There are things like meetings. There are grants, and funding concerns, and there is talk of “community outreach” and “public programs,” which Weary must fight off with words like research facility and focus and (when he brings in the linguistic big guns) integrity. Gavin Gray taught him well; he taught him what was necessary for the survival of Corvus and this place, but also what was critical for Weary’s own survival. Every day, Weary thanks Gavin Gray. He sends love skyward, on the back of a bird.
There are all these phone calls. Emails. Caw-cawing chatter. But at the heart of it, at the every-day center, there’s Weary and the research; there’s Little Black and Corbie and Rousse and Snap and Billy and Simone; Yves and BG and Fou-Fou and Petit, and the captives, like Mean Boy and Lovey and the injured Bobo, and the rest. There is Matias with his clipboard in the pens, and Aimée in the jungle, sitting on a stone, eyes up to a nest in the hidden V of a tree. There is the bam-bam of hammers as Hector and Lotto repair damage from the storm, a fallen drainpipe, the roof of one of the pens. They have already removed the X’s of tape from the windows, which they’d tacked up after the typhoon warning came.
They are a smoothly functioning communal roost. Smaller in numbers than the hundred to two million crows in some roost locales, and more recently settled than the hundred years that many roosts have been in existence. But a communal roost just the same.
Weary leaves early, because all is ticking along and functioning beautifully without him. Also, he sneaks away right then because like many American crows, he leads a double life. There is the territory he lives in with his large extended family, and there are the places he flies solo, fields and dumps where he goes alone to scavenge and feed his hungers.
Today, it will be all business, though. Or, rather, this day is not about physical hungers but driving emotional ones. When Jean-Marie appears on the apartment balcony as Weary sits at the table at Le Bilboquet now, Weary only downs the last drop of an espresso. He does not need the shot of liquor this time, the tiny-glass courage required to disrobe in front of the gorgeous Jean-Marie. This will be a quick meeting. Weary races across the street. It’s hot, the hottest month, humid. He wipes the sweat from his forehead before Jean-Marie opens the door, because vanity is still vanity. He hopes he still smells good after all that waiting in the humid shade under Bilboquet’s striped awning.
Jean-Marie wears aviators on his head like a guest star on Miami Vice. He’s dark and sexy enough for the television version of the underworld work he does, even if it’s 1970s style, all unbuttoned shirts and tight jeans and sideburns. Weary considers his retro good looks a perk, a buy-one-get-one, a party favor. Jean-Marie takes the new envelope that Weary hands him. Weary packed the single photo most carefully. If Isabelle rips it up or trashes it, there’s no replacement. It’s a risk, but what isn’t. He’s counting on Isabelle. She’s his last chance. She’s the plan, one hundred percent, and if the plan goes south, there will not be another. At least, that’s what Weary says now. He’s too tired to do this again. Fury is exhausting. Worry is, too, and so is responsibility of this magnitude. If Isabelle fails him (or, please, please, no, if he fails her) he’ll turn his eyes back to the birds and only the birds. Henry North will have gotten away with it—with all of it, murder and soul murder.
This exchange completes Weary and Jean-Marie’s business for today. He’s almost sorry to be going so quickly, because there’s this fleeting relief with Jean-Marie, the freedom of being known. But, then—maybe they both aren’t in such a hurry after all, because Jean-Marie’s smile is slow.
“Regardez ce que je dois ici.” Look what I have here. Jean-Marie waves a small package like a treat, raises his dark eyebrows enticingly.
“You did it,” Weary said.
“Bien sûr.”
“So soon! I thought I’d be waiting weeks.”
“I aim to please,” he says. Oh, and he does. He does. Jean-Marie’s voice is low.
“Let me see.”
“Où est ma merci premier?” Where is my “thank-you” first?
Heat radiates from Weary’s face down through his whole body. Well. Well, why not? Is this moment not worth a celebration? It’s perfect, really—no time for nerves or regret, only the fast sweep of passion. Jean-Marie leans in, and there is his warm tongue. There’s the rough press of his cheek, and then a grind of hips. Weary thinks of the cloacal kiss, the rubbing of the male crow’s cloaca against the female after she solicits sex. Quickly, though, crows and anything avian is gone, everything is gone, except bodies and their vibrating. Weary’s hands undo Jean-Marie’s shirt, his pants. Jean-Marie’s skin burns hot; it’s slippery with sweat, and they drop to the floor right there. Right there in the hallway of Jean-Marie’s apartment.
Life is short. That’s one thing Weary knows. There is joy in what has occurred. He is surprised with pleasure, with Jean-Marie’s tongue; he is surprised by the waiting package. He cries out. It is over in seconds, same as with Corvus. Seconds are long enough. Jean-Marie politely kisses down Weary’s neck, but then pulls on his pants.
“Ne pas oublier,” he says. Don’t forget.
As if. Weary could never forget that package; he could never forget any of this day and its unexpected delights. This is what it looks like when things go right. When things tick along according to plan, the whole day moves gratifyingly forward. He can feel so tired, and then be so invigorated. He can be ready to just let it all go, and then he can remember everything—the beauty of his life now, the relief of it, and the beauty of his anger, too.
Weary waits until he’s back in the sweltering Jeep before he opens the envelope. In those shorts, the sun-hot seats sting the back of his legs. Oh, whatever. Who cares about the searing pain! He rips open the package to find the precious document inside, the handsome burgundy of the French passport.
He flips it open. There’s the photo, and it’s lovely.