âIâm supposed to be the cure for the town, and your cockatoo now?â Mary said as she ran her fingers along the row of CDs to find some new music for the bird.
That was a pretty lousy way to look at it. âI donât think of it like that,â said Mac.
âThatâs how they put it. Something to bring everyone together. A big, splendid Christmas pageant to remind us of peace on earth, goodwill to men and such.â
âIâm sorry you got hired to fix whatever it is people think I broke.â
âIâm not sorry,â she said, handing him a Mozart disc. âBut if I get sorry, Iâll make sure youâre the first to know. I think itâs sort of sweet, actually, how much people care about getting along here.â
âIf people cared about getting along here, you could have fooled me,â Mac said. âThereâs a town hall meeting tomorrow nightâcome see how much getting along we actually do.â
While âMacâ MacCarthy hadnât counted on peace and quiet when he returned to his office, he hadnât anticipated an opera-singing cockatoo, either.
December might not go as well as he planned.
Assuming the only logical explanation, Mac pushed his way through the connecting interior doors of the bakery adjacent to his engineering office. âAll right, Dinah, what did you do to him?â
Dinah Rollings, owner of the Taste and See Bakery, looked up from her cash register. âTo whom?â
Mac cocked his head toward the racket behind him. âIâve got Luciano Pavarotti in feathers perched on my credenza. Very funny. Now tell me what you did to Curly so I can hush him up before cats start prowling the alley.â
With both doors open, Dinah could evidently hear the bird. Her face was half surprised, half amused. âNot bad. Thatâs from The Marriage of Figaro, I think. Didnât peg you for an opera fan.â
Mac looked quizzically at his smirking neighbor. âYou didnât do this?â
She raised an eyebrow. âNo.â
âGil?â Mac named his best friend who, while no fan of opera, had been known to love a good joke.
âHavenât seen him.â
âCameron?â Dinahâs new husband didnât seem the type, but as a former New York City native, Cameron might have opera in his background. And pranks.
Dinah shot him an incredulous look. âNot a chance. Look, Mac, I donât know who might haveâ¦â
At that moment, Pavarottiâthe real oneâbelted out the aria in question from the stairway between their businessesâ doors. And Curly, Macâs yellow-crested-cockatoo-recently-turned-tenor, joined in.
The second-floor apartment had been empty since Cameron and Dinah got married. Evidently, it wasnât unoccupied anymore. Opera music flooded the hallway when Mac opened the door that led upstairs.
Dinah came to the door. âOkay, maybe I do know who could beâ¦â
Curly chose that moment to chase his avian muse, leaving his perch in Macâs office to bolt up the stairway in a squawking white streak of feathers and falsetto.
Mac took the stairs three at a time, ruing the fact that repairmen at his house necessitated that Curly spend this week at the office with him. Curly almost never bolted, but when he did, he went full out. Nothing good could come from this. Mac was a few steps from the top when he heard the shriek.
Taking the last risers in two strides, Mac looked in the apartment door to find a blond woman cowering behind a music stand, holding what looked like a conductorâs baton as if it were a broadsword. The operatic waltz blared from a set of speakers on either side of the room, and Curly stood ducking and bobbing in time with the music from atop a bookcase to Macâs right.
âWhat is that thing?â she said over the loud music. Actually, shouted might have been more accurate. Shouted with great annoyance. Curly wasnât a small bird, and he looked like an invading white tornado when he flew anywhere. Mac could only imagine how frightening, at first sight, it was.
âThatâs Curly,â Mac introduced, feeling ridiculous as he yelled above the orchestration. âHe wonât hurt you. He seems to get a kick out of your music.â