Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates

Author:Joyce Carol Oates [Oates, Joyce Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780062195692
Amazon: 0062195697
Publisher: Ecco
Published: 2012-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

A Brutal Murder in a Public Place

At Gate C33 of Newark International Airport in a waiting area of seats facing curved glass windows and a heavily occluded sky beyond the windows, a sudden frantic chirping!

Everyone looks around—upward—the frantic chirping continues—the bird—(if it is a bird)—is hidden from view.

A bird? Is that a—bird? Here? How—here?

In these rows of seats, strangers. Directly in front of the curved-glass windows facing the runway outside and the overcast New Jersey sky are three sections of seats of ten seats each, with six plate-glass windows facing each section of seats: in all, eighteen windows.

On the other side of the walkway, which is not wide, no more than a few yards, are rows of seats arranged in the usual utilitarian way: back to back and, across a narrow aisle, facing one another.

Barely, there is room for people to make their way through this narrow aisle, pulling suitcases.

You might guess fifteen seats in each row. Ten such rows of seats at Gate C33.

This place of utter anonymity, impersonality.

This place of randomness.

Emptiness.

And suddenly—the tiny bird-chirping!

An improbable and heartrending little musical trill like an old-fashioned music box!

A sound to make you glance upward, smiling—in expectation of seeing—what?

At the ceiling above the closest row of seats facing the window there appears to be a ledge of some kind, probably containing air vents—(from my seat about fifteen feet from the outer row of seats by the window, I am not able to see the front of the ledge)—and very likely the trapped little bird—(if it is a bird, it must be “trapped” in this place, and if it is between the ledge and the ceiling, it must be little)—is perched there.

The seated travelers continue to look around, quizzical and bemused.

A white-haired woman in a wheelchair squints upward, with an expression of mild anxiety. A contingent of soldiers—mostly young, mostly male—mostly dark-skinned—in casual-camouflage uniform like mud-splotched pajamas—squint upward frowning as if the bird’s chirping might be a warning, or an alarm.

How is it possible, a bird here?

Though the chirping is fairly loud, rapid-fire and somewhere close by, yet no one has sighted the bird. A lanky young man with a backpack stands, to squint toward the ceiling, with the air of an alert bird-watcher, but the bird remains invisible.

Another possible place (I see now) in which the little bird might be hidden is in the leaves of a stunted little tree near the windows.

This is a melancholy tree of no discernible species in a plastic pot meant to resemble a clay pot. At first you assume that the tree must be artificial then, when you look more closely, you see to your surprise that the stunted little tree is a living thing.

The tree is a well-intentioned “decorative touch” in Newark International Airport. Intended to soften the harsh utilitarian anonymity of the place.

And the horror of randomness—of strangers gathered together to no purpose other than to depart from one another as swiftly and expeditiously as possible.

But the little tree has not fared well in this mostly fluorescent-lit environment.

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