The Autobiography of Benjamin Abbott - Chapter 13: The Pigeons (Part Two)
Previous Chapter: Chapter Thirteen (Part One)
Bare legs of an unsuspecting waitress walked by. I tagged along, hiding behind her in a crouched position, hoping the gunman would have more respect for the lives of human bystanders than he did for pigeon ones. We made it inside the restaurant and I ran. I ran through the seating area into the kitchen, out the back door of the kitchen and kept running, down an alleyway, through city blocks, looking over my shoulder, still running, still trying to escape a madman with a gun.
I made it to my apartment building and climbed the steps to my floor. I didn’t go to my apartment, I knew enough not to do that. Ducking low as I walked fast down the hallway I went to Angel’s door. I started softly rapping on it with a panicked force. It was almost noon. She usually slept until 1 or 2. I knew she was in there. 2 minutes of soft constant knocking and still no response. I ducked my head lower and looked down to the end of the hallway waiting for a charging hitman to come up from the stairwell gun in hand. I pirouetted and started rapping on her door with an even greater panicked force. Open up Angel, please open up.
“It’s me, Ben,” I whispered to the door, through the door, knowing she could hear me because you could hear everything through the doors in that building. Deliveries, swearing, fights, fucking, nothing in the hallway was secret. “It’s Ben,” I said again, “please open up.”
Finally, I heard the brief sound of a waterfall going in reverse, her deadbolt disengaging, and then the door opened and Angel stood before me in a nightshirt and nonchalantly yawned. Either because I had woken her up or because she was still pissed at me, she didn’t look happy to see my face.
“What do you want, Ben?”
I didn’t answer, quickly entering her apartment and shutting and locking the door behind me. “Can I stay at your place for the night? I think somebody is trying to kill me,” I hyperventilated to her.
She thought I was joking or playing some sort of prank on her so she ignored my manic state and walked to her kitchen area (that was identical to my kitchen area, besides the liquor bottles on the shelves, just as all the studio apartments in that building were identical to each other). She took an opened box of Honey Bunches of Oats and a cheap ceramic bowl with painted yellow flowers ringing the top off one of her non-liquored shelves. “Why don’t you stay at your girlfriend’s place?” She asked without looking at me. Yep, she was still pissed off.
“What? Who? Debi. A. She’s not my girlfriend. B. Because she’s married.”
“She’s not your girlfriend. So you’re just screwing her then?”
“What? You’re jealous?”
Angel angrily poured cereal into the bowl, if it is even possible to angrily pour cereal into a bowl. “I’m not jealous.”
“You sleep with people for a living and you’re upset I’m having an affair.”
I heard muttering as she opened the refrigerator. I think she was mocking me somehow.
“I’m serious. I need to stay at your place tonight.”
“We all have problems.” She angrily poured milk over her cereal.
“Angel, I’m not exaggerating, somebody shot at me today. Somebody is trying to kill me. Look!” I held up the dead pigeon I was still grasping in my right hand, still desperately clutching by its feet like it was a police baton, my weapon, my only defense against the person trying to kill me.
“Jesus! Why are you holding a dead pigeon?”
“Look at it! Look at it!” I said waving the pigeon back and forth. I might have sounded and looked like a crazy man at that point, I’m not sure. “There’s a bullet in it.”
My waving slowed. Angel held my right hand in hers to get a better look at the bird. She squinted. Then she let go of my hand and picked up her reading glasses from the kitchen counter (unlike Richard she liked to wear her reading glasses and did so most of the time when she was lounging in her apartment) and inspected the pigeon a second time. She took my right hand in hers again and turned it back and forth examining the pigeon from different angles like a podiatrist looking at a gangrenous toe.
“The thing fell in front of me when I was eating outside at Bira’s. I think two other pigeons were shot, too. They were dropping like flies” (or dead pigeons). “Somebody was shooting at me.”
Angel let go of my right hand and took off her reading glasses ready to make a diagnosis. “That’s a hollow-tipped 365 Lancer.”
“A what?”
“A 365 Lancer. It’s a type of bullet. You’re lucky it didn’t go through the pigeon and hit you.”
“How do you know that?”
“I have hobbies.” She shrugged. Then looked concerned, the gravity of the situation hitting her now that she realized why I was waving around a dead bird and all. “Why would someone want to kill you? Are you okay?” She hugged me, hard, squishing the pigeon in between us. “Of course you can stay here tonight.”
After throwing the heroic dead pigeon out the window, I washed up and Angel ate her breakfast and then we caught up on all of the time we had missed with each other over the previous 2 weeks. I had a rapport with her I didn’t have with Debi. Debi and I always got along fine, but like with many relationships it was more transactional in nature, we were with each other to fulfill certain needs as much as we were together because we liked being in each other’s presence.
But with Angel, we had a closeness, a shared sensibility, an understanding that made no sense, really, if you thought about it. We had such different backgrounds and lives you’d never think we’d get along so well, but we did. We laughed at each other’s jokes not out of politeness but because we actually found them funny, we listened to each other’s insights about life because we actually thought they were interesting, we shared confidences because we knew the other person actually cared, none of this was going through the motions, of waiting for the other person to finish so I can talk, of courtesy because we want to be considered courteous, it was something more, something indefinable. Sometimes this is referred to as compatibility but it’s much more than that as well. Even after being away from each other for many days, we picked up our little in-jokes, and knowing looks, as if no time had passed. Staying at Angel’s all afternoon watching television and talking and then still talking and laughing as she got dressed getting ready for work that night, it was the best day I had had in a long time. It almost made me forget someone had tried to kill me at lunchtime.
“I was wondering. You know people, right?”
“What do you mean?” Angel was in the bathroom teasing her hair so she would stand out amongst the competition.
“In your business, you meet people, you know people, who might happen to know other people who might happen to know people who perhaps kill people for a living.”
“Uhhh, maybe.” Angel came out of the bathroom and looked at me with doe eyes. “Who are you in trouble with Ben? You can tell me if you stole money from somebody. Or is it gambling debts?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. I don’t owe anybody money. I’m pretty sure I know who it is and I know they didn’t shoot at me themselves. They would have hired somebody to do it. Actually, they would have hired somebody to hire somebody else to do it. So I figured if someone’s been hired to kill me, word might have gotten around, I don’t know, I figure it’s as good a place to start as any.”
“I don’t think I’m going to find out anything, I don’t usually hang around with murderers.”
“I know, but…”
“I’ll ask around. There’s a few girls who might know something.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ll owe me.”
“I already owe you.”
“For what?”
“For letting me stay here.”
“Bah,” she flared her hand dismissively, and went back into the bathroom to put the finishing touches on her outfit for the night. She came back out 2 minutes later.
“How do I look?”
“Nice.”
“Nice?”
“Don’t you want to look nice?”
“I hope that’s not what you tell your girlfriends when they ask you how they look. That’s like the worst thing you can say.”
“How do you want to look?”
“Like you want to fuck me. That you would pick me over all the other girls on the street.”
“Well, I already did once.”
“So?” She opened her arms presenting herself again.
“You look perfect.”
“That’s better.” She walked to her dresser and opened a small wooden box and turned around with four spangly objects in her hands. “Now help me choose earrings.”