It’s almost as if the magnitude of the evil creates cheer. Or is this cheer perhaps the very source of the evil?

Baldo waits until King has turned to take a drink from his water bowl and then he shits, copiously. He longs to scratch his wing-pit, but he resists. King completes his drink and then returns to his perch. He peers at Baldo, cocks his head, quizzically, clears his throat, bows ‘ironically’, and then:

[King.]

‘Ring-ring! Ring-ring! Ring-ring! Ring-ring!’

King performs an astonishingly loud and unerringly accurate impersonation of ‘phone’.

Baldo listens (no head cock) as Bitch is heard to rush down the ‘corridor’ from the ‘kitchen’. Bitch answers ‘phone’.

Baldo observes how peerlessly King times the cut-off for ‘phone’ ring with the moment Bitch picks up the ‘receiver’. He doesn’t know what any of this really means, but he is profoundly impressed by it, just the same.

[Bitch speaks.]

‘*****? ** ****? ** **** …?

****! ****, ****, ****, ****, ****!’

[‘Hello? Mr Huff? Is that …?

Damn! Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!’]

Bitch slams down the ‘receiver’.

King listens intently to Bitch’s irate response to his ‘phone ring jape’ and then expresses his intense delight by shaking himself, violently, from beak to tail. Baldo observes millions of minuscule pieces of old skin and bird dander fly around his ‘cage’, illuminated by the gorgeous shaft of ‘sun’ in which King is currently perched. Baldo’s own urge to ruffle and shake and scratch himself is very strong – very strong – but still, he resists it.

King and Baldo both listen intently as Bitch returns to ‘kitchen’.

All is briefly quiet. Baldo inhales slowly and deeply. He knows that it is almost time (‘sun’ on ‘back wall’, hitting left-hand edge of ‘side table’) for Bitch to leave ‘kitchen’ and go ‘outside’. Every day at this time Bitch goes ‘outside’. Bitch will be gone for a lengthy spell (‘sun’ on ‘back wall’ to ‘sun’ creeping over towards Baldo’s own ‘side wall’. Of course if it’s a ‘cloudy’ day, this interlude cannot be measured and is simply calibrated as ‘eternal’).

Baldo is not much given to calculation, but he calculates that King – fiendishly clever as he is – might still be too new to the household to have fully digested the exact niceties of Bitch’s schedule.

Baldo waits. He is still. Very still. Soon Bitch can be heard turning off the ‘radio’, picking up her ‘keys’ and putting on her ‘coat’. Shortly after Baldo hears her slam out of the ‘house’.

King also listens intently (in ‘sun’, bastard!) to these comings and goings. Every so often he glances towards the immobile Baldo. Baldo has been immobile for so long now that King has almost forgotten that Baldo has the inbuilt capacity for mobility.

Baldo waits. Five ‘minutes’ pass, ten ‘minutes’, fifteen, twenty. Half an ‘hour’. King starts to doze in the ‘sun’ (bastard!). Forty ‘minutes’. Fifty ‘minutes’. ‘Sun’ is now ‘inches’ from Baldo’s ‘side wall’.

Baldo’s eyes are fixed on ‘side wall’. Yes! Yes! IT IS TIME! Finally!