I was feeling almost smug, standing across the street from Keller’s, knowing all the papers I needed were waiting for me at home. I hardly noticed the time passing, until the ambient sound on Little West Twelfth Street changed. I heard a bird singing. The sky was still dark, but no longer inky. It was more of a blue gray now. I looked west, out at the river, but that wasn’t going to help. The sun hadn’t risen in the west as far as I could remember. I must have been more tired than I realized, or now that I was safely out of the building, the adrenaline no longer pumping triple time, I was due for a crash. Two birds now. A pair. I looked toward the old chicken market to see if they were in the tree I’d climbed, but these were city birds. They didn’t need a tree. They might have been on the sidewalk bridge, or on a tiny lip over a doorway. They might have been on a windowsill, the very one I’d slipped through so gracefully, surprising the hell out of Chi Chi’s dog. I heard a truck, the meat market coming to life.
