III

Birding is a dance. It takes a lot of grace and rhythm to approach a bird, let alone spot one. My father says it has a lot to do with approach. He says approach is how music finds your feet, kind of like dancing, for which he would reminisce about mother dotingly. Their first dance was at a prep school dance – once of those up-tight gatherings where all the kids divide into girls and boys and stare their shoelaces until their eyes burn holes in their feet. Father says that was the cause for the dance-craze, “The Hot Foot.” He’d managed to fend off is competition by feigning a dreadful illness and letting mother nurse him to health. She’d come over every day to do so, ignoring all the other boys to play house nurse to my pseudo-ill father. She’s a very nurturing woman, but she can be quite vindictive; as was the case when she discovered before the dance that he’d feigned his illness just to isolate himself with her.
She was flattered of course, but didn’t care for his duplicitous act. So as revenge, she dressed up a homosexual boy to look like her to dance with father for the first dance. The boy, a smallish lad, whiter than the whitest cocaine (one of Father’s pet similes), was a beautiful sort and with my mother’s makeup, he became divine. Suffice to say, father was quite smitten until he discovered that his true love, Lily, wasn’t so Lilliputian after all.
So it was that one Tuesday afternoon, my father found himself on the twelfth floor of his office complex, sitting in one of his power meeting to talk about what powerful men talk about, when a package arrived with a delivery man named Chad.
It was a bit surprising to all his fellow executives that a package had to be delivered directly to him, but to hear father tell it, it sounded pretty urgent.
They were talking about their favorite subject, how to make more money and create different markets and what not when father’s secretary alerted him of the package. Confused, he asked her to wait, but she said it was urgent. He wondered what it could’ve been and asked to bring send it in. That’s when Chad burst in the door, all smiles in his tight tan deliveryman garb, buttoned up, but wearing tan shorts and mocha moccasins. He went directly over to my father put the package on the table and revealed it to be a small boom box. At this point, Chad asked if anyone had asked for a special delivery.
My father’s eyes became saucers, as wide as he was telling me the story over dinner that night. Chad turned on the boom box, which played some dance tune from CC Music Factory, whatever that means. My father swears it was a good tune up until this day. The moment Chad took off his shirt and danced on the conference room table, my father slinked in his designer leather chair and covered his face with his cornstarch blue tie, which he wore with another black suit, Armani, he said; the conference room phone rang. He pulled the receiver close to him and knew exactly who was calling.
“Hi honey,” he sighed. He nodded along as she spoke very calmly. “Yes, I got your gift. It’s…lovely…the guys just love it.”
He looked over as the other suits cowered in their seats except for Stephen, who was a flamer.
“Yes, I’ll pick up our son from school today. No, I won’t be late. Yes I can pick up a gallon of milk on my way back as well. Uh-huh. Very well played my dear. Goodbye.”
Defeated, he hung up the phone and left the office, his head quietly slunking between his sagging shoulders.