The woman heard the sound again. Rrroo-cooo. Rrroocoo.

She climbed out of the bed, carefully, so as not to wake the man sleeping beside her, and went to the window. On the roof of the bed-and-breakfast hotel were two pigeons. The female pecked and walked, pecked and walked, always turning away from the male, which was puffing its feathers, dipping its head, making its soft, chuckling, private noise. The female, sleek and oblivious, hopped to the roof of the next house. The male followed. He spread his tail. His strut seemed precisely timed, but halting, as if the gears of some mechanism inside him were missing several teeth. His coo came to the woman's ear more faintly. Then the female pigeon flew off, swooping down toward Bourbon Street, the male followed, and the woman stepped back to the bed.

"Wake up," she said to the man. He was sprawled in such a way that had the mattress been a wall, he would have been scaling it dramatically. His hands seemed to be reaching out. But he was soundly asleep.