And Still

And Still

He woke to the particular silence of a room where someone used to be. The curtain moved once in the open window. He got up.

The mors was on the counter in a glass pitcher, the color of dark cherries, beads of water already forming on its sides. He poured a glass and carried it toward the light.

She was already at the railing when he opened the balcony door. She wore the robe he had seen over the chair the night before, the sash tied once and low. Her hands rested on the iron and she was looking out at something he couldn't yet see from the doorway.

He stood there a moment without speaking. In the pale northern light she looked like a woman who had been standing at railings her whole life. A siskin sat on the railing two feet to her left. It did not move when he appeared in the doorway. It regarded her with one bright sideways eye, then looked away again at nothing in particular.

He came out beside her. The iron was cold under his hand. He held the glass of mors out around her and waited until her fingers closed over it. The condensation darkened her skin where she gripped it. His arm stayed at her waist after she took it, and he drew himself in behind her and rested his head lightly against her shoulder. She did not lean back. She did not move away.

Beyond the rooftops and the wires, the dome of St. Isaac's held the early light. Neither gold nor gray. Something between the two.

The siskin hopped once along the rail, stopped, considered, and then lifted without warning. It crossed the gap to the next balcony and sat there alone in the same posture, looking at nothing.

"You left before I woke," he said.

"I went three steps."

Below them a delivery truck idled at the curb. Somewhere down the street a bottle broke and nothing answered it. The city below was already at work, moving its freight in the half-light as if morning required nothing from anyone.

She lifted the glass and looked over its rim toward the dome. He followed her eyes.

A scatter of pigeons had risen from the stone below the gold and wheeled once across the face of it. In the flat northern light they looked almost silver, then gray again when they turned.

"There," she said.

He watched them circle. "They use hawks."

She lowered the glass. "For pigeons?"

"To keep them off. The city does it. The gold."

She watched the birds complete their arc and come lower, drifting toward the base of the dome where it met the darker stone below. "They look happy enough."

"They don't send hawks for happy birds."

She smiled at that. He felt it in the shift of her shoulder under his cheek before he saw it.

"Then why do they keep coming back?"

He didn't answer immediately. The truck below pulled from the curb and its sound lasted in the street longer than the truck itself. A bus crossed the intersection, roof flashing once, and was gone. A man in a dark coat walked against the light and was nearly struck by a bicyclist. Neither of them turned around.

"Maybe they think it's something it isn't," he said.

She drank. The red in the glass had gone lighter where her mouth touched it. She looked at the dome the way a person looks at something they have memorized and are not sure they like having memorized.

"Or they know exactly what it is," she said. "And still."

He lifted his head from her shoulder. The place where his cheek had rested cooled immediately. He straightened and put both hands on the railing, one on each side of her, and looked at what she was looking at.

The pigeons had settled in a line along the base of the dome where the gold met the darker band below. They sat there in a row, not touching, each one leaving a precise gap between itself and the next.

The siskin was back. It had returned to the same spot on the railing as before and taken the same posture, the same sideways watch.

"I heard they peck at it," he said.

"The gold?"

"Whatever shines."

She turned the glass slowly in her hands. The mors had left a faint ring on the iron where she'd set it. "Then they're stupid birds."

"Maybe they just want what they want."

The windows across the courtyard were starting to wake. Laundry on a line three buildings over had gone from gray to white. The city was becoming itself again, slowly, without drama.

"You could sleep," she said. "I'll be here."

"You aren't sleeping."

"No."

The siskin lifted again. This time it went farther, clearing the railing of the opposite balcony entirely and angling up and away until it was gone between the buildings.

"I can go," he said. "If that's the thing."

She nodded once, the way a person nods when they are agreeing to something practical. "Yes."

Neither of them moved.

The glass sat on the iron rail between them. The cold of the mors had done its work on the outside of it, water gathering in slow beads, running in thin lines down toward the base. One bead had grown heavier than the others. It held. At its base it took on the gray of the railing. It waited. It did not yet fall.

The pigeons on the dome shifted without lifting, a small collective adjustment, each bird recalibrating its position relative to the others. Then they settled again in their row, their gaps intact.

He moved his hands from the railing to her hips. He pulled her gently back against him and swayed once, lightly, something between a nudge and an apology. She let herself be moved. Just barely, just enough, the way something held briefly will resume its own form the instant the hand is gone.

Then he let go.

He stepped left, no longer behind her, and his hand settled on the glass. Not dramatically. The way you reach for something that was yours.

She saw his hand on the glass. Her left hand came for it at the same moment her head turned right, both movements happening at once, the reaching and the not looking, and where their hands met on the cold wet surface the glass moved just slightly and the bead released, ran, and dropped.

Below the balcony the siskin was on the lower ledge. The bead struck near it and was gone. It looked up once with one bright eye, then opened its wings and turned, the dark of its back giving way to a brief gold before it was gone.

She stood with her hand on the glass and her face turned away from him.

He stood with his hand on the glass and looked at her profile, at the place where the robe collar opened and closed with her breathing, at the hair gathered loosely at the nape of her neck.

Above the dome the pigeons lifted all at once. They crossed the gold and scattered and were gone behind the buildings. The dome stood empty in the flat northern light, neither gold nor gray, holding its color that had no name.

Then from somewhere beyond the nearer rooftops a new set came. Small at first against the pale sky, then clearer, dropping toward the dome in that loose unhurried way of birds that have found what they are looking for. They settled along the base where the gold met the darker stone, each one leaving the same careful gap between itself and the next.

The light held. The dome held. Below them the city went on moving its freight.