“Is this where you live?” Cindy asked Manchild dreamily as they pulled up in front of the Park Avenue Armory. The enormous old building took up the entire city block.
“Not exactly,” Manchild said. Was she stupid? How had she been invited to the Elite Club Ball? “It’s an old sort of fortress. You know, like where military officers would train and hang out. And a now it’s an arts space. They have big art shows here and antiques fairs. It’s too big to be anyone’s house.”
Cindy was still staring up at the building. The brickwork seemed to be crawling with little birds.
“Are the birds some kind of art thing?”
“What’s going on?” the limo driver suddenly shouted.
The twins hadn’t noticed, but they’d been stopped at Park Avenue and 66th Street for quite a while.
“Do not lose the Town Car,” Nastia commanded. “Please.”
“It’s the middle of the night, how can there be traffic?” Dizzy whined.
“It’s not traffic,” the limo driver told them. “It’s birds.”
Dizzy rolled down her window and stuck her head out. Princess the dog climbed all the way into her lap and stuck her head out too. The entire sidewalk and street in front of the Park Avenue Armory was covered with chickadees of all colors and sizes, pecking at birdseed and twittering their high-pitched and repetitive chickadee birdsong. It almost sounded like screaming.
“What the—?” Dizzy murmured. Princess growled, her little black and white body vibrating with the sound.
“Don’t. Lose. The. Town. Car. Please,” Nastia reiterated. She could see the shiny black car easing forward ahead of them.
“It’s not like we live in like, India, or wherever. This is Manhattan,” Dizzy complained. “This is Park Avenue. We have places to go, people to spy on. Let’s go.”
“It’s just a bunch of birds,” Nastia said. “Drive on. They’ll fly away.”
Princess continued to growl, her enormous pointy black ears pressed flat against her head. Then she jolted forward, out of Dizzy’s lap and out the window, landing with a squealing yip on the sidewalk below. She tore away from the Town Car, still yipping and yapping, headed straight into the center of the seemingly endless throng of tiny twittering birds.
“They’re taking off!” Cindy squealed and clutched Manchild’s arm as the birds took flight, a whirring, screaming gray blur surrounding the Town Car.
“They’re just birds,” Manchild yawned. Really all he wanted to do now was get home and play Grand Theft Auto V on his Xbox.
“Excuse me? Can we please leave? Now?” Nastia spoke directly into the limo driver’s ear just in case he couldn’t hear her over the roar of the birds’ wings and the cacophony of their cries.
From the sidewalk, Princess continued to yip and yap. “And shut that dog up!” Nastia snapped at no one in particular.
“Merci, merci, merci,” Hubert said under his breath. He glanced behind him. The white limo was gone, or at least, he couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see anything, just a swarming mass of gray flapping wings and piercing birdcall. He opened his door and slipped out of the car.
“Here Princess,” he called, fending off the birds with one of his large, billowing shirtsleeves. “I’m going to take you back to your Mommy now. We’re going to get out of here before we turn into pumpkin puree. That’s a good little doggie.”
