'I'm
leaving in the morning,' I told him. 'It's not your fault; it's not
William's fault; it's not anybody's fault. We just didn't quite make
it, that's all. Almost, but not quite.' Tootsie listened to me. You
know how they do, with their heads cocked to one side. He was in a cage
with a fail-safe door; the kind that are hinged at the bottom--if they
aren't positively latched shut, they fall open so you'll know to latch
them." Arlen swirled the whiskey around in his glass.
"In three years, Tootsie never got out of his cage. The next morning, I
got up and went into the living room. 'Goodbye, Toots,' I said.
'Toots?' He wasn't in his cage. I walked over, and there was Tootsie on
the table beneath his cage. He was lying on his side, stone dead."
"No way," Oliver said.
"Stone dead. I don't know how he got out. I don't know what happened.
All I know is that he died when the relationship did. I think his heart
was broken."
"What did you do?"
"I buried him beneath a tree on the Eastern Prom," Arlen said. "I
haven't seen William for years. He moved out of town." One of the
parakeets burst into song. "There he is now."
"Who?"
"William," Arlen said.
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