The Owl and The Wren

Ever since Jeff had been working at the small diner on Second Street, he made a ritual of walking through the alley way rather than the more ordinary and preferable way of taking the front street. This was because taking the alley way to work allowed Jeff to pass by a small, dark pine door. The door was captivating to Jeff; how it seemed so out of place and yet to his knowledge so overlooked by everyone who passed it. It was several yards from the dumpster, framed against the barren red wall of the apartment building across from the diner. It had no duplicates to either side, but it did have the number 1251 written in black paint above its edging.

It was not unusual for Jeff to pause a moment after donning his apron to think about the door. Not soon after he would be scolded by his boss for standing around daydreaming; this was often effective at killing his idle thinking and putting him back to his paces. Between taking orders and serving food, and every other little thing a waiter could be bothered to do, there was not much time for Jeff to occupy himself with the door. That isn't to say there was no time, however, and Jeff would sometimes stand by the register, his pen scribbling away over blank order slips.

In the less lively hours of the evening other waiters and waitresses might doodle on the forms, but Jeff was less inclined to do so. He preferred to write. He would write the most captivating stories he could, turning anything he could into an insight, trying to peel the layers behind things. Of course, small pads don't harbor great novels, and great novels aren't penned in the late night hours of nameless restaurants. So Jeff merely settled for writing the few words he could, in whatever time he had.

'It is the absence of stone replaced by supple wood, both vibrant and dull,' Jeff wrote as the brass bell atop the door was gently struck alive. Jeff knew he would have to scrawl down his last thoughts on the subject before the customer took her seat 'A method of keeping me out, compelling me to come in.'

Jeff greeted the woman, a dishelved thirty-something blonde wearing a baseball jacket and matching cap. Her eyes were hidden from sight by dark sunglasses, though to Jeff this only gave the impression that the eyes behind them were too weary and tired to be put upon by the gaze of others. "Can I get you anything?" Jeff asked. The woman began moving around the salt and pepper shakers on her table, nudging them from side to side to some measure of balance Jeff could not understand. She then gave a delayed jump, and looked up at Jeff, her sunglasses reflecting the dull neon light of the diner. "Coffee." She replied.

Jeff brought the woman her Coffee, which she reacted to with a slight pause before becoming aware that her drink had been brought to her. She turned down everything else Jeff could think of getting her, so he merely returned to the register.

"Any orders?" The cook called from behind the small hole between the bar and the kitchen. Jeff quickly tore off the ticket with his few thoughts on the door (so that it would not become apparent that he had been goofing off as he always did) and turned to the cook. "No, not just yet."

"Slow night." the cook idly replied, and returned to loitering in the kitchen. The night however did pick up, and Jeff quickly found himself without time to ponder over things. Running back and forth from counter to counter and table to table, he only had time to look over at the fidgety woman who ordered the coffee earlier that evening. She only sipped a bit from her cup every now and then, and afterwards would stare vapidly at windows, or the ceiling, or many other things equally less interesting. Jeff stopped by her table every now and then, but only to fill up her cup, which would then consume all of her attention.

Soon, quite late in the night, the orders stopped coming in. Most of the customers had left for the night. Except the woman of course. Now Jeff could resume his post at the register. He almost wished he hadn't thrown away his earlier musings. He felt he could have expounded on them, at least by a few more inches of paper. It was not all a loss though, as Jeff had something equally puzzling to speculate on.

The woman. She would have looked like a mess if she had just came in and ordered her meal like every other customer. Instead this was magnified by the clatter of moving salt and pepper shakers, and the uneasy clanging of her spoon against the sides of her coffee cup. She'd be the quietest squatter they ever had, if not for those few moments every now and then where her fidgeting seemed to be the only thing audible in the entire diner. Jeff wasn't sure what to think of her, but what he did think was more of the same. Another something where it didn't belong, where only he could become obsessed with why it was there at all.

'Why does the owl watch the wren? In the dead of night the owl should hunt. The silence is broken by the shrill song of the wren.' Jeff broke off as another ringing noise sounded out, this time from the door. 'A song so soft only the owl can hear it...' Jeff tidied up, throwing another priceless blurb to the ground, and carried on with the rest of his shift.

It wasn't often Jeff got out on his days off, and when he did it was often to the movies or somewhere equally expected. Tonight he was at a gallery, an art show for a collection of amateur painters, something a friend of a friend had invited him to. It was something to do, Jeff figured, and that made it worth putting on nice clothes and taking a cab the odd forty blocks downtown. Once he was amidst the crowd of art patrons (or onlookers, or people greedily weeding out hor'dourves) he found himself feeling quiet out of place.

He was not a fan of art to any large extent. He could appreciate it. He could stand back and nod his head and in the back of his mind take some sort of meaning from it all. But it was not the kind of expression he preferred. It didn't challenge him enough, he supposed. When he read stories by Hemingway and Bradbury, he could take his time and weigh them in his mind. Turn over every word like a stone, something that could be hiding something deeper underneath it. When musing over words, there was a point, and there were truths to be discovered. Watching these paintings, there was only a small moment of joy at the first sight, and then less so as he began to pick them apart. Combing over a work of art only made it less than what it should be, less than that first moment of grandeur.

Jeff would have been content with never coming to another gallery show again in his life, had he not seen the paintings at the far end of the gallery, in a space absent of attendees and, possibly related, appetizers. It was a painting of a wall, a brick wall, or at least a wall of what Jeff thought was simple bricks at first sight. As he looked closer, however, the repeated brick texture was hidding a collage of doors. Doors of all shapes and sizes, coming from all directions, making up every last inch of the wall.

Jeff thought this was a bit odd, maybe even coincidental if he could let his thoughts get away with that much. Then he spotted the smaller canvas next to it. If he had a knack for describing art, he could have seen so much more in the painting than he saw. The play of the moonlight, or the soothing color of the leaves. All Jeff saw was an owl, an owl looking over a singing wren.

Maybe it was because his routine kept him up at all hours of the night, but Jeff couldn't bring himself to go to sleep that night after the art gallery. There were too many small things nagging at him, so much so that every time he forced his eyes to close he could feel his pupils underneath them, squirming around and trying to break free of darkness imposed upon them. Eventually he gave up on sleep, burst forth from his bed, and picked up the small pad on the dresser beside him. He started sketching rough ideas, a brainstorm of sorts. There was the door, the one secluded behind the diner. Then there were the doors, the collage that seemed to reverberate his own inner thoughts too much to just be coincidence. He especially couldn't forget the owl, or the wren. Surely those weren't common pairings. He had never heard of them being mutual to each other, if anything it was a motif that may have only come into being on two occasions, in his feeble musings and on that canvas. It was unnerving, the epitome of coincidence.

'A man dreams of a butterfly, a butterfly dreams of a man' Jeff began to write, for he could not recall with any grace how the addage began, but he knew enough to say what he mean't. 'Neither exists but in the others dreams; both exist because of the other, and yet there is not real tie between them, is there?' Jeff began to pause for a moment. Then, with his thoughts collected, he pressed on. 'The man sees in his dreams that the butterfly has purple wings. The butterfly sees in his dream that the man wears a purple tie. Is it their reflection in the dream, or is it because they are reflecting on the dream?' Jeff read over his notes a few times, then scratched them out post haste. This wasn't getting him anywhere, he thought. He didn't care about causation, about coincidence. Yet something great had happened that night, something Jeff would only begin to realize as he finally managed to shut his eyes and drift off to sleep.

The small thoughts in Jeff's life had been reflected, and magified. His words, now formed in oils and paints, were not something he could crumble up and toss aside.

Jeff lingered at the door the next day. The door was the only thing inviting as far as his eyes could see. The brick wall was old and faded, the pavement bore signs of wear that weren't even recognizeable. The door stood against all this, with its painted numbers and white trim, and challenged Jeff to enter. He could give it a quick knock, he supposed, and put the matter to rest once and for all. It would certainly take the suspense out of life, or at least the part of his life spent walking the long way around the diner. Jeff took a few quick steps, tapped on the door a few times and waited. There was no movement on the other side. He gave it a few more louder knocks. Still nothing. The door would have to wait another day, Jeff thought, he was going to be late.

Jeff came to work in the thick of things, and had no time to himself for the first several hours of work. It seemed as if people were coming in droves, relentlessly filling up tables as soon as they were empty. Jeff waited on them politely, but in truth he had no patience for them. They were the only thing standing between him and his place beside the register, where his pen and pad waited longingly. With only an hour left on his shift, it seemed as if Jeff was going to finally have his moment of reprieve. He bussed the last few tables, and then sauntered over to the register. His pen was right where he expected it. He had the tip pressed firmly against the paper when the door chime rang.

Jeff would have been upset, would have felt cheated, had it not been the same dishelved woman who had previously worked her way through several pots of coffee some odd nights ago. Jeff had seen her a few more times since then, but it was that first night she had arrived when he had developed a name for her, the "wren", and it was that night that stuck out in his mind the most. He didnt even bother taking her order, he merely arrived at her table with a fresh cup. She greedily took the cup in both hands, and at that moment she was lost to the world, her black glasses falling from her face only slightly, revealing the worn eyes that Jeff had known were there all along.

Jeff had become as much taken with the woman as he had with the door, not for her beauty, but because she felt like something...how could he put it. In whatever wierd little puzzle Jeff's life was, she was the odd piece. The element that stood out, that challenged him. As he began to press his pen back against the order pad, she was his muse.

'Singing for an empty room. The wren can see nothing else in the night, and is only concerned with the shrillness of its voice. The night is almost through, and the Owl is near sleep. But it has time for the song. It has time for the wren.'

Jeff could hear a metallic clank, one he had learned by now mean't the expiration of the wren's cup. He crumpled up his musings and tossed them as close as he could to the trash, and went to fetch more coffee. While pouring the wren a new glass, he felt himself give a small cough, as if something was trying to escape from his throat.

"I'm sorry?" asked the wren.

"Oh, nothing." Jeff replied.

Jeff replaced the pot of coffee on the heating plate and went back to the register. As he looked up to gaze at the wren, he found her gaze upon himself.

"You don't get many people at this time of night, do you?" she offered with a lazy smile.

"No. But its nice like that," Jeff replied casually.

"I bet it is. So what are you writing?" the wren asked.

"Oh, just...reciepts."

"Hmm. They look like fascinating reciepts." The wren replied. Well, Jeff thought, I guess there's no point in being coy.

"They aren't really. I just write things to pass the time."

"Oh, what sorts of things?" the wren piqued up.

"Nothing, just thoughts."

"I'd like to hear them." The wren replied.

"I think I'd rather keep them to myself," Jeff said, turning his back to the woman. He believed he was off the proverbial hook, but after a few moments the wren spoke again, this time in a slow monotone as if reading a book.

"Singing for an empty room. The wren can see nothing else in the night," she began. Jeff turned back towards her to discover the paper he had tossed to the garbage was now resting uncrumpled in her hands.

"and is only concerned with the shrillness of its voice. The night is almost through, and the Owl is near sleep. But it has time for the song. It has time for the wren."

"Do you always go through peoples trash?" Jeff replied, trying to gain some sort of ground in the conversation.

"Only when they don't make a habit of littering notes on the floor next to my seat." The wren replied. "You know it would make my life alot easier if you didn't throw these away."

"Come again?" Jeff paused.

"I guess I should explain myself." said the wren,"I'm somewhat of a starving artist, and lately haven't had much to really express on paper. Then I found these papers, just lying on the ground at some random diner. It was an odd experience, to read something like that on the back of reciept. It nagged at me. Eventually I started painting what I saw in the notes. The paintings are actually rather lovely, they're on display-"

"At the local gallery. I know," Jeff said as he took a seat next to the wren," I saw them the other night. You don't know how odd it is to see your thoughts on display like that. It seemed...dream like, for a moment."

"You saw them?" The wren said shuffling a bit in her chair, "Both of them?"

"Yeah," Jeff replied, his eyes now gazing intently at the wren. In turn, she tipped her glasses down, and then with some hesitation removed them entirely.

"Were they..."

"Brilliant?"

"That may be saying a bit much."

"Maybe...I still don't understand the larger one though."

"The collage of-""Yes, that one. I never mentioned a door in my notes, How did you..."

"It seemed obvious."

Jeff sighed and rested his head on his hand. The wren swirled her coffee with her spoon.

"Are you sure I'm not just dreaming you?" said Jeff.

"It's possible," the wren spoke, and the two shared a small chuckle. "I have been known to be a meddling figment, an illusion of grandeur and the muse of a muse."

Jeff took this with a puzzled expression.

"I've also been known to be a bit odd after the fourth cup."

As the words had found there way to Jeff's mouth the bell rang, and there pleasant conversation was peacefully shattered.

Jeff continued to write his notes, only these days more fervently. They were stronger now, tempered with conviction, but even more dangerously, showered with adoration. Soon he was making excuses as to why orders were coming in wrong and the reciept book was short dozens of pages. He didn't care though, there were far more important things in life than being a waiter, and what he had now was one of those many things.

Jeff continued the story of the owl and the wren, but now he had left his voyeuristic perch to embrace what could be called a dissonant sonnet, a poem without rhyme or meter. Soon he wasn't just immortalizing the wren, he was courting her. Every time she glossed over his notes, as warm vapors formed a trail from her mug to her now bare and bloodshot eyes, he watched her intently. He scanned her face for every signal, every curve of her lip or wrinkle in her forehead. When she asked him questions about the wren, as she did often, he left his post at the register and sat down beside her, his hands gesturing emphatically and his voice brazen but sweet. Every night the wren left with a few new pieces of Jeff's tale, and every night she came back eager to see the next.

Then one long night the door bell did not ring at dusk as it had all the days before. More days passed, and with them came the continued absence of the wren. Jeff's perfomance at work benefited greatly from this reprieve, but the pad at the register was thicker than it ever was most nights, and more often than not Jeff's pen rested not in his hand but rather between his teeth, where he gently gnawed at its tip.

After a month had passed without the wren, Jeff found his desire to write had left him. It had no potency. His words were no longer insightful, no longer wells of any greater knowledge. He had tried, several times he wrote the first labored thing that came to his mind. His thoughts were bland though; they had no teeth. Did he miss his old talent? No, but he missed the praise it had earned him, and the woman that had become his sole reason to think anything he wrote could be more than useless scraps.

One especially quiet night, the kitchen phone rang. It was answered by the head chef.

"Hello? No, we don't do delivery. A pot? Lady, go bother someone else with this nonsense, I'm busy here."

"What was that?" asked Jeff.

"Some nut job," The chef sneered," Said she lived in the apartments next door. Actually wanted me to deliver an entire pot of coffee, can you believe the nerve of some people?"

"Yeah..." Jeff trailed off, although he was no longer listening to the chef. Suddenly, after weeks of an overwhelmingly numb feeling in the back of his mind, his senses were coming alive. He walked at a precarious pace to the coffee maker, took the entire pot of coffee, and left out the back of the restraunt, much to the dismay and protest of the head chef.

Jeff knocked on the pine wood door, apartment 1251. It flew open almost instantly.

"You look like you could use a cup." Jeff spoke to the wren.

"Hmm, I thought you didn't deliver?" The wren replied teasingly.

"Waiter's don't," Jeff said as he let him self into the wren's aparment, "But I most certainly do."

As soon as he walked in, he took in the sights of the shabby one room loft. A room divided by wood beams and composed of nothing but barren concrete walls. All barren walls, save but one.

"It took weeks," The wren told Jeff," but I think this captures all of it." Jeff agreed with her. The mural, which took up the largest of all the walls in the wren's apartment, was everything he had ever imagined as he penned his great novel in the late hours of a nameless restaraunt...