Chapter 1 - Baby Bird

It was exactly 5:51 am. A loud and intentionally jarring buzz echoed briefly in the small apartment, silenced by a heavy hand dropped on the snooze button. In nine minutes the second alarm would sound. Six o'clock would come at the same time as it did every morning and Jim Parish would once again drag himself out of bed to start another in an unending series of pointless days. He rolled over and into a fetal position, almost enjoying the extra few minutes in spite of the hollow melancholy of the day ahead. He lay perfectly still until the alarm rang a second time.

This time he hit the off button.

Five days a week Parish followed the same routine. He sat on the side of his thin mattress, bare feet on the equally bare wood floor, head bowed and shoulders rounded until the cold spread up through his soles and defeated the last bit of sleep fogging his mind. Then he stood and padded naked to the even colder tile floor in the bathroom.

By 6:25, Jim was showered, dressed and in the kitchen fixing his breakfast. He added a tablespoon of water to two eggs sizzling in a non-stick pan, covered them so the steam would lightly cook the tops. On the rare occasions when he ate breakfast out he always ordered his eggs over light, but at home he didn't want to chance breaking the yolks when the eggs were flipped.

Five minutes later he was seated in what the rental agent had called a breakfast nook but was really just the end of the kitchen that had no counters or cupboards. The chair across from him was naturally empty, so he could see the local news on the television in the next room. A young woman he did not know had somewhere been murdered. Cameras captured her family’s grief and poured it out for the viewers. Jim had long ago stopped pretending to care, he knew that his days would be the same with our without this particular stranger in the world. By the time the next story began, this one was forgotten. Traffic, weather, some local politics floated about with the steam from his meal and, no more substantial, dissipated into nothingness. He picked up the remote and turned the TV off. News continued to be broadcast, but no longer wafted through his kitchen.

Plate, fork, spoon, knife, juice glass and coffee cup were all washed and dried by hand and put in their proper places. The dishwasher was rarely used, as Jim hated to have dirty dishes waiting until he had a full load. He washed and dried the pan and cooking utensils, put away the coffee and milk. Eight eggs gone, four remaining, it must be Thursday. On Sunday he would make oatmeal and go shopping again. At seven o'clock exactly he looked around to be sure that the apartment was as neat and sterile as always, grabbed his keys and locked the door behind him as he left for work. It was a block and a half to the bus stop, and Jim always gave himself plenty of time to walk leisurely there. The weather on this morning was pleasant, although it had rained the night before.

A few doors from his apartment, a car came too fast down the narrow city street, too close to the curb, and before he knew what was happening Jim Parish was splashed and soaked from just above the knees to his shoes with cold, dirty water. He stopped dead in momentary shock and was angrily glaring at the retreating rear bumper when he heard the screaming above him and looked up.

It all happened in an instant that he would re-live in excruciatingly slow motion again and again. A jumble of white and blue with flying black hair came toppling out of a third floor window. A horrified wail mixed with the higher pitched shriek as a woman lunged out and just missed brushing her fingers against the falling bundle, desperately clutching empty air and leaning so far out she nearly fell herself. Jim watched with his mouth open and before he could assess the situation instinctively put his arms out and, to his amazement, caught the child and pulled her to his chest.

Time, for the moment, stopped frittering itself away. The woman in the window was a mannequin, unable to gulp a breath of air. Other pedestrians, who had turned toward the commotion, simply stared at the middle-aged statue of a man, holding a toddler as though she were a baby bird that he wanted to put back in its nest. Cars must have passed, drivers unaware, but if so they were part of another unfrozen dimension. Only a few seconds, perhaps even less, and then the little bird looked up at her rescuer with bright eyes and smiled an impossible smile.

If there was the director of this sequence, he must have shouted 'Action!' just then. One bystander swooned and dropped to the sidewalk. The woman in the window disappeared momentarily, descending three flights inside the building nearly as quickly as her child had outside, burst through the door and ran barefoot and sobbing to where a man she did not know was holding fast to a tiny life in his arms. She stopped an arms length from him, tears streaming down her face, unable to make words come. Jim Parish was similarly at a loss for conversation, although his eyes were dry.

"Here," he said, handing the girl to her mother as though she were a package to be delivered. "I have to get to work," he added rather stupidly, then turned and walked unsteadily past the few gaping onlookers toward his bus stop on the next block. She watched him go in stunned silence. The little girl waved her fingers at his back and mouthed 'Bye-bye.'