We’ll Always Have Parrots

Chapter 10

Even from where I stood, I could smell the blast of peppermint from her breath. Either she’d just knocked back a killer dose of mouthwash or she’d taken up flavored vodka. She gazed slowly around the circle of people outside her door, though it didn’t feel as if she was looking at us. More like scanning us with some instrument other than her eyes. I could imagine a reptile performing the same emotionless survey. It’s not edible; it’s not dangerous; I can’t mate with it; it might as well not exist; I’ll ignore it.

Fine by me. I’d seen what happened to people when the QB stopped ignoring them.

I saw a faint spark of interest in her eyes when she spotted Michael.

“Come in,” she said, beckoning to him. The rest of us followed. She didn’t shriek, so I deduced she was in a good mood.

An artificially induced good mood, though. Her balance was worse than usual, and her smile had a certain wobbly quality.

I was surprised, and I could tell Michael was, too. From his tales of life on the set, her drinking was a menace, but only after the cameras stopped rolling. She might show up for work with a monumental hangover, but she’d be sober. I suppose we’d expected her to maintain the same discipline at the convention. After all, it was work.

“Oh, my God,” the Amazon murmured. “She’s—”

“A real trouper,” Typhani said, in a loud firm voice. “I’m sure even though she’s been feeling a little unwell, she’ll do fine once we get her on stage.”

It was that getting her on stage part that worried me. She chatted brightly with Michael, oblivious to the passing minutes.

Or perhaps less oblivious than determined to sabotage the schedule. Or unwilling to leave the comfort of a familiar environment.

Not my idea of comfort, but it looked a lot like her trailer on the set, from the brief glimpses I’d had of it. She’d made herself at home.

Bits of clothing covered most of the room’s horizontal surfaces. At least a dozen pairs of shoes lay scattered about. An empty box of truffles sat on the bedside table, and from the number of fluted brown-paper candy cups strewn on the floor, it wasn’t the first box. The contents of her purse carpeted the top of the dresser—she had an amazing number of credit cards.

Hard to believe she’d checked in the night before. I’d need a week to create that much chaos.

“Oh, they won’t want to hear me,” she was saying. “Not after the novelty of listening to Ichabod Dilley. What did he say, anyway?”

Her voice had an edge. Maybe she resented sharing the spotlight with Dilley. Maybe she was afraid he’d denounce the clever deal she’d made, thirty years ago, when she’d bought the film rights to Porfiria for what now seemed a ridiculously small sum.

Or maybe she was just afraid he’d mention how long ago that deal had taken place.

I wondered if someone should tell her that it wasn’t the real Ichabod Dilley after all. At least, not the Ichabod Dilley who’d written the comic books. Would it calm her down to hear this, or further enrage her?

No one else answered, so I spoke up.

“I don’t think any of us know what he said. Hardly anyone went.”

She looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time, and I remembered why I usually held my tongue around her.

“Really?” she said. She smiled, and then, when I didn’t say anything else, her glance flicked away as if I no longer existed.

I realized I’d been holding my breath.

“Look at the time!” Michael exclaimed. “We should be going!”

Michael continued to distract the QB while Typhani stuffed her employer into the glittering jacket of her costume, and combed her suspiciously jet-black hair into some kind of order. Then Michael offered his arm in a gesture whose apparent chivalry disguised its practical purpose. The QB clung to him as he half-supported and half-steered her out the door and propelled her down the corridor. The tiny Amazon trotted beside them, occasionally tugging Michael in the right direction when he made a wrong turn, as all of us did when navigating the hotel corridors. Of course, Michael had an excuse—he was chattering a mile a minute about what a lovely convention it had been so far and how enthusiastic the fans were.

To my surprise, they were enthusiastic. They greeted the QB’s arrival noisily—had they been bribed, perhaps? As I stood in the wings, I could see them listening with rapt attention. Amazing. Perhaps my own dislike blinded me to the fans’ genuine affection for her.

I was silently berating myself when Typhani came up and shoved a legal pad and a pen into my hands.

“Help us think up the trivia questions,” she hissed into my ear.

“Trivia questions?” I stage-whispered back.

“The fan who can answer the most trivia questions about Miss Wynncliffe-Jones’s talk gets a personally autographed picture,” she said. “Of Michael.”

Ah. That explained the rapt attention. I was right; they were bribed. I dutifully began scribbling notes.

“And she’s supposed to be Porfiria?”

I looked up to see Alaric Steele standing at my elbow.

“That’s her,” I said. “Is the booth—?”

“Chris, the blademaster guy, offered to watch it,” Steele said. “What is that getup she’s wearing?”

“It’s what she wears when she performs a sacrifice to the goddess Apnea.

“The goddess of snoring.”

I watched his face as he studied the outfit. The costume shop had intended the gown’s stiff brocade and voluminous folds to disguise the QB’s girth while the high gold lamé collar camouflaged her chins. The headdress was supposed to make her face seem less round, though to my mind it only completed her resemblance to the top ornament on a Christmas tree.

“I understand that in the original comic books, Porfiria performed her sacrifices wearing a loincloth and a couple of tasseled pasties,” I added. “Not that I’ve ever read them.”

“Yeah, that sounds more like something from a comic book,” Steele said, with a fleeting smile. “I might even have read some of them—I’m old enough, remember?”

“Problem is, so is Her Highness.”

“And then some,” he said. “And I don’t think Her Highness is the right form of address.”

“Her Majesty, maybe?”

“More like Her Tipsiness.”

“Is it that obvious?” I said, wincing.

He shrugged.

“Are all the panels like this?” he asked. “Bunch of silly actors talking about the show?”

I decided, in the interest of harmony, not to remind him of my connection with one of the silly actors. I nodded.

“I’d better get back,” he said. “Chris only agreed to watch the booth for a few minutes so I could get a gander at Her Elusiveness.”

“I should go back and help you,” I said.

“I can hold things down if you want to hang around with your boyfriend.”

“Unfortunately, he’ll be escorting Her Decrepitness for the next hour,” I said. “So while I appreciate the offer, I might as well come back and make myself useful.”

I handed the trivia questions I’d come up with so far to Typhani and followed Steele to the dealers’ room.

Business wasn’t as slow as it had been during Michael’s appearance, but neither was it booming. Good. They probably didn’t need the overflow room, but at least the QB would see a crowd large enough to keep her happy.

I was writing up a sales receipt for a couple of daggers when I heard a voice at my elbow.

“Did you see my speech?”

“Hi, Ichabod,” I said. “No, sorry; I was here. Thank you,” I added, to my customer. “Wear and/or use them in good health.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Dilley said, sounding hurt. “I was hoping you had. Maybe you can catch me tomorrow, then.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

“I don’t think this crowd is receptive to motivational talks,” he said.

“Oh, dear,” I said. “So it didn’t go well?”

“I’ve seen better audiences,” he said. “But never mind. By tomorrow, I hope to have something to say about the other Ichabod Dilley.”

“That should be interesting,” I said.

“The weird thing is that I am probably the most appropriate person to represent the other Ichabod Dilley,” he went on. “I didn’t know it before, but he’s my uncle.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t realize immediately that they were talking about your uncle.”

“Maybe I would have, if my parents had ever told me I had an uncle,” Dilley said. “Up until this weekend, I always thought my dad was an only child, and now I find out I’m named after his black sheep younger brother who died before I was born.”

“Oh, he’s dead,” I said, feeling slightly disappointed.

“For thirty years,” Dilley said.

“He must have been young,” I said.

“Yeah, about twenty or so. Drugs,” he added, solemnly.

“Drugs?”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I just finished talking to my parents. Dad wouldn’t say anything; just kept yelling that his drugged-out brother was dead and buried, and he didn’t want to talk about it. But after he hung up, Mom told me a little. She says the real last straw was when Dad had to pay off all these huge debts my uncle ran up. They almost had to sell the farm.”

“Yeah, that could leave bad feeling,” I said. “Although I doubt if your uncle did it deliberately. At least the dying part.”

“I’m hoping I can get her to tell me some more this evening. I need background for my talk tomorrow. And I’m sure there’s some interesting stuff to tell. It seems my uncle Ichabod dropped out of college and went to San Francisco and got involved in drugs and pornography.”

“Drugs and pornography?”

“It wasn’t that uncommon, thirty years ago,” Dilley said, sounding a little defensive.

“Drugs, maybe,” I said. “But pornography?”

“Yeah, these underground comics,” Dilley said, “really raunchy stuff, apparently. My parents were amazed to hear that anything he’d done had been made into a TV show.”

“Consider the times,” I said. “Thirty years ago, TV kept married couples in separate beds, and now, look what you see.”

“True,” Dilley said. “Maybe his work was only offensive to the backward, parochial sensibilities of the time. Perhaps today, instead of offensive, we’d find it bold, forward thinking, and socially relevant.”

“That’s the spirit,” I said. “You can rescue your uncle from the slanders that have besmirched his reputation all these years.”

“Yes,” he said. “Only—”

“What’s the problem?”

“What if it is pornography?” he said. “I’ve never seen his work.”

“That’s easily fixed,” I said. “See that woman at the Dreamscape Booksellers counter?”

“The one wearing antlers?”

“Yes. That’s Cordelia—she sells used and rare books. Go see if she’s got some of your uncle’s stuff for sale.”

He started forward, then turned around, looking doubtful.

“Now what?” I asked.

“She’s a real book dealer,” he said. “Won’t she be insulted if I ask her about comic books?”

“She may be miffed if she doesn’t have any to sell, but she won’t be insulted,” I said. “Call them graphic novels, if you’re worried; it’s a classier term.”

He nodded and waded into the crowd.