Urban Decay

acey Quinlan finds a dead bird lying on a leaf next to an overflowing
trash can. She looks up and peers around, then cradles the bird. She
then wraps the bird in the business section of the New York Times and slips it
into her shoulder bag. The street is busy, but she doesn’t think anybody notices.
There’s a lot of traffic. A moving truck is parked beside one of the apartment
buildings, occupying the majority of the street. Sofas, a few tables and chairs, and
an array of cardboard boxes litter the sidewalk. Pedestrians chortle to themselves
as they skip by the stationary vehicles, avoiding the movers and crunching the
leaves as they pass. Lacey is one of them, and she canters briskly to avoid the drop
in temperature expected on late October evenings.
By the time she reaches Johnson Avenue, the cold is already pinching her
cheeks and biting the back of her neck. Lacey wishes she’d worn her scarf. She
peers up towards the sky through a couple of barren trees lining the sidewalk.
She clutches her bag. Lacey comes to her block and walks up the small stone path.
She eyes the buildings around her. The neighboring apartments all have finely
cultivated green grass encircling the steps, with a tree or two placed on opposite
sides of the lawn. Lacey’s building is the only one with barren land; thick brown
dirt welcomes her after her day out. A small number of curled brown leaves col-
lect where the grass should be, and they scatter and twitch from the sharp wind.
Once she enters her apartment, she hikes the heat up and takes out the dead
bird. Lacey thinks it could be a starling because of its small size. She assumes it
was living in the city. It doesn’t appear to have any open wounds. Lacey concludes
it broke its neck flying into a window at top speed. Birds often fly into windows
stories up because they see the reflection of the sky mirrored perfectly in the glass.
After they fall to the ground, most of them are taken by cats or other city scaven-
gers. Lacey finds it simply miraculous that this specific bird just happened to fall
atop a leaf and remain safe and untouched until she arrived.
“You must be something special,” Lacey says to the bird as she fingers its
feathers. Some grease wipes off of the triangular wing and onto her hand, and she
wipes it on her jeans. The stocky black bird has a square tipped tail and a yellow
beak. Lacey places the bird into the newspaper and puts it on the kitchen table.
She then sorts through her belongings. She kicks past the crates and boxes on the
floor. Her studio is nicely kept except for the recent clutter. Lacey always makes
her bed and puts her clothing in the dirty laundry basket. She does her dishes im-
mediately, or as close to immediately as possible. She must keep these routines.
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