The guys from All Year Gutters were up there walking on the shingles. Every summer they came, and they weren’t careful with their hoses. They hit his balcony and his mountain bike, and it didn’t matter if he complained. The president of the condo board was always somewhere else. Playing golf in Arizona or fishing in Cancún, and he didn’t stop to listen when Jason caught him between trips. He just waved and kept on going. Where’s that pretty wife of yours, he’d say. It’s been ages since I’ve seen her. Jason hated him even more then. Not even fifty and retired already. Always smiling and always wearing shiny leather shoes. Tan as a politician and he went to a salon where the ladies buffed his nails. He went outside though the workmen were still spraying the water. They were shouting over the thump of the compressor. The birds were wet and their skin was dimpled gray and they were dead, all of them, except for one still in the nest. They looked like tiny ducklings. Like plucked birds hanging from hooks the way he’d seen in San Francisco.
