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at ten o'clock at night. She has little patience for prudes.
    "And I won't ever forget. One day you brought a pigeon to school in a wicker cage. It was for show-and-tell," the stranger on the platform says.
    "That's right." Louisa remembers how at a prearranged time Miss Knott nodded to Louisa, who fetched the covered cage from the back of the classroom and carried it up to Miss Knott's wooden desk. Louisa had been terrified. She scratched at her head, chewed on her lips. She was flustered to be standing before a perhaps inhospitable classroom full of fourth graders. She began to sweat and twitter.
    "Go ahead" Miss Knott said, so finally, after one large swallow, Louisa pulled back a worn chamois cloth that had been covering the cage. The bird was lean, strong, and gorgeous. Its iridescent feathers looked like a jewel.
    A few children snickered because pigeons were as common as dust in New York City. Louisa opened a small door on the wicker cage. The bird hopped over to her outstretched pointer finger. And Louisa removed the bird from its enclosure.
    "Ladies and gentlemen," she said to the roomful of fourth graders, just as Walter had practiced it with her. "Study this bird well." Louisa paused with the pigeon perched on her finger. The bird was nearly purple everywhere except for her extraordinary neck and her feet, which were the healthiest shade of bright pink magenta. She had a small white ring around her orange eye, an eye that did not blink. The bird bobbed herself nervously about, ducking and stretching her neck as though she were a miniature Irish boxer in the thick of a rumble. "Ladies and gentlemen," Louisa repeated, though they were really just boys and girls. "Please remember what this bird looks like," she said and turned to the bank of windows at the head of the classroom. After pushing on one of the wooden slats that held the rippled panes in place, she drew the window up with one hand while extending her arm outside. The bird took flight simply, magnificently, as birds do, and Louisa turned to collect her cage. The class mustered a round of applause for Louisa, though her demonstration remained to them as mysterious as the bird's iridescent neck.
    Mysterious, that is, until the following day at school, when Louisa
returned with her cage once more, and again at the appointed time Miss Knott gave her nod, and Louisa, standing before the class, no longer nervous but this time with all the confidence of a studied magician, whisked the chamois cover off the cage. Inside was the exact same bird that Louisa had set free the day before.
    She began to explain to the class, "You see, Marlene is a homing pigeon..."
    "So how's Marlene?" Arthur Vaughn asks her.
    "Marlene's dead," she says.
    "Oh, I'm sorry." Arthur twists his bottom lip with his fingers. "Hmm," he says and then nothing more. Louisa waits. He twists his lip some more before looking up at the subway ceiling. "I've been meaning to ask you" he finally says. Arthur keeps his voice very quiet, and Louisa has to lean in closer to hear. She can smell him, pepper and beeswax. "Ever since that day in school I've been wondering, how
do
pigeons know their way home?" When he speaks he moves the tips of his fingers, as if conducting.
    Louisa shakes her head, blushing. She has no idea how pigeons find their way home.
    The tunnel fills with sound. The subway train pulls into the station. Arthur and Louisa watch it come to a stop in front of them. The doors make a hissing pop as they open and Arthur turns to smile at Louisa, waiting for her to board the subway first. She steps inside, rigidly aware of his presence behind her as if he were a huge magnet pulling her heart, her lungs, her stomach into his.
    The train lurches forward. Once he has found a seat for them both, he leans into her, placing his mouth not more than three inches away from her ear. "Well, how do they?" Arthur asks so softly that Louisa smiles.
    "Who?" she asks, wanting to keep his mouth, his breath this