.jpg)
Just as the first hint of dawn crept across the sky, the telephone rang.
“Hello?” a groggy voice answered.
“Buenos días, Señor,” came a careful, hesitant reply. “This is Ernesto, the caretaker at your country house.”
“Yes, Ernesto,” the man said, already uneasy. “What’s going on? Is there a problem?”
“Well… yes, Señor. I am calling to inform you that your parrot has died.”
There was a pause.
“My parrot? Dead? You mean the award-winning parrot? The one that won the International Talking Bird Competition?”
“Sí, Señor. That one.”
“Oh no… that’s terrible! I paid a fortune for that bird. How did he die?”
“He died from eating rotten meat.”
“Rotten meat?!” the man shouted. “Who on earth fed him rotten meat?”
“Nobody fed him, Señor. He ate the meat from one of the dead horses.”
“Dead horse? What dead horse?!”
“Your thoroughbred, Señor. Mr. Lucky.”
“Mr. Lucky is dead?! How did that happen?”
“He died from exhaustion, Señor… from pulling the water cart.”
The man sat upright.
“Water cart? What water cart?”
“The cart we used to put out the fire.”
“Fire?! What fire?!”
“The fire at your house, Señor. A candle fell over and the curtains caught fire.”
“CANDLE?!” the man screamed. “Why was there a candle? The house has electricity!”
“Yes, Señor… the candle was for the funeral.”
The man went silent. Then quietly, dangerously asked,
“What funeral?”
“Your wife’s funeral, Señor. She arrived unexpectedly late one night. I thought she was a thief… so I struck her with your new Tiger Woods Nike driver.”
Total silence.
Then, in a very calm voice:
“Ernesto…”
“Yes, Señor?”
“If you broke that driver… YOU’RE FIRED.”
“Hello? Hi, honey. It’s Daddy,” a man said into the phone. “Is Mommy nearby?”
“No, Daddy,” the little girl replied. “She’s upstairs in the bedroom with Uncle Paul.”
There was a brief pause.
“Sweetheart,” Daddy said carefully, “you don’t have an Uncle Paul.”
“Yes I do,” she said confidently. “Mommy says I do, and he’s upstairs with her right now.”
Another pause—longer this time.
“Okay,” Daddy said slowly. “Here’s what I want you to do. Put the phone down on the table, run upstairs, knock on the bedroom door, and yell that Daddy’s car just pulled into the driveway.”
“Okay, Daddy! One minute!”
A few minutes passed. The girl came back on the line.
“I did it, Daddy.”
“And what happened?” he asked.
“Well… Mommy got really scared. She jumped out of the bed with no clothes on, ran around screaming, tripped on the rug, hit her head on the dresser… and now she’s not moving.”
“Oh my God!” Daddy gasped. “What about Uncle Paul?”
“He jumped out of bed too—no clothes on—and ran out the back window. He jumped into the swimming pool, but I guess he didn’t know you drained it last week. He hit the bottom really hard, and I think he’s dead.”
There was a very long silence.
Then Daddy finally said, slowly,
“Swimming pool…?”
Another pause.
“…Is this 486-5731?”
😄