THE HOUSE PRESENTS
Someone to Tell About the Birds
An Apartment 415 Story
An imagined evening
The house had been trying to make itself useful.
It held the lamp at a good angle. It kept the refrigerator cold. It offered the table, which had several things on it but could, with modest negotiation, offer a little more.
When the man came home, the house was ready to hear about the work.
He put down his bag.
“I forgot breakfast.”
The house reconsidered its opening remarks.
“Let’s start there.”
—
There was banana bread in this version of the evening.
The other chair insisted upon it.
“We have been through this,” it said. “You cannot feed someone a description of toast.”
The bread sat on a plate with a little butter beside it. A knife rested across the edge. Nobody had arranged it for a photograph.
The man took a bite while standing up, then remembered the chair.
The chair accepted this without making a thing of it.
Outside, a vehicle made the long, expensive sound of being a vehicle.
Inside, a love song began.
—
He told the house about the morning.
The wet grass. His socks. The dashboard, where several small warnings had apparently agreed to hold a meeting.
The mountains had been hidden.
There had been birds on the wires above the interstate.
“I said hello to them.”
“Of course,” said the house.
He broke another piece from the bread.
For a while, he watched the crumbs gather near his thumb.
He remembered something else about the birds.
“I’m supposed to figure out why some of them have red eyes.”
The house made room for the question.
“We should keep that one,” it said. “Someone might enjoy looking it up with you.”
—
There had also been work.
He had returned to something he once promised himself he would keep tending. He had found the loose parts, made repairs, tested what happened when someone actually tried to use it.
Then he had put it out into the world.
Later, someone had written back.
The house was pleased.
The other chair leaned forward.
“Did they understand what it does?”
“We’ll see.”
This was a perfectly respectable answer. The chair settled back.
For tonight, there was an email where there had not been an email before. He had answered it. Somewhere else, the conversation could continue.
—
The house had a suggestion.
It was always a little dangerous when the house had a suggestion.
“We could make a list of everything that went well.”
The man looked at it.
“A short list,” the house added.
He turned his plate a little on the table.
“I know things went well.”
The house waited.
“I just want someone to tell about the birds.”
The refrigerator stopped.
In the space it left, the song became easier to hear.
—
The other chair had imagined this moment before.
It had prepared several excellent speeches about companionship. There was one involving harbors, and another involving two cups, and an ambitious passage in which the moon was somehow also a front porch.
It discarded all of them.
It was, after all, a chair.
It could offer a place to sit. It could not choose who would arrive.
Across the table, the man finished his bread.
“I’m grateful,” he said. “There are people whose voices have been part of my days for a long time.”
He told the house about a familiar voice on a screen. The way a person could lose the thread of a sentence, laugh at something in her own room, and find it again. Over time, he had come to know those small turns.
Tonight, he was glad she was there.
The house listened.
Nothing needed subtracting from that.
—
Later, he went onto the balcony.
The door opened reluctantly, then gave him the outside.
He held up his phone.
For fifty seconds, he let the place speak at its own pace.
The house stayed behind the glass.
It could see his outline, the little change in his posture as he listened. Beyond him were other buildings, other windows, places where people were arriving late or washing something or deciding what to eat.
Then he came back in.
“I got a recording.”
The house looked delighted.
“You went out for one small sound.”
“I went onto the balcony.”
“Yes,” said the house. “You did.”
—
They made something with it.
A story. A place to listen.
He adjusted a sentence. The house held the lamp. The other chair supervised the remaining banana bread, a responsibility it took with unusual seriousness.
The work moved at a pace that left room for the song.
Sometimes he stopped.
Sometimes he read a paragraph twice.
Once, he smiled before he knew he was smiling.
When it was finished, they left a small invitation beside it:
Step onto the balcony.
Someone, somewhere, could choose to press play.
—
The other chair remained empty that evening.
He still wanted it occupied.
He also liked the song. He was glad about the message. He was pleased with what they had made.
All of this fit inside the apartment.
Before bed, he carried his plate to the sink. On the way back, he rested a hand on the other chair and moved it a little closer to the table.
It made an ordinary wooden sound against the floor.
Outside, the night took another breath.
He thought of the birds above the interstate, their feet wrapped around the wire while everyone hurried underneath.
Tomorrow, if they were there, he would say hello again.
He hoped that someday he would come home and begin—
“You should have seen them.”
—and someone, still taking off their coat, would say—
“Tell me.”