We’ll Always Have Parrots

Chapter 9

The little man turned pale, and Steele looked startled.

“He can’t be Ichabod Dilley,” Steele said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“For one thing, isn’t he a little too young?”

“Maybe he wrote the comics as a teenager,” I said.

“In the womb, maybe,” Steele said. “Didn’t they come out in the late sixties or something?”

“Early seventies, actually,” I said.

“Wrote what?” the little man asked. He did look a little young, perhaps, but then he had the kind of bland, round face whose age I find hard to pin down.

“And now that he has gone on to a respectable corporate career, he isn’t sure he wants to be reminded of his wild and crazy youth,” I continued. “You are him, aren’t you?” I went on, turning back to the little man.

“I am named Ichabod Dilley,” he said. “But I’m not that Ichabod Dilley.”

“How can there possibly be two?” I asked.

“It’s a family name,” Dilley said. “I’ll have you know that there was an Ichabod Dilley who fought in the Revolution.”

“What do they call you, anyway?” Steele asked. “Icky?”

“I prefer Ichabod,” the little man said, sounding sulky.

He’d probably been called Icky more than once in his life.

“If you’re not the Ichabod Dilley who wrote the comic books, what are you doing here?” I asked.

“They invited me,” he said.

“And you didn’t find that odd? That a bunch of people you’d never heard of before invited you to be the special guest at a convention?”

“I speak at conventions all the time,” he said.

“What kind of conventions?”

“Any convention that hires me,” he said, drawing himself up very straight. “That’s what I do. I’m a motivational speaker.”

I managed to keep a straight face. Steele didn’t.

“Oh, that’s going to go over real big with this crowd,” he said, through snorts of laughter.

“Have you ever spoken to a group like this?” I asked.

“No, mostly I’ve done conventions of accountants and actuaries,” he said. “They’re a little more…um…”

“Buttoned up?” Steele suggested.

“You could say that,” Dilley said, glancing at two scantily clad Amazons strolling past the booth. “I did a convention of funeral directors, once.”

“I bet they were a load of laughs,” Steele said.

“Actually, they were, after the meetings,” Dilley said. “They really cut loose and get crazy at conventions. I don’t think I got to bed before midnight the whole weekend.”

If staying up till midnight was his idea of cutting loose and getting crazy, Amblyopia had some surprises in store for him. I’d already received two invitations to con parties that didn’t start till midnight.

Steele frowned, and I worried that he’d make another insulting remark about Dilley’s name, so I glanced up at the wall clock and pretended to be alarmed.

“Look at the time!” I exclaimed. “You’d better get over to the ballroom. It’s almost time for your panel.”

“Oh, right,” Dilley said, staring raptly at a woman walking toward the booth. Her barbarian warrior costume consisted of a few scraps of strategically positioned fur and a lot of leather straps holding her weapons.

She saw Dilley staring at her and smiled at him. He drew back as if she were a snake.

“This is crazy,” he muttered, and scurried away.

The barbarian woman glanced at our booth, favored Steele with a smile considerably warmer than the one she’d given Dilley, and undulated on.

“Interesting costume,” I said, into the ensuing silence.

One o’clock came, and shortly afterward, the dealers’ room grew crowded. Very crowded. Not a ringing endorsement of Ichabod Dilley’s motivational speech.

Sure enough, I overheard nearby fans talking about it.

“Good time to come to the dealers’ room and visit my former money,” one said.

“So what’s going on in the ballroom now?” another asked.

“Nothing worth seeing,” said the first.

“Some crackpot yammering on about daring to be yourself,” said a woman dressed as one of Porfiria’s ladies-in-waiting.

“As if we need that kind of advice,” scoffed a pudgy Michael clone.

Poor Icky.

The crowd thinned out toward the end of the hour, so I deduced the fans expected something interesting in the ballroom at two. I was about to suggest to Steele that one of us make a food run when Michael appeared and beckoned to me.

“Sorry,” he said. “Things have been crazy. I thought we could have lunch, but they’ve drafted me to coax the QB out of her room and give her moral support when she does her panel at two.”

“She’s still playing hermit?”

“Apparently. Can you come along and help us with her?”

“Me?”

I wasn’t sure the QB even knew who I was. She’d been known to glare at me when I showed up at cast parties on Michael’s arm, but normally she ignored me.

“We think she’s feeling overwhelmed,” Michael said. “We’re rounding up people she knows.”

Shaking my head, I followed him.

They had already gathered Michael’s costar and buddy, Walker; Nate, the scriptwriter; blademaster Chris; and a perky young blond woman named Typhani who’d been working as the QB’s personal assistant for an impressive six weeks. Previous personal assistants had flounced off in a huff or run off in tears by the end of the first week.

“Okay,” Michael told the diminutive Amazon. “Let’s go get her.”

At first, I didn’t think it would work.

“Go away! Leave me alone!” the QB kept shouting. But Michael kept coaxing, and periodically he’d say something like,

“Everyone’s just waiting to see you!”

And the rest of us would ad lib encouraging comments.

Gradually, the protests grew less vehement. And finally, after one particularly impassioned plea from Michael, success.

She opened the door.