Ties Are Made

"No, seriously, what's going on?" my guest asks again.  "How do you two know one another?"

"Stop being annoying!" I yell, louder than I mean to.  The hazy man across from me leans back in his chair. 

"Ma'am, let 'im aks 'is questions."  The billowing smoke shifts slightly toward my unwanted associate, leaning forward almost enough to expose the face behind the cloud. "This liddle gal n' I met one day when I wus called to the scene of a crime.  A toy dog, a liddle pup, had gone berserk an' attacked a boy. He wus only two, ye know.  One 'o the worst tings I had ever seen.  An this gal, the woman ye have beside ye, was standin' right outside o' the police tape, like nuttin was botherin' her inna world."

I blush, surprised that he remembered so well.  "I am your biggest fan, sir."

"I know, gal, I know."  He tossed the toy car casually onto the desk.  "Now, waddaya need from me?"

"Well, sir," my associate began, "I seem to have lost something very important..."

I roll my eyes.  "He lost a flock of robotic pigeons that are of national importance."

"Ah, I heard about 'em, from a friend o' mine."

"But," my associate spluttered, "this is top secret! Most of the people who invented the things don't know they're lost!"

"Mebbe, but the people I know're higher'n that..."  The voice behind the cloud petered off into nothing, waiting for a response.  I cover my face as much as I can, trying to hide my embarrassment for the man who unfortunately hired me.

My employer explained everything to the ball of smoke, and I let my eyes wander the room, bored.  On every wall there seemed to be a book case dedicated to the technological trophies he had won or dismantled. 

When the men were done talking, our host gathered a few odd looking things from around the room, giving them to me in a small bag.  He told me that they were going to be instrumental in returning the secrets and the pigeons to Washington.

For a few minutes he marked on a map that he had grabbed from one drawer or another.  The smoke once again obscured everything, and when he handed it to me it was folded into eighths.  

"Now, don't you open that up 'till ye get outta this office.  And keep the stuff in the bag hidden.  I never wanna see any of it again.  Not, both of you go an' don't come back here. Ever, whether you're successful or not.  Do ye unnerstand?"

"Never?" I as kin disbelief.  "But what if I want to talk to you? If I want to discuss methods of mechanical extermination?"

"Never!" the cloud said harshly.

I rose so abruptly that my chair screeched against the stone in the office.  My associate followed after me, back into the dark city.

They look like happy cacti

Since I woke up this morning (round 7:30) it has been snowing.  And not like a little drizzle of snow.  Or flurry.  Whatever.

For the past twelve hours I have seen my feet and then ankles disappear beneath the flakes.  My shins were slowly taken over by frozen water.  My sock monkey hat did nothing to protect me from the wet downpour, for that's what it was.  I became a wildlife expert, tracking the footprints of the various wildlife that lives here.  I trudged through the blizzard and went to class, all the same.

On my way to piano I spotted some birds hopping on the ground as they are wont to do.  I scared them away and looked down to see if they had left footprints on the light dusting of snow that had been left since the last brave person had crossed this sidewalk.

These footprints make me happy

I think this discovery was the highlight of my day.

The foundation of a lasting friendship is awkward situations.

Mechanical pigeons were high on my list of untrustworthy mechanics, right up there with toasters.  I have yet to come across a toaster that worked properly and I have developed a grudge.  Even the rumors about the pidgeons had solidified my distrust.

"You want to know how much it will take to find mechanical pidgeons?"  I stare at the mashed potatoes in the sink.

"Indeed I do."

"How much you got in your wallet?"  He pulls out a wallet that looks like it has seen better times. I grab it from him before he can open it.

"Maybe that's why you lost mechanical pidgeons," I scoff.  "You can't even keep a wallet."  I pull out a wad of cash before he can remove the cheap pleather from my hands.  "It will take this much," I say, stuffing the bills into my pocket.

"Seriously?  That's it?" he says, perplexed.  "You know this is of national importance, right?  A million dollar job at least?"

"It would give me no greater pleasure than to help out our government."  I sigh and turn back to the man.  He is looking at me.

"Your flier said you were the cheapest detective in the midwest but I didn't  believe it."  He turned and led himself to the door, and I wished it would be the last time I saw his face.  But these things never go my way.

He turns back to me.  "Are you coming?" he asks.  "We have some birds to locate."

We walk down twelve flights of stairs in awkward silence, the elevator having broken down weeks ago.  The man says with me the whole time, like a bad habit.  By the time we get to the lobby we are as close as best friends without the convenience of conversation.  We were more like cellmates.

When we walked out of the building it was raining.

"Fabulous," I say under my breath.

NOW THERE ARE ROBOTIC PIGEONS?!

The man puts the graphs down and walks back to me.

"So. The carrier pigeons."  He shovels more mashed potatoes into his mouth.  "How much will it cost to retrieve them?  They're carrying some very sensitive information."

"How sensitive?" I ask, watching my mashed potatoes slowly disppearing, like the polar ice caps in twenty years.

"Top secret government stuff," he says vaguely.  "It was being delivered by carrier pigeon because we figured no one would guess that we would carry secrets of national importance using birds."

"Shocking," I say with a snort, "someone outsmarted a pigeon."  I wrestle the bowl of potatoes away from the man and dump it into the sink.  If I can't have any, no one can.  "Did ya ever think they just flew away?" I ask him.

"No, that thought never crossed my mind."  It had crossed mine already.  Like a friend I never should have hurt.  "You see, they are mechanical pigeons."

I stop and look at him.  Shadows cover most of his face.  "Robot pigeons?" I whisper.  I had heard rumors about robotic pigeons before but I had never taken them seriously.

"Yes ma'am, robot pigeons," the man responded.

Dangerous Pie Graph Makers

The man takes the potatoes and wanders around my office like a cat on the prowl.  I pour us both a bit of alcohol and pass one glass to him.

The last time I had dealings with birds the affair ended with a lot of feathers flying and a broken heart.  The woman I dealt with that time was a friend and even she didn't talk to me after that.  The seagull had been carrying love letters between her and her boyfriend but the bird and the man both decided to try their own hand at new love. No one ever saw the seagull again.

The man rifled through some of my papers, pie and bar graphs mostly.

"It's a handy thing," he opined after a large swallow of gin, "knowing how to make a good graph."  He pulled one out for reference, a nice one colored using different shades of purple.

"Handy like a knife in the back," I replied, putting down my glass.  "Some of my acquaintances are graph makers.  Most of them are dead now."

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Nothing good happened today, so instead I give you dangerous graph makers.