He sat down in front of the television and watched his film. The playground, the jungle gym, the slide the children slid down, and one of the children laughed, and he laughed as well because it looked like so much fun. He pressed rewind, watched the fun once again, and made a note on the sheet of paper on the table beside him, where there was also a vase with six tulips, both of which he’d bought that same afternoon.

Now the boy was there. His face, then the car window behind him, the radio, the backseat. The boy told him what to film, and he filmed it. Why not?

The parrot hanging from his rearview mirror. He’d picked out one that was red and yellow, just like the climbing frame at the playground that needed another coat of paint, but his parrot didn’t need repainting at all.

The boy, who’d said his name was Kalle, liked the parrot. You could see that in the film. The boy was pointing at the parrot, and he filmed it even though he was driving. That called for a fair amount of skill, and he was good at driving while thinking of something else at the same time, doing something else entirely. He’d been good at that for a long time now.

Now he heard the voices, as if the volume had suddenly been turned up.

“Rotty,” he said.

“Rotty,” echoed the boy, pointing at the parrot, and it almost looked as if it were about to fly away.

Rotty. It was a trick. If anybody else were ever to see this film, which wouldn’t happen, but if, it would seem as if Rotty was the parrot’s name. But that wasn’t the case. It was one of his tricks like all the other tricks he had when he was little and his voice suddenly g-g-g-ot s-s-st-st-st-st-st-stu-stu-stu-stuck in midstride, as it were, when he first st-st-started stuttering.

It started when his mom walked out. He couldn’t remember doing it before. Only afterward. He had to invent tricks that would help him out when he wanted to say something. Not all that often, but sometimes. The first trick he could remember was Rotty. He couldn’t say parrot, pa-pa-pa-pa-no, he could stand there stuttering for the rest of his life and still not get to the end of that word. “Rotty” was no problem, though.