Thunderstruck & Other Stories (11 page)

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.

Sid fought to sit up. His stomach seemed to be the sun around which the rest of his body orbited. “Pay her off and she’ll love you forever. Isn’t that how it works in the slave-girl
movies? Tony,” he said, “I hate to hound you, but—I’d ask Malcolm—”

“I don’t have it.”

“Izzy have it?”

“Izzy has the same no-money I have.”

“The budgie room,” said Sid dreamily. “That sounds nice. Let’s go see the budgie room and talk to Izzy.”

“We’re not going to the budgie room.”

“I like budgies,” said Sid, hurt.

“I don’t.”

But Sid was already struggling to his feet.

“Je t’aime,”
said the bird again, and Sid said, “Kid, you’re breaking my heart.”

Tony followed Sid, and Aldo followed Tony, and Macy, yawning, followed Aldo. They walked down the hallway Indian file. From behind, Sid had the tight-arsed bullish strut of a smuggler. His bare back looked strong; he hitched up his sweatpants with one hand and almost kicked a passing kitten down the hallway. “You seem to be infested with kittens,” he observed. “Hello, you,” he said to it, leaning down and plucking it from under Aldo’s snuffling nose. It was one of the little kittens. Tony could hear its ingratiating purr. It was true: they were infested with kittens.

“You want a kitten?” he asked.

“I
still
live in a truck,” said Sid. In a kingly fashion, he handed Tony his empty wine glass, as though it were a decree he wanted enacted instantly. He held on to the kitten.

“Izzy might be asleep,” said Tony.

“Oh, she’ll see
me
.”

Sid had epaulets of steel-gray hair on his shoulders. The
kitten, high on the curve of his stomach, looked dwarfish and blissful. You kind of had to love the pair of them.

“I’ll get you a drink,” said Tony. “Second door on your left.”

In the kitchen Tony tossed the empty pineau bottle and refilled the carafe.
Jamais deux sans trois
. The spigot was hard to work, and the wine was running out, so he opened the cardboard box and extracted the metallic bladder and squeezed it like an udder into the carafe, from which he then filled Sid’s glass. If he’d been sober, he thought, he would never have let Sid bother Izzy; and he was very happy he wasn’t sober, because it was essential that
someone
bother Izzy. Aldo had followed him back and now sniffed one of the puppies skeptically. “He does so look like you,” Tony told him.

When he opened the door to the budgie room one of the budgies flew out, a yellow lutino. That left forty-nine inside.

Sid and Izzy were sitting on the awful flowered sofa holding hands; it was the room’s only piece of furniture meant for humans. The sprung-open cages of the budgies encircled them. Some budgies—the ones who feared the warden, no doubt—stayed in their cages, but most of them flew around like drunken fairies. The grouch-faced English budgie called Bomber Harris paced pacifically through Izzy’s spiky blond hair. The way Izzy and Sid sat—he still bare-chested, holding a sleeping kitten in one hand near his armpit, she with her birds—they looked like a low-budget
allegorical painting, though what the allegory was, Tony couldn’t say. Izzy was a bird-inclined saint who attracted budgies with her kindness, or a crazy woman who stuffed her pockets with bread crumbs. If she’d been ten years younger and twenty pounds thinner, it would have been saint for sure.

“Should that cat be in here, with all these birds?” Tony asked.

“It’s fine,” said Sid. “I have her hypnotized.”

“Malcolm bought me a parrot,” Tony said to Izzy.

“
Malcolm
did?”

“Half a parrot,” said Sid, patting the back of her hand. Then he hissed at Tony, “When did this
happen
?”

“Oh,
hello
,” said Bomber Harris in a ludicrously pleasant voice. “Oh,
hello
.”

“Week ago,” said Tony. “An African gray. Like Maud.” He began to drink the glass of wine he’d brought for Sid.

Izzy rolled her eyes at Maud’s name. “If you met that bird today, you’d never give her a second look.”

“Attention,” said Sid. “This did not happen in a week.”

“The budgies?” Izzy scooped Bomber Harris off her head and smiled at him. “They tell you that if you want to breed budgies you can’t have a pair, a pair won’t mate. You need at least two pair. So we got four pair to make sure. Eventually—”

“Because they’re swingers,” asked Sid, “or because they’re naive? Should the other pair be older and come with sex manuals or be younger and come with quaaludes?”

“Quaaludes?”
said Izzy. “Do quaaludes even exist anymore?”

“Since Malcolm,” said Tony.

“Since Malcolm
what
?” said Sid.

Since Malcolm had made his announcement—
I’m selling the house
—she’d slept in the budgie room on the old, moldy flowered sofa they’d found in the barn. At night she draped the cages, then blacked out her own head with a duvet.
I’ve talked to a lawyer. It’s in my name
. The budgie room had belonged to the worst of the badly behaved French boys, the one who seemed to have pissed in every corner of the room though the toilet was right there, the one who carved his name,
PASQUAL
, in the stone walls, and put his cigarettes out on the windowsill, and broke the lock on the window so he could creep out at night; by all evidence a feral boy—the budgies kept finding long dark hairs—but nevertheless a boy who most likely had never threatened to sell his parents’ house from under them.
I’m sorry to do it
. When had Malcolm become so tall? His hair was cut like the guitar players of Tony’s 1970s youth, shaggy, awful even then.
It’s just when I look at my problems, I don’t see any other way
. Izzy loved Malcolm, though she wasn’t his mother, and was taking his betrayal worse than Tony—which is to say, she believed it would actually happen.
All right? Dad? Daddy?
Everyone loved Malcolm. Sometimes Tony thought that was Malcolm’s problem, overexposure to the rays of love, a kind of melanoma of the soul.

I don’t have a choice
, said Malcolm, and Izzy said,
Of course you do, you make the choice to be a better person
.

But Tony understood, then and now. There was a small part of him that believed he’d sell out every single person
he loved, too, if it allowed him to be rid of his obligations of love forever.

He stared at the brown drapes Izzy kept drawn so the budgies wouldn’t fly into the window. That couldn’t be healthy, surely. Even a bird needed vitamin D. He couldn’t explain to Sid what Malcolm planned to do. He refused to believe in it. To believe in it was to yank at the one loose thread that would eventually, finally, unravel their entire lives. It was hot in the room, and Tony imagined a house-hunter asking about the heat.
Gas? Oil? Wood?

No, actually: budgies
.

Tony hoped. Izzy didn’t, and she was the one who explained it all to Sid.

When she’d finished, Sid began to sink. He sank as though the vital architecture of his skeleton were being dismantled, as though, in a moment, like a tent the gossamer bulk of him would billow to the ground.
Shit
, Tony thought.
If Sid is appalled, it’s serious
.

“No,” Sid said. “Malcolm? No.”

“Malcolm,” said Izzy. “That beautiful kid.”

“When?”

She laughed. “He says the place needs to be fixed up first, so.”

Sid got up. He pointed the kitten at Tony like a gun. “You need a lawyer. Someone French, who knows those laws, because they’re set up to fuck you every way they can. They will
betray you
!” The kitten curled its sleeping body around Sid’s hand. “Izzy, listen to me. Do you know a lawyer?”

Izzy shrugged her entire body infinitesimally, to illustrate the impossibility of this.

“Money,” said Sid, nodding. “I know a bloke looking for a car.” He turned to Tony. “All right, Knight Rider. You’re selling the Ford.”

“What Ford?” said Izzy.

Tony shook his head.

“You say it’s for Malcolm. For
Malcolm
,” said Sid, disgusted. “I say, sell
all
his Christmas presents.”

“That’s the only one,” said Tony.

Izzy rubbed her head and her hair bristled. He hated that haircut. “You bought him a car?”

“A crap car,” said Tony. “Twenty-five euro.” Actually it had been a hundred. The Italian had been desperate.

“Malcolm is in England,” said Sid; and Izzy repeated, in a wondering sorrowful voice, “Malcolm is in England?”

“What’s Malcolm doing in
England
?” Tony asked.

Sid sat back down on the sofa. “You didn’t know Malcolm was in England?”

“What’s he
doing
there?” said Tony.

“I don’t know. But he’s gone. Christmas with his mother? Said he was going, hasn’t been at the Commerce, and if Malcolm hasn’t been at the Commerce then he’s not in the country. I know someone looking for a car. This Englishman who married an American. The fool. How much do you want for it? They have a budget. It’s not much. Three hundred euro.”

“It’s not worth—”

“Sell it,” said Izzy. “If that’s their budget, that’s what it’s worth.”

Three hundred euro seemed simultaneously an enormous
sum of money and so little it wasn’t even worth thinking about.

“It’s Malcolm’s,” said Tony again.

“Who cares!”
Sid pulled a cell phone from his pocket, looked at the screen, and shook it.

“No reception,” said Izzy. “End of the driveway.”

“Fuck it. I’ll go get them. They’re staying with Little Aussie Peter. Back in a tick. I’ll try to talk them up. All right, Tony? Pay attention. Action stations. The car runs?” He stood up and suddenly noticed he was still holding a kitten. “Hello, moggy. Let’s go. The car?”

“Those old diesels run forever.”

“That’s all they need. Cash in hand, I’ll tell them. Bye, Izzy darling.”

“Bye, Sidney,” she said. “Take that parrot with you.”

“She’s my parrot,” said Tony. “Her name’s Clothilde.”

“Clothilde!”
said Izzy, as though the name itself were an argument against the bird.

This was finally how their marriage would drift apart: Tony didn’t understand loving fifty birds at a time, and Izzy didn’t understand loving only one. Tony followed Sid down the hallway. “He might change his mind.”

“He won’t change his mind. What have you done with my clothing?” Sid asked the kitten, who meowed in an incensed, kittenish way. “Ah, here.”

In the front room, Clothilde knocked her beak on her cage and said, “Aye-aye-aye.” Somehow Sid managed to pull on the fleece top while still holding the kitten, though his head spent some time investigating first one armhole
and then the other before at last finding the neck. “When was its last
contrôle technique?
”

“Not too long ago.”

“Aye, aye,” said Clothilde.

“More than six months? Because otherwise you’ll have to do it again, and will it pass?”

“Aye!” Clothilde said.

“It’ll pass,” said Tony, who hadn’t checked the date. “Listen. He’s not that bad. When it comes down to doing the worst thing—”

Sid had his hand on the door. He smelled sweet and winey, and his eyes looked like the back end of a globe, some place where the Earth was mostly oceans and unpronounceable islands, some place to fear cannibals.
Please
, Tony thought,
don’t tell me you know him better than I do
.

“The worst thing is saying,” said Sid.

“What?”

“The worst thing is he told you he
would
. He’s done the worst thing. Now he’s got that out of the way he can do anything. Believe me. I know.” Sid handed the kitten over and opened the door. “I’ll be right back. Anthony. Listen to me. It’s not too late. You have to decide what kind of man you want to be.”

Clothilde said, “I
love
you!” as though she’d been teaching herself in their absence, an orphan hoping to ingratiate herself to foster parents.

“I love you, too, my darling,” Sid said, and closed the door behind him.

·   ·   ·

For a parrot, Clothilde seemed to have a poor sense of balance: she squawked and dug into Tony’s shoulder. It had stopped raining. The outdoor cats were edging out of the old barn and sniffing the wet air. Clothilde squawked again. “You’re a pretty girl,” said Tony, though even he could hear the lie in his voice. She ran her beak through his hair. He kicked the cats from the barn so they wouldn’t bother her, and closed the door.

In the dim light the Escort looked seaworthy. It was black, with tinted windows, and on both sides the word
LASER
was painted in space-age lettering. It was an ’84, Malcolm’s birth year, and that had seemed like a sign. Malcolm took his bike to the Commerce, and came back wobbling drunk or not at all. Sometimes he slept in a ditch—an actual ditch. “It’s France, Daddy,” he said. “It’s not like a ditch somewhere else.”

Tony had assumed Malcolm had been sleeping on sofas since he’d made his announcement, ashamed of himself. But he was in England.

He lifted the passenger door handle, remembered it opened only from the inside, and went around. The paperwork was still in the glove box. The
carte grise
—the title—was in order, and the last
contrôle technique
had been, miraculously, five months and three weeks before. He could legally sell the car to the Americans without putting it through another inspection, just as the Italian had sold it to him. That was the reason the Italian hadn’t haggled, or held out for another offer.

“Bah di donc!” said the parrot.

His shoulder hurt. “All right, Clothilde,” he said, and set her on the passenger seat so he could get to work.

For three hundred euro, could you expect a radio? He pulled it out, and then the safety kit: the reflective vest, the reflective triangle, the flares, all the things he’d bought for Malcolm to keep him safe and entertained. The old fuel pump had gone out and he’d replaced it with a rubber bulb: he had to open the bonnet and pump the fuel into the engine by hand, but it worked all right and a new pump would cost a hundred euro. If the Americans wanted to replace it, let them. Now he opened and pumped and slammed.