Thirty

“Help! Get this vulture off me!”

Esther was sprawled on the hardwood floor, her body blanketed by wide flapping wings. Though she shielded her face, the bird’s orange beak kept slipping under her hands.

“It’s not a vulture, Esther. It’s a duck!”

“I don’t want to go like Tippi Hedren,” she whined.

But instead of grabbing her exposed throat, the duck folded its huge wings and settled down on Esther’s chest like a hen warming an egg. Bowing its downy white head, it rubbed against Esther’s cheek.

“Scat! Scoot! Get off me,” Esther pleaded with closed eyes. The duck quacked contentedly but refused to budge.

“It’s a pet, Esther. Maybe it’s trained.”

“It’s not a dog, Boss Lady!”

“It’s still a pet. You should try using its name.”

She opened her eyes. “Wacker, go to your room!”

At the sound of its name, the duck lifted its head, stuck out its feathery chest, and hopped to the floor. Esther sat up on her elbows.

“I thought that thing was going to eat my liver.”

“Relax, Prometheus, I think Wacker is calm now—”

The duck shook its white feathered rear and, with an abrupt squirting noise…evacuated. Esther climbed to her feet, gingerly avoiding the green spew on the hardwood floor.

“I can see why that beast was locked up.”

Wacker cocked its head to gaze at us with one strangely contemplative eye. Then the duck waddled back into its lair. Esther quickly closed the door and pushed me down the hall to the living room.

“That was intense.” Esther shook her disheveled raven bouffant. “Did you see that bathroom? There’s duck guano everywhere.”

“That explains the smell.”

“I might need a mask to go back in there,” Esther continued. “Poor Wacker needs care—”

The angry, booming voice startled us both.

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?”

A raging man swathed in terrycloth burst into the living room. He wasn’t old, but he wasn’t young, either, maybe late thirties. And if his boyish features hadn’t been twisted up with outraged fury, he might have been considered handsome.

The whites of his wide, angry eyes matched the robe, which barely reached his knees. His legs were covered with dark hair. His feet were bare, his face unshaven, and this was no five-o’clock shadow. The cactus growth looked several days old, and his dark, longish hair was Einstein wild, as if he’d just rolled out of bed.

As he strode into the room, his hastily tied robe came undone, exposing a hairy chest to go with the hairy legs and a pair of tighty-whities with a visible bulge.

Esther hid her eyes. “Unsee, unsee!” she chanted.

But I was less concerned with propriety and more worried about the large mallet the man was waving around in one white-knuckled hand.