A Friend for Life
Last Wednesday, my husband and I went to a secondhand bookstore down the road and ended up singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” to a parrot. Whenever we got to the chorus, it would burst out with a breathless “eee-ai-ee-ai-oh” and ruffle its feathers in ecstasy. Its owner, a woman whose face was half obscured by a surgical mask patterned with a bird of prey, sang in a pitch-perfect quaver, swinging her arms to a rhythm entirely her own.
The store is situated on a bustling street near town center and is immediately recognizable by the cascade of books spilling from its door. Standing in piles, stacked on tables, and perched on the stoop, they hint at what might be in store for an unassuming tourist who dares cross the threshold. The first impression one has on entering is height–not of the ceiling, but of the books. Piles and piles fill the cavernous space. There is the odd shelf here and there, but mostly, the geography of the store is formed by free-standing stacks, some of which appear more precarious than others.
The parrot sits just inside the entrance in a large cage camouflaged by teetering columns of books about Old Hollywood. To the casual observer, the cage is merely a prop for the schnauzer-sized stuffed parrot that sits on top. As soon as you hear the first, shrill “Hello,” however, you might look beyond the stuffed version and see the very real bird that perches inside, his shoulders hunched and his feathers disheveled with age.
On this particular afternoon, Michael and I had gone to the bookshop to procure enough reading to get us through the end of summer. After the customary nod to the bird, we parted ways to find our favorite corners of the store. As I perused the 19th and 20th century female authors’ pile, which merges seamlessly into the watchmaking pile (much larger), a couple of teenage girls holding smoothies discussed in Brazilian Portuguese where they would be having lunch. A man with elbow-length gray hair and cargo shorts was trying to strike up a stimulating literary conversation with the parrot’s owner at the cash register and was growing progressively irritable at her silence. Every minute or so, someone lost in the maze would squeeze past me, muttering apologies and shrinking in embarrassment when it became clear that the only option involved physical contact.
In the past, I’d gotten lost on the second floor, which consists mostly of dusty volumes about British trains, thin books about fast cars that have more pictures than words, and a travel section made up of mostly European and East Asian destinations. Once, I was even drawn into the narrow, crooked pile that awaits on your right as you descend the stairs. What can only be described tactfully as the “nationalistic” section, it is full of volumes about the superiority of 19th century British foreign policy (colonialism), and a few treatises on the end of civilization. This time, however, I stuck close to the entrance, picking up three novels from the women’s pile and a door-stopper of a book about the history of the Hollywood studio system before nearly bringing down the entire yarn-craft alcove trying to extricate a tome about Fair Isle knitting.
By the time I got to the cash register with the remnants of a sneeze still tickling my nostrils, an hour had passed. The other patrons had long since found their way out, and Michael was busy breaking down the defenses of the diminutive shop owner. Michael lives with open arms, drawing out the most reticent of people by either displaying genuine curiosity about them or confidently making a fool of himself to put them at ease. I wasn’t there to see his method of attack on this occasion, but when I reached them, they were deep in conversation about the parrot.
“He thinks he’s a person, you see,” the woman said eagerly, her voice muffled from behind the mask. “He thinks he’s going to work every morning.”
“Do you take him for walks?” Michael asked, “Because I watched a YouTube video once where a couple went for runs and their parrot just flew behind them the whole way.”
“He gets some personal time in the garden,” she said, “And he’s let free in the house sometimes.”
“Can I feed him?” Michael asked.
“Oh yes,” she said. And as if a wall was magically evaporating before our eyes, she carefully extricated herself from behind the paper-strewn counter, zig-zagged through some knee-high stacks of Isaac Asimov, and shuffled to the cage.
It was littered with food. A cereal bowl overflowed with berries. Bird seed covered the floor. And a pile of shrimp (raw and shelled) sat beside a container of banana slices. Behind it all, the parrot stood hunched in a corner, blinking out at us. “Hello?” he asked uncertainly as we crowded round.
“Do you know what he really likes?” the woman asked. “Do you know ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’?”
Just before we left, she gave Michael a rose hip. “Here,” she said, “Feed him this. You’ll have a friend for life.” We watched as the bird took the shiny red object from Michael’s fingers and clutched it in his claws. Ever so delicately, he began to nibble, his small beady eyes focused and reverent. “You have a friend for life there,” the woman murmured. “It’s his favorite food. And you can’t get them year-round, you see. It’s the first of the season.”
The scent of roses filled the musty air.