I put my index finger on the hummingbird, pressing myself into this tiny thing. This tiny, vulnerable thing. The one bird that seems like a glitch. An anomaly in David’s confidence.
“Who did this?” I ask, raising my eyes to his. “Who put these on you?”
“An artist. In New Orleans,” he says, looking down at me. I expect him to look surprised, but he doesn’t. He looks calm and light.
“What does this one mean? This tiny hummingbird.” My voice is so quiet. And yet I can hear my own awe. “What do all of them mean?”
I am awash with emotion, and I’m not sure if it is because of Ricky’s letter or because I told David I love him or because of the hummingbird. Maybe it is everything. All of it.
David is silent for a long time. My hands move to his other arm. They grasp him by the wrist, and my fingers trail up along the inside of his elbow to the crest of his arm. I move up to his neck, then to his chin. I am holding his face like a child’s, rubbing my thumbs against his jaw and looking at his open eyes.
“They’re for my mother,” he says quietly. “She called me her bright little bird.”
I know that David’s mother died when he was young. He told me the night I came home to find my new kitchen. He said he was eight.
My fingers move back to the hummingbird. Tracing it. “Is this one you?” I ask.
He grins at me and shakes his head. “No. It isn’t me.”
“Then who is it?” I ask. He looks as if he doesn’t want to answer.
“That one belongs to the artist.”
“Oh,” I say, rubbing my finger against its folded wings. “Did you ask him to put it there?”
“No,” he says cautiously. “She put it there on her own.” She. He said, “she.” Why would a woman put herself, in bird form, on a stranger’s arm? She wouldn’t. She would only put herself on the arm of a man she cared for.
“Did you love her?” I don’t know why I ask, but I do. I can’t take it back.
David pauses for a moment before he answers. “I didn’t love her, no. But she loved me. Or at least she said she did.” Oh. Another woman loved him. Another woman said those words and didn’t hear them back. David must sense that I am sinking inside because he keeps talking, trying to pull me back up. “She was messed up, Emma. She was a junkie. How could she have loved me when half the time she didn’t even know if it was Tuesday?” His hands are on my shoulders now, and I feel as if he is trying to hold me up. Trying to help me find my balance.
“Where is she now?”
“She died. Years ago.”
Anna Spaight’s obituary didn’t say that she was a tattoo artist, nor did any of the other articles about her death. But, in the picture, the one where David is standing behind her, his tattoos are there. Wrapped around her. Is he talking about Anna, or is he talking about someone else? Being on medication for depression and paranoid schizophrenia doesn’t make you a junkie, does it? I want to ask him if it is Anna—but I won’t, because my question will tell him that I know about her. To have two women in your life die would break a man—even a man like David. It must be Anna he is talking about.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I want to cry. I want to cry for Anna. And for David. And for me.
“It’s okay,” David says. “Really. She was messed up, and it was over between us long before she died. I only stayed for as long as I did because I was trying to help her.”
“Oh.” It must be Anna. In my mind, I am picturing David and Anna together, imagining him holding her up by the shoulders the same way he is holding me right now. Trying to help her find her balance.
“You already know that I am the raven, Emma. We both are.” He lets me go and lifts up his arm to show me the dark, thick bird. The one above his right underarm. The one I found the night he took me to the bridge. The clever and self-assured and peculiar raven. How could I have thought that he would see himself as a frail hummingbird? The ridiculousness of my earlier question tugs at me. Anna was the frail one. And David didn’t love her because ravens don’t love the weak.
With that thought, I straighten myself. I don’t need David to hold me up. I am centered now, and I put my lips against the raven. I kiss its beak and run my tongue across its body. David tastes of salt, of skin. His hands move to the back of my head, and he lifts my face up to his, kissing my mouth, lapping his tongue against mine. I can feel how much he wants this. How much he wants me. When we finally separate, it’s clear that David has something on his mind.
“I know Saz told you about Lucia the other night. I’m sorry you had to hear about that from him.” His voice sounds uncomfortable. As if he is embarrassed and ashamed.