Life Guards in the Hamptons (9 page)

“Good grief, no.” Grandma Eve would have skinned him alive.

She poured me another glass of lemonade. “I belittled him. In front of your mother and the others.”

“You should not have done that. He never, ever meant harm to anyone.”

“I know that, and I apologized the next day, right after I got rear-ended by a Pontiac. Do you know what they look like?”

“I don’t pay attention to that kind of thing. I don’t think they make them any more.”

“They used to be big and flashy, with a silver statue on the hood, like the Jaguars have. This one was Chief
Pontiac himself. I found it in the road when they towed my car away.”

“But could you have prevented the accident if you knew Dad meant a car? You couldn’t stay home forever, or pull over every time you saw that make.”

“No, but the point is your father tried because he has a good heart. That’s all I am asking of you. Try. Oh, and if you come upon a doddering Brit, call Lou. Royce University in London has misplaced a beloved retired professor.”

I
 WALKED HOME FROM MY GRANDMOTHER’S house, full of pie and resolution to be a better granddaughter. She believed in me, whatever I was. The least I could do was try to deserve that trust.

No tweeting came across the fields or from the trees that bordered the private dirt drive. No missing professor either. As I stepped around the ruts from the rain and the extra traffic, I heard crickets and a bullfrog in the pond behind Aunt Jas’s house. Sometimes the pond dried up in the summer. Where did the frogs go then? But this year we’d had plenty of rain, floods, in fact.

I didn’t like walking in the dark this way, with nothing but Little Red and a flashlight for protection. My grandmother would have sneered if I’d taken the car for such a short distance, though, and I needed the exercise, especially after the pie. Besides, I could see the many lights I’d left on at my house.

And, I told myself, none of the Hamptons’ new robbers would be stupid enough to come down a narrow dirt road, not that I’d heard of them housebreaking or waylaying pedestrians. No masked man was about to ride out of the trees shouting, “Stand and deliver,” like they did in Mrs. Terwilliger’s romance novels. Still, I’d locked the house up tight, so it took me three tries with two keys to get the front door open.

All shut up that way, the house felt hot. Summer lingered and the breezes didn’t blow tonight. Off came the
sweatshirt, up went the windows. The front door stayed locked.

I decided to work a little, since the day hadn’t been productive beyond a couple of notes and sketches on the bus ride out. That deadline loomed.

I checked my email, checked Facebook in case I got fan mail, played solitaire till I won, then got to it. Blank screen, blank sketch pad, blank mind. Blech.

So I played solitaire some more. Got a Diet Coke from the fridge. Did a mental smack in the head, kick in the butt, poke in the ribs. And sat and thought about my plot, my character, my readers. And, hot damn, I finally figured out the perfect companion for my hero. Not a young boy, a butler, or best friend, but a creature that was both fanciful and fun. I did a bunch of sketches, added colors that would look good on the cover, adjusted the size, fixed the highlights in the eyes to look more intelligent. Lost in the creative cloud, I tried out names, abilities, character traits. Maybe I’d give it a limp. No, a lisp. It had to talk, to fit the story, but a speech impediment made it unique, like my three-legged dog.

Before I knew it, hours had passed. My back ached from sitting. My eyelids felt scratchy. I let the big dogs out in the fenced front yard, then put a leash on Little Red so I didn’t lose him in the dark. He hated being in the dog run with the old guys, most likely thinking they were going to gang up on him, which they never would. He yipped every time they got close, and yipped when they didn’t move. Aunt Jas deserved a quiet night, especially if she was too exhausted to eat peach pie. I led the Pomeranian around to the side of the house, in the new light from the wrap-around porch.

He stopped, tail up, ears perked, straining forward. A skittering in the brush?

“Red, heel up.”

He didn’t, of course. I pulled him closer on his leash and got a better grip on the nylon loop in my hand in case it was a fox or a feral cat, not the usual rabbit.

Now we both heard rustling in the trees. Red gave a low growl.

I scooped him up. It might be a sleepy squirrel or a bird, but no night-hunting owl was going to get my little dog. Red growled again, at me, not the owl.

I admit I was spooked, imagining threats without seeing any. “Hush up.”

The big dogs didn’t bark. I took that for a good sign, except one couldn’t hear, the other barely saw. Watchdogs, they weren’t. So why hadn’t I brought the flashlight out with me, instead of relying on the light from the porch and the windows? It was one of those big suckers with rechargeable batteries that weighed a ton, if one were thinking of swinging it at someone’s head.

Of course I was back up on the porch by this time, my cell phone in my hand ready to dial 911. My other hand, with Little Red in it, could still reach for the front doorknob.

I waited.

Nothing stirred but the hairs on the back of my neck. And I had to get Buddy and Shad back in the house.

Then I heard it. Not the bullfrog. Not the high rustling. Not the low skittering, but a tweet. A definitely scratchy, loud, unfamiliar tweet, the way Susan had described it. Only more of a
twee
, without the final t. I put my hand over Red’s nose so he didn’t start yipping and there it was again,
Twee, twee
. Kind of plaintive, although maybe I read more into the squawks.

I called back. “Twee.” I didn’t have that abrasive rasp in my call, but a “Twee” answered back.

“Twee?”

“Twee!”

Buddy barked, his woof loud and deep. The night instantly turned silent. “Damn, you scared it away. It must think you’re some kind of bird dog, Buddy, instead of a couch dog.” I whistled the dogs inside, and shut Little Red in, too, just in case the bird turned violent. I could run faster without the Pom.

I retrieved the flashlight from beside the door and went out again, feeling brave. I left the lights on, not feeling brave enough to face an unknown entity in the dark. I did step down off the porch to the edge of the glow cast
by the windows. We had floodlights for the backyard, but the noise had come from the front, maybe across the dirt road nearer to Aunt Jas’s house.

I stayed where I was but called, “Twee? Twee?” This time my voice had a hoarse tone, from trying to make less noise. I didn’t want to wake my aunt and uncle, but I did want to catch a glimpse of this life-list bird. Not that I had a life-list, or ever intended to, but hey, if I started with the rarest avis I was ever apt to see, I was ahead of the game.

I raised my voice a little, not to the raucous screak I’d heard, but almost a caw. And it answered back.

“Twee?”

Okay, I talked to Little Red all the time, and he didn’t understand much beyond cookie, out, and bad dog. Trying to hold a conversation with a wild bird—from a foreign country, no less—was dumber. Talk to it, Grandma Eve had said.

“Okay, oiaca, tell me how to get you back to your friends.”

“Twee.”

Oh, boy.

“Then come on out in the open and maybe I can—” I didn’t know what. If it had escaped from a zoo or a private collector, maybe it would land on my hand like the chickadees Matt tried to entice. I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out a couple of dog treats. One never went anywhere with Little Red without bribes. These were soft liver chews that couldn’t do much for my pockets or my ambient aroma, if Big Eddie were here now. They might appeal to a bird.

I never did find out if pink-toed Patagonian oiacas ate meat or flies or fruit. Liver treats were all I had. I held my hand out without looking toward where I thought the last
twee
had come from. Matt said wild creatures didn’t like to make eye contact. My mother said the same thing about unfamiliar dogs, which took a stare for a sign of aggression. As if I’d take my eyes off a dog ready to go for my throat. A lost oiaca, maybe. Except, again, no one
said if it was a hawklike raptor. The thing could be as big as an eagle, from the volume of its call.

Thinking of calling, I realized I’d left my cell phone inside when I switched to the flashlight. Which meant no 911, and no camera to take a picture.

Someone would have said if the bird was picking off rabbits or squirrels—or dogs and cats—so I figured I was safe.

“Twee. Twee, come on, twee. I have goodies.”

I could swear I heard what sounded like a disgruntled “awgh” before a louder “twee.”

“Okay, no liver treats.” Maybe I read too much into its screeches, anthropomorphizing big time, but I put my arm down, happy to do so. I regretted my lack of time on the rowing machine, and the muscles that went with it. No matter, I rationalized. Maybe the bird saw my raised arm as a threat. Maybe it remembered an outstretched arm holding a net.

Who was I kidding? I hadn’t a glimmer of an idea of the thoughts of a thing with a head full of feathers. How much gray matter could it have in a tiny skull, anyway? I think I once heard that owls’ heads were filled with eyes and optic equipment, not brains. They relied on sight and instinct and habit. Like with everything else, no one seemed to know the oiaca’s habits or instincts. This one’s wits seemed to be leading it to certain doom. Birdbrained, for sure.

“Come on, pretty boy. Or girl.” Everyone liked flattery, I figured. “I won’t hurt you. I have carrots inside. And crackers. Polly want a cracker?” Thank God no one was nearby to hear me.

The next “twee” came softer.

Maybe Oey, for want of a better name, was farther away, maybe listening, maybe trying to figure out if I could be trusted. So I kept talking. I wished I could remember more of “Ode to a Nightingale” than “Adieu! Adieu!”

“Rockin’ Robin?” I couldn’t remember much of that ancient classic either.

“Papa’s gonna buy you … ?” Wrong image.

“Bye-bye Blackbird?” Good hint, but all I got was another “twee.”

Damn, Willy, think.

“Birds fly over—No, don’t fly away. Unless you know where your home is.”

No response, and I was out of bird songs. I never could whistle, and the “twees” weren’t getting us anywhere. “Um, okay. Once upon a time there was a mama duck and she had a nest full of eggs. Only one of them was bigger than the rest. She sat on it anyway. And then the eggs hatched and there were six little fuzzy yellow balls of ducklings, and one gawky, long-necked, grayish—”

“Awgh!”

I jumped. “All right, no bedtime stories.” But I did have the “awgh” sound down now, kind of like a pirate’s parrot’s “arrgh,” or a bird with a bad taste stuck in his throat. “Awgh, yourself. So what do you want?”

Silence. Frustrated, I wondered what everyone wanted from me. Hell, it had to be more than I had to give. It always was.

When ten more minutes went by without a sound, I got up to go inside. “If you won’t meet me halfway, I’m not wasting my time. Like I told Matt, I don’t belong here. Grandma asked me to try. I tried. Now I am going to bed. Try not to disturb the neighbors, okay? Tomorrow I’ll bring some carrots and crackers, maybe lettuce, okay? Or you could leave me a grocery list.”

I almost reached the door when I heard a sad little “twee.”

I turned around and there it was, at the very edge of the porch light’s reach. The pink-toed Patagonian oiaca bird.

It had pink toes, all right, Barbie-shoe hot pink. After that, things got dicey. I sincerely doubted this animal came from Patagonia. And I wasn’t entirely sure about the bird part, either. The darkness made the feather colors hard to distinguish, but the wings glittered in rainbow shades. The head appeared parrotlike, with a big curved beak, round eyes, and more bright feathers. It was huge,
bigger than the scarlet macaw at the dry cleaners around the corner from my apartment.

The problem—one of the problems—was that instead of plumes at the back end, this creature had shiny scales, translucent fins, and a forked tail. Like a fish.

Holy shit, it was a parrotfish. Not the multicolored tropical variety—oh, no. This … this apparition was my freaking sea god’s freaking companion, the one I’d finally drawn an hour ago. The one that could sit on the hero’s shoulder at Spenser’s pet store, then transform itself into a fish to accompany M’ma in the water. The one that could blink in and out of shape. In and out of sight. In and out of this freaking world. I’d drawn it disappearing as a starburst, a “pock” in the frame.

Damn it, Grandma Eve must have known from the way the thing vanished. “Go talk to it,” she said.

Mrs. Terwilliger at the library must have guessed. Books on mythical beasts and tropical fish, my ass.

Double damn.

“You’re no oiaca, are you?”

It shimmered, and then the head of a fish, gills, and dorsal fin appeared, only with a long feathered tail and wings. Except the fish kept gasping. It turned back to the bird, wheezing some, catching its breath.

“Stupid creature. Fish can’t breathe air.” I watched it change, then change back, until I was dizzy. “Pick one or the other, for crying out loud.”