21
Tess, slurring her words from too much booze and with a streak of mascara down her cheek that made her look like a retired femme fatale, leaned in and began to speak.
Her voice was low, almost solemn.
“Ryder… has a pet. A Caribbean red-fronted Amazon. His name is Rimbaud.” She pronounced it like she was quoting a cursed poet—which, in a way, he was. Only with feathers.
That parrot wasn’t just a pet. He was the one constant in Ryder’s messy, chaotic, and, in many ways, tragically melodramatic life. He’d had him since he was a kid, a gift from his parents during his full-blown “pirates, corsairs, and buccaneers” phase.
Before the spotlights. Before the tours. Before the stadiums.
Rimbaud had been there during the lean years, when Ryder slept in beat-up vans and played half-empty bars. And he was still there now, even with Ryder dizzyingly famous.
His father was dead. He didn’t speak to his mother. He’d never had real friends. Wives had come and gone like seasonal guest stars.
But that bird… that bird had always been there.
And Ryder treated him like royalty. Rimbaud traveled everywhere with him: world tours, five-star hotels, photo shoots. Tess lowered her voice even further, delivering the kill shot.
“Once, during a European tour, after an apocalyptic bender, Ryder landed in Paris… and realized he’d left Rimbaud behind in Madrid. You know what he did? He sent his private jet back for him. Just for the bird.”
She let me picture it: a regal parrot strutting down the stairs of a jet like a tropical diva.
“Since then,” she went on, “he never keeps Rimbaud in the room during his creative trances—which, translated, means locking himself in a suite, drowning in booze and drugs, trying to channel the spirits of music, and occasionally smashing the furniture to get there.”
To protect Rimbaud, he always left him in the care of luxury-hotel pet sitters.
Pampered. Hand-fed. Worshipped.
Tess straightened, her face lit with a dangerous kind of clarity. Her pupils gleamed.
“The plan has changed, Bea.”
She smiled .
“Now… we have to kidnap Rimbaud.”