Treasure Island!!!

don’t happen to have a thousand dollars lying around, do you? That I could borrow?”
    With a scornful glance, Adrianna plunged a shard of pita into the hummus.
     

CHAPTER 7
     
    I ’ve decided to live with Lars,” I told Rena on the telephone.
“Really? I thought you were . . . feeling alienated and . . . thinking of breaking up with him. How did this happen?”
    “What do you mean, happen? We’ve been together for five months. Actually, nine, if you count that impromptu sleepover.”
    “Yes, but . . . Well, how does he feel about it?”
    “He’s thrilled. He’s more domestic than I am. This is what he’s always wanted. Also, I can’t pay the rent on my studio.”
    In an intimate booth at Diamond Dave’s Taco Co., Lars had looked at me over the rim of his large-bowled margarita. “You mean you want us to get a place together?”
    “Do you mind me asking?”
    “Frankly, it’s a relief to not be the one doing all the emotional work,” he said. “I didn’t see it coming though. You’ve been kind of bitchy lately.”
    “Preoccupied,” I amended.
“Mea culpa.”
    “Wow,” said Rena on the telephone, after I had explained my plan to immediately move in to Lars’s recently renovated sublet one-bedroom condo. “Did you even—I mean, did you try asking your family for help?”
    “Well, duh, because what’s the fourth Core Value, Rena?”
    “ HORN-BLOWING ?”
    “That’s four. I meant three. What’s the third Core Value? INDEPENDENCE . Adrianna has no money, only credit card bills. Aunt Boothie already paid for the parrot, and my parents will only loan me money with interest. I still owe them money for the Lasik.”
    “Tough love,” Rena said. “Still, what would be the APR?”
    “The hell if I know,” I said. “I’m not an economist.”
     
    In the beginning, living with Lars was lovely. It didn’t matter if I was kissing him hello, or kissing him goodbye, or reminding him to pay the bill for cable; there was something sweet in all we did, something fresh and fragrant, as if a spring breeze blew through the apartment, which of course it didn’t because it was autumn and I kept all the windows closed even when it was warm so I could enjoy the central air conditioning.
    Rena threw out her skepticism and gave us a box of personalized address labels. My mother sent us a congratulatory note and a three and half gallon bucket of caramel corn. Adrianna came over for spaghetti and did a decent impression of not being jealous that I had a live-in boyfriend and she had a loveless life in which her richest emotional engagements were with third graders. Did I mention that since her debt debacle, Adrianna had been living with my parents?
    I hadn’t wanted to take full ownership of Richard, but now that I was living with Lars, it didn’t seem exactly like I had. Richard was
our
baby. After we discovered that Lars’s gag reflex was weaker than mine, Lars took to cleaning the cage, and I volunteered to do food and water. I found an independent supply shop not far from the apartment, which seemed a remarkable stroke of good fortune, until I discovered it was owned by a drab and lonely lunatic with strong ideas about avian diet. “I won’t sell you vitamins,” she said, flitting about the shop like Ben Gunn, prying bottles from my hand. “You need to be thinking about
whole foods
. A green vegetable, an orange vegetable, whatever fruits and vegetables are available seasonally! Sprouts? Yes! Loaded with enzymes! Grow organic and just
wait
till you see the shine of his plumage!” Shine this, I thought and took the bus to PETCO, where I bought a bag of Vita-Mix pellets—and on, second, indulgent thought, a bag of sunflower seeds to motivate Richard during lessons. I now spent my jobless hours training him to speak.
    “No, honey, don’t let him out,” I told Lars, “I know more about animal behavior than you. A cage is a bird’s home. It safeguards him from the overwhelming complexity of the world. Letting him out for some exercise would be like throwing a person off a cruise ship for a little swim.”
    “People swim off cruise ships all the time,” Lars said and he began to take Richard regularly on his arm. Sometimes Richard made thrumming noises while he clowned around with Lars’s glasses. Sometimes Lars tickled his belly, and Richard made a weird sound like two cups of gravel in a blender, which Lars called laughing.
    “See?” said Lars. “Happy bird! See?”
    The two of them