Saturday nights at Spectrum are go-go boy dance parties. Feverish, tight-shirted gay men, mullet-clad lesbians and some straight couples, pack onto that famous floor. The flashing lights are distorted by their forms. Techno blares from body-sized amps on all sides. The disco ball dangles over the center of the floor. Nothing escapes its smattering of flexible circles of light. The flashing surface of the crowd of heads forms a rhythmic, waving sea.

But Auggie works on Fridays, and things are different on Fridays.

Each Friday, Auggie goes to work at 9am, to a computer job. He is a computer guy. He is also a professional singer. He leaves his day job at 5pm and heads over to Mambo’s, an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, where he sings for three hours, from 6pm-9pm. He then rushes from Mambo’s to be at Spectrum by 9:30pm. He has done this every night for the past three years, without missing a day or even being late.

There is no need for Auggie to hurry, because the bar is empty at 9:30pm. The checkered wood bowls are overflowing with pretzels, and the bartender leans forward on his elbows to speak to two men who possess the easy quality of managers, or owners, during an off-peak time. Auggie and these men rarely speak. They call out a joke or two, and Auggie laughs, but mostly he’s consumed with unwinding cords, flipping switches, inserting and ejecting tape cassettes and CDs. He says testing into the microphone.

Auggie’s system cost him five thousand dollars. He refers to it as phenomenal, and he does not appreciate when people do not respect it. His pet peeve is when customers cradle the very top of the microphone with their hands. This produces an echo chamber that results in a phenomenal amount of feedback, disabling the system. He also hates when people scream into the microphone. In his black pants, pointy black dress shoes, button-down shirt and gold chain, Auggie eagerly awaits customers near the opening of the room, where it is brighter. The closer to the back wall of the bar, the darker things get.

Meanwhile, the dance floor is in the other room, popping colors at nobody. The DJ is slumped on a stool behind his equipment, fingering his CDs, eyes cast downward in concentration. Up the narrow hall, next to the door, the bouncer sits on a bench. The cuffs of his bloated, black jacket reveal hands patiently folded. With no crowd clamoring to get in, his largeness is ridiculous; his body overwhelms the room.

Auggie worries about the lack of customers. He used to think karaoke was a dying art form. “But in the past couple months,” he adds, “I’ve seen more places opening up for karaoke than I’ve ever seen in my whole life. Applebee’s is doing karaoke. Can you believe that?” He glances almost imperceptibly at the bar, at the door. “I just don’t know why they’re not coming here.”

By eleven, the crowd has grown, but there are still plenty of empty seats and space. People cluster around the bar, with mostly mixed drinks dotting the surface. The cranberry vodka seems most popular. The customers mainly consist of male couples, in their early thirties and forties, though there are two Hispanic women cuddling in the corner, flipping through one of the black-bound songbooks. Conversations are inaudible, private mumbles speckled with low laughter. A younger man leans against the wall, his expression detached, cool. With hands pressed behind his lower back, his eyes slowly scan the room. His dark hair is sleek and heavy with product; his shirt outlines his biceps and beginning potbelly.

On karaoke nights, Auggie thinks in white paper song slips. Stacks of slips can be found every third seat at the bar, along with a binder. One can also obtain a slip directly from Auggie. Each 2” X 4” square provides blanks for names and song numbers. Auggie uses these to craft the mood of the entire evening. The biggest problem for Auggie arises when customers continue to choose depressing songs. He has to do some quick thinking: “If I have 10 slips, and 5 are happy and 5 are sad, I mix them—happy, sad, happy, sad, or sad, sad, happy, sad, sad, sad.” He also has music video DVDs of cheerful, romantic songs accompanied by cheerful, romantic images, such as couples horseback riding or couples staring at the ocean, to break up the monotony. According to Auggie, this is one of the special services he supplies that other karaoke jockeys (KJs as they are referred to in the business) do not.

One of Auggie’s regulars refuses to complete slips—disrupting Auggie’s sense of order. This customer sits next to Auggie, and produces a chorus of “When am I up? When am I up?” Auggie forgets him, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes not, and the man gets angry. Auggie says he knows this man well enough now that he can command him to complete a slip. The man storms off, but minutes later, he obeys Auggie, and slinks back to his spot on the slouching burgundy couch up front.

The singers’ choices are diverse; they include everything from Dean Martin to Christina Aguilera. But there is an undeniable predilection for showtunes and Streisand that even Auggie will admit to. When he has visited other karaoke clubs in Brooklyn, particularly within the notoriously working-class Bay Ridge, he always felt limited, as a male singer, to Johnny Cash or Led Zeppelin. He would even dress differently at these places, switching to jeans and a tee shirt. He was not himself. Because Spectrum is a gay club, he says, men can sing women’s songs and women can sing men’s songs and nobody cares. Auggie feels free here. He dresses the way he wants to and sings what he pleases.

Though Auggie will not reveal who it is that annoys him, one might guess that it is Howie, a tiny man in his thirties, who wears a red flannel shirt and jeans. Howie remains up front with Auggie. He does not complete slips. He is by himself. He says hello to the man at the bar, and to Auggie and to a few others who are clearly regulars. As others sing, he smiles serenely, watching.

When Auggie introduces Howie, his voice assumes the deep, professional quality of a television weatherman. He overpronounces his words. Upon hearing his name, Howie puts his hand to his mouth, feigns disbelief, then laughs good-naturedly. The people in the room clearly recognize him, and return his chuckle. The stage is a square of carpet illuminated in white light. Suspended above the bar, roughly fifteen feet from the stage, is the monitor, a television anchored t Saturday 1:16:48 PM 6/12/2004o the wall with thick bolts. “’Half-breed’ by Cher” appears on the screen, in yellow block letters that disrupt the simple blue background. Howie closes his eyes and sways his head as he sings. He pushes invisible, Cher-length hair to the side, away from his face, in a natural way, as if he’s carried hair that long his entire life. His imitation is subtle, sincere. He does not sound like Cher, but he is trying very hard; he sings with authority, imitating every fluctuation of the original. When his song is over, he lingers on the stage and waits for the scattered clapping to cease before resuming his position next to Auggie.

There happens to be a drag queen show tonight, in the dance room, and at midnight, usually the peak time for Auggie, the room clears, and Auggie resorts to one of his cheerful DVDs. The dance floor is only moderately congested, and the karaoke crowd is a negligible addition. Auggie sits on his couch in the other room, with Howie. He waits for his people to return. Thirty minutes pass. An hour. Most of them never do.

When Auggie first introduced karaoke to Spectrum, he says that there were only two people in the bar. Within the first sixth months, he had the place packed. But then they dwindled away. Auggie thinks it is picking up again now, mostly because of his tremendous amount of energy. Aside from his system, his DVDs and his music (the best around, in his experience), Auggie will sometimes host free raffles, for tee shirts and CDs. He also keeps ten blank tapes close at hand, and will occasionally record a singer, and surprise them with the cassette when they are finished. Auggie doesn’t profit; he mostly just breaks even. But he doesn’t mind. His hobby gives him a chance to share his voice, to help others share theirs.

Auggie occasionally allows Howie to perform in special Cher-only karaoke nights. There is a photograph of Howie on Auggie’s website. Howie does not look like the man he once was—his skin has been smoothed into porcelain. His eyes are made heavy with thick, dark lashes. His lipstick is rose-colored and perfectly applied. On Cher night, Howie will not need to wave invisible hair; he has a wig, black, shiny and ample.

Though Auggie worries about the future popularity of his karaoke show, he is satisfied for right now. He believes in the release of karaoke, that it is an art form in itself. “There are artists out there who didn’t do the right thing, meet the right people, who weren’t in the right place at the right time.” Auggie believes he is one of these artists. “Myself, I get it all the time. When I work at the restaurant, I hear the same thing every night. You could be on Broadway. What are you doing here?” Auggie pauses and leans forward slightly, as if he’s telling a secret. “Well, I’ve found my own little corner of success. I have a day job, I’m enjoying myself. I’m better off.”

What does a person do at a protest? What if I have to beat a drum and my lack of rhythm throws everyone off? If no one shows up? If we run out of chants? I tend to be more of a letter-writing type.

It turns out I did beat a drum. I didn’t have a noisemaker, and I didn’t have a sign, so like every other person in my position, I grabbed an empty blue water cooler jug from the Writing Division office and carted it out to the sundial in the middle of the cobblestone Campus Walk. It was 1pm. All four divisions of the School of the Arts, Visual Arts, Writing, Theater and Film, gathered and grew. Andy Mannle, a fellow writing student, donned a full-body black and white cow suit. The cow, a symbol for the School of the Arts, was named Cash Cow since the School of the Arts rakes in millions of dollars annually for the university, yet has to apply to the university to use even 50% of that amount.

Paper and markers and masking tape were distributed, and each of us taped signs to our bodies declaring our Columbia-induced debt. My sign said $86,000. I tended to complain a lot about money issues, but for the first time, I saw this number reflected all around me. Many other students had the same amount of debt. Some of them had more. Last year’s graduating class alone walked away with $9.6 million in debt.

Chi Wright, the central organizer of the protest, took the mic. Amplifiers stood on either side of him. The chanting began.

“What do we want?” Chi yelled.

“More tuition!” three people yelled.

“When do we want it?”

“NOW!”

More tuition? The main item we were protesting was tuition cost, which is expected to rise to nearly $40,000 annually in the next three years, making Columbia the most expensive Arts program in the world. The whole point of the protest was to make tuition more affordable for students. I must have misheard. But Chi changed his chant before I could get it right.

“Arts elite…” Chi began.

“Cannot eat!” a handful of students replied. No one beat their water drum. Signs were slung carelessly over one shoulder. I prayed things would pick up soon.

Across campus, a lively graduate worker strike was taking place. Mostly consisting of graduate instructors, the students had been on strike all week because they were meeting opposition to unionizing. Despite the graduate assistants’ generous endorsement of our protest, I supported them but had a hard time feeling very sorry for them. Many were Ph.D. students, and while many Ph.D. students have the opportunity to teach in the University Writing Program at Columbia, the same appointments are rare in the School of the Arts—the Director of the Undergraduate Writing Program is authorized to give only 7 teaching positions to M.F.A. Writing students. Over 90 students applied this year. While every student who receives a teaching appointment is qualified, many students feel that getting a teaching appointment is like winning the Lottery. Not only do you receive complete tuition remission, you get a stipend of $18,000 a year just for teaching one class. With tuition at nearly $32,000, it’s like being paid $50,000 just to teach one class.

The fact that the vast majority of Ph.D. students receives this shower of money and experience while only a small percentage of M.F.A. students receives the same makes no sense to me. An M.F.A. is a terminal degree, just like a Ph.D. Like Ph.D. students, many M.F.A. students go on to teach. M.F.A. students produce quality work that is as valuable to the intellectual community as that of the Ph.D. students, and it is often more accessible. While the university squeezes more research out of Ph.D. students, it also uses the high publication rate of M.F.A. Writing Division students to attract more prospective students (a.k.a. more cash) and pad its reputation for being one of the greatest writing schools. At the very least, an M.F.A. student deserves the same respect and consideration as a Ph.D. student. This is absolutely not the case. What’s worse, the School of the Arts put forth a request for 25%-75% need-based fellowships—not full tuition remission like many Ph.D. students receive—and even that was rejected.

The graduate assistants were making more noise than us. Our group was growing larger but wasn’t as big as I had hoped. Chi was still yelling away on the microphone.

“What do we want?”

“Lowr tuition!”

Lowr tuition, not more tuition.

When do we want it? “NOW!” the same handful of students yelled.

I couldn’t handle it anymore. I wedged my drum tightly under my arm and began banging away. The blue plastic vibrated against my body.

“What do we want?” Chi screamed.

“Lowr tuition,” I yelled.

“When do we want it?”

“NOW!”

“Yell, yell, yell,” I yelled at my fellow students, who I must say were very fashionably dressed, as always, despite their sudden status as mutes.

I was beginning to panic when, miraculously, the din of the graduate assistants across campus rose. They dramatically marched towards us toting their “Union Now” signs. They slithered down the steps of Low Library, a solid, imposing, noisy mass. The graduate assistants, those magnificent bastards, most of whom had won Columbia’s version of the Lottery, were coming over to join us, to support us. They cared about us. They were organized and large and angry. They had whistles. We didn’t have whistles. Plus, I noticed, looking around, many more School of the Arts students had trickled in. Most of our faculty was present. Richard Locke, the director of the nonfiction writing concentration, had his fingers pressed to his ears and looked generally very uncomfortable. But he was here. Our group was growing. The protest was taking a turn for the better. I banged on my drum, no longer caring about my lack of rhythm.

Chi read an angry letter to the President. Cash Cow got up and gave a rousing speech, which included mooing. Chi resumed the stage and asked for students to share their personal experiences. A couple of seconds of awkward silence passed. Then a girl I didn’t know took the stage. She was an international student in the School of the Arts. International students can’t file for federal aid and they have a very difficult time getting cosigners for the enormous private loans they must take out. She had put her mother’s house up for collateral to attend the School of the Arts. Sasha, another international student from my division, spoke of nearly deciding to drop out because the exchange rate in her country, Trinidad, makes her debt six times more costly.

I looked at Low Library, that imposing building with the dome I had only known from the movie Spiderman before I came to Columbia. President Bollinger’s office was in that building. I looked around at my classmates. We all had stories. Nearly all of us had made huge sacrifices to be at Columbia, and, as artists, we had a bleak financial future to look forward to. Throughout school, both as an undergraduate and at Columbia, I’ve worked anywhere from two to four jobs to support myself. I am getting tired, but when I leave this school in May, I will still have a mountain of debt to face. How could President Bollinger not respond to us? I half-expected the doors of Low to burst open, for Bollinger to rush down the steps, through the crowd, up to the microphone. “I hear you,” I wanted him to say, “and I will do something to help you.”

President Bollinger, of course, did not rush down the steps to embrace us. And I, a person who generally shies away from the center of things, walked onto the stage and faced my classmates. They cheered for me. I leaned towards the microphone. In a shrill, wobbily voice, I told President Bollinger that I was pregnant, that my Columbia debt would have an impact on my new family, that rich people aren’t the only people who deserve to study the arts. I wasn’t very profound, and Bollinger didn’t burst through any doors. But I’d like to think that he heard me.

The protest lasted until 3pm. By then I was sweaty and dehydrated. My throat hurt from chanting. I had lost my Vitamin Water. Since we had not been alLowd to hold our protest on the steps of Low, Chi suggested we spend our last ten minutes there. “Let’s make some noise!” he said, the way any good protest leader might. I grabbed my drum. We walked as one to the steps of Low and filled one quarter of the façade. “We are not your cash cow,” we chanted, to a conga beat. And as we stood in the sun, sweaty, smiling, determined, I found myself banging my drum on beat, discovering the rhythm. A man lit up a cigarette in between chants and blew smoke into my face. I held my breath, looked for pockets of clean air, and kept screaming. This was something I believed in.

I have never liked birds very well. In my last year of undergraduate college, I transferred to San Francisco State University, and discovered that the cafeteria there was infested with birds. I believe these birds were robins, and while I ate my daily burrito, one would perch across the table from me, its claws hopelessly seeking to dig into the impenetrable plastic of the back of its chosen chair. The bird would look at me sideways, one eye always watching. It would open its mouth and emit a gurgling, scratchy sound from its throat. Others had told me that if you didn’t move for a given period of time, a bird would dive for your food. Birds are disgusting and ruthless, but there are people who love them.

I wanted to meet these people, to try and see what they see.

I wondered if I was dressed right. I imagined rich people in fancy suits with parrots perched on their shoulders, smoking those long cigarettes that rich people smoke. I was wearing corduroys and Converse, and I suddenly noticed a small blueberry stain from this morning’s breakfast on my shirt. I buttoned my coat closed. It was too late for concerns like these. Besides, the name of the restaurant provided some relief—Jackson Hole might really a hole.

But it could also be a fine restaurant with a crummy name.

There seemed to be three doors at the entrance, but this was all cleared up by a sign that read “Use this door.” I did, and it worked.

The Jackson Hole is a bar and grill like any other—cluttered but cozy, all done up in browns. I asked the man at the host podium how to get downstairs.

“The bird club?” he asked. He stared at me a second too long, with what I suspected was a smile creeping onto his face.

Embarrassed, I hesitated before saying yes.

He pointed towards the stairs, and I made my way down.

Three women and one man sat at a cluster of tables in the back of the room. It was immediately apparent that we did not share the same worlds. My instinct was to leave, but I pushed forward. Remember Frida, I instructed myself.

Frida was the imaginary finch that my neighbor gave me when she moved. I had decided that Frida was a female zebra finch, but it struck me as I approached these women and men in their fifties and sixties that I didn’t imagine Frida’s age, my neighbor’s name, or the color of the beak of a female zebra finch.

“Hello,” I said.

“Are you Angela?” A woman with the orange lipstick that perfectly matched her orange sweater extended her hand. This was Anna.

“I have a zebra finch named Frida,” I blurted, as I took Anna’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Anna is the founder of this incarnation of the New York Companion Bird Club of Manhattan. She had a solid handshake, and a smile that was both friendly and concerned. I had emailed her about the club after seeing a flyer posted at the Skylight Diner on 34th St.

“Everyone, this is Angela. She has a zebra finch.”

Two old women stared at me with the icy indifference of veteran police officers introduced to a rookie. One finch?, I could hear them thinking. I had to account for myself.

“I have one finch. A friend gave it to me. I’m just here to learn.” Could they hear my lie unraveling?

Anna quickly came to my rescue. “You’re exactly who this club is designed for.”

She led me to Roger, who had a diamond stud in his left ear. While Roger wore a dress shirt and tie, the other women wore jeans and sweaters. I was in the clear.

“Roger can tell you all about finches,” Anna informed me, before abandoning me for the old ladies back in her corner.

“I have thirty to forty finches,” Roger said.

Alarmed, I realized that I did not know the location of any pet stores in New York. Where would I tell people I get Frida’s feed?

“Wow. Where did you get them all?”

Roger liked to talk about his finches. He went on for a good five minutes. This gave me plenty of time to wonder where Roger works, how he lives, where he came from.

“…and this one friend,” Roger concluded, “had a crested finch.” He paused and looked into my eyes for some flicker of recognition. I could tell he wanted me to be impressed.

“Wow,” I said. I could not think of a new question. “Where did she get them?”

“A pet store.”

“Oh.”

There was an awkward silence.

“Are you from New York?” I asked.

“No,” Roger said. “But I’ve lived here for twenty-three years.”

Roger politely inquired about myself, and I answered, but he did not seem to want to talk about where we are from.

“What do you feed your finches?” I asked.

Rogers got excited and his hands began to move quickly as he talked about the various types of vegetables a finch will eat. They eat all types of sprouts and love Romaine lettuce, but you have to cut everything up finely.

“I just have feed,” I ventured.

“Oh, no. You have to give her greens. Especially in the winter.”

I did not know what this meant, but I was nodding vigorously when two pictures of a black parrot were shoved in front of my face.

I took them out of the hands of the woman next to me. I had been too engrossed with Roger to see her come in. This was Roxanne. She had a bowl cut and a turtleneck and glasses.

“That was Fury,” she told me. Her eyes were trained on me intensely. They jumped to the pictures, then back to me. “He wasn’t noisy at all.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was stolen.”

Roxanne had a creepy stare, but she obviously wanted to discuss Fury’s kidnapping a bit more. There was no way out of hearing the story. Fury was stolen from a friend’s house in Rochester. For weeks, Roxanne was frantic. She announced his disappearance on the local radio station, put up flyers, took out ads. One day, she received a call from Fury’s kidnapper. The man on the other end of the line told her he’d taken Fury and he was keeping him, and there was nothing Roxanne could do about it.

“I’m not ready for another parrot,” Roxanne told me. I returned her pictures. She took one long look at Fury and gently returned him to her wallet.

There was a very good turnout at this week’s meeting—fifteen people, myself included. We had to rearrange to make room for everyone. Roxanne was a bit aggressive in the shoving of tables, and she shattered a ketchup bottle on one fierce push.

I ended up next to Diana, a thin woman with a black shoulder-length perm. One long strand of hair had somehow escaped the perm and black hair dye. It flew free, beyond the boundaries of her helmet-shaped hair. Diana had the deep, throaty voice of a smoker. She could have been fifty or eighty years old. Her face reminded me of a fish, the features exaggerated by deep grooves. She looked as though she’d lived a difficult life.

She leaned towards me.

“Anna is a good person,” she said. She spoke in a low voice. Clearly whatever followed was meant in confidence. “This club is new. The last woman who ran it was into control. But Anna’s not in it for herself. She’s in it for the birds.”

Diana spat on my arm as she talked, but there was really no way to maneuver out of my position. On my left sat Jane, who I believe had a parrot, and had also recently spent $30,000 renovating her apartment. On my right sat Diana, the owner of one Amazonian yellow-headed parrot, a parakeet, and two other birds whose names I could not understand.

Nina across from me had a parrot too, the same type as Diana. Nina was wise and calm. She had a long, knowing face and a British accent. Nina’s parrot, George I, sounded a bit more aggressive than Carrie.

“How old is Carrie?” Nina asked.

“Six,” Diana said.

“Just wait,” Nina replied ominously. She spoke elegantly and looked each of us in the eye. “Parrots hit their sexual prime at six or seven. George used to be a love sponge, too. He wanted to be in the room with me all the time. He wanted me to carry him everywhere. Then he hit adolescence, and everything changed. Now he’s more like a cat.”

Nina and Diana had mentioned their husband and boyfriend, respectively. All this talk about sexual parrots got me thinking.

“Do you think your parrots get jealous of men?” I wondered.

Nina said they just have to realize that a different type of relationship exists between a woman and her bird. Diana said she’s not yet in the stage of her relationship to worry about it.

“Anyway,” Diana said, “Carrie sees me as a mother. Not a mate.”

“He does not see you as a mother,” Nina said. “You are his mate. Or his slave.” Nina and Diana laughed. I did too, uncomfortably.

Anna waved her arm and loudly but kindly announced a Question and Answer session.

“Angela,” she said. “Do you have any questions about your finch?”

I’d almost forgotten about Frida. The bird club members were satisfied talking about their birds. They did not ask many questions about mine. It was like a group of parents discussing their children. Each of them had the smartest, most beautiful bird, and they only wanted to talk about him or her.

“No,” I replied to Anna, rather wobbily. “Roger answered all my questions.”

Roger smiled at me. Anna looked disappointed.

A woman at the end of the table spoke up.

“I normally feed my parakeet millets and oats—”

The table murmured millets like a dirty word.

“Millets are terrible for a bird,” Roxanne said. “No nutrition.”

“But I feed her oats, too,” the woman protested. “Big, fat oats.” The table looked somewhat satisfied. The woman continued. “I just switched brands, and he won’t eat a thing.”

“I never switch brands,” one woman said.

“I buy my parakeets expensive restaurant salads. They’re gourmets…I mean gourmands,” said another.

“What about pellets?” Roxanne asked, in a mildly accusatory tone.

“I don’t know,” the woman said. “Pellets are so…They just seem like they have mad cow disease or something.”

The table murmured again. Everyone looked at one another. The balance of power was clear: this woman knew nothing, and the bird club knew everything. I felt a rush of relief that I was not this woman, that I hadn’t asked a thing.

“Are you projecting your negativity towards pellets to your bird?”

“No—I—“ “Try Nutri-berries,” Nina interrupted. The bird club nodded. The tension broke as everyone discussed the benefits of Nutri-berries. The woman at the end of the table looked grateful.

Diana leaned over and informed me that I could mix vitamins into a finch’s food or water. “Good idea,” I said flatly. I am already a terrible liar, and my lies were wearing thin. Diana had been spitting on my arm all through her tuna on rye. White globs of coleslaw had collected at the corners of her mouth. I was tired of the bird club. I had seen the club get ugly; its members had turned on one of their own. Earlier, Nina had told me that it had been seventeen years since she and her husband had traveled anywhere together. “One of us has to stay with George,” she said. George is twenty-three. Nina looked to be about forty-five. George could live to be as old as eighty.

Jane was the first to leave. This left an open spot on my left, a space that I could use to make a graceful exit.

“I have to go,” I told Diana. “It was nice meet you. Goodbye.” Forever.

I had not even risen before Anna came hauling towards our end of the table carrying a green parrot book larger than the Bible. “Wanna look at this parrot book?” she asked me.

“I have to go,” I told her, and a young woman two seats down eagerly took the book.

I put my jacket on, grabbed my purse and thanked Anna for the meeting. I took one last look at the ladies, at the two men. I would never know them.

Outside, the gloomy day had gotten even darker. I pulled the hood of my jacket over my head, but it didn’t matter. The sky was misting, and it covered my face. As I made my way down 34th St., a fat man staggered towards me. He had a wide, red, comical face though he seemed to be crying. I looked at his face, but he did not look back. In the basement of a restaurant less than a block away, thirteen people remained, speaking of love and birds.