Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins (II)

Maestra failed to greet him in the vestibule, so Switters wandered the ground floor searching for her. Nearly a year has passed since he'd been in the house, but it was as he remembered it: spare, elegant, and spotless (Maestra had a professional housecleaning service come in twice a week; her meals she ordered delivered from Chinese and pizza take-out joints), and a dramatic contrast to the dumps in which her offspring - and their offspring had often resided. Maestra had done all right for herself. Above the living room fireplace was an Henri Matisse of a mountainous blue nude reclining, distorted limbs akimbo, on a jazzy patterned harem sofa. He was reasonably sure it was authentic.

He found her in the library, perched at a computer. Much of the library was jammed with electronic equipment, twice the amount as on his last visit. Her collection of great books was now double and triple parked at one end of the room, while at the other end there were two computers, an array of modems, printers and telephones, a forty-inch television set into which a stack of black boxes was jacked, a fax machine and a helmet with goggles attached, which Switters took to be some type of virtual reality device.

"Maestra! Surfing so early in the day?"

"Less traffic this time of the morning. Switters! Are you alone?"

"Of course. Who'd I dare bring with me?"

Punching off-line, she swivelled to face him. "Well, I did intercept an e-mail message in which you promised little Suzy you were gonna take her 'all the way to grandma's house.'" Her affectionate gaze hardened into a glare.

Switters blushed so incandescently he could have hired out his face as a beer sign. It was one of those instances, rare in his life, when he was at a loss for words.

"Perhaps that expression has some different connotation for you. Eh? Something I'm not hip to?" Her smile was ironic and a tad malicious. "After all, you've always exhibited the good taste not to refer to me as 'grandma.'"

"Uh, er," Switters stammered, "Suzy? Suzy's in Sacremento, how in hell did you access her email?"

"Heh! Easy as pie. Child's play. You of all people ought to know that." The edges of her smile softened some. "All right Switters Come here, Kiss those wrinkly old cheeks. It's a blessing to see you. A mixed blessing, but a blessing nontheless. Mmm. Boy. So what'd you bring me? Great, you know I'm crazy about mums. And a most fine pumpkin. Yes. Excellent damn pumpkin." Her disappointment in the presents was ill concealed.

From his jacket pocket, he fished a Bakelite bracelet, pinkish butterscotch in tone. "Found this in an antique shop in Paris. Guy claimed it belonged to Josephine Baker."

"Well, its mine now!" Maestra was immoderately fond of bracelets, often wearing as many as ten on each thin arm. "That's so thoughtful of you, Switters. So sweet." She paused, adding the bracelet to her jumble and admiring it there. "But don't think this lets you off the hook, buddy boy. I don't have to tell you what a wicked degenerate you are."

"Oh, tell me anyway. I never tire of hearing it. Puts a spring in my step."

"You are a wicked degenerate. A rascal, a wastrel, a pervert... Don't look so pleased with yourself. This business with little Suzy is not funny. It's sick. What's more, it's criminally prosecutable. You've always been the most irresponsible-"

"Now, now. How can you say that? I'm a dedicated, decorated public servant with a top-secret security clearance. Hardly the resume of a slacker."

"I'm supposed to sleep better nights knowing the likes of you is guarding the henhouse? It amazes me you've lasted in that job."

"Over a decade now."

"It amazes me they ever recruited you in the first place."

"It was my firm jaw and air of tragic nobility."

"It was your academic record." There was an irrepressible yeast of pride in her voice when she said, "The dean of students at Berkely told me personally they'd never seen the likes of you when it came to cybnernetics and linguistics..."

"Don't forget modern poetry. I had nine hours of modern poetry."

"He neglected to mention that. And the rugby fellow, that swarthy Englishman, he said you were the only American he'd ever coached who actually understood the game."

"Nigel was just buttering you up. He was consumed with desire for you. You drove him wild."

"Heh! Rubbish! I was a senior citizen even then. Rugby's barbaric. Worse than football. But there's no denying it, you hit the grade-point jackpot."

"Genes, Maestra. Abilities I inherited from you."

"Heh" The old woman beamed in spite of herself. "You were clever, in some areas, but I'm still surprised they'd recruit you, considering your extracurricular activities and your weak moral fiber."

"It's government service, Maestra. Morality's scarely an issue."

"You have a point there, unfortunately. So what monkey business has that agency of yours got its nose into now? What're you up to? What're you doing in Seattle? How long before you leave me?"

"Upon the rosy-fingered dawn."

"Tomorrow? No!"

"I fly to South America first thing in the morning - but I'll be back in a wink. Actually, I'm supposed to be starting a thirty-day leave, but the yard boss insisted I postpone it just long enough to dash down to Lima and back. Really, I'll probably only be there overnight."

He saw her eyes narrow behind her spectacles.

"Assassination?"

"I don't do windows. You've been watching too much TV. Company recruited a very promising young dude down there, indigenous operative, fronted him a new Honda as a signing bonus, and now he's backing out on the deal."

"You're ready to terminate him with extreme prejudice."

"Get real, I'm gonna lobby him, try to talk him into staying aboard."

"Why you?"

"I guess because we have similar backgrounds. He earned a double master's from the University of Miami. Computer science and languages."

"No modern poetry?" She was needling him.

"Me thinks not, Maestra, But I bet he can quote a line or two from Howl"

"And what'll you do on your vacation? May I expect another intrusion?"

"Absolutely. Another bangle, too. First thing, when I get back. Uh, I was hoping you'd let me use the cabin up at Snoqualmie Pass for a week or two. I've sucked way too much cement this year. But juju rising off them city sidewalks. I need to babble with a brook or two, inhale starlight, make friends with some trees. Then I may hop over to Sacramento briefly, regale the family."

"Including Suzy?"

"Uh, well, uh Suzy quite possibly may be on the premises. I believe she's going back to school."

"Of course she's going to school! She's a teenager!"

Maestra fell quiet and remained quiet for such a lengthy period that Switters wondered if she might have nodded off, as the elderly are wont to do. Either that or she was truly very angry. He cleared his throat. He cleared it again. Louder now.

"South America," she said abruptly.

"Yes."

"Nice."

"Not nice. No. South America holds a minimum of charm for this buckeroo."

"I suppose. The death squads, the poverty, the corruption, the destruction of nature."

"Hmm, well, yes, there's that." He scratched his himself, as if thinking of South America made him itch. "And then there's the fact that it's just too goddamn vivid."

She regarded him quizzically, but when she spoke she asked not what he meant by "vivid" but to what country, exactly, was he travelling in South America?

"Peru."

"Peru. Yes. That's what I understand. Lima, Peru." There followed anther long silence, but this time he could tell she wasn't drifting in any geriatric ozone. Her eyes simultaneously narrowed and brightened until they looked like apertures through which Tabasco droplets enter the world, and the zing zing zing zing of synapatic archery was very nearly audible.

"Jeez" he muttered eventually, shaking his head. "If J. Robert Oppenheimer had thought that hard, he'd have invented video poker instead of the A-bomb."

Maestra smiled sardonically. "Prove to me," she said, "that chivalry can still eat lunch in this town."

With a rattle of bracelets, she extended both arms. "I need to be excused."

Switters was taken back at how light she was, how frail. Her body was a husk compared to the meaty pulp of her spirit and her voice. Yet once he had helped her to her feet, she left the room rather briskly, barely relying on the rustic mahogany cane that she seemed to sport mainly for effect. He heard her rat-a-tatting it along the banister posts as she climbed the stairs.

******

After tossing his trench coat over a modem (underneath he wore a gray Irish tweed suit and a solid red T-shirt), he strolled to the library windows. Maestra's house sat high on the bluffs of he Magnolia District, so called because a botanically challenged early explorer had mistaken its profusion of madrona trees for an unrelated species that graced more southerly climes. Magnolia's cliffs overlooked the shipping lanes through which all manner of vessels, from warships to oil tankers to funky little salmon-snaggers, sailed from the Pacific to Seattle's docks by way of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound. Maestra's second husband had been a sea captain and owner of tugboats and he liked to keep an eye on the tides. On this drizzly day, the captain wouldn't have seen very much. The sky and the water looked like separate panels of the same chalk-fogged blackboard. Nature had erased the diagrammed sentences and multiplication tables, leaving a view that was all pan and not orama.

Switters turned from the misty void and was instantly confronted with its opposite: namely a well-defined object of lurid coloration. It was the pumpkin, only its orangeness had become so intense it seemed to be undergoing spontaneous combustion right there on the library table. Switters didn't know whether to reach for a fire extinguisher or fall down and worship. The thing was blazing - and spinning, as well. At least, it appeared to be, for a minute or two. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. Then he remembered.

He had forgotten about ingesting the XTC. It was starting to come on, and come on strong. Knowing that 150 milligrams of 3, 4 methylenedioxy-methamptehtamine, to call it by its rightful name, would not produce hallucinations, he figured that his present-moment awareness must be substantially heightened. With that in mind, he pulled up a chair and sat directly facing the gourd. It was no longer afire, but it was very pretty and very friendly, and Switters felt compelled to caress its haptic contours.

"We search for the door in the side of the pumpkin," he whispered, "but unlike Cinderella's coach, it is drawn only by its own slow ripening." (Where was this coming from?) "Distracted by the toothy glitter of com, mice leave it to round, to orange: a globe of lost continents, a faceless head, its true identity known only to the Halloween knife and certain deputies of the pie police. 0 pumpkin, pregnant squaw bladder, hardiest of moons, scarecrow's beachball, in the name of farmers' daughters everywhere, remove your hood and - "

"Switters!" Maestra had entered the room behind him. "What the hell are you saying to that poor fruit? Is this what nine hours of modern poetry does to a man?"

"My queen. You have returned."

"Christ, boy! See the frost is off your pumpkin. Have you finally gone around the bend?"

He smiled at her sweetly. Shyly, he studied his white sneakers. "Maestra, would you mind putting on some music? I feel like dancing."

"Never mind the damn music. Sailor Boy and I want your undivided attention."

It was then that he noticed the parrot.

******

How his grandmother, in her fragility, had managed to fetch Sailor's cage from her upstairs sitting room, Switters could not imagine. Although airily constructed of wicker and copper wire, it was spacious, as birdcages go, and probably none too light. Normally a sceptic, Maestra had become convinced that pyramids possessed the power to refresh and preserve organic tissue, whether of a plucked apple or a fully feathered bird, and inspired by an article on the subject in a reputable science magazine, she had long ago commissioned a craftsman to build her parrot a cage in the model of the Great Pyramid, although whether its geometric shape added to or subtracted from its total weight was something that had never been considered. Its impact on Sailor Boy's health was likewise unproven, yet no observer could dispute the salubrious sheen of his plumage.

"I'm aware," she said, "of your antipathy toward animals."

"Why, that's slander, Maestra. I cherish all God's creatures, great and small." It was the XTC talking. The XTC grinning.

"Okay, pets then. I have it on good authority, namely you yourself, that you don't like pets. Why are you acting so goofy?"

He scratched his jaw in a pensive manner. "It's cages I dislike. Cages and leashes and hobbles and halters. It's the taming I dislike. I appreciate that a pet can be a comfort to one such as yourself, but domesticity shrinks the soul of a beast. If God had meant for animals to five indoors, he would have given them second mortgages."

"It's the wild kingdom that you fancy."

"Well, sometimes nature has a tendency to go over the top, lay it on a bit thick with the creeping and crawling and sliming and hissing and stinging and ceaseless reproducing. But generally speaking, yes, my respect is for the thing that sniffs its prey instead of sniffing my crotch, the thing that shits in the elephant grass instead of shitting in a box in my kitchen."

"Your phrasing is indelicate, but your meaning is clear. You prefer your creatures wild and free. That's good. That's very good."

"Is it good, Maestra?" His expression was that of a proud child who has just been praised for some trivial if heartfelt achievement.

"Yes, it's very damn good because it means that you are philosophically disposed to undertake the little mission I'm about to assign you."

Switters blinked. He was in a drug-induced neurologically based state of blissful benevolence, a state in which ego was softened, fear dissolved, and trust expanded, yet through it all he sensed that he was about to be conned.

It turned out that his grandmother wanted Switters to take Sailor the parrot with him to South America and release the bird in the jungle there. At her advanced age she faced the inevitable, and while its life expectancy was almost certainly greater than her own, the parrot, too, was no spring chicken. She wanted her pet to spend its remaining years flying free in the forest of its birth.

"But, but, uh," Switters sputtered, "you've had Sailor for about as long as I can remember. . . ."

"Thirty-four, thirty-five years. And he was at least that old when I acquired him."

"Sounds right. I'm thirty-six. So, why at this late date?"

"Don't pretend to be a knucklehead. You know why. I've always assumed that he was leading a good life, but that may have been a chauvinistic presumption. I mean, he's behind bars, isn't he? You might recall that he used to be loose in the house, but in recent years he's taken to ripping up the draperies with his beak and committing other disagreeable and destructive deeds. He's undergone a personality change. You're the one who's claimed that all pets eventually become anthropomorphically neurotic. Correct? Anyway, I've had to keep him locked up. You have no idea how guilty I've felt. So it's for my conscience as well as for his 'shrunken soul' that I want you to liberate him."

"But, but I thought Sailor was from Brazil. He's a Brazilian parrot. I'm going to Peru."

"Quit speaking to me like I'm senile. Brazil, Peru - the Amazon jungle's the Amazon jungle. Birds and beasts don't recognise national boundaries. They have better sense."

"Okay, but I'm not going to the Amazon jungle. I'm going to Lima." His voice was fuzzy, and muffled by faux nonchalance. "Lima's on the coast. There's desert around it. It's hundreds of kilometers from the Amazon." He turned to face the cage. Sailor was tearing at a bunch of grapes, but his head was cocked to the side, with one shiny orb trained on Switters, as if he could detect the man's abnormal state. "Sorry, ole birdy, ol' pal, but if you expect to wing home to the emerald forest, you're gonna have to redeem your frequent-flyer miles."

Maestra was neither amused nor dissuaded. "Your tone disappoints me," she said. The pupils of his aforementioned fierce, hypnotic green eyes were so dilated they looked like the burners on a dollhouse stove. She stared into them without trepidation. "A quick detour, that's all I'm asking. It may widen the pinhole in your travel map, but you're going to have to do it for me."

"Oh, no. No, no. It wouldn't be anywhere near quick enough for me. If I'm not out of South America within forty-eight hours, I will have forfeited all claim to future happiness. Can't do it, Maestra. It's an ordeal in the making, and it's too much to ask."

She clapped her age-spotted hands together with such a sharp pop that it caused the parrot to start and flutter. "Then I'm no longer asking. I'm insisting."

Switters grinned. He loved the whole world at that moment, South America and a demanding old matriarch included, but he wasn't going to let himself be manipulated. "You forget, I'm the only member of our family you've never been able to intimidate or control. That's why you adore me. So, you might as well - "

"Heh! The reason I tolerate you, to the extent that I do tolerate you, is that you're the only one of us left with any tricks in his bag. In this case, I'm afraid, those very tricks of yours are your undoing." She paused briefly for the threat that was in it. "You see, buddy boy, I happen to have on file every e-mail mash note you I've posted to Suzy in the past six months."

"No, you don't" he blurted out confidently, but somehow he knew she wasn't bluffing.

"Want to bet?" She went directly to the smaller and older of her two computers, the Mac Performa 6115, and within a few minutes had pulled up a text. "All right, this one is dated thirty, September. Ahem. It reads, and I quote, 'I long to greet your delta like a rooster greets the dawn. ' "

"Oh, dearie me." Blushing, he slumped in his chair and began to croon very softly, "Send in the Clowns."

******

In the discussion that followed, the word blackmail fell many times from Switters's lips. He said it without rancor, she responded without guilt.

"I can't believe my own grandmother would stoop to blackmail." He shook his dark blond curls. He was bemused.

"Nobody else will believe it, either. But they'll have no choice but to believe the sordid evidence of Suzy's e-mail. I ask you again: Do you want your mother and stepfather to read those messages? Want your superiors in Virginia to read them? Mull it over."

"Blackmail most foul. No pun intended."

"It's for a good cause. Don't take it so hard. And you know, I've been contemplating updating my will. The Sierra Club probably wouldn't know what to do with the cabin at Snoqualmie, so I'm now considering, only considering, leaving it to you."

"I..."

"Hush. Just listen. My Matisse that you've always been kind of gaga about? At present it's destined for the Seattle Art Museum, but 1 might be persuaded to keep it in the family. If Sailor was sprung free and my heart was at peace."

"Blackmail wasn't sin enough. Now you've added bribery."

"Yes. The old B and B. It doesn't get any better than that."

"You realised from the start that bribery alone wouldn't work."

"Materialism is one of the few vices you don't subscribe to. Yet, deep down, even you have a pitty-pat sense of self survival."

He made a final effort to escape his fate. "Perhaps this hasn't occurred to you, Maestra, not being a traveler, but a person can't just take live animals in and out of foreign countries. Most countries have strict quarantine laws regarding pets. I'll wager Peru - "

"Switters! You're a CIA agent, for Christ's sake Surely you have ways of getting any manner of restricted items through the tightest of customs. You told me once it was like diplomatic immunity, only better."

Defeated, he slumped further in his chair. In that position, he was Defeated, he slumped at eye level with the pumpkin, and he imagined he could detect its seeds spiraling inside of it like stars in a galaxy or bees in a hive.

******

Conspicuously pleased with herself, Maestra strutted over, bracelets clattering, and gently poked his neck with her cane. "Sit up straight,boy. Do you want to be Quasimodo when you grow up?" From somewhere in her richly brocaded kimono, she produced a thrice-folded sheet of crumpled pink paper. "All this blackmail and bribery has given me an appetite. Let's do lunch!" She slapped the cheap brochure and a cordless phone onto the table between him and the pumpkin. "There's a new Thai restaurant opened in the Magnolia shopping area. Why don't you order for us? Five years in Bangkok should've given you a modicum of expertise!"

He ought to be hungry (except for a pint of Redhook ate at Pike Place Market, he'd had no breakfast) just as he ougbt to be furious with Maestra, yet thanks to the XTC, he was neither. "Like sedated spacemen conserving their energy for the unimaginable encounters ahead, the pumpkin seeds lie suspended in their reticulum of slime!" Those were the very words he whispered, but luckily she paid them no heed, having already moved to the pyramid to speak to the parrot. Unlike those old women who coo baby-talk to their birds, Maestra spoke to Sailor exactly as she spoke to everyone else, which is to say, with language that was fairly formal and occasionally flowery, a self-amused, ironic eloquence that to some degree, though he might deny it, had influenced Switters's own manner of speech. (As for the parrot, on those rare occasions when it spoke at all, it would utter but a single sentence, and it was always the same. "Peeple of zee wurl, relax," is what it would say, as if giving sage advice in a raspy Spanish accent.)

Seeing no route around it, and aiming to please, he studied the menu and picked up the phone. As he requested such dishes as tom kabug and pak tud tak, names that routinely sounded like a harelip pleading for a package of thumbtacks, the tricky tonalities of Thai didn't faze him. The waiter, in fact, mistook him for a fellow countryman, until Switters explained that despite his immaculate accent, he could not actually speak that tongue that in all probability had been invented by the ancient Asian ancestors of Elmer Fudd.

In less than thirty minutes, cartons of aromatic food were clustered, steaming, on the library table. Wafts of lemongrass, chili paste, and coconut milk envlivened the technologized old room.

After about five torrid forkfuls of pla lard prik, Maestra dozed off in her swivel chair and slept for hours.

Switters didn't eat a bite, but danced alone in front of the CD player until deep in the dark afternoon.