, reproachful eyes. With a gentle laugh she raised her finger, but Yubi exploded into flight so headlong and erratic that Daniele worried he might crash into a wall or window. She felt relieved when he alighted on a chair across the room. "Come on, Yubi, let's make up." He waited until she was close, then flew away again. She followed him around, repeating the dance several times before he consented to mount her hand.
Yubi quickened against her as never before. She felt the tiny powerhouse of his heart, its humming amplified by every cell in her body. His heart weighed no more than two or three grams, yet it possessed Daniele completely. As he ascended to climax on his pale wings, the bird and his wild cries became pure energy, a sunburst flaring in Daniele's deepest center. He brought her to life. Like Adam in the painting by Michelangelo, she touched her fingertip to God's. She laughed at the cartoonish thought, but nothing could diminish the secret that she had learned from Yubi. Neither love nor pleasure was meant to be taken, but given away and experienced through another. Someday Daniele might love a human being enough for that.
Instead of flying off, Yubi clung to her finger and panted. He suddenly looked frail and sickly, his wings atremble, his beak snapping at the air. Daniele felt a twinge of guilt. The bird spent all his strength on her hand and got nothing back. What if he expected eggs to appear and the chicks to hatch in her palm? Yubi had no way of understanding it could never happen.
Cam stopped flirting with Daniele and treated her like any other keyboard tapper, beneath his notice. One day, about a week after their date, she was headed for the restroom when Cam strode from the elevator into her path. He made an elaborate show of checking his watch and scowling in disapproval. To save time, employees were supposed to use the office restrooms during work hours, but they often used the building's larger public restrooms during lunch. She got a memo from Cam reminding her of company policy and wrongly asserting that lunch hour had already ended when he caught her in the corridor. Since Daniele had violated no rules and owed no apology, she ignored the memo.
A few days later he summoned her to his office. "What's your response to my citation?"
"It was ten to one when I got back," she said. "I made a point of looking at the clock."
Cam leaned backward in the tufted leather executive chair, fingers interlocked behind his neck, elbows splayed in a relaxed pose. "My watch said after one."
"Then your watch is running fast or your clock is slow."
"I don't want any arguments," he said.
Daniele smiled absently at the carpet of sculpted plush. If Cameron Bowers had to satisfy his pride by firing her, there were plenty of other jobs.
"I'm willing to forget this whole matter," he finally said, "if you go out with me again."
She looked up, startled, and found Cam's chiseled lips drawn back in an unlikely impish grin. His eyes had a reckless glint. He might have planned this reconciliation when he sent the memo, but she doubted it. He had probably surprised himself as much as Daniele surprised herself by answering, "Why not?"
On their second date Cam drove to a resort area outside the city. They ate an ordinary dinner at a cafe where aspirin, antacids and breath mints were displayed behind the cash register, and then they strolled along a smelly lakeshore. This time he listened while Daniele talked about her aloneness. "It's not like I have an excuse," she said. "I had a normal happy childhood, I'm not afraid of people. I just like being by myself." Cam said that he felt the same way. That was one big reason he hadn't married. The second a woman paid attention to him, he got scared of her taking over his life. As they paused to contemplate the stars, more numerous in the country sky but still not bright enough to reflect in the lake, he slipped an arm around her waist. He whispered that he felt safe around Daniele because she valued freedom too.
That night and nights to come, he dropped no hints about coming up to her apartment. He seemed content to kiss her good night and wait for the right moment. He also let Daniele decide when they should see each other again, but it bothered him that she never made dates more than two evenings in a row. "I guess I'm taking turns with some other guy," he joked. Daniele replied that he could pick up the telephone anytime and check whether she was home. She saw no point in explaining that her other guy was a parakeet.
Yubi got used to her absences, but he never accepted them. When Daniele was late, he scolded and sulked in his cage, turning disdainfully from her finger. When she came straight home from work, he crowed with such joy that she felt terrible for ever leaving him alone. Because of Yubi, she put off inviting Cam to her apartment long after she had gathered the courage to risk what might happen. But her life was bound to change sooner or later. Yubi would have to adjust. She finally asked Cam to dinner on Sunday afternoon, thinking Yubi might feel more secure after spending the morning with her.
He seemed uneasy when Daniele unfurled a tablecloth and set out place mats. Flying from her shoulder to the table, he cocked his head as though asking, "What gives?" She let him stay while she arranged napkins, flatware and wineglasses, but kept a lookout for droppings on the white tablecloth. After inspecting his image in a butter knife, Yubi strutted over to a glass and tapped his beak against the crystal. He warbled approval of its clear tone, then flew up to the rim and balanced, ready to drink.
"Yubi, stop it!" She offered Yubi her finger to perch on, but he feathered down to a spoon and landed one claw on its neck, the other splayed in its bowl. Daniele almost shoved her finger at him. Affronted, he flew to the curtain rod and regarded her with cool arrogance. "That's it, into your cage." She hated to lock him up, but he seemed determined to make a pest of himself. He would no doubt expect his usual saucer on the table, and Cam might not appreciate eating dinner with a bird. Daniele chased him for about ten minutes. At first he flew away from her, then he conserved energy by letting her carry him almost to the cage before darting off at the last moment. She sighed with frustration and went to check on the curried lamb.
The door buzzer sounded while she was in the kitchen. After speaking to Cam on the intercom and pressing the button to unlock the door to the building, she found Yubi on top of a photograph frame, panting, his eyes big with fright. She guessed the buzzer must have scared him. "Yubi," she cooed. He stepped tremulously onto her finger and clung tight as she brought him to his cage. Inside, he cowered in a rear corner on the bottom.
Cam offered a fat bouquet of irises. From his other fist a bottle of champagne dangled as though its glass neck was wrung. He insisted on carrying his gifts to the kitchen, so Daniele kept thanking him while she rummaged in cabinets for containers that might serve as a vase or ice bucket, items that she had never thought of needing until now. She found a piece of Tupperware to hold the champagne but nothing for the irises. "This is stupid," she said, her cheeks warm with embarrassment. "I haven't got a vase for your beautiful flowers."
"What's wrong with the plastic thing?"
"Oh, that's for the champagne."
"Put the champagne in a waste basket," he said. "Just line it with a garbage bag."
Later she wondered if Cam had seduced her with one practical idea. It made her grateful enough to drink his champagne even though he remarked that her glasses were more suited to Burgundy or Bordeaux. And she listened with sympathy to more complaints about "that bastard Farr" who was ruining his career. In a heady moment she even confided Farr's office nickname. "Mr. Clean!" Cam snickered. "That's perfect! What do they call me?" Daniele remembered too late why she had promised herself to avoid office gossip with Cam: she hated lying or snitching on her co-workers. So she finessed the truth instead.
"Don't know about the guys," she said coyly. "The women think you're a real heartbreaker."
"What about you?" he said.
Daniele smiled and wondered if she looked mysterious.
Cam made his play before dessert, before she could even ask if he wanted coffee. With ceremony he rose, walked around the table and scooted back her chair. Daniele stood without a word. Dizzy from the champagne, she welcomed his arm around her waist, holding her steady, but when he started dancing her around the living room, she felt a reeling panic and disorientation that made her afraid of vomiting. He might be Fred Astaire, but she was no Ginger Rogers. Besides, their clumsy dancing was upsetting Yubi. She heard his panicked fluttering. "Stop it," she said. "We're scaring my bird."
Cam laughed under his breath. "Very funny." As she looked over her shoulder to make sure Yubi was all right, Cam whirled her into the bedroom.
She figured this time would be as sticky and oppressive as her other two sexual experiences. It started out that way. As Cam hunched on top of her, cobra-like, his face hanging above hers, a chafing pain accumulated in her groin. She kept waiting for him to finish. Neither the neighbor boy nor the college junior had taken this long, and she began to worry that his condom would tear and she would get pregnant. What would she do then? She recoiled from abortion but doubted if she could face the grief of giving up her baby. She would have to raise the child by herself. Or worse, Cam might insist on marrying her. No more evenings alone, no more reading, no more life of her own.
The thought filled Daniele with such dread that she erased it like a computer file – it remained somewhere in her mind, but she no longer had access. After that she felt clearheaded, open to anything. She studied Cam's face and considered what he might be feeling. She remembered how Yubi's paroxysm resonated through her body and recognized the same force gathering in Cam, his jaw tense against her cheek. Her body tightened in response, so sudden and pleasurable that she cried out. Groaning, Cam bent himself against her just like Yubi. She felt his flesh, not beneath feathers but through the emotional insulation that had protected her twice before. As another, stronger shock surged from her core to every nerve ending in her skin, Daniele imagined arctic blue wings enfolded them both. She looped her arms around Cam's neck and allowed him to carry her wherever they were going.
Afterward they looked at each other as though for the first time. She delighted in his pores, like thousands of pinpricks in his overly handsome face. They made him seem human. She hoped Cam would take as kindly to her flaws, and it felt strange to want acceptance from him. Daniele had never cared much whether people liked her.
She said, "So what happens now?"
He was careful not to shift his eyes, but he refocused them somewhere beyond her. "I don't know yet."
Cam started coming to her apartment on evenings when she turned down his invitations to go out. He would phone beforehand to announce that he was in the neighborhood and thought he might as well stop and see her – if that was okay? She could make excuses only so often. Besides, there were evenings when she enjoyed seeing him and making love. The problem was Yubi. The moment Cam walked in, Yubi hurled himself against the cage bars and began to shriek like a tiny, forlorn banshee. He kept up the racket until Cam said, "Can't you make the damn bird shut up?" and Daniele draped a bath towel over the cage. She hated doing it, but nothing else would make him be quiet. And after Cam left, Yubi sulked. No matter how sweetly she coaxed, he ignored the tidbits of fresh strawberry, musk melon or peach that she offered. It was hours, sometimes a whole day before he relented enough to take a bite. Sensing her betrayal, he stopped nibbling her eyelids and making love on her hand.
Daniele told herself that the change was inevitable. She thought of a plan to help Yubi adjust. One Saturday afternoon she invited Cam over to watch baseball and left the cage door open. She fixed a tray of snacks, including the low-salt Wheat Thins that Yubi loved, hoping to lure him over so he and Cam could get acquainted. It seemed like a simple plan, but things went wrong from the start. Cam wolfed down all the Wheat Thins during the first inning. Yubi squatted in his cage, his arctic feathers ruffled with indignation.
During a commercial Daniele took out more crackers and tried coaxing Yubi from his cage, but he kept jumping off her hand, back onto the perch. "Game's on!" Cam announced without looking up from the screen, too engrossed to care what she was doing. Finally Yubi let himself be taken from his cage and flew up to the curtain rod.
"What the hell was that?" said Cam.
"Just Yubi."
"Just what?"
Before she could say, "My bird," Yubi launched into one of his showy aerial displays – plunging like a dive bomber, pulling level at the last moment and banking toward his target with a raucous shriek. He delivered a glancing blow that mussed Cam's hair. Cam swore and fingered his scalp as though checking for blood. "Guess he doesn't like you," Daniele said. She managed not to laugh.
"The feeling's mutual." He might have elaborated, but Yubi was circling for another strike. This time Cam was ready. When the bird swooped, Cam batted him from the air.
It took Daniele a moment to absorb what had happened. She was too shocked even to gasp. Then she dashed to the spot where Yubi had fallen – on an upholstered chair, or he would have been dead. His legs were collapsed beneath him, his eyes dull, and one wing drooped away from his panting breast. Gently she scooped Yubi into her palm and began to comfort him in a sugary tone.
"You sound like an old lady," Cam said.
Daniele grew cold inside as she transferred Yubi onto the cage floor. His panting became so violent that his mouth gaped open and she knew his pain must be terrible. She carried the telephone and the directory into the kitchen, where she could talk to the vet in private.
"Looks like his wing could be broken," she told Cam afterward. "The vet said to bring him right now. You're welcome to stay and watch the game." Daniele hoped that Cam would leave, but she had no time to argue about it.
"Whoever heard of taking a parakeet to the vet." He gazed stolidly at the player moseying up to bat. "You sure they bother with birds that small?"
She wanted to believe that his callousness covered up regret and embarrassment, that he was one of those stunted men who never learned how to apologize.
"So are you staying?" she said.
"Of course not, I know you're upset." The TV seemed to hold Cam like gravity, and only with effort could he stand up and pull himself toward the door. "I'm sorry about your bird. Believe me, it was pure reflex when he came at me like that."
Daniele knew better. Cam had seen Yubi coming and secretly felt pleased with what he had done.
The vet tied Yubi's broken wing against his body and said he needed plenty of rest and heat to recover. He would have to stay in a covered cage with a blue light bulb up against the bars for warmth. Blue produced a softer light. After taking Yubi home, Daniele hurried out to buy the blue bulb. She spent the evening beside his cage.
He refused to eat. On Sunday morning she found him crouched on the cage floor, ignoring his seed, seeming to prefer death to the miserable bondage of his sling. Daniele looked up the vet's phone number and caught him as he was leaving for church. He listened to her kindly, as though people called him at home all the time, and said that he would show her how to tube-feed Yubi if she brought him to the office that afternoon. As she thanked the vet, Daniele thought that Yubi would never forgive her for sticking a tube down his craw. Several times an hour she offered him dollops of yogurt or crumbles of hard-boiled egg yolk on a demitasse spoon. A big spoon in the cage made him skittish. The tiny one he merely treated with disdain. She was ready to give up when Yubi dipped his beak in the yogurt. Although he turned away immediately, Daniele felt a surge of hope – he was hungry. If she persevered awhile longer, he would be eating from her hand again. She phoned the vet and cancelled their appointment, and as though sensing her renewed faith, Yubi went for the yogurt the instant she put the spoon back in his cage.
Forgive me?" she crooned as the bird ate. "Forgive me just a little bit?"
On Tuesday she got a phone call from Cam. "You're abusing your sick leave," he said without even a hello first. "You're home nursing that damn bird."
"Is this an official complaint?" she said. "Would you put it in a letter, please, so I can make a formal reply?"
He was silent for a long moment. She could imagine him sorting out the consequences of such a letter – questions from Mr. Farr, who might wonder why a junior partner was involved in a trivial personnel matter – and the strong possibility that his romance with Daniele would be exposed. "It's not official," he finally said. "I just want to know what's going on. What's the deal with the bird? Are you still upset?"
It hardly seemed worth the trouble of an honest answer, but Daniele tried. "I'm upset that you're not really sorry."
"Wait a minute!" He leapt toward the hole in her argument. "I said I was sorry!"
"You always say the right thing, Cam."
"For chrissakes, we're talking about a damn bird. Look, you stand your ground and I like that. It attracted me right off the bat. And by the way, you're the only girl from the office I've ever dated. I meet lots of women with successful careers, whose salary could double my income if I married them."
"So you expect gratitude?"
"I'm just saying that I have choices and I chose you. See you tomorrow, Daniele."
The next morning she called Farr & Dey's personnel office and quit. She had scant money in the bank, no reference from Mr. Farr and no desire to start looking for another job as long as Yubi needed her. She guessed that, left alone, he would eat his seed rather than starve, but he preferred being fed from the demitasse spoon. It was crazy, sacrificing her job to humor a parakeet. With one part of herself Daniele understood and even shared Cam's derision. She was acting like a perverted old lady, falling in love with a bird. At times she resolved to give Yubi back after his wing healed, even if she had to borrow money from Michael to make the trip. He would get plenty of love and attention from Michael's family. Maybe they would get him a parakeet mate and he would learn to do the natural thing. But then her heart clutched at the thought of letting him go.
Remembering how Yubi bent around her hand at their climax, the scent of wild flowers and hot grasses rising from his erect feathers, all his wildness concentrated to the black points of his eyes, Daniele scooped him tenderly into her palm. He was not afraid to leave his cage when they were alone. He trusted Daniele; only strangers frightened him. Nor was she afraid of his sharp beak as he nibbled at her eyelids. She trusted the tiny bird as she trusted no one else. There would be other jobs – and other men, if she wanted – but never another Yubi. Whatever became of them, Daniele would love Yubi as long as she lived.