Annie finds a note from Jay under the only rock in her garden. It's a fake she bought at the mall with a trap door for her house key. He's printed a single word in boxy handwriting on an index card folded small: Friday and illustrated it with wings.

At Bangkok Garden, Jay talks about birds, parrots and their habitat, how in the Amazon they look like flowers, not something to eat. That's how they defend themselves. He works in the aviary at the Audubon Zoo. He picks the caramelized shrimp out of his pad Thai, puts them on Annie's plate because he's allergic, and she pushes the pile around with her fork, afraid to squander the gift.

"Want to see how they sleep?" he says.

They drive to the zoo and walk into the glass house. Some of the birds recognize Jay and shake their feathers, others are wary and hold so still they looked stuffed, but every living thing is wide awake. A parrot screeches and flies low over their heads to another branch. "Better let them rest," he says.

They wake at dawn and eat leftover chicken in coconut milk for breakfast. Jay uncovers his parakeets' silver cages so they can sing to the morning light. Candy-colored birds swing on trapezes, jump from stand to stand, drink from the tiny water dish. While Jay cleans their cages, he lets them fly around his apartment and an orange parakeet lands on Annie's head. She holds still, not wanting to startle it and be shat on.

"Come here, June," Jay, says, snapping his fingers. "They're named after months." June lands in the palm of his hand and he sets her back in the clean cage. "Shower with me," he says to Annie. They do, and leave for their jobs without making more plans.

When Annie gets home from work, she checks under the rock for another word, but there's nothing. Too soon. She sticks a No. 2 pencil into the ground next to the stone as encouragement.

It rains for three days. Jay doesn't call and her brain roils like a high-school girl's. They shouldn't have fucked after the zoo visit. Deep black sky, night-blooming jasmine, monkeys calling out to each other like the Walton's before they settled down to sleep - all sucker punches.

She has drinks with a friend from the gym, takes him to bed to erase the sex with Jay. "How do birds sleep?" she asks him, hoping he knows.

The fourth day she puts on red lipstick and a black bra and panties. She fixes herself a curried chicken salad, slices a celery rib into thin arcs, cubes apples, chops walnuts. In what second did she fall in love and lose her turn? There was the date, the wariness, out at dinner: still her choice, small talk. Bird talk! The particularity of his concern for feathered things, which she took personally.

Annie must leave the quiet house, the dead phone, walk on the levee. When the door clicks shut she remembers she's left her key on the kitchen table. But the extra key isn't in the rock. Maybe a raccoon picked up the smell of her hands and jimmied the trap door open. Her neighborhood is infested with raccoons. During the day, they sleep in trees; at night, they root through garbage cans and eat leftovers.

Annie digs in the dirt but can't find the spare. She tries to break the small bathroom window with the pencil, which splits in half. She throws the rock hard and shields her eyes. It takes two tries before the glass shatters. Shards stick to the sleeves of her sweater, and Annie tweezes these out and lays them on her dresser like diamonds.

From the silver maple tree in her front yard, she hangs a pinecone stuffed with peanut butter and raisins.

On the computer, she looks for Jay, Googles his name, and his photo is there with the other keepers at the Audubon Zoo. A parrot named Poncho sits, cocky, on his shoulder, nuzzles his neck with her curved beak. Her head is bright blue and sleek, her body electric yellow. There are fifty websites devoted to the virtues of parrots. These birds attach themselves to one family member at the expense of the others. They scream when frustrated, and take offense at a dirty look. They sleep standing on their branches because all of their weight settles into their feet.

The front of Jay's house is quiet, the same table lamp on all night in the living room. Annie writes a word on paper that means more than sex and puts it under a smooth rock in his garden: again.

Large parrots can live to be eighty. Annie buys a bright green male with a red crown and names him Pedro. He says "Honey, I'm home" as soon as he hears her key in the door.

This is what Pedro says when Jay lets himself in with Annie's key. She's reading the newspaper at the kitchen table, and is first relieved, then startled, her instincts flip-flopped.

He says, "One of the toucans needed heart surgery and I flew with him to Miami."

The missing days fill in with answers and Annie goes to Jay, rests her head on his shoulder. Pedro squawks, yells something else Annie's taught him, "this bird flies" so they all know what he'd be doing in the Amazon. Annie drapes Pedro's cage with the dark cover. "Easy, bub," she says.

"Are you up for one of my famous kitchen sink omelettes?" Jay says later, lying next to her in bed, his foot grazing hers. Annie doesn't know hunger, only that her heart grips the branch.