Peter Carey - Collected Stories

The giggling carried across the hot tarmac and got lost in the heat haze.

Lilly went back to the car and was still stroking the bird when Mort came back.

Through pale veils of pleasure she saw him walking back across the blistering car park and she knew, before he arrived at the car, exactly what his eyes would look like. She had seen those eyes more and more recently, like doors to comfortable and familiar rooms that suddenly open to reveal lift wells full of broken cables. She should have taken him in her arms then and held him, stroked his neck until the lights came back on in those poor defeated eyes, eyes which had once looked at the world with innocent certainty, which had sought nothing more than the contentment of being a good gardener, calm eyes without fear and ambition. She should have taken him in her arms, but she had the bird and she sat there, stroking it stupidly, like someone who won’t leave a hot shower until the water goes cold.

He came and sat behind the wheel, not looking at her.

“Take off your coat, honey,” she said gently, putting a hand on his. “Come on, take it off.”

It was then that he saw the bird.

“What’s that?”

Her left hand was still stroking it. She ran a finger down its opaline bill, across its exquisitely smooth head and down its glowing blue back. “It’s a bird. Stroke it.” She tugged his hand, a hand which each day had become smoother and softer, towards the bird, and the bird, as if understanding, craned its supple neck towards him. “It’ll make you feel better.”

But Mort put both hands on the steering wheel and she saw his knuckles whiten. She was frightened then. He was a dark well she had only thought of as calm and still, but that was in the easy confidence of employment, in times without threat. Now, when she said what she had to say, something would happen.

“Mort, I’m sorry. I paid five dollars for it. I’m sorry, Mort.”

He opened the door and walked slowly around the car. She watched him. He didn’t look at her. He walked around the car a second time and she saw his face colouring. Then he started kicking it. He moved slowly, methodically, kicking it every couple of feet as if he wished to leave no part of its dull chalky body unpunished. When he had finished he came and sat down again, resting his head against the wheel.

Lilly got out of the car and walked to the driver’s side.

“Come on, bugalugs,” she said, “move over. I’m driving.”

She slid behind the wheel, thinking that in another month she wouldn’t be able to fit behind it, and when he moved over she passed him the bird. By the time they had left the terminal he was stroking it. His face had relaxed and resumed its normal quiet innocence and she remembered the days they had worked together as gardeners on the Firestone Estate as if this were some lost paradise from which they had been inexplicably expelled by a stern fascist god.

“Let’s stay in a motel,” she said. “Let’s have a hot shower and a good meal and get drunk and have a nice fuck in a big bed.”

“And be broke in the morning,” he said, but smiled.

“One morning we’ll be broke. We might as well have fun doing it.”

Mort stroked the bird slowly, dreamily.

“Do you like our bird?” she asked.

He smiled. “You’re a crazy person, Lilly.”

“Do you still love me?”

“Yes,” he said, “and I like the bird. Let’s have champagne and piss off without paying.”

“Champagne it is.”

As it turned out, the motel they chose didn’t have champagne, but it had an architecture well suited to their plans. Its yellow painted doors faced the highway and when they backed the car into the space in front of the room there was nothing in their way to prevent a fast getaway.

2.

Lilly lay on the bed stroking the bird which sat comfortably between her breasts and her swollen belly. The bottle of wine which stood amongst the debris of a meal on the table beside her was very nearly empty.

Mort, his hair wet, sat naked in a chair staring at the television. She envied him his looseness, his easy sexual satisfaction.

“Why don’t you put it down?” he said.

“In a minute.”

“Come and rub my back.”

“You’re a greedy bugger, Morto.”

“You want to be careful with that bird. It probably should have injections or something. You shouldn’t fuck around with exotics when you’re pregnant.”

“You’re the only exotic I fuck around with.” She looked at him and thought for the millionth time how pretty he was with his smooth skin and his hard muscles and that beautiful guileless face. “Let’s get another bottle.” The drunk Mort was more like the old Mort.

Without waiting for an answer she reached over and picked up the phone. She ordered the wine, put the bird in the bathroom with a saucer of seed, threw Mort a pair of trousers and picked up her own dress from where she had dropped it.

It was the manager himself who brought the wine. He wasn’t content to hand it through the door. “I’ll just pick up the trays,” he said, and Lilly noted that he already had his foot in the door, like an obnoxious encyclopedia salesman.

He was a short, slim man, handsome in an overripe way, with a mole near his eye and waving dark hair. Lilly didn’t like him. She didn’t like his highly shined shoes or his neatly pressed flannel trousers. She didn’t like the way he looked at the wet towel lying on the floor and the rumpled disordered bed freshly stained from lovemaking.

She sat on the bed while he busied himself with the trays. When she saw he was actually counting the knives and forks she started mimicking him behind his back.

When he announced that a saucer was missing she nearly burst out laughing, as if anyone would pinch one of his stupid tasteless saucers.

“It’s in the bathroom,” she said, and was wondering if she should add “where it belongs” when the man took the opportunity to inspect the bathroom.

When he came back he was holding the bird in one hand and the saucer in the other. Lilly took the bird from him and watched him drop the seeds into the rubbish bin.

“There is a house rule against pets. It’s quite clearly displayed.”

“It’s not a pet,” she said.

“I can’t have people bringing pets here.”

She saw Mort put his head in his hands as he anticipated one more setback, one more razor-nick defeat.

She took the saucer from the manager’s manicured hand. “Just stroke it,” she said, “it has special properties,” and smiled inwardly to hear herself use a word like “properties”, a leftover from her wasted education.

The manager looked at her with supercilious eyes and was about to give her back the bird when she firmly took hold of his free hand (which she was astonished to find damp with anxiety) and rubbed it down the bird’s back. When she took her hand away he continued to stroke it mechanically, the threatened light of authority still shining in his eyes.

“Go on,” she encouraged, “it feels nice.”

In spite of a private conviction that he was being made a fool of, the manager stroked the bird, at first tentatively and then more surely. The bird, as if understanding the importance of the occasion, brushed its cheek against the manager’s and then for a minute or two very little moved in the room but the manager’s hand.

Lights from the highway flowed across the wall.

On the television a mute reporter held a microphone towards a weeping man.

Twice Lilly saw the manager trying to give the bird back and twice she saw him fail.

“Feels nice, doesn’t it?”

The manager nodded his head and looked embarrassed. She could see that pleasure had made his eyes gooey as marshmallow.