Seven Deadlies

by Gigi Levangie

  I stepped back quickly. “I’ll help you up. And then we are going to have a conversation before you watch television. School isn’t just about getting smarter. School is about socialization skills. And apparently, you don’t have any.”

  Angus lay on the floor, trying to sit up, but having no luck. He could, however, get his head off the floor if he tried very, very hard. He grunted and rolled over onto his belly.

  I watched Angus writhing and mewling like a walrus that couldn’t maneuver off an ice floe. And that’s when I realized: This boy could be my greatest calling, my greatest gift. I, Perry Gonzales, had trained every week since the fourth grade for this moment.

  I would help Angus. I would change his life for the better. I would . . . make him take a walk.

  I put my hand out to help him up.

  And Angus reached out . . . grabbed my hand . . . and bit me!

  “Ow!” I yelled, and dropped the remote control as I yanked my arm back. A fine trickle of blood was starting to drip from my skinny forearm to my little finger.

  The cat, an orange tabby, flitted around my legs, then looked up at me with a sorry expression. In my shock, I saw a warning expression in its emerald eyes.

  Get out while you can, the cat seemed to be saying.

  Angus had rolled over on his back, wriggled over to the chair, and was now resting against it. He was watching me, smiling.

  And then Angus licked his lips.

  “How dare you bite me?” I lost my temper, I’m sorry to say. This was the first time I raised my voice at a client, ever. “You’re not allowed to go around biting people!”

  “I can if they don’t give me my remote!” Angus whined. “And I’m hungry and you’re not feeding me and I’m telling my mom!”

  I cleared a chair and sat down. “Have you had your shots?” I asked, inspecting my wound.

  “No!” Angus said. “I don’t need any shots! I don’t have GERMS!”

  I went into the bathroom, which was quite neat compared to the living room, and washed my arm with soap and water and hydrogen peroxide (Mrs. Willhelm had twenty bottles under the sink). There were two half circles of teeth marks; Angus had broken the skin.

  I covered the wound with bandages and made a note to ask my mom about a rabies shot first thing tomorrow morning. But before that, I still had a job to do.

  While Angus whined about missing his program, I set about making a healthy dinner. Which was kind of difficult—there was no fresh food in the cupboard. The refrigerator was stocked with Lunchables, ranch dressing, and strawberry lemonade.

  Luckily, I always carry healthy snacks with me to my jobs. I made a fresh vegetable platter with raw carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower florets and used the ranch dressing as a dip.

  And set it out for Angus to eat.

  “I won’t eat that crap!” he squealed, staring at the vegetables. “What if I choke?”

  “You don’t eat, you don’t watch,” I said, grabbing the remote and waving it above my head.

  Angus relented. He tasted the vegetables and made disgusting noises with each bite. He spit out pieces of broccoli and wiped the remnants on his chest.

  But he finished the plate.

  And I turned on the television set.

  When I wasn’t looking, I felt like Angus was sneaking peeks at the wound on my arm.

  And licking his lips.

  That night, I slept in the Willhelm apartment—behind the locked door of Mrs. Willhelm’s bedroom—and had vampire dreams. In the morning, I noticed the cat was missing.

  “Angus,” I asked, “do you know where the cat is? I need to feed it before I leave for school.”

  Angus gave me a strange look. “What cat?” he asked in his high-pitched voice.

  I shook my head. The cat bowl was empty—so the cat had eaten its dinner. I left some water out.

  “Are you going to be okay?” I asked before I left. I was relieved to be going. “I can’t be late to school.”

  “Yes,” Angus replied. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  I looked up at Angus, shocked. He was being polite; what was that about? I didn’t know why—but his tone gave me chills.

  That evening, Mother Willhelm came back to the apartment she shared with Angus. Her foot was in a cast, and she was in a foul mood. She’d been called by the school authorities. Angus had to be enrolled in school—the following day!

  “Angus, what did you do to Perry?” Mrs. Willhelm asked. She hobbled over to where Angus was sitting, banjo in his lap. “The authorities called me today at the hospital—I was still in bed, recovering!”

  “Why’d you leave me, Mother?” Angus squealed. “She was so awful! She made me eat roughage!”

  “Did you bite Perry?” Mrs. Willhelm asked. “She had to report you to the school nurse. Perry had to get shots.”

  “I didn’t bite her!” Angus lied. “She snatched the remote from my mouth! It was an accident!”

  Mrs. Willhelm took one long, sad look at her son.

  “Angus,” Mrs. Willhelm said as she sat down. Her cast made it hard for her to move, and dragging her foot around had tired her out. “Darling. My love. I’ve had some time to think. And I’m afraid I’ve done you a grave disservice. It is time you went to school. You have to learn manners. You have to learn to get along with other kids. Maybe you’ll catch a cold, diphtheria, bird flu, or Ebola, but maybe not. Tomorrow morning, you and I will go down to the school and enroll you.”

  “NO!” Angus screamed. “I can’t go to school! There’s GERMS in school!”

  “Angus, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Willhelm said. “But if you don’t go to school, Mommy will be arrested—and then who will take care of you?”

  “You can’t make me go to school! I won’t do it!” Angus yelled.

  “I’m going to bed now, Angus.” His mother sighed, then looked around the room. “Where’s the tabby?”

  “It ran off when Perry opened the door,” he squealed, and shrugged.

  Mrs. Willhelm just shook her head. “Good night, Angus,” she said. “Sweet dreams. Oh, and starting tomorrow, I think it wouldn’t hurt for both of us to start eating more vegetables. It’s time for the Willhelms to go on a diet.”

  That night, Mrs. Willhelm had terrible dreams. Vampires, werewolves, and spider monkeys all made guest appearances in her nightmares.

  At four a.m., she woke up to find Angus standing next to her bed.

  “Angus!” Mrs. Willhelm said, sitting up in her flannel nightie with her bonnet on. “You startled me. H-how did you manage to get in here?”

  “I don’t want to eat vegetables, Mom,” Angus whined. “I hate vegetables. I need protein to grow! I need protein to feel good!”

  “Angus, we’ll talk about this in the morning,” Mrs. Willhelm said, rolling over on her back. “Now, go to sleep.”

  Angus didn’t say a word.

  “Angus?” Mrs. Willhelm asked. “Are you still there?”

  She turned to face him.

  “Angus,” she said, “what really happened to the cat?”

  A week later, Angus had eaten all the food in the apartment. He’d even eaten all the ranch dressing and the leftover tins of cat food (the lamb variety was surprisingly delicious!). He’d eaten while the landlord banged on the door for his rent check. He’d eaten while the phone rang, and then stopped ringing. He’d eaten while he’d heard that terrible yet tasty Perry and her mother knocking on the door, calling for him and his mom.

  He’d eaten through the police ringing the doorbell and sliding a notice under the door for Angus to report to school.

  But a week after that, Angus was dizzy with hunger. He’d eaten everything in the house. (Narrator note: And I mean EVERYTHING.)

  He didn’t even have the strength to play his banjo. So he ate that as well.

  He didn’t have the heart
to eat his television set (and he couldn’t very well stand up on his own two feet to get to it, anyway).

  The phone was no longer working.

  The remote was out of battery power.

  Then one morning, the most amazing thing happened: Angus woke up to find a huge Christmas ham in his lap. It was large and pink and succulent. And it smelled of piggy.

  Angus was so happy—he didn’t question his good luck as he sank his teeth in!

  A few days after Angus’s last meal, the police finally had the landlord open the door.

  Two of the three threw up. The third merely fainted.

  The End

  Picture Dick Cheney as a kid, Herman Cain as a kid, Rupert Murdoch as a kid. Now combine them—and you have little Rodney Bartholomew (pronounced “BART-olom-ewe”). Little Rodney loved one thing: money. What did he love more than money? Quick money. He was slick as an oil spill, as fast-talking as a horse-race caller, wore ascots like the Duke of York, and carried embossed business cards and a sterling silver Tiffany money clip. Little Rodney (he was quite small) was in the seventh grade at Mark Frost Academy and lived with Grandma Bartholomew in a sunny two-bedroom condo in Encino. His bedroom walls were covered with downloaded photos and articles about his favorite modern robber barons—one entire wall was plastered with pictures of Sumner Redstone—and while his IQ was upwards of 170, he was too consumed with making fast money to spend time on his schoolwork. Why should he care about school when school didn’t pay him?

  Grandma Bartholomew had her speckled hands full, as she explained to me one day over a cup of peppermint tea. I’d been tutoring Rodney in math, which was the only subject he took any interest in, as long as I explained integers and negative numbers in money terms.

  “I’ve no idea what to do with that boy,” Grandma said. “He’s going to end up in jail or as Bristol Palin’s running mate.”

  Where were Dad and Mom? I looked them up on the Internet. Harry and Jillian Bartholomew were once famous for their Hair Today, Hair Tomorrow! Miracle Hair Grow System!™ Perhaps you saw their infomercials? Harry was just that—hairy! And his wife, Jillian, an ex-Playmate, was just plain silly. They died when Harry’s light plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean. According to Grandma, they were on their way to Mexico to escape something called “the IRS.”

  Little Rodney was skinny and wan and spent hours on his computer searching for ideas on get-rich-quick schemes. He wasn’t interested in eating, unless you could drink dinner through a straw. Everything he did had to be quick. He conceived his first Ponzi scheme when he was barely out of diapers. His last matrix scam cost his fifth-grade teacher her Honda. Grandma Bartholomew had even caught him trying to hack into her bank accounts.

  “I wouldn’t trust that boy with a dime,” Grandma warned me. “And don’t you, either.”

  One day after school, I came over to find Rodney sulking at his desk in his bedroom, staring at an old photograph of Paul Allen, his little feet swinging, barely skimming the floor.

  “He’s a handsome one, that one,” Rodney said in his vague British/Madonna accent.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Rodney, where’s your computer?”

  “Grandmother took it away,” Rodney said in another stilted attempt at sophistication. “I’m not currently speaking to her.”

  I walked out of his bedroom and found Grandma sitting at her kitchen table, enjoying a game of gin with several of the “girls” in the condo retirement community.

  “I had to cut off little Rodney’s Internet privileges,” Grandma admitted, slapping a card down on the table. The other ladies clucked their tongues, shook their white bobble heads, their eyes on their cards. They kept their distance from Rodney after he’d fleeced them in dominoes.

  “What’d he do,” I asked, “if I may inquire?”

  “The boy stole one of my credit cards,” Grandma said.

  The clucking started to build.

  “He tried to buy a yacht in the marina,” she continued, “to rent out for sunset margarita parties.”

  “Grandmother, you old hen!” I heard Rodney yell from his room. “You can make a load of money doing Sunset Margarita parties!”

  “He’s failing every one of his classes,” Grandma said, “and now he refuses to wear his school uniform unless it’s hand-stitched. He wants a bespoke uniform! I’m at the end of my rope, Perry. And what’s with the accent? My people have never set foot in England.”

  “It’s the Billionaire Boys Club syndrome. I’ve seen it before,” I said to the old lady. “Let me see what I can do.”

  After all, I wanted to tell her, I’ve dealt with Lust, Wrath, and Gluttony—surely Greed would have a happier ending. At this point, I was losing my clientele at a rapid pace. I needed to do something, quick.

  I went back into his bedroom and tried to get Rodney to start his history homework. I perused his textbook until I found something interesting. “Rodney, look at chapter three—it’s all about the pharaohs,” I pointed out. “All they cared about was gold and power . . . sound familiar?”

  “You know I love the pharaohs. But I need current investors,” Rodney said. “I’m working on a start-up.”

  “You have to graduate high school first, Rodney,” I said.

  “Why? Bill Gates didn’t graduate.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, not entirely sure.

  “Do you think I should get a Phantom or a Bentley when I’m sixteen?”

  “What’s a Phantom?”

  “A car, Perry,” he sneered. “Sometimes you’re just so . . . common. Where do you think I should hide my offshore accounts? The Cayman Islands or Anguilla?”

  “First of all, I don’t think we should be having this conversation. We should be studying, not hiding assets we don’t have. Secondly, how do you presume to buy a car, any car, when you don’t have any money?”

  “My grandmother is a very wealthy woman, Perry. Don’t let this condo business fool you. That old woman’s tight as a drum,” Rodney said. “She’s already spent my father’s trust. You do know of the Bartholomews of Pink Sands, Bahamas, I presume?”

  “No, Rodney, I do not,” I said. “Your grandmother had to pay off all of your father’s debt. She’s living on a fixed income. Everything goes to tuition, uniforms, gin games, and peppermint tea.”

  “I remember when my parents were alive,” Rodney reminisced, a dreamy look crossing his pinched face. He looked like a middle-aged banker waxing eloquent about the bailout. “We had an Italianate mansion at the top of Doheny, servants who’d beg me not to tell on them when they’d discipline me, dogs I couldn’t play with because they’d bite me. My parents would leave me for weeks . . . God, they were rich and neglectful. It was heaven!”

  I thought it sounded horrible. I managed to get Rodney to pay attention to his textbooks for a scant ten minutes (bribing him with a twenty-dollar bill, half my hourly rate) before I had to go to my next appointment.

  Grandma, with some effort, got up from her card game and walked me to the door as I was leaving. She had lately taken to using a cane, and I noticed she was more stooped than normal. Her dowager’s hump had grown, like she was hiding a kitten underneath her sweater. Her eyes were becoming foggy behind her bifocals.

  “Are you okay, Grandma Bartholomew?” I asked.

  She coughed from deep inside. “Growing old’s not for sissies, my dear Perry,” she said. “I wouldn’t recommend it, but I’m not ready for the alternative, not yet.”

  Then she grabbed my arm, her bony fingers digging into my skin. “Don’t be surprised if something happens to me, Perry. Something . . .” She looked off in the direction of Rodney’s room and wheezed. “Don’t be surprised,” she murmured. “I see how he eyes me. Perry, I’m raising a sociopath.”

  “Grandma Bartholomew,” I said, “Rodney’s just a kid. He’s smart, and I know he’s got a good heart—we jus
t have to . . . find it.”

  I was crossing my fingers; I didn’t know what Rodney was capable of.

  I hurried home and looked up sociopath. Although there wasn’t a photograph in the description, there might as well have been. And it would have been a photo of Rodney Bartholomew, age thirteen. No capacity for empathy? Disregard for social norms and rules?

  Hi, Rodney!

  I discussed the matter with my mother, the very wise and formidable (even at four feet, ten inches) Yelena Maria Gonzales. I was serving her favorite, arroz con pollo, for our dinner as she soaked her swollen feet in hot water and Epsom salt after a long day at work. It was ten o’clock at night.

  “What the boy needs is gratitude. Take him to a homeless shelter,” she suggested in her native Spanish.

  Two days later, I tricked Rodney into going to the local homeless shelter in Sun Valley. I told him we were going to a Rich Dad Poor Dad seminar.

  Instead, we met people who’d lost their jobs and their homes. We met families with small children whose next stop was living in a van. We sat with a bent, soft-spoken man who’d been an accountant with the same company for twenty-five years, whose pension plan was drained by a Bernie Madoff associate. He’d lost his wife, his family, everything.

  Rodney’s eyes lit up.

  “The Bernie Madoff?” he asked the accountant. “Did you ever meet him? What was he like? I’d really like to visit him; I write him at least one letter a week.”

  The accountant’s weary face took on a puzzled look.

  “He’s, like, my personal hero,” Rodney explained. “I think of him as a mentor, if you will.”

  I dragged Rodney out by his ear—as I said, he weighs about ninety pounds.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I hissed. “This is not a joke—that man worked for twenty-five years and was left with nothing.”

  Rodney’s face screwed up, as though he were chewing on a lemon; he was not impressed by the accountant’s story.

  “He should have worked smart,” Rodney said. “He had twenty-five years to figure out the system. Sucker.”