I don’t want to tell the ostrich that his head is funny. It’s so small compared to his butt. His butt has so many feathers, and I don’t think there are any feathers on his head. Even if there are some, they are very tiny and look more like hairs. The ones above his eyes are really long and sticking out. Some old men have eyebrows like that with hairs hovering dangerously over their eyes.
We all keep quiet because the ostrich is bending his legs to sit down. We all sit on the floor of Mom’s and Dad’s bedroom, and we listen intently, expecting a speech, but he keeps his beak shut. We wait.
Something new is going on in my head. My thoughts jump so much that it scares me how many things I can think about in a single second. I can see how a thing contains other things in all its nuances, and it’s so natural—of course we see things this way, we don’t know any other way to think, why is it weird to see it so clearly, hmm. I float far away to something dark that I’m sure I know very well but can’t recognize. I decide to land back into my body sitting on the floor with its legs crossed.
“I think you all feel it by now.” It’s the ostrich speaking. I thought an ostrich’s voice would be squeaky, but not his. It sounds a little bit like the voice I would imagine Zeus has, it’s so deep and manly, with the right intonation it could be the sexiest ostrich voice I’ve ever heard.
“Let’s talk about what is going on inside you.” The ostrich acts like a therapist. His neck is so long that when he speaks, his head moves up and down on the tip of that neck as though it were a snake. When we found the ostrich, he was standing on the corner of Main and Corner with a sign “Help the Ostrich Eat” tucked under his wing. He stood still, only moving his head up and down. We stopped in front of him to ponder the issue. He didn’t start talking to us right away, but when we told him we wouldn’t mind helping him, he nodded his head wisely and said his name was Charlie.
Simon is the first to respond to Charlie’s suggestion to say what is going on inside us.
“Things are like forks. You can pick them up, take something else with them, and bring that thing close to your face. Although, th— if you are trying to pick up another fork, it will be hard, and you can never know if you’ll be able to make it.” Simon’s eyebrows rise up on his forehead and almost soar above his head like a halo. Apparently a fork lifting a fork is bewildering for him, especially if the outcome is not certain. I am glad Neville put him in charge of The Richest Kitchen, he is the perfect guy for that. His face looks even more naive with his eyebrows so high up. People make that face when they are having an orgasm or when they are eating “the best cheesecake in my life.”
“And those forks don’t need to be grounded.” I don’t know how much time passed just now, but this is Rina speaking: “They could be floating around, especially if they are in outer space because of the vacuum.” Rina is in charge of The Space Travels Living Room. I know that recently she’s been going crazy trying to find nice but cheap outer space materials because we are pretty tight on budget. “We don’t know, though, what will happen if the forks are sucked away to an unknown part of the Universe,” Rina scratches her right nostril. “We might not be able to keep the forks suspended there because that area might have different physical laws, so we might be doing things wrong according to those standards.”
“We could also suspend other things in outer space,” I add. “Because anything can be compared to anything—even if you take a blade of grass and happiness, you can find something they have in common. Oh yeah, if I connect enough things, maybe I would see everything… no, not at the same time, but I wish I could see everything.” Behind the things I’m seeing, I know there is a dark blank, and it scares me.
I am in charge of the Nonexistent Cellar. I am still figuring out what to do about it. We gave a theme to each room in the house because we were tired of boring houses. It’s Neville’s house, but we all started hanging out here instead of in coffee houses which someone else created because they thought they knew where we wanted to hang out. Neville started THE SHIT. He inherited the house from his grandma, which meant he could change it however he wanted. He asked all kinds of people to come over, and they did, talking, laughing, dreaming, making love, occasionally going to the bathroom. Soon, the place became an informal, home-like coffee house at first run by Neville only. In the beginning, he called it THE HIT and wrote that on the front door. But a very witty someone added a big, fat S before HIT, so now it reads THE SHIT.
We weren’t all here from the very beginning. The first to join Neville was Karla because they spent a night in what is now The Music Bedroom and got together after that. Then came Simon and stayed because of the breath-taking snacks in The Richest Kitchen. I, Lilit, joined because it felt cozy. Rina was the last one to join the team (not counting the ostrich). I think she stayed because she is generally an air-head. Whenever we ask Neville why he decided to start THE SHIT, he shrugs and smiles knowingly, muttering something about being scared of ghosts when he is alone in a big house. He let us choose what to do with these rooms, he only asked me what I’d make of the room, I said a nonexistent cellar, and he said okay. I thought there was something fishy about that, but I’m not too worried now because it seems like Neville knew why we wanted to make weird rooms. He probably also felt the need to put his fears into something, something he created, in order to unleash those fears and ride them.
Charlie the ostrich has been silent for awhile. Then he remembers something and goes berserk with laughter. His head faces the ceiling, his beak wide open spitting out dark air in mouthfuls, and then he suddenly falls silent. His feathers flutter and sound like countless pieces of lace sliding across each other.
“It’s my smell, it makes you see your forks, your outer space, your everything,” Charlie says quietly. “It’s been doing that for a while.”
We don’t think of much to say.
“If you want me to stay here, I can stay,” Charlie adds.
I think about it. I could get used to seeing everything. It’s a little too much, but I need to know what the darkness behind it is.
Charlie stays in Mom’s and Dad’s Bedroom, it becomes his temple. People who usually come to chill out in THE SHIT now know about our ostrich and tell their friends. We put up flyers whose big letters shout “Let the Ostrich Help!” There is a photo of Charlie, and at the bottom it says: THE SHIT, 154 Corner Street, open all the time. We really are open all the time. We take turns, there are five of us, so it’s not a big deal. And about Charlie, I’m worried that he never goes out, and I don’t even know when he sleeps, but it’s his own business. People stop by all the time and wait in line in front of Mom’s and Dad’s Bedroom. Simon’s really happy because everyone buys things from The Richest Kitchen. He even got two new kinds of sandwiches and some new juices. The juices I don’t care about much, but one of the new sandwiches, the one with butter, salami, and strawberry jelly, is so good that I lick the jelly from my fingers every time I have it.
We decided that people should go in one by one to see Charlie. They stay in for only five minutes, it’s enough to make them see their things, and they walk out not blinking, with their jaw hanging. In one or two days, they come back. I spend some time with him every day. His scent makes me see things I don’t want to see, for example how overarching my loneliness is or how permanent doubt is. But, as Freud said, repressed thoughts threaten to pop up at any time, so I’d better face them.
Today, Charlie asks me about what I see. We don’t usually talk, so I just sigh. Maybe I could tell him about the doom.
“I don’t want to believe in the doom, but I think it’s quite possible. It’s not some profound doom, it’s just the fact that whatever you do, it will never be entirely satisfactory. That goes for anything: a piece of art, a dish, a conversation, a relationship, a moment as a whole. Whatever I do, I won’t be able to make it perfect. The problem is I don’t know why I want to make it perfect; I don’t even know what it would be if it were perfect. When I have your smell inside of me, I can look at anything and there will be a shadow behind it containing its perfect version. It just haunts me.”
Things are rarely unexpected to me, but this one was. He touched my hand with his wing. I almost pulled my hand back in surprise, but in the end I didn’t.
“I know I am an ostrich,” Charlie said slowly, “but I understand.”
I stroked the feathers protecting his slender wing.
February is the shittiest month of the year because it’s so cold that it bites my nose off. I just got off the subway and turned into Corner Street—a narrow, sunken street leading away from Main Street as quickly as possible. I get to 154 Corner Street, the address of our cozy coffee house and home. It’s almost 6pm, which means it’s my turn to manage THE SHIT until midnight.
Simon shouts over everyone’s voices to ask customer after customer, “What can I get you?” in The Richest Kitchen. They shout back, Simon gives them what they want and takes their money. Now he’s shouting to the next person. I go behind the counter, he hugs me and pats me on the back with his skinny palms, I reach from under his armpits and pat him back. It’s my shift now. I sell food and drinks like crazy for the next two hours and watch people stand in line to get some of our ostrich’s precious scent. When they walk out, the doom is written all over their faces. I don't know why they keep coming back to Charlie. The same goes for me, though.
Once (most) people are satisfied with their dinner, I check on the rest of the house. The Space Travels Living Room is fine, two girls have put on 3D glasses to look at these really pretty images of the horse head nebula. This nebula used to be one of my favorites, but Rina told me that people put in artificial colors in the photos, so the nebulae aren’t really that pretty at all. It’s quite disappointing, but I don’t tell the two girls with the 3D glasses.
The door of The Candle Bedroom is closed. I put my ear to the door, and I hear the bed screeching and a girl moaning. I got it, two people are drowning their loneliness, I’m not going in. When did this house turn into a cheap motel.
The door of The Music Bedroom is also closed. Once again, I put my ear to the door, but there’s no sound—people aren’t fucking violently in there. I knock on the door, no answer. I press the handle slowly, slowly, the door slides open, and I look inside. One guy is lying on the bed with headphones on his head, and another one, headphones on his head too, is prostrated on the ground like a canvas. We put a bunch of sound equipment in The Music Bedroom, so people can go crazy with music. These guys’ faces are twisted, though, something’s tormenting them. The doom’s getting to them too; I leave.
Neville comes over around 10, but there isn’t much to talk about. He asks about the profits, I recite a number, he nods. He knows my heart’s not into it anymore because I’m not a business person. I don’t blame him for being one, though, he had a good idea, it brings him money. I hope he misses the nights when it was only the five of us, no clients, no products to sell, dreamily making plans about our crazy house. We were going to show people rooms full of fantasies.
Rina takes over The Richest Kitchen at 11.45. I gladly drop whatever I was doing and go to Mom’s and Dad’s Bedroom. Charlie’s hairy eyelids droop slowly over his eyes. People have been going in and out of his temple since early morning, and now is the first time that he can pause and breathe on his own. I ask him why he stayed with us, and he utters a short, exhausted laugh, like an old man. It hurts me to see you so tired, I say. I don’t really think about it, but I hug him, and my arms hold on to him as hard as they can. His feathery wing brushes my cheek and lifts my chin up to his beak. We kiss very lightly.
His scent has gotten deep into me when I open my eyes: all my fears are lined up there next to each other. Like clouds of heavy smoke, they hover above the rest of my thoughts, hug them, and suck out any warmth they may find. Repression isn’t keeping them back now, it never kept them back very well, only so much that they wouldn’t stop me from getting up in the morning. My heart sinks with the weight of those clouds of fear. It turns out I’m always afraid, but I just don’t face it. Fuck it, I think, this time I’ll face it.
I know Charlie is worried about me, but I prefer to look out the window. Only ten feet away from us are the neighbors’ windows, and I can see directly in their homes. I zoom in on a guy on the fourth floor, but I still notice the darkness that fills everything around him until he looks like a distant, 2D image about whose jerky movements I really don’t need to care. He is cooking, and steam is rising from the stove above his head. I bet that if I stuck my head out the window, I could smell what he is making. Maybe he is frying some carrots, but I’d prefer it if there was some meat with those carrots. He is following a recipe because he’s not an excellent chef, but this time he wants to make a fantastic dinner. But carrots with meat doesn’t sound too amazing, so I hope he’s cooking something else. I’m pretty sure, though, that in the end it won’t be what he tried to make. On his right, I’m not sure if it’s the same apartment, a woman is reading beside the window with a reading light next to her head. If it was summer, she would be reading out on the balcony. Poor lady, the mosquitoes would eat her alive unless she used some repellent. On top of that, she doesn’t know about the dark air hovering around her little apartment. In summer, the balcony would have flowers all over. She would probably do nothing all day but water those flowers: some people have cats, others have flowers. Two of the flowers—one on each side of the balcony—would have long stems hanging down, almost reaching the balcony underneath. There a kid is playing with an orange truck, a toy, obviously, banging it against the door to the balcony. He turns his head sharply to the inside of the apartment. Someone probably called out to him. And they should, it’s bedtime. Oh, he turns to his orange truck again, apparently not bedtime for him; what are those parents thinking. A kid needs to sleep a lot to be healthy, needs to eat nice things, and to play with his toys. But he also needs other things to be a nice kid, and we don’t know what they are. If we did, it would be way too easy to raise a good kid. Please, kid, grow up to be a happy old kid. Two windows to the left, a purple light is shining in the room. Wow, it looks cool, it looks as though it’s on a TV screen miles and miles away, I can’t reach—
“Lilit,” Charlie draws me to him cautiously, “Lilit, where are you?”
“It’s okay, Charlie,” I say, drifting off afloat my fears.
“I can leave, Lilit, if I leave, you won’t have to see your fears.”
“Shut up, Charlie.” I breathe in. One thing I fear is being honest. “I don’t want you to leave.” I’m being honest. “Because I don’t want to be alone, that is.” I am also afraid of being alone. “I mean, I can be alone, it’s okay, but it’s better when you are around.” His beak clicks on my forehead. That’s an ostrich kiss.
“This doesn’t help me make things perfect, though,” I go ahead with the loudest fear, the doom arching over our heads like cigarette smoke piling up below the ceiling of a suffocating nightclub. “I need to make at least one perfect thing.”
Charlie rarely sleeps, but I guess I made him sleep last night. I must have fallen asleep tucked under his wings, between his feathers, and when I wake up in the morning, I see his tiny head relaxed against the window pane. I like to sleep lying down, but maybe it’s different for an ostrich. I crawl out of his hug carefully and put a blanket on top of him. I don’t know if ostriches get cold easily, but I’d rather not risk it. Walking out of Mom’s and Dad’s Bedroom, I see two guys and a girl eating breakfast and sipping coffee. They sit on the ground around a low wooden table, but when they see me coming out, they jump up, lusting Charlie’s smell.
“He’s asleep, you junkies” I say.
Neville pulls me aside to the back of The Richest Kitchen. “What is wrong with you? They are customers, be a little nice.”
“He’s asleep for once,” I murmur looking at him underneath my eyebrows. “I gotta go buy some stuff.”
I buy some white paint. A lot of white paint, actually, and light bulbs. I come back to THE SHIT where people are waiting in a line in front of the front door. They push those in the front up the stairs, against the walls and the door—it’s closed, it’s full inside, but they are still pushing. The Richest Kitchen, The Space Travels Living Room, The Music Bedroom, The Candle Bedroom, probably even Mom’s and Dad’s Bedroom too, none can hold any more people, but twenty more are waiting outside to get squished in like canned fish. I push them left and right to get in and walk straight to The Nonexistent Cellar—I don’t want to hear Neville whine again about how I’m not good with the customers.
There is a bunch of trash in the Nonexistent Cellar. We call it nonexistent, but it is perfectly existent, the idea is that I’ll do something so cool with it that it will seem nonexistent. When I open the door, it creaks just like a serious old door should and reveals wet, rotting boxes stacked in rows and columns. There are torn blankets thrown on the floor, and also half a bike rests against three boxes. I step in and feel dirt sticking to my shoes. It will be a lot of work. I feel weak just like every time I begin making something. I really don’t want to touch anything in this disgusting cellar, but I do.
For hours I throw things out: I pick them up, I carry them to the street, I drop them in the dumpster. My back and my arms ache with the weight that they carry, I am sweating like a dog, but I’ve never felt this strong. For several hours I don’t think about the doom, but that’s only because Charlie’s scent is not around. If I let Charlie leave, I could stay with my fears subsided; we could all live like we lived before. I don’t understand why people keep coming to Charlie, when his scent torments them. It’s the same for me, though, every time I get close to the doom, my mind screams that it wants to get away because it’s painful, painful and impossible to make something perfect if it exists around us or in us. Which means that only The Nonexistent Cellar can be perfect.
“Charlie,” I whisper to wake him up, “Charlie, come with me.”
“Where?” his eyes search for a clue, still dizzy.
I take him by the wing and we walk into the hallway where people are eating, drinking, talking. They all stop doing whatever they are doing: no one’s seen Charlie come out of Mom’s and Dad’s Bedroom. I wave my hand for people to follow us.
We walk down the stairs, and people follow in a long, snaking line. We progress slowly because the stairs are simply wide, wooden blocks nailed to the wall. It’s hard to distinguish where one ends and the next starts in this dim light, and I don’t want Charlie to break his bony leg. In an hour or two, approximately, we get to the door of The Nonexistent Cellar. People give it weird looks because I painted it white, and cellar doors are usually anything but white. Whatever, I think, and open the door.
Charlie and I walk in and lie on our backs, my head on his fluffy chest. I painted everything white—the floor, the walls, the ceiling—and put up all the light bulbs I had. Others’ bodies squish against mine, and we lie there like canned fish, but we can’t see each other: there is so much light that we only see white everywhere. We fall silent as Charlie’s smell generously envelops us all.
Nothing changes, there is nothing to perceive, so no shadows annoy us with hints that the thing could be more perfect. We don’t have memories or thoughts about the future now. The doom’s clouds of smoke can’t come in because the light disperses them even before they have formed; simple, white light can’t be made more perfect. Charlie’s feathers are on my cheek; his scent is deep into me.
