Page 71 of Grumpy Puck

Huh.“You would scare them away anyway.”

He shrugs.“I’m glad to be spared the headache.”

We park on the driveway of a house that is so large it is just a couple of bricks short of being a mansion.I gape at the grandeur as Michael gets the door for me.When we step inside, he says, “Welcome to my humble abode.”

“Right.Humble.”The ceilings are about twenty feet tall, there are gorgeous paintings and statues of birds all over the walls, and the furniture looks like it jumped straight out of a European furniture catalog.

“Your rats can have the parlor room,” he says, leading me over to a space bigger than the apartment I just vacated.

I let the rats out and everyone seems happy, except for Lenin, who looks at me reproachfully.

Tovarisch, you’re turning me, the proletari-rat, into a fat bourgeoisie.

“Where amIgoing to stay?”I ask Michael.

Please say “my bed.”

“I have two guest rooms,” he says.“Let’s see which you prefer.”

I’m both impressed and disappointed.Also, I was wrong before.Thisisa mansion.“Seems like us mascots don’t get paid as much as the players,” I muse as we walk from room to luxurious room.

Michael grunts.“Given how much I hated the idea of Florida, they had to give me a very competitive salary to lure me here.”

I spin around to glare at him.“What could you possibly hate about living in Florida?”

“Fucking sunlight.”He folds his pinky finger.“It blinds you, gives you cancer, and wakes you too early in the morning.”He folds his ring finger.“Fucking grass.It’s everywhere, and has snakes lurking in it, and pesticides, and bugs that are resistant to said pesticides.”He folds his middle finger.“Fucking ocean.It’s wet and too salty, and people drown in it all the time, and fish pee in it.And there are sharks that?—”

“Jeesh, stop.”I bet he was going to use up all his ten fingers, and maybe go on to toes.“There must be things you’ve grown to like.”

His eyes gleam.“You mean… besides certain special people?”

I nod, my chest bubbly all of a sudden.

He purses his lips in such a way that makes me want to kiss them.“The birds, obviously.”He walks me over to a big window facing a forest and looks into a telescope for a few seconds.An almost-boyish grin appears on his face and makes something ache in the pit of my belly as he says, “Ethan and Mo are feeding Eye right this moment.”He pulls me over.“Have a look.”

I do, and it’s cute, or as cute as watching a bird puke food into a smaller bird’s beak can possibly be.

“Do hawks mate for life?”I pull away from the telescope.

“This type does,” he says.“Which is all the more impressive given the fact that they are solitary birds.”

Huh.“Is it true they can mate mid-air?”Because that sounds pretty cool, especially if?—

“No,” he says.“When the male wants to woo a female, he’ll dive bomb to show her how good a hunter he is, and then tackle her.What follows merely looks like they’re doing it in the air.But, in reality, if she’s down to fuck, they’ll do it on a perch, on the ground, or in their nest.”

Why does the idea of getting tackled sound kind of hot?Do I have a bird brain?

My phone rings, sparing me from dwelling on more questions in the same vein.

“It’s my sister,” I tell Michael as I pick up.

Nodding knowingly, he walks out of earshot.

“Hey,” I say.

“Don’t you ‘hey’ me,” Seraphina says sternly.“Once again, our family has to learn about you from viral videos.”

“What?”

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