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endless chattering,
Eddy. For your information, I spend most days dodging Pluto—when he
manages to get inside. Thanks for asking."
    "Why don't you fly off to live in the trees?
You know...like a bird."
    "Window, Eddy," Tap said. "Can't fly through
glass."
    I looked up from hanging a kettle over the
fire. "Ah, I have forgotten your window."
    "Not to belabor the obvious..."
    I stood and opened it a crack, giving Tap a
good six inches of open space. Without a word, he squeezed through
and hopped onto the sill outside. Then he flapped away into the
night.
    I knew he'd be back, so I didn't get my hopes
up.
    Neither did I bother closing the window. When
he had first appeared on the night of Virginia's funeral, I thought
I could rid myself of the wretched creature by allowing him to fly
away in such a fashion. But no sooner had I settled in with a
volume by the fire than I heard a tapping on the pane behind me—and
not so gentle either. Night after night, I would shoo the bird away
only to be assailed by its insistent tapping, its pecking beak like
a hailstorm on the glass.
    "How do you expect me to get back in if you
keep closing the window?" he asked one night.
    "Bird or devil! Wretch!" I cried. Oh,
what was the use? Now I just left it open so he could come and go
as he pleased. Anything was better than his mad tapping.
    I spent a few moments alone with my tea
before Tap came back. He squeezed through the crack in the window.
With two flaps of his wings, he resumed his perch on the back of my
rocking chair.
    I saw his beak open and I winced.
    "I believe we were—" he began but I quickly
held up my hand, cutting him off.
    "Tap, please. In deference to my poor head."
It had only gotten worse and the tea hadn't helped. Furthermore, I
felt myself descending.
    "—talking about love, Eddy," the bird resumed
without missing a beat, whispering now. "There. Is that
better?"
    I sipped my tea. "I don't recall anybody
talking about love. Nobody but you, that is."
    "Oh, but your head is filled with visions of
it."
    "What do you know of my head?"
    The bird soft-cawed a chuckle. "Your thoughts
are an open book to me, Eddy. You're thinking of that Coppelius
dame."
    He had gradually left off his whispering and
spoke once again at his usual overloud pitch.
    "What of it?" I asked.
    "Nothing. Just saying..."
    "Well, quit saying."
    I stood and taking my candle and tea with me
walked over to my desk. Perhaps by leaving him in shadows and
sitting with my back to the bird, I could dissuade him from
blabbering on so. Alas, I knew better. Nothing dissuaded him.
    But perhaps this time, he had a point.
    I picked up my pen, but before dipping it,
mused aloud, "Oh, to hear my name fall from her lips..."
    " Gawk! That's just plain embarrassing,
Eddy. I suppose there's no way I can un-hear that?"
    I dipped my pen and wrote, 'To' . I
wanted to write Olimpia's name, but all at once lost my courage and
just left a blank underline. Perhaps someday she would know for
whom my poem was intended. I was still scandalized by my feelings
so soon after Virginia's death.
    Perhaps, because of this, words deserted
me.
    "'To,'" Tap said, as I laid my pen down and
reached for a blank sheet. "Is that what you're going to call it?
'To'? Oh, brother! Do you want me to help you?"
    "There are no rusty chalices in this one,
Tap."
    "You make a guy famous and this is the thanks
you get?"
    I had for days been formulating a new story.
Now was as good a time as any to put down the first lines while
they were still fresh in my mind. I dipped my pen.
    'Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up
together in my paternal halls.'
    "It doesn't even rhyme," Tap said.
    "Shut up!" I cried.
    "Touchy," said Tap, but he gave me a few
moments of peace. I would remember to snap at him more often.
    I wrote in silence.
    "But it is not only thoughts of love dancing
in your head." His voice came out of the darkness that shrouded my
room. "There is still the matter of a certain corpse buried behind
a