The Perfidious Parrot

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  Sub-images flashed along. Home-cooked exotic dishes featuring the day’s catch. His boat would be bizarre, maybe a Chinese type mini-junk like one he had seen in the harbor. Drinking coffee in the early morning, like the old Cuban gentlemen he saw everywhere, perhaps he could assume a similar persona, wear an immaculate straw hat and pressed white pants, a dress shirt, white and brown shoes, sip espresso, get energy, do nothing with it. The waitress was on her way already. “Otro cafecito, señor Rai-nus?” (she would recognize a good tipper)

  “Por favor, señorita.”

  Pornographing the evenings away, fill up the days with sailing and diving.

  De Gier got off his bicycle in front of The Perfidious Parrot.

  The bar’s logo was drawn in a few ragged Zen-like lines on the gable of a former marine warehouse. The bird, wings half-spread cockily, looked aggressive.

  “We like it,” the doorman said, noting de Gier’s interest in the logo. The doorman imitated the bird’s arrogant stance. His hooked nose resembled the parrot’s beak. His clothes looked feathery. The wide orange silk sash became the parrot’s belly, the white jacket its breast. The doorman’s tall boots changed into muscular bird legs.

  “Impressive,” de Gier said politely.

  “The painting of the parrot is based on Mayan art,” the doorman said. “Pre-Colombian Mexican, modelled on a sixth century cave painting, found it in the Chiapas mountains. Mayan priests, in return for gold coins, performed totem-animal dances. The parrot powered the cave-temple’s doorman. I drew the damn bird from memory. It came out good. He and I welcome the likes of you.” He pointed a thumb across his shoulder. “You do want to get in there?”

  “If you please,” de Gier said politely.

  The doorman held up his. “Ten dollars entry-money.”

  De Gier pulled out his wallet.

  “That’s to bounce you out with,” the doorman said, “in case you misbehave. You know enough to keep your paws off the flesh? No flirtatious attitude? No smoking, eating, sleeping?” He flexed muscles. “Any punishment will be painful.”

  De Gier stared at the doorman.

  The doorman looked noncommittal.

  “Fuck you,” de Gier said, putting his wallet back into his jeans’s rear pocket.

  The doorman narrowed his eyes. “What did you say, sir?”

  “Fuck you.” De Gier looked noncommittal too.

  The doorman was expensively dressed. It is tiring to roll about on crushed oyster shells at high noon under a hot sky. Does it really pay to engage in fisticuffs with a neatly attired tourist ready to spend money in a holiday setting?

  “Welcome, Friend,” the doorman said.

  Inside, music rocked. Captain Noah waved from his high bar stool. Nude, almost nude, semi-nude, three quarters-nude, barely/flimsily/fully attired women walked between tables, stripped or dressed in the aisles, kneeled or squatted in front of clients, danced on tables, rolled on the stage, slid along bannisters, strode in and out of doors, stood on their heads for short moments, stood on their feet for long moments, smiled slavishly, glared domineeringly, raised the corners of their lips up like madonnas, turned them down like hellish whores, twisted their bodies as if in great pain, or great need perhaps. Of what? Of love? Love of de Gier’s money? A bald host in a red silk cummerbund shook de Gier’s hand. “You know our rules, sir?”

  De Gier breathed in deeply. The doorman behind him waved at the host. The doorman made an O out of his bent index finger and thumb. His lips said “o-kay” silently. The host retreated. “Welcome, Friend. Our establishment is your establishment, sir.”

  “Budbuddyboy,” Captain Noah said at the bar. “There he is. Join me, you well-funded foreigner, you.”

  The captain pointed at the dancers. “The olive-green beauty in the black skinny dress with the thin shoulder strips is a Syrian national, and the black lady is Jewish, escaped the Sudan for Israel, escaped Israel for our Peace & Quiet. The white women on stage are Irish, the taller of the two is Nasty Nick’s.”

  “Nasty who?” De Gier asked.

  “The doorman.” Captain Noah was happy, he said, that he could introduce this new world to a new arrival. “Nasty Nick is an anthropology university graduate.”

  “Changed his field?” de Gier asked.

  “Adapted his field,” Captain Noah said. “Nick specialized in pre-Columbian civilizations, paid for his studies by professional boxing, brilliant student, good degree, nobody wanted him when he was done.”

  “Too different?” de Gier asked.

  “Those who are different stick out and get hammered down,” Captain Noah whispered. “I am French Canadian–different. Do you know,” the captain’s elbow dug into de Gier’s side, “that you are foreign-different? You know what that means? No?” The elbow dug harder. “That means that the non-different don’t understand you too well so you get to play the bad guy in their movies.”

  The waitress was British, with an introverted ladylike expression. She was large breasted. She wore a tight jacket. The jacket’s V was covered by a rose-colored scarf. De Gier ordered fruit juice. “Spiked?”

  “No thank you.”

  She smiled. “You don’t drink alcohol?”

  “No longer,” de Gier said.

  “Admirable,” the waitress said.

  “Drunks drool on them,” Captain Noah said, watching the waitress walk away. “See those ladylike swaying hips? Wait till you see her ladylike thighs. Ahhh.” The captain shook his head wildly. “We must be serious. You’re here on business. The whereabouts of ex-military men. The crude oil business. I have some information there too. Which do you want first, oil or the bad soldier?”

  “Is there a connection?” de Gier asked, much aware of femininity everywhere. He should be. It was expected, Captain Noah said. “Are Dutch ladies more attractive?”

  “They aren’t here,” de Gier said.

  The captain said he couldn’t imagine more beautiful breasts than those of the British waitress, not even in unknown Holland. Could Dutch women have longer legs than the olive-green Syrian, who happened to be passing their table that moment? Were Dutch female hips more seductively smoothly oval than the Irish ones now on stage?

  De Gier watched Nasty Nick’s tall Irish girl friend dance with a black woman. The Irish girl wore ballet shoes only, the black woman seemed about to undress. The two dancers were kissing.

  “Crude oil,” the captain said.

  De Gier kept watching.

  Captain Noah’s hands covered de Gier’s eyes. “You gave me money up front for information on the Caribbean oil trade. The Sibylle. Piracy near St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles. Remember?”

  De Gier promised to listen, while watching.

  The captain said he had asked around. There was an oil-transshipment facility on the Dutch island of St. Eustatius, one island south of St. Maarten. The facility belonged to a corporation that transferred supertanker cargoes to storage tanks, then transferred the product again to small tankers. A wholesale business—buy large quantities at a discount, sell small quantities at a mark-up. Buy when oil is cheap, sell when oil is dear. Play the market. Demand and supply. “You have that?” Captain Noah asked. “Or did it get mixed up with butts and boobs?”

  De Gier tapped his right temple. The information was recorded, 100 percent error free. He said so.

  The captain also reported that computerized supertankers are handled by small crews. Five, six men at most, including the captain. Tanker crews are almost always on board because their ships do not waste time in harbors. Being stuck in confined quarters causes depression. A negative state of mind leads to abuse of alcohol, drugs and porno on TV. It would not be difficult to take over a ship run by a sad and befuddled crew. Captain Noah had heard that insurance premiums on tanker cargoes were high and rising.

  “Aha,” de Gier said. The British waitress had returned with papaya juice on the house, compliments of Nasty Nick who could be seen smiling and waving in the doorway. De Gier smiled and waved ba
ck. The waitress made de Gier step off his barstool, sat on her heels, placed her tray on a low table, showed long smooth thighs. She settled him in a chair. She stepped out of her short skirt. She took her jacket off. She knelt between de Gier’s knees and dropped her brassiere. Her breasts rubbed his thighs. She pouted. Her body followed, like the chassis of a well-sprung sportscar, the bouncing beat of the rocky blues thundering from loudspeakers placed in all the corners. She made her tongue pop from between tight lips, then let it slither about lasciviously. She removed her slip. She rubbed her pubic down against his knee. She leaned, turning, sideways, alternating breasts against alternating thighs. She got up and let her nipples caress de Gier’s cheeks, get lost in his moustache. She got dressed. De Gier handed over a banknote. She raised her skirt and inserted the bill into her slip. He thanked her. She thanked him for thanking her. She walked away.

  “Oil,” the captain, still on his bar stool, said from above, “is a fascinating product.”

  “What?” de Gier asked.

  “You seem fond of women,” Captain Noah said. “I like that in a man. You’re not overly fond of men?”

  De Gier checked the captain’s low brow, his ragged eyebrows growing into each other, the small squinting eyes, the earlobes grown into his neck, the jughead ears, the moth-eaten fluffy beard, the bent legs, the hairy toes showing in the captain’s open sandals. “Men are okay,” de Gier said politely.

  “Men-liking men do have taste, though,” Captain Noah said. Key West had been restored by them, gloriously, subtly. Tasteful restaurants, cozy bars, perfect Beds & Breakfasts, lovely gardens, all demonstrated good taste. He himself had none. When at home in inland Maine he drove a rusted-out pick-up, the back loaded with empty beer cans, a deer rifle clamped against the cabin’s rear window. Noah, back home, slumped next to Suzie, an inflated life-sized doll strapped in her seat by the passenger’s safety belt. Suzie wore a blond wig that Noah had found in a catalogue. He dressed her in tight jeans and a T-shirt that said GUANA-PARTY? under a picture of copulating reptiles. Suzie wore a bottle between her legs. Noah smiled sadly. “The way I live there.”

  “A bottle of alcohol between Suzie’s legs?” de Gier asked.

  “The bottle fits into her body, mouth facing out. It’s a receptacle,” the captain explained.

  De Gier shook his head.

  “Not good?”

  “I never thought of any of that,” de Gier said.

  “And if you had?”

  “But don’t you have live women out there?” de Gier asked.

  “Big babes,” the captain said. “The frightening kind. Three sizes only. Regular big. Big big. Oh-my-God-it-is-coming-at-me big.”

  “I see,” de Gier said.

  He also saw dancers performing a parroty show, in feather costumes that were being unzipped. The dancers confronted the audience, they came down to touch clients. De Gier was danced on by the Syrian girl. When the music stopped she drank a Coca Cola. De Gier was served with more papaya juice, waved his way by the doorman.

  De Gier made conversation. “What do you do when you’re not working here?”

  The Syrian studied at the University of Miami, spending her days off in Key West. She was about to take final exams. She was going to be a legal secretary. She said that the tall blond girl who had just come in attended medical school. “She is almost done too. We make good money here. The waitress will be a lawyer.” Captain Noah invited the blonde girl over. She wore an evening dress, adorned with small oval mirrors for buttons that the Syrian undid. The blonde girl recognized de Gier’s accent. She had Dutch parents who spoke American now, like herself, but she was born in Holland and remembered some words. “You like it here, darling?” she asked in Dutch.

  De Gier said he did in Dutch.

  She sat on his knee. She pulled his head down so that her bare breast brushed his cheek.

  “You will be a general practitioner?” de Gier asked.

  The blonde stripper didn’t think so. She wanted to be a surgeon. Perhaps she could help now that breast cancer was becoming common. De Gier, nose in cleavage, shivered. He handed over a banknote. She thanked him. She also excused herself, it was her turn to perform on stage. She remembered more Dutch, wishing him a happy stay in the country, asking him to take greetings to her parents’ hometown, Schoonrewoerd, meaning “beautiful land between dikes.”

  “All doctors and lawyers?” de Gier asked, pointing his nose at the moving display of firm flesh.

  Some, Noah said, but most of the lapdancers just worked for the doorman, wasting their youth before a future of giving blowjobs for crack. Nick the Pimp drove a Ferrari and shared his penthouse with the employee of the week. The others lived in his ghetto-motel, with malfunctioning air conditioning. He insisted on collecting most of their money.

  De Gier told the Sudanese Jewish woman, active on his lap, that he enjoyed his blissful situation. If only it would last.

  The Sudanese comforted her client. “It will last as long as you can hold it.”

  Bouncing breasts made de Gier thirsty. Papaya juice kept flowing. De Gier got sleepy. The dancers kept coming, kneeling, separating his knees, pushing, touching.

  “You do have quite a supply of twenty dollar bills,” Captain Noah said. “You want to hear about your former Special Forces man?”

  “My former what?” de Gier yawned. He wondered whether he was allergic to papaya.

  “You phoned,” the captain said. “Ex-military types. Well funded. Where they lose their loot. That’s here, Old Buddy.”

  Right, right, de Gier remembered. He said he was looking for an ex-military man who looked like he did. “Mickey,” the girl on de Gier’s lap said. “Has to be Mickey. I did think you were he for a moment but that couldn’t be for Nasty Nick just threw Mickey out.” She nuzzled de Gier’s cheek. “You are cuter.”

  “You looking for Mickey, Buddy Boy?” the captain asked. “How come you didn’t say so?”

  De Gier forced his mouth to talk. “Please tell me all about Mickey.”

  “A lush who comes here often,” Captain Noah said. “Used to be a Green Beret. Squats in a camper in the William Street trailer-park. Drives a rusted-out open Chevy convertible. Just got his license back, police took it away for drunk driving, next time they’ll keep it.” Captain Noah pointed at an empty bar stool. “He was sitting right there, just before you came in. Squeezed the nipples of your medical countrywoman, got shown out by the skinheads.”

  Captain Noah’s voice seemed to be coming from quite close. “Hey, buddy boy, are you feeling okay down there?”

  De Gier saw how Nasty Nick hit Captain Noah and dragged him toward the exit. De Gier wanted to help the captain but couldn’t get off the floor where he was resting. The music sounded much different and then suddenly dropped off, except for the drumbeat that throbbed on relentlessly. The women were tearing off their skins. They were only skeletons underneath. Nasty Nick was a giant parrot whose hollow voice, within de Gier’s skull, shouted threats. The parrot hopped closer, bent down and peeled de Gier out of his skin. Other parrots picked up de Gier’s raw carcass, dragged it outside and ground it into the crushed oyster shell parking lot. “You really need to do this?” de Gier wanted to ask but a parrot squeezed de Gier’s throat between its crooked toes and tore it to pieces with its sharp beak.

  21

  NUDE ON THE CEMETERY

  The sea north of Cuba stayed rough, even though Skipper Peter said that that was unusual for the time of the year. No matter, said Ambagt Senior—all you had to do was drink more alcohol. The idea, like any idea by now, upset Grijpstra’s stomach. The skipper drank on, alone in the barroom. The commissaris and Carl Ambagt were tied to their chairs on the Rodney’s rear deck. The servant brought them beakers filled with coffee, with lids through which plastic straws pointed upward. “Otherwise we’ll have a mess here.” He frowned at Carl. “And who cleans up?”

  “Sometimes the wise-asses drive me crazy,” Carl told the commissaris, while watchin
g the servant departing abruptly. “They know exactly how far they can go, and that’s where they’re always going.”

  “I wish you a lot of employees,” the commissaris said, winking, to show that he didn’t mean the malediction.

  Right, Carl said, but what could one do on a luxury yacht without staff to keep the luxury going? The more desires are created the more servants are needed to keep them fulfilled. A demonic circle. Carl blew angry bubbles through his straw. “Dad likes to be waited on.” He flicked his full coffee beaker across the railing. “I’d just as soon as get my coffee myself.” Carl’s voice squeaked. “It used to be Mom who never allowed Dad to leave the couch.”

  “Your mother is a caring lady?” the commissaris asked.

  “My mother belongs on a cookie can label,” Carl said. He raised eyebrows at motherly coziness. “Happy Ambagt family munches cookies in happy home. Happy Dad munches while he reads the paper. Happy Mom munches while she irons the laundry. Happy Carlie munches while he does his homework. Happy Dog begs for a cookie. Watch Stupido sit.”

  Carl threw the commissaris’s coffee beaker into the Caribbean too. “Happy upstairs apartment at Bourgeois Alley in Rotterdam. Watch Ma cut rancid cheese with a blunt knife. Bend over dented cooking stove. Straighten plastic cover with Mondrian design on wobbly kitchen table.” Carl glared furiously. “Are you analyzing my character? Want to know what makes me jump?”

  “You interest me,” the commissaris said. “Finding out about you saves me living your life.” He smiled. “So you don’t like Mondrian’s art?”

  “It’s okay for decorating walls,” Carl said. “Dad used to have a Mondrian, hung it in the bar, but we sold it in St. Maarten. It brought a pretty penny.”

  “All that money,” the commissaris said. “I’m surprised you haven’t hired some female company for your journey.”

  “Dad doesn’t care for loose women,” Carl said. “When I bring them aboard the crew tries to get them.”