Bahia
Kerry can’t remove her gaze from the fractally hypnotic creature. Its beauty nearly disables her lungs’ autonomic functioning. Like a matador’s empty supple suit of lights come alive, the benthic sparkles in her vision. How could she have been sharing a building with this uncanny living artifact without sensing its pulsing aliveness even through several concrete floors?
The Senators appear equally taken aback by the alien presence. Ferryway finds her tongue first.
“It—it can do everything you claim for it?”
Jarius answers. “You’ve seen the videos, Senator. Did you suspect we were faking them?”
“No. But it was all so incredible to me.”
Jarius’s teeth gleam. “Diaverde specializes in producing precisely that reaction, Madame Senator.”
Without ever having used the manipulator gloves to reach inside the aquarium and fondle the swirling captive—an action Kerry had been half anticipating, half dreading—Teague interrupts. “I have to return the benthic to its homeostatic tank now.”
“I think we’ve all seen enough,” ventures Jarius, and, meeting with no demurral, conducts the party out of the high-security area.
The rest of the day passes hazily for Kerry. She surfaces from her ruminative fugue several times to find herself working as assiduously as usual. During three such instances she tries to reach Tango, but meets with no success. At last, quitting time trundles round; Oreesha sticks her brilliantined head into Kerry’s office.
“The company limo’s pulling up now for you and Mr. Jarius.” The receptionist winks. “Do me a favor and order the most expensive item on the menu. The likes of you and me don’t step out with the bigshots all that often.”
“What if the most expensive thing is something I don’t like?”
“Shit, girl, you learn to like it!”
Peter Jarius’s limo always rolls down into a securely armored basement garage: street pickups invite terrorism. Kerry, coated and booted, waits nervously near the chauffered vehicle, its anonymous stone-visaged driver attentive behind the wheel, but not obsequious. Nearly half an hour after most of the Diaverde staff has cleared the building, Jarius steps off the elevator. Spotting Kerry, he smiles with his usual precise degree of expressiveness and quickly crosses to her.
“Terribly sorry to keep you penned in this chilly cement cloister, Ms. Hackett. The demands of upper management make me long for my humble days in the lab. Well, you know my importunate schedule as well as I do, so surely you’ll excuse me.”
“Of course.”
Jarius takes one of her hands and pats it. “How does The Greedy Parrot sound to you?”
“I’ve only heard of it—”
“It’s everything that the foolishly wagging tongues of those with more money than brains can tattle of—and more. Shall we?”
Jarius opens the door for her, she climbs onboard, and he moves to slip in the same door, forcing her to slide over and slightly ruck up her skirt. Jarius eyes her exposed legs without leering, as if to convey a kind of dispassionate worldly appreciation. She makes no awkward move to adjust her skirt, but only looks away, out the window.
The darkening streets of the city are already emptying, arcades where games of cynical disillusionment attract few customers. Patrols range the dusk. Kerry spots one brace of bandoliered bravos bullying a beggar: as they spin him about for frisking, Kerry notes a folded blue blanket twine-bound to his back like a makeshift pack.
The front entry to The Greedy Parrot offers a walled portico manned by armed guards to shield discharging cars. After exiting, Jarius crooks an arm to escort Kerry inside. The tophatted doorman, jovial black Caribbean face matching his cocoa-rich voice, tugs open the heavy glass door, saying, “Mighty bitter out here, friends. Hurry inside.”
Lemon-celery lighting, faux palm trees, animatronic wildlife, digitized jungle soundtrack, piped-in scents, and delicate random sprays of aromatic mist from the ceiling, enough to sheen faces lightly and dampen the expensive coiffures. The staff of servers is all-female, each sporting a duster of feathers from her rump and a cranial ruff, their bosomy low-cut, cheekily high-cut costumes hummingbird-bright.
Kerry and her boss are delivered to a small table with only two chairs.
“Where are the Senators going to sit?”
An innocent smile divides Jarius’s past-poxed face. “Our illustrious legislators were summoned unexpectedly back to Ottawa. Their regretful call was what kept me so late in the office. But when I came down and saw you waiting so earnestly, I simply couldn’t bear to cancel our much-anticipated outing.”
