Thomas McGuane - To Skin a Cat

Bobby buys a chicken at the Kensington grocer, a whole chicken. He descends to the underground and rides in silence, carrying the chicken in his lap. He heads for a tattoo parlor near Knightsbridge.

At the end of the day, Hildegarde, at the front desk in Blake’s, hands Marianne a beautifully wrapped box. Marianne takes it to her room and removes her coat. She sits on the bed and opens the box. The chicken lies nestled in excelsior, its breast tattooed Born to raise hell.

Marianne smiles.

A middle-aged couple living on the first floor of Blake’s idly dismembers the morning Times on their patio while eating breakfast. A dead mouse falls on the table. The gentleman lets his gaze travel upward to the falcon pacing nervously on the balcony above, fretting over its own lost breakfast.

At the front desk, Hildegarde says to Marianne, “Never mind the Portobello Road. It’s all queers selling Marilyn Monroe pictures.”

“I need a sweater and souvenir paperweights for my nieces.”

“What was in it?”

“In what?”

“The box.”

“A chicken.”

“A chicken! I think that is the height of rudeness. In my country it is considered inappropriate to send a lady a chicken.”

“It was delicious,” lies Marianne defensively.

The manager is at Bobby’s door. He’s a Midlands fellow with surfacing blood vessels in the points of his cheeks.

“Mr. Decatur, we’ve had a complaint as to the bird. Mr. and Mrs. Tripp downstairs assert that it is dropping mice amid their breakfast.” His right hand illustrates the downward progress of a mouse in air. “The bird,” he adds.

“I have arranged to sell the bird to an Arab.”

“Not because of this small complaint—”

“I’m returning to the United States of America. I’ve met a girl, and it is impractical to transport falcons on commercial aircraft.”

“Actually, there’s an Arab gentleman in the lobby just now, actually.”

“It’s our man. Send him whilst I dust the bird.”

A short time later, a rather bouncy sheikh sits in Bobby’s room, in a leather chair. His kaffiyeh is very well lighted by a standing lamp. He has the carriage of a lazy natural athlete.

“I feel you have overpriced the hawk, Bobby.”

“Say, Sheikh, you need a prairie falcon. The American West, get it?”

“Five thousand is a joke.”

“It’s an Arab’s job to pay too much.”

“If I give this kind of money, I’m compromised each time I try to buy an American hawk.”

“I know what you offered the Air Force Academy for the Arctic falcon.”

“That’s different. I was in Colorado. I was skiing. I was tooted out. And it could have been taken as a political gesture. Exxon was on every slope.”

“What kind of airplane do you have?”

“De Havilland with a custom galley. When it’s on autopilot, the pilot cooks. What does that have to do with it?”

“A week with the plane and the hawk is a gift.”

The sheikh unwinds his rig from about his ears as he thinks. It makes the sheikh’s beard seem wrong.

“Bobby, it’s a deal. You should have been a pimp.”

“It’s never too late.”

In Blake’s small dining room, Bobby and Marianne sit at separate tables, though tiny rippling energy waves connect them. Bobby sends Marianne a Shirley Temple. Marianne sends Bobby a Bionic Boy. These concoctions are like the filaments sent out by warring spiders.

Marianne calls out, “Thank you, it’s fantastic! But don’t drop by the table to discuss it!”

“Can I interest you in a martial-arts film festival?”

“Gosh, no.”

Marianne gets up from her table and walks to Bobby’s.

“Don’t get up. Listen, you’re terribly interesting. But I’m here to see my fiancé, and you’re a vulgar little shit.”

“I have a de Havilland and an MEA pilot who cooks.”

“Right, and then I’m going back to the United States. It’s silly, really it is, to spend your time on something that isn’t happening. Isn’t happening, got it?”

Bobby hears a knock on the door of his room. When he opens it, there is Marianne. He says, “Come in, come in.” No surprise here. Atop her in no time.

“Got anything to read?”

“Sure do. A history of falconry in Persia do?”

“Just right,” says Marianne. Bobby fishes the old volume off the shelf and hands it to her.

“I’m going to the country with my fiancé. I need something to read. Haven’t got your bookplate in here, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Good, thanks, ’bye.”

Gone.

“You be sure and bring that book back. It’s — it’s—” Bobby goes to the empty falcon perch. “It’s my book.”

Bobby Decatur is all alone in an unsuccessful tearoom.

“A weekend can be a long time when you’re missing someone. Darling, it was an eternity. I thought of you in the country with an Englishman the color of putty. And I ached. I really did.”

A waiter peers at Bobby from the doorway.

The Silver Cloud cruises from Iver Heath. Do-wop millions, in relatively stable pounds, pay the freight.

“I don’t think you ever took the trouble to get Mummy’s point of view.”

“Mummy has a problem,” says Marianne to her fiancé.

“Which is?”

“She’s an absolute pill.”

“Oh, God.”

“That’s my point of view.”

“See over there? Next to the Hogarth Laundry? That’s where the engraver Hogarth lived.”

“Got a plaque?”

“Yes, Marianne. The house is history, Marianne. Therefore the plaque.”

“Then I want a plaque for us.”

British Airways flashes in the window of the Silver Cloud.

“So, that’s how it is.”

At the desk in Blake’s, Marianne tells Hildegarde she would like to leave the American a message.

“What did you do with that chicken?”

Marianne requests of the Dutch girl that she not be impertinent. They once were friends. Now Marianne stares at her and concludes: a real cluck. Hildegarde.

“I told you once, Hildegarde. I ate it.”

One room of the British Museum contains a Norse ship whose swept dragon-shaped prow dominates the venerable space. Bobby and Marianne, together at last, are in its dusty shadow.

Bobby says, “Look at it, Marianne. I always come to see the Viking stuff. Can you imagine building a boat like that and then invading England, kicking their rotten little monasteries into the Atlantic?”

A glass case holds a Viking skull, splendid in a winged helmet. Bobby is in rapture.

“Now there’s who I want to be.”

A peregrine scatters larks in a vivid diorama.

“Falcons take splash baths in clear water about ten times a day. If they get mites and little parasites other birds take for granted, they lose their edge and can no longer win the game of survival. If they lose one percent of their pure efficiency in killing, they are the ones to die.”

An illuminated Bible from the Middle Ages catches his eye for bright colors. Bobby is explaining everything.

“The only people in the world like Vikings and falcons are pimps. They prey on the world. Look at that God damned Bible. That’s the book that put Joe Blow in the driver’s seat. It’s a regular operation manual.”

“I want something to eat.”

“A pimp doesn’t care if he ever eats again.”

“If we find the right restaurant we can make beautiful music together. What do pimps have to do with it? ”

It was an awful restaurant. Both Bobby and Marianne ordered so as not to upset the waiter. Then the waiter was rude. But they were scared of him.

“How did you meet the Englishman?”

“He was in their trade commission. Now he’s a music producer with a specialty in do-wop.”