Based in Sydney, Australia, Foundry is a blog by Rebecca Thao. Her posts explore modern architecture through photos and quotes by influential architects, engineers, and artists.

Love in the Time of Corona

Love in the Time of Corona

You get lonely during a pandemic. I guess that’s why I struck up a relationship with Suzy, a chicken who lives in a group house on Harvard Avenue with several other lady chickens. I don’t call them “hen houses” because it evokes a complicated period in the early 1970s when I worked as a bouncer in an east Texas bordello called The Hen House. I wore red leather chaps and a white derby, a gun belt slung low around my waist, a seven-shooter in the holster for when the cowboys got unruly. A seven-shooter was a pistol of my own invention because I noticed in cowboy movies the bad guy would listen for six shots, assume you’re out of ammo and come at you. I surprised the heck out of a lot of rowdy cowboys with that seventh shot, let me tell you.

But I digress.

Suzy the chicken. In recent weeks, whenever I came down Harvard Avenue, she’d poke her little beak through the chicken wire, turn her head and blink her nictitating membrane at me. It wasn’t a “come-hither” winky-blink, nothing like that. It was a lonely blink. These days when I stare at myself for hours in the bathroom mirror, my blink is lonely, too.

Look, I know what’s worrying you – that fella in China who got involved with a pangolin and started the current global catastrophe. Hey, that guy ate the pangolin. I had no plans to eat Suzy. I didn’t even want her eggs – scrambled, over-easy or sunny-side up with a dash of paprika. This wasn’t going to be a transactional relationship. All I wanted was conversation.

Really – I just wanted to talk. The only other . . . human . . . I’ve been talking to for the last two months is my wife, Mary.

The other day, Mary said, “Please pass the salt.”

The next day, I answered. “Okay.”

The day after that, she said, “Thanks.”

Come on! I can’t just sit there at the kitchen table with Mary, day after day. I love her, but gosh darn it, a man needs something more during a pandemic.

So, why Suzy? you ask. Why a chicken? A married man chatting up another woman, even with six feet between the two of you – tongues will wag. But if somebody sees you talking to a chicken – who’s going to think twice about that? Besides, the other couples on my street with their perfect marriages – I don’t want them to know my marriage is, well, rocky. This pandemic business. I’m nervy, Mary’s snappish. I know things will calm down when we can all come out of our houses in 2027 when they invent that vaccine. But until then . . . well, I needed Suzy. 

So the other day, just after dawn, I paid Suzy a visit. I waited at a respectful distance until she laid her egg and settled herself. Then I approached.

“Hi Suzy. You don’t mind if I call you Suzy, do you?”

Suzy cocked her head the way chickens do, held me in her one-eyed gaze. She did not nictate her nictitating membrane, not even once. She was listening. Really listening.

“I’m lonely, Suzy,” I said. “And I know you are, too. I pass by here, I see it. Look, I don’t want anything unseemly. I’d just like to stop by once in a while . . .  to talk.”

You know that endless moment when you open your heart to a chicken, make yourself utterly vulnerable? Wait for emotional reciprocity that might never come? One of the female chickens standing behind Suzy snickered. 

But not Suzy. Her beak-lips slowly parted. And you’re not going to believe this. You’re not going to believe what happened next. It started with a cluck, then the sounds clarified. There was no mistaking it. As clear as day, and with a slight Delco accent, Suzy said four words to me:

“Please pass the salt.”

My eyes went wide. I backed away, turned and ran. It wasn’t going to be any different with a chicken! Marriage is sacred, even the boring parts! Chastened, I ran all the way home, burst through the front door intending to sweep Mary into my arms. 

When I rushed into the kitchen, she was at the table. Across from her sat a fox – in my chair, drinking from my coffee cup! 

Mary clutched the top of her pink nightie – the one she’d worn on our wedding night. 

“A wife gets lonely during a pandemic!” she cried.

The fox winked at me, and took another sip of coffee. If I’d had my trusty seven-shooter, I’d have shot him on the spot.

Writer Jon Cohen lives in Swarthmore.

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