Bird box

“Keep your eyes closed!” Tom yells. “We’re letting you in.”

Tom’s hand is on the doorknob.

“Jules, Felix,” Tom says, “use the broomsticks. Cheryl, Malorie, you’ll need to get up close to him, feel him. Okay? Now, everybody, close your eyes.”

In the darkness, Malorie hears the door open.

There is silence. Then Gary speaks.

“Is the door open?” he says eagerly.

“Hurry,” Tom says.

Malorie hears shuffling. The front door closes. She steps forward.

“Keep your eyes closed, Gary,” she says.

She reaches for him, finds him, and brings her fingers to his face. She feels his nose, his cheeks, the sockets of his eyes. She touches his shoulders and asks for one of his hands.

“This is new to me,” he says. “What are you searching—”

“Shhh!”

She feels his hands and counts his fingers. She feels the fingernails and the light hair on the knuckles.

“Okay,” Felix says. “I think he’s alone.”

“Yes,” Jules says. “He’s alone.”

Malorie opens her eyes.

She sees a man, much older than herself, with a brown beard and a tweed blazer over a black sweater. He smells like he’s been outside for weeks.

“Thank you,” he says, breathless.

At first, nobody responds. They only watch him.

His brown hair, combed over to the side, is unruly. He is both older and heavier-set than any of the housemates. In his hand is a brown briefcase.

“What’s in there?” Don asks.

Gary looks to the case as though he’d forgotten he carried it.

“My things,” he says. “What things I grabbed on my way out.”

“What things?” Don asks.

Gary, looking both surprised and sympathetic, opens the case. He turns it toward the housemates. Papers. A toothbrush. A shirt. A watch.

Don nods.

As Gary closes the case he notices Malorie’s belly. “Oh my,” he says. “You’re close, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she says coolly, not knowing yet if they can trust this man.

“What are the birds for?” he asks.

“Warning,” Tom says.

“Of course,” Gary says. “Canaries in the mines. That’s very clever of you. I heard them as I approached.”

Then Tom invites Gary farther into the house. The dogs smell him. In the living room, Tom points to the easy chair.

“You can sleep there tonight,” he says. “It reclines. Do you need something to eat?”

“Yes,” Gary says, relieved.

Tom leads him through the kitchen and into the dining room.

“We keep the canned goods in the cellar. I’ll get you something.”

Tom quietly motions for Malorie to follow him into the kitchen. She does.

“I’m going to stay awake with him for a while,” Tom says. “Get some sleep if you want to. Everybody’s exhausted. It’s okay. I’ll get him some food, some water, and we’ll talk to him tomorrow. All of us.”

“There’s no way I’m going to bed right now,” Malorie says.

Tom smiles, tired.

“Okay.”

He heads for the cellar. Malorie joins the others in the dining room. When Tom returns, he brings canned peaches.

“I never would have thought,” Gary says, “that one day the world’s most valuable tool would be a can opener.”

Everybody is at the dining room table together. Tom asks Gary questions. How did he survive out there? Where did he sleep? It’s clear that Gary is exhausted. Eventually, one by one, and beginning with Don, the housemates go to their bedrooms. As Tom walks Gary back into the living room, Malorie and Olympia rise from the table. On the stairs, Olympia puts her hand over Malorie’s.

“Malorie,” she says, “do you mind if I sleep with you tonight?”

Malorie turns to her.

“No,” she says. “I don’t mind at all.”

twenty-eight

It is the next morning. Malorie gets up and gets dressed. It sounds like everyone is downstairs.

“Did you have electricity as well?” Felix is asking as Malorie enters the living room.

Gary is sitting on the couch. Seeing Malorie, he smiles.

“This,” Gary says, fanning a hand toward her, “is the angel who felt my features when I entered. I have to admit, the human contact nearly made me cry.”

Malorie thinks Gary talks a little like an actor. Theatrical flourishes.

“And so did a vote really decide my fate?” Gary asks.

“Yes,” Tom says.

Gary nods.

“In the house I came from, no such courtesies were extended. If someone had an idea, they went with it, rather vigorously, whether or not everybody approved. It’s refreshing to meet people who have retained some of the civility of our former lives.”

“I voted against it,” Don says abruptly.

“Did you?” Gary asks.

“Yes. I did. Seven people under one roof is enough.”

“I understand.”

One of the huskies gets up and goes to Gary. Gary rubs the fur behind its ears.

Tom begins explaining to him the same things he once explained to Malorie. Hydroelectricity. The supplies in the cellar. The lack of a phone book. How George died. After a while, Gary begins talking about a former housemate of his. A “troubled man” who didn’t believe the creatures were harmful at all.

“He believed that the people’s reaction to them was psychosomatic. In other words, all this insanity fuss isn’t caused by the creatures at all, but rather by the dramatic people who see them.”

Insanity fuss, Malorie thinks. Do these two dismissive words belong to Gary’s former housemate?