Interspecies Communication

While Katie returns the freight elevator to its proper floor, I sit down on the curb outside and wait.

It’s late afternoon, an hour or so before dusk, still some light left, a low, buttery light tinted with gray from the overcast. I watch the breeze play with the few living things in this industrial dead end: a weed or tree growing in the rain gutter on the top of a brick wall waves a few delicate leaves, a pigeon wandering the asphalt a few yards away shakes his feathers in the cool.

The pigeon notices me, noticing him, and struts over to check me out, so I politely say, “How’s it going?” but he doesn’t reply.