1.

A soft and haunting call dragged them from their dreams and their bramble of limbs and sheets.

“Are those doves?” Her voice was thick.

On the other side of the curtains, a pair of little round shadows shuffled and bobbed on the chipped iron of the fire escape. They sat up in bed, disturbing the smells of whiskey sweat, cigarettes and sex that had become trapped in the bedclothes.

She made one of her small delightful noises as he kissed just below her ear, burying his nose in the scent of her Marlboros and shampoo.

Stealing to the window, he lifted the curtain and peeked out a pair of birds that paused and stretched their necks at him.

He laughed and returned to bed. “Doves.”

2.

“What’s it doing?” She asked.

“Kinda just sitting in the window box.”

“Where’s his girlfriend?”

“Don’t know. Maybe it’s her turn to look for nest materials.”

“They think we put that there for them.” She informed him, jutting her chin at the dove in the window box, wiggling itself and rubbing against the new green herbs and plants in extasy.

“Did you know doves mate for life?” She asked and he was glad he was facing away and fiddling with the coffee maker.

“I didn’t know that.” He answered, proud of his even voice.

3.

“Look,” She said, “They’re checking on us.”

“Seems that way.”

Outside on the fire escape perched the happy couple looking at them
from the sides of their heads. Birds cannot help it. All that sideways peering smacks of ‘what are you up to?’

She smiled at the doves and called hello. “It’s a sign.” She said.

He did not believe in signs. Not anymore. But those doves began to make him nervous anyway.

4.

A racket of cooing, a gentle din sounded throughout the apartment.

“I can’t see them.” She said.

“Maybe they’ve built a nest on the roof?” He wondered.

She clutched his arm and grinned. “Baby doves?”

He laughed. “It seems the natural progression.” For doves, he added in the silence of his head.

5.

He sent her away for good, never to return. Not because of the doves, but of many other things. He did not lament her absense, but he did not expect the ragged void that appeared from nowhere.

It was a week or more before he realized he no longer heard the cooing from the roof. He told himself that they’d raised their fledglings and were now about their business.

Time passed in almost connections, near misses and attempted reachings out. He scratched in the wall with a rusty screwdriver to mark the days. There were a lot of marks and he enjoyed the romance of them, but remembering his security deposit, he bought spackle.

6.

The sheets smelled only of cigarettes and whiskey now.

They had followed her, he was sure. Perched on her window, they would come inside to be fed by hand. His home was a place of cold decisions, and though doves can survive a New York City winter, they cannot abide frost of a certain kind.

7.

He’d stopped marking the walls. The last dove sighting had been days ago, a single coo outside his window and when he’d rushed to look, there had been nothing.

8.

A strange noise roused him. It was winter again and just over a year since he’d sent her away. Sitting up in bed, he looked outside.

A single dove was on the fire escape, peering in at him from first one eye and then the other. Unmistakeable appraisal, and he wondered if it approved.

“Welcome back.” He said to the dove, which ducked its head once and flew away.

It was time, he realized, to get up.