Treasure Island!!!

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.
     

CHAPTER 5
     
    B ack in my studio apartment, I reached for the phone. Could anyone be more lost than I?
I started to call my mother—a reflex reaction when I smell trouble—but before I completed dialing, I realized I had no desire to hear her point of view and saved myself by hanging up. Then I called Lars, who was at work and couldn’t take my call, and Rena, who was not, and immediately came over to feed and water Richard. This was fortunate, since I was in no condition to nurture a bird. She insisted she didn’t mind.
    “You haven’t called me in a long time,” she said. “So you’re still deep into this
Treasure Island
thing, huh?”
    “Inch-thick, knee-deep, o’er head and ears, a fork’d one! Thanks for asking. Lately my sister’s the only one who asks, but she asks because it’s her library copy. She’s pissed about the overdue notices.”
    “Of course. They’ll revoke her borrowing privileges!”
    “You’re as bad as her. They won’t. They’ll just decide the book is lost. Adrianna wants me to get my own copy, but that’s crazy—like telling a superstitious person to buy a new rabbit’s foot.” I nuzzled the book against my cheek.
    “Did you used to have a rabbit’s foot when you were a kid?” Rena said, shuddering. “Mine was dyed blue and on a little metal chain. My uncle gave it to me. Whose idea of luck was that? Certainly not the rabbit’s.”
    Rena cut up some banana and gave Richard a water dish, occasionally throwing him flirty little glances.
    “I’ve pet-sat for a Zebra Finch and some lorikeets,” she said. “But never a large exotic. He sure seems like a character.”
    “What’s wrong with him?” I said.
    “Nothing. I just mean he has a lot of personality.”
    At that Richard screamed, loosening the fillings in my molars.
    “Maybe turn off the maritime music,” Rena suggested.
    Reluctantly I did, but Richard didn’t calm. He screamed and screamed until Lars pressed the buzzer to be let into my apartment. “Wonder why
that
shut him up?” I said as I pressed the intercom. Rena left as Lars entered. In passing they exchanged mildly distressed greetings, Rena clobbering his hip with her enormous Turkish Kilim hand-woven expandable purse.
    “I’m not taking sides,” Lars said after he had heard, two or three times, my story.
    I cuddled up to him on the bed, about three feet from the bird whose cage sat unhygienically on my table.
    “Do,” I urged. “Do take sides. Otherwise where is the fun?”
    “Well, okay, I’m thinking maybe you were out of line a little.”
    “Oh come on! Nancy thinking I stole her money,
that’s
out of line.”
    “You did take it—”
    “But it was petty cash. And I’m her employee. She’s putting the worst possible spin on it. She goes about as if she’s St. Francis of Assisi! I’m supposed to bring extraordinary diligence to her scrappy endeavor? I said I’d work there, not that I would
live
for the animals. ‘Oh, time to feed hamsters!’” I added. “‘Oh, time to brush cats!’”
    “Please don’t do her accent,” Lars said, his mouth askew.
    “But you know the apple barrel scene, right? Jim Hawkins overhearing Long John Silver plotting a mutiny? After Jim falls asleep in the apple barrel? That’s how he discovers half the crew are pirates.”
    “So?” Lars said, failing to grasp the magnitude.
    “So then Jim rushes back to the Captain, Dr. Livesey, and Squire Trelawney and tells them everything he’s just heard. And they’re all like, Wow, Jim, with this information you have basically saved our