was known to cock her head a half inch to the right and pause for a moment before repeating the question. “Why did I choose to become a journalist? Well, the easy answer is fairly obvious. Perfect recall is something I was born with, but I guess what really drives me is the money. That, and the free booze.” It killed her to follow this with “I was just joking about the money.”
The paper she worked at was called The Eagle, and she wrote for the Tempo section, which was later renamed Lifestyles and was now titled simply Living. Most of her stories were little more than puff pieces: interview the wealthy tortoise who’d shelled out money for the new speedway; cover the benefit gala for feline leukemia research, for hip dysplasia, for ringworm or heartworm or the Hookworm Anti-Defamation League. She wanted an opportunity to show her chops, and finally got her break when a potbellied pig took over as director of the local art museum. The Eagle wanted something simple—three hundred words, tops—but the parrot thought differently and scheduled a long lunch.
Her guest arrived on time, and, after ordering, they got down to business. “So,” the parrot began, “it’s a long way from Ho Chi Minh City to the much-coveted director’s chair of a noted museum. I’d like you to reminisce about the journey a little.”
“I’m sorry,” the pig said, “but I’ve never been to Ho Chi Minh City.”
“But you are from that region, are you not?”
“No,” the pig told her. “Not at all.”
The parrot ran her fat black tongue over the ragged edge of her upper beak. “I don’t mean to contradict you,” she said, “but I’ve done a little legwork, and it seems that you’re officially registered with your health-care provider as a Vietnamese potbellied pig. So let’s turn our thoughts eastward, shall we, and talk about your past.”
“Technically, yes, I am a Vietnamese potbellied pig,” the museum director said. “But that’s just a silly formality. The fact is that I was born in this country, as were my parents, and their parents before them.”
“I see,” the parrot said, and she scratched the word “self-hating” in her notepad. “So how will your ethnicity reflect itself in regard to our museum? Can we expect to see more Oriental art? A pricey new Ming Wing perhaps? Some big ‘Treasures of the Emperor’ extravaganza?”
“Nothing’s planned,” the pig said.
“But you wouldn’t rule it out?”
“Well, no, not completely, but—”
“That’s all I wanted to know,” the parrot said, and at that moment their lunch arrived.
It was she who had made the reservation, and in a flash of inspiration, she’d decided they’d go to Old Saigon. The fact that it was her idea would not be mentioned in the article. Nor would she add that the pig had never in his life used a pair of chopsticks and that he gripped them, one in each hoof, as if they were screwdrivers. During the meal—a few blades of lemongrass for him, a Mekong platter for her—they talked about this and that, but she wasn’t really engaged, busy as she was dreaming up a headline. “Museum Takes on Asian Slant” was good, but she’d have to fight hard to get it past her editor, who despised what she called “wordplay.”
When their lunch was over, the pig trotted back to the museum, and the parrot headed down to the VFW Hall, where she hoped to round out her article. There she spoke to a red-shouldered hawk who hadn’t actually fought in Vietnam but who might have, had the war lasted just a few weeks longer. “I could have practically been killed over there, and now one of them is coming to my museum, trying to tell me what art I should look at?”
“I hear you,” the parrot said.
The article was due the following morning, and she stayed up all night to finish it. Her editor scowled at the bulk of pages but softened after the first read-through, saying, “Good work, you” and “Maybe we should send this over to the city desk.”
The eventual headline was no masterpiece—“Potbellied Museum Director Stirs Controversy”—but the parrot was so relieved to move out of the Living section that the paper could have called it “Shit on a Stick” and she wouldn’t have cared.
As for the pig, he wasn’t nearly as upset as she’d thought he would be. Rather than threatening a lawsuit or demanding a retraction, he phoned to say that he was disappointed. “Deeply disappointed” were his exact words.