Ron says to Harry, “This guy inherits an island from some benign son-of-a-bitch.”
 
Harry presses his palms on the cement, adjusting his butt against a piece of insulation, his daybed. He watches forms passing in the street, the dusky light slanting. “Must be six by now.”
 
Ron hikes his sleeve. He wears the watch just under his elbow. “5:22.” He checks the temperature, 41 degrees, quartz accuracy.
 
Harry says, “I need a bottle.”
 
“The island has fruit trees, lots of them. Good fishing, a fresh-water spring. And birds, birds of all colors like oil paints. Heh, maybe they drip when they fly. The man should have been a bird,” Ron adds.
 
“Gonna freeze tonight.” Harry studies the pre-rush hour traffic.
 
Ron gropes in his parka. “I had a cigarette.” He finds it, most of the tobacco slipped from the paper, no matches.
 
“I’ll get Fred; he owes me.” Harry’s face is gray; the stubble on his neck is white. He looks as though he’s been submerged for a while. “Fred’ll be around.”
 
Ron pinches the end of the cigarette to preserve the remaining tobacco. He runs his tongue along his teeth. It pleases him that his teeth are still well rooted in his mouth. Even the caps are holding up. Most of his colleagues have lost their teeth by now. They say that the dentine breaks down in about six years on a wine diet. Not true for him. 
 
“So, there’s a condition. The guy can’t take anybody with him. And once he’s there, he stays. No visits home, no nothing.”
 
Harry gets to his knees, palms the wall for support, fiberglass and fluff stuck to his coat. He waits for dizziness to pass. “Go to the lot. We can’t have no fire here.”
 
Ron considers this and says, “So what do you think the guy does? He gives up his life, as he knows it. Kids, wife, spa, a sweet little Mercedes. He tosses everything and inherits an island where he has to live alone. Now, why would he do that?”
 
Harry starts down the alley, swaying, “You stay, you die.”
 
Ron observes Harry’s unsteady retreat. The sudden sweet smell of roasting chestnuts wafts through the air. He remembers himself jogging across a park, a younger man, the smell of chestnuts, then heading down for the train home. Suddenly it’s snowing. He looks up at the network of fire escapes. The head of a shaggy dustmop stabs the air. “It’s not snow,” he says. He picks a dust mote from his beard.
 
Ron takes a piece of Harry’s insulation and wedges it between his back and a Dumpster he’s leaning on. He slides his legs up under the parka. A pigeon rests unsteadily on a discarded box, bloated, one eye whited out. “You want to hear?” The pigeon doesn’t answer. “Perversity. The man is perverse, the famous death wish. Accepting a life of isolation accelerates the process. Just the ticket for the man who has everything. I don’t envy this guy.”
 
Button announces his entrance shaking a cookie tin, filled with buttons. His army coat displays the patches and medals from several campaigns in Nam. It’s tied off with a thin gold chain. Hanging from the chain is a cup, spoon, and some high-top sneakers. “If a billy goat cross your lawn, that your billy goat.”
 
Ron scans Button’s pockets for a bottle. “If a billy goat don’t cross your lawn…” Button’s eyes widen, mouth turns down, then up in a smile.
 
“Button, where ya been?” Ron asks. “You hear about the guy who inherited an island? Thing is, he has to stay there alone the rest of his life. Sound good?”
 
Button sits next to Ron, crosses his legs. Ron notices two pink combs in his kinky hair, new items. “Drinkie?”
 
“Drink would be very good, Button.” Button produces a half-gallon from his backpack. Ron swallows fast. “Hmm, strawberry, sign of life.” He takes another swallow. “You know, there’s strawberries on the island, all kinds a fruit. The guy builds himself a raft, paddles out to a coral reef for some spear fishing. Never taught his kid how to fish. At night, he’s got a fire, an occasional iguana cutlet. Soon he’s looking for ways to kill himself permanent.”
 
Button takes a sip of wine, offers it again. “You are a very generous man, Button.” Button pulls some cigarillos and a lighter from his sock. Ron leans forward. The cigarette paper burns to ash leaving a red glow of tobacco, enough for several deep drags. Ron leans back, eyes closed. The wine moves through him, the warm smoke in his chest. He exhales, satisfied. Smoke pours from Button’s wide nostrils like a Chinese demon.
 
“One night, after a day of depression about his family, the guy swims way out until he’s exhausted. He lets go, starts to sink, panics, thrashes back to shore. He lies there, terrified self-pity. The stars offer no solace. The moonlight is disinterested in his dilemma. So, what’s he do? He asks God to kill him. God’s not around. But the whore is, hope. He starts to hope. Tomorrow he will build a big fire, send smoke signals. He’ll write in the sand: H-E-L-P. A trawler, an airplane will spot him.”
 
Button lights another cigarillo, drags on it, hands it to Ron. “Billy goat talkin’ shit tonight.” They smoke quietly for a few moments. Ron regards Button’s PFC stripe. He traces the long scar from Button’s ear to his collarbone.
 
“There’s more,” Ron says.
 
Button says, “Man gets hisself a mermaid, take care a him.”
 
“A bird,” Ron tells Button. “He falls in love with a Great Blue Heron.”
 
“Shit,” Button looks disgusted.
 
“Not that kind of love, friendship. The heron befriends the man, hangs out with him in the lagoon. Tosses him some fish. Of course, the man doesn’t know anything about friendship. He has plans for the heron. But he gets used to it. When the bird flies in from the ocean, it circles the man, majestically, saluting him with its powerful wings. The bird flies low along the shore. He can touch its wings as it passes. It looks like it was painted by Van Gogh, flying art. But he doesn’t know what it is.” Ron leans forward and extends his hand for the bottle.
 
Button cautions, “Freezin’ tonight.” He relinquishes the bottle, and adds, “Goin’ to the lot?”
 
Ron nods, shakes off a chill. “You see, Button, that’s the problem. The man doesn’t know what the bird is. The problem is knowing what things are.”
 
“Wanna get me a mermaid girl.”
 
“You will,” Ron assures. “Well, after a while the man forgets some of his troubles. He’s not so lonely. One night, he comes in from the ocean, naked as God made him, trim and tan from healthy living. Throws himself down on the sand. He’s talking to the bird, looking at the moon, thinking how it seems to get brighter each night. The next thing he knows, it’s lights out. Two quick jabs of that sharp beak, the bird skewers his eyes out.”
 
“Fuck that. They s’posed to be friends?”
 
The bell tolls from the Episcopal Church, where the evening star takes residence in a clear sky. A blast of cold air sweeps through the alley. Ron pulls another piece of Harry’s insulation over his legs and chest. “They are friends. The bird just accelerated the man’s process. He rendered the man physically what he already was mentally. So he runs off terrified, banging into trees, stumbling over rocks. He can’t fish now or find food. You know what’s on his mind? Revenge. He wants to kill that bird, break its long feathery neck. The irony is the man is dead, stumbling dead, but he wants his revenge.”
 
“The man’s blind. He ain’t doin’ no ironin’.”
 
They drink. Ron coughs some back up. The cold has entered his bones. “It’s a different kind of ironing.”
 
Button is up, dancing foot to foot. He pries open the cookie tin and stirs with a long, black finger. He tosses Ron a button, red with speckles, maybe from a woman’s blouse. “Your luck,” Button says, as usual. The wind carries it off target. Ron gropes for it, squeezes it in his palm.
 
Button starts off. “Don’t you want to hear the rest?” Ron asks.
 
“See a man ’bout a piece a steak. Get yourself to the lot.”
 
Ron looks around. Windows are lit up now, warm blocks of light thrust out into the dark, the smell of cooking, urine, and rotting trash. A chilling gust of wind lifts newspapers up the vertical shaft of the alley like clumsy angels with newsprint wings. He checks his watch, 6:38, and then the temperature, 35° F. “Shit.” The pigeon is still where it was, the faded eye closed now. It trembles, claws the cardboard.
 
“I don’t know what I can do for you,” Ron tells the pigeon, “and vice versa.” He pulls at the insulation but it comes apart. “So, the guy gets hungry. He scrounges for food and water. Fortunately, he knew the island somewhat when he was sighted.”
 
Ron sighs, leans back, and closes his eyes. The story goes on in his head; a word or two escapes his mouth as if he’s chanting. He gets good at catching crabs, crawls along the beach tapping the sand until he finds a hole, digs them out. Whatever falls from the trees is his. Each day he makes a bang-up pilgrimage to the spring, tripping on roots, his flesh welted from thorns and branches. He gets better at blind man skills, sounds and smells. At night he sleeps badly in his hut, listening for wings in case it comes back to finish the job.
 
Ron leans forward and pinches his toes, numb. His legs, getting numb. He doesn’t think he can get up. The pigeon looks frozen in place. He spends his days sitting on the beach, waiting, listening, the sun browning him; his eye sockets baked dry. He listens, ships’ horn, helicopter blades, no luck. Just the pounding of the waves and the sun, hotter each day as if the island has drifted below the equator.
 
The pigeon stirs. “I’ve decided to call you Gray Bird Dying,” he tells it. “I’m not feeling too well myself. So one day, the heron returns. Hovers over him, beating its wings. At first, he runs from it, covering his head with his arms. The bird follows him. Finally, he stops, reaches out, and feels the familiar softness. He rests his hand on the bird’s back, strokes it a few times, slides his arm around its side, stroking, working his way up to its neck. The bird stays perfectly still. He takes it in both hands, lifts it off the ground, and strangles it. His arms stretched out, he squeezes its neck as hard as he can. The bird doesn’t fight; it goes limp. The man releases his grip, is suddenly overcome with grief and a hundred other things he doesn’t know anything about. He buries his face in the bird’s feathers, listens for a heartbeat. Nothing. He stands it up in shallow water, hoping instinct will return to its limbs. Its spindly legs collapse in the waves. He douses water over its head, but its head hangs, feathers matted to its breast. Now the man has had his revenge.”
 
The pigeon stirs again, fanning a bent wing. Its claws are bloodless pieces of notched wire, a white paste formed on its beak. Gradually, it’s rolling off the horizon. Ron wonders, should he, if he can, hold it in his arms, or give it a stomp, save it the misery. Ron hasn’t moved since last night, and he can’t now. He thinks he’ll try to crawl out to the sidewalk.
 
“OK,” Ron says, “We’re about there. This time the man plays with his old fishing spear, wedges it in a tree, runs up against it, not hard enough. He positions it at his heart, but he can’t force himself into it. He prays for courage, but can’t do that either. Then he stops, listens, and pricks his ears like a dog. He hears it, nothing, no surf, no wind, no nothing; sound has ended. He drops on the sand; its soft coarseness pulls something from his body. He feels adrift. There’s a studying you do before you die, a kind of quick calculation. He sits there on the beach, no more sun, no wings flapping. He sits there waiting for that benign son-of-a-bitch who endowed him.”
 
Harry comes cursing through the debris in the alley. Fred is in tow, drunk and reluctant, clutching his pea jacket together. “Fuckin’ asshole.” Ron doesn’t hear Harry, but smiles at the feeling of being lifted up. “He’s fuckin’ freezing. Get his arm. Fred, get his fuckin’ arm.”
 
Fred complains, “He ain’t walkin.”
 
“Drag him,” Harry commands. They manage to get Ron’s arms over their shoulders and theirs around his waist. They drag him into the pinkish streetlight, people sidestep them, give them lots of room. Harry lets go, slaps Ron’s face as hard as he can. “Snap to, goddamn it.”
 
Ron feels a grinding, crippling ache. But he also feels Harry’s blow like the stroke of a feather, soft against his cheek. They drag him toward the lot, Ron’s feet starting to find the pavement, but he keeps his eyes closed to prolong the sensation of rising up, rising up.
 
 
© Mark Morganstern 2015
 
This story is from the  collection Dancing with Dasein Burrito Books 2015