Page 125 of Puck You Both

I do not love stages. A crease has boards and a net and a job. A stage has a mic and people watching. Patrick goes up the steps ahead of me, thanks every single sponsor from memory, hands me the mic, and stands there with his hands folded, openly enjoying my turn.

"Hi, umm. Thank you all for coming," I tell the floor. "Give generously. The auction closes at ten."

I hand the mic back. Somewhere at the Wolves table, Becker starts a standing ovation for the shortest speech in charity history, and it catches, because these people will applaud anything.

Then Jinx releases the cloth, finally, ceremonially, and the check comes out.

Six hundred and forty thousand dollars. The crowd makes the sound the number deserves, and under the applause Mama Paws leans into the mic and delivers the part that isn't on the check: the Milwaukee shelter is funded, fully. Every kennel, every vet bill, the works, the next ten months handled, and fully paid for.

Wanda's face comes apart with the cameras on her, and Papa Paws steadies Mama Paws with a palm between her shoulders, the same spot Leila holds Washington, and I stand on a stage being professionally observed while the thing we actually did all season concludes all at once, and…Okay.

Worth every spreadsheet war.

Worth the fonts.

Patrick's eyes cut sideways to me for half a second, co-chair to co-chair.

Worth those too.

We come down off the stage and the gala rolls into its loose second act, auction closing, band tuning, and this is the point in the laminate where nothing else is scheduled to happen.

This is when Hendrix decides the evening needs him.

I should have seen the build-up. There were signs. The rejected photo. The bow tie confidence. A room full of pairs, and a perch with sightlines, and a bird whose entire body of work is making people uncomfortable.

We've somehow drifted together again near the foot of the stage, all three of us this time, plus a donor who's telling Patrick about her rescue terrier, and I blame my feet. They kind of work on their own when I stop supervising them for three consecutive seconds.

On the perch above us, Hendrix goes still. I've known him long enough to know what stillness before movement means. I'm just about to turn to suggest a tactical relocation when he pins the three of us with one yellow eye and opens with his favorite banger. "Kiss kiss."

The nearest donor table laughs, because there's a famous feud standing right here, and a parrot demanding it end in romance. It's a great joke if you don't have the context.

I have the context. The context is that this bird has a perfect record. Ask Ace. Somewhere in the deeper Hendrix lore there's probably a wedding he caused. He does not aim that phrase at random, he aims where it does the most emotional damage, and he is currently aiming at the only three people in this ballroom who are actually hiding something.

"Kiss kiss."

More laughter. Phones are coming up. Theo has gone bright-eyed and dangerous next to me, delight and panic fighting for dominance, and Patrick has his camera face on, the pleasant one, which means he’s barricading the doors inside.

The donor with the terrier says, "I think he means you two," waggling a finger between me and Patrick, and the tables nearest us actually cheer.

Encouraged, Hendrix starts walking the podium rail, sideways. He has the room and he knows it. Someone at a Vipers table calls out "Go bird, go!" and it gets picked up, scattered, and chanted, and then there are twenty cameras, and a national feud, and a parrot with a flawless record all pointed at my life.

My pulse is doing playoff numbers. My face, I hope, is doing nothing at all.

And then Hendrix flies, and when Hendrix flies, he means business.

He crosses the space between the perch and my shoulder, lands with both feet, and grips on. He sidesteps up my shoulder, puts his beak an inch from my ear, and says, at volume, with the mic still hot enough to catch it, "KISS KISS. KISS KISS."

I look at Patrick. Patrick looks at me. Theo looks at both of us. It takes maybe half a second, it wouldn't register on any camera as anything, and it holds an entire conversation, or at least my read of one, and my reads have been good all season.

Not like this. Not as a bird's punchline at a charity gala.

But the other half of the look, the half that gets me through the next ten seconds, says, but soon.

Soon.

There's a protocol for this. It's older than the campaign, older than the three of us, established in Frank's bar by a firefighter with more marbles than an entire hockey roster. Hendrix demands a kiss. Hendrix does not specify participants. The greatest loophole in the history of loopholes.

I turn my head and kiss Hendrix directly on the beak.