9

The Atlantic Puffin, formerly known as the Common Puffin until it was almost wiped out by man, was a strange bird that never really interested Margaret until last week. All these people were so excited about a pigeon with a funky beak. She didn’t get it.
She found herself in one of the reading rooms of her Bread and Breakfast and noticed a bird book published by the Audubon Society. She flipped to the P’s and found the entry she was looking for.
Margaret read about the plight of the Puffin (Fratercula artica) and its decline. She read about how just off shore was one of it's last habitats.
Whoopty Poop, the damned bird still had a home in Nova Scotia. Let the damn Canucks deal with it. She liked the business, but there was a lot to be done around here. Not like she was going to do it, but Mike expected her to. She normally was on her way to warmer climes just as Mike cracked open that first can of paint. Now, she had to stay because of some bird.
This would not do.
Her skin was losing its golden brown and she had previously arranged engagements in the Grand Caymans. Not to mention her nephew, that ugly toothed bastard. She shuddered at the thought of actually seeing him. She hated the fact that just because her sister squeezed out some illegitimate demon from her birth hole, she had to associate with it.
God, could this get any more inconvenient?
Maybe she could fake an illness related to the cold?
Maybe she could just leave Mike?
Nix on that. She had found the one man that finally got her, even if he was once a woman. He really got her.
That man was hard to find and she was ready to put up with about anything to keep him. Dating was messy. It seems like a lot of fun when you don't care about the end results, when it's for a purpose it becomes a chore. Blind dates and one night stands aren't so exciting when they become and endless monument to your failure to connect with anyone else on a level beyond sharing food and bodily fluids. All that phoniness and disappointment was something she was glad to leave behind her. No way was she letting herself fall back into that grind.
She had managed to find several where she liked the sex but hated the person. They could rock the boat but couldn’t captain a ship. She had found some that knew how thrill her with their wit and intellect but she hated the sex.
She found both in Mike. So, she wasn’t going to fuck this up, at least not yet.
Maggie, as everyone called her, was going to stick this one out.
For a little while.
The place was filling up and money was always a good thing.
All these bigwigs from Washington with expense accounts were annoying but they were just dollar signs to Maggie.