Treasure Island!!!

hundreds of miles of Amazon canopy.
    “I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl,” the salesgirl told me. “They don’t come in tagged. But we call it Richard. Little Richard.” Having done her duty, she turned away, and as the sweet perfume of her hair oil receded, a musty smell took precedence in my nostrils. Bird. Bird smell. Did I want to bring this thing into my workplace? It was larger and more alive than I had expected. Running back and forth along the perch, “Little Richard” let loose a long, harassing whistle.
    “I’m a fool, if you like”—I walked the aisles in panic—“and certainly I’m going to do a foolish, over-bold act, but I’m determined to do it”—which is what Jim Hawkins says when he sets out to recapture the ship from the pirates. I found the salesgirl, tapped her on the shoulder.
    “You want him?”
    I clutched a shelf for balance and accidentally knocked down a noisy Swat ‘n’ Swing. “I do and I don’t, of course. I came for a parrot, but I wonder if a parrot is really the thing. Does he creep
you
out? Look at that tongue, I didn’t even realize birds had tongues. You’re probably getting minimum wage, and here I am, taking up your time, trying to figure out . . . I
love
your hair, by the way.”
    She didn’t smile; she heard that compliment all the time.
    “The thing is, I’m torn. What do you think?”
    “Why do you care what
I
think?”
    But I did care, I mean not pathologically, but a little. In another scenario, this girl and I might become friends. I looked at the bird and imagined it sitting on my shoulder and pecking my eyes out. The girl turned around to . . . “Wait!” I shrilled. I picked up the cage, produced the cash, and in a loud, jovial voice, announced that I would buy it.
     
    I began to feel pretty excited as I walked the parrot back to The Pet Library. He was excited too. He screamed the whole way.
    A car filled with teenage boys came roaring by, its tires spitting mud, and one of the boys stuck out his head and called, “Eeeeeeeeeeeyaaaaaaa Polly, want a cracker?” which was not even
remotely
witty, and yet as witnesses to my bold business, they were somehow kindred; they were scrappy, fearless fellow adventurers. I waved and walked on, a smile on my face.

CHAPTER 4
     
    A s soon as I got back to The Pet Library, the smile disappeared. The door, I now realized, I had left unlocked. This might not have mattered; in fact, at first I was relieved that, cage in hand, I wouldn’t have to fuss with the keys, and pushing my way in, I said, “Welcome home, Richard.” Immediately I sensed a disturbance. I placed Richard’s cage on the desk and caught sight of the marmalade cat, tied to a chair with a dog leash, like a prisoner awaiting interrogation. I leaped over and untied him, for which he thanked me not at all, only slunk off, his tail puffed up and bristling. A cat tree lay on the floor, its feather toys torn off; cabinets stood open; on the floor lay canned goods, bags of dog food. “What the hell?” I said.
    My first thought was the animal rights people, who for years had been sending Nancy hate mail. In the beginning, she’d thought that she could win them over, naively supposing that she and the animal rights people were on the same side. They would come round ostensibly to inspect the cleanliness of the cages and Nancy would wheedle them to apply for a membership card. But they never so much as checked out a hamster. Instead they organized protests, wrote letters to the newspaper, and once they covered The Pet Library’s windows with black spray paint that said, “2-DAY LOAN PERIOD = 2 MUCH TRAUMA.” Luckily,
that
wasn’t so catchy. Their movement fizzled out when the local leader left to set up a handicraft cooperative in the Kyrgyz Republic.
    As I walked around, checking out the damages, I realized I wasn’t looking at the work of the animal people. They would have escaped with every animal in tow, and although I hadn’t done a head count, already I was conscious of having kicked the rooster away with my boot. Now he was pecking away at a torn bag of dog food, greedily keeping pace with the mutts. The record book was on the floor, a few of its pages bent, but nothing was missing. No, whoever had come in had not wanted to destroy the place. They had vandalized it, almost carelessly. I was wandering around, noting the large amount of water on the floor—did the fish jump out of the tank?—when the door chimed, and