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highly of herself,
considered herself entitled to waste the second half. He did his life's work with the rest. This
woman on the edge of the piano with the face of mistreated lover was breaking the rules. First
you break a window and then you become one. Nothing else exists. Nothing else can touch
you.
    There is a soft,
sexual twilight of revenge on her face. A deserted oasis beside her in her bed one night had
prepared her for this moment. He had left her once, sneaking silently away into the night. The
note beside the bed said, "I WAS GLAD TO GET IT FREE BUT THE IDEA OF MAR­RIAGE IS TOO GROSS TO BE
ADEQUATELY CONSID­ERED." It took her six months to find him again.
    He has stopped
singing even though his fingers continue to move across the keyboard. She unloosened one strap of
her gown, pushing it down off her shoulder. More of her fell out of the front of her dress. The
bartender wiped his hands nervously and began his journey around the edge of the bar. Under his
breath, he was using her gown to wipe the beer glasses clean, but duty was duty.
    "My life is a box
in which I have been packed and out of which I took myself," she said, and she pulled the other
strap loose and began undressing.
    The gown fell away
in a heap at her feet. She wore noth­ing beneath' it.
    But.
    But her body was
covered with feathers. Her breasts ended in two exaggerated plumes. A ruff of feathers covered
the front of her lap.
    Silence spreads
through the nightclub and even the piano falls prey to it. She leaps free of her clothes, a
pioneer mo­ment. She spreads her arms in a taking-flight motion and turns to face the shocked
patrons of the nightclub. The feathers look like they grew there naturally.
    The bartender,
halted in mid-stride, points a silent accu­sation at her and just stands there, overwhelmed with
some­thing. The nightclub manager, alarmed by the sudden si­lence, stuck his head out of his
office door. He sniffed suspiciously for the telltale tear-gas odor of police protec­tion. His
gaze took in the bartender and the piano player and then came to rest on the piano bird. He
snorted with disgust, ducked his head back inside, and slammed the door with a vicious bang. He
vowed to fire them both if the police became involved. He didn't have a license for that kind of
thing. Only the police had a license for that.
    Some of the looks
she was getting were pretty hot but it was cold in the nightclub, even with feathers.
    ''You asked for
it!" she screamed. "Go ahead! Pluck me!"
    The piano bird.
They came and took her away.
    The piano bird. She
screamed, "Pluck me!"
    But a certain
militancy about the feathers scared them all away.
    When she tells the
cop with stomach distress who books her downtown that she is probably not innocent, he
ignores her. He is grimly efficient, so
bored with routine, the feathers she wears go by him without drawing a comment.
    She is here because
she is a sentimental eagle. As a spe­cies, she is on the endangered list. She returns all the
letters her mother back in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sends, marked RETURN TO SENDER BECAUSE OF TOO
MANY CON­TENTS.
    The cop applies the
ink, gestures, "Now the thumb in this block here."
    She lets him place
her thumb firmly against the finger­print ID card. She says, "I never had much carnal knowl­edge,
but I did send a heat wave from the coast." She seems wistful. If dimpled cheeks can be called a
performance, she is smiling.
    "Press your thumb
evenly but firmly in the second block, too," he says, thinking of the Alka-Seltzer in his
desk.
    "Aren't you going
to ask me why I did it?" she asks, notic­ing that there are no ripcords on the window blinds in
the police station. No one ever bails out here.
    For that statement,
she gets a fisheye from the cop. All the nuts come out at night. He could have been a
mailman.
    "Now the index
finger. Firmly but evenly."
    She was giving him
this stare, so he shrugged. "Ok, sure. Why did you