Hawks Below the Balcony

The house looked like it had wandered up the ridge in a storm and then stopped for good. From the balcony you could lean on the rail and watch hawks circle below, each shrug of their wings proof of a physics you could not borrow. Beyond them the valley unfolded like a map someone had folded too many times. Far off, three points of light winked through the trees. If you wanted visitors, they looked like ships. If you didn’t, they looked like tin roofs.

Inside, the fridge hummed a steady note, softening the air. Lisa was barefoot in the kitchen, pouring cold brew over ice. She asked if I wanted some. I said yes though I hated the taste, like bark and pennies. We had slept in separate rooms because late arrivals make people polite, and because the house belonged to her mother, whose rules lingered like perfume.

“Those lights,” I said, pointing to the ridge.

“Farm roofs,” she said. “They catch at this hour. Then they go away.”

“Ships would be nice.”

“If they came with signal,” she said. “I still can’t get a bar in the living room.”

We took our glasses to the balcony. The boards had been sanded once but remembered to splinter anyway. Hawks drew circles where they had drawn them yesterday. Lisa slid on sunglasses that cooled the valley. I wanted her to move closer without deciding to.

“This place feels like a roof,” I said.

“It is,” she said. “The whole mountain is a roof.”

We laughed. It was easy to laugh with her. Harder to relax.

She asked what I’d do if the lights were ships.

“Maybe lunch,” I said. “They could drop me back in the afternoon.”

Her smile thinned, like I’d brushed against something hidden. A swallow cut the air and left its diagram. The hawks tilted lower, considering us.

Later we swam in a lake cold enough to wake the spine. On the drive back we passed a peach stand. She didn’t slow. I didn’t speak. When we were nearly home she asked my age. I told her. I asked hers. She tapped the wheel twice.

“I don’t like that question,” she said.

“I was just asking about birthdays.”

“I know,” she said.

We went a mile in silence. I tried to make it good silence, then small silence. It stayed the same size. Back at the house she tucked her knees into the chair with the most room. Afternoon heat pressed the glass like someone checking locks.

“I’m old fashioned about age,” she said. “I like to keep some things where they belong.”

“I hear you,” I said.

Later she asked me to text her number. Her phone chirped on the counter. “Good. Use that one,” she said. A second phone sat face down on the shelf.

“One for work,” she explained. “One for life.”

“Which am I?” I asked, trying for a joke.

“You’re someone who asks good questions at bad times,” she said, gentle as a blanket.

We walked the ridge path. It broke off and returned, the way paths do. I kept imagining the balcony behind us, chairs waiting with an empty third.

That evening she cooked onions into thin moons, sharp knife flashing more threat than need. We ate like defenders of the meal.

“Tell me something you’re proud of,” she said.

“I wrote a song once,” I said. “It wasn’t good. I sang it alone and cried.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Crying in a room is underrated.”

Her eyes went to the balcony. The three lights were back. Brighter. The radio muttered air quality and budget votes. The world felt like a board game missing half its pieces.

“Do you ever want to be scooped up by something bigger?” I asked. “Something that tells you what to do.”

“Sometimes,” she said. “Then I remember instructions are written by whoever’s holding the pen.”

After dishes we brushed shoulders. Too light to count. She said good night and used my name. The sound of it stayed in my mouth. I lay in bed and the house thumped once or twice. Maybe the wind. Maybe the world shifting.

Morning brought the hawks again, the lights fading to roofs. We spoke of pastries in town, then stayed. She opened a book, closed it after a paragraph. I paced the balcony, thinking of calibration, how a crooked compass still lets you walk with purpose, only to the wrong place. I didn’t know if what I felt for her was compass error or weather.

“Do you ever want to be closer than you are,” I asked finally.

She set the book down. “I’m trying to fit everything inside the time we have. I don’t know what the right amount is.”

“What feels right now?”

She looked at my shoulder, not my eyes. “The hawks never look bothered. That feels right.”

“I keep hoping your body will reach before your mouth decides,” I said.

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then I learn something.”

She came to the rail. Close enough for me to smell her hair, to count freckles. Our fingers touched on the rail for a second and then she pulled them back. A kindness. An absolute line.

“Sometimes I feel like a museum,” she said. “Everyone wants to touch. The signs say don’t. I watch people pretend they didn’t see.”

“I don’t want to be a visitor,” I said.

“Then be the guard,” she said, smiling to soften it.

Her face turned away. A chainsaw roared in the valley, cut out. The silver lights dimmed. The air smelled of rain and smoke at once. Something larger than us had crossed a border and wasn’t reporting back.

“Lisa,” I said. “Do you like me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me?”

She closed her eyes. “I want peace. Sometimes I want you. Then I remember the part of me that hides. It isn’t about you. It’s the hiding.”

“Do you want me to wait?”

“I can’t ask you that. It’s a debt I couldn’t pay.”

The hawks kept circling. One tilted its tail, adjusted. The kitchen radio announced a test of the alert system. If this were an actual emergency…

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you for telling me.”

She took my hand and held it like passing water. Warm. Tense. Then she let go. My palm remembered her until it didn’t.

We went into town. She pointed at a dog, said that was the right size for a dog. I wanted to believe it meant more. At the bakery she chose cherry, I chose plain. On the road back a hawk rode a column of air, trembling without moving. The radio voice returned: If this were an actual emergency, you would be told where to go.

“Where would you go?” I asked.

“Down,” she said. “Always down.”

“Down to what?”

“To something that doesn’t move when you push on it.”

Back at the house the balcony looked newly built, waiting to be used differently. The lights were gone. We passed the afternoon with small repairs, small lists. That night she knocked and asked to sit. We brought blankets outside. The valley kept its light like a grudge. A nighthawk stitched the dusk. Sirens moaned far off.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “For not being something I wish I were.”

“You don’t owe me that,” I said. “I asked. You answered. That’s all.”

“Do you still think those are ships?” she asked.

“Roofs pretending,” I said. “They liked it. Then remembered what they were made for.”

“I hope you find someone whose body runs to you without thinking,” she said.

“Me too,” I said. “I hope you find peace.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. Pressure enough to say thank you.

That night I slept well. The hawks took something with them.

In the morning the valley wore smoke like wisdom. Lisa handed me tea that smelled green. She surprised herself by leaning her head on my shoulder for five seconds. An honest gift.

We packed, cleaned, left the house as we found it. At the station she hugged me, sturdy, more design than love. She waved twice, the second wave small.

On the train I watched the valley stitch itself together from different angles. A roof caught light, flashed, disappeared. My phone buzzed with a test alert. If this were an emergency, it said, you would be told where to go.

I didn’t believe it. I thought of the places a person could stand when the air tries to change you. A balcony higher than hawks. A car seat with the window down. A kitchen where coffee tastes like bark. A body that reaches without being asked.

I took a pen and wrote in the margin of a free magazine. Wrote that I would learn the difference between signals and wishes. That I would wait for the hand that moved without hesitation. That I would not mistake hawks’ height for my own.

The pen tore the paper. The train rolled on. Outside, the sky lowered itself onto the land. A quiet opened in my chest, the beginning of a song, and I let it stay quiet.