It was quiet under the trees. No wind. The only thing I heard was someone pecking at a typewriter and then the little bell dinging when whoever was typing reached the end of a line. But nothing else. It was like even the birds knew they had to be quiet, because I guess no one was supposed to disturb the great Mrs. Windermere.
I left the wagon at the foot of the steps that led up to the door, and I rang the doorbell and stepped back.
Typing not stopping. Little bell still dinging.
I waited for a while.
Typing not stopping. Little bell still dinging.
I went up and rang the doorbell again. Twice. Knocked. Twice.
Typing stopping.
I took a step back, which turned out to be a really good thing, because the door suddenly swung open and there was Mrs. Windermere—at least, I figured it had to be her.
She had hair as white as clouds, and about as wispy too, and big. It was all gathered like one of those huge thunderheads that rises on hot summer days. The top was in sort of a bun and tied tight with red rubber bands. And in that top bun—I'm not lying—there were three bright yellow pencils stabbing through. She wore a bluish kind of gown that shimmered—it looked like something that someone about to go to an opera would wear (not that I've ever been to an opera, or would ever be caught dead at one. Can you imagine Joe Pepitone ever going to an opera?). With the cloud on top and the shimmering blue beneath, she looked like a rainstorm that could walk around all by itself. Which wouldn't have been so bad on a day that wanted to be a hundred degrees.
All this, by the way, took about half a second to see, because she hadn't even finished opening the door when she said, "Who are you?"
That's not really what she said. She used a word that I'd never heard a lady use before. It came pretty close after Who. You can figure it out for yourself.
"Who do you think I am?" I said. I know: sounding like Lucas. But you have to remember that she started it. And it was hot. And Mr. Spicer had never given me that really cold Coke. Ice coming down the sides.
She looked behind me at the wagon. "I think you are a very skinny and very rude delivery boy, and you are a very skinny and very rude delivery boy whom I have no time for right now. Go away and come back later this afternoon."
She closed the door. Hard.
Typing starting up again. Little bell dinging.
I could almost hear Lil snorting, back at the deli.
I stood out there for a couple of minutes. To be as thirsty as I was, you'd have to be in the French Foreign Legion and lost somewhere out in the Sahara for a week. I thought about dragging that wagon back down the baking brick walk and through the field to the road. I thought about dragging that wagon down all of those fourteen blocks back to Spicer's Deli. And then I thought about doing it all over again in the afternoon.
I rang the doorbell.
Typing not stopping. Little bell still dinging.
I rang the doorbell again. Twice. Knocked. Twice. Stepped back.
Typing stopping, and this time the door opened even more quickly.
"Do you know what Creativity is?" Mrs. Windermere said.
You have to admit: this is not something you expect a normal person to say.
"I'm not sure," I said.
"I'm sure that you do not know, or you would not be ringing this doorbell. Creativity is a god who comes only when he pleases, and it isn't very often. But when he does come, he sits beside my desk and folds his wings and I offer him whatever he wants and in exchange he lets me type all sorts of things that get turned into plays for which people who own New York stages are waiting. And right now, he is sitting by my desk, and he is being very kind. So if you would go away and—"
"Suppose you offer him some ice cream," I said. "Would he stay longer?"
She looked behind me again, at the wagon. "Ice cream?" she said.
I nodded.
"What kind did I order?"
"Lemon."
She considered this. "Lemon?" she said.
I nodded again.
She looked at the wagon once more.
"Go around back. There's a door into the kitchen. Put everything away where it's supposed to go. If you cannot figure out where something is supposed to go, for heaven's sake, don't come and ask me. Leave it on the kitchen table. You better start with the ice cream. And do not make any noise."
She closed the door, again. Hard, again.
I followed the brick path around the house to the back. I should tell you that there was no shade around this side of the house, so things were getting sort of desperate in the Thirsty Department. The kitchen door was up three steps, so I grabbed the ice cream and headed up.
The door was locked. Of course. Of course it was locked.
I thought about going around and ringing the doorbell again.
I thought about walking away and leaving the whole thing right there. Melted lemon ice cream all over the back steps.
Instead, I looked under the mat by the door, and there it was: the key! Pretty sneaky of Mrs. Windermere. No one would ever think to look there if he wanted to break in while she was away at the opera.
Here are the stats for Mrs. Windermere's kitchen:
The floor was white and yellow tile—twenty-four tiles wide, eighteen tiles long.
One rack with sixteen copper pots and pans hanging over a woodblock table.
Four yellow stools around the woodblock table.
Twelve glass cupboards—all white inside. You could have put my mother's dishes into any one of these and you would have had plenty of room left over.
And the dishes! All white and yellow. And the glasses! Who knows how many? All matching. Not a single one chipped.
You know who deserved this kitchen, right?
Before I did anything, I drank about a gallon and a half from the faucet. I put my head under and let the water run. I didn't even care if Mrs. Windermere came in and saw me doing it. It wasn't like I was using one of her glasses. And it tasted so good. Even better than a really cold Coke.
Then I put all the groceries away, starting with the lemon ice cream into the freezer. I left the fresh beans and carrots and onions on the woodblock table, but everything else got put away in cupboards that, if you asked me, were pretty full already. But no one was asking me.
I took another long drink for the road. Another gallon and a half, I'd say.
Then I started out the back door—and remembered: $22.78.
I could hear the typing and the dinging through the house. They were going pretty steady. Probably the god Creativity was still being good to her.
But I needed the $22.78.
I swung open the door out of the kitchen and went into a dining room. It was cool and dark and full of roses—big red ones on black wallpaper, and big red ones in a vase in the middle of a dark table that looked like it should be in a museum or something.
I followed the sound of the typing and the dinging. Down a long, long hall with walls hung with framed photographs of actors and actresses—Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and Yul Brynner with his bald head and Telly Savalas with his bald head and Danny Kaye and Lucille Ball even, all posing on stages. Then the hall let into a bright sitting room, all yellow and white again. And then down another short hall there was a glass door with diamond panes and behind that I could see Mrs. Windermere typing wildly—sometimes her hands went high above her shoulders before they dropped down to smack at the keys. And by the way, there wasn't any god sitting on the chair by her desk with his wings folded. He couldn't have sat there if he wanted to. The chair was filled with books, most of them lying open, one on top of another.
I waited before knocking at the glass door. I'm not lying, her typing was a sight to see.
But I couldn't stand there forever. So I knocked.
Typing not stopping. Little bell still dinging.
I knocked again. Twice.
Without turning around, she waved her hand to shoo me away.
So I knocked again.
>
Both hands up above her shoulders this time. Both hands dropping down to the typewriter. She turned around. Slowly. There was this look on her face that ... well, if she had reached for one of the sharp pencils stabbed through her bun, I would have been gone.
"What is it now?" she said.
"I have the bill," I said. "Twenty-two seventy-eight."
You have to remember that we were talking through the door here, which made the whole thing kind of weird. It was like I was talking through glass to some sort of prison inmate.
"Put it on my account," she said. She turned back to the typewriter to sort out all the keys that were jammed together now.
"I can't," I said. "Mr. Spicer wants me to bring the cash back to him."
She was working over her typewriter.
"Mrs. Windermere?" I said.
"Arrrgghh," she said. I'm not lying. "Arrrgghh." Just like that. Then she stood up and grabbed the door handle—which was glass too, by the way—and threw the door open. "You fix the typewriter keys," she said. "I'll get the money."
I went into the room. It was bigger than I had thought. Its walls kept going back and back, and every wall had dark wood bookshelves to the ceiling, and every bookshelf was crammed. Out on the floor there was a round table heaped with books. Beside that was a dark couch covered with rows of books. Everywhere on the floor, piles of books leaned into each other. On the sides of her desk and in front of her desk, more piles leaning. I never thought that one person could own so many books. I picked one up off the desk and smelled its pages. The smell of old paper.
I worked at separating the keys in her typewriter. I found out pretty quickly that the trick is to take one key at a time and just let the ink get all over your hands, and I got most of them done by the time Mrs. Windermere got back. She threw twenty-five dollars at me.
"I don't think I have any change," I said.
"Keep it," she said. "Splurge. Go on a shopping spree. Book a trip to Monte Carlo. Do whatever you want. But do it away from me. Here, stop fussing with that. You'll just get everything all inky."
She took over the typewriter keys, and I think by the time I backed out of the room with the twenty-five dollars, she had forgotten I was there.
Two dollars and twenty-two cents. It was the only tip I had gotten all day, but it was a good one: $2.22. Do you know what you can do with $2.22? I had never had that much money all my own. $2.22.
So maybe it was because I was thinking about the $2.22 that I turned the wrong way in the short hall and got into a room I hadn't been in before. It was all light blues with white furniture and a white fireplace with small stone lions on either side and another vase on a dark table filled with pink roses.
And over the fireplace, a huge picture of birds. The same size as the one of the Arctic Tern. And by John James Audubon again. You could tell.
But this one was different. One bird was the mother. Two were swimming away, doing what they felt like doing, not even looking at her. And there was this small bird, pretty young. It was looking like maybe it wanted to swim where the other two birds were, but maybe not. And anyway, he was afraid to try. And the mother? Her neck was turned all around about as far as it could possibly go, and she was looking far away, at something a long way out from the picture. She was looking at a place she wanted to go but couldn't, because she didn't know how to get away.
There were flowers beside her.
I stood there looking at that picture for a long time—even after the typing and dinging started up again. The little one didn't know what he wanted to do at all. I reached up and touched the glass over it.
Cold.
Then I found the kitchen again, went out, locked the door behind me, and hid the key in its so-secret spot that no one would ever think to look in. I wiped my inky hands on the grass and dragged the wagon back to Spicer's Deli.
When I pulled the wagon inside, Mr. Spicer looked at his watch, then at me, like I hadn't been paying attention.
"Did you see Mrs. Windermere?" said Lil.
"Yup," I said. I handed Mr. Spicer the twenty-five dollars. He counted it, took it to the register, and paid out my tip. "Pretty nice," he said.
I nodded.
"Well?" said Lil.
"Well what?" I said.
"I pay salary every other Saturday," Mr. Spicer said.
"Okay," I said. I still had my $2.22 in hand. "That's fine."
I know. I'm a chump.
"So what happened?" said Lil.
Then Mr. Spicer handed me a Coke.
You remember, right, that I know what to do with a really cold Coke?
I did it. Except the burp, since Mr. Spicer was right there.
"Not a thing," I said when I finished.
"You skinny thug," said Lil.
I handed her the bottle.
I burped when I got out onto the street. I'm not lying, it was a pretty good one. Birds flew out of the maples.
I put the $2.22 in my pocket and went up to the library. Mrs. Merriam looked at me, then went back to whatever she'd been working at to let me know that I wasn't worthy of Her Majesty's attention.
So what? So what? It wasn't like I needed her attention. I just came to the library to see if I could get that beak right, which I probably couldn't on account of how I don't draw. Like I told Mr. Powell.
So what?
I went upstairs. The lights were on. Mr. Powell hadn't turned the page of the book; it was still open to the Arctic Tern.
But there was one thing that was different. There were three large blank sheets of paper on the glass display case. And there were five colored pencils: gray, black, green, blue, and orange. Dark orange. They were all sharp. There was an eraser too. Waiting like I had ordered them.
I ran my hand over the glass on top of the Arctic Tern. Then I left. I didn't touch anything, since I don't draw. Remember?
That night at supper, my father asked if I started the job.
I nodded.
Did I get paid?
Tips.
Tips? That's all? Tips? Didn't I get paid for the day?
I told him I got paid every other Saturday.
He told me I was a chump, and he and my brother laughed at me like I was the jerk of the world. Like I was never going to see any of that money. Like I was about as useless as a rubber crutch.
My mother turned and looked out the window, at something far away.
***
That next week, I ran into Lil Spicer three times. The first two times, I looked like a chump.
The first time, I had finally jumped under a sprinkler because it was so hot the sidewalks were white and shimmering, and if there was any place within ten miles to go swimming, I didn't know about it. I guess I got desperate. So I jumped under a sprinkler not so far from the library, and it was perfect, and I had just come out from under it when, of course, Lil Spicer turned the corner on her bike, looking as cool as if she had been in Monte Carlo or something.
As soon as she saw me, she started to laugh.
"Did you fall into a pool?" she said. It took her a while to say this, since she was mostly snorting.
"No, I didn't fall into a pool," I said.
"Did you—you did! You went under a sprinkler!"
I didn't say anything. What would you have said?
"You're trying to stay cool by running under sprinklers. Just like when you were a cute little boy instead of a skinny thug."
"Yes, I'm trying to stay cool."
"I suppose that's one way to do it."
"Yes, it's one way to do it."
Lil Spicer started to laugh again.
"It's a pretty dumb way," she said.
"Thanks for pointing that out," I said, and went on down the white-hot sidewalk, wishing that I wasn't squishing so much.
"You're leaving ... you're leaving footprints," she pointed out. She was laughing so hard, she was almost crying.
I hate this town.
The second time was on Friday. I was heading toward the
library—and yes, I know it's not open on Friday but who knows if a miracle might happen and it would be open after all? So I was heading to the library, and when I turned the corner, there, two blocks away, was my brother, with a new group of criminals. It hadn't taken him long. They were in front of Spicer's Deli, probably figuring out how to rob it. My brother sat on a Sting-Ray that wasn't his—I guess it belonged to some weaker member of the pack—and he was probably talking about how hard life was where we had come from, and how he'd been in knife fights that were for real, and how he'd even seen a teacher get knifed—which was all a lie, but when he pulled up his shirt and showed the long scar he had gotten from climbing over a fence—which was what he was doing right now, pulling up his shirt—who could tell it wasn't a scar from a blade?
I moved back into the shadows beneath the tall maples in front of the library. I didn't move. That's how packs detect you. You move, they see you out of the corners of their beady yellow eyes, and then they swarm for the kill.
Which was why I did not move when I felt a large, wet, sloppy plop drop down from the branches overhead. Large isn't the right word, and drop isn't either. Think pour down for drop down and you have it about right. There was a rustle, and a crow flew away, grinning. I did not move. The plop slimed down my hair, over my ear, and then along my neck and into the collar of my T-shirt, and still I didn't move. I waited. I could feel the bird poop starting to crust over in the heat, and still I didn't move. I waited. Until finally, finally Mr. Spicer came out and hollered, and my brother hollered back and stood up on his Sting-Ray—he was really pretty good at balancing on the thing—and then he looked my way. I think my heart stopped. I almost panicked and moved. But someone must have said something—probably God—and so he turned and headed the other way on his bike, hollering once more at Mr. Spicer before he left, the jerk.
My heart started up again.
I waited in the shadows until he biked around the corner with the rest of the pack, and then I reached up to wipe off the bird poop.
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