Parrot Blues Read Online Free Page B

under Rick’s nose. “You’re not getting paid to agree or disagree,” he barked. “You call the police, I cut off the lab’s funding. It’s as simple as that.”
    Money talks, power shouts. Rick’s eyes blazed behind the granny glasses, but he didn’t say a word.
    â€œNow I have to make a phone call,” my client said, taking his briefcase into the office that had to be Deborah’s. He was not behaving well, but people who do don’t need lawyers. “Why don’t you show Neil around the lab?” he asked Rick.
    It wasn’t a question, it was a command. Rick put Max down on the office desk, turned his back to me and Terrance and stomped across the lab floor as rapidly as his plastic footgear would allow. Terrance opened his briefcase, took out his phone and started talking about buying and selling stock in cell voice. One of nature’s laws is, the more inconsequential the conversation, the more advanced the equipment, the louder the voice.
    My options were to follow Rick or to expose, embarrass and possibly lose my client. Rick squared his shoulders and straightened his ponytail as he walked across the lab. He stopped at the table where the other grad students were talking to their Amazon, more emphatically even than they’d been before. There was a beat-up paperback copy of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead lying on the table. On the far side of the lab I could see into another room, and it was very easy to be diverted from the tension by a spectacular blue bird sitting on a manzanita perch in a metal cage.
    â€œIs that Colloquy?” I asked Rick.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œCan I take a look?” I asked him.
    â€œIt’s Terrance’s bird.” He shrugged.
    Colloquy was big and beautiful, a collector’s item, a work of art. The place on the adjacent perch was conspicuously empty. Her tail feathers were a long and elegant train the same deep turquoise color as the feather that sat on my desk. Her feathers turned lighter and greener as they approached her neck, and there were bright yellow ovals around her eyes and beside her large beak. Her upper beak hooked over the lower with the deep curve of a scimitar that could snap off a finger. The indigo’s size and color made her magnificent, her beak made her intimidating, but she had the goofy expression of a trickster or a clown.
    â€œHi, Colloquy,” I said, walking up to the cage holding out my empty palm, a reflex action, the way a child learns to approach a strange dog. Maybe the bird would have preferred a full hand. The floor of her cage was littered with feathers, but she still had plenty left and they fluffed out as she lifted her long wings, squawked and flapped furiously at me like a big-haired woman having a bad hair day. “It takes more than that to scare me,” I said, but when Colloquy began to screech in a voice that was loud and piercing enough to crack a piñon, I backed off. She had a sound to match her size. “Okay, okay,” I said, dropping my hand.
    Terrance had finished his business and slapped across the lab floor in his plastic booties. “She doesn’t like strangers,” he said to me. “Hey, Colloquy baby,” he cooed to the indigo. “Come to Daddy. Your daddy’s here.” He reached into his pocket and took out a plastic bag, then he opened the door to the cage and stood next to the opening. Colloquy swung from her perch and climbed onto his shoulder. “Even I don’t put my arm into the cage,” he said. Colloquy settled her ruffled feathers, accepted the contents of the bag and gave me a look just like her master’s when he’d provoked the reaction he wanted. She got a lot of expression out of one beak and two eyes.
    â€œWhat’s in the bag?” I asked him.
    â€œGranola,” he said. “My birds don’t get monkey chow.”
    Colloquy swallowed her granola, snuggled up to Terrance