Magpie
Sunlight falls in waves upon a simple bungalow, a gentle breeze ruffling a hodgepodge garden of pansies and daffodils strewn out before its bay window. A motley collection of furry and feathered critters employ themselves with springtime affairs while a man watches them gambol about through the window. A woman looms in the living room behind him.
“Paul?”
Paul doesn’t respond, his gaze fixed on something out on the lawn.
“Paul!”
Paul’s shoulder tense, his hands, teeth and buttocks clench. He cranes his neck around slowly, hips swivelling.
“You’re ignoring me.”
“What? No.”
“What did I just say?”
Paul squints, lips parting wordlessly. Robin frowns and tucks a wing of red-brown hair behind her ear with one nimble movement.
“You’re unbelievable.”
Paul puts great effort into looking abashed, turning to face Robin, canary-yellow drapes fluttering behind him. “You should see this magpie out here. Quite the character.”
“I don’t care about the magpie,” Robin scoffs. “You’re avoiding the question.”
Paul’s face wriggles sheepish, inciting an eye-roll from Robin, while his own eyes drift back towards the window, his expression becoming pointedly distracted. Robin feels a surge of irritation but squashes it down with a slow exhale; stepping forward she asks softly: “How long have we been together?”
Paul says nothing but moves closer to the window. Robin reaches out and squeezes his shoulder, pulling him in to lay a kiss on his cheek, hanging her arms around his neck. They stand there awhile, Paul reaching up to grip Robin’s arms, pressing his head lightly into hers.
“I think we’re ready for the next step,” Robin whispers.
Paul sighs. “Robbie, you know how I feel about you.”
Robin smiles quietly and starts to speak but Paul interrupts her with an abrupt exclamation. “But just look at this magpie!”
Paul jostles Robin with his exaggerated gesticulation. “This plump old fop, traipsing about in his smart feather jacket. A raptor dressed in steely blue…”
Robin groans and releases her hold of Paul, who rambles on, somehow seeming both completely unperturbed and very, very perturbed.
“Look at him! Touching toes to chin as he bounds across the lawn, chasing flies and mites and… Whatever else it is they eat.”
Robin takes a couple of steps back, picking up a mug of tea from a rustic reclaimed-wood coffee table and draining it in a series of quick, efficient sips. Paul doesn’t see this, involved as he is in his ovation.
“Magpies aren’t raptors, Paul.”
Paul pauses, and then redoubles his exhibition, pirouetting and pressing his hands together before his heart with a silly, beseeching look on his face. “You know how attractive you are. It’s perfectly obvious. With your silky soft skin a natural bronze and your eyes, green as…”
Paul breaks off, pupils flicking frantically to and fro before focusing on something in the kitchen behind Robin, where a dish-washer washes dishes dutifully. “Palmolive,” Robin snorts.
“You’re gorgeous! Drop-dead gorgeous and I mean it! Literally, most men would fall dead at your feet for the mere chance to…”
Robin places hands on hips and gives Paul a skeptical look. He forges ahead.
“But for all that your charms are nothing to those of this fat little magpie! Beautiful though you may be, how it all pales to the brilliant plumage of this sprightly songbird out on the lawn!”
Paul takes a tone like a documentary narrator waxing poetic. “Just see, the sharply delineated layers of blue, black, and white; the wings an iridescent teal, like the scarab’s shell, a sacred thing of peoples long gone.”
Robin shakes her head, lips pressed into a tight, patient smile. The dishwasher grumbles behind her. She opens her mouth to speak.
“No, my dear! Please! Don’t speak.” Paul squawks. “To hear your voice after the delightful chirruping of our avian visitor would only fill my heart with disappointment!”
Robin arches an eyebrow and crosses her arms. Paul holds up his hands as if to ward off a blow and Robin briefly considers loosing one. “Don’t get me wrong, I love your voice. You’ve a sort of rolling articulation and lusty timbre and it makes me wild — it’s music! I can barely get enough of it! But how could anything compare to the eternal spring of the magpie’s song?”
Paul tries on a smile, but it plummets from his face almost as soon as he tacks it there, crashing down dead before Robin’s tapping foot.
“Paul. Have you ever actually heard a magpie before?” Robin’s inflection climbs and her eyes sharpen. Paul, giving no indication whether he has heard Robin or a magpie pivots on his heel and continues to blather, stepping into the window’s alcove to fiddle with the corner of an orange throw-pillow.
“How I envy you, wee feathery nomad! Unbound and with no mistress but the great open sky! I too, have flown those happy heights and revelled in the clouds and thermals I met there. But alas! Turbulence bore me to the ground and compelled me take shelter in familiar branches. And now my nest grows dry and my wings heavy, I fear I may never fly again!”
Robin pulls the corners of her lips up in a mocking smile, her green eyes taking on a hard edge. “I want to talk about this Paul. I get that you don’t, but eventually we’re going to. You’re just being difficult.”
Paul rocks back on his heels and thrusts his chin skyward, half-turning from the window to peek at Robin out of the corner of his eye. Robin flashes a profane finger with a cheeky wink, but her cheeks are hesitant, wincing. Paul gapes.
“Oh come on! We see each other almost every day! It’s been five months and you still text me good morning, every morning,” Paul says nothing, but appears less gaping and more tender. Robin hears her voice rising. “Last night we sat out on the porch for hours without a word, and it was fucking delightful. I love that all that romantic crap just comes natural for us,”
Robin pauses, looks down at her feet, spots a mysterious green-yellow stain beneath the coffee table and makes a mental note to assault it with the carpet steamer later. She takes a long breath.
“I love you, Paul. More than I’ve ever loved anyone.”
Paul inhales a panicked gasp and coughs. “Oh! Uh… oh.” He coughs again, officiously.
“Oh! To be free of the constraints of manhood! To fly unfettered, clear of the tyrannical tempests of social compact! To this day I still often remember the easy blues of the dawns I once travelled. But, woe! Time moves so fast! And I have been enamoured by the most insidious of nets, woven of impenetrable fibres of reticulated sentiment! Ought I really to condemn myself to a lifetime of cautious manoeuvring? Can I be so tactful a navigator?”
Robin stares Paul dead in the face, her expression predatory.
“Tactful.”
Paul swallows, loud. Robin hisses a little under her breath.
“Fine. You’ve made your point. But we’ll be coming back to this.”
Paul swivels and thrusts up his arms, flapping his fists at the ceiling. Robin flinches. The dishwasher trembles.
“Were it that I was a magpie! That I might fly, fly away! — and peck my fields in peace! But I am bound in the flesh! By the flesh! And this nest, though it really is a lovely thing… The sky calls to me still! I cannot deny it forever! Lo! See here how insurmountable, indecipherable is desire! Even though love is buoyant and I am near filled to bursting, the chains of propriety hang heavy upon my neck! This burden, it grounds me so, it’s surely only a matter of time before it bears me into the mud! To churn the muck of routine forevermore!”
Here Paul grimaces and flails his limbs to demonstrate, glancing down at Robin from between his elbows. She sighs heavily.
“You are such an ass.”
The dishwasher grouses, hiccups and goes quiet, while outside the window two magpies hop and snap their beaks, until one flies off with a harsh and ugly chatter.
