Ollie Makes an Impulse Buy

Walking down the foggy, exotic streets of Chinatown, Ollie could think of only two things.  Proving his commitment to his girlfriend and finding a way to not quaff the endless stench of far away Oriental fish that permeates this section of Chinatown.  He knew that to get the perfect the gift, the perfect keepsake for the women he loved he would have to venture into Chinatown.  Scouring the streets he would soon find the answer to his dilemma. 

It’s been a problem his entire romantic life.  He was committed to his job, to his hobbies, but never to his girlfriend.  They were just leisure activities.  Someone to go out with when he wasn’t playing World of Warcraft or watching Mexican wrestling (he always dreamt of being a luchadore).  However, Ollie was truly enraptured by his current squeeze.  Unlike other women, she saw him for what he is.  She needed to be with him and he needed to be with her.  To prove his commitment only to her, and to show her that he can abandon his old ways he would first need the perfect gift.

It was several hours and several cups of coffee and several cheap pork buns before Ollie discovered the answer to his problems.   The sign for Pei Wei’s thrift shop was decrepit.   Just a cheap piece of plywood with a corner torn off and splintered.  Whomever painted the sign used too much paint and all the signs bore the long drips of paint from each letter.  What drew Ollie to this particular shop amongst all the thrift shops in Chinatown was its appearance. After all, his girlfriend loved finding random eclectic (beat down) thrift stores to buy random knick-knacks at.

Ollie opened the glass door entrance which led to a small foyer with a large piece of exposed wall on his right side, and an apartment style mailbox with all the little box doors hanging off.  The room smelled sour, and only a few feet away Ollie could see a beaded entrance.  “Wow” Ollie thought.  This is exactly the kind of place to find something unique for his hipster lady friend.

The place truly was eclectic.  On his right side was a long glass counter filled with various exotic looking fishes on top of chipped ice.  To his center, Oriental clothing, records, a six foot tall Godzilla.  On his left all sorts of Chinese lamps, mini water fountains, bonsai trees.  Upon entering he also heard a tiny splash.  He looked down at his feet to see a small fish bowl full of tiny box turtles and a sign reading “Not fore sale”.   The music was some strange blend of world music and something from the Enter the Dragon soundtrack. 

The store was completely empty.  No clerk in sight.  Ollie peroused this strange selection.  “Where is all their weird shit?” he thought.  Up to now he’d seen everything this store had to offer at other stores.   This store was only different as it sold everything else from every kind of store he’d already been at over the course of his day. 

He went over to the fish counter.  It reeked.  There were smears of fish blood all over the walls.  Some of the fish looked rotten.   They looked and smelled worse than the smelt they feed to attract sharks.

Ollie peeked over the counter slowly.

“Hi stranger!” yelled a small Asian man.

“Oh my God!” yelled Ollie, scared half to death.

There was a long stare. 

“You must be Pei Wei.”

“No no no.  I am Wei Pei.  Pei Wei is my brother.”

“OK then.  Well I just came in here to look for something special for my girlfriend.  Do you have any ideas?”

Wei  Pei had two glass eyes that were old looking and opaque.  He was short, maybe only five foot three and had a Fu Manchu moustache.  Ollie envied his moustache.  He always bragged to his buddies how cool it would be to grow a Fu Manchu.  Unfortunately for Ollie, that side-effect of growing facial hair never occurred during puberty and he was only in need of a shave twice a month. 

Wei Pei lifted his head high, awkwardly opened mouth, and just stared in a long arduous thought. 

“She like pets?”

“Hmm.  She never mentioned pets but maybe that’d prove my commitment.  We could get our own pet.  Thanks Mr. Pei.  I’ll head over to a pet shop.”

“No no no.  I have a speciar pet for you.”  Upon saying this, Wei Pei removed a small puffer fish from out of a small fish tank behind the counter.

“Oh no thank you.  I was thinking more along the lines of a kitten.”

Wei Pei ignored Ollie.  He put the tiny innocent fish on a cutting board and with one quick move chopped its little head off.  The action of his knife was so fast it sent the little fishes head flying at Ollie.

“Oh my God!” screamed Ollie.

“No no no.  I have a parrot.”

“A parrot?  Can it talk?”

“Ah yes.  It speak fruid Engrish.”

“Can I see it?”

“Farrow me.”

Wei  Pei led Ollie down a set of old steps.  There was barely any room to walk and the steps were half the size of normal steps.  He led him into the stores basement.  Old food containers and random old antiques were there.  It looked like a Magic Store more than a basement.  In the back there was an old cage with a brightly colored parrot.  It had a vivid pattern of green and yellow across its back and a yellow patch of feather underneath its beak.  It sat perched in its cage.

Ollie was sold.  Never the patient buyer, Ollie was convinced this was eclectic and special enough to gain back his girlfriends faith in him. 

“How much?”

“ Two hundred dahrah.  I give you cage and food for week.”

“You got a deal Wei.”

All of a sudden there was the yelling of a woman from upstairs.  She was yelling loudly in Chinese.  Wei Pei yelled back louder.  This lasts for a few moments.  Finally, Wei Pei seemed to finish this argument.  With a smile he turned to Ollie giving him a pat on the shoulder. 

“It you tell anyone you saw this, I will frucking kill you.”

“Whoa I am not telling anyone.  Trust me.  I know not to fuck with you old Asian dudes.”

“Sneak out the back door.  May Confucius bress  you with many many children.”

Ollie did so with the cage in hand.  He was excited to reveal this awesome gift to his girl.  “She could teach it how to sing some indie music and to recite some beat poetry or something” he thought.  So excited was Ollie, he rushed right to his girlfriend’s apartment. 

He buzzed on her intercom and she let him in with a slight disappointing tone of voice.  He sprinted up the steps to her apartment.  The parrot’s cage was swinging every which way as he ran and it was jostling its feathers around.  Ollie finally made it up to the door and with a great deal of confidence knocked on the door.

His girlfriend was an attractive young girl with short red hair and clear skin.  She was wearing a bright paisley colored dress.  She stared at Ollie for a second with arms crossed.

“What are you doing here?  What is that?”

“Listen I know I’ve got my faults. But I really am crazy about you.  I want to be devoted to you every moment of my day.  Nothing else matters anymore except that I get you back in my life.”

“Ollie you said that last week, and then you made me watch you play Xbox the rest of the night and then you had the balls to ask if we could stay up to watch the Robocop marathon.  Why do you have a parrot?”

“It’s for you.  I know how much you like animals so I thought we could have our own pet.”

“Ollie!  You asshole!  Don’t you remember that I protest at the zoo every Saturday morning.  For fucks sake!  I was just on the phone with my protest group organizing a break out at the petting zoo.   You need to bring that parrot back to whomever it belonged to, or better yet you can personally fly it back to Bolivia and put it back in its natural habitat.”

“So…besides that .  Are we ok?”

“No now we’re really through.”

“OK” said a morose looking Ollie.

“Ok Ollie, go fuck yourself” she said in a nonchalant manner.

The walk home for Ollie was as cliché as it could come.  Rain was pouring.  It was cold, especially since he had used his sweatshirt to keep the parrot’s cage covered and he had some old sad bastard love song stuck in his head.  He thought to himself, “I can’t be alone right now.”

He finally made it up to his apartment.  He was drenched and shivering.  He quickly put the cage down on his kitchen counter and checked his message machine.  It beeped once.  “None again huh?  Well well well Polly-O.  Guess you and me are going to be best buds now.”   He opened the little cage door to try and pet the bird.  With no experience with birds at all he felt a little anxious about doing this but was surprised to find that the bird took to him rather well.  With a cute little leap, the parrot rested himself on Ollie’s wrist.  Ollie took his hand out of the cage.  “Can you say hello?” said Ollie.  The parrot just shook its head.   “Are you talking me?  Don’t shake your head, guy.  Just speak up.”  The parrot shook its head again.

“Oh whatever.”

He rested the parrot on the counter and turned around to look inside his refrigerator.    Nothing but cheap processed cheese, old salsa jars and some leftover pizza.  A feast fit for kings he thought. 

While his back was turned a scratching could be heard.  Ollie slowly turned and was amazed to see the parrot with pencil in beak drawing something.  It was a tic-tac-doe board.  Ollie grabbed a nearby pen and drew an X in the center square.  The bird fought back with an O on the top-left.  Ollie came back with an X to the right of his center one.  The bird defended with an O to the left of the center X.  Now with an intensity and confusion all at once Ollie put down what would be his final X, the bottom right square.  Immediately he knew he was mistaken and the bird took advantage with a big O in the bottom left.

“Holy shit!  That was incredible!  How’d you do that?”

“If you tell anyone what you saw, I’ll fucking kill you” said the parrot.

Ollie’s eyes opened up the size of melons.  His chest felt heavy, his feet became itchy, he even began to drool with fright and amusement.

The possibilities.  Late night tv shows.  School classrooms (maybe not elementary schools). 

“What else can you say?”

The parrot shook its head again.  Then it lifted its leg and a little bird turd landed on the counter.

“Ah god dammit!” yelled Ollie.

“If you tell anyone what you saw, I will fucking kill you” said the rambunctious little parrot.

“I’d like to see you try Polly-O.  C’mon bring it!”  Ollie was pleased with himself.  “That’s right biatch.”

Ollie went to sleep that night pleasantly.  The loss of the love of his life was an afterthought now.  He hung the parrot’s cage in his bedroom near his window. 

Around 3 AM Ollie was suddenly waken by the violent fluttering of feathers.  He looked at the bird’s cage and there were feathers flying around everywhere.   Ollie also felt cold.  He looked and could see the window was open.

“What the hell?”

Ollie stood up and slowly creeped to the cage. 

Inside the green parrot was mounting a pigeon.  Feathers were flying everywhere and the two birds wings were flapping vigorously.  The green and yellow face of the parrot was staring right back at Ollie while the rest of its body was in a Tantric-like love session with this pigeon.  “If you tell anyone you saw this, I will fucking kill you” proclaimed the Parrot.

Ollie thought he was going crazy.  He quickly reached into the cage and pulled the parrot away from the pigeon.  The parrot didn’t fight at all and the pigeon just flew back out the window.  He quickly tossed the parrot back in the cage and closed the door.  He then turned and slammed the windows down. 

“That’s it,” he thought.  This parrot is going right back to Wei Pei.

And it was so.  Ollie went back to Chinatown and entered the shop’s front door,parrot in hand.  An Asian woman approached Ollie yelling and screaming in Chinese.  Wei Pei stepped up from behind the fish counter and took Ollie by the hand and led him to the basement once more.

“What are you doing here?  No refunds!”

“I don’t even care frankly.  I think I’m going crazy.  Or maybe its just this fucking psychotic parrot you sold me.”

“What is it with you Americans?  You never have the proper responsibeerity to treat a pet.  I bet you can’t even dress yourserf in the morning.  Try taking a boat made of bamboo across an ocean to get here and you will rurn responsibeerity rear quickree.  Get your frucking rife together man!”

Ollie sighed. 

“You’re right Wei Pei, You’re so wise.  Still though I don’t think I can take the parrot.  How about something simple, maybe I can take one of those box turtles upstairs?”

“Not for sale!  Two hundred dahrah!”

“For a turtle?”

“I have mogwai also!”

“Mogwai?”

“I’m kidding you frucking nerd!  Go get a rady, stop being a horse’s ass-hore! Move on and live in prosper.  Confucius will bless you with many good year.  Just stop being a frucking nerd.”

“Ok!” yelled Ollie.  “I’ll frucking go than!  What’re you?  The Asian Dr. Phil?”

“Ah yes Dr. Phieer.  Very crever.  Go fruck yourself!”

Ollie rushed out of the store front and changed his life.  He doesn’t need a pet or some fancy gift to get his girl back.  He knew how to win her back now.  He will go to that petting zoo and let all the animals free. “That’ll surely win her back” he thought.

The next day, poor unfortunate Ollie did break out the petting zoo.  Unfortunately he did it in front of an off-duty Park Ranger with an itchy trigger finger.  “No more breaking up fights between raccoons and squirrels” thought the park ranger as he put a slug in Ollie’s knee cap.  He rushed over to Ollie’s writhing body and quickly bound his wrists together with plastic riot cuffs.  “You’re going to jail dickwad.”

And so he did.  Three months in the klink.

One sunny day, Ollie woke up and stood up on the toilet to peek outside his barred window.  “Ah only a few more days to go.  Things will be different from now on” he thought.  As he reflected on the past months and strange colored bird perched itself on the window. It was green and yellow and grey.  It had a parrot’s beak but with the dirty colored attributes of a pigeon.  Ollie’s jaw dropped.  He could swear the birds beak was moving, even talking to him.  It was saying, “If you tell anyone you saw this, I will fucking kill you.”