We'll Always Have Parrots(21)

I sighed.

“Who is it?”

“It’s only a miserable parrot,” I said. “It’s safe to talk.”

“What if it overhears us and repeats what I say?”

Interesting point. If Salome’s keeper was right, the parrot might imitate something shortly after we said it, but probably wouldn’t wander around the hotel repeating it for the rest of the convention. But what if the wrong person walked into the bathroom too soon? Better safe than sorry.

“Can we talk somewhere else?” I suggested.

“No, it’s okay,” Typhani said. She was blotting her eyes with a damp paper towel. “I’m all right now, honestly.”

She left.

So the QB was getting hate mail. If that surprised poor Typhani, she had a lot to learn.

I was making sure all the bits of my costume were back in order when my mother stormed into the rest room.

“There you are,” she said, when she saw me, and I relapsed briefly into that dreaded childhood feeling of knowing I had displeased my parents, but not yet knowing how.

“What’s wrong, Mother?” I asked.

“That woman,” Mother said. “I could strangle her with pleasure.”

I winced. Over half the people in the hotel were female, but I had a feeling I knew exactly which woman she meant.

“You have to do something,” Mother went on. “Your father is comforting Eric, but you have to do something about this.”

“Eric?” I said, torn between anger and irritation. “What has she done to Eric?”

As if in answer, Mother handed me a convention program. From the various stains and fingerprints, I deduced that it was Eric’s, and that my parents had fed him pizza for lunch. From flipping through the pages, I further deduced that Eric had adopted the common convention-goer’s goal of getting autographs from everyone pictured. He’d made a good start—I saw Nate’s signature, Chris’s, Walker’s, even Dilley’s, beside the giant question mark they’d used to substitute for his missing photo. When I got to the W’s, I saw that Michael had signed, and after him, someone named Maggie West. The space beside Tamerlaine Wynncliffe-Jones was blank. Okay, this explained why Eric had gotten within striking distance of the QB, but not what she’d done to him.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “I know it’s a pain, standing in line, but her line probably isn’t as long as Walker’s or Michael’s. If he goes now—”

“He stood in line,” Mother said. “And he asked her very nicely for her autograph. And that…witch threw the program back in his face and shouted at him!”

“Strangling’s too good for her,” I said. Actually, I thought Mother was overreacting a little. Not that I’d ever tell her.

“The child will probably be traumatized for life,” Mother said.

Or perhaps the experience might teach him the folly of idolizing people on silly TV shows.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

Mother hesitated.

“I was about to say get her to apologize, but on second thought, I don’t want her in the same room with Eric,” she said. “But someone should tell her exactly what we think of her. I would, but I’m not sure they’d let me anywhere near her again.”

What had Mother done to make herself persona non grata in the autograph room? I decided I’d rather not know, though chances were I’d hear all about it before the end of the convention. And did she realize what she was asking me to do? Tell Michael’s boss exactly what my family and I thought of her?

Then again, why not? Odds were the QB couldn’t afford to fire Michael right now. It might be a good thing if she did, for that matter. Right now, at the peak of his popularity with the series, he’d probably find it relatively easy to find other roles. Meatier, more dignified roles that did not require him to prance around in tight leather pants.

And if not, well, eventually we’d find a house we could afford without the acting income.

“But first, get her damned autograph on the program,” Mother said.

“Do you have any idea why she wouldn’t sign it?” I asked.

“She kept shouting that she didn’t want her signature on the same page as that imposter’s,” Mother said.

Imposter? I glanced at the page. I only saw signatures from Michael—that looked genuine—and Maggie West. Who, from reading her one-paragraph biography, had played the Duchess of Urushiol, Walker’s on-screen mother, for the first half of season one. I’d only started watching when Michael joined the show, but she looked familiar. Then again, she was an actress; I’d probably seen her in lots of things, if she’d been in the business as long as the QB had. Of course, that didn’t mean whoever signed the program was the real thing. Maybe the convention had invited the wrong Maggie West, too.