Anne,
Sorry. You’re the only veterinarian I know.
Here’s why I delivered you this bird.
Every Sunday I fill a burlap sack with DVDs from our collection, sling it over my shoulder, and walk down to the storm drain so I can drop each DVD in one-by-one. I’ve been doing this for eight months and one week. I can only get rid of two or three at a time, max.
We have way too many because that DVD store on campus was going out of business and they started selling four for the price of one at the end of the 2011 school year. We were the only ones on campus. I had to take my finals late because you gave me mono in the Spring.
My eyes burn as I fill the sack because I stuck my head behind the dusty entertainment stand to grab I Know What You Did Last Summer. Probably twenty-seven views between the two of us. But I don’t like the title. You know why. I toss it in.
My hand stops at Anchorman. My twenty-fifth birthday. You took me to the double feature. Anchorman 1 and 2. You laughed more at how pissed I was at the guy yelling out all the lines than at the movie. I skip past it.
- John Cusack. You made fun of me for days. I swore it would be great. Sure you don’t wanna grab a second copy in case this one gets scratched? You’d laugh. I thought your laugh was weird as fuck at first. There was a period of time when I didn’t want my friends to hear it. Now I’m hearing it, and I’ve been blowing out my eardrums cranking Soundgarden, trying to drown it out.
You laughed like that when we watched Superbad with my roommates. Especially when Michael Cera sang for the guys on coke. That was the first night you slept at my place.
I take out my earbuds, throw them on the floor. I yank open several drawers until I finally find a flathead screwdriver.
I run to the storm drain.
DVDs caked with leaves and mud. Superbad peeks out.
I wedge the flathead into one of the grate notches, pry upward.
It smells like raw sewage as I lean down into the drain, head-first.
Anyway…
That’s when I hear the faint chirping. The storm last night was so bad, the water gushing down the hill must have pushed it through the grate.
I made it this shoebox home with a sock duct-taped to the bottom for a sleeping bag, seed, water, and a ball.
I know you aren’t ready to do it in person, but maybe one day down the road we can, like, watch a movie together on Zoom or something. We can even turn our cameras and mics off and just watch at the same time.
How’s Ryan’s movie taste? Lol.
Dean
***
I stop at PetSmart, buy a bird, smear mud on its wings.