Cocky

I was enjoying my smoothest bowel movement in months when the doorbell rang. “Focus” I coached my intestines as they threatened to concertina in fright. “Aahhh” I breathed out, sighing loudly to drown out the continued buzzing. I surveyed the log that symbolised all the unwanted baggage of the year for a moment before pushing the flush.

Feeling considerably lighter, I swung the front door briskly open. No-one. I was congratulating myself on having avoided some unwanted encounter when a loud screech startled me nearly out of my skin. Settling the thin cotton of my sarong more firmly round my waist, I peered past the door to investigate. A large cage sat smugly on my front porch, wrapped in a jaunty pink ribbon. Underneath the elaborate bow that topped the cage bristled the crest of a large white cockatoo. As the one beady eye visible on the side of its face met mine, it let rip another bloodcurdling shriek. I glanced towards the neighbouring attached terraces. They baked silently in the late morning sun.

“Probably at work” I muttered gratefully to myself. But who….and why? Apart from the tokenistic box of chocolates or cheap wine from the temp agencies annual secret Santa, I hadn’t received a Christmas present since I’d waved goodbye to the ancestral home some twenty years ago. A Christmas card sometimes caught up with me on the odd occasion I spent more than 12 months at a single address. Not recently though. Perhaps Mater and Pater were dead. I examined the cage and its occupant from the safety of the front door. The bird continued to examine me back, shifting from foot to foot, the only movement allowed by its cramped quarters. Its expression was unchanged as it squatted slightly and let a large turd drop onto the cracked brown tiles.

“Well Merry Christmas to you too” I muttered. I was about to go back inside and close the door in hopes the whole problem would go away, when I heard the groaning of the number 11 bus as it laboured up the Norton Street hill. I froze watching the lumpy, wheezing shape grow nearer and nearer. Just it pulled up to the stop before the one directly outside my house I dashed the two steps across to the cage, grasped it by the large ring protruding from the bow and deposited it in the hall behind me. I was sucking in the small and sparsely furred spare tie that protruded above my sarong as Kaycee Tomkins of two doors up alighted.

“Kaycee” I waved nonchalantly. She flashed me a dazzling smile and I chose to ignore the fact that it was the same smile she flashed everyone. What the hell, the sun was shining, there was a sudden lull in the traffic, conditions were perfect. I could hear the chatter of Noisy Miners in the bus stop’s Moreton Bay Fig, whose lofty branches cast a dappled shade on Kaycee’s face as she looked up at me.

“Last day?” I loitered at the door as if I’d just popped out to water the plants before the afternoon heat sucked every last drop of moisture from the earth. They were already dead of course, but no harm in trying.

“Yes, thank God. No more night shifts for a week! How bout you?”

“Oh well, not much work for me at this time of the year.”

“You must have some free time then.” I nodded, surreptitiously wiping the sweat from my palms on my cotton swathed thighs. “Fancy a drink tonight?”

Yes, I did.

“Sure. At yours?” I’d always wanted to see the interior of the terrace she shared with two other nurses. Its exterior was identical to mine, but I was pretty sure that was where the similarity ended.

“Nah, can’t do. Tracey’s still on night shift. She’ll have a cow if we make any noise after 8.30. How bout yours? You don’t have a flat mate, do you?”

My thoughts strayed to the newly acquired cockie just behind me in the hall. Afraid it would betray it’s presence at any moment I quickly agreed.

“Sure. 7ish?” That would give me a couple of hours to clean the house and take care of my other little problem. I watched her shapely calves’ stride briskly down the street. Those calves and their accompanying limbs were probably the main reason I hadn’t left this crappy part of town already. It had taken me a couple of months to pluck up the courage to orchestrate a conversation opener and a couple more to get the friendship to this stage. Trust a nurse to take matters into her own hands. The sweet feeling of anticipation drained away as I shut the front door and turned to find my way blocked by the cage. The birds crest rose immediately and, as I picked it up to take it into the kitchen, it tore at the bars viciously, its beak centimetres from my fingers.

“Sweet Jesus” I dropped it in the least cluttered corner. It stared balefully up at me.

” Don’t blame me,” I addressed it from the safety of the kitchen table. I carefully extracted a not quite smoked butt of Winnie Blue from the overloaded ashtray and found a lighter that worked. I blew a stream of smoke into the cockies face and it half screeched, half coughed.

 “I didn’t put you in that tiny cage” Which begged the question who had? Was this a well-meaning gift, or had the giver fully intended to scarper as soon as they heard me coming down the hall? The wellbeing resulting from the mornings successful bowel evacuation had not yet left me, and I decided to take the gift as benign. However, as I surveyed the scene of destruction that was my kitchen, it was also one more bit of trash cluttering up my carefree, bachelor on the loose, image.

I pointed to the blue sky that could be glimpsed through the smeary glass of the back door. “Wouldn’t you rather be free to fly wherever the whim takes you? I’m sure you would” I opened the door, not an easy task considering how many cases of empty beer bottles were piled against it. I hadn’t spent much time in the back courtyard of this crappy rental, and the jasmine and scraggly grevilleas formed an arching roof over the tiny space. Attempting to move the cage outside brought on another bout of terrifying ripping attacks by the cockies lethal looking beak, so I left the back door open and used a metal ruler to lift the catch on the cage door. The bird stared blankly at the open space in front of it. I considered the possibility it had never left its prison, had hatched in there, and had no concept that any other reality existed.

“Come on you dickhead.” I poked its hunched, feathery back with the ruler from the opposite side to the cage door. As it whirled its head round to attack the offending object, its body lurched through the gap and it fell, wings fluttering, out onto the floor. For a moment it sat dazed. Then, in a blur of white and yellow, it shot upwards and came to perch on the bare curtain rail over the back door.

“Well, whenever you’re ready Milord” I gestured grandly towards the garden and forced myself to turn my back on the unwanted guest. Only an hour and a half to hide all evidence of my slovenly ways, get down the bottle to purchase some drinkies and make myself presentable. I started shoving the debris that crammed every surface into drawers, cupboards and, when I ran out of room, garbage bags. The bird remained motionless in the semi darkness over the door and in my cleaning frenzy I clean forgot about it.

The sun was descending and the summer air cooling my sweaty body when I finally surveyed my efforts. Good enough for a guy’s house. I’d been enjoying my first solo living situation – no pesky flatmates to whinge about unwashed dishes and a weeks’ worth of socks scattering the lounge. But no one to clean up either. I’d let things get a little out of hand. Half a dozen bulging green garbage bags needed to be ferried out into the back courtyard. Hopefully, Kaycee wouldn’t want a tour. I lifted as many as I could carry and squeezed out the still open door. The sound of my passage startled the forgotten parrot, and it flew screeching, not out the door, which was filled with me and my burden, but further into the house. I watched its white shape disappear ghostlike up the dim hallway.

Dumping the bags, I ran after it and slammed all the doors leading of the hall shut yelling as I did so “I’ll deal with you later!”

Kaycee was exactly on time. I’d changed into shorts and a shirt for the occasion but was hoping to lose at least the top half ASAP. Despite the muggy air, Kaycee looked as cool as a cucumber in a green dress that revealed those magical calves. I tried to keep my eyes on her face, only letting them drop to her charmingly freckled cleavage for a moment as I handed her a cold beer. I’d kept the lights dim in the loungeroom to hide the dust that tended to fly up when you sat on the couch.

“Cheers” she settled back and eyed me mischievously. “This is nice. “She laughed. “I had a bet with the girls about what your place’ d be like on the inside. They bet filthy.”

“I appreciate your faith. I, uh did clean up a little. That’s the whole point of guests isn’t it”

We were getting on like a house on fire. The conversation was flowing, and I took advantage of Kaycee’s tendency to fall into laughing fits to exchange her nearly finished beers for fresh ones. Generally, beer number three is the point where I’m able to put some slow dancing tune on the stereo and start manoeuvring my quarry towards the bedroom. Nurses, it would transpire, are made of sterner stuff. She’d nearly demolished my six pack by the time her speech was starting to slur.

“Hey” I let my head roll casually on the couch towards her face. Her astonishing teeth flashed. “I love this song. Wanna dance?” I pulled her to her feet. She giggled and leaned her weight against me. I let my fingers graze across her well-muscled butt and twirled her down the short hallway. We came up against the bedroom door and shared a beery kiss while I snaked my hand behind her and turned the knob. It was only a couple of paces to the bed and we half fell, half stumbled to horizontal. The trampolining of the springs set off another bout of laughter from Kaycee. Immediately there was a furious commotion of screeching and beating wings. Without thinking I grabbed the baseball bat I kept beside the bed in case of intruders and swung. The club made impact with the uplifting body of the parrot and it fell with a great scrabbling of claws across our faces before becoming twitchily still.

We both leapt to our feet and stood standing on opposite sides of the bed. Any sign of drunkenness had vanished from Kaycee’s demeanour. She seized the bird in her capable hands, and I wondered if she was about to attempt CPR. It hung limply in her hands.

“What have you done? You’ve killed it!” She looked down at the limp, feathered form with horror, then at me. She laid it slowly down on the bed. I didn’t mention the fact there was bird blood dripping on to my doona.

We stood silent for a moment. I reluctantly tried to meet her eyes, but she was still looking at the bird.

“It’s illegal to kill native animals you know” she berated me in a voice that could only be described as nursey. “What’s this?” She peeled a curl of white paper from the bird’s ankle.

“Good luck dealing with this later. Love the crew at number 12 “

I smiled innocently and shook my head in bewilderment. Perhaps the Eastern suburbs would be cooler at this time of year.