After that initial visit, Sailor became a regular fixture at Jo's side. I tried not to be bothered by this, and the other staff were charitable enough to pretend that I was successful. I ignored their age difference, since I didn't want to be a hypocrite as well as a fantasist. And I focused on my work, for all its lack of interest. 

Gradually, I got used to the sight of them, and thinking of them as a mated pair. Almost like they were the mallards that floated on the harbor and occasionally waddled over to snack from my hand. I noticed that the male ducks would often stand back and allow their companions to eat first, and I thought of what Jo said to me on that day when he first brought her around, and how much his interest in Sailor's welfare must have shaped that interaction, rather than anything he might have felt about me. 

I loved ducks, you know. In truth, I loved any living thing. Ducks can't propose to humans, so Jo's previous words about getting closer could only be meaningless nonsense that I misinterpreted for speech. 

My increased diligence, or maybe it was my tragic origin story, convinced Amelia to keep me on for the fall and winter. And so the rest of September glided by, like a maple seed on the wings of the wind. 

Although she mostly went wherever Jo did, once in a while, Sailor would turn up at the café on her own. 

Usually, it was for nothing more important than two black coffees or a can of Moxie. (By the way, every Moxie product that leaves our shelves funds a smile from Bullwinkle, and I heartily recommend picking some up.) Her solo visits seemed to increase in frequency as the weather got colder, and I suspected rheumatism in Jo. 

When she was alone, all civility flew out the window, and she would instantly become the centre of everyone's barely concealed attention. Sometimes it was just strangers' remarks, banal conversations about the weather or where she (really) came from, but some of the men were so bold as to nearly run into her as they glided to the counter. Can't say I loved that. 

Human nature always scared me with its frankness. I could almost feel sorry for her, if she hadn't caused me equal suffering with her own unmitigated clinginess towards the one person who held us both in a trance.  

She acquired a lot more clothes in the period after her first visit. Like I said, he loved her. Today she was wearing a charming little one piece with daisies on them, and black kitten heels. 

This was also the day when a sparrow got into our rafters. Now, we were used to birds, especially the rock doves and gulls that would scrounge for litter along the harborwalk. They were a principled nuisance that mostly kept to the deck, and we in turn managed to stay out of their way. But today a bird much smaller and more peculiar than any of those was bold enough to assail the open kitchen and drive Amelia into a frenzy. 

"We're under attack! Lock it down!" Amelia screamed, fumbling with the door of the kitchen which was seldom closed, then vainly shoving Bullwinkle at the doorway as he wandered over to help. Alas, our resident square was not square enough to block the entire airspace. The small bird immediately flew through his outstretched arms and up to the rafters. 

"Girls, that is a literal shit cloud in my establishment," Amelia said to us as Gianna came up my right side, broomstick and duster already in hand. "If it builds one of its grody little domiciles up there I am plucking out my eyes. Please do something - Gianna, not like that!!"

Too late. Gianna's broomstick flew at the bottom of the rafters with a loud thwack!! And our storefront, which I frequently suspected was made of nothing but laminate and paper-maché, creaked and groaned in a way that made everybody bow a little lower, and the hairs on our back stand straighter. 

"It's too short!" Gianna cried, as if that was the problem. 

I thought of the want of structural integrity of my little loft above the store, and gulped. "Maybe, we can get a stepladder," I proposed delicately. 

"Stepladder's propping up a broken shelf in the pantry," Bullwinkle muttered as he walked up, with a fierce side-eye towards his business partner. 

Normally, when slapped with a fair criticism about her spending priorities, Amelia would blaze a path to the kitchen without even a look over her shoulder for satisfaction. But seeing as her beloved sanctum had just been dusted with biohazardous waste, she could only chew her lip and endure sharing the same space as the accuser: stone-faced, while the unspoken accusation dissipated like a bad fart. 

"I could see if I have a pole sander," Bullwinkle added, eyeing the distance. "Failing that...we might still have some furring strips in storage that are that long."

"Yes to whatever that is, get it," Amelia agreed immediately.

"Aw, Chief, no. For a little birdie like that, you could just get out a stiff measuring tape and give its little toes a whack," Gianna suggested, and I thought it was an uncharacteristically humane remark coming from her. 

The handypeople were resonating and I didn't want to get in their way. I stood apart from them, and surveyed the rest of the store for anyone who might have needed assistance. 

My eyes caught on Sailor, as they so often did. (Was I a human thistle?) She was standing to the side of the counter, and had put down her coffees in alarm. 

"Sorry, you might want to step outside for a moment," I offered, and tried not to make it sound like the lead-up to one of my recurring daydreams where we literally got into fisticuffs. "Was it just the coffees for you?"

"Is everything okay?" Sailor ventured to ask. Her eyes were such a pretty shape, I thought. How was it that they artfully fanned out whenever she looked at Jo, yet seemed to exude roundness and guilelessness when she wanted something from me? 

"Uh, yeah. We're just trying to figure out the best way to get rid of this little bird..."

"It's a sparrow, right? The library had lots of those. Could I try something?" 

The library? "Well, um, I'm not..."

But before I could dissuade her, Sailor had already made her way to the space beneath the plank. Her eyes turned upwards as the bird darted to and fro, untroubled by the furore it had kicked up below. 

And then unexpectedly, she leapt up with her mouth open. As if she was trying to eat the bird. 

The kitten heels landed hard against the linoleum. And then, before any of us could react, she did it again. An undeniable image surfaced in my head, of a giant trevally on one of Grandma's nature programs. 

She did this maybe eight or ten times before I couldn't stand it anymore. Something about the pointless leaping, along with the way everyone simply froze, the scarred look on Amelia's face - it was practically a skit. 

I started laughing hysterically, and I couldn't stop laughing. 

I'm not sure if it was the sound of my laughter that caused it, but the sparrow finally took notice of us. It fluttered its wings and for a second, seemed to lose its balance. At that moment, Bullwinkle ran up, took out the length of plywood he had retrieved, and gently tipped the little hobgoblin into the netherworld from which it had tried to escape. 

With a few more well-placed warning taps to the floor, he was able to escort it outside. All of us watched in fascination as the little fluffball tripped and hopped its way onto the caprail, like a spurned barfly. In the manner of birds, it then perched there insolently, staring back at us as if hexing all our families. 

"Good work," I said breathlessly to Sailor, who was standing behind me. A flower hiding behind a leaf. 

She nodded, and as if we were suddenly as close as sisters, took the very elbow of my sleeve and suspended her hand there. 

I looked back at her, surprised. In that moment, it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, it was Jo who brought out Sailor's worst tendencies. The same way that I would only be insufferable as a child when I was being shuttled by my grandparents to recitals and ballroom classes. How I would have dreaded being judged on the basis of those isolated encounters! How dehumanizing it would have been, if anyone had done it...

She really was a sweet girl. She was probably desperate to tell me that. 

Sailor, oblivious to my thoughts, blinked back the bright sunshine, and the weightless strands of her dark hair appeared for a brief moment to be spun out of gold. "You can learn a lot from birds," she said, without a hint of self-awareness in either the direction of the future or the past. And I tried my best not to laugh in her tiny face.