Damn Parrot

“Another shot of patron!” I screamed to the bartender as I swayed slightly under the influence of nearly a full bottle of the powerful tequila.

“Last one for tonight Rob,” he replied while pouring an extra big shot.

The bartender’s name was Jake and he took good care of me. I’d been coming to this bar every night for the last six months. Always drinking big and tipping the same. I don’t know why I drank so much. Wait, that’s not true, I drank because of my damn wife and our damn bird. I pounded the shot down and tried to stand-up off the bar stool. After a couple of stumbles I succeeded on the third try and staggered off towards the bathroom.

“Later Jake, see you tomorrow.”

“Alright Rob.” Jake said, eyeing the fifty I had left on the bar.

I lurched slowly and unsteadily into the bathroom. There were people at each of the four toilets. Strange since I could have sworn there were only two toilets in this little bathroom. This mystery revealed itself when I looked down and saw four feet instead of two. Shit, I usually made it home before I started seeing double. I walked unsteadily over to the sink and started to pee, I was way too drunk to wait for the toilet. I was also too drunk to the hit the little sink and ended up pissing on the floor. After creating my own little lake on the floor I splashed my face with water hoping to sober-up enough to get home. As I looked up at the mirror I saw the man I had become looking back at me with blood-shot eyes. Large bags hanging down underneath the tired eyes. Even more striking was the bright white stubble dotting my fleshy cheeks. I still couldn’t believe this was me. Just six months before I was an in-shape car salesman with dark black hair and no cares. But in those six months I had lost everything.

            It all started when I got the damn parrot. He was a present from my best customer, Natas. I asked Natas about his name once but all he said was that it was a biblical name.  He came into the dealership every three years to trade-in his car and get the new flashier version. He was an imposing man. Tall, at least six inches taller than my own six feet. But not just tall he was big, not fat just big. He would come in, sit down in my office, and throw me his old keys.

“It’s that time Rob, what do you have for me?”

“Natas, I think it’s time for you to go big, Ferrari big.” I said with a smile while thinking about how to spend the huge commission check.

“Sounds good. I need to be out of here in an hour so do the paper work and change my personal plates over. Oh and don’t forget, it has to be red.”

Every time it had to be red and he always had to have his personal plate “Demon.” But I didn’t care because every three years he came in and I walked out with at least fifty grand.

It took maybe a half a hour to get everything taken care of but damn that Ferrari looked good. I guess it should since it was costing him three-hundred fifty large.

As we pulled the car around front, Natas walked over with his pen and briefcase. “How much this time Rob?”

“Well, after the trade-in it’s only three-hundred thousand. A bargain for this beast.”

“It’s all in the briefcase,” Natas said with a smile then his smile turned slightly creepy. “Rob, walk with me over to my old car, I need to ask you something.”

His old car was already out back, just waiting to be prepped so that we could put it out on the floor. Generally we sold Natas’ trade-in quickly for double what we gave him. He kept his cars immaculate.

We arrived at his old, red Porsche 911 and he looked around suspiciously. “Rob pop the hood.”

I did what he asked and we both looked inside. The first thing to catch my eye was an ornate brass birdcage holding a large African Grey parrot.

I almost jumped out of my skin when the bird screeched “go to Hell, Natas!”

“That is the first favor I have Rob, can you take that damn bird?”

“Of course, now you said first favor. What else can I do for you?”

“See that blanket under the cage? Lift it up.”

I lifted the blanket and almost fainted when I saw a perfect set of pink toe nails contrasted against a pale, bloodless foot. “Please tell me that’s a mannequin, Natas.”

He smiled slyly his dark eyes smoldering. “Unfortunately no. That is my former girlfriend Tatyana and I really need your help disposing of her body. Can you do that for me?” As he asked that last question he stroked a brown leather briefcase that closely resembled the one he had used to pay for the Ferrari.

What the hell? He was asking me to dump a body for him. I’m a car salesman not a thug. But Natas was the reason I was successful. He had been my first big sale twelve years ago and since then he had come back every three years. But a damn body?

“Your girlfriend? Shit Natas, this favor is a little bit bigger than taking a parrot.” As I said this my voice quivered and I knew I was just waffling for time.

“Rob I didn’t want to kill her it just happened and I thought we were friends? I mean that’s why I always come back to see you and send all my friends to see you. Are you saying we’re not friends? A friend would help me out.” His voice was completely even, no waver, no emotion.

“We are friends Natas! But damn.” I paused and watched him stroke the briefcase, thinking how I could use that money. It’s not like I knew the girl and I really couldn’t piss off Natas.

“Well I think something can be arranged. You just head out, I will take care of everything.” I wonder if my eyes turned green as I said that because all I could think of was the money in that case.

“Very well, and Rob, thank you.” as he spoke, he handed me the case his eyes smoldering darkly. Then walked away, without any signs of concern. He even gave me a little wave as he climbed in his new car.

I quit watching and started thinking. What the hell am I gonna do with this damn body? First thing I needed to do was get it out of the Porsche. I ran over to grab my Caddy. I will always drive a Cadillac because you never know when you are going to need that big trunk. This was just one of those situations. I quickly unloaded the body and closed the trunk. As I went back for the bird, Jenny spotted me and I could tell by her angry steps that I wasn’t going to be able to duck her tonight. Just what I needed.

“Rob where the hell have you been? Bob has been out of town all week and I swear you have been avoiding me.”

It’s true, I had been avoiding her. Looking at her still makes me instantly hard. I mean who wouldn’t want her. She was five-ten, with curves in the all the right places, green eyes slanted just a little matching her slightly almond skin. Her outfit clearly showing the toned body she still had from her time as an NFL cheerleader. She was hot. But she was also Bob Burkeman’s wife. Bob was the General Manager of the dealership and my boss.

“I haven’t been avoiding you. I’ve just been busy.”

“Well Rob, you used to be busy fucking me. So who are you fucking now?”

“Nobody. I really have been busy selling cars. You know, my job.”

“Well, what about right now? We can use Bob’s office.” She smiled and her eyes glinted, obviously excited by the danger of that idea.

“Jenny, I am not going to fuck you in Bob’s office. Call me later. I have to take this damn parrot home now.”

“Fine, but don’t hold your breath waiting for my call, asshole.” The words sounded harsh but she said them in a seductive purr and rubbed my butt at the same time, so I knew we were still good.

She walked away swishing her hips and glancing back to make sure I was watching.

As soon as she was out of sight I grabbed the bird and got the hell out of there. But now I had to figure out what to do with Tatyana. Episodes of CSI floated through my mind. Only I kept remembering that at the end of all those episodes the bad guy got caught. The advantage I had was that I really didn’t have any connection to Tatyana. So, the cops wouldn’t be looking around me. All of a sudden a light bulb popped on above my head. My neighbor Jeff, who I hate, is digging a pool. Even better, he is out of town for the week-end. The hole is just sitting there lonely.

The whole way home I focused on driving slow and staying calm. How many times have we seen the bad guy get caught because of something stupid like running a red light with a body in the trunk? As soon as I got home, I grabbed the parrot and went inside. Lucky for me that Natas had picked my wife’s “girls night out” to give me his woman for a night out. After stowing the Parrot in the living room and went back out and backed the car in, all the way to the back of the driveway near the fence between my property and Jeff’s.

It was surprising easy to get the body into the deep hole I had dug in the middle of where the pool was going to go. Then when I was done I simply smoothed the dirt down so it looked just like all the dirt around it. After I went home, got myself cleaned up, and drove back to the dealership. I figured I needed to clean the car up to make sure there was no evidence. I had the guys do a full detail job including shampooing all the carpets. Finally, I went home exhausted.

That was the start of my downward slide. From that night on I had a slight twinge of guilt always lingering in my stomach. I knew I wouldn’t be caught. Almost every night I heard Jeff or his family splashing around in their pool, oblivious to the dead girl right under them. If that favor for Natas had been the only bad thing to happen then I would have been fine but it wasn’t. Actually in terms of my life the next event was really the one that sent me down the tubes.

Things at the dealership had been going really well. Natas had sent a bunch more of his friends to get cars and those sales made me look like a superstar. I had sold more Ferraris in a month then most of the other guys had in their career. I guess that is why I said yes when Dolly, my wife, suggested having Bob and Jenny over for dinner.

Everything was going great at the dinner until Dolly brought the damn parrot into the room. At first it was fine; Dolly had a whole routine with the bird:

“Polly want a cracker?”

“No, Dolly want a cracker.” The bird replied.

“ Speak birdie, speak.”

“woof, woof.”

“Oooh Bob I want one, you could keep it at the office.” Jenny interrupted the routine in a spoiled voice.

Everybody was laughing until suddenly the parrot said, “Jenny, I am not going to fuck you in Bob’s office.”

Everyone got really quite and looked at Jenny whose face was completely white, despite the spray tan. I looked away from Jenny to stare at the damn parrot. When I finally looked up the room was silent and they were all staring at me.

“I don’t kn…”

“Well Rob, you used to be busy fucking me. So who are you fucking now?” blurted the parrot.

“It’s a damn parrot I don’t know where all this is coming from. I mean come on I am not having an affair with Jenny. Bob, you know I know better than to shit where I eat.” Even to myself I sounded guilty.

Bob just stared at me for what felt like hours before he stood-up grabbed his jacket and started to leave. Jenny leaped-up to follow him and Bob looked back and said, “Better get a good lawyer Jenny. Oh and Rob you’re fired.”

I sat there stunned as Dolly grabbed Jenny by the arm and dragged her outside slamming the door on the way back in.

I looked up at her and said “You know it’s not true? Right honey.”  

I watched her to see if she believed me. But all she did was turn her back to me, she was standing a few feet away in front of one of our crystal vases. I must have looked down because the flash of movement startled me. She had turned around and was right in front of me with the vase in hand. That was when she hit me. I woke up in my bed with a headache and a note stapled to my shirt.

I ripped the staples out and started to scream with pain. I looked at the staple and saw a piece of my right nipple had come off too. Fuck.

The note was in my wife’s angry handwriting and said, “You fucking punk. I am at my mother’s don’t fucking call me. I’m not sure if we are over or not but not seeing you for a while might help. Dolly

 

She did come back. A month later she showed up at the door with her luggage and a pissed off expression. “If I ever find out you cheated again, I’m gone.” That was all she said before pushing past me to go up to the bedroom.

“Good to have you home honey,” I yelled up the stairs before continuing under my breath, “Yeah, really like the attitude.”

We coexisted in near silence for a few hours, I kept waiting for her to give in and pretend like everything was normal but she didn’t seem to want to play that game. Finally I announced “I have to go to a meeting with a new business associate, Jake, I will probably be back pretty late.”

Her response, “um huh, bye.” All grunted through an angry scowl.

My appointment with Jake did last pretty late. I stumbled out of Jose’s Cantina at around one. I considered calling Dolly but fuck it let her be pissed at me when I get there.

I don’t really remember how I got there but the next thing I really remember is being in the living room of the house trying to be quiet because an argument would be way too much effort right then. No matter how quiet I was trying to be I was still drunk and tripping over everything. Finally I just gave up and sat down on the couch.

“Fucking useless drunk!” screeched the parrot from his cage in the corner.

“You ruined our lives. What the fuck were you thinking?” The damn parrot was parroting the fight that Dolly and I kept having.

“Shut the fuck up you stupid bird!”

“You know I had a one night stand when I was at my mother’s don’t you?”

I was up and running at the bird as soon as I heard one night stand. When Dolly had told me about her fun I had been so tempted to hit her. I didn’t, but it was close. But the bird wasn’t a person so I could get a little of this frustration out on it. I grabbed the cage and opened it up, scratching the hell out of my wrist in the process. “Shit!” I hollered loudly then quieted myself, can’t have the wife coming down now.

The scratch and anger had served to sober me up; it was pure anger and a certain meanness that fueled my desire to hurt the parrot. The bird kept screeching and trying to fly away but I held it firmly.  That instant might have been the only opportunity to punish the bird and through the bird, Dolly. I took the bird into the kitchen getting more and more irritated with its noisy struggling. Fnally I couldn’t take it anymore and smashed the parrot down onto the counter top. That stopped its struggling so I took the opportunity and pulled out one of our hundred dollar Henckel’s santoku knives. Having visions of Food Network I quickly used the knife to cut one of the bird’s wings off.  It immediately started spurting blood as I made the cut. I realized that I didn’t want a bloody kitchen or a dead bird when Dolly came down in the morning. I grabbed a towel and placed pressure on the wound. Luckily the bird was still stunned from getting rammed onto the counter so it was not struggling. I managed to get the bleeding stopped just in time to look up and see Dolly staring at me. The look in her eye told me that she had seen it all.

I walked towards her. “Honey it’s not what it looks like. I was trying to help the bird. It was hurt, really.”

“I heard you stumbling around drunk so I came down. I was thinking about throwing you out. I heard what the bird said. I watched you grab it out of the cage. You have fucking lost your mind and I am calling the police.” Somehow she made this whole speech in a dispassionate voice. She appeared so calm.

That calmness disappeared as I grabbed her arm and started to drag her towards the door to the backyard.

“What the hell are you doing Rob? Let me go! You’re hurting me!” She screamed at me trying to get her nails into my arm.

I fended off her strikes and picked up a frying pan. The swing was almost casual catching her right on top of her head. Her frenzied attempts to escape stopped abruptly and I allowed her body to crumple to the ground. I crouched down and checked her pulse, still strong. Good she was out cold but not dead, yet. With her unconscious I had time to devise a plan. This time I had to be more creative than underneath my neighbor’s pool since the police would certainly consider me the prime suspect. But where?

Then it struck me, the dump. The dump had been in the papers for a while now. The politicians argued amongst themselves if it was too big or not and the people who lived by it begged for it to be closed. I knew from those reports that it was huge, easy to get into, and impossible to search. I grabbed two of our large garbage bags and stuffed Dolly inside. After I got her inside I heard the parrot start to squawk and squeal in pain. Shit, I had almost forgotten about that bird. Light bulb, I could kill two birds with one garbage bag. I grabbed the frying pan and knocked the parrot over the head, making it go quiet again. I stuffed the parrot into the bag and duct taped the seams so it was at least kind of airtight. I was calm as I started to tenderize the lumps in the bag but as I swung away with the frying pan I got more frenzied, as if all my frustrations were finally being fixed. It felt great, just like whack-a-mole when I was a kid. I whacked a dozen more times before dragging the bags out to the car. I leveraged it up and in before going back to make sure no blood had leaked. The kitchen was pristine and no blood spotted the drive way, perfect execution.

It took about thirty-five minutes to get to the dump. The dump was located in a deep gulch around six miles long and two miles wide. I drove around the perimeter looking for a spot that would be easy to toss the bag over the edge. Ten minutes later I spotted a hole in the fence and backed my black caddy right up to it. I heaved the bag out of the trunk and dragged it behind me as I walked in hunched, awkward steps through the hole. I pulled it right up to the edge and pushed it down the short hill. My hands were sweating buckets inside my leather driving gloves but I knew I wasn’t leaving prints. I ran back to grab the shovel out of the trunk.

Once I was down in the dump the smell hit me like a wall. Maybe I didn’t need to dig too far; a few feet would be fine. I mean who would be able to see or smell that this garbage bag was any different from the thousands of other bags in this dump? The bag fit well into the hole and I quickly covered it up. Success. Now to go buy an Alibi, Jake would surely vouch for me.

The walk from the bathroom to the street was pure torture. I was still seeing double and it felt like the stairs that led out of the cantina were experiencing a solid south swell. I made it, finally, to my car. Driving drunk was another legacy of all the crap the parrot had put me through but all that was over now. Dolly and the parrot were napping away in the dump and I was headed home to my nice quiet house.

I turned on the local news station for the ride home. For some reason listening to news makes me feel more sober. Whatever the logic of my ways, it had worked so far. It worked again this time because I made it home accident free. Just as I pulled into the driveway something on the radio caught my attention

“…found the parrot wandering loose.” That was all I heard from the radio but it chilled me to the bones. I was instantly sober. That sobriety led me to look around and notice the numerous unfamiliar, late mode l American cars parked on my street. I pulled into the driveway and they all appeared, guns drawn.

“Mr. Parton, roll down the window and show us your hands, slowly.”

I did as they asked and continued to follow orders until they had me face down in my own driveway.

That’s when I heard it, “What the hell are you doing Rob? Let me go! You’re hurting me!” The damn parrot.