Free Whale Music by Paul Quarrington

the old chops. My chubby cheeks are woefully flaccid, I don’t think I could speak a word that didn’t sound like shit sliding down a brick wall. Ilean back, stretch my arms behind my head and yawn like a sea-elephant. Time for bed, then—Call Dr. Tockette!—time for beddy-bye, indeed. I wander out into the backyard in hopes of a brief but spiritually rewarding gaze at the heavenly firmament. Wrong again. It’s daylight out here, sunny with a vengeance, Claire is reclining in the chaise-longe reading a book. Well, I’m adaptable. If it’s not time for bed, then it’s time for something else. I plod over, allowing my flat, ugly-toed feet to fall loudly, because I don’t want to alarm the little creature. They are skittish up on Toronto. “Hi,” I give out, the traditional Earth greeting.
    “Desmeroony,” she smiles. “What’s doing, hon?”
    “Oh, you know. I’ve been working on the Whale Music. What have you been doing?”
    “Reading. Eating. I cleaned up around the place some. Des, I found a cheque for like twelve thousand bucks. You think maybe you ought to put it in the bank or something?”
    “I don’t know.” How did my mother miss that one? She is distressed by Maurice’s health, I suppose. I momentarily feel remorseful, but I have had plenty of practice at hardening the heart. I sit down on the ground beside the chaise-longe. “Did you crash into the sea?”
    “Huh?”
    “Let me guess. Your craft started sputtering in the exosphere, the air being too rich for your carburetor. Happens all the time. Then the ship plummeted into the ocean. Dolphins ferried you to the shore.”
    “Desmond,” says Claire, “sometimes you get just a little bit too snaky. I mean, I’m used to weird people, but you push it.”
    “I thought you’d come here for a purpose.”
    “Oh, yeah. I came here because back home they’re after me with butterfly nets.”
    “A renegade, a refugee! How exciting.”
    “I guess I should tell you, Desmond, you’d probably be in a lot of trouble if they found me here.”
    “They won’t find you. And if they do, we fight. Er, just how sophisticated is their weaponry?”
    “Pretty fucking sophisticated. They use electricity.”
    “Aha! Then we repulse them into the water.”
    Claire laughs lightly, but she is not cheered.
    “Why are they after you? What did you do?”
    “I didn’t do fucking anything. They did stuff to me. It doesn’t matter.” She waves her small hand in the air, dispersing her speech like stale cigarette smoke. Speaking of which, I think I’ll have a butt. I extract a crumpled package from one of the bathrobe pockets, pull out a bent Salem Menthol. Claire
tsks
her tongue. “Cancer-stick,” she says. “You ought to quit.”
    “I mean to,” I lie. “Just as soon as the Whale Music is completed. Perhaps the morning after the party.”
    “Party?”
    “I’m inviting the whales. They can sit in the ocean there, at the bottom of the cliff. We can wave and smile at each other as we listen to the music. You’re going to stay for that, aren’t you?”
    “I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Des.”
    “Yours or mine?”
    “Huh?”
    “Tell me about Toronto.”
    “Well, it’s a lot like it is down here. It’s got some nice parts, some shitty parts.” Claire turns over on her side, leaning close to me, and excitement sparks in her eyes. “I’ll tell you the best and the worst thing about Toronto, Des. The best thing is that it’s got more seagulls than anywhere in the universe. We got billions and billions of the little dudes. There’s this place called the Leslie Street Spit, and you can walk down there and see nothing but gulls. And I like to do that, don’t ask me why. And the very
worst
thing about it is that everybody thinks this is a big problem. They say that seagulls are stinky, smelly birds, and people want to poison all the gull eggs and turn snakes and mongeese and hawks loose on the Spit. And when I hear people talk like this, I