We’ll Always Have Parrots

Chapter 4

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Dad said, obligingly striking a pose for a passing camera. Of course not; when had any member of my family ever passed up an opportunity to wear a silly costume in public?

Mother, whose train prevented her from skipping through the crowd, turned and waved from across the room. I noticed that she’d gotten quite good at the sort of genteel wave favored by the British royal family, a barely perceptible twist of the wrist that one could keep up for the entire duration of a parade with minimal risk of repetitive motion injury. And she’d already acquired parrot protection in the form of a purple umbrella.

My ten-year-old nephew, Eric, appeared in front of us, dressed as an Amblyopian knight, though most of his oversized armor looked as if he’d borrowed it from one of his older brothers. At first glance, I thought he was dragging a bundle of spare ostrich plumes behind him, but on closer examination I recognized a small dog, his blackand-white fur almost totally obscured by a headpiece of purple feathers.

“I see you brought Spike,” I remarked, without enthusiasm.

“Grandma says for you to keep him, Grandpa,” Eric said, handing Dad the leash. “I’m going to go carry her dress.”

Eric trotted back to resume his post, and he and Mother swept off toward the ballroom. Eric obviously considered it a point of pride to hold the train as high as possible, and I was relieved to see that Mother, perhaps anticipating this, had accessorized her outfit with only the most elegant frilly purple lingerie.

“Come on, Meg,” Dad said, seizing the leash. “You’ve got to see what I found.”

Spike didn’t seem to mind his change of handlers. He appeared totally absorbed in staring cross-eyed at the plumes over his head and intermittently growling at them. I couldn’t tell if he was moving his feet, or Dad was simply towing him gently across the polished lobby floor.

I followed Dad, trying to keep him from actually thwacking anyone with his magician’s staff, until we arrived at a small side room whose entrance had been decorated to simulate the opening of a small jungle cave. Dad darted inside, ducking low to clear the overhanging foliage, and I followed more slowly.

“Look what I found!” he exclaimed, waving his staff. “This is Salome!”

“That’s nice, Dad,” I said, following his gesture. “But I don’t think Mother will let you keep her.”

Salome was a full grown tiger.

“Fascinating,” Dad murmured, staring into the cat’s eyes.

“Don’t put your hands near the cage,” said a man nearby. Presumably Salome’s keeper.

“No intention of it,” I said, and I got a grip on the back of Dad’s robe, in case Salome’s unwavering stare was having an hypnotic effect.

Salome blinked, and shifted her gaze up to the ceiling, where several monkeys and a parrot perched on the light fixtures, watching her. The monkeys chattered, nervously. I don’t suppose it occurred to the silly things that if they didn’t like sharing the room with a tiger, they could leave—she couldn’t. Salome’s mouth curled back as if she were snarling, but no sound emerged.

I pulled out my camera with the hand that wasn’t holding Dad back and snapped a few quick shots of Salome’s snarl.

Spike suddenly stopped snapping at his plumes and noticed Salome. He burst into growls and barks.

Salome dropped her gaze to Spike. Was I only imagining the mild annoyance in her previously inscrutable amber eyes?

“Don’t let him go,” Salome’s keeper warned. “Salome could kill him with one swipe of her paw, and gobble him up before I could get the cage open.”

“Promises, promises,” I said. I shushed Spike, and he subsided into muted growls.

“Stand back!” the keeper snapped.

“We are,” I said, tugging Dad a little farther away.

“Wasn’t me,” the keeper said, and pointed at a gray parrot perching overhead.

“Stand back!” the parrot repeated, in an uncannily accurate imitation of the keeper’s voice.

“Amazing!” Dad said, shifting his admiration to the parrot. “I would never have guessed that wasn’t you.”

“African Grey,” the keeper said. “They’re the most talented mimics. A cockatoo or an Amazon usually sounds more like your stereotyped ‘Polly want a cracker.’ An African Grey could fool your own mother into thinking it was you.”

I suddenly realized what my own mother would think if Dad brought home a parrot, however talented.

“We should go,” I said, plucking Dad’s sleeve.

Just then the parrot trilled a scrap of Vivaldi in the chirping tones of a cell phone.

“It doesn’t just do voices,” Dad exclaimed, with delight.

“An African Grey can do just about any noise,” the keeper said. “Electronic noises are easy—a lot like the shrieks they use in the wild to communicate with the rest of the flock. I just hope this one’s never heard a car alarm. And I’d appreciate it if you could take the dog away before it learns to do him.”

“Surely it couldn’t learn anything that quickly,” Dad said.

“A talented African Grey can repeat something after one hearing,” the keeper said. “Doesn’t become a permanent part of its repertoire without some kind of reinforcement. Usually repetition…”

He frowned down at Spike, who was still growling repetitively.

“Come on, Dad,” I said. “We’ll miss Michael’s spotlight,”

“Oh, right,” Dad said. “I’ll come back later,” he told the keeper.

Yes and for that matter I planned to come back later myself, and find out why the convention organizers had arranged to have a live tiger as part of the proceedings, and why the tiger’s keeper had agreed to this demented idea.

But for now, we left, with Dad dragging Spike, who continued to growl until we succeeded in pulling him out the door. Then he finally shut up and began prancing along behind us with a jaunty air, as if his barking and not our change of location had caused the tiger to disappear.

The organizers had scheduled Michael’s spotlight in the convention’s main event room—the hotel ballroom, which contained a small stage and several hundred chairs, set up auditorium-style. Mother, of course, had snagged a chair on the aisle, to accommodate her train. Dad and Spike joined her, but I turned down the seat she had saved for me. I preferred standing in the back, where I could escape quickly at the end of the hour.

And where I could survey the crowd, about ninety percent of them in costume. Of course, I was looking at the backs of their heads but, still, I could see a great many purple ostrich plumes and pointed wizard’s hats, along with an astonishing variety of headgear—hennins, wimples, plumed knight’s helms, musketeer’s hats, space suit helmets, and even the odd set of antlers or insect antennae. This meant that as the crowd settled in, debates raged up and down the rows over whether or not people should take off their hats for the benefit of the fans behind them. The fans toward the back of the room also protested the umbrellas and parasols that some people wanted to use as protection from the monkeys and parrots—large numbers of whom, sensing something important afoot, had followed the human crowds into the ballroom and were squabbling noisily overhead for the available space on the crystal chandeliers.

By 8:57, the ballroom was packed. I was close enough to hear the convention security staff—all of them female, and dressed as Amazon guards—turning away latecomers.

“I’m sorry. Due to the fire marshal’s regulations, we can’t allow any more people in,” they kept repeating. “You can watch the closed circuit broadcast in the Rivendell Room.”

Closed circuit broadcast? I glanced up and saw that the ballroom boasted a small balcony that doubled as a lighting booth. At the moment, it held not only the lighting techs but also a camera crew, composed of a Klingon in full battle dress and a flying monkey from The Wizard of Oz. The cameras panned across the audience, setting the scene for the fans exiled to the Rivendell Room.

The cameras reminded me to pull out my own little camera and put in a fresh memory card so I could get plenty of photos when Michael took the stage.

I spotted familiar faces, but refrained from waving, since I couldn’t figure out why most of them looked familiar. Were they people I’d met, however briefly? Or after half a dozen of these fan gatherings, had I started to recognize the die-hards?

I was almost relieved to spot one face I definitely knew. Francis, Michael’s agent, stood off to one side, wearing the anxious look that no longer worried me, now that I knew it was his habitual expression. A pity because, as I’d told Michael, on those rare occasions when Francis relaxed enough to smile, he was reasonably attractive in a lanky, aristocratic fashion.

“Is it the long horsy face or the threadbare tweeds?” Michael had countered.

Obviously this wasn’t one of Francis’s relaxed days. I saw him reach into his right jacket pocket and then glance around to see if anyone was watching before slipping something into his mouth.

I sighed and shook my head. Francis had relapsed. Not that it was any of my business, but still. If it was humanly possible to OD on TUMS, one of these days Francis would do it. Should I sic Dad on him?

The crowd began shushing each other when a six-woman contingent of the Amazon security guards marched in and arrayed themselves in front of the stage.

“What the hell is this?” muttered someone to my right.