Stackerlee
Parrot Solberg is an orphan looking for his birth parents, a part-time folk singer, and a computer hacker in the services of an underworld figure. As you might expect, the search for his birth parents leads him to more than he bargained for.

Lowest Fruit (Excerpt)

Let’s see, what else do you want to know? I shop in second-hand stores where I’m inclined to purchase multi-colored polka-dots and plaid sleeveless dresses. I keep bows in my hair and jangly collections of thin bracelets on both wrists. Desperate and fruitless cries for attention, all of it. I know pretty much how I appear to other people. I am five foot two with black hair and dullish blue eyes, I weigh one hundred eight pounds and dress like a fire sale. I’m twenty four and there are already lines around my eyes and my mouth is tired looking all the time. My fingers snap when I walk, I hum and whistle and throw my hair around. I have a whimsical sense of humor, a great eye for color, and an interesting childhood.

My father, for instance, never married my mother despite his promises. They even agreed to hold a ceremony at the government center, where she was to meet him at three o’clock on a day in October that was brilliant ultramarine sky and crimson maple trees. She borrowed a tan suit, forced it closed over her belly, which was swollen with a pre-natal me, and took the bus downtown. Once there she stood in the lobby of the government center and waited for him until the place closed. She snuffled back some tears and let others flow. She adjusted her little Jackie-O hat while her best friend made phone calls from a booth in the corner. But that jackass never showed, so she and her best friend went to their regular bar where the plan was for the best friend to drink enough for them both to drown their sorrows. And there he was, the brainless dope who fathered me, sitting like just another guy in a bar. He looked at my mother and the tan suit and the dried mascara on her cheeks and said, Baby, was that today?