Carrie and Mr. Big went to Carrie's parents' house for the weekend. In her house, everybody cooked. Mr. Big was making
"Don't screw it up," Carrie whispered as she walked by him.
"What's wrong with my gravy? I make great gravy," Mr. Big said.
"The last time you made it, you put whiskey or something in it, and it was terrible."
"That was me," her father said.
"Oh. So sorry," Carrie said meanly. "I forgot."
Mr. Big didn't say anything. The next day, they went back to the city and had dinner with some of his friends. They were all couples who'd been married for years. Somebody started talking about parrots. How they'd had a parrot that talked.
"I went into a Woolworth's once and bought a parakeet for ten bucks and taught it how to talk," Mr. Big said. "Parakeets can't talk," Carrie said.
"It talked," Mr. Big said. "It said, 'Hello Snippy. That was the name of my dog."
In the car on the way home, Carrie said, "It couldn't have been a parakeet. It must have been a mynah bird."
"If I say it was a parakeet, it was a parakeet."
Carrie snorted. "That's stupid. Everyone knows that parakeets can't talk."
"It talked," Mr. Big said. He ht up a cigar. They didn't say anything the rest of the way home.