We’ll Always Have Parrots (5 page)

“Found any panels you want to attend?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” he growled. “I don’t watch the damned show; I’m just selling swords.”

But a smile undermined the gruff tone, and seeing it, I found myself wishing we were selling jewelry, or clothes—something that would let us use Steele’s ability to attract women to the booth.

“I wouldn’t watch it myself if Michael weren’t on it,” I said aloud.

“Your old man? Which one is he?” Steele asked, holding out the cover photo. “This one?”

“No,” I said, glancing at his finger. “That’s Walker Morris. He plays the Duke of Urushiol, Queen Porfiria’s archrival. That’s Michael, to his right, in the black robe.”

“Hmmm,” Steele said. “What’s he play?”

“The wizard Mephisto.”

“Mephisto?” he said. “I don’t remember anyone by that name. ’Course it’s been a year or two since I’ve seen it.”

“I thought you didn’t watch,” I said, laughing.

“I don’t,” he said. “Not regularly. But yeah, I’ve seen a few episodes. When it first came out. Weird, seeing something you vaguely remember reading as a kid turned into a TV show. But after a week or two, I could see what garbage it was. No offense meant,” he added, apparently remembering too late my tenuous connection with the show.

“No offense taken,” I said. “It’s not as if Michael has anything to do with the scripts.”

“Yeah, the scriptwriter’s the one who should be drawn and quartered.”

“Don’t blame Nate,” I said. “He’s on a pretty tight rein. Some of his original scripts aren’t bad. Unfortunately, by the time they shoot, the QB mangles the script into the usual swill.”

“The QB?”

“Tamerlaine Wynncliffe-Jones,” I said. “The actress who plays Queen Porfiria. Also known as, um, the Queen Bee.”

“Yeah, right,” he said. “Tamerlaine Wynncliffe-Jones? Bet that’s not her real name.”

“You never know,” I said. “Parents have done stranger things.”

“And I bet that’s not her original face,” he said, shaking his head. “Thirty years ago, maybe even twenty, she was a looker; you can still see that much. But now—it’s a bad joke. So what is this Mephisto character your guy plays?”

“He’s a mercenary wizard introduced in the second season,” I said. “Originally a one-episode guest shot, but he got such a good reaction from the fans that they brought him back for two more episodes that season, and he’s in about half of them this past season.”

That seemed to satisfy Steele’s curiosity.

I spent a reasonable amount of time at the booth before running out again for the combat demonstration. Steele was good at security. Even while talking to one customer, he kept the whole counter covered with his peripheral vision, and I could see he suspected the same shifty-looking people who raised my hackles.

Definitely a talented swordsmith. Perhaps more than any other form of iron work, weapons and armor call for a perfect balance of form and function. Steele’s swords had the spare and deadly elegance I was working so hard to perfect myself.

Not much of a salesman, though. Not that I was such a whiz, but even I was better at it than Steele.

I hoped to catch Michael before going on stage—I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to brag or warn him—but they kept him in the autograph line until the very last minute. I didn’t even know if he was in the ballroom when Chris, Harry, and I went on stage.

Chris acknowledged the audience’s applause with a low bow, sweeping the floor with the white plume in his hat. Then he launched into an explanation of the difference between fencing, stage combat, and real combat—an explanation that might have sounded dry, if not for the practical demonstrations. Harry and I took turns sneaking up and attacking him, while Chris, waving his sword around to make a point or demonstrate a technique, parried each of our attacks, as if by accident.

“In stage combat, you always want your blade exactly where your partner expects it to be,” he said, while parrying in a deceptively nonchalant manner. “Of course, in real combat, your goal is just the opposite—you never want your blade where your opponent expects it.”

He continued with several practical demonstrations, having Harry and me execute a sequence of thrusts and parries at full speed, and then in slow motion, so the audience could see the techniques. For a grand finale, Harry and I ran through our side of a three-way battle, looking rather silly as we lunged and leaped about, slicing the air. But when we repeated the sequence with Chris defending against our combined forces, it brought down the house, and we took several bows. I felt like an imposter. Only their skill kept me from being skewered several times during the performance. And we’d managed to make my nearly pinning my own foot to the floor look like just another part of the act. From the way Chris beamed at me, I deduced that I’d made fewer mistakes than he’d expected. I’d decide later whether to feel relieved or insulted.

“I’ll answer questions from the audience for the rest of the hour,” Chris announced, sitting down on the edge of the stage with the microphone in his hand.

I was tempted to hang around. I loved listening to Chris talk about swords and combat. For that matter, I’d have liked to hang around and hear what the mysterious Ichabod Dilley had to say. But I’d already abandoned poor Steele for most of the morning. So I snapped some pictures of Chris and headed back to the dealers’ room.

In the hallway, I saw small posses of Amazon guards and hotel staff, armed with ladders, nets, and heaps of fresh fruit, beginning the parrot and monkey roundup, accompanied by the scarlet jesters’ soulful rendition of “Git Along, Little Monkeys.” Probably my imagination, but the atmosphere already smelled fresher.

“Sorry,” I said, as I joined Steele in the booth. “Were things too crazy?”

He shook his head.

“Biggest problem has been keeping the vermin from filching the merchandise.”

“Vermin?” I said, looking around to see if anyone had heard. Not very tactful, referring to the convention goers that way. Or did he mean real vermin, I thought, peering down at my feet.

“Up there,” Steele said, pointing to the ceiling. Though the roundup had begun outside, the dealers’ room still had its contingent of escaped monkeys. Clusters of them hovered eagerly over our booth and those of two nearby jewelry makers. At least I assumed they were eager. Perhaps I’d feel differently if I were another monkey, but I couldn’t see that their expressions ever changed. I found it slightly unnerving to look up and see half a dozen solemn, impassive faces staring down as if in silent judgment of our strange human antics. The parrots, by contrast, always looked cheerful, eager, and friendly, even while biting you. Over time, no doubt, we could all learn parrot and monkey body language, but fortunately, thanks to the health department, they probably wouldn’t be around that long—although several other booths had already rigged makeshift canopies to protect their wares, an idea we might want to copy.

“Sorry I wasn’t here to help,” I said, turning back to Steele.

“They scatter if you wave a blade at them,” Steele said, with a shrug. “And apart from that, it’s been dead. Things get slow whenever there’s an interesting panel on.”

“Glad our panel counted as interesting.”

“I wouldn’t have minded seeing it,” he said, smiling as he ran his eyes up and down my costume. He wasn’t bothering to hide his appreciation, but he wasn’t being obnoxious about it, so I smiled back and turned to help the customer who’d just stepped in front of the booth.

We got enough traffic to keep from being bored. Not many people buying yet, but then people often took a while to work themselves up to the kind of major outlay required for a handmade sword or a piece of armor.

At one point, I saw the small man in the business suit wandering around as if shell-shocked. He stopped in front of our booth.

“Now you’re wearing a costume, too,” he said, in an accusing tone.

“Sorry,” I said. “It helps with sales.”

He looked at our merchandise.

“Swords,” he said. “Of course.”

“You don’t seem to be having a good time,” I said.

“Am I supposed to?” he asked.

Light dawned.

“You’re Ichabod Dilley, aren’t you?”

The little man turned pale, and Steele looked startled.

“He can’t be Ichabod Dilley,” Steele said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“For one thing, isn’t he a little too young?”

“Maybe he wrote the comics as a teenager,” I said.

“In the womb, maybe,” Steele said. “Didn’t they come out in the late sixties or something?”

“Early seventies, actually,” I said.

“Wrote what?” the little man asked. He did look a little young, perhaps, but then he had the kind of bland, round face whose age I find hard to pin down.

“And now that he has gone on to a respectable corporate career, he isn’t sure he wants to be reminded of his wild and crazy youth,” I continued. “You are him, aren’t you?” I went on, turning back to the little man.

“I am named Ichabod Dilley,” he said. “But I’m not
that
Ichabod Dilley.”

“How can there possibly be two?” I asked.

“It’s a family name,” Dilley said. “I’ll have you know that there was an Ichabod Dilley who fought in the Revolution.”

“What do they call you, anyway?” Steele asked. “Icky?”

“I prefer Ichabod,” the little man said, sounding sulky.

He’d probably been called Icky more than once in his life.

“If you’re not the Ichabod Dilley who wrote the comic books, what are you doing here?” I asked.

“They invited me,” he said.

“And you didn’t find that odd? That a bunch of people you’d never heard of before invited you to be the special guest at a convention?”

“I speak at conventions all the time,” he said.

“What kind of conventions?”

“Any convention that hires me,” he said, drawing himself up very straight. “That’s what I do. I’m a motivational speaker.”

I managed to keep a straight face. Steele didn’t.

“Oh, that’s going to go over real big with this crowd,” he said, through snorts of laughter.

“Have you ever spoken to a group like this?” I asked.

“No, mostly I’ve done conventions of accountants and actuaries,” he said. “They’re a little more…um…”

“Buttoned up?” Steele suggested.

“You could say that,” Dilley said, glancing at two scantily clad Amazons strolling past the booth. “I did a convention of funeral directors, once.”

“I bet they were a load of laughs,” Steele said.

“Actually, they were, after the meetings,” Dilley said. “They really cut loose and get crazy at conventions. I don’t think I got to bed before midnight the whole weekend.”

If staying up till midnight was his idea of cutting loose and getting crazy, Amblyopia had some surprises in store for him. I’d already received two invitations to con parties that didn’t start till midnight.

Steele frowned, and I worried that he’d make another insulting remark about Dilley’s name, so I glanced up at the wall clock and pretended to be alarmed.

“Look at the time!” I exclaimed. “You’d better get over to the ballroom. It’s almost time for your panel.”

“Oh, right,” Dilley said, staring raptly at a woman walking toward the booth. Her barbarian warrior costume consisted of a few scraps of strategically positioned fur and a lot of leather straps holding her weapons.

She saw Dilley staring at her and smiled at him. He drew back as if she were a snake.

“This is crazy,” he muttered, and scurried away.

The barbarian woman glanced at our booth, favored Steele with a smile considerably warmer than the one she’d given Dilley, and undulated on.

“Interesting costume,” I said, into the ensuing silence.

One o’clock came, and shortly afterward, the dealers’ room grew crowded. Very crowded. Not a ringing endorsement of Ichabod Dilley’s motivational speech.

Sure enough, I overheard nearby fans talking about it.

“Good time to come to the dealers’ room and visit my former money,” one said.

“So what’s going on in the ballroom now?” another asked.

“Nothing worth seeing,” said the first.

“Some crackpot yammering on about daring to be yourself,” said a woman dressed as one of Porfiria’s ladies-in-waiting.

“As if we need that kind of advice,” scoffed a pudgy Michael clone.

Poor Icky.

The crowd thinned out toward the end of the hour, so I deduced the fans expected something interesting in the ballroom at two. I was about to suggest to Steele that one of us make a food run when Michael appeared and beckoned to me.

“Sorry,” he said. “Things have been crazy. I thought we could have lunch, but they’ve drafted me to coax the QB out of her room and give her moral support when she does her panel at two.”

“She’s still playing hermit?”

“Apparently. Can you come along and help us with her?”

“Me?”

I wasn’t sure the QB even knew who I was. She’d been known to glare at me when I showed up at cast parties on Michael’s arm, but normally she ignored me.

“We think she’s feeling overwhelmed,” Michael said. “We’re rounding up people she knows.”

Shaking my head, I followed him.

They had already gathered Michael’s costar and buddy, Walker; Nate, the scriptwriter; blademaster Chris; and a perky young blond woman named Typhani who’d been working as the QB’s personal assistant for an impressive six weeks. Previous personal assistants had flounced off in a huff or run off in tears by the end of the first week.

“Okay,” Michael told the diminutive Amazon. “Let’s go get her.”

At first, I didn’t think it would work.

“Go away! Leave me alone!” the QB kept shouting. But Michael kept coaxing, and periodically he’d say something like,

“Everyone’s just waiting to see you!”

And the rest of us would ad lib encouraging comments.

Gradually, the protests grew less vehement. And finally, after one particularly impassioned plea from Michael, success.

She opened the door.

Even from where I stood, I could smell the blast of peppermint from her breath. Either she’d just knocked back a killer dose of mouthwash or she’d taken up flavored vodka. She gazed slowly around the circle of people outside her door, though it didn’t feel as if she was looking at us. More like scanning us with some instrument other than her eyes. I could imagine a reptile performing the same emotionless survey.
It’s not edible; it’s not dangerous; I can’t mate with it; it might as well not exist; I’ll ignore it.

Fine by me. I’d seen what happened to people when the QB stopped ignoring them.

I saw a faint spark of interest in her eyes when she spotted Michael.

“Come in,” she said, beckoning to him. The rest of us followed. She didn’t shriek, so I deduced she was in a good mood.

An artificially induced good mood, though. Her balance was worse than usual, and her smile had a certain wobbly quality.

I was surprised, and I could tell Michael was, too. From his tales of life on the set, her drinking was a menace, but only after the cameras stopped rolling. She might show up for work with a monumental hangover, but she’d be sober. I suppose we’d expected her to maintain the same discipline at the convention. After all, it was work.

“Oh, my God,” the Amazon murmured. “She’s—”

“A real trouper,” Typhani said, in a loud firm voice. “I’m sure even though she’s been feeling a little unwell, she’ll do fine once we get her on stage.”

It was that getting her on stage part that worried me. She chatted brightly with Michael, oblivious to the passing minutes.

Or perhaps less oblivious than determined to sabotage the schedule. Or unwilling to leave the comfort of a familiar environment.

Not my idea of comfort, but it looked a lot like her trailer on the set, from the brief glimpses I’d had of it. She’d made herself at home.

Bits of clothing covered most of the room’s horizontal surfaces. At least a dozen pairs of shoes lay scattered about. An empty box of truffles sat on the bedside table, and from the number of fluted brown-paper candy cups strewn on the floor, it wasn’t the first box. The contents of her purse carpeted the top of the dresser—she had an amazing number of credit cards.

Hard to believe she’d checked in the night before. I’d need a week to create that much chaos.

“Oh, they won’t want to hear me,” she was saying. “Not after the novelty of listening to Ichabod Dilley. What did he say, anyway?”

Her voice had an edge. Maybe she resented sharing the spotlight with Dilley. Maybe she was afraid he’d denounce the clever deal she’d made, thirty years ago, when she’d bought the film rights to Porfiria for what now seemed a ridiculously small sum.

Or maybe she was just afraid he’d mention how long ago that deal had taken place.

I wondered if someone should tell her that it wasn’t the real Ichabod Dilley after all. At least, not the Ichabod Dilley who’d written the comic books. Would it calm her down to hear this, or further enrage her?

No one else answered, so I spoke up.

“I don’t think any of us know what he said. Hardly anyone went.”

She looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time, and I remembered why I usually held my tongue around her.

“Really?” she said. She smiled, and then, when I didn’t say anything else, her glance flicked away as if I no longer existed.

I realized I’d been holding my breath.

“Look at the time!” Michael exclaimed. “We should be going!”

Michael continued to distract the QB while Typhani stuffed her employer into the glittering jacket of her costume, and combed her suspiciously jet-black hair into some kind of order. Then Michael offered his arm in a gesture whose apparent chivalry disguised its practical purpose. The QB clung to him as he half-supported and half-steered her out the door and propelled her down the corridor. The tiny Amazon trotted beside them, occasionally tugging Michael in the right direction when he made a wrong turn, as all of us did when navigating the hotel corridors. Of course, Michael had an excuse—he was chattering a mile a minute about what a lovely convention it had been so far and how enthusiastic the fans were.

To my surprise, they were enthusiastic. They greeted the QB’s arrival noisily—had they been bribed, perhaps? As I stood in the wings, I could see them listening with rapt attention. Amazing. Perhaps my own dislike blinded me to the fans’ genuine affection for her.

I was silently berating myself when Typhani came up and shoved a legal pad and a pen into my hands.

“Help us think up the trivia questions,” she hissed into my ear.

“Trivia questions?” I stage-whispered back.

“The fan who can answer the most trivia questions about Miss Wynncliffe-Jones’s talk gets a personally autographed picture,” she said. “Of Michael.”

Ah. That explained the rapt attention. I was right; they were bribed. I dutifully began scribbling notes.

“And she’s supposed to be Porfiria?”

I looked up to see Alaric Steele standing at my elbow.

“That’s her,” I said. “Is the booth—?”

“Chris, the blademaster guy, offered to watch it,” Steele said. “What is that getup she’s wearing?”

“It’s what she wears when she performs a sacrifice to the goddess Apnea.

“The goddess of snoring.”

I watched his face as he studied the outfit. The costume shop had intended the gown’s stiff brocade and voluminous folds to disguise the QB’s girth while the high gold lamé collar camouflaged her chins. The headdress was supposed to make her face seem less round, though to my mind it only completed her resemblance to the top ornament on a Christmas tree.

“I understand that in the original comic books, Porfiria performed her sacrifices wearing a loincloth and a couple of tasseled pasties,” I added. “Not that I’ve ever read them.”

“Yeah, that sounds more like something from a comic book,” Steele said, with a fleeting smile. “I might even have read some of them—I’m old enough, remember?”

“Problem is, so is Her Highness.”

“And then some,” he said. “And I don’t think Her Highness is the right form of address.”

“Her Majesty, maybe?”

“More like Her Tipsiness.”

“Is it that obvious?” I said, wincing.

He shrugged.

“Are all the panels like this?” he asked. “Bunch of silly actors talking about the show?”

I decided, in the interest of harmony, not to remind him of my connection with one of the silly actors. I nodded.

“I’d better get back,” he said. “Chris only agreed to watch the booth for a few minutes so I could get a gander at Her Elusiveness.”

“I should go back and help you,” I said.

“I can hold things down if you want to hang around with your boyfriend.”

“Unfortunately, he’ll be escorting Her Decrepitness for the next hour,” I said. “So while I appreciate the offer, I might as well come back and make myself useful.”

I handed the trivia questions I’d come up with so far to Typhani and followed Steele to the dealers’ room.

Business wasn’t as slow as it had been during Michael’s appearance, but neither was it booming. Good. They probably didn’t need the overflow room, but at least the QB would see a crowd large enough to keep her happy.

I was writing up a sales receipt for a couple of daggers when I heard a voice at my elbow.

“Did you see my speech?”

“Hi, Ichabod,” I said. “No, sorry; I was here. Thank you,” I added, to my customer. “Wear and/or use them in good health.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Dilley said, sounding hurt. “I was hoping you had. Maybe you can catch me tomorrow, then.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

“I don’t think this crowd is receptive to motivational talks,” he said.

“Oh, dear,” I said. “So it didn’t go well?”

“I’ve seen better audiences,” he said. “But never mind. By tomorrow, I hope to have something to say about the other Ichabod Dilley.”

“That should be interesting,” I said.

“The weird thing is that I am probably the most appropriate person to represent the other Ichabod Dilley,” he went on. “I didn’t know it before, but he’s my uncle.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t realize immediately that they were talking about your uncle.”

“Maybe I would have, if my parents had ever told me I
had
an uncle,” Dilley said. “Up until this weekend, I always thought my dad was an only child, and now I find out I’m named after his black sheep younger brother who died before I was born.”

“Oh, he’s dead,” I said, feeling slightly disappointed.

“For thirty years,” Dilley said.

“He must have been young,” I said.

“Yeah, about twenty or so. Drugs,” he added, solemnly.

“Drugs?”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I just finished talking to my parents. Dad wouldn’t say anything; just kept yelling that his drugged-out brother was dead and buried, and he didn’t want to talk about it. But after he hung up, Mom told me a little. She says the real last straw was when Dad had to pay off all these huge debts my uncle ran up. They almost had to sell the farm.”

“Yeah, that could leave bad feeling,” I said. “Although I doubt if your uncle did it deliberately. At least the dying part.”

“I’m hoping I can get her to tell me some more this evening. I need background for my talk tomorrow. And I’m sure there’s some interesting stuff to tell. It seems my uncle Ichabod dropped out of college and went to San Francisco and got involved in drugs and pornography.”

“Drugs
and
pornography?”

“It wasn’t that uncommon, thirty years ago,” Dilley said, sounding a little defensive.

“Drugs, maybe,” I said. “But pornography?”

“Yeah, these underground comics,” Dilley said, “really raunchy stuff, apparently. My parents were amazed to hear that anything he’d done had been made into a TV show.”

“Consider the times,” I said. “Thirty years ago, TV kept married couples in separate beds, and now, look what you see.”

“True,” Dilley said. “Maybe his work was only offensive to the backward, parochial sensibilities of the time. Perhaps today, instead of offensive, we’d find it bold, forward thinking, and socially relevant.”

“That’s the spirit,” I said. “You can rescue your uncle from the slanders that have besmirched his reputation all these years.”

“Yes,” he said. “Only—”

“What’s the problem?”

“What if it is pornography?” he said. “I’ve never seen his work.”

“That’s easily fixed,” I said. “See that woman at the Dreamscape Booksellers counter?”

“The one wearing antlers?”

“Yes. That’s Cordelia—she sells used and rare books. Go see if she’s got some of your uncle’s stuff for sale.”

He started forward, then turned around, looking doubtful.

“Now what?” I asked.

“She’s a real book dealer,” he said. “Won’t she be insulted if I ask her about comic books?”

“She may be miffed if she doesn’t have any to sell, but she won’t be insulted,” I said. “Call them graphic novels, if you’re worried; it’s a classier term.”

He nodded and waded into the crowd.