No Nest Building
"It's their food that gives them their color."
She looks at him.
"If their diet is good," he says, "they are a deep, healthy pink, but if their diet is lacking in nutrients they are whitish."
"Not so different from us."
"Yes, you could say that. But some of us have darker skin, ranging from light brown to black."
"Of course."
She sips her coffee. He sips his coffee. Both of them have paper cups. Both of them are looking at the birds.
"The one leg tucked up and under, while the other leg supports them—varying opinions about that," he says. "A popular idea is that they are resting. Some people think that this one-legged stance allows half of their body to rest, or even to sleep, which means that if they switch legs they can rest the other half, or let the other half of their body sleep."
"You're kidding."
"No."
"Are you an ethologist?" she asks.
"Ethologist?"
"Someone who studies animals, scientific study."
"No. That's not me."
"Okay," she says. "We won't go any further with that."
He now looks at her. "Any further with what?"
"Occupation."
He nods while looking at her profile, her face no more than four feet away from where he is. The wide strap of a leather handbag is looped over her left shoulder. He saw the handbag when she walked up to look at the birds, her arrival drawing his attention. He, having arrived first, was already standing and looking at the birds, the nearest bird no more than five feet away, birds neither fenced nor caged nor hobbled in any way. It was so casual, her walking up to look at the birds. A lot of people walk up to look at the birds. They are amazing birds. Nevertheless, since no one else is around, just the two of them, ideas of possibility bubble in his eager mind.
In addition to the handbag, there is a short-sleeved lavender blouse and a floral print skirt that comes to her knees. Huaraches are on her feet, and they, more than anything else, hint at possibility, or so he thinks. But why he thinks this he doesn't know; it's just a feeling. Of course there are her glasses, rectangular and fashionable, transparent plastic with a blue tint in the frames. The glasses, though, are more about wealth or aspiration or imitation. The glasses mean nothing. His view returns to the birds.
"At first, they didn't look real," she says. "They looked fake."
"That's what I thought, too."
"What do you think those two are doing?" she asks, pointing with her free hand, the hand without the paper cup.
"They're eating."
"Really?"
"Yes. It's an odd way to eat, that's for sure—upside-down. Their neck bending down and their head and beak upside-down, and their beak, and even their head, in the water, and their beak moving like that. It's called 'filter-feed.' Their beaks are designed to eat that way and their tongue helps out as well. Their tongue is large and rough and their beaks can sort mud and dirt out so that food remains. Algae and brine shrimp are what they eat in the wild."
"It looks like they're nibbling," she says.
"Yes. That's what it looks like, doesn't it?"
He thinks he might have seen her the night before in the casino, but he isn't sure about this. Along the edge of her left ear four silver studs wink, while on her one forearm cooper, or bronze, bangles tinkle pleasantly when she moves her arm, the arm that's connected to the hand that holds the paper cup. He thinks that the silver studs and the bangles are an attempt at youth. She isn't young. She is middle-aged, just as he is middle-aged, but with her it is early to mid-forties. He, on the other hand, is ten years beyond that, but he is rangy, and there's weather on his clean-shaven face, and he figures this makes him look younger.
"They are sociable birds," he says. "Very sociable. Tens of thousands of them to a colony sometimes. Can you imagine?"
"It must be spectacular."
"Indeed."
On her fingers there are no rings, the same as on his hands, no rings. It's 9:30 in the morning and it is October, World Series time. Gorgeous weather prevails in southern Nevada. Maybe she is a divorcee.
"Why don't they fly away?" she asks.
"I don't really know. They do need running room to take off. And . . ." He gestures at what surrounds them, which is a beautifully landscaped garden with meandering concrete walkways and wooden benches every so often along the walkways. "There's not enough of a runway here," he points out. "But I'm not really sure that's the reason they don't leave."
"Maybe they like it here," she says. "After all, if they leave here, what are they going to find? Desert. Of course there's Lake Mead, but that's an aberration."
He chuckles, a raspy sound. "Yeah, they're better off right here."
"Maybe their wings are clipped."
"That's a possibility," he concurs.
"Freedom," she says. "It's not what it's cracked up to be."
He turns to look at her, and this time she turns her head to look at him. Their eyes meet, and this creates a flickering moment. She smiles, teeth well cared for. He smiles back, but his smile is crooked, the left side of his face passive, the right bunched up. She looks at this. He's used to it, though, because everyone looks at this, looks at his crooked smile, the result of a pinched nerve from falling off a swing when he was four years old. Her lips are pinkish, tint similar to the birds, but in her case the color is shiny. He thinks this might be called lip gloss. The product was probably designed for this, designed for attraction. She continues to look at his face. His smile wanes. He hopes the cologne he splashed on his cheeks and neck after shaving is fulfilling its design.
"They have a life span of twenty to thirty years."
"That's not bad."
She lifts her cup and looks at him over the rim of the cup as she sips. This seems provocative. He wonders if anyone is watching them. She lowers the cup and looks back at the birds.
"How do you know so much about these birds?"
"I was here yesterday, on that bench over there." He gestures. "I looked them up on the internet, on my smartphone."
She smiles in a small way and says, "No wonder they're called 'smartphones.'"
Three children, elementary-school age, and two adults, a man and a woman, come down the concrete path from a pair of glass doors, children running ahead to come up to the edge of the shallow, slow moving water where the birds stand, three birds on one leg, two birds with their necks bent down and their heads upside-down in the water eating. The birds don't flinch. The children are pointing and telling each other all about the pink birds. The two adults, both in safari shorts, both with tanned legs, both nearly overweight, come up to stand in back of the children. The youngest child turns to consult the woman.
He eavesdrops and imagines that the woman next to him with the lip gloss and the huaraches is doing the same. It is family chitchat and it is all about the birds, questions and answers, but the adults don't have all the answers. He's tempted to fill in what they don't know, but he doesn't.
The woman next to him turns away from the birds to look at him, which was what he was waiting and hoping for. He gestures toward the bench that is across the walkway and a little bit up an incline. She nods and they walk over and sit down. The bench is wooden and it has a curved back. A tree with big floppy leaves shades the bench. With the sun's glare gone, his eyes relax and he imagines the woman's eyes relaxing as well. He brings a hand up and adjusts his glasses, bifocals, frames nondescript. His hair is brown and thinning, and it's combed straight back over his skull. His forehead is high.
"This is better," she says.
"Yes, it is."
They sip their coffee.
"The female lays one egg, and both the male and female feed the chick by secreting a type of milk that comes from the upper digestive tract. Pigeons do this, too. 'Crop milk' is what it's called. Some authorities think that it is the chirping of a hungry chick that stimulate the secretion of the milk."
"Really?"
"Both the male and female defend the nest, which is built on a mudflat. They simply kick the mud up to make a nest."
"It's encouraging that they share that responsibility, child rearing, something that remains a matter of contention among humans." She smiles. "Are they monogamous?"
"Mostly. But sometimes they do change mates." He pauses. "Regarding feeding the young, 'foster feeding' can occur as well."
"You mean someone steps in and feeds someone else's chick?"
"Yes."
"A highly evolved species," she says.
The family of five starts down the pathway in search of other attractions. The birds remain unchanged, two eating, three sleeping, the sleeping ones standing on a single stick-like leg.
"I was wondering about your name."
"No names." This falls between them like some sort of weight. She adds, "Names are as dangerous as unprotected sex."
His cup is stalled halfway to his mouth. She doesn't say anything more. 'Unprotected sex' is definitely a step in the right direction. This is what he thinks. His cup resumes movement. He sips his coffee. She does the same, sips coffee.
"It is during nest building that copulation takes place."
She seems to listen to this even after the statement is finished, as if its resonance requires attention. She says, "That makes everything quite clear, doesn't it? Plans for a family, purpose of copulation."
"Yes. These birds seem to plan ahead."
She chuckles, a fresh sound, which makes him think that she's not faking it. He chuckles too, but with him it’s more that she's chuckling, so he chuckles. Their chuckling fades at about the same time.
"Why are names dangerous?" he asks.
"A number of reasons. Foremost is the internet. You can look up someone's name and find out just about everything there is to know about them, which makes a person vulnerable."
"I see. Well, what about first names? Even Alcoholics Anonymous allows first names."
She looks at him. "Have you been to AA?"
"Yes, but I didn't join the program. I only sat in on some open meetings." His head is turned and he's looking at her. A soapy scent clings to her vicinity.
"Do you think you have a drinking problem?"
"Yes, I think I probably do," he answers.
"Las Vegas is a strange place to come for someone with a drinking problem."
"Oh, I don't know about that. I got a feeling that a lot of people come to this town with a drinking problem, and other problems as well. Actually, I think a lot of people come here to forget their problems, drinking and otherwise. At least temporarily to forget their problems."
Her expression, having gone through several changes—playful, questioning, humorous—is now serious.
"Does it really show?" she says.
"Does what really show?"
"Why I came here?"
He chuckles. "No, no. I was speaking generally. I don't know why you came here."
Her view returns to the birds.
"Why'd you come here?" she asks.
"To forget about Los Angeles."
"That's too general."
"Actually, I'm thinking of moving here," he says. "Not near the Strip of course. Out on the east side, at the edge of the desert. A used singlewide that's already spotted in a mobile home park is what I have in mind. They're cheap, particularly the fixer-uppers. I'm getting too old to work the way I'm working. If I move into a trailer that's in a modest mobile home park I figure I can downsize, save on expenses, and if I do that I won't have to work so much. I do handyman work and house painting. Some days I can hardly stand I'm so tired. Also, I can't handle the freeways in L.A. anymore."
"I thought we weren't going to talk about occupations."
"It slipped out."
She searches his face, and he lets her reconnoiter.
"Is this usually how it works?" she says.
"How what works?"
"Flirting. It's been a long time, and I'm not sure what the rules are anymore."
"I don't think there are any."
"What makes you say that?"
"I don't know. Just a hunch. I'm like you—coming in from a drought."
Perhaps it's the way he said it, succinctly, that causes her to pause.
"I'm not interested in nest building," she says. "I've been through that."
"No nest building."
She only looks at him.
"Nest building is not on the agenda," he assures her.
"What is on the agenda?"
"I don't know. But there is hope and desire and fantasy."
She looks at his long face afresh, and then turns her head to look at the birds.
"I saw you last night at the slot machines," she says. "I was hoping you'd go to a blackjack table, so I could sit at the table and maybe see how you are. But you didn't go to a blackjack table."
"Why didn't you come over and sit down at the slots?"
"All the machines at that bank were taken."
"Yeah," he says. "Those are pretty good machines. They're popular."
"But then I was at the coffee cart just now and I saw you through the windows. So I came out here."
"Well, that explains everything."
"Yes. But what next?"
"I don't know."
She sips her coffee.
"I got an idea," he says.
"Oh?"
"How about if we make up some names for ourselves. You make up a name and I make up a name, so we can call each other something."
"I hadn't thought of that."
"I hadn't, either, until just this moment."
"Is that how it works?"
"I think so."
