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agentsketchbook · 1 year

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2-5-23 Pigeon's Nest

Ding

Dong

Leaning on the tips of his toes, Hansa peered up into the peephole of the door before him, as if there was any chance for him to view the interior through such a myopic piece of glass curved the wrong direction. He bent sideways, looking at the orange glow of lights inside the familiar house. Hansa wasn’t known for his patience or ability to sit still, fidgeting with his keychain in his pocket, thumbing over the plastic grooves of the miniature figure’s coif. He rocked on the soles of his shoes, back and forth for what seemed like forever before he decided he’d waited too long.

Ding Dong

Knock Knock

Pressing his ear to the door, he could make out some sounds. So there was life after all. There was a distant and muffled shout and footsteps advancing. Hansa stepped backwards from being flush with the door, allowing a tall slender gentleman he knew well to swing it open, light hitting Hansa’s face and warming his complexion as he did so.

“Oh, it's Hansa. Honey, it's only Hansa!” He crowed behind him.

A female voice called out from what he believed to be the kitchen, judging by his memory. “I heard you the first time, don’t make him wait outside, come in!”

“Thanks for letting me come over, Mr. Wing. And Mrs. Wing.” Hansa slipped his thumb under the heel of his left shoe with his right hand, familiar with the drill of entering the Wing household with respect to the homeowner’s boundaries. He carried his scuffed once-upon-a-time white shoes to the closet next to the doorway, placing them in an empty spot on the ground. He gazed at a particularly large pair of sky blue canvas shoes. They look like they’d hardly ever seen the outside of the confines of the closet. Hansa didn’t recognize this pair, but it was starkly clear they belonged to Pigeon Wing. Or at least, once upon a time. Who would wear them now? Anybody? “Hansa, you want something to drink? Water? Juice? We have Coka!”

He snapped out of his thoughts, turning to face Mrs. Wing. “Oh uh, no thank you, thank you for asking.”

“I get you some juice. Wait here.”

Before Hansa could even protest, she was scampering down the hallway to fetch the young man a drink. He couldn’t recall ever entering this house and leaving without something in his stomach. The hospitality he received from the Wing family was always thrust upon him. Perhaps a little forceful, but always well intentioned. Hansa took it no matter what he was feeling.

The newly empty nested mother returned to Hansa with a tall glass of orange juice, placing it in his open palm.

“Here, drink it up. You’re so short- like me, you need to grow,” she fussed. “You want something else?”

“Aha, no thank you, Mrs. Wing. I just wanted to go up to um. You know. Pigeon’s room. I-I called earlier and Mr. Wing told me it was alright to take anything home with me that I wanted from him.”

Mrs. Wing’s face changed at the mention of her late son. A sadness clouded her eyes, lips pressing together to contain it.

“I don’t remember that, he not tell me. You can go, but if you need something, tell me, okay? I get it for you, anything.”

Even with the painful reality, she managed to compose herself and maintain her gracious host persona for guests. Hansa had been over countless times before, and yet, she never waivered or let her guard down around him. He could sense a kind distance she’d kept between him and her through the cordiality. Despite this impersonal care, he’d return the pleasantry.

“Thank you, Mrs. Wing!” Hansa plodded up the hard wooden stairs that creaked beneath his socked feet. He made a turn into the second door down to the left, putting his palm to the cool metal handle, ice cold glass in his other hand.

It was so dark. The room was nearly black, save for the dusk fading in through the window past the white curtains. Hansa’s free hand planted against the wall, searching for a switch he’d never had to turn on before. Every time he was over, Pigeon was leading the way and lighting the room. That, or he had it on ready for him.

To his surprise, the room was very neatly laid out. Pigeon’s bed was made, there were no clothes strewn on the floor or stray papers carefully set up in little project piles, and his desk was free of empty bottles of Coka Co or half eaten bowls of ramen noodles. There was, however, an assortment of boxes by the bed full of belongings. Clothing, books, and… more books. A lot of books, actually. Several of these boxes were filled with notebooks as well as published titles. They were all neatly placed in the cardboard and plastic bins with care.

His parents must have tidied up the young man’s living space some time after the news he’d never come home. That he’d gone missing. Police reported to the Wing residence that their son had become a casualty in his involvement with a drug operation and that his body had gone missing from the morgue he was taken to. Hansa knew the truth a little further than this, but he would have to stick to the authority’s story. How heartbreaking it was to not only feel involved in the passing of their baby boy, but to keep from them the knowledge where his body was safely buried.

It felt almost dirty to be in their home, in their son’s room, going through his belongings with the intent of walking away with them. Hansa pushed that feeling down as deep as he could. It wasn’t helping him to feel so gravely guilty. He just wanted to get in and get out without causing pain or feeling pain. He was already failing, however, as a dull aching began in his throat and the middle of his face from the nasal cavity out the eyes. Emotion was filling his face and chest quickly at these thoughts.

He took a sip of the sweet orange juice in his hand. Mrs. Wing always freshly squeezed it from the few trees they grew out in the backyard. As he approached Pigeon’s desk to set the glass down, he could see the foggy silhouettes of them through the curtains. There was no wind to breathe between their leaves, making them appear still, as though they were frozen in a moment in time. In the corner of Hansa’s eye, the alarm clock on the bedside dresser ticked, proving that time was indeed moving on without him. He made a mental note that he was intruding on the bereaved couple’s evening, inspiring him to move towards the boxes and get started. He pulled his face up with a sniff, furrowing his brow and directing his focus to the boxes.

He gave a glance to the ones with clothing, acutely aware that they were too big to be of any use to him or anyone he knew. Sunshine was much too massive to fit in the clothes of any of his loved ones, even if Pigeon was a giant too. Blackery was too bulked up to wear the gaunt Wing’s garments. Even still, Hansa picked up the soft button up on the top of the pile, holding it up by the shoulders as though to prop his friend up before him. Many a time, Hansa would be too proud to wear a jacket out. Hell, even long sleeves. And every time, Pigeon would hand the shivering young man whatever shirt he was wearing over his T-shirt the moment he could hear chattering teeth.

Unlike those times, the shirt in his hands was not warmed and fragrant with body warmth and cozy lived in cotton. He held it close to his chest and gave it an inhale, taking note of the empty room temperature and sterile smell of detergent. Along with organizing Pigeon’s space and things, his folks have appeared to do whatever laundry he had not gotten around to.

A deep inhale and sigh out of his chest made Hansa sink to the floor, sitting in the middle of the boxes with his legs crossed. He arrived in his usual tank top and jeans, still feeling the chill of the evening outside from waiting to be let in. The warmth of the house did start to tingle his skin, but wasn’t doing enough. An arm slipped through the oversized sleeve, then another until Hansa was swimming in his best friend’s shirt. He scrunched the sleeves up his arms to his elbows for use of his hands. Owning the button up simply didn’t give the same feeling as borrowing it. Still, Hansa got the only thing he really wanted from the box of clothes.

Moving onto the other boxes, he peeked into the ones full of notebooks of all sorts. He began to pull them out. Arranging them around him in piles similar to how Wing would lay out his homework on the carpet around himself as Hansa crashed on his bed, keeping him company and accountable for his concentration. He had composition books, spiral notebooks, planners of every shape and size, and itty bitty memo books. Some were empty and never touched, but the majority were filled, their pages fanning out from use. Most peculiar was a little wooden keepsake box full of tiny keys, far too small to fit any door he knew of.

Hansa thumbed through the pages of a small thick book, the soft leather cover bowing in his hand and thin pages gently brushing his fingertips as his eyes scanned the contents. He looked to the plastic bins and boxes surrounding him, noting how every single book must have been filled with Pigeon’s neat and tiny handwriting. It differed greatly from Hansa’s large and scrawled characters, all joined in the wrong places and scorned by all of his past teachers. He didn’t have any current professors to disappoint or irritate with his writing ability, but he thought of Pigeon's excited conversations about his creative writing course, his gripes about the stuffy professor in his English course, and so forth.

He knew Pigeon had a knack for writing and stories, but his towering friend would never share his work. It didn’t bother Hansa as much as it could have. After all, he didn’t want to step on his toes and make the already skittish Wing uncomfortable. He always had his head in the clouds, however, and was curious as to what he saw from up there with his eyes in the sky. Now that he was really up there, he could not ask. Hansa looked to the books surrounding him instead to tell his truth. They were filled up page to page with poetry, his thoughts, his feelings. These books told of his love for life, and his fears, his dread. He had an eye for the beauty in things as dark as death, and it made Hansa understand how Pigeon could stay so melancholy at baseline.

One thing that caught his attention was a series of notebooks with locks on them, about the size of a Bible. This made the box of tiny little keys that Hansa produced make a lot more sense. Each of the notebooks had different doodles in ballpoint pen, stickers, and collaged scraps of paper on the outside covers and backs. Every one sported its own color and style. He looked through them, rubbing his palms and fingertips over them, taking in the texture and thinking of how well loved they were. He could even see the ruffled up edges of the pages, clearly frequented as opposed to the impeccable neatness of the brand new notebooks pigeon never used.

Hansa picked up one of fourteen secured notebooks, inspecting the lock and passively prying at the edges with his fingers, testing their strength. No dice. “No duh,” he thought. It wasn’t just for show. He looked at the box of keys, noting that there were multiple of the same key, two to a small coiled ring about half an inch wide.

He picked up a key and flipped it over, closely observing the ridges on the side before trying it on the lock of a notebook. With a click, the mechanism released, spilling forth Pigeon Wing’s pages to the middle, allowing Hansa to drink in the sight of them.

His eyes darted across the spread of words, skimming them for an inkling as to why they were guarded so closely. It seemed to him that Wing was writing about his feelings for someone. Through the thickness of his chest and throat, he chuckled to an absent Pigeon, “You sly thing, I didn’t think you had it in you…” He picked up that it was about a certain “him,” and found himself slowing down to read through. Was this really what he was seeing? These were intimate feelings. More than just amicable, and even more than describing a crush. There was a heaviness that pooled in Hansa’s heart as he absorbed the text. Pigeon felt things so strongly that he could compete with a reader like Sunshine for the title of most emotional. However, Hansa was carrying the burden of feeling for the both of them.

He never knew Pigeon felt so strongly for another man, let alone another person. Hansa reminisced and realized his friend had never once mentioned a girl in his life outside of interacting with family. Hansa used to egg Pigeon on about whether or not he was interested in someone special, and even played games such as asking who in Molly’s gang he would see himself with. Pigeon didn’t find kiss marry kill very stimulating, so it was a curiosity that remained unsated.

Hansa’s eyes scanned the finely written text, wondering if he should even be reading something so personal and intimate. He continued regardless, until his eyes froze on a name.

His name.

Was that right?

He read the following lines closely and with a careful cognizance.

“I just wish I could do something about how I feel about Hansa. He has never once left my side, and maybe that’s the problem. I’m always feeling so vulnerable near him, and it feels good to let myself be soft and loosen up around him. I feel like I can be myself, except for the matter of telling him how strongly in love with him I am. It’s overwhelming at times. And other times, it feels like we’ve been married for decades. I’ve never wanted to spend the rest of my life with someone else, but I could see myself growing old with him. It’s a fact that he is so dedicated to caring for his mother. Nobody could deny it. I have no doubt in my head, as rose tinted as it may be, that he would do the same to care for me if I ever needed it one day. I would take care of him until my dying days if the roles were reversed.”

Hansa felt tears pushing out from the intense numb stinging of his face as he read on.

“I want to do what he does for me. To encourage him to follow his dreams and pursuits. He’s such a gorgeous and talented illustrator, to add. Sakana may be the resident artist in the gang, but I think Hansa is the best. His drawings for my writing are my favorite. Even if I don’t let him read it, he always draws the perfect thing for it. He’s perfect. So passionate about what he cares about, in fact. I hope he feels passionate about me as well.”

The next line whiplashed his heart, nearly pulling the tears back into his skull as the sultry words echoed loudly in his head. Perhaps a little too personal to be reading in Mr. and Mrs. Wing’s all too squeaky clean home. He felt like he’d opened Pandora's box, or blared a siren in the middle of the silent suburb. He hurriedly joined the halves of the book back together, latching the lock to its original position. Hansa was unclear about whether or not to continue, but he decided now and here was neither the time nor the place to do so.

His face flushed at the confession. Had he really been this dense as not to notice how strongly Wing felt before? He knew Pigeon would always cling to him, wallflower that he was. He knew he would confide in him and lean on his shoulder when times were rough for him at home. And he certainly knew that Pigeon was a fan of passionate works, always mentioning the next romance novels he’d move onto. Maybe Hansa should have understood sooner, despite it being a secret guarded by a series of locks and keys.

He wiped his tears with the sleeve of the massive shirt he donned upon him and took in a deep breath, recollecting himself and clearing his head. Hansa glanced at the alarm clock through blurry eyes, shocked at how much time flew by. 10:01 PM, it read. He had to get going, he thought. He turned his head to all the boxes with a determination to move them all into his car.

Creeeaaak…

The yellow rose whipped his head to look at the open door, seeing Mrs. Wing peeking in.

“Are you okay in here?” She asked in a voice softer than her usually high volume.

She stepped into the room and Hansa stood up, giving a sniffle before replying.

“I’m fine. I think I’m ready to go, I just need to take…” Hansa gestured to the books strewn across the floor and the boxes they lived in. “all of these back with me.”

“Okay, okay.” Her head nodded, eyes fixed on the books with a worried distance. “You need help? I help you.”

“Oh um… Don’t worry about it, I got it. I just need to take a few trips and I’ll be out of your coif.”

“Nooo. I help you. Okay?” Their eyes met and he could see the sincerity in them, pleading for him to allow her to help. His face softened to match hers, and he sighed.

“Okay.”

#gallery #writing #hansa geoluhread #pigeon wing #mr. wing #mrs. wing #Pigeon's Nest

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