Velocity

room.
    Billy glimpsed dark fir floors, midnight-blue mohair furniture, a Persian-style rug. The artwork seemed to be from the 1930’s.
    He made some noise on the hardwood floor, but Ivy did not. She crossed the room as if a slip of air always separated the soles of her feet from the fir planks, the way a sylph fly may choose to step across a pond without dimpling the surface tension of the water.
    At the back of the house, the kitchen matched the size of the living room and contained a dining area.
    Beadboard paneling, French-pane cabinet doors, a white tile floor with black-diamond inlays, and an ineffable quality made him think of the bayou and New Orleans charm.
    Two windows between the kitchen and the back porch were open for ventilation. In one window sat a large black bird.
    The creature’s perfect stillness suggested taxidermy. Then it cocked its head.
    Although Ivy said nothing, Billy felt invited to the table, and even as he sat, she put a glass of ice in front of him. She picked up a pitcher from the table and poured tea.
    Also on the red-and-white-checkered oilcloth were another glass of tea, a dish of fresh cherries, a sheet-cake pan piled high with unshelled nuts, and a bowl half full of liberated pistachios.
    “You’ve got a nice place,” Billy said.
    “It was my grandmother’s house.” She took three cherries from the dish. “She raised me.”
    Ivy spoke softly, as always. Even at the tavern, she never raised her voice, yet she never failed to make herself heard.
    Not one to pry, Billy was surprised to hear himself ask, in a voice softened to match hers, “What happened to your mother?”
    “She died in childbirth,” Ivy said as she lined up the cherries on the window sill beside the bird. “My father just moved on.”
    The tea had been sweetened with peach nectar, a hint of mint.
    As Ivy returned to the table, sat, and continued shelling the nuts, the bird watched Billy and ignored the cherries.
    “Is he a pet?” Billy asked.
    “We own each other. He seldom comes farther than the window, and when he does, he respects my rules of cleanliness.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “He hasn’t told me yet. Eventually he will.”
    Never in Billy’s life, until now, had he felt entirely at ease and vaguely disoriented at the same time. Otherwise, he might not have found himself asking such an odd question: “Which came first, the real bird or the one on the front door?”
    “They arrived together,” she said, giving him an answer no less odd than his question.
    “What is he—a crow?”
    “He’s more lordly than that,” she said. “He’s a raven, and wants us to believe he’s nothing more.”
    Billy did not know what to say to that, so he said nothing. He felt comfortable with silence, and apparently so did she.
    He realized that he had lost the sense of urgency with which he had left Whispering Pines. Time no longer seemed to be running out; in fact time seemed not to matter here.
    Finally the bird turned to the cherries, using its bill to strip the meat from the pits with swift efficiency.
    Ivy’s long nimble fingers appeared to work slowly, yet she quickly added shelled pistachios to the bowl.
    “This house is so quiet,” Billy said.
    “Because the walls haven’t soaked up years of useless talk.”
    “They haven’t?”
    “My grandmother was deaf. We communicated by sign language and the written word.”
    Beyond the back porch lay a flower garden in which all blooms were red or deep blue, or royal purple. If one leaf stirred, if a cricket busied itself, if a bee circled a rose, no sound found its way through the open windows.
    “You might like some music,” Ivy said, “but I’d prefer none.”
    “You don’t like music?”
    “I get enough of it at the tavern.”
    “I like zydeco. And Western swing. The Texas Top Hands. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.”
    “Anyway, there’s already music,” she said, “if you’re still enough to hear it.”
    He must not have been still enough.
    Taking the photo of the dead mantis from his pocket and placing it on the table, Billy said, “I found this on the floor in Barbara’s room at Whispering Pines.”
    “You can keep it if you want.”
    He didn’t know what to make of that. “Were you visiting her?”
    “I sit with her sometimes.”
    “I didn’t know.”
    “She was kind to me.”
    “You didn’t start to work at the tavern until a year after she was in a coma.”
    “I knew her before.”
    “Really.”
    “She was