“So tell me more about this young girl you met. Corvo, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, well you *know* her name. Supergal Ruby. And you know she’s engaged… or reengaged to be more exact,” he tried to reassure his wife. “She and Greg Ogden had been married before. But…” Herbert Glenn Gold wasn’t sure he wanted to bring up the death of Greg’s interim lover Mr. Babyface in that Korean Channel water funnel. Simply because he wasn’t sure he was really dead.
“But what, dear?” April Mae said in the gap. “Is… is there a problem in paradise?” This was what she sometimes said when she sensed trouble in a relationship. And this one, she felt, threatened hers. She had been quite insecure — and understandably so — since the Merry Goldbusk debacle over in NWES City. And now they’ve returned to the same continent of the indiscretion — probably adds to the paranoia a bit.
“I don’t think so. Anyway, that’s why I invited them both here,” he followed up on earlier conversation. “Greg is happy painting so I provided him with models.”
“Models, hmph. Is that what you call them?” She was usually more tolerant of Herbert’s eye wanderings but her biorhythms were on the downswing today. Perhaps too much tea lately. But Albert makes such a fine pot!
“Now now, April Mae. They’re only cheap mesh statues really. Like all those ones standing outside Baker has lined up for potential use later on.” They were on the wrong side of the house to look at all that mess so April Mae didn’t try. Flesh and mesh, she thought here. Unreal but still tempting, she felt.
“Soo… she was just here to pick up the 2 coins and then leave. And you said she knows what to do with them.”
“She knows. But she just has to remember. There’s 2 directions here,” he says as he cuts another piece of pizza and gobbles it down. “She can pawn off the golden coins for quite a small fortune actually.”
Unwise, April Mae thinks here about his earlier actions. Risky and unwise.
“*Or*,” he continues, “she can use them as *evidence*.”
“Atlantis, right.” She cut her own piece, she accomplished her own gobble. “And what about Bermuda?; you mentioned a Bermuda. From the way you described it it sounded more like a person than a place.”
Thinking of her newest dress with all the parrots, Herbert Glenn Gold decided to deflect here again. “No, it’s a place. A triangle, actually.”
Another funnel, he then realized.
—–
“I’ll take everything you have,” she said shortly after entering the store and the introductory chit chat was over with Hector Big Parrot Bird Guy. “Including these 3. Including *you* if you wish, she thought but didn’t say out loud. There had to be limits to all this silliness.
“Molly, Polly and Folly are *not* for sale,” he returned in a haughty voice more human than bird. “They’re my friends. They keep me company. I can’t be entertained by reading all the time.” He finally looks up from the book about non-parroty things, stares into her eyes. “But the rest are yours. Take them, I don’t care. I’m just an unpaid employee minding the shop while the owner is away. I don’t know when he’ll be back. He’s been gone for days, maybe years even. I don’t care,” Hector reiterates.
“Free?” she said.
“Free.” I can replenish the stock in a blink of an eye. *Those* parrots aren’t real; mere 2d replicas. Only these three here are real. My friends, as I said.”
Molly emitted, “You’re darn tootin,” to this.
Polly squawked loudly as if in agreement.
But, without chatter herself, Folly just looked around from her own perch at everyone involved. She personally had her doubts that *any* of this is real, pet shop and all. And where was Victor Ratt the owner? Rumor has it that he’d been kidnapped by pirates.
Only the unreal parrots in back knew for sure and they weren’t talking either.
(to be continued)
Sunklands 