We'll Always Have Parrots(7)

He frowned down at Spike, who was still growling repetitively.

“Come on, Dad,” I said. “We’ll miss Michael’s spotlight,”

“Oh, right,” Dad said. “I’ll come back later,” he told the keeper.

Yes and for that matter I planned to come back later myself, and find out why the convention organizers had arranged to have a live tiger as part of the proceedings, and why the tiger’s keeper had agreed to this demented idea.

But for now, we left, with Dad dragging Spike, who continued to growl until we succeeded in pulling him out the door. Then he finally shut up and began prancing along behind us with a jaunty air, as if his barking and not our change of location had caused the tiger to disappear.

The organizers had scheduled Michael’s spotlight in the convention’s main event room—the hotel ballroom, which contained a small stage and several hundred chairs, set up auditorium-style. Mother, of course, had snagged a chair on the aisle, to accommodate her train. Dad and Spike joined her, but I turned down the seat she had saved for me. I preferred standing in the back, where I could escape quickly at the end of the hour.

And where I could survey the crowd, about ninety percent of them in costume. Of course, I was looking at the backs of their heads but, still, I could see a great many purple ostrich plumes and pointed wizard’s hats, along with an astonishing variety of headgear—hennins, wimples, plumed knight’s helms, musketeer’s hats, space suit helmets, and even the odd set of antlers or insect antennae. This meant that as the crowd settled in, debates raged up and down the rows over whether or not people should take off their hats for the benefit of the fans behind them. The fans toward the back of the room also protested the umbrellas and parasols that some people wanted to use as protection from the monkeys and parrots—large numbers of whom, sensing something important afoot, had followed the human crowds into the ballroom and were squabbling noisily overhead for the available space on the crystal chandeliers.

By 8:57, the ballroom was packed. I was close enough to hear the convention security staff—all of them female, and dressed as Amazon guards—turning away latecomers.

“I’m sorry. Due to the fire marshal’s regulations, we can’t allow any more people in,” they kept repeating. “You can watch the closed circuit broadcast in the Rivendell Room.”

Closed circuit broadcast? I glanced up and saw that the ballroom boasted a small balcony that doubled as a lighting booth. At the moment, it held not only the lighting techs but also a camera crew, composed of a Klingon in full battle dress and a flying monkey from The Wizard of Oz. The cameras panned across the audience, setting the scene for the fans exiled to the Rivendell Room.

The cameras reminded me to pull out my own little camera and put in a fresh memory card so I could get plenty of photos when Michael took the stage.

I spotted familiar faces, but refrained from waving, since I couldn’t figure out why most of them looked familiar. Were they people I’d met, however briefly? Or after half a dozen of these fan gatherings, had I started to recognize the die-hards?

I was almost relieved to spot one face I definitely knew. Francis, Michael’s agent, stood off to one side, wearing the anxious look that no longer worried me, now that I knew it was his habitual expression. A pity because, as I’d told Michael, on those rare occasions when Francis relaxed enough to smile, he was reasonably attractive in a lanky, aristocratic fashion.

“Is it the long horsy face or the threadbare tweeds?” Michael had countered.

Obviously this wasn’t one of Francis’s relaxed days. I saw him reach into his right jacket pocket and then glance around to see if anyone was watching before slipping something into his mouth.

I sighed and shook my head. Francis had relapsed. Not that it was any of my business, but still. If it was humanly possible to OD on TUMS, one of these days Francis would do it. Should I sic Dad on him?

The crowd began shushing each other when a six-woman contingent of the Amazon security guards marched in and arrayed themselves in front of the stage.

“What the hell is this?” muttered someone to my right.





Chapter 5




I glanced over and saw a small, round-faced man in a business suit standing, like me, against the wall. He stared at the crowd with—no, fascination wasn’t the word. Horror. In college, I’d briefly dated a man who kept a snake. Briefly, because he’d made the mistake of letting me watch him feed his pet. The expression on the small man’s face mirrored what I’d seen when the mouse spotted the snake at the other end of the glass enclosure.