Thursday's Gathering

Under the cross-street neighbors’ immaculate white porch, Logan nods, culminating his Saturday morning’s interrogations.

“Sure hope that bird o’ yers turns up. Be a shame if it didn’t,” Dennis says before offering a snide grin. The senior leaves one hand on his wooden cane, raising his other to swing the ajar front door closed.

Click!

The dismissed visitor rubs his cleft chin, stubbly for the first time all week. Fantastic. Four cul-de-sac neighbors visit for a weeknight dinner party, and none of them confess to knowing how Atlas went missing. A seventeen-thousand dollar Black Palm Cockatoo had vanished. With a heavy exhale, the lost-pet owner descends the Campbell’s porch steps and ambles toward his own home. How could Carla have let this happen?

A mid-autumn breeze rustles the yellowing ginkgo tree leaves overhead. Hands stuffed in his front jean pockets, Logan transitions from concrete to asphalt and slows his pace in his sheepskin moccasins. All around the secluded turning circle, neither the Jamisons, Miss Bryant, nor the Campbells could report anything about the missing Atlas. Only one neighbor’s alibi remains unconfirmed: Chase Gibbs. Of course, the prevailing narrative involves him leaving the Thursday-night social early so he could reach his hunting land before dawn and the precise start of goose season. Such details currently rest with Carla, the party’s hostess and Logan’s dear wife. With no answer at the woodsman’s door earlier, Logan had sent Chase a text message—response still pending.

Meanwhile, the husband-turned-investigator reaches his own driveway, strolling toward the open garage in his copper-brown puffer vest. Fresh strands of pine straw, weak to the morning wind, flitter from the nearby garden bed. HOA fees, hard at work. At least the association had kept its contracts consistent throughout the year, including weekly landscaping. The symphony of roaring blowers and whirring edgers was about the only thing Logan enjoyed avoiding while away on business travel. So many damn energy audits. To conclude an unrevealing mission, the senior site manager taps the garage’s control pad, initiating the overhead electric motor.

Ka-chk—vrrmmm, vrrmmm, vrrmmm—ka-thunk!

Before unlatching the entry door, Logan straightens his glasses. Wait, huh? Through the garage’s side window, two houses over, Tiffany Bryant scurries across the curved front sidewalk and pops into her silver Crosstrek. The headlights illuminate, and the vehicle’s wheels turn before Logan can place his hands on his hips. Why the hell is she in such a rush? The single woman hadn’t mentioned any urgent plans for the day and had claimed nothing but praise for Carla and Thursday’s gathering. According to the hostess, one of the evening’s most dramatic topics involved Tiffany’s recent promotion with the Georgia Safari Conservation Park. A pro-animal lady in every aspect.

Logan tilts his head forward and eases through the entryway. The photo frame collage lining the narrow hallway leads his sight line toward the den—Atlas’s room. An empty ten-foot by six-foot cage. Hello! Atlas would call each time he heard his owners approaching. With an array of mimicked phrases, the quirky bird with red cheeks had brought verve to a growingly muted household.

Rrr-ch-ch-rrrrrr!

The garbage disposal sounds from the next room, so the husband moves left to reach the open kitchen and report on his failed findings. He rounds the corner as Carla tidies the counter near the kitchen’s front window, her loose hair cloaking her upper back.

“Hey, you’re back already?” The wife asks, spinning around and resting her palms on the counter’s edge.

“Yeah, back already.” Logan drops onto the nearest cushioned barstool, facing Carla in her daisy-white sweater from across their speckled quartzite island.

“What’s the news? Did anyone know anything about Atlas?”

A head shake.

“No… Everyone talked about their time over here on Thursday, but no one’s seen or heard anything since then. Only person I couldn’t talk to was Chase. Seems like a convenient weekend to have run away for ‘goose season.’ Still hasn’t responded to my text,” Logan says, retrieving his phone from his vest pocket to check again.

“Ugggh. What a bastard… But you talked to everyone else?”

“Yeah. Phillip and Meg came to their door. Said they were ‘shocked’ when they hadn’t overheard any squawking for the last day and a half.” And the leery homeowner rolls his eyes. “I know they’ve always hated hearing Atlas ever since we got him… Whatever. Anyway, I checked with Tiffany, and she babbled on and on about how great the party was, and how much she loved that bird. Except I just caught her racing out of her driveway a second ago.”

“Huh,” Carla utters, tapping her index finger on her chin. “That’s strange. I mean, she probably talked more than everybody combined while they all were over here, if I had to guess. But she drove off? Just now?”

“Uh-huh, like two seconds after I closed the garage door behind me.”

The homebody folds her arms tightly to her chest, pouting. “You don’t think she was spying on you, was she?”

“Hard to say… Definitely possible. I had just walked across the turnaround from the Campbell’s a minute ago.”

“Wait. What did they have to say?” Carla asks. “The Campbells, I mean.”

“Dennis answered the door and said Sandra wasn’t feeling well. I asked about Atlas and the party, and he wound up rambling about the fall weather. I can’t believe those two are somehow fit to lead the HOA board.” With his right hand, Logan gradually spins the nearby glass salt shaker in the island’s middle condiment caddy. “And it’s no secret they’ve been trying to change the bylaws to banish pets. Surprised the old man didn’t offer his ‘freedom for all animals’ lecture while I was over there—a captive audience.”

Carla, palming a jade-green hand towel, steps to her left and polishes the silver air fryer.

“Hmmm, that’s true. And you didn’t see Sandra at all just now?” The relentless kitchen-cleaner asks.

“Nope. Also a convenient hour to ‘not feel well’…”

“Logan, they are in their late seventies, after all.”

“So? Apparently they were still young enough to come over two days ago and have a wild time!”

Thump!

Logan slams his fist on the firm stone. To comfort her fretful husband, Carla ends her particular cleaning efforts and skirts the rectangular island to reach him. With her hands withdrawn inside her sweater sleeves, she extends around his shoulders, landing a side hug.

“I’m so sorry, babe,” she whispers, her head resting on Logan’s back left shoulder.

Without returning her touch, Logan sighs.

“I just don’t understand…why someone would come over here and steal him. I’d write every one of these assholes a seventeen-thousand dollar check, if they would’ve just left our bird alone!”

Carla withdraws. The downstairs, normally flooded with friendly whistles, clucks, and intermittent flapping, remains hushed.

“Chance is still a wildcard, since no one has seen him since Thursday night,” she says, reaching for the petite watering can beside her corner plant stand.

The vexed man huffs. “That freak would shoot any moving thing with wings. Could’ve released Atlas and fired at him like a hopeless clay pigeon.”

“Oh, that would be sooo horrible,” the interior gardener says as she tips the can’s water spout over her third and final dwarf philodendron. “He even joked about what the taste of cockatoo might be like. I should’ve kicked him out on the spot, but I—”

Bzzzzz.

Logan’s phone buzzes atop the counter, and he snatches it straightaway.

“Agh, just work stuff… Can’t even get the weekend to myself.” Logan stands as he straightens his vest. “Hey, I forgot to ask last night—was there anyone else suspicious who came by the house this week?”

***

A sheen of daylight above, Carla sighed, her bare skin sinking into the bamboo sheets around her. With her eyes closed, she dug her fingertips into his solid lower back. Yes, yes, yes. Her body, still young enough to crave the rush.

“Mmmm.”

The deepest euphoria escaped her through their synchronized breaths, and she retreated her hands to her breasts. Meanwhile, the tanned frame atop her withdrew and gently rested beside her under the generous white cover.

“Holy…” he muttered before a heavy exhale. “Miss Whitaker, I’d be a fool not to arrange a follow-up visit here next week.”

With her eyeline fixed on the bedroom window, Carla flinched as a burly palm landed across her waist. She lowered her right hand to resist, but her fingers easily traced up his veiny forearm, finally resting on his clean-shaven chest.

“We’ll see about that,” Carla said, still turned away, the taste of coconut pear at her lips’ edges.

Smoothly, his fingers squeezed her bare waist, and she let out a giggle.

“Hmmm. Maybe I oughtta stay a little longer, huh?”

“Nooo way. You’ve got to head out with your crew.” She pivoted to face the ceiling, her golden-blonde hair a mess underneath. “…And I’ve got to get the house ready for tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Oh, just hosting a teeny dinner party with the neighbors, that’s all.”

For thirty-six of the year’s forty-two weeks thus far, Logan had been traveling. The stay-at-home wife, working remotely as a paralegal, kept losing her humanity amid the lone company of an expensive avian pet. And for the first time since her eyes favored the principal landscaper, Carla had extended the pleasantries beyond a wave and a brief “how are you today?”

After rinsing off in the shower, Carla wrapped herself in a seafoam waffle bath towel. Her remaining uncovered skin shimmered in the sunlight beaming through the bathroom transom. She retrieved her wedding ring from the burl wood jewelry box, trusting that her recent guest had already departed as instructed. Now what? Halfway between a sigh and a smile, the paralegal with a day’s worth of PTO swiftly exited the bathroom. After all, a mindless to-do list awaited ahead of her next desperate social occasion.

“Ohhh—Ross!”

The words shrieked from downstairs. Carla froze. Was the landscaper lingering?

“Hello?” she called, clutching the banister at the top of the quarter-turn staircase.

“Hello!”

A moment removed from shock, the indistinguishable tone jolted Carla’s pulse. Atlas!? That damn bird. Of all the phrases to overhear during foreplay between the lonely spouse and her private exception. Carla sprang down each hardwood step—one hand strangling her towel, the other hovering the handrail. No, no, no! In a blur, she crossed the jute hallway rug and darted into the den.

“Okay!”

“Atlas! No!”

Carla stood, damp hair tangled before her face, forcing quick breaths in the stillness. The black bird flicked his head, dipping back and forth along his favorite braided rope. His prominent crown feathers elongated, Atlas clucked his gray beak. He let out his familiar shrill-whistle combination, striking the distressed spouse. Carla’s eyes bulged, her towel slipping from her pulsing skin as the den’s musty stench cloaked the scene in filth. Logan can never know…