Ask the Parrot

11

Suzanne woke to the patter of pebbles on her window. Annoyed, not wanting to be awake, she thought, Who would be pestering me at this hour? What time is it, anyway?

No, it’s not pebbles, it’s shooting! Guns, shooting.

Suzanne opened her eyes to utter madness. Instead of the silent dark of her own hushed peaceable room, she was seated upright in some harshly angular place of bands of hard glare that sliced down across full crowded banks of blackness. Light above, dark below, black on all sides—a window?

“Oh! My God, what’s—”

“Shut up!”

Another shock. The voice was male, low, intense, guttural, and not at all friendly. It silenced Suzanne like a hand clapped against her mouth, long enough for the sharp bite of the boot lace around her wrists to bring memory crashing back, with all its terror and all its humiliation.

How could she not have realized that it was the bank robber they’d run into? She had been just so full of her normal assumption, for so many years, that as she moved through the world she was simply going to be mistreated, or ignored, or dealt with unfairly, that when a man suddenly appeared in front of her to wave a gun around and tie people up like political prisoners, then march off without a single word of explanation, it had somehow been normal, somehow what she’d expected from the world all along, even though on most days nothing remotely like this had ever happened.

And now that it had happened? She’d been so locked up in her own feelings of mistreatment, expectations fulfilled, that it hadn’t even occurred to her to wonder who that man might be or why he would act in such a way.

Bank robbers were being hunted all around the countryside, but when this had happened to Suzanne, did she think, bank robbers? No, she thought, now, see what they’re doing to me, and it took Brian Hopwood of all people to tell her, not gently, that this time the story wasn’t about her, it was about him, about that man, the one who’d tied them up and gone away.

Then, of course, once Brian had explained to her what was actually happening here, she’d felt such belated terror, mixed with such humiliation, that the tension had kept her absolutely silent for hours, afraid to make somehow an even bigger fool of herself. Brian, who never said anything to anybody, anyway, was also silent through all this, until, who knows how much later, the phone had rung, and rung, and rung, and Brian had finally said, “By God, I hope that’s Edna, and I hope she’s starting to smell a rat.”

But then the phone stopped ringing, and Brian said nothing else, and somehow, despite the discomfort, despite the fear, despite the embarrassment, Suzanne had fallen asleep. Asleep! To wake up who knew when, with gunshots somewhere outside.

Finished now. Who was shooting guns? Was the bank robber back, had he decided he should kill them, after all? But it had been so long since he’d gone away; still daylight then. Wouldn’t he be miles and miles from here by now, while Suzanne slept like a rag doll on the floor of Brian Hopwood’s filthy gas station, wouldn’t he be deep into some other badness by now?

She tried a whisper: “Brian.”

“Yes.” Gruff but not unfriendly.

“Brian, what’s going to happen?”

His laugh now was bitter, and not friendly at all. “Well, we’re trussed up here like Thanksgiving turkeys. There isn’t a thing for either of us to do until somebody decides to look for us.”

“But they’re shooting out there. Brian? Who’s shooting?”

“How would I know?” He was getting really irritated now.

Looking as much for some way to appease him as for some way out of their trouble, she said, “Would Edna come here?”

“I don’t think that was her, on the phone.”

Struck by a sudden thought, she said, “You know, it could have been Jack. You know, my grandfather.”

“I know who Jack is,” Brian said, very testy. “Why would he call me?”

“Looking for me.”

“Oh.” Brian considered that, then said, “Will he come looking for you?”

“Not after dark.”

“Wonderful.”

The silence now outside was worse than the gunshots; in the silence, you didn’t know where anybody was. Feeling sudden panic, Suzanne shrilly whispered, “Brian, we have to get out of here!”

“Go ahead.” Sardonic, unbelieving, unsympathetic; in other circumstances, rude.

Which she ignored. “No, really,” she whispered. “I know you can’t move in that chair there—”

“Huh.”

“But I can move.”

“You’re tied hand and foot.”

“But I can move. Brian, what if I came over there and—”

“How?”

“I don’t know, crawled or rolled or something. What difference does it make?”

“All right,” he said. “So you’re over here.”

“I tied that knot on your wrists. I know what I did. I think maybe, I think maybe I could untie it.”

“How do you get at it?”

She thought about that. Now that she was awake and oriented, she could see the office more clearly, even though all the illumination came from outside, from the gas pumps and the soda machine and the streetlight. She and Brian were near each other in the front left corner of the room, where no one looking through any window would be able to see them. The chair Brian was in, taped to the floor, was the only furniture near them. Beyond the dark doorway to the service area, Brian’s desk hulked like the recently abandoned headquarters of a defeated army. No, not army; a defeated platoon. An armless kitchen chair, a reluctant acknowledgment that there might someday be a customer to accommodate, stood against the wall on the far side of the desk.

She said, “Brian, is that chair on wheels?”

“No, why should it be?”

“I was just wondering.”

“Suzanne, let it go. In the morning, they’ll find—”

“I can’t wait till morning,” she said, and realized it was the truth. Now that she was fully awake, she needed a bathroom, and soon. “Let me just try something,” she said, though with every movement the need grew more urgent.

“What are you doing?” he asked, testy as ever, as she started hunching herself across the floor toward him.

“Just let me see . . .”

Ankles and wrists tied together, she could only move in strange little lunges, but soon she was where she wanted to be, with her back to Brian, her tied hands down by his ankles, her hunched shoulders against his shins. Exhausted from the effort, she rested her head a minute, until she realized she was resting it against Brian’s thigh and that Brian hated that. So she lifted her head, felt around behind her, and at last came to a part of the duct tape holding the screwdrivers as chocks against the floor, to keep the chair from moving.

Now he grew silent again, and she was aware of his head bent as he tried to see what she was doing and whether or not it would get them anywhere. The duct tape clung fiercely to the wooden floor, but finally she felt far enough along it to reach an end, and could yank that upward. Once started, the tape came more readily, and then the screwdriver itself helped, and, out of breath but triumphant, she could whisper, “I got it!”

“It’ll take more than one,” he said. “But then I’ll be able to help.”

This shift in him from being testy with her, scornful of her, impatient with her, to someone who could help was instantaneous and unremarked-upon. She simply accepted the offer with a nod and scooted backward a bit more until she could find some duct tape to assault.

The second screwdriver was easier to remove, now that she knew how, and then Brian could move his chair, though only in tiny increments, since his ankles were still tied together and to the chair. “Now what?” he said. “I don’t think I can drive this thing through that door.”

“Let me bring that other chair over,” she said. “If I can get up on it, maybe I can reach the knots on your wrists.”

“What good does that do? They’re tight, Suzanne, trust me.”

“I tied them myself,” she said. “Just let me see what I can do.”

“Whatever you want,” he said, disbelieving her.

She didn’t care. Now that she was moving, she was moving. She rolled across the floor, making herself dizzy, but at last bumping into that other chair. Her legs tied together with jumper cable made for a blunt instrument, but with them she could kick the chair away from the wall and around the edge of the desk and over toward Brian, who, astonishingly enough, was doing what he could do to help. That is, he kept shifting his body forward while pressing down and back on the floor with his white socked feet, inching the chair on its casters out away from the corner, where she would find him easier to reach.

Maneuvering them into position wasn’t hard, with his back turned to her and the other chair so that, if she were sitting sideways on it, Suzanne would be able to reach Brian’s wrists. No, the hard part was for her to get up onto the chair. She did manage to lunge herself up so she was lying facedown across the chair seat, but then could do no more, had no traction anywhere. At last, half-muffled in that position, she said, “Brian, I need your help.”

“Sure. What?”

“I have to put my foot in your lap, and you have to not let it get away. I can’t get up on this chair unless I can brace against something.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but all right. Let’s try it. Jesus, Suzanne, try to be a little careful.”

“This will be very fast,” she promised.

Well, it wasn’t, and she was sorry to have to hear him grit his teeth as her right heel bore into his crotch, but she needed that brace to be able to swivel around on the chair seat, first on her side, then faceup, so that then she could pull herself up with her bound hands behind her against the slats of the chair back.

“There!” she said.

“Jesus.”

“I’m sorry, Brian. Can you turn a little more away from me?”

“I certainly can.”

There was some fumbling involved, but then, behind her, she could feel his thick-fingered hands, and then the wrists, and then the thin strong shoelace.

Yes, those were the knots she’d made, good strong knots that could be slipped if you knew which part you were pulling. Here’s a loop, here’s an end, here’s—

He jumped as though he’d been electrocuted. “What’s that? Wait—wait a minute! My hands are loose!”

“Brian, please, please, untie my wrists, please, please—”

“Yeah, wait, let me see what I’m doing here. He didn’t make it easy, that sonofa— There!”

“Oh, thank God!” she said, and bent to tear off the jumper cable pinning her ankles.

He was still struggling with the duct tape on his socks. She jumped to her feet, patting the wall. “Lights.”

“We’ve got to be careful when we go out there, Suzanne, we don’t know what’s—”

“I don’t want to go out there,” she said, hurrying through the doorway into the dark interior room. “I want the ladies’!”

He called after her, “You’ll need the key!”