Date: Sun, 19 Jan 1997 15:40:30 -0800 Subject: Sub:Valentine's Contest: "Cupid and the Cardinal": short story There's still time to send your entry! Check out http://web.mit.edu/mbarker/www/val97/val.html for details. Please reserve all critiques on contest entries until after Valentine's Day! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cupid and the Cardinal "Louise! Louise! They liked it! They want to discuss buying the rights!" I heard this cacophony from off my deck balcony and hurried into my living room to find the source. I had a strong suspicion such source was my neighbor and agent, Joanne, who regularly and with no compunction would straddle the wrought iron between my balcony and hers to enter the sliding glass doors into my apartment. Before I could throw the lock, Joanne was pounding at the glass door and still shouting the news. "God Louise! Look at you...your hair is wet...goodness...let me find the blow dryer...we have an appointment at two!" "What appointment?" I asked as I removed my towel turban and rubbed my hair vigorously. "The appointment with the production company!" Joanne shouted, "they liked your screenplay and want to discuss it with you!" With this it became incumbent upon me to jump up and down in hysteria. They liked my screenplay! And they wanted to talk to me about it! Later that evening, after I had coerced Joanne to straddle the wrought iron back to her own apartment, I sat quiet in my tiny kitchen to ponder the day's events. The screenplay began with a takeoff on Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds". The protagonist, a mousy little thing, finds herself in a dusty old shop in San Francisco's Chinatown. She spots a pair of love birds in a cage sitting on a counter in the rear of the shop as if forgotten. The protag regards the birds for some time until the proprietor, an ancient and wise Chinese man, asks her if she would like to purchase the avian pair. The protag says no...she doesn't want to buy the birds....she was just watching them dove and coo and wondered why human males could not be like that. "Ah...you have a love wish?" the wise Chinese man says. The protag tells the shop owner that sure...she has a love wish. "Send me a man that is completely human but acts like the love bird in this cage." The Chinese man agrees to grant the wish, much to the protag's delight and ultimate despair. "Be careful of what you wish for"- or some such- was the moral of the story. I walked over to the stove to pour some hot water over my fresh tea bag. Before this thing went...who knew where?...I had to re-assess. For the real story in this tale is the story that was happening just now. It is the origin of the story that resulted in my move to California to meet the flighty Joanne who liked the screenplay enough to hang up her shingle as literary agent with this, her only property. It was a story within a story, I mused. The screenplay, I pondered, was nothing compared to the truth. Which is...the story really happened and it really happened to me and because it happened is why I am here right now and rejoicing in the news of my "fiction" screenplay. I sat my tea on the tiny table, ceased pondering and began remembering. I was a fresh 23 years old and had just moved to the big town of Philadelphia from a small backward town at the base of Pennsylvania's Appalachia mountains. Just the prior June I had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in English literature. I was of legal age, outfitted with a college degree and ready to see what the world had to offer. The small town could no longer contain my adult self. Philadelphia was great. I had quickly located a flat in a singles apartment complex on the outskirts of the city. Almost as quickly I landed a job with the Philadelphia Enquirer. I was off to a good start in the life race and found myself enjoying the run. Except for that small matter of the non-existent love life. It was a week before Valentine's Day that I noticed the sign. "Free consultation with Cupid for Valentine's Day wish." It was a ratty old sign, hand-lettered on sturdy cardboard and taped over the "Yes, we're open" notice. The sign rattled against the window every time a customer opened the door to enter the living room of the local fortune teller. Many was the time I had considered a visit to Madame Moonlight, as she called herself. When I spotted the sign for Cupid consultation, I was hooked. Madame Moonlight was an overweight middle-aged woman with dark hair and darker eyes. Her breath smelled like pepperoni. "Yes, we have a special this week. For the normal $25 fee, you may also place a wish with Cupid to grant a love request. In the two weeks before Valentine's Day, I can channel a request to Cupid not possible in any of the other weeks of the year." I could barely stifle a smile at this. So pepperoni-breath could channel Cupid, could she? I handed her the $25 and told her I wished to speak to Cupid. Madame Moonlight closed her eyes and furrowed her brows in great concentration. "Cupid wants to know what is your love request," Madame Moonlight said . I was stopped still. What the heck was my love request? I had come by mostly to talk to Cupid, but I didn't even have a plan. Of course, I could always request a tall, dark and handsome suitor, but before my mind could register this sensible entreat, a flash of a picture I saw in a recent magazine whipped through my mind. It was a picture of a cardinal, drawn by a cartoon illustrator for a comic strip. The bright red bird was tenderly placing a sunflower seed in his mate's mouth. The cartoon was a satire about the commercialism of Valentine's Day, with the cardinal pair pictured as icon to true love. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out instructions for Madame Moonlight to channel to Cupid. "Send me a man that is completely human but has the courtship behavior of the cardinal." Madame Moonlight made some more contorted facial expressions to indicate pain, opened her brown eyes wide, and informed me that the request was granted. Nowhere in my immediate surround could I see any sort of cardinal human to place sunflower seeds tenderly in my beak. "You must be patient, child," Madame Moonlight informed me in response to my puzzlement. "You have made a direct request to Cupid and your love wish will be granted." For the next three days, I saw no sign of any sort of cardinal human. I laughed over my visit to the fortune teller and even told my Mom about it. On Valentine's Day, I met Carl. Only I didn't know his name was Carl just then. I only knew him as a shock of red hair that poked his head out of the apartment directly across from mine to retrieve the paper. I was retrieving my own paper at the same time and almost jumped out of my skin when the owner of the red hair greeted me good morning. First, that apartment had been populated until as recently as last night by an elderly gentleman I knew as Mr. Roberts. Second, no human type person could possibly possess hair as red as this guy's and not be mistaken for Dennis Rodman. First, I asked where was Mr. Roberts and second I commented on that impossible hair. Carl stepped out of the apartment door. He looked human enough, with his rumpled T-shirt and pajama bottoms with the draw string. "Uncle Joe went to visit my mother...who is his sister, by the way. He let me use the apartment while he's gone. And the hair," with this Carl ran his fingers through his feathers, I mean hair, and smiled, "it runs in the family." I told him I was Louise and he told me he was Carl. I made a quick excuse to return to my apartment. Nah, I thought, after closing the door and standing with my back flat against it as if to ward off danger just on the other side. Just a coincidence. Jesus, though...that red hair! By day's end I had convinced myself the whole thing was a hilarious fluke. I even considered it might be interesting to check out my neighbor Carl. Someday, I envisioned, I would tell him about my visit to Madame Moonlight and request to Cupid for a red-headed lover...of sorts. The story would be told, according to my revery, as we sat by a roaring fire and after tucking in our red-headed children. The next day Carl brought himself right to my door. Even then I jumped a bit at the sight of that hair. "I figured since we were going to be neighbors," Carl said, than offered me a tupperware dish. Of course I had to invite him in. I peeked inside the bowl. "It's pumpkin soup," Carl explained, "my mother taught me how to make it." Wow, I thought. Pumpkin soup. Whoever heard of a man that makes pumpkin soup? I invited Carl to sit down, then offered him a beverage. "Just a glass of water," he said. We spent an hour in a leisurely chat. Carl was an Accountant, although he only worked temporary. "I like to be off in the Spring," he explained. He was a vegetarian. "I like a balanced diet with a lot of roughage". He liked to fly. This revelation caused me to almost fall off my sofa. "I have an amateur pilot license. Clocked almost 100 hours in the air so far," he explained. Carl then invited me for a stroll the next day in a local park. "But it's February!" I exclaimed. "So?" Carl asked, as if there were no problem. "Mom, it's the weirdest thing," I found myself on the telephone after my chat with Carl. I just had to talk to someone, and since I had already told my mother about my visit to Madame Moonlight, she seemed like just the sensible person. "Honestly honey, I think the whole thing is funny. You could send the story into Reader's Digest. So the guy has red hair ("Not just red Ma.....I mean RED...glow in the dark"). So he is a vegetarian ("He likes roughage...Ma...lots of roughage"). So he flies an airplane ("yeah...well....he don't look like a pilot...you ever see a pilot with red hair?")." Mom thought the whole thing to be a scream and before long she had me laughing along with her. "Honey, someday this will make a funny story. Maybe you will even be able to tell it to Carl." We laughed like two girlfriends. I admitted to my mother that Carl seemed like a really nice guy and was kind of cute, even with the impossible hair. "He gave me a bowl of pumpkin soup, Ma. Imagine a man that makes pumpkin soup?" I waited for my mother's guffaw, but was greeted with silence. "Ma? Ma?" "I'm sorry honey. The pumpkin soup caught me off-guard. It's nothing really." Well of course I couldn't let Mom tell me it was nothing when it was quite obviously something. "Pumpkins, Lou," Mom said, still trying to grasp the explanatory words, "the cardinals love pumpkin seeds." After a pregnant silence, Mom and I rang off. We stopped laughing after the pumpkin comprehension. This was definitely starting to get weird. If I didn't think I was in the Twilight Zone of cardinal boyfriends upon completion of my call to Mom, I knew it for sure after fifteen minutes into my February park date with Carl. Consider: The "picnic" food consisted of two bags of shelled peanuts and two bottles of Evian spring water. For dessert-some berries. Carl wore no coat and seemed to suffer no chill although it was below freezing. If these particulars were not telling enough, consider his behavior. Carl never let me out of his sight. Even when I had to go down the hill to the outdoors port-a-pot, he insisted to follow me and called my name the whole time I was in the outdoor john. He walked up to every male within eyesight and made threatening gestures. He had a package of pumpkin seeds sticking out of his shirt pocket. It was when he began to sing that I really got spooked. Not that "Climb Every Mountain" isn't a fine song, but in a public park in the middle of Winter? I feigned an appointment and cut the outdoor date early. "Lou, someone's playing a joke on you," Mom began when I called her about my hour in the park with Carl. "I thought about it last night after I hung up. These things are no longer coincidences, but they are still funny...really. Especially when you figure that someone is having a laugh at your expense. This Carl fellow sounds like quite the actor." I had just finished my telephone rendition of Carl's "Climb Every Mountain", when Mom offered this suggestion. We both were quiet on the phone lines as I considered. Who on earth would play such a joke on me? Who knew about my visit to Madame Moonlight anyway? Except Mom and Madame Moonlight. And also Carl. "That's the funniest thing I ever heard," Carl said when I told him he could stop acting his cardinal role. I had asked him earlier to stop by my apartment for my planned confrontation. I then demanded to know just who put him up to his little charade. "I honest to God don't know what you are talking about. There is no charade," Carl continued to deny. "And in case you are wondering, I know about the cardinal connection. My mother used to call me her "little cardinal" up until I was about twelve. Come on Louise, I know I'm a little odd, but I'm no damn bird! Look, " Carl mumbled as he fumbled in his wallet in search of something, "look...here's my paycheck. See...I work, got a social security number...just like you." I looked at the paycheck and almost fainted at the name of the payee. The paycheck was payable to Carl St. Louis. "St. Louis! Where'd you get that paycheck, off of Word Perfect? No one's last name is St. Louis!" "It's my name, honest to God! My grandparents were French. The original name was Saint Louis...pronounced in the french way." It was no mind. This whole thing had to be a joke and I figured just the way to prove that this red-headed Carl St. Louis was a phony and maybe prove who he really was. Soon we were both laughing over my confusion and sharing, what else, a bowl of peanuts. "Louise. Louise" Carl said softly, then pulled me close to him. He did have a set of beautiful blue eyes and a smattering of freckles that would forever hint at boyishness. He placed his lips softly on mine and... ...inserted a peanut from his mouth to mine. That was it! That was absolutely the end! I told this Carl nut to get the hell out of my life with his stupid singing and pumpkin seeds and constantly hanging by my side and belligerent behavior around other men. Whatever the hell he was, he was too weird and if he was playing some sort of a game, I strongly suggested that he stop. I bade him good night and slammed the door against the cardinals that would pretend to be human men. I only wished I could somehow close the door on consultations with Cupid and wishes that would be granted. The next day I stopped in the office of a private detective in my office building. John Bohn and I occasionally shared a coffee in the building lunch room. I thought us acquainted enough for me to ask him a special favor. "The guy's name is Carl St. Louis you say?" John asked me, while jotting in his notepad. I didn't tell John about the cardinal connection. So far as I knew, John still considered me sane. I had memorized the social security number on Carl's paycheck, then jotted it down as soon as he left. John chuckled and waved my scrap of paper hastily scribbled with the nine numbers. "Louise, with these numbers I can find out everything from whether he was breast fed to what kind of lovemaking position he prefers." While I didn't want John to go that far, I was eager for him to give me the real identity of my bird buddy. "Louise," John's gravelly voice rattled in my ear, "I checked out your Saint Louie pal. I figure you might be disappointed at what I have to tell you." I was quite interested to hear the news John would tell me from his research. As predicted, I was very disappointed at the result. "The guy's name is really Carl St. Louis. He's worked for a temporary accounting firm for almost ten years. He's really quite ordinary, Louise. And his Uncle is really your neighbor Joseph Roberts. Who is this guy and why are you so suspicious?" I murmured a quick lie and thanked John for his help. It was either a most amazing coincidence or Carl was such a master of disguise he had even fooled the bureaucrats at the social security complex. The next week was bizarre. Carl would show up at the most unexpected moments. I looked up from my lunch one workday afternoon to see a shock of red hair sticking up from an opened newspaper. As the red hair lowered the newspaper, Carl gave me a wave and a quick wink. One night I was fumbling with the keys to enter my apartment when Carl came out from his apartment to greet me. I was avoiding this guy by now and ignored his insinuations for an invitation inside. Just then the building superintendent walked by on some errand. When Carl spotted the maintenance man, he walked across the hallway and stood in front of me. He pointedly crossed his arms and glared at the beleaguered super. The poor guy hurried by, no doubt wondering what kind of nut was this. Carl's behavior was, as a matter of fact, becoming dangerously close to outright stalking. I had only known Carl for a week and a half when the Enquirer sent me to California to cover the story on the state's recent marijuana reform laws. I eagerly accepted the assignment, both to get away from Carl and perhaps some distance to think. In the three days I would spend in California, I came upon the perfect solution to my little problem. First, I got a job offer. It came as a result of one story I had written about the marijuana issue. The editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, a sister paper of the Enquirer, was impressed with the piece and asked how I would like a job with the California branch of my newspaper's publishing empire. I initially demurred. After all I would have to move and...and... Then I thought, why not? Imagine living in California! Then I thought of my Carl problem and accepted the job immediately. "I'll move too, Louise," Carl responded when I told him of my impending career move. Well of course you will move Carl baby, I thought, because you are some kind of nut that thinks he's a cardinal and male cardinals follow their chosen females wherever they go don't they? I shrugged my shoulders at Carl's suggestion. I offered that he could follow me if he wished. And now I was in California, author of a screenplay about a protagonist that wished for a suitor that was once a bird. Only the protagonist of my screenplay had to trick her human lovebird to the shop owned by the wise Chinese man and beg him to make her boyfriend back into a bird. While moving clear across the country might not have been considered an easy solution to my birdman problem, who knows what would have happened had I not? For when the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle offered me a job, I accepted quickly both for the adventure and opportunity, but also I knew it would reveal Carl for what he was. And it did. Though Carl would follow me to the bathrooms and lunchrooms..perhaps even move to another state...I knew that my move to California would put an end to Carl. If Carl was what I thought he was, I knew I would never see him again. While Americans would flock by the millions to the balmy state where it never rains, California was definitely not for those who actually thrived in the cold and snow. There are NO cardinals in the state of California. ------------------------------------------- Michelle winebird@inreach.com