Ten

Sunday

Sam’s cat crumpled like paper under the truck’s wheel. He knelt down to touch her and then something like heat, some sudden shock of air, surged through his hands.

Suddenly she was breathing, blinking up at him through a mass of matted fur. Dead, and then not-dead, and his were the hands that had done it.

A car door slammed; he cradled the cat, heard footsteps. When he looked up he saw a boy, standing white and terrified in the same spot where the truck had crushed the cat against the curb. Moments ago, only just. The boy’s mother stood close to the truck, her eyes large and dark with guilt.

“It’s fine,” he said, when he could speak. He avoided the mother and spoke instead to the boy, his hands around Chickenhead, his fingers throbbing with alien power. The wings ached in the chill of the early evening air. “I know it didn’t look like it, but she’s fine.”

“I saw . . . blood,” said the boy. He had stubborn hair. He looked like the kind of boy who would grow up to argue with Sam in one of his classes. One day, if he was still teaching.

“It was a mistake.” He couldn’t think of any other way to say it. “I thought so too, but look.” He let Chickenhead go and clenched his hands to stop the shaking. The cat dropped lightly to the ground and sauntered over to the boy. Sam could hear her purr from five feet away.

“She’s okay,” said the boy. Like Sam, he sounded as though he couldn’t quite believe it. When he knelt and held out his hand, the cat rubbed against his fingers. “What’s her name?”

“Chickenhead,” said Sam. The mother laughed — a high laugh, edged with hysteria — and the boy made a face.

“Chickenhead?” he repeated. If he could see the wings, he wasn’t letting on. “What kind of a name is that?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said, perfectly honest. “I was — ” he almost said high, and then thought better of it. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

The boy’s mother rolled her eyes. “Aidan,” she said, “we should go.”

The boy nodded, but he didn’t get up. “What’re those rips in your shirt for?”

“Those?” Sam shrugged and pointed a lazy hand, careful not to touch the wings. There was his answer, right there. “It’s just an old shirt.”

“Aidan,” his mother said again. “You’re going to be late.”

He was tempted to ask what the boy would be late for, just to keep the two of them there and talking. Instead he whistled, and Chickenhead jumped out of the boy’s arms and sauntered back to him. Aidan gave a small wave and climbed into the truck. And off they went — piano lessons, karate, soccer practice, whatever.

Still clutching the cat, he leaned forward and vomited into the gutter. There was blood on the asphalt. A few clumps of dark fur. The wind flapped against the holes in the back of his shirt.

“Well,” he said. “What happens now?”

Chickenhead, bathed in light, began to purr. She turned on her back and stretched her legs so that her claws caught the wings, which were white now, the feathers long and soft. Sam stood at the end of his drive and let them unfurl — six feet across, maybe more. When he flexed his shoulders, they beat hard against air. He rocked slowly on the balls of his feet and watched the clouds. The sky waited above him. It was almost night. The air was cold. The only light on the street came from him.

Saturday

In the morning he gave in, finally, and cut holes in all of his shirts. Chickenhead watched from the bed as he moved the scissors through the blue plaid shirt from Julie and the cream silk one he’d bought at the overpriced suit store on Robson. The rugby shirts and V-neck sweaters were next — he’d had some of his students pick these out, his finger no longer quite on the pulse of the fashion world. A system that had suited them all — his cash, their amusement. Wasted now, with every thrust of his scissors.

He stopped when he got to the linen shirt that would have seen him through the wedding. Time for coffee, maybe even a morning stroll.

No one used the garden this early on a Saturday, so he took Chickenhead out with him and watched her stalk bugs in the grass. The wings were long enough to touch the ground and bounced softly in the air with each step of his slippered feet. He walked around the pond and watched them unfurl in his reflection. A gift, the priest had said. A gift, and it wasn’t even Christmas.

When he got back inside he picked up the phone and dialed Julie, even though he wasn’t drunk. He moved to hang up when a male voice answered the phone, but then he coughed and his anonymity was gone.

“Sam,” said the voice on the phone.

“Derek. Can I talk to Julie?”

“It’s pretty early,” he said, as though Sam didn’t know. “She’s still sleeping. I can give her a message, if you want.”

“Sure.” He thought for a moment. “Tell her the church still smells the same.”

“Okay.” If Derek found this strange, he didn’t let on. “You have a good day, Sam.” Then he hung up the phone.

Sam was supposed to be the one hanging up. Sam, in point of fact, was supposed to be the one sleeping beside Julie. He listened to the air for a moment. Chickenhead, who had adjusted quite happily to the tuna juice — he was now the only person in this household losing weight — glared at him from where she sat, concentrated on her food.

“I am trying,” he told her, and he shook the phone for emphasis. But his threats, as they both knew well, were laughable at best. She remained impassive, bored, infinitely superior. She licked a paw as Sam watched. Her eyes said pussy, as plain as day.

Friday

School ended in a one-on-one conference, Sam on one side of the desk, Emma on the other.

“You’re not going to tell anybody?” she said.

“There’s nothing to tell. No one will believe me.” He paused. “Are you going to tell anybody?”

This made her laugh. “What makes you think anyone will believe me if they’re not going to believe you?” She ran her fingers over the faded wood of his desk. Her face held a deference he didn’t like. “Are you going to leave?”

“I’m thinking about it,” he said. Which was a lie; he hadn’t thought about anything until right then. “Maybe I’ll go on a road trip.” Suddenly the idea shone in his mind. Sam and Chickenhead and the dying Jetta, Joni Mitchell on the open road. “A pilgrimage.”

“Where would you go?”

“I have no idea.” The word pilgrimage made him think of two things: Mecca and Memphis. Hot sun and fervour and praying five times a day — and Elvis. But he didn’t have the cash for Saudi Arabia, and he wasn’t really a Graceland kind of guy. Besides, a road trip along the Sunshine Coast? With his cat? Taking God’s gift for a spin, that’s all it would be. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “You’re always staying after class. I’m getting looks.”

“I have something for you,” Emma said. She reached into her bag and pulled out a twisted loop of metal. There was a circle of string around one end. “It’s an infinity puzzle,” she said. “You’re supposed to get the string off.”

“Thank you.” His hands went automatically to the string and started working it through. “Is this supposed to drive me completely over the edge?”

She laughed. “I was hoping it would save you, actually.”

“Too late,” and his tone was light, even though the words were not. “I don’t think I have that much further to go.”

Thursday

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

Like riding a bike, the old cliché. The church felt the same, which shouldn’t have surprised him but did — it had been two years, only that, and somehow it felt as though he’d been gone forever. Worn floorboards and the same threadbare cushions in every pew.

But it wasn’t the same, not really, because Father Jim wasn’t there. Instead, a small dark-haired man shook Sam’s hand and directed him into a pew. His name, he said, was Father Mario. His voice was also small — Sam had to still himself completely to hear him, which was probably the point.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he repeated. Though he hadn’t come to confess and didn’t believe in sin anyway. But there — that was how he started.

“How long has it been since your last confession?” The priest’s accent was soft and unobtrusive. Filipino, maybe — a roly-poly young boy who’d grown up with the light of God in his eyes.

“I don’t know,” and he shifted in his pew. He’d eschewed the anonymity of the confessional on the chance that Father Mario might have noticed the wings, like Emma, but so far he hadn’t said anything. “I’m not a fan of confession, actually.”

The priest smiled. “Most people aren’t.”

“I’m,” he felt restless now, “not here to confess. I need . . . some advice?”

Father Mario smiled again. “Most people do.”

If this were Father Jim, he would have taken Sam into the rectory and offered him a glass of Scotch. Father Jim, who went way back. He’d taught catechism until Sam switched schools and was famous in the diocese for going sober at Lent. Once upon a time, he was going to marry them, with Bryan there to act as best man and Julie’s mother ready to outdo the town florist on dahlias.

Today, there was only Father Mario, small and stooped in a pew before the altar. He raised a hand and patted the cross at his neck. “What do you need?”

“I’m afraid,” said Sam.

“Afraid of what?”

What, indeed. “I think I’m . . . changing.”

“Change isn’t always bad,” the priest said instantly. “Especially when it draws you out of yourself.”

Sam snickered before he could help it. “I suppose it’s doing that, yes.”

“Not all change seems natural, either,” said the priest. “It is natural, for example, for a man to doubt. The growth to believing is what is so hard.”

Jesus. They actually still said these kinds of things. Sam longed, suddenly, for Father Jim and the Scotch. Advice? Julie probably doled out crap like this to her patients. He stified another snicker, then ruffled his wings and stood. He offered Father Mario an apologetic smile, even though he wasn’t sorry. “Thank you. I’ll try to remember.” There was, he reflected, a bottle of Scotch at home in the cupboard.

The priest stood with him. Before they exited the pew, Father Mario reached out a hand and patted the right wing. When he drew his hand away, there was down on his fingers.

“No one can know what His gifts are for,” the priest said. He grinned, suddenly boyish in the dark light of the church. “I am a man of God,” he said. “Nothing surprises me anymore.”

Wednesday

He decided to skip school again, and drove to Julie’s studio. This time he managed to tuck the wings in so that they didn’t block the rear-view mirror. He parked the Jetta in the old spot, the corner by the rhododendron bush, and walked into the studio with a mat rolled under his arm. Just another patient, that’s all. The receptionist was new, and fell for it. He smiled at his luck and watched her blush. She couldn’t see the wings, obviously — otherwise, there’d be no welcoming grin. The thought took his own smile away, even as the blush deepened down her neck and spread across her collarbones like a flush of poison ivy.

Once upon a time, he might have asked for her number. Asked in spite of Julie. Asked because of Julie, just to make her mad. But once upon a time was long ago. Back when wings weren’t sprouting out of him, back when the world made sense.

Instead he asked for Julie. The receptionist was instantly all business.

“She’s just finishing a class,” she said, and she ushered Sam into the office. “She shouldn’t be long.”

Julie was over twenty minutes. Sam walked around the office and looked at the pictures on her desk — Julie and Derek at the Capilano Bridge, Julie in her gear, doing yoga on the beach. The dogs. The big, slobbering German shepherd—Max, how original — and Einstein, the tiny, slobbering Shih Tzu. They had to be leashed all the time, or God knew what would happen.

Chickenhead had no trouble walking alongside him, even without a leash.

He peeked through the files on her desk because he was bored, because he wanted to make her angry but didn’t know why. The top file was red tab, which meant a hard case, a lot of work. Thirty-four-year-old female with advanced scoliosis and mild cerebral palsy, significant depression, significant suicidal tendencies. Significant. Was that even doctor-speak?

“Sam.”

He looked up and put down the files in one fluid motion. Julie pulled the office door closed and went to the other side of the desk. She took the file and placed her arms around it, a dare, her anger evident in the thrust of her chin, the stiff angle of her legs and feet. Her hair was darker than he remembered.

“Nosing around, I see. Should I be surprised?”

“I was waiting,” he said. “I didn’t make an appointment.”

She had pit stains, which annoyed him. Great gaping circles of dark blue beneath each arm. “I have another class in five minutes.”

“I won’t stay long.”

“Fine,” she said. “What do you want?”

Sam retreated, gripped the back of the patient’s chair, the wings enormous and white and still. “I wanted to ask you something.”

Julie swept an arm out and then back as if to say she had all the time in the world.

“Do you still go to the cathedral?”

She blinked and shook her head. “No.”

“Just that church? Or any others?”

“I haven’t been,” she said, and she flushed. He knew, then, that she hadn’t said anything to her mother. “Derek and I are taking a Buddhism class.”

“I didn’t know they had classes for that type of thing.”

This, of all things, made her angry. “They have catechism — why not this?”

He shrugged. The wings ruffled against his back. They were heavy. Why hadn’t he noticed that before? “I just wondered. I was thinking about Father Jim. Thought I might go and see him, and I wondered if you knew whether he was still at the church. That’s all.”

“Oh.” She shook her head. “No. I don’t know. I could ask my mother, if you want.”

“Don’t bother.” He could ask Carol, but that would get her excited. Not as excited as she would be to find out that her son was sprouting the wings of seraphim — if, indeed, she could see them at all — but there were plenty of things that his mother didn’t need to know.

“Is that really all?” Julie asked.

He fought the urge to snap. If anyone has a right to be edgy here, it’s me. Instead he picked up his mat and ignored the rolling eyes this earned him. “Thanks for letting me stop by.”

“No problem.” Her voice was dry and hesitant at the same time. “Any time.”

He nodded, then turned and took three steps to the door.

“Sam?”

“Hmm?” The sudden thumping of his heart, the clammy slick of his hands. Rocks, his best friend had said. And still, here he was, hoping for the confession, the terrible mistake.

“Are you all right? You look . . . not well.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just tired.”

She nodded. “All right. If you see Father Jim, tell him I said hello.”

Tuesday

He called in sick, and went to see the doctor. Chickenhead, who hadn’t been eating, came with him in the car — they could stop at the vet on the way home, make it a family affair.

The wings made driving difficult; they were larger than yesterday and pushed against the roof of the car. The brightness of the feathers sent beams of reflected light into his eyes whenever he glanced in the rear-view mirror. Twice, he almost ran into oncoming traffic. Chickenhead and her claws were the only thing that saved him.

In the doctor’s office, he sat quietly in a corner and leafed through a stack of trashy magazines. The wings draped over each side of his chair, terribly unmistakable, terribly invisible. No one glanced his way or said anything. But people avoided the chairs beside him all the same. He sat and turned the pages and wondered what the doctor would say.

But when the doctor called his name, she said nothing. He put down the magazine and followed her through to the examination room, ducking slightly to fit the wings under the door. That, oddly enough, got him a look. But she covered it quickly and ushered him into the third room on the left. He ducked under the doorframe again and turned to face her. She couldn’t see the wings, he was sure of it.

The doctor was short and very pretty. She wore a yellow shirt under her lab coat and her hair was brown, like Julie’s. “Mr. Connor,” she said. Her voice, if it had a colour, would be yellow too. “What can we help you with today?”

Help. No one could help him here. “I have a growth,” he said lamely. “It’s hard to explain.”

“All right,” she said. “Where is it?”

“On my back.” He choked back a bout of hysterical laughter. Five feet of wingspan, lady.

The doctor nodded, made a note in her file — psych consult wouldn’t surprise him — and asked him to remove his shirt. He wiggled each wing through the haphazard holes he’d torn in the back and then, when it was off, folded the shirt so that the rips weren’t showing. Here he was, in front of a pretty doctor in all of his soft, greyish glory. He turned his back to her eye and stified a shout when her hand went right through the wing and pressed against his skin.

“These scars have healed well,” she said. “Who was your doctor?”

What? Scars? “Ah . . . out of town,” he said, making it up as he went along. “Doctor Marriner?” What the hell?

“Ah.” Her hands prodded his flesh. “Sometimes,” she said, “traumatic wounds like these take a long time to heal. It’s not unusual for patients to develop odd sensations around extensive stitching.” More prodding. Then a pause. Sam could hear the doctor shake her head. “I can’t see or feel anything here, Mr. Connor. But let’s book you for an x-ray, just in case.”

On the x-ray table, he watched as the attendants fitted him with a protective bib, unconsciously avoiding the wings. The cartilage folded neatly against the cold leather of the table. He fought the urge to itch as a feather tickled the inside of his arm.

He was sure that the x-rays wouldn’t show anything. He was right. The technician who came to take his iron bib away was young and bored. “You can change over there,” he said, and he pointed to the stalls. Then he left.

He couldn’t fit the wings into the changing stall, so he dressed quickly in the middle of the room. The right wing stuck in its hole and for a moment he was paralyzed. Then it pushed through and the wing flexed of its own accord, several feathers dropping to the floor. He picked them up and stuffed them into his pocket.

In the car, Chickenhead hissed as soon as he opened the door. She didn’t like waiting. He ran a tired hand along her fur and then snatched it back, surprised, when she turned her head and bit him.

Julie had never liked Chickenhead. Even then, pre-Max, pre-Einstein, she’d been a dog person. Maybe it appealed to her sense of charity. He’d stopped trying to figure it out. But given the choice, he’d choose Chickenhead any day, in spite of the biting. She didn’t slobber. And as long as he stayed on top of the kitty litter, no nasty smell. She had manners, his cat.

Or perhaps not so much manners as personality.

At the vet, the cat was quiet, calm, and detached. The vet and his assistant (who didn’t notice the wings, but that was hardly surprising) cooed over the cat’s fur and laughed when she shook herself after the exam. The air he knew so well didn’t leave her face at all — if anything, she looked more disgusted with him when they left the office. She’d rung in at seventeen pounds.

Chickenhead. The fact that she wasn’t eating (try tuna juice, said the vet) was probably a good thing.

Monday

In the morning there was a fine layer of down on his sheets. He showered with the door open, the wings quivering in the cooler air but dry. None of his shirts would fit — they bunched and made him look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. He settled, finally, on an old sweatshirt, the grey one from McGill that he didn’t mind destroying. He took the kitchen scissors to it, twisted and turned and bent the wings through the holes. The entire process took him almost half an hour.

Dressed, he looked in the mirror and found himself wishing, not for the first time, that Julie still lived in the house. His face was almost as grey as the sweatshirt and there were bags under his eyes. A glamour touch-up would do him so well right now. Just a smidge of cover-up, a touch of blush to bring him back from the edge of dead.

He wore a jacket — the gangster trench coat, Bryan called it — even though it wasn’t that cold. The wings could fold against his back and the bulk of the coat was just enough to disguise it. He was not prepared for questions.

At the school, he slipped in through one of the back doors and looked over his shoulder every few metres, like a thief. No one said anything. In the staff room, he waved away the jokes — Pulling the Mafia act on the kids, are we? — and kept the coat on. Sweat that was part heat and part fear began to collect in the small of his back. Dave, who taught in the Mathematics department, poured him a coffee and then, seeing his face, added a shot of espresso.

“Rough night?” Dave asked. The pat on Sam’s shoulder was briefly sympathetic.

“Rough weekend,” Sam said, and left it at that.

In class he was quiet, distracted, just this side of short. He angled his chair so that his back faced the wall, and avoided the chalkboard. Some of his students shot odd looks his way — What’s with the coat, dude? — but he ignored them and made the kids choose their own roles for Macbeth, instead of standing in front and reading as he normally would.

Halfway through the day, an early group of students surprised him. He’d removed the trench coat during lunch because his back was slick with sweat, and he was just about to put it back on when they tumbled through the door. For an instant he froze, terrified — the wings were longer than they’d been in the morning, and the feathers that peeked through the down were an unyielding, brilliant white.

But no one noticed. No one said anything. Just to be sure, he stood and flexed his shoulders so that the wings gave a half-hearted flap. And nothing. The students were engrossed in their conversation, and no one even looked his way. He folded the coat deliberately over the back of the chair, and then he straightened, and he taught.

His last class of the day was Modern English — Philip Roth and Martin Amis and Vladimir Nabokov, because once upon a time (when literature mattered, when he couldn’t feel the weight of feathers on his back) he’d loved Lolita. The syllabus had enough Alice Munro and Doris Lessing to keep his female students from revolting. To date, he hadn’t had any truants. Maybe that said something about him. Maybe it didn’t.

His favourite student in this class was Emma, the petite redhead with journalistic aspirations. He was careful — even she didn’t know. But he sought her opinion in discussions and he looked forward to her essays and he liked the sway of her hips. She had a lovely laugh.

Today, though, she walked in and looked straight at Sam, desperately nonchalant at his desk. No laughing — she looked puzzled at first, and then her face went pale. She sat at a desk in the back, as far from the front as space would allow.

He taught the class from his desk and dismissed them early. He stacked papers and watched Emma lag behind her friends. She waited until there were no students left and then came slowly to his desk.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he said, and swallowed. His throat was very dry.

“Is this an early Halloween?” and she forced a laugh, pointed to the wings. He felt them arch over his head and stretch as if in response to her question; two inches since lunchtime, it wouldn’t surprise him at all.

“Not exactly,” he said. He blinked and her face swam in and out of focus.

“I see,” she said and nodded, as though that explained everything.

“I don’t.” His voice was sharper than he’d intended. “I don’t see at all.”

“Oh.” The word seemed very small. “They’re real?”

“Yes.” Strange, the relief that rushed into his bones.

Unexpectedly, a quirk of her mouth. “You don’t strike me as a particularly religious man.”

“I’m not.” He’d been Catholic, just as he’d believed in the Tooth Fairy. His mother still said prayers for him. They weren’t helping, obviously.

“Maybe you should be,” she said. “Maybe it’s, you know, a sign.”

This was surprising — he wouldn’t have pegged her for a religious person, either. “I’ll think about it,” he said, another attempt at nonchalance. He tossed a hand back to the wings and tried a crooked smile, his first of the day. “Might try to get through the week, first.”

“Okay.” She gave him a tentative smile in return, then left. Much later, he realized that he hadn’t asked her to keep it a secret.

Maybe you should be. Tomorrow, the Tooth Fairy would show up at his door with a bag of old teeth, dressed in rags and asking for change.

Sunday

He woke up with a stiff back, that was all. Stumbled into his bathroom and flicked on the light and there they were — greyish knobs of skin that unfurled from his shoulder blades and hung to just above his waist. He blinked and leaned in to the mirror. Close up, he could see tiny feathers, densely packed together and obscured in some areas by grey, fuzzy down. He splashed water on his face and looked again.

Wings.

He was hallucinating. He had to be hallucinating. He reached around and grasped as though expecting air, then shouted when his fingers touched a feather, all too real. A hint of cartilage lay beneath the fuzz. He followed that slight ridge up to where the growth met skin — the move from wing to flesh was seamless. His skin was both clammy and hot, fevered.

Chickenhead heard his cry and pattered into the bathroom. She hopped onto the toilet and watched him, her head tilted to the side. Her eyes grew wide and then narrowed; she batted at one wing and then licked her paw, as though it was no big deal.

“This isn’t funny,” he told her, almost shouting. She raised a paw again and ran her claws through the feathers. It hurt, more than he could have imagined.

Bryan. It was the only thing he could think of. He’d stumbled into his apartment alone last night, but Bryan was the craftiest jokester he knew, and he lived half a block away. His hands shook so badly he could barely dial the number.

His best friend answered on the seventh ring, sounding half asleep. “Muh?”

“Very funny. Ha ha.”

“What?”

“I have down on my bedsheets. Extra points for getting in and getting it all done without waking me up. Now how do I get the damn things off?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The wings, Bryan. Is it Super Glue?”

Pause. “I’m coming over.”

“Don’t bother. Just — ”

“Five minutes, Sam.” And click.

Bryan was at his house in three, pounding on Sam’s door as though he’d just called 911. He’d run over in slippers and his flannels and when Sam opened the door expecting a yell, or at the very least a startled What the fuck, all Bryan did was grab him by the shoulders and pull him in for a brisk, hard hug.

“Sam,” he said, when he pulled away, “I thought that was it.”

“What?”

“I thought you’d lost it. All this stuff with Julie — I thought it had pushed you over the edge.” His hair was in matted brown disarray and there were bags under his eyes.

Sam took one breath and then another. “I called because of — these.” He gestured wildly behind his back. The wings fluttered, up and down. “See?”

Bryan’s broad face was puzzled. “What?”

“Can’t you — ” waving madly “ — see them?”

Now he looked nervous. “See what, buddy?”

Sam blinked, unsure — was he still dreaming? — and then looked back over his shoulder. There they were, the feathers limp against his spine. “You don’t see anything? Anything out of the ordinary?”

Bryan snorted. “Aside from you and one hell of a hangover? No.”

He felt dizzy, and slumped against the wall. “Oh. Okay.” The wings bent against the wall with a sound like crumpling tissue, but Bryan didn’t appear to hear it. Sam closed his eyes.

“Dude. You need to forget about this chick. Look at what it’s doing to you.”

That almost made him laugh. “She’s not just ‘some chick,’ Bryan.”

Bryan ignored him and padded down the hall into the kitchen. Sam listened as he opened the cupboards — out of coffee again, most likely. Then he shuffled back to the door. When Sam opened his eyes, Bryan was readjusting his slippers, coffee in hand.

“I’m telling you, Sam. It’s over. She’s granite. You’re humping a fucking rock.”

“I think,” he said, “that the expression is ‘beating a dead horse.’”

“Whatever. A rock is a rock is a rock, Sam — time to move on. We should go out more, introduce you to some people.”

“Since when do you know people?” Sam asked. Each word felt forced, too big for his mouth.

“This might surprise you, but the whole world hasn’t gone into mourning.”

“I haven’t gone into mourning.”

Bryan snorted. “Sure,” he said. “You’ve practically disappeared and now you’re hallucinating after one night out on the town.”

“I’m not — ”

“Sam.”

He blinked and then remembered. Pressed his hand against the wall and felt feathers, just waiting. “I’m just — old. Too old for nights like that.”

“Speak for yourself, friend. What you need are more nights out. We should do this again soon. To hell with Julie and the accountant.”

“Professor,” he said. And, “Maybe.” He couldn’t think about Julie right now. He needed to get Bryan out of the house.

“Want me to make coffee?”

Sam shook his head. “No. Must be tired — should just go back to bed.”

“Suit yourself,” and Bryan clapped him on the shoulder, narrowly missing one wing. Sam bit his lip and fought to keep from crying out. “See you later in the week?”

“Sure.” He closed the door as soon as it was polite, then stumbled to the bathroom and stretched out on the floor, the wings a feathery mass between his back and the tile. It hurt to breathe, and still the air pushed onward, through his lungs.

After a long moment, he dragged himself to sitting and blinked at Chickenhead, who hadn’t moved from her perch on the toilet.

“I think I’m going crazy,” he said. Something in his voice moved her, because she jumped down and crawled into his lap. Her purr was robust and warm against his stomach. He ran his hands through her fur and stopped just short of praying. Here he was, with his wings and his cat. Her eyes were amber slits in the soft light of the bathroom. If she could talk, give him some of her nine lives’ wisdom, she might have said: this is just the beginning.