Treasure Island!!! (2 page)

Something has to budge, I thought as we walked home that night, arm in arm, ostensibly happy, but inwardly one of us (me) seething. Already I felt big with book the way a woman feels big with child. Was there room in this relationship for the two of us?

“Lars, I want us to talk
seriously
about
Treasure Island
,” I said as we reached my apartment. “Like, pretend we're in a seminar.”

“Piracy and the expansion of the nineteenth-century nation-state,” he replied. “I'll talk for twenty minutes and then turn it over to you and Jimbo.”

“Jim,” I said. “Jim Hawkins.”

“Whoa, you're mauling the door! Didn't I tell you,” Lars said as if this were
his
apartment, “turn the key and pull at the same time. Otherwise it sticks.” He put his hand over mine and pulled. The door popped open.

Inside, Lars removed my backpack and slung it on the futon. We kissed, and the kiss was a wrecking ball; walls crumbled, plaster sifted, a grey bird flew through the dust and emerged white as snow. What a heap! Later somebody from the salvage department would come by and look for usable, well-conditioned pieces of me.

“What's a ‘nineteenth-century nation-state'?” I asked later as I searched the tangled sheets for my underthings. But Lars had drifted off to sleep.

 

 

 

C
ooped up in a library with twelve rabbits, eight hamsters, six hermit crabs, one rooster, four large sullen cats, a tank of fish, five mutts, and a purebred poodle whose needs are as bountiful as the sea, a person gets to thinking. Neither Rena nor Lars was helping to strengthen the hold of
Treasure Island
on my life; they
said
they were supportive, but talking to them about the book's Core Values—

 

BOLDNESS

RESOLUTION

INDEPENDENCE

HORN-BLOWING

 

—was about as interesting as talking to a couple of Tic Tacs. What I wanted to bring the message home was a parrot, a parrot who would sit on my shoulder every day, or at least every day I worked at The Pet Library, and be a living, squawking reminder of the active role I meant to play in my life. In
Treasure Island
Long John Silver's parrot shouts, “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” Mine would shout, “Be bold, but be kind, be yourself but be plucky, be flexible and yet tenacious,” assuming a parrot could be trained to say such a long and syntactically complex thing. If not, I would accept “Steer the boat, girlfriend!”

The morning I fixed on the idea of the parrot happened to be a morning Nancy had taken her ancient mother to physical therapy and wouldn't be back until noon. The library was awash in gloom. One of the cats had been vomiting and because I'd been pretending not to see the puddles, the place stank. Also, the week before, in a fit of apathy, I had allowed a teenager without any ID to check out the rooster, and now the bird was back, its neck feathers ruffled and a stormy look in its eye. In the old days, by which I mean my pre-
Treasure Island
days, I wouldn't have thought of leaving that smelly Pet Library, I would have soaked up the bad air and all the rest until Nancy came back to release me. Oh yes, I am quite sure, in the old days, my tiny train of thought would have circled around a papier-mâché landscape of imaginary needs and catastrophes, and thinking I was obliged to stay at work, I would have missed an opportunity for decisive action. But I had a scheme in my head.

The point of the scheme was to show Nancy that I was capable of action. Lately, our relations had been tense, and I didn't want to waste any energy discussing the further responsibilities I craved. No, I would
show
her she could rely on me and I knew just the way to do it. As I cast my eye around the dreary room, a dozen ideas for improvement flooded my head.

Nancy, who had an immigrant's mistrust of banks, kept a box of petty cash in the back room. A few times I had seen her open the box before she sent me out, like an errand girl, for feed. Now I removed the key from its hiding place and though the lock was very stiff, I turned it and threw back the lid. A faint smell rose from the interior, almost like scented toilet paper or over-ripe apples, but nothing was on top except a plastic tray containing a few pieces of junk jewelry, a pair of foam earplugs, and a harvest of bright red, floozy-length Lee Press-On Nails. I pulled up the tray with impatience, and there lay ten crisp one hundred dollar bills. Nancy! I'd never dreamed she had this much capital! If only she would trust me with it—and here I lost a few moments to a potent daydream in which I tore out the Library's U-shaped circ desk and installed a slab of black walnut. Or Zebra Wood. Then I shook myself awake and pocketed the cash. I returned the key to its hiding place, and was about to make for the door when I heard a sound that brought my heart into my mouth—the door chime chirp, alerting me that we had a patron. As I came out of the back room, I saw it was a boy come to return a goldfish. He was about ten years old and walked, the little glass loaner bowl close to his chest, as if he had another ten years to make the journey from the door to . . .

“Hurry up then,” I said. “You won't drop it. I was about to close up.”

Goldfish returns are the easiest, or should be, since you don't have to interact with the pet. When you do a mammal return, you stroke the animal and make a big fuss to pretend you missed it. With the goldfish, I just checked to make sure its fins were still there, and dumped it back into the tank. I didn't even pretend to know which fish it was. “Vinny, huh? Alberto, huh? Or is this Iphigenia?” “This is Percevaux,” the boy said. “Sure it is, good old Percevaux.” I grabbed the record book, found the boy's name, and crossed it off. (Another way Nancy might have used me better: Hello, computer age!) “You're all clear,” I told the boy. He had followed me over to the tank and remained there, watching Percevaux flick a fin. “It's not the circus,” I said. “Come on, I'll walk you out.” In my haste I forgot to lock the door.

On the pavement the boy threatened to walk my way, but by lingering at the corner and pretending that I was about to catch a bus, I quickly shed him. You have to be careful in this job; certain kids glom on to a Pet Librarian as if to a celebrity. Something of the animal glamour attaches, the way it would for a zookeeper or a lion tamer. I don't pretend to understand it, but fortunately this boy wasn't too hard to shake. “You ever think about maybe getting a panda?” he said dreamily. When I roared, “No!” he scuttled off.

For reasons I don't wish to go into, I don't have a car, and I was too impatient to wait for a bus, so I began to walk. Walk and walk and walk, past pizzerias and dry cleaners and fast lube franchises until I reached Cutwater Mall, a downscale place with a crappy food court and a hideous green and black linoleum floor rolling past stores with names like Gifts ‘n' Things and Sox ‘n' Stuff. My family used to go here before a better mall was built—one with skylights and a fiberglass reproduction of the Trevi fountain.

The pet shop I wanted sat in a dark corner on the lower level, its floor seething with woodchips and hair. Puppies and kittens cowered in the front window, fish tanks bubbled and glowed along the sides. I threaded my way through the mess and found a regal teenaged girl, her hair done up so elaborately she appeared to wear a Zulu basket on her head. Lethargically she unpacked a crate of ferret shampoo.

“I came for a parrot.”

For the benefit of anyone who has never been to a mall pet store, the people who work there don't know a thing about pets, nor would they care to. Without any affect she led me to aisle nine. There, in the fluorescent corridor, after rows of twittering songbirds, none of whom caught my fancy, I discovered a cage labeled “Yellow-Naped Amazon.” Its occupant was one foot high and came at my eye like a bit of migraine, its feathers so brightly colored the air around them seemed to pulse. I studied the hard curled beak and two glittering eyes, one of which studied me. Then the bird made an unearthly noise, a metallic call pitched to pierce through hundreds of miles of Amazon canopy.

“I don't know if it's a boy or a girl,” the salesgirl told me. “They don't come in tagged. But we call it Richard. Little Richard.” Having done her duty, she turned away, and as the sweet perfume of her hair oil receded, a musty smell took precedence in my nostrils. Bird. Bird smell. Did I want to bring this thing into my workplace? It was larger and more alive than I had expected. Running back and forth along the perch, “Little Richard” let loose a long, harassing whistle.

“I'm a fool, if you like”—I walked the aisles in panic—“and certainly I'm going to do a foolish, over-bold act, but I'm determined to do it”—which is what Jim Hawkins says when he sets out to recapture the ship from the pirates. I found the salesgirl, tapped her on the shoulder.

“You want him?”

I clutched a shelf for balance and accidentally knocked down a noisy Swat ‘n' Swing. “I do and I don't, of course. I came for a parrot, but I wonder if a parrot is really the thing. Does he creep
you
out? Look at that tongue, I didn't even realize birds had tongues. You're probably getting minimum wage, and here I am, taking up your time, trying to figure out . . . I
love
your hair, by the way.”

She didn't smile; she heard that compliment all the time.

“The thing is, I'm torn. What do you think?”

“Why do you care what
I
think?”

But I did care, I mean not pathologically, but a little. In another scenario, this girl and I might become friends. I looked at the bird and imagined it sitting on my shoulder and pecking my eyes out. The girl turned around to . . . “Wait!” I shrilled. I picked up the cage, produced the cash, and in a loud, jovial voice, announced that I would buy it.

 

I began to feel pretty excited as I walked the parrot back to The Pet Library. He was excited too. He screamed the whole way.

A car filled with teenage boys came roaring by, its tires spitting mud, and one of the boys stuck out his head and called, “Eeeeeeeeeeeyaaaaaaa Polly, want a cracker?” which was not even
remotely
witty, and yet as witnesses to my bold business, they were somehow kindred; they were scrappy, fearless fellow adventurers. I waved and walked on, a smile on my face.

 

A
s soon as I got back to The Pet Library, the smile disappeared. The door, I now realized, I had left unlocked. This might not have mattered; in fact, at first I was relieved that, cage in hand, I wouldn't have to fuss with the keys, and pushing my way in, I said, “Welcome home, Richard.” Immediately I sensed a disturbance. I placed Richard's cage on the desk and caught sight of the marmalade cat, tied to a chair with a dog leash, like a prisoner awaiting interrogation. I leaped over and untied him, for which he thanked me not at all, only slunk off, his tail puffed up and bristling. A cat tree lay on the floor, its feather toys torn off; cabinets stood open; on the floor lay canned goods, bags of dog food. “What the hell?” I said.

My first thought was the animal rights people, who for years had been sending Nancy hate mail. In the beginning, she'd thought that she could win them over, naively supposing that she and the animal rights people were on the same side. They would come round ostensibly to inspect the cleanliness of the cages and Nancy would wheedle them to apply for a membership card. But they never so much as checked out a hamster. Instead they organized protests, wrote letters to the newspaper, and once they covered The Pet Library's windows with black spray paint that said, “2-DAY LOAN PERIOD = 2 MUCH TRAUMA.” Luckily,
that
wasn't so catchy. Their movement fizzled out when the local leader left to set up a handicraft cooperative in the Kyrgyz Republic.

As I walked around, checking out the damages, I realized I wasn't looking at the work of the animal people. They would have escaped with every animal in tow, and although I hadn't done a head count, already I was conscious of having kicked the rooster away with my boot. Now he was pecking away at a torn bag of dog food, greedily keeping pace with the mutts. The record book was on the floor, a few of its pages bent, but nothing was missing. No, whoever had come in had not wanted to destroy the place. They had vandalized it, almost carelessly. I was wandering around, noting the large amount of water on the floor—did the fish jump out of the tank?—when the door chimed, and Nancy stepped into the room.

She screamed. It was such an awful blood-curdling scream—and not, may I remind you, the first scream I'd heard that day—that I almost wet myself. Her scream was answered by Richard's scream, which was answered by the dogs barking, which was answered by the cats yowling, which was answered by the rooster crowing, which in turn set off a car alarm right outside the door.

“Look this place! What happened? You drink vanilla latte?”

As Nancy darted around the room, taking inventory of the disaster, I felt a hard knot in my stomach, twisting and turning. This was an admirable opportunity to put the Core Values into action—particularly
RESOLUTION
—but I hardly knew where to begin.

“Where is Willie?” Nancy muttered in a low voice. “Where is poodle?”

“I'm sure he's here somewhere,” I said though at that point, I wasn't. It didn't seem likely that anyone would have abducted a poodle, but if the vandals had held the door open for him, he might have run off. He was Nancy's favorite, but not as attached to her as she liked to think.

A whimpering noise came from the back room.

“Willie?” Nancy cried. “Where are you?”

“I know this sounds weird, but he might be tied up,” I said, but she had already broken past me before I could finish my sentence.

In fact, he had not been tied up. But neither had he been spared. Whoever had barged into the place had managed to find the electric clippers and shave fluffy white Willie clean as a lamb. It was fascinating to see him shivering there under the table, all white and pink, like a licked candy cane. About three feet away from him lay a soft, enormous, tufty pile of fur.

“William!” said Nancy, stricken.

I wish I could say that was the end of the trouble. In fact, because I had left the fish tank uncovered, the cats had helped themselves to a snack, which explained the water on the floor. It must have taken them quite a bit of work to catch those fish. You might almost say they deserved them—not that Nancy was open to entertaining that point of view.

“You leave fish tank uncovered,” she wailed. “Cats loose! Fish massacre!”

“I have a notion,” I began. “I feel that my talents are a bit under-used in my present position. I realize that right now you may not even be following every word that I'm saying, but I'll go on. The Pet Library is ailing—admit it! Admit what you and every other person in this town know. This Pet Library is going down. Hard. I reckon we can't compete with companies that sell long-term ownership of dogs and cats and hamsters, et cetera. But what if we offer something different, something less run-of-the-mill than cats and dogs?”

“We do that,” Nancy insisted. “We do rooster, we do llama.”

“I know. But do we do parrot?” and here I unveiled Richard who, despite his initial echo of Nancy's death cry, had yet to be noticed by her. Then I gestured to the long front windows by which I wanted to build a sandy bank. “I'm thinking seashells, I'm thinking palm trees. Parrots, geckos, maybe a
different
kind of fish tank—one with a wave machine? Nancy Wang, I'm talking about branding the place. Not just any old animal rental, but—are you listening?—
Pets
Treasure Island!
”

“Where you get money for parrot?” she asked.

“Well, it's our money. Your money, of course. I took it from the petty cash.”

“What petty cash? No petty cash here!”

As I said, I'm no economist, but from what Nancy said next, I gather that the money I'd used had not been ear-marked for the business. Apparently she had been stashing it away for her mother's hip replacement. But she kept it in The Pet Library, so how was I to know? Quite suddenly, Nancy sat—or rather collapsed—on the floor, hugging Willie and crying, her hair sticking in wet wisps to her face. Willie licked her tears.

“I work hard to build Pet Library. People in community say thank you, Nancy. Thank you for bringing animal joy to my life. When I hire you, you say you like animals.”

“I told you I was tired of working the gift wrap department at Flounkers. It's not my fault if your English isn't good. Maybe I said I like to
eat
animals.”

“You have problem in your head!” she shouted. “Give back money now or I call lawyer! Flighty! You are flighty person!”

“It's all very well to call me names, but I don't
have
your money. I have this parrot. —Oh wait.” I fumbled in my pocket and produced two soiled fives and some change. She ungraciously left my hand to dangle in the air. “Nancy,” I said, in my kindest voice, hoping to restore the crisis to its proper proportions. “I think you and I have had a misunderstanding about my job description.”

She stood up and began to scream in Chinese, causing Willie to pee all over the floor. I shook my head, but before I could explain that it was not
my
job to get a rag, the rooster began to choke on a dog food nugget the size of his trachea. I don't know if you've ever seen a rooster choke, but it's a terrible sight. Even more frightening was the prospect of having to pick up his herky-jerky body and perform the Heimlich maneuver. “Help me, help me!” Nancy ran insensibly through Willie's urine and made her way to the rooster, but I had already grabbed Richard's cage and was hotfooting it out the door.