2. Just Think How Sane We’d Be if it Weren’t for the Heat #3
What could I tell you about JR? That he was Roro’s twin brother, and a couple inches shy of six feet—which is to say, very tall according to my grandmother.
He had briefly been in training to be an EMT, but somewhere along the way, something went awry.
JR mostly wanted to please other people in precisely the way that so eluded Roro and me, but he couldn’t always figure out how to do it without supervision.
For this reason and a few others, my mother had never really liked him and often urged people not to turn out like JR. I thought at the time (judging from context) that she meant aimless, or maybe lazy, though JR was almost comically obedient, and it didn’t seem possible to be lazy if you always did everything you were told.
Mom specifically made these comments when dredging up the subject of me dropping out of college or quitting well-paying temp jobs because they conflicted with callbacks.
Which was not a matter of laziness and certainly wasn’t aimlessness either, unless you were the kind of person who didn’t believe acting was a legitimate aim.
“He has a name,” JR said. He held the pigeon out toward me. “It’s Alistair.”
Alistair had many qualities. Feathered, agitated.
Compared to the rest of his body his legs were so long and pristinely white, practically stockinged, that they could only be described as “gams,” as per Jessica Rabbit or Lola Bunny.
Meanwhile, his throat was so massive it looked like he’d swallowed a snake egg by accident and couldn’t figure out whether to digest it or spit it out, which emphasized the supreme beadiness of his eyes.
He wore a look of confusion mixed with panic that I would later learn was just his face.
His coat was primarily gray with some splotches of mottled green iridescence, like a bottle fly, though tufts of white splayed across his chest and back feathers, and again, his elongated legs.
I’ve never considered myself an animal person.
It seemed to me like one of those qualities you had to inherit from somewhere, and my mom wasn’t an animal person, either.
My mother and I liked having an unstained sofa and ambiance that smelled like Febreze, which in rare periods of camaraderie we jointly selected to match the nearest holiday.
Also, I don’t mean to speak about Alistair in the past tense.
If you’re wondering, the pigeon survives.
“He seems upset,” I observed. I was trying to be charitable and sympathetic, which thankfully was a common feminine characteristic.
I had much to fall back on for inspiration, narratively speaking.
In reality, I couldn’t get over how bizarre Alistair looked, like a cross between a sexy cartoon nurse and, well, a pigeon.
“Of course he’s upset. The books say he’s experiencing feelings of anxiety.
” JR turned Alistair toward him to stare deeply into his beady pigeon eyes.
This, for understandable reasons, did not calm Alistair at all.
He was making frantic cooing noises that turned arbitrarily to panicked bleats.
He kept trying to fly, but of course JR was holding him.
Casually, I posited: “Do you think the feelings of anxiety have to do with his captivity?”
Over a squawk of deafening protest, JR replied, “Alistair was born in captivity. He’s genetically very gifted.
” I doubted this profoundly at the time, but I later learned it was true.
Everything that seemed objectively insane about Alistair’s appearance was heightened specifically to be attractive to other pigeons, approximating the exaggerated effect of a Kardashian waistline in the wild.
“He comes from the finest stock, according to Pete,” JR went on, undeterred.
“Even better than any of Tavis Anderson’s doos. ”
This much I could tell you: Pete was a dealer who lived in the neighborhood, part of the debris keeping property values low (a quote from my mother).
He trafficked mainly in small things, recreational ubiquities like coke and molly, so I probably should have been glad JR had only come to him for pigeon.
As for the other name—“Dare I ask about Tavis Anderson?”
I was only half paying attention to the conversation, fixated as I was on remaining within the orbit of my phone.
Every time the screen lit up I jumped to reach it, but it was only ever TikTok or Instagram or the dating app I’d recently downloaded.
I was trying my best to get on Delphi, the app that celebrities use, but even at my most self-assured I knew I was exactly the kind of person they were trying to keep away from Delphi.
I was actively looking for a foothold in the industry, not meaningful connection.
Or sex, which I had plenty of with no one’s help.
This time, though, when the screen lit up, it was easy to tell it was another Amber Alert—even with my phone on silent, the alarm was loud enough to hear from space.
The ensuing commotion was an immediate racket. “Can you turn that off? It’s upsetting Alistair—”
“I’m trying, it’s another one of those missing person alerts—”
“Who is it?” JR, leaning over to see my screen, brought several feathers into my periphery. “Sorry, sorry—”
I finally managed to turn the sound off and said the woman’s name out loud, though I already knew we wouldn’t know her. “Salvadorena,” commented JR in response, before adding, “And Tavis Anderson is the region’s foremost dooman.”
“Dooman?” I echoed vaguely, in lieu of expressing anything else.
“There are doowomen,” JR assured me.
“Not really the thing I meant to question.” The picture on the Amber Alert was pulled from the girl’s social media.
She was clearly at a party, her top skimpy and tight.
Her mascara was slightly smudged, eyes glassy in that way that suggested drinking.
She looked happy, full of secrets, almost smug.
I wondered if whoever provided this photo had thought she looked beautiful in it.
She did. She was a few years older than me and I thought: I hope that by the time I’m her age I find a waterproof mascara that really sticks.
“Doo flying is at least five thousand years old. In Scotland they’ve been practicing it since the Victorian era.”
“And you relate to this because you, too, hail from a lawless island?” Not implausible.
“You still haven’t told me what a ‘doo’ is.
” I’d already swiped away from the alert back to my socials.
My mom had turned on the news that morning, as was her practice, but I’d long ago stopped listening.
School shootings, mutilated bodies. I thought of it all equally as sensationalism.
Summer of Exsanguination sounded like a band name, not a meaningful call to action.
It hardly inspired any motivating effort toward change.