Ask the Parrot

“No, it’s tonight. The change is, you drive down by yourself.”

“By myself?” Alarmed, Tom said, “I thought we were doing this together.”

“We are. When you get there, that first place you unlocked, you wait. If I’m not there, I’ll show up a little later.”

“But—” Tom tried to understand what was happening. Ed didn’t have a car. He didn’t have anybody else here he could ask for help. How was he going to get all the way from here to the track?

“How are you going to get there?”

“I’ll get there,” Ed said. “You don’t have to know what I’m doing.”

“I don’t get this,” Tom said. He didn’t just feel confused, he felt very nervous, as though he were at the edge of a cliff or something. A nauseous kind of fear was rising in him, giving him that rotten taste of bile in the back of his throat. “I don’t see why you have to change things.”

“You’ll see when it’s over. Listen, Tom.”

Reluctantly, Tom said, “I’m listening.”

“You leave here, you drive down there. If you see Cory’s truck anytime, don’t worry about it.”

“Why? Are you going to be driving it?”

“No, just don’t worry about it. Keep driving. When you get there, wait. If I don’t show up in half an hour, you can go do the thing yourself, or you can just turn around and come back, up to you. But I will show up.”

“You’ve got something else going on.”

Ed gave him an exasperated look. “We work from different rule books, Tom. You already know that.”

“Yes.”

Why did I think I could control him? Tom thought, remembering the sight of the man coming up that hill. Because he was on the run? That didn’t make him somebody that could be controlled, that made him somebody that could never be controlled.

Ed said, “This’d be a good time for you to go.”

Startled, Tom thought, I’m still supposed to go! I’m still supposed to do this. For Christ’s sake, Tom, you’re not the assistant on this thing, it’s your theft. You’re the one thought of it, you’re the one wanted to hurt those bastards at Gro-More with it, and you’re the one brought this man into it. And it’s still yours.

Very nervous, but knowing there was no choice, Tom looked around his little living room and said, “You’ll turn the lights off?”

“Go, Tom.”

“All right.” Tom looked over at the parrot and saw the parrot was looking directly back at him. Why didn’t I ever name it? he wondered. I’ll do it now. When I get back. No, while I’m driving down there, I’ll think of a name.

6

When it started to turn to night, Jack Riley switched the porch light on. That always brought Suzanne, but tonight it didn’t. Where was she?

Four hours. More than four hours ago, she was right here, they were talking about who around here would sneak into a man’s house and steal his gun, and she said she’d go off and get some gas and something for them to have supper together, and off she drove.

Jack figured, maybe an hour. He didn’t happen to look to see which way she went when she drove off, so she might have gone to Brian Hopwood’s gas station here in town, or she might have gone out to the Getty station, the other way, all depending on where she figured to pick up something for their supper. So maybe half an hour, maybe an hour; no more.

A little after six, he woke up in front of the television set—again! . . . and cursed himself for it. He kept promising himself and promising himself, no more sleeping in front of the television set. He’d tell himself what to do: At the first feeling of sleepiness, get up, stand up, walk around. Go outside, maybe. If the lights weren’t on, turn them on. Just do anything instead of falling asleep yet again in front of the goddam TV.

Well, he couldn’t do it. He’d be sitting there, watching some damn thing, wide awake, and the next he’d know, it would be two or three or four hours later, and he was waking up in front of the set again, mouth dry, head achy, bones stiff.

Damn, how could he stop that? Stand up, maybe? Never watch television sitting down, only stand up in front of the set? Or would he fall asleep standing up and break his nose when he hit the floor?

Women are supposed to outlive you, dammit. They’re supposed to be there to give you a poke in the ribs when they see you nodding off. Just another way life was a pain in the butt without Eileen.

Jack Riley was nine years a widower. He’d lived the last seven years in this house, once he’d understood his former home was too much for him to care for on his own, and the money the house had sold for was better off in blue-chip stocks. In the years since his moving here, Suzanne was just about his closest female companion, very different from Eileen, and one of the differences was that it was no way her job description to sit next to him all the time and poke him in the ribs when he started to fall asleep in front of the goddam television set.

Where was Suzanne? How far could she have gone in search of gas and food? There hadn’t been an accident, had there?

If only he’d been looking out the window when she drove off, so now he’d have some sort of idea where she might be. At Brian Hopwood’s station? It was after six, and he knew Brian was long closed by now, but he tried calling the gas station number, anyway, just in case, and, of course, it rang and rang and rang over there in that empty building, where Brian Hopwood would be the last man in the world to install an answering machine.