"Aw, Pigeon"
Marie drifted. She felt warm and heavy.
Her brother was here.
Her brother was talking to her about the latest pirate movie.
Was there a new pirate movie?
What was John doing here? Wasn’t he still in Sacramento?
Why was her living room rocking back and forth?
Never mind. It stopped.
The trainman poked her shoulder. “Millennium Station. Everybody off.”
“Oh, right.”
Marie made it from the platform to the stairs, the last person in a big crowd. She climbed the steps, two at a time, though the mass of people in front of her caused her movement to be cartoonishly slow.
Marie walked through the doors of the station. She passed the smell of Starbucks, the smell of Burger King and the smell of that fake Garrett popcorn. She climbed up another flight of stairs, and made her way up to the sidewalk.
She walked past a busking musician, a pair of well-dressed people selling one of the younger religions, and a footless man claiming to be a veteran. She put in her earbuds and did her best to make no eye contact.
Marie plugged her earbuds into her phone and tapped the tiny triangle that appeared. A pair of voices started talking about pirates.
What was it with today and pirates?
She scrolled through her podcasts, finding one that was about anything other than buccaneers.
She was successful in this task, but unsuccessful at her other goal of “not kicking pigeons,” as, while distracted, she had definitely kicked a pigeon.
“I’m so sorry,” she started to explain to the bird, then stopped herself realizing the futility of this monologue.
“Well, I should say so,” said a nearby non-pigeon. Marie turned to see a young man in corduroy pants and suspenders give her the evil eye. “You really ought to pay attention.”
“Sure,” Marie responded, not paying any attention to the hipster. She started the new podcast.
“Hey!” said the hipster.
Marie didn’t pay him any attention.
“Hey!!” said the hipster.
Marie didn’t pay him any attention.
“Hey!!!” said the hipster.
Marie had no choice but to pause her podcast and remove her earbuds; he had used three exclamation points.
“What seems to be the trouble?”
“Take this,” he said handing her a small copper sphere. It was roughly the size of a billiard ball, and slightly tarnished with green.
“What is this?” Marie asked the hipster.
The hipster was nowhere to be seen, which she should have expected. After all, today felt like a day for magical realism.
“Oh, Goddamnit,” Marie proclaimed, nevertheless.
She kept walking, past the Walgreens and turning North on State street, that great street. What was she supposed to do with this copper ball?
She put it into her snapchat story to see if it got any responses. She didn’t have enough followers to guarantee results there, so she shared it with her Facebook group dedicated to cross stitching.
Her phone vibrated with comments.
“Make a wish on it!”
“Don’t make a wish, it could be a Monkey’s Paw situation.”
“I think that means you win the Quidditch match!”
“More like Monkey’s Ball.”
“Its like that magician David Copperballs.”
“It’s not its.”
“Cash 4 gold!”
“First!”
“Dude, you’re like tenth!”
“Give it to me!”
“Jesus gave it to you!”
“There’s no such person as Jesus.”
“Jesus was black!”
“Jesus can look like anything because he lives in your heart!”
“I can’t tell if your joking, but its David Copperfield.”
“You’re not your.”
“Um, actually David Copperfield is the name of the book. The magician is David Copperballs.”
Marie carefully weighed her crowdsourced advice, and decided that social media is all terrible. She started writing a status update about how she was taking a break from Facebook, but she remembered that already had a good draft of such a statement saved on her home computer.
Marie held the copper ball in front of her, contemplating her options as she stood in front of the Chik-Fil-A. She felt a jolt in her entire body. At first, she thought it might have been some sort of copper ball related curse, but then she saw the body running past her and she saw that her own hands were now empty.
“Hey! Stop!” Marie thought for a minute. “Or don’t. Whatever.”
Her mugger was now half a block away. Still running, he turned to smile at Marie. A gold tooth glinted in the sun and Marie could see that he was wearing an eye patch.
He ran directly into a flock of pigeons.