Elizabeth McCracken - Thunderstruck & Other Stories

“Let me get glasses,” said Tony. The cupboards were on the floor, waiting to be hung. The four-legged dogs came careening down the main stairs and into the room, herding an adolescent kitten.

“Sheepdogs?” Sid asked.

“Of some stripe, maybe.” Louis and Borgia certainly had the gap-mouthed, hunch-shouldered look of sheepdogs, but Tony suspected an actual sheep would scare the crap out of them. Mostly they bumped into things and tried to look as though they meant to do it. Borgia sometimes tried to herd the kitchen island; a kitten was an improvement. Now she saw the parrot and began to herd that.

“That bird’s not going anywhere,” said Tony, taking the carafe from the mantelpiece. “That bird is caged.”

Borgia stopped, her head at an obsequious tilt.

“Right,” said Tony to the bird. He lifted her cage and put her on the coffee table. Sid collapsed into the old leather armchair.

“Je t’aime, Olivier,” said Clothilde, and Tony thought: Nothing sounds more insincere than a parrot speaking French .

The wine tasted like buttered popcorn. Sid lit a cigarette. “D’ye mind?” he said again, as though it were polite to ask even if he disregarded the answer.

“Izzy’s asthma,” said Tony, helplessly.

“Izzy’s not here.”

“She’s—”

“She’s not in the room,” clarified Sid. “Where is she?”

“Budgies,” said Tony.

“What?”

“She’s in the budgie room.”

That was the advantage and danger of an eight-bedroom house: eventually the oddest things would have their own rooms. When Malcolm sold the house — if Malcolm sold the house — the new owners would walk around sniffing, saying, as Tony and Izzy had before them, “What do you suppose they did in this room?”

“Ah, the budgies,” said Sid. “I’ve never met the budgies. Did you know that budgerigar means ‘good eating’ in the Aboriginal language?”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Tony.

“That would make you a psittiphage,” said Sid.

“A what?”

“A psittiphage: an eater of parrots. Psittiphobe: one who fears parrots. Psittophile: one who—”

“Yes,” said Tony. He filled Sid’s glass again.

“So you already have parrots, and now here’s another.”

“The budgies are Izzy’s minions. This one’s mine. I don’t even like those budgies. I love you, though,” he said to Clothilde. “Do you love me?”

She bobbed her head and said nothing.

“They talk?”

“The budgies? One or two,” said Tony. Most of them couldn’t, they just babbled. Then suddenly one would say Hello, there. Hello, there . It always made Tony feel as though he’d been doing something vile in a room full of deaf and dumb and blind nuns, only to find there were a few regular nuns mixed in.

“Anthony,” Sid said grimly.

“What?”

Sid pointed at him. He waved his finger around, indicating something in general about Tony that was displeasing him. “Your hair,” he said at last. “Your beard. It’s a disgrace.”

“I need a trim.”

“One or the other. No man should ever keep his beard and hair the same length. Shave your head and let your beard go, or grow your hair and affect a Vandyke. One or the other. As it is, you just look fuzzy .”

“I am fuzzy,” said Tony. He rubbed his hair ostentatiously and stared at Sid’s bald head.

“All right,” said Sid. “I get your point.”

“I am fuzzy,” Tony said sadly.

“I know, mate.”

“Malcolm tell you?”

“Malcolm tell me what?”

But Tony couldn’t say it aloud.

Sid lumbered to his feet and snagged the carafe off the mantelpiece. He poured himself another glass. “Jamais deux sans trois,” he said, Never two without three , the drinker’s motto. He took a great gulp, then looked at Tony. “Bloody rude of me!” he said, filled Tony’s glass, too, and splashed the rest of the wine into his own. He held the empty carafe by the neck and pointed to the corner.

“What’s wrong with that dog?” Sid took a drink.

“That’s Macy,” said Tony.

“But what’s wrong with her?” Sid took another drink.

“That’s Macy .”

“But what happened to her?” Another drink.

After a second, Tony said, “Land mine.”

“That’s not what I mean. She’s all, she’s got, she’s swollen .” Sid indicated his own bare torso with the empty carafe and finished the wine. It was just like Sid to be prudish about a dog’s teats.

“She’s nursing. She had pups. You want one?”

“I live in a truck,” said Sid. He held out both the wine glass and the carafe.

Tony went to the box of wine on the kitchen island. “Don’t look,” he said, filling the carafe.

“ I don’t care.”

“I was talking to Clothilde.”

“I don’t mean to harp on the fifty euro,” said Sid, “but it is fifty euro.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Tony. “Where’d Malcolm find her?”

“Mine.”

“Yours?”

He looked at the parrot with some suspicion and came back to fill Sid’s wine glass. Sid watched the rising level with the concentration of a telekinetic.

“You’re selling her why?”

“I see we’ll be ordering off the children’s menu,” said Sid, and then, with cruel patience, “I live . In. A. Truck .”

“Kids don’t want it?”

“ She won’t,” said Sid. He shook his head. He’d been sitting like a human being. Now he wheeled around in the chair and draped his legs over one arm and leaned on the other. Some wine slopped and he sucked it off the back of his hand. The armchair seemed to falter with its burden. “Spent the morning tearing down the piggery,” he said.

“You have a piggery?”

“Had a piggery. Hated the piggery. The piggery is no more.”

“I thought you lived in a truck.”

“There’s this house,” said Sid. “Nearby Manville, this side of the river.”

“When did you buy that?”

“Haven’t yet. Will do. The mairie ’s deciding whether it’s habitable. I’m getting a jump on the work. Night, mostly.”

“What if they decide it isn’t?”

“They will.”

“You’re renovating a house you don’t own in secret—”

Sid sighed dramatically. “I am,” he declared, “over France. Isn’t that what they say? I am so over France.”

“Leave,” said Tony. He moved to the sofa.

“My kids are here,” said Sid. “I might drink a pineau.”

He looked a bit cross-eyed, Tony thought, but maybe it was Tony who was drunk.

Apparently all American university lecturers slept with their students, but Sid, bored by the timorous bad behavior of the Yanks, who knew how to fuck up only a semester — a real man took pains to fuck up his life —had carried one off to Las Vegas and married her. That was how he’d lost his job. “Should have waited till final grades were in,” he’d once told Tony. “That, or not married her at all.” They’d moved to France with plans to open an English-language theater near Eymet. Tony had no notion when they’d given up on the idea. Now they had two little kids, a son and a daughter, and Sid made his living as a chippie’s assistant: he toted wood for a friend who was a master carpenter.

“Perhaps I’ll take that pineau,” Sid prodded.

So Tony got the pineau. It was sweet and thick and cold, and he and Sid drank it in big gulps, though it was meant to be an apéritif.

“The angels weep,” said Sid.

“I don’t know who gave us this bottle,” said Tony, looking at the label.

“ Bonjour ,” said the bird.