Love and Ordinary Creatures

by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

“Okay, try again,” she says. “But, this time, blink your eyes. Act shy, like you’re the one who’s afraid.”

  The man does as she tells him, timidly blinking both of his eyes at Caruso.

  Appeased, Caruso cries softly at him, stretches out his wings, and gives them a gentle flutter.

  “You see, Caruso’s nice to people who are nice to him,” Clarissa says, half-smiling.

  “What can I say? I’m a bird pleaser,” the man says. “Just can’t seem to help myself.”

  “Well, thanks for trying so hard,” Clarissa says. “Caruso’s my best friend, and I don’t like to see him scared.”

  “Your best friend’s a parrot?” the man says, as though amused.

  “Parrots are wonderful companions, especially cockatoos.”

  “He must’ve cost you a pretty penny.”

  “It took me almost a year to save up for him, but he’s been worth every cent.”

  “How long have you had him?”

  “Let’s see,” she says. “I got him Labor Day weekend of ninety-one, so almost two years now—but I feel we’ve spent a lifetime together.” Leaning over, she plants a kiss on Caruso’s forehead.

  “He’s a lucky guy.” The man grins, his front teeth gleaming like opals in the dusk.

  “I best head home, while it’s still light out,” Clarissa tells him.

  “Yeah, I like to surf in the late afternoon, like to have the beach and waves all to myself,” the man says. “I’d give you a lift,” he adds, his tone apologetic, “but I drifted. My van is parked a couple of miles up.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Caruso and I do this all the time.”

  “I wish I could be of more assistance.”

  “Why, you’re quite the Southern gentleman,” she says, with an enticing giggle.

  “Joseph Hampton Fitzgerald, at your service.” He presents his hand to her.

  “Clarissa McCarthy,” she says, shaking it.

  Caruso follows the movement of her strong hand, firmly clasped around his, and a momentary feeling of jealousy knifes through him. “Jo-seph Hamp-ton Fitz-ger-ald,” he says, mimicking the man perfectly.

  “Sounds just as pompous coming from him.” His head thrown back, his mouth opened wide, the man lets out a boisterous laugh. “Why my parents did that to me, I’ll never know. My friends call me Joe. You live here year-round?”

  “Uh-huh. I’m the chef at Crab Cakes.”

  “I know the place,” he says. “Across the street from the harbor. I’ve heard tourists raving about your food. Mind if I drop by tomorrow evening and say hello?”

  “Please do,” she says, smiling warmly, “and I’ll thank you for your valor with a little taste of my cooking.”

  A little taste of her cooking, Caruso thinks, whipping out his cheek feathers, studying the man with disfavor. Dirty-blond hair. Brown irises, flecked green. Medium height. Neither handsome nor ugly. An ordinary Homo sapiens. Not worthy of comparison to any bird. Common, Clarissa would call him. No sooner does he think this than his gaze falls upon the man’s arms, long and muscular with biceps round as coconuts, then upon his chest. Unlike Theodore Pinter’s, it is broad, strong, and hard. Hard as the nut of an oyster around a pearl. Hard as the shell of a sea tortoise. Hard as the heart of a great white shark, he fears.

  Four

  Somehow, she seems different to him today, annoyingly chirpy, like a sparrow. He perches on the T-stand, returned this morning to its customary spot in the sunroom, and watches while she dons her white tunic, pins up her red curls, and squeezes into the black Reeboks she swears alleviate the discomfort of standing for hours in front of the stove. With hands on hips, she turns this way and that in front of the mirror above the chaise longue, stretching her swan neck so far out he fears her head might tumble off, then she takes a step closer to her reflection and licks her lips until they glisten. She bats her long eyelashes, deep red like her hair, winks at herself, and says, “Not so bad after all. Maybe Beryl’s right.” Spinning around, she saunters over. At once, he’s on her shoulder.

  They head out the kitchen door, but instead of taking the shortcut through the backyard to Crab Cakes, she makes a beeline for her bike and mounts it. Before he knows it, they are cycling over the driveway toward Fig Tree Lane, veering left, away from the restaurant, onto Silver Lake Drive. “I need to speak to Beryl,” she says into the breeze.

  Speak to Beryl, he thinks. About what? It’s Tuesday. Time to get back to Crab Cakes. Time to get back to work.

  She turns right at Biff’s Dockside Store, where Beryl clerks for her cousin when not painting in her studio, and kerplunks over the warped, weathered planks. “Stay put,” she tells him, braking in front of the entrance. “I’ll be back in a jiffy,” she says, pushing down the kickstand, sliding off the bike.

  Back in a jiffy, Caruso thinks, hissing with irritation. Usually, she and Beryl Gaskill get together on Monday, when the restaurant is closed. Typically, they hang out at Beryl’s house, where five generations of O’cockers have gathered on her family’s screened-in front porch, drinking beer and telling tall tales with an exaggerated island brogue before enjoying a supper of spicy boiled shrimp, onion-laced hush puppies, french fries, and coleslaw. But seldom do they meet on Tuesday, when Clarissa must get to the restaurant early to prepare for the next six days of hectic work.

  Moving toward the wooden pocket door, she slides it open, leaving him alone beneath the hot sun on a rickety dock above the splashing water. What is she doing? he wonders, glancing furtively around. Isn’t she worried about what could happen to him, same as he worries about her? After all, he is an expensive bird. Someone could sneak up, hurl a beach towel over him, and steal him away from her forever. Doesn’t she care? Even as he thinks this, he knows his fears are histrionic, for on this island of eight hundred residents, a thief of parrots would be quickly found out. Besides, the tourists who swarm here during the summer come to have fun—not to get into mischief.

  The vague sound of their chitchat, drifting through the partly closed door, tantalizes him. Why didn’t she take him inside? he puzzles. She knows how much he likes to listen to Beryl Gaskill talk. The first time he heard Beryl say hoi toide, he had laughed like a kookaburra. “High tide,” Clarissa had translated for him. Then, a few days later, when Beryl came out with, “Don’t mommuck me. I’m feeling quamished,” Clarissa had immediately explained that mommuck was harassing a person, while quamished was being sick to your stomach.

  Caruso aches to know exactly what they’re saying. Swiveling his head, he checks to see if anyone is coming. The dock is clear. Using his beak for balance, he tightropes down the bike’s crossbar, alights on the gray floorboards, and hastens toward the doorway. Staying out of sight, he cranes his neck and listens intently.

  “When I saw him on that surfboard, rolling toward me,” Clarissa is saying, “I didn’t know what to do. I mean, he’s so hot he’s…”

  Hot? Caruso muses. The sun is hot. If Clarissa stays outside too long in the heat, her skin feels warm beneath his feet. Yet yesterday, it was dusk when Joseph Hampton Fitzgerald came paddling toward her on his surfboard. The sun was no longer shining, and he was yards beyond her reach. So how did she know he was hot? Caruso thinks, just as Beryl says, “Hunksome,” finishing Clarissa’s sentence for her. And although Beryl isn’t in sight, the loud thump suddenly filling his ears paints a picture of her in his mind—plunking her rough elbows on the counter while clasping her paint-flecked hands. He imagines her short black hair shining bluish-purple in the sun-filled room. That is, if she hasn’t already dyed it another color. It seems to Caruso that she is constantly molting, her hair falling out one shade before growing in another.

  Two years ago, when they had first met, Beryl’s unruly, clipped thatch had been yellow, the hue of a snowflake lily on a Kakadu billabong after a severe monsoon, but the next time he cast his eyes on her, it was wine-red. As soon as he adjusted to that, she changed it to sweet-potato orange, and then a few months later to
wren-brown. Which he must admit didn’t suit her. Now, it’s crow-black. Her natural color and the one that looks best on her, she insists.

  “That’s right,” Clarissa says, with an intoxicated sigh. “Hunksome. That’s what he is. I’ve never seen anyone built like him before. I mean, his pecs are huge—Herculean.”

  Herculean, Caruso muses. The old man had often told him stories about Hercules and his great feats of strength. The surfer’s arms were long and muscular. His chest was broad, strong, and hard—but Herculean? Caruso ponders this some more. No, he wouldn’t go so far as to call his pecs that.

  “Herculean pecs,” Clarissa says again. “When he was paddling over the swells, with me beneath him, I felt his chest brushing against my back, and I tingled all over.”

  Tingled all over. From the heat? Caruso wonders.

  “And then on the beach, as we were walking, I saw his stomach. He has a stomach like a washboard.”

  A stomach like a washboard. What does that mean? Caruso thinks with a befuddled shake of his head.

  “No body fat at all?” Beryl says, her tone dubious.

  “None that I could see,” Clarissa tells her. “And the rest of him looked pretty good, too. Strong chin. Full lips. Brown eyes. Blond hair, and oh—the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen on a man.”

  “But is he nice?”

  Caruso can imagine the teasing smile on Beryl’s face when she says this, as annoying as a sheath around one of his pinfeathers.

  “Well, he paddled all the way out to help me.”

  “That was nice,” Beryl says, with an ambiguous drop of her voice. “What’s his name?”

  “Joseph Hampton Fitzgerald,” Clarissa replies deliberately.

  Three big names to tattoo across his hard Herculean pecs, Caruso thinks.

  “I don’t know the name. He must be a dingbatter—not from around these parts.”

  “He’s dropping by the restaurant tonight,” Clarissa says. “Wants to say hello. I’ll ask him where he’s from then.”

  “Smooth operator,” Beryl says.

  “I offered to fix him a little something,” Clarissa says, ignoring her remark. “’Course, I haven’t decided what yet.”

  “Shuck him some oysters,” Beryl suggests, her tone immediately helpful. “Hain’t nothing better than oysters on the half-shell with some lemon juice and cocktail sauce for dipping.”

  “They’re not in season now, not as sweet,” Clarissa says. “Besides, anyone can shuck oysters and serve them on a bed of chipped ice.”

  “Hain’t so,” Beryl objects, in a voice gruffer than usual. “Ya gotta use your oyster knife, know your way ’round the mouth.”

  “But there’s no cooking to it,” Clarissa shoots back.

  “Ya want an arrow through his heart, ya best shuck him some oysters.”

  “Beryl, honey,” Clarissa says, sighing, “I want to cook him something special.”

  “Oysters are aphrodisiacs,” Beryl argues. “Will put ya in the mood. Hain’t that what it’s all about, anyhow?”

  “No.”

  “You know what shucking rhymes with?”

  “I’m not serving him raw oysters,” Clarissa almost shouts, just as Caruso remembers that Beryl is the five-time and still-undefeated champion of Ocracoke’s annual oyster-shucking contest.

  “I’m just trying to help,” Beryl says with a pout in her voice.

  “I know, sweetie,” Clarissa says. She softens her voice before adding, “I know what I’ll do. I’ll fix him a plate of Oysters Rockefeller. Show off my culinary talent.”

  Will she feed him oysters like she feeds me grapes? Caruso asks himself, shifting sinuously from one foot to the other. Will she slip the plumpest one into his mouth?

  “Might work,” Beryl concedes halfheartedly.

  Neither speaks for several seconds.

  Caruso listens to the water lapping against the pilings and to the throaty gurgling of a motorboat idling nearby. Next comes the nasal twang of a country song blasting through an open window, then fading as the car rumbles down the road. All of a sudden, Clarissa blurts out, “I better get going. My God, it’s almost one! Between deliveries and prep, you know how crazy my Tuesdays are.”

  “Too much work and too little time,” Beryl says with a great big sigh.

  Panicked, Caruso shambles over the dock and is halfway up the crossbar when Clarissa catches him. “Caruso!” she yells, dashing over. “What are you doing? Didn’t I tell you to stay put?”

  He lowers his head, refuses to look at her.

  “Handlebars,” she commands in a brusque voice.

  He maneuvers himself to the top, curling his toes over the hot, curved metal, stubbornly keeping his back to her.

  “I’m late,” she mutters, mounting the bike. With a swift clack, she kicks up the stand. The tires thunk over the buckled planks.

  Unlike the old man, she’s forever running late, Caruso thinks, cutting her no slack.

  Out of nowhere, an image of Theodore Pinter’s grandfather clock looms up in his mind. Six feet tall, its design of boldly shaped curves had stood out against the sage-green wall in the study. A pattern of swirling birds was carved at the bottom of its mahogany case. The pendulum was brushed brass, he remembers, and with the arrival of each hour, “Ode to Joy” chimed. Large and easy to read, the numerals on the clock face had brought shape and form to the old man’s solitary life. Every weekday morning at seven, he’d slip the custom-made cover off Caruso’s cage and say brightly, “Let’s hope the mail comes early.” Whereupon he’d tread down the hallway toward the kitchen, only to return ten minutes later to stand by the window sipping strong black tea in a mug. As soon as the postman ascended the porch steps, Theodore Pinter would set the mug on the desk and step closer to the pane of glass, bouncing excitedly on his toes as Olivia passed by the living room window, then out of sight, on her way to pick up the mail. His eyes would flit over the exterior brick wall of her house, glide above the porch railing, and come to rest on her slender fingers, dipping into the woven basket tacked to the doorjamb.

  The wire basket in front of Caruso’s toes begins to jangle as Clarissa cycles around the curve of Silver Lake Drive. Bothered by the sound, he shifts his attention to the thick growl of the Cedar Island ferry coming in to dock, followed by the foghorn’s low, deep tone. Inhaling the salty air, he takes in the scenery—the weathered storefronts advertising deep-sea fishing and day trips in small, open boats to the deserted island of Portsmouth, with its miles of pristine beaches and rare shorebirds, spotted whenever the flats are wet. He sees Ride the Wind—tourists in line for parasailing—the Slushy Stand on the opposite side of the road, and the picturesque Silver Lake Motel and Inn. They cycle past the Treasure Chest Restaurant, whose chef is Clarissa’s main competitor. “Always sending out his spies to steal from my menu,” she has complained time and again. It’s true, for Caruso has heard comments from the patio diners: “I ordered this the other night at the Treasure Chest, but it can’t compare to what I’m eating now.” Every time she tried something new, the inferior “Chef Louie” version would be created a few days later. “When I was growing up, my brother stole all of my parents’ attention,” she often grouses to Caruso. “Chef Louie is the one stealing from me these days.”

  “Chef Louie! Chef Louie!” he shouts, trying to get back into her good graces by mocking the man.

  “Don’t push your luck!” she growls.

  “Chef Louie!” he tries again, but she turns a deaf ear to him.

  By the time they roll to a stop in front of Crab Cakes, she is winded, her breathing short and rapid. “Come here, you little brat,” she says, banging her foot against the stand.

  Compliant, he goes to her arm and ascends to her shoulder.

  “Next time, you’d better stay put.”

  She makes straightway for the front entrance, which leads into the dining room, the long arm of the L-shaped bistro, and takes a quick left, rushing by the storage room and into the kitchen.

/>   “You’re late, Clarissa,” Rick says, in his soft, effeminate voice. He is the head line cook, sous chef, and also the owner’s nephew.

  “I stopped by Biff’s. Wanted to talk to Beryl,” she explains.

  “About what?” he asks.

  “About a gentleman I met at the beach yesterday.”

  “A gentleman?” Rick says. “A…gentle…man,” he repeats, as if each word were a sweet fig in his mouth. “Oh, hi there, Caruso,” he says, his left eyebrow levitating, his right eye wandering the instant he acknowledges the bird.

  Caruso loves it when he does this trick. In fact, Caruso is utterly intrigued by the way Rick looks. His wispy, silver-blond bangs. The thick black eyebrows below them. The lazy right eye of cerulean blue, the same blue as the feet of a Galapagos booby. Clarissa calls him an uninspired cook, says that she only hired him because he’s the owner’s nephew and she had to. Regardless, it seems to Caruso that he performs efficiently in the kitchen. Once, when Clarissa fell sick with a headache, Caruso had looked on as Rick took charge, issuing orders with decisive gestures while decorating dinner plates with his colorful palette of sauces. “Rick tries hard,” Clarissa had given him later, “but, bless his sweet ole soul, he should’ve been a painter.”

  “I wanna hear more,” Rick says, whisking eggs into a bowl of cream, raising his left eyebrow once more.

  “Un novio,” Jorge, the produce guy, hums, glancing up from the potatoes he’s scrubbing.

  “As soon as I deal with Caruso, I’ll tell y’all about him. And he’s not my boyfriend,” she says, looking pointedly at Jorge as she brushes against Skeeter—the salad man—on her way to the door. Big, rumpled, and bearded, Skeeter steps promptly to one side, his eyes wide with amusement. Rick waves good-bye with a shimmy of his fingers. She draws open the glass door and lunges through, her stride purposeful as she crosses the patio with Caruso still on her shoulder. “Okay, you little monster,” she says, unlatching his cage door, “now get inside.”

  He descends to her forearm and lifts his foot up to the perch. “Chef Louie, Chef Louie, he go. He go,” he warbles over his shoulder, in a last-ditch effort to win her back.