I Heard Animals' Voices novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Vote

"The vote is in," said the sparrow.

It read from a very small scroll that I am almost sure it did not have.

"The otters say yes. The flamingos say yes, loudly, which is how they say everything."

"The camel says yes if the roof gets fixed."

"The heron abstains, because the heron is bitter."

"Mabel says," the sparrow finished, "that the two of you have been disgusting for a week."

"She would like it to be official before Sunday."

Derrick had not taken his hand off my face.

"Thank them," he said.

"They can hear you."

"I'd like it on the record."

"Thank you," Derrick said, to the lamppost, to the dark, and to the heron.

Then we walked.

He lived ten minutes from the zoo, above a hardware store.

The way up was an outside staircase that creaked on the fourth step.

"Skip the fourth," he said.

I skipped it, and it creaked anyway.

"It does that," said Derrick.

He unlocked the door, and I walked into a room with a couch, a lamp and a fern.

The bed had clearly never held two people.

There was a pigeon on the windowsill.

"Don't mind me," said the pigeon.

"Don't," I said to Derrick, who was reaching for the blind.

"What did it say?"

"It said don't mind it."

He pulled the blind down, hard.

"I'm out of practice," he said, with his back to me. "I should tell you that. It's been a long time."

"You hid a whole talent for seventeen years," I said. "You can be out of practice."

He turned around.

I put my hand flat on the front of his coveralls, where the zipper began at his collar.

"Rule one," said Derrick, in a rough voice. "You don't go in without me."

"I remember rule one," I said.

I took hold of the zipper pull and drew it down.

It was a very long zipper.

I took the whole length of it, one slow inch at a time.

His breath changed on every inch, and the zipper ended low on his hips.

"It's a lot of zipper," I said.

"It's a vet's coverall."

"It's a lot."

He pulled me in by the back of my jacket and kissed me.

Nothing in the parking lot had been like this.

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