Several times, I went to New York City to visit my childhood friend, Kristin Petersen. She is blonde and Swedish, I am brunette and Norwegian. We were raised together in Bellevue. We went to school together from kindergarten on, were Bluebirds and Camp Fire Girls, as well as close friends. When she was a junior or a senior, Kristin began to dance, which she’d loved since she was tiny, but had never seriously studied ballet or modern. Nevertheless, she was a gifted interpretive dancer with a beautiful figure and long, stylishly straight hair.

Almost immediately after we graduated, she moved to the Big Apple, never to return, dancing for Alvin Ailey and with other avant garde ensembles. After about a decade, I went to visit her at her loft right off Broadway on Houston Street. On the fifth floor of an old warehouse, already reclaimed and gentrified downstairs, but not inside, she had a large dance studio, lined with mirrors, complete with barres. At the far end of the space was the living area, a perfect hippy world walled off with four by eight sheets of plywood and some two by fours.

The living space was crowded with stuff. She had a sleeping area against the exterior wall with its grimey window on one side, and a rickety shower and bath on the other window side underneath an ancient, grime encrusted skylight. Along a line created by the bathroom was an eight foot high sleeping loft slash storage area arrangement, accessible by a step ladder propped against the wall. The opposite side provided a sitting area with coffee table next to an office, another sitting area, a stand-alone closet stuffed with clothing, abutting the sleeping area shrouded in Indian print sheets.

The space was imaginatively furnished with found objects from the streets of the City. The first time I visited, Kristin’s live-in lover, Mark, had an impressive mahogany table from some Wall Street board room as the centerpiece. The second time I visited, I flew to Manhattan, then took a cab to Kristin’s loft with all my bags of stylish clothing and a promise from a gentleman friend to take me to some Broadway shows.

I had recently become interested in aerobics and was a fit 5 foot two inch size five with a new life, so Kristin and I were still like female bookends, yin and yang, blonde and brunette Kristins. Sadly, elegant Mark and his regal table were gone. In his place was a huge American Indian named Turtle Heart and a giant cage with an angry cockatoo named Bird Lancaster. Other inhabitants included a large, flop-eared bunny who lived in the shower. He had the run of the place and his own litter box, placed in the bathroom area alongside the cats’ boxes. Two cats, Siamese variants, flitted over furniture and behind walls, but left the rabbit and Bird alone.

At first the Indian was delighted with me, but as soon as I made it clear that I would not be joining him in bed with Kristin, that changed. He also hated me because my gentleman friend made good on his offer, and sent a limousine to pick me up to go uptown to Petrossian and to the theatre.

I wore this killer black and silver, off-the-shoulder disco dress to go out with Bob, the hundred and seventy five dollar an hour attorney from Seattle who was squiring me around town. Turtle Heart told me in no uncertain terms that “This is not a hotel” but I was Kristin’s friend and guest, plus it was her place, so after a while he left me alone, sort of.

My heart had been stolen by Bird Lancaster. He was a terrible, spoiled brat, but we bonded the minute we laid eyes on each other. Kristin let him out at dinnertime that first evening, so he walked along the floor to the table, then used his beak and claws to crawl up my jeans leg onto my lap. He watched me eat; I gave him tidbits from my plate. After that we were inseparable.

Sometimes it was okay for Bird to be out, but he hated to go back. They would catch him and shove him in, slamming the door. He would scream fit to split your head, then grab the edge of his food dish to dash it against the cage, so seeds and kibble flew out in all directions.

Turtle Heart made a great living as a dope dealer and shaman. He had a maple box on a tv tray by the door. The box was segmented to display thirty two kinds of primo marijuana and hash he imported from all over the world. The phone rang all the time, and the most interesting people in Soho showed up at all hours to smoke and talk.

As a shaman, he also had a following of easily led New Yorkers, who thought he had answers, but he only had contempt for them. However, I was not allowed to join in the ritual, to punish me for being so worldly that I wanted to see Broadway shows and let a rich man buy me expensive dinners. I did not care, stayed in the living area, and played with Bird. When Kristin and her paramour returned from the studio ritual into the living area, Turtle Heart said,

“Did any of those wallheads leave any money?”

Kristin and I stayed up till wee hours, smoking pot, talking and weaving beads around sticks in a distinctive pentagram shape she had mastered. She cast my horoscope and we talked a lot about astrology and mysticism.

She told me that I am a dark moon person, who searches for meaning in others but only finds it within herself, but that she is a full moon person, the opposite, who searches for meaning within herself but only finds it in others. Apparently, she found it in Turtle Heart, because she sat at his feet.

During the day we walked around New York, shopping for Turtle Heart’s special tobacco, his booze, special food from the Farmers Market, striding under ever-present scaffolding, visiting shop after shop with an unlimited number of twenty dollar bills peeling from Kristin’s pocket. Finally, we went home, but only after a lengthy visit to art galleries festooning the ground floor.

Upstairs at Five Front, Turtle Heart was at work in his office. This was the early era of computers, with four inch discs that showed a lot of their inner magnetic tape through a hole diecut through its cardboard cover.

One simply shoved a big disc into the A drive, saved the data, then ejected it for remote storage. In this case, Turtle Heart had a lot of discs, stored on several shelves above his desk. The monitor, keyboard, and printer were all observed by Bird, whose cage was his elbow.

The cockatoo watched Turtle Heart’s every move, all day, every day, as he saved files, switched discs, running his business in a modern, organized fashion. He worked at his desk often, maybe to keep the details of his lucrative enterprises recorded, maybe to write arcane answers to universal questions. No one will ever know.

Because I let Bird out and forgot to watch him.

Also, I made the mistake of answering the phone. I did think it might be Bob, and it was, but it was Turtle Heart’s business line. Unfortunately, while I chatted, Bird flew up onto the desk and began to pick up each disc in turn, angling it with his foot so that he could pop the delicate magnetic tape with his beak. He had destroyed quite a few when the Indian stormed into the living space to find me on his phone and Bird on his desk.

Oh man, did we catch it. The giant yelled at me for answering the phone, while he grabbed Bird, flinging him into his cage. Kristin came to our rescue: we made dinner or some other conciliatory activity, feeding the enraged bird treats to calm him.

Often Kristin would play with her cats when we were trying to avoid Turtle Heart. She had a colorful Costa Rican hammock strung across the room; she would capture the Siamese, wrapping them in the hammock like cat peas in a pod, then swing them round and round in a circle.

Wheeeeeeeeee

One night, I was up in the alcove, nestling in my sleeping bag, when I heard clamp, scrape, clamp, scrape, repeated, repeated, getting closer and closer, up the step ladder. Into the attic room came Bird, with his little top knot unfurled, and his wings held out from his sides. My visitor ran round in circles on the rug in excitement. It was like being visited by a Martian.

He came right up to me, staring, inviting me to rub under his wings. He was purest white, with canary yellow overtones in his topknot and on the edges of his wings. A soft, talc-like substance clung to my fingers after rubbing the soft skin under his feathers. His tail was damaged from being in the cage, but he looked healthy, watching me from one side of his head with that eloquent eye, iris expanding and contracting in the dim light.

It was all I could do not to leave my elegant clothes behind so that I could punch holes in my suitcase and steal Bird Lancaster. I will never forget him. I’ve never stop regretting that I didn’t try to buy him, because he died the next year, but his Martian spirit lives on.