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CHAPTER THREE

MY ROOMMATES

Margaret's parrot has taught itself how to imitate my alarm clock. That becomes clear to me at five-thirty this morning, when three solid slaps delivered to my Sony Dream Machine fail to turn it off. The bird's alarm clock impression is impressive. A pitch-perfect crescendo of electronic beeps, rising in volume, piercing my sleep. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

I get a kick out of it at first. I lie in bed and laugh. Then, after a while, it stops being funny. The parrot imitates my alarm clock every few minutes for two hours straight.

"I get it," I am forced to say, out loud, to a bird. "You can imitate the clock. Good one. You can stop now." But parrots don't have snooze bars. If you try to bop it on the head, you will just break its little bird neck.

When I moved in, I told my roommate, Margaret, I was okay with her cats and birds. Roommate Finders had told me I should be agreeable, so I lied and told her I was an animal enthusiast, and that I didn't mind if she moved the parrot onto the patio outside my bedroom.

"Outside, Zulu can get more fresh air," she said, and I said, "Great! Parrots need fresh air!"

What I probably should have said is: "Okay, but good luck finding fresh air if your cats keep taking dumps under my bed."

I lie down and try hard to fall asleep. I drift off and am sitting by the ocean, with the sun on my body and a line of turquoise hotels stretching horizon to horizon behind me. It's just like I had imagined Florida would be before I got here.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

My eyes snap open.

"Shut up, bird!" I shout, way too loudly.

There is a knock on my door, and it swings open before I say, "Come in." It is Margaret, her skinny body shrouded in a pale blue nightgown, coming back from her early-morning bathroom break. She glances over at the parrot to make sure I haven't killed it.

"Please!" she says to me.

She doesn't seem fazed by the fact that I am lying stark naked on top of the sheets. Margaret gives me a final reproachful glare and shuts the door. The parrot starts up again, BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! I hurl the throw pillow at the patio door. The bird keeps beeping.

Having a roommate can be practical, especially when you've just moved to a new place. I'm not yet sure, though, whether it is practical for me to have a roommate who spends the greater part of each afternoon talking to her animals. Ah, the Cat-and-Bird Lady. Back in suburbia, we would have dared each other to ring her doorbell and run. Now I live with her. Although it's not as if Margaret and I ever interact. Sometimes it seems like she's a ghost roommate, and that my real roommates are the cats, Ranchipurr and Petna, or the parrots, or the large painting of Jesus Christ that Margaret keeps on my bedroom wall.

Aren't Margaret and I a little too old to be platonic roommates? I haven't had a roommate in years. Once you get past a certain age, it's not considered appropriate. Which begs this additional question: Why would someone in her late sixties invite a twenty-eight-year-old man to live with her? Margaret never even asked me why I was down here in Florida. When I told her I was here to test out retirement early, she shrugged and went back to watching penguins on Animal Planet.

Is it financial problems? I've read that it's common for senior citizens to have inadequate savings. Does she like my company? Perhaps. It's not as if she has any friends stopping by. Maybe she likes the security of having a man around the house. Or maybe there's some darker reason. Margaret has a jittery way about her that can put me on edge. Her hair is often stringy and wild, as if she's been out wandering in the middle of the night. It's weird because she never leaves the condo. Sometimes, when I open the refrigerator and see the weird, drippy meat on Margaret's shelf, I wonder what it is I'm looking at. God help me. Is it an old cat? A former twenty-eight-year-old roommate? Later, at night, I stare from my bed at the painting of Jesus. I half expect eyes to blink behind the canvas, revealing the secret passage Margaret will use when she leaps into my room, in her pale blue nightgown, her wrinkled arms wielding a murderously sharp can opener.

In the living room, Margaret has a beautiful piano that she never plays. Mainly the piano serves as a perch for Margaret's cats. The only time that Margaret talks to me is when I ask her about her cats.

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