In the Land of Birdfishes by Rebecca Silver Slayter Page B

the meal. “Come sit down with me.”
    But Jason didn’t answer and took a seat without sending a word or a look her way.
    I turned back to Minnie. “Why did you say that. Why did you say that to him in front of everyone.”
    Minnie said, “He’s got no right to change the stories. He can make up whatever stories he wants about himself. I don’t say anything when he does that. He’s got no right to change the stories.”
    Across from us, Angel stood up. Minnie and I watched her cross the room and then lean over the table to where Jason’s head was bent down, studying the table as steadily as I’d seen him do anything. We couldn’t hear what he said, but we saw Angel straighten from the back, her spine drawing up. We saw how quickly she walked out the door after that.
    Minnie said to me, “What are you doing here anyway. What made you come here now?”
    I said, “I had nowhere else to go.”
    Minnie watched me for a moment and I looked away. “That’s how most folks come here,” she said.
    I thought I could understand why Jason would say whatever he said to Angel. He made a kind of sense to me. For some reason, I thought suddenly of a time in my twenties, loving Stephan. Of course it was something else with him—it was sex and it was how he looked at me and all kinds of other things besides. But there was that way in me, how I felt like I could look at this man and know him. And because I knew him, I loved him. And because I loved him, I forgave him. You could forgive anything.
    I walked to the door and looked out across the street and then pressed my face to the glass to peer down along the road. I couldn’t see Angel anywhere. The sky had a quality of blue in it, a near darkness that I hadn’t seen since I’d got here. I’d heard by August the leaves would begin to change colour. This strange brightness and these dry, hot days were already written over with their end.
    Opening the door and letting it close behind me, I imagined the road buried in snow. How high would it rise? How cold would it be?
    There was a sound and I saw, around the side of the building, a girl crouched on the ground. A cigarette burned down in her hand.
    “Angel?” I said.
    Angel threw the cigarette behind the building and stood up.
    I didn’t like to see women cry. I caught a glimpse of her tiny, pointed teeth like pearls before she covered her mouthwith her hand. There was a bloodless look about her pale brown face, and she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and turned away from me.
    She said, “He kissed me.”
    “He kissed you?” I looked at her. I knew she wasn’t lying.
    “And then, inside, he said … I just wanted to know if he was all right. I liked the story he told you.”
    I watched her closely. I was thinking that maybe she wasn’t all that bright. I asked her, “What did he say to you?”
    She began to speak and then shook her head. Not stupid though. She wasn’t stupid. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.
    “He’s not like you, is he,” I said.
    I heard her breathing slow. She stood up. “I’m going home,” she said.
    “I wouldn’t think you’d have trouble finding someone else to kiss in this town,” I said. I knew my voice had changed. Gone hard. I said, “You go where you need to, but I don’t know why you’d go home. He’ll be waiting for you inside.”
    She said, “You think you know him?”
    I said, “All I meant was I don’t think he’d be an easy person to love.” She looked in the window of the bar. Ha. There were some women who could only love men who scared them a little. “I’m going inside,” I said. “You do whatever you want.”
    She looked at me and then walked away, down the street, in that slow way she had. Her face and figure were soft, despite the sharpness of her features, but from behind, she looked so thin. From behind, she could have been a child shuffling home.
    Inside, Jason was back at the bar again, and Minnie was talking to someone at another