“Kevin,” said Cody, still in negotiator mode. “I want you to meet my new friend, Brooks.”
“Friend?” I said, a little offended.
“Boyfriend!” Cody quickly corrected. “This is my new boyfriend, Brooks. We met while I was traveling through the States. He owns the cutest bookstore in a little town called Mulligan’s Mill and… well… we fell in love. I want you to make him welcome.”
Kevin’s feathers ruffled, he raised his tail, and without so much as a word he squirted a shit into the kitchen sink behind him.
“Oh, gross!” I spluttered, choking on my gag reflex. “Please tell me we don’t have to wash any dishes in that sink.”
“What dishes?” Kevin cawed. “I smashed them all.Squark!”
One glance across the kitchen floor confirmed he was not lying. “My God, are you sure that bird isn’t possessed by the Devil?”
“Squark!Just becauseyourmother cooks socks in hell, doesn’t mean I’m the one with the problem, you brazen hussy!”
“Now, Kevin… what have I told you about being polite to strangers?” Cody tried to reason cautiously. “Brooks is my guest and I’d like you to be on your best behavior. That means no name-calling, no trashing the house, and absolutely no more shitting in the sink.”
Kevin the cocky gave me the stink eye, then leveled his gaze at Cody. “Fine. If you want me to behave, I will. But that doesn’t mean I need to sit around here watching you two make hoochie-coochie kissy-face in front of me.Blurg! Squark!Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got better things to do like annoy the hell out of deadbeat Damo by pecking the fuck out of his Casuarina trees.Squark!”
With afoompof his wings, Kevin suddenly took flight, flapping up into the rafters and flying out through an open window near the ceiling.
For a moment, Cody and I stood in complete silence, staring up at the blue sky through that window. It wasn’t until we were certain Kevin wasn’t going to reappear that Cody finally turned to me. “Are you okay?”
“I think so. I’m not sure. What just happened?”
“Kevin just happened.”
“Jesus, is he your pet?”
“No. Kevin’s wild.”
“You’re telling me! One look around this place confirms the hell out of that. Can we close the damn window before he comes back?”
“Um… not really.”
“Why not?”
“Because he knows he’s safe in here.”
“Hemight be, but nobody else is!”
Cody took my hand, brushed some broken teacups off the couch, and eased me down. “I couldn’t possibly lock him out. I don’t want to lock him out. Kevin and I have known each other for years. Back in 2011, a cyclone named Yasi blew through here. Tore up half the island. Kevin was just a young chick. I found him in the bush after the cyclone, and he was barely alive. I nurtured him back to health, then when he was strong enough, I set him free.”
“I hate to tell you this, but you didn’t exactly do a very good job of the ‘setting him free’ part.”
“You know what they say, if you love them, set them free. If they love you, they’ll come back.”
I stared around the pillaged shack. “This is Kevin’s idea of love?”
Cody shrugged. “I know, I know, he gets kinda hectic. And needy. And batshit crazy. But… he’s a bird. He knows this is his safe space, it always has been. Whether there’s a storm or he’s in danger from a predator—whether I’m here or not—he knows that window up there will always be open for him.”
“You leave it open? All the time? Even when you’re not here?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But what if someone breaks in?”
“Brooks, we’re on an island. Who’s gonna break in? The koalas? Besides, I don’t exactly have anything worth stealing. And even if someone did break in, they couldn’t do much more damage than this.” He pointed to the mess everywhere.
