Cadan squatted back on his heels and admired his handiwork. It was dead stupid of them to put down the fitted carpet before they had someone paint the radiators, he thought. But he’d managed to get the most recent spill cleaned up with a bit of industrious rubbing, and what he’d not got up he reckoned the curtains would hide. Besides, it had been his only serious spill of the day, and that was saying something.
He declared, “We are out of here, Poohster.”
The parrot adjusted his balance on Cadan’s shoulder and replied with a squawk followed by, “Loose bolts on the fridge! Call the cops! Call the cops!” yet another of his curious remarks.
The door to the room swung open as Pooh flapped his wings, preparatory either to making a descent to the floor or to performing a less than welcome bodily function on Cadan’s shoulder. Cadan said, “Don’t you bloody dare, mate,” and a female voice said in concerned reply, “Who are you, please? What’re you doing here?”
The speaker turned out to be a woman in black, and Cadan reckoned that she was Santo Kerne’s mother, Dellen. He scrambled to his feet. Pooh said, “Polly wants a shag. Polly wants a shag,” displaying, not for the first time, the level of inapposition to which he was capable of sinking at a moment’s notice.
“What is that?” Dellen Kerne asked, clearly in reference to the bird.
“A parrot.”
She looked annoyed. “I can see it’s a parrot,” she told him. “I’m not stupid or blind. What sort of parrot and what’s he doing here and what’re you doing here, if it comes to that?”
“He’s a Mexican parrot.” Cadan could feel himself getting hot, but he knew the woman wouldn’t twig his discomfiture as his olive skin didn’t blush when blood suffused it. “His name is Pooh.”
“As in Winnie-the?”
“As in what he does best.”
A smile flickered round her lips. “Why don’t I know you? Why’ve I not seen you here before?”
Cadan introduced himself. “Ben…Mr. Kerne hired me yesterday. He probably forgot to tell you about me because of…” He saw the way he was headed too late to avoid heading there. He quirked his mouth and wanted to disappear, since-aside from painting radiators and dreaming about what could be done to the crazy golf course-his day had been spent in avoiding a run-in precisely like this: face-to-face with one of Santo Kerne’s parents in a moment when the magnitude of their loss was going to have to be acknowledged with an appropriate expression of sympathy. He said, “Sorry about Santo.”
She looked at him evenly. “Of course you are.”
Whatever that was supposed to mean. Cadan shifted on his feet. He had a paintbrush still in his hand and he wondered suddenly and idiotically what he was meant to do with it. Or with the tin of paint. They’d been brought to him and no one had said where to put them at the end of the workday. He’d not thought to ask.
“Did you know him?” Dellen Kerne said abruptly. “Did you know Santo?”
“A bit. Yeah.”
“And what did you think of him?”
This was rocky ground. Cadan didn’t know how to reply other than to say, “He bought a surfboard from my dad.” He didn’t mention Madlyn, didn’t want to mention Madlyn, and didn’t want to think why he didn’t want to mention Madlyn.
“I see. Yes. But that doesn’t actually answer the question, does it?” Dellen came farther into the room. She went to the fitted clothes cupboard for some reason. She opened it. She looked inside. She spoke, oddly, into the cupboard’s interior. She said, “Santo was a great deal like me. You wouldn’t know that if you didn’t know him. And you didn’t know him, did you? Not actually.”
“Like I said. A bit. I saw him round. More when he was first learning to surf than later on.”
“Because you surf as well?”
“Me? No. Well, I mean I’ve been, of course. But it’s not like it’s the only…I mean, I’ve got other interests.”
She turned from the cupboard. “Do you? What are they? Sport, I expect. You look quite fit. And women as well. Young men your age generally have women as one of their main interests. Are you like other young men?” She frowned. “Can we open that window, Cadan? The smell of paint…”
Cadan wanted to say it was her hotel so she could do whatever she wanted to do, but he set down his paintbrush carefully, went to the window, and wrestled it open, which wasn’t easy. It needed adjusting or greasing or something. Whatever one did to rejuvenate windows.
She said, “Thank you. I’m going to have a cigarette now. Do you smoke? No? That’s a surprise. You have the look of a smoker.”
Cadan knew he was meant to ask what the look of a smoker was, and had she been somewhere between twenty and thirty years old, he would have done so. His attitude would have been that questions like that one, of a potentially metaphoric nature, could lead to interesting answers, which in turn could lead to interesting developments. But in this case, he kept his mouth shut and when she said, “You won’t be bothered if I smoke, will you?” he shook his head. He hoped she didn’t expect him to light her cigarette for her-because she did seem the sort of woman round whom men leapt like jackrabbits-since he had neither matches nor lighter with him. She was correct in her assessment of him, though. He was a smoker but he’d been cutting back recently, inanely telling himself it was tobacco and not drink that was the real root of his problems.
He saw that she’d brought a packet of cigarettes with her and she had matches as well, tucked into the packet. She lit up, drew in, and let smoke drift from her nostrils.
“Whose shit’s on fire?” Pooh remarked.
Cadan winced. “Sorry. He’s heard that from my sister a million times. He mimics her. He mimics everyone. Anyway, she hates smoking.” And then again, “Sorry,” because he didn’t want her to think he was being critical of her.
“You’re nervous,” Dellen said. “I’m making you that way. And the bird’s fine. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, after all.”
“Yeah. Well. Sometimes, though, I’d swear he does.”
“Like the remark about shagging?”
He blinked. “What?”
“‘Polly wants a shag,’” she reminded him. “It was the first thing he said when I came into the room. I don’t, actually. Want a shag, that is. But I’m curious why he said that. I expect you use that bird to collect women. Is that why you brought him with you?”
“He goes most everywhere with me.”
“That can’t be convenient.”
“We work things out.”
“Do you?” She observed the bird, but Cadan had the feeling she wasn’t really seeing Pooh. He couldn’t have said what she was seeing but her next remarks gave him at least an idea. “Santo and I were quite close. Are you close to your mother, Cadan?”
“No.” He didn’t add that it was impossible to be close to Wenna Rice Angarrack McCloud Jackson Smythe, aka the Bounder. She had never remained stationary long enough for closeness to be anywhere in the deck of cards she played.
“Santo and I were quite close,” Dellen said again. “We were very like. Sensualists. Do you know what that is?” She gave him no chance to answer, not that he could have given her a definition, anyway. She said, “We live for sensation. For what we can see and hear and smell. For what we can taste. For what we can touch. And for what can touch us. We experience life in all its richness, without guilt and without fear. That’s what Santo was like. That’s what I taught Santo to be.”
“Right.” Cadan thought how he’d like to get out of the room, but he wasn’t certain how to effect a departure that wouldn’t look like running away. He told himself there was no real reason to turn tail and disappear through the doorway, but he had a feeling, nearly animal in nature, that danger was near.