"Fuck you," the newspaper seller said. "Want to buy a paper?" He said it with a grin.

Serenity dug into the bottom of her purse to find the correct change. Her hand strayed to her wallet, and she pulled out a wad of twenties. "Buy that bird a cage," she yelled. "Shave off that beard."

The bird squawked. It spoke with the man in unison. "Who the hell are you?"

* * *

The young woman sped when the light changed to green, her skinny arm out the window, her middle finger stuck in the air. Franklin was sure he didn't know her, had never spoken to her, but every morning for the past month she'd glared at him on the way to wherever she worked, shook her head like it was an affront more than a sale's ploy when he started holding a newspaper in front of her windshield, forming the sections into the shape of a fan. He decided he must remind her of someone she knew who had failed.

There were worse things to do with one's life than sell newspapers and drink beer.
He'd made it impossible for his intelligence to show. Faded, ripped jeans, soiled at the seat with ground in dirt, straw colored hair washed, but never combed so it merged with the beard that disappeared inside his shirt collar. It wasn't a conscious decision. It was an evolution.

Kathy's death was all it took, a fatal car accident, six days before the wedding, a tragic cliché. He'd walked off the newspaper, writing his way to a Pulitzer Prize nomination for a political expose on a national candidate he favored. He used Kathy's death as an excuse, no one left to care about his tough shit, but there was no good reason to write. He sublet his condo, destroyed all the research, and started using his middle name as an alias.

And then there was Whitey and his damn bird, living in the woods behind the overpass, and that became his existence for a year, selling newspapers, something to do, and camping out, no one expecting him to write or say a word, and Whitey always talking to his parrot, so Franklin learned all the phrases. They were drummed into his head, same as the bird.

It was all good, and now Whitey was dead, a hit and run vehicular homicide. It ran in every newspaper, a captioned photograph picked up by the Associated Press, how he was the vendor who took over the homeless man's parrot, nothing about Whitey except his unknown identity.

The police found a handwritten will on his body, a half dozen names crossed out with an X. He left Franklin the bird so he'd never be lonely, a sleeping bag, and his collection of paperback books. Franklin kept a copy in his pocket, folded like a treasure map, with his own name crossed out.

Didn't the bitch read the newspaper? Franklin counted out the twenties, surprised there were six. Next time he saw the sullen blonde, he'd give them back.

* * *

The next day was Saturday, and Serenity was on her way to the shopping mall to buy a hated formal dress, when she made a U-turn and traced her way toward work, her latest job as a greeter at the art gallery near the north end of the beach, a first step after college toward representation and her own exhibit. If the newspaper guy even sold papers on Saturdays, it was already ten o'clock, but she was curious. If he'd shaved off the beard, she could see his face, and if he was David from high school.

The voice made it seem possible, deep with a burr in it, like the actor, Sam Elliott, but that could be from whatever hard liquor he drank. She supposed the bird's wings were clipped, or what would make it stay with all that road grit and unnatural noise?

A cage by the side of the road wasn't sufficient. A bird like that needed a home. She'd offer to take it, and tell the man who could be David to consider the $120.00 a down payment. She wondered if he'd already spent it on something illicit.

What did a man like that do when he wasn't selling newspapers, or reading them? She often saw him reading, the newspaper and paperback classics, sitting in the median on his overturned shopping cart, weighted with a concrete block attached by a chain. He'd worn a hole through the toe in his boot, sticking out his long legs for ballast.

She turned onto Commercial Boulevard, but there was no one on his corner, only the overturned cart, with its rusty metal bars. She laughed at herself, embarrassed by her disappointment, and proceeded to drive to the Starbucks two blocks further east, intent on the drive through and a savory morning coffee.

She saw the newspaper man standing in the parking lot, and a family gathered around him, parents and two little kids, about three years old and seven. The parents held their kids by the shoulders so they wouldn't get too close to the bird or the man, but the littlest one stroked the parrot's wing, listening to it squawk, and the bird tilted its head and walked on the shoulder of the man and back and forth across his outstretched arm.

Serenity parked her car, her heart pumping hard, enough to scare her because she'd been born with a hole in her heart and her parents had chosen not to close it. She controlled the hyperventilation and got out, walked past the man with the bird and the happy family, and pushed open the door to the coffee shop, afraid to look back, until she realized, even if he saw her and recognized her, he couldn't come inside with the bird. Fidgeting, she waited for her turn, and ordered two.

Holding the coffees with both hands, her purse slung over her shoulder, she saw him leaning his dirty butt against her yellow Subaru. By the time she turned around and went backwards through the door, he was gone, and all six of her twenties were tucked beneath her driver's side windshield wiper.

* * *

Determined, Serenity put the coffees on the floor of the front passenger side, and looked around. He couldn't have gone far, unless he'd gotten into somebody's car, and who would let a man like that into their car with his dirty clothes and unkempt hair and beard?

She supposed returning the money was his way to tell her to back off, but he knew who she was. It gave her a flutter in her abdomen to think of it, a dangerous thrill and the image of a jungle rut in the soft moss by a riverbank, just after a naked swim in a swift moving river, so the hairy man was wild, but clean, and the overt attraction was undeniable.

Why did she suspect, under all that hair, he wasn't the ugliest man alive, and that his body wasn't pocked and battle scarred, bullet and knife riddled, overly tattooed and strawberry birth marked? But what, if every word he appeared to read was a labor? He could be mentally challenged, his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck before he was born and no one knew he needed to be rescued.

Serenity heard a squawk and then a loud shush, the man blowing on his finger. Over and over the bird said, shut your mouth, and the man echoed the admonishing phrase. She locked her car, and went on foot to find him.

* * *

Franklin wanted to run fast. The young woman was slight, pale, early twenties at the most, and he was thirty-two. For a moment he'd lingered by her car, thinking he would show her the parrot, just like the family, no need to speak, just let her look at the bird. But she was on her way to somewhere, bringing coffee to somebody. His desires were absurd, to sit under a tree and hold her hand, to hear the melody in a female voice.

And now she was running after him, her narrow hips climbing over the concrete wall behind the Starbucks, and he knew she must be crazy. It was a dirty lot, cracked asphalt strewn with broken glass, and she wore sandals with her jeans. He gripped her tiny waist and lifted her down.

"Lose something?" he said. "Your marbles?"

She stared at him. Fluffy hair haloed her flushed face. She forced breath through pursed lips, and sounded a half-hearted whistle.

"Pretty bird," the attentive macaw said, its neck at an angle.

"It's not fair to confuse him," Franklin said.

"Are you David?" Her chest quivered. "David, three years ahead of me in high school.
He made sculptures out of paper, birds and animals, but it wasn't origami. The art teacher said they were junk. He threw them in the trash, but I put them in my book-bag." She shook her head, apologetic. "I should have told him."

She opened her purse. She showed Franklin a clear plastic case with a statue inside, a miniature figure of a lorikeet, delicately colored, shaped out of paper pulp, the bird's quizzical expression caught at an angle.

The curious cant of the bird's head reminded Franklin of Whitey. "You always carry it around?"

She nestled the sculpture in its spot. She closed her purse, and flashed Franklin an expectant smile. "I carry it for inspiration. I had the same art teacher. I should have told David. No one else can make these."

Franklin started to speak, but she touched his mouth with a sensitive hand. "Don't be David."

It all made sense to him. He gave his name. He said he was a journalist and she didn't even blink, just stroked his beard, like she could yank out hanks of it and find the man beneath. That's when the parrot pecked her golden head, found its flight feathers to be sufficient in length, took off, and flew into the greenery.

~ Finish ~

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