Vegas Moon

13.

There’s no need to worry about Dick. He’s locked in a giant cage that’s six feet high, four feet deep, and takes up half the wall.

“Beautiful, isn’t he!” she says, practically breathlessly.

I don’t know much about roosters, but this one is probably as handsome and clean as they get. He’s white, with a giant, black plume of a tail, and his head and neck sport that red rooster skin thing they all have that looks like a punk rocker’s spiked hair above the beak, and a giant set of nuts below. It’s a generally nasty look. Freaky, up close.

“He’s quite a specimen,” I proclaim, for lack of anything better to say.

“While we’re here,” Gwen says, “we ought to go ahead and walk him.”

“Walk him?”

She looks into my eyes. “Unless you think it’s too dangerous.”

I look into hers. They’re mud brown, but far prettier than that sounds. “We’ll be fine,” I say.

Her smile is so sudden and radiant, it takes me by surprise.

“What?” I say.

“You’re really tough, aren’t you? I mean, you’re the real deal.”

“You think?”

Gwen launches a punch to my face, which I easily catch in my hand. She smiles and says, “I know it.”

She crosses the floor to a small sink, turns on the water, and lets it run long enough to warm. Next, she gets a cotton ball from a container and wets it with warm water. She removes the bird from the cage, holds it upside down and starts stroking it with the cotton ball.

“What are you doing?”

“Dick hasn’t peed today.”

“So?”

“If you rub a warm, moist cotton ball on his genitals, it stimulates him to pee.”

I think about telling her I haven’t peed since early this morning.

Gwen waits a moment, then frowns.

“Maybe the walk will help him pee,” she says. She fits him with a harness and attaches a leash to it. Then she pops the garage door open, and starts to leave.

“Shouldn’t we lock the door?” I say.

“Probably. Punch in 5197, then hit “Enter.”

I do as instructed, and we stroll down the driveway, walking her rooster.

“You know what I call this?” she says.

“The cock walk?”

Gwen smiles. “How’d you know?”

“Nothing else would be quite right.”

“Exactly.”

It takes much longer than I would have thought to walk a rooster to the end of the driveway. As we approach the gates, the gate goons puff themselves up to impress her. But Gwen doesn’t seem to notice, or at least, pretends not to. We pass by them, stand on the road a few minutes, then turn around and head back to the garage.

“Does he crow every morning at dawn?” I ask.

“Do you kill someone every morning at dawn?” she says, testily.

I think briefly about the five I killed this morning, but decide hers is a rhetorical question.

“Did I offend you by asking that?” I say.

“It’s just a stupid question.”

“Don’t roosters crow in the mornings?”

“No more than any other time. It’s a myth.”

“You sure about that?”

“Quite.”

We walk some more. Then I say, “What’s that red stuff on his head and neck?”

“Wattles and comb.”

“And the red-and-white part?”

“His earlobes. You don’t know much about roosters, do you, Mr. Creed?”

She could have said cocks, for shock value. But something tells me we’ve moved past that now.

“Please. Call me Donovan.”

She stops short.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

She turns and nods toward the two muscle heads guarding the gate. “Could you take them down without a gun?”

I don’t even look up. “Yes.”

“Both of them? At the same time?”

“I doubt one would stand still while I kill the other.”

We start walking again, only now she’s walking much closer to me.