Closet Case (Robert Rodi Essentials) Read Online Free PDF

She picked up Spencer from the floor, where she’d spread out Lionel’s pots and pans for the bird to play with (he was entranced by his reflection and loved the sound he made when he banged his beak against the lids). “I am not used to eating so late; I may die of hunger before he gets here.” She ran her hand over the cockatoo’s back; the bird responded by making his pigeon-toed way up her arm and perching on her shoulder, where he snuggled against her ear and clucked contentedly. “What a good boy,” she cooed at him. Then she turned to Lionel and said, “I think a firecracker must have gone off in the alley and frightened him, but he is feeling better now.”
    “I should just give him to you,” he said, kicking off his loafers and peeling off his socks. “He’s crazy about you, and he can’t stand me.” He leaned against a wall and cracked one of his big toes with a little grunt of pleasure.
    “Nonsense! He loves you in a different way, that is all.” He opened her mouth and the bird stuck his tongue out, touching hers.
    “Well, you better hand him over or he’s going to crap on your dress.” He padded over to her, arm outstretched, but as soon as he was within reach Spencer raised his crest in alarm, extended his wings, and hissed at him.
    “Oh! Oh! Spencer!” cried Yolanda, holding his razor-sharp beak shut with her thumb and forefinger. (Jesus! thought Lionel. How does she do that?) “Bad boy! That is your daddy!” She let go of his beak and shook her finger at him heedlessly, as though possessing nine others made this one expendable, then turned to face Lionel, an embarrassed grin on her face. “He is still a little scared, I think. I will put him in his cage, okay?”
    “Okay,” said Lionel with a sigh. He hurled one last glowering look at Spencer, then turned his attention to his mail. He rifled through the envelopes — bill, bill, sweepstakes entry, bill — then tossed them onto his butcher-block table. He turned back in time to see that once again Yolanda’s derriére was protruding in his direction, as she balanced precariously on the footstool she needed to reach Spencer’s cage (she was only five-feet-five). Lionel thought, If only I could feel something for that sight, something beyond a kind of abstract delight in the symmetry of it.
    Yolanda made her wobbly backward descent from the stool, while Spencer screamed in protest at being locked up again. She pitched a little to the left when she reached the floor — balancing in those heels had to be like walking on stilts — then righted herself and, smiling at Lionel, adjusted one of her earrings. “Spencer likes to try to pull the backs off these while he is on my shoulder,” she explained. “He is a very talented cockatoo.”
    Oblivious to the compliment, the bird kept screaming, and Lionel said, “Let’s go to the front room. I can’t stand this caterwauling.” He started down the long corridor, Yolanda following him. “Get you a drink?” he offered.
    “Oh, no, thank you. Bob will be here at any moment.” At the darkest stretch of the hallway, a few feet beyond the point where Lionel’s track lighting ended, she suddenly stopped and said, “Oh, blessed mother. Now I have done it.”
    Lionel turned. “What?”
    “The backing: I have dropped the backing. Oh, Lionel, the earring will not stay on without it.” She fell to all fours and began running her hand across the floor. “I heard it land somewhere around here — a little ping. Help me find it, I do not want to keep Bob waiting!”
    “Jesus, calm down,” he said, getting on his hands and knees and joining her in the search. He skimmed his fingers across the barely illuminated floorboards. “I’ll never understand this big terror thing you have when it comes to Little Lord Fauntleroy.”
    “Not now, please, Lionel. Can you not make it any brighter in here?”
    “Hold on.” He got up and trotted into the bedroom, which was just a few step away, and