Arnie
By Dafna Hagans-Slezak
It was an unusually dark Sunday, even accounting for the return to standard time. Mer’s hazel eyes met those of the unbothered crow on the fence post. She was waiting impatiently for her coffee to finish brewing so she could return to the intricate nest of blankets she’d built in the den. Mer wasn’t sure what the crow was waiting for.
He seemed to live in that same spot now. He was there for coffee and toast at 7, and for tea at 2; he watched her chop carrots and saute mushrooms in the evenings.She’d started calling him Arnie in her head a few weeks before. It was a cute, respectable, almost hip name. She imagined him, when away from human spectacle, wearing clear-rimmed eyeglasses and drinking his espresso from a glass demitasse cup. Seattle was a city of crows; Mer’s neighborhood alone housed an impressive number. Arnie participated in typical crow activities, but always returned to the post of the neighbor’s fence to observe. She couldn’t prove this was the same crow every day, but as this wasn’t a thing anyone asked her to prove, she didn’t care. Arnie was a nosy, occasionally noisy, always watchful neighbor.
Small red leaves from the slack branches of a sweet gum tree blew furiously across the fence. Arnie, unmoved by this seasonal violence, maintained his gaze into Mer’s kitchen. Mer, distracted by the intensity, pulled out the carafe of coffee from underneath the brewer a second too early. “Ay!” she exclaimed, as the hot liquid splashed off the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. She instinctively pulled her hand up to her mouth, slurping off the coffee and sucking on her skin to soothe it. In the process, the coffee scalded her tongue. Moaning and grimacing, Mer closed her eyes tightly
When she opened them, Arnie had moved to a post even closer to the kitchen window.
On her walk back to the den, Mer glanced him again from the corner of her eye. Arnie! He’d previously stationed himself on the neighbor’s fence post, then on her own yard’s post, near the window in her south-facing kitchen. Those movements alone had seemed odd enough. Now he was outside her north-facing living room picture window. Arnie was following her through her house.
“Maybe I should just open the door and invite him in,” she thought.
Mer struggled for comfort in her den. She tried relaxing her shoulders and dug her backside into the sofa cushion. Sighing, she pulled her fleece blankets closer.
“Caw.”
Arnie’s droll utterance unsettled Mer. She turned back to the window. He cawed again, this time in a softer, more measured tone.
The rain stopped; the light shifted from yellow to silvery green.
Mer peered at her observer curiously through the glass, as if it were a two-way mirror, and said,“Hey, Arnie,” expecting nothing in return.
Right on beat, Arnie blinked, replying, “Hey, Mer.” He turned his head, gently shook out his feathers, then flew up into the obscured sun, feeling victoriously perceived.
