Treasure Island!!!

illustrating I don’t know what: longitudes, latitudes. Turn the page, I urged him silently. Turn the page, plunge in!
    “I find maps interesting,” he said.
    So violently did I expel my breath, I spat on the map—one of those weird, nervous spits where you accidentally trigger a salivary gland and, as if your tongue had discovered your mouth’s G-spot, the saliva erupts in a concentrated jet. Thinking I’d meant to do it—“gleeking,” he called it; as if I’d ever “gleek” on my bible!—he took the occasion of my nervous laughter to close the book. “Let’s order two flans,” he said affably, and thus our discussion of the salty book was derailed by sugar.
    Something has to budge, I thought as we walked home that night, arm in arm, ostensibly happy, but inwardly one of us (me) seething. Already I felt big with book the way a woman feels big with child. Was there room in this relationship for the two of us?
    “Lars, I want us to talk
seriously
about
Treasure Island
,” I said as we reached my apartment. “Like, pretend we’re in a seminar.”
    “Piracy and the expansion of the nineteenth-century nation-state,” he replied. “I’ll talk for twenty minutes and then turn it over to you and Jimbo.”
    “Jim,” I said. “Jim Hawkins.”
    “Whoa, you’re mauling the door! Didn’t I tell you,” Lars said as if this were
his
apartment, “turn the key and pull at the same time. Otherwise it sticks.” He put his hand over mine and pulled. The door popped open.
    Inside, Lars removed my backpack and slung it on the futon. We kissed, and the kiss was a wrecking ball; walls crumbled, plaster sifted, a grey bird flew through the dust and emerged white as snow. What a heap! Later somebody from the salvage department would come by and look for usable, well-conditioned pieces of me.
    “What’s a ‘nineteenth-century nation-state’?” I asked later as I searched the tangled sheets for my underthings. But Lars had drifted off to sleep.
     

     

CHAPTER 3
     
    C ooped up in a library with twelve rabbits, eight hamsters, six hermit crabs, one rooster, four large sullen cats, a tank of fish, five mutts, and a purebred poodle whose needs are as bountiful as the sea, a person gets to thinking. Neither Rena nor Lars was helping to strengthen the hold of
Treasure Island
on my life; they
said
they were supportive, but talking to them about the book’s Core Values—
     
    BOLDNESS
    RESOLUTION
    INDEPENDENCE
    HORN-BLOWING
     
    —was about as interesting as talking to a couple of Tic Tacs. What I wanted to bring the message home was a parrot, a parrot who would sit on my shoulder every day, or at least every day I worked at The Pet Library, and be a living, squawking reminder of the active role I meant to play in my life. In
Treasure Island
Long John Silver’s parrot shouts, “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” Mine would shout, “Be bold, but be kind, be yourself but be plucky, be flexible and yet tenacious,” assuming a parrot could be trained to say such a long and syntactically complex thing. If not, I would accept “Steer the boat, girlfriend!”
    The morning I fixed on the idea of the parrot happened to be a morning Nancy had taken her ancient mother to physical therapy and wouldn’t be back until noon. The library was awash in gloom. One of the cats had been vomiting and because I’d been pretending not to see the puddles, the place stank. Also, the week before, in a fit of apathy, I had allowed a teenager without any ID to check out the rooster, and now the bird was back, its neck feathers ruffled and a stormy look in its eye. In the old days, by which I mean my pre-
Treasure Island
days, I wouldn’t have thought of leaving that smelly Pet Library, I would have soaked up the bad air and all the rest until Nancy came back to release me. Oh yes, I am quite sure, in the old days, my tiny train of thought would have circled around a papier-mâché landscape of imaginary needs and catastrophes, and thinking I was obliged to stay at work, I would have missed an opportunity for decisive action. But I had a scheme in my head.
    The point of the scheme was to show Nancy that I was capable of action. Lately, our relations had been tense, and I didn’t want to waste any energy discussing the further responsibilities I craved. No, I would
show
her she could rely on me and I knew just the way to do it. As I cast my eye around the dreary room, a dozen ideas for improvement flooded my head.
    Nancy, who