— I don't tempt fate, he says.
— Some of the residents are angry about a seance happening here.
— Judge not lest you be judged, Birdman says.
— Really? I ask.
— Did you get my postcards? I sent four.
It was Birdman, I realize with shock. Birdman.
— I got three, one today, I say.
— Just today? I mailed you four.
— Just you?
— Me and my shadow.
No wonder his scratchy signature was familiar, residents sign in and out on a register and see each other's first names daily, so I ponder Birdman, with brand new eyes, that's what my mother would say, brand new eyes, consider his mailing me cryptic, thoughtful notes as he traveled far away from here, venturing in distant lands. The night we sat on a couch in the library, he told me he grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, radiated charm and helplessness, which allied with his determination and grit, and I liked him, then didn't and did. His father was taciturn, kept secret his beliefs, since in his thirties Birdman's father joined a white supremacist group, which offered his father's flaccid white rage terrifying, subversive expression. Birdman was furious with his father, his mother, who was silent, then an impervious world that anyway engulfed their alienated patch. He wandered back in time, his eyes rolled to the left, reliving the war with his father, when any pity for the man turned into a violent hatred, as they watched, in the 1960s, the riots on television, Watts and Newark, because his father laughed and laughed, so Birdman stiffened into rebellion, did every drug he could get his hands on, fled at sixteen, traveled to Los Angeles, New York, then Austin, was a short-order cook, wrote plays, though he'd not seen one until he was twenty, and gave that up, also, when he rescued and cared for his first bird. Every gentle bone in him responded to that bitty mess of feathers, he said, he didn't know himself, he was one with a baby sparrow, with its wounded wing, a tiny being who couldn't fly, who needed him, but he needed the bird more, it was a white-throated sparrow, he soon learned, and, almost as a lark, he started a tourist company, with a partner, so he could travel and support himself and his avian causes, Birdman reveres even the relatively common raven, in some parts, he's told me, it's considered the prophet of birds, and, curiously, at least to me, he and the young married man, an ornithologist, have nothing to do with each other. Birdman no longer hates his father, who has Alzheimer's disease and doesn't know his son. He urged me, his sallow skin pinkening, to give up anything and everything, to leave it all behind, to follow my instincts, but I told him I wasn't sure what they were. That night, he and I were stationary on the couch, intimate and sedentary, so long, we might have triggered a relationship of some kind, slow or fast, but it's not wise or healthy to be involved in this community, it's discouraged by the staff, and I've been in love, its terrain isn't novel or untrodden. More, I hoped to sunder myself from, not adhere to, objects and people, to break things down into elements even senselessly, since I might discern something about an object's integrity or necessity in the process or by its result, and now I might rather die for an idea, since there's a liberty that chooses death.
Birdman and I keep company at the bottom of the stairs, when a prolonged silence settles into a profound ambiguousness, so I stare at the floor, embarrassed the way an English person might be, recalling each of his three postcards and my not having a clue it was he who wrote them, I hadn't once thought of him, and the mounting minutes cement our impossibility, so I swear off any further intimacy. With this, the spell breaks, some potential is buried, I can feel it diminish in breadth, collapse, and the loss of its potential and energy debilitates me. "I'd better go upstairs," I tell Birdman, "since they're probably waiting for me." He nods, exhausted from the rapid rise and fall of intensity, and also because he suffers from severe anemia, in which the hemoglobin count in the red blood cells is very low, often dangerously so, hemoglobin is composed mostly of iron, which accounts for his sallow complexion. He and I would have been a mistake, this relationship another blot, most start as mistakes, with promise, they might have possibility, but they begin as accidents, any relationship in the universe is, some can't be avoided, some are embellished, raided for treasure by a lover's piratical need, drained and dropped, or taken up for life, people balance good and bad on a human scale usually weighted against the other, since they demand love, wanting more, rarely getting enough, wanting everything, and they can't stop themselves. I've teetered on the verge and gone over, when an imperious love, overwhelming and magnificent, raised me from despair to a blind ecstasy. But an intimacy's death in infancy, like mine with Birdman, is irrevocable in my experience, which is, in a way, all I have, or nothing much at all.
The Rotunda Room is lit with an assortment of strategically placed and motley, unimportant small lamps, as well as tall, white, tapered candles in brass candleholders, but the large room and its objects are mostly dark or in shadow, especially since the green damask curtains are drawn nearly to the bottom of the windows. On the stage, there are two artisanal metal candelabras from Mexico and in front of the stage, a large, round walnut table that could be Mission furniture or a good copy. The sitters: the Magician, the Count, Contesa, Arthur and Henry, the Turkish poet, Spike, the young married man, the disconsolate young woman, our Felice, anorectic and psoriatic, the tall balding man, our KaAca, whose posture saddens me, and Moira, the odd inquisitive woman. The presence of the young married man and our Felice is a small surprise, which I appreciate. Without pomp, the Magician motions to a chair, one of the Green Lady's, and, first moving its pillow into a better position, I sit down between the tall balding man and Spike, and everyone says hello in a manner unique to each, I remember the Turkish poet's gold ringed hand touching his heart and Contesa's fateful double wink. Then we, eleven of us, await instruction.
The Magician explains that we are supposed to center and open ourselves to what is out there, way out there, and also in us.
— Death is the master of transformation, he says in his mellow, nasal voice. Some believe there is no death, and the spirit or soul continues after death. We learn from physics that matter doesn't die. You could say we survive death, because human beings are matter. In the 17th century, the scientist Emanuel Swedenborg believed that when a person dies, they're welcomed by angels. In the hereafter, they live the style they did on earth.
— The same lifestyle? Is this patter? Spike asks.
— Please don't interrupt him, Contesa urges, gently.
— I get your skepticism, the Magician says, but what I'm trying to do with you here-actually I'm not sure what it is. I'm not above entertainment, that's true. But, for what it's worth, I recently lost my mother.
— I recently lost my best friend, the young married man says.
— I lost my older sister, Contesa says.
— I lost my wife, the Count says.
Is the Count's wife dead, I wonder again, lost, literally lost, or is it figurative, she's lost to him?
— My dog died two weeks before I got here, the disconsolate woman says.
— I don't know anyone, no one I love, anyway, who's dead, says Spike, her unmarked face an embarrassment of riches.
— I can see that, Moira adds gravely, lowering her eyes.
The Turkish poet exhales operatically, straightens up in his chair, and begs the Magician to get on with it.
— Please. I am inspired by you, my blessed, extravagant companions.
The Turkish poet's hands are outstretched, palms peacefully up.
— And by whatever spirits come, even if they don't. I've lost… I am not so brave anymore to admit, maybe like you.