The Observer Effect

Rob Bianco

It was summer, 100+ degrees, and I was standing in front of a cellphone store limply pitching deals to passersby. Due to my employer’s insistence that salesmen can only be inside if helping a customer and a newly installed camera that would swivel to follow whenever I came inside, I stayed outside sweating. The neighborhood was rough, a man would go by a half dozen times with a different bicycle each time, a homeless couple pitched a tent behind the dumpster and would take turns anxiously standing beside it, and a drunk sprawled out on a dead flowerbed, but I was tasked with watching passing people to yell “free iPhones” or “our cheapest family plan yet” while they quickly accelerated away at the sound.

 After a few hours of this I smelled smoke and hurriedly fetched water and went to the side of the building. There a man, mottled brown hair with an oversized hoodie and hospital wristband, was pulling bits of scrap paperwork from his pockets and feeding them piece by piece to a small fire while watching them curl into ash. I watched with him for a few moments, eventually saying that I needed to put out the fire while gesturing towards my water that he could not see, as he stared fixedly at the flames. I waited for a moment for him to move away, but he only said, “go for it.” The fire smothered instantly, and he picked at the remnants like a pyre’s bone picker until he was happy and looked at me. His face was streaked with dried blood. His eyes were pinpricks. He was smiling. I asked if everything was ok and he laughed. “Sorry, I’ve been doing a lot of meth lately” before lifting himself up and carrying himself across the parking lot to 7-11.

Before I regained my senses a group of pigeons landed next to the walking man and began playing in the puddles of the parking lot and pecking for food, cooing and strutting. One pigeon, grey and black with green on his head, stopped to stare at me, but I don’t know why. While we stared, a car rolled slowly through the lot. The pigeon saw it and started walking away from the tire, but, after a few steps, stopped suddenly to turn bodily towards the tire then back to me. It was only a few moments, but it felt like a choice had been made. It didn’t happen slowly, all the pigeon’s bones snapped simultaneously and it was gone. The woman driving didn’t turn her head, likely didn’t even hear it, as she went inside and rejoined the thoroughfare with her coffee. The man never returned. The bird’s body stayed for three days.

Author Bio

Robert Bianco is a working-class writer from Maryland’s Eastern Shore who recently graduated from MFA at George Mason University. Rob was a recipient of a participant scholarship for the 2024 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, received support from Vermont Studio Center, and was awarded the GMU Provost Research Scholarship. His work can be found at Hippocampus.