Ginny decided it was probably better not to answer that question.
“Where would people be looking for tickets?” she asked.
“The West End. You weren’t far from there yesterday. Covent Garden, Leicester Square—that’s the area. It’s where all the theaters are, like Broadway. But I’m not sure how successful you’ll be. Still, if they’re free…”
The West End was not as bright and in-your-face as Broadway. It lacked the three-story-high billboards that sparkled and revolved and had gold fringe. There were no massive, illuminated cups of ramen noodles, no skyscrapers. It was much more subdued, with only a few posters and signs marking out the territory. The theaters were stark, serious-looking places.
She immediately knew this was not going to work.
For a start, she was American, and she looked like a tourist, and it kept starting to rain and then stopping. Plus, the tickets weren’t the official computerized kind—they were just unevenly cut photocopies. How was she supposed to show people what the show was, where it was, what it was about? And who was going to want to know about Starbucks: The Musical when they were waiting in line to get tickets for Les Misérables or Phantom of the Opera or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or some other normal show at a normal theater that sold commemorative sweatshirts and mugs?
She stationed herself near a massive brick theater off Leicester Square, right by a kiosk filled with theater information. For the next hour or so, she just stood there, biting at her lower lip, clutching the tickets. She occasionally stepped forward when someone lingered by the posters, but she couldn’t manage to coax herself forward to try to convince them to go and see the show.
By three o’clock, she had only managed to give away six tickets, all of them to a group of Japanese girls who accepted them politely and appeared to have no idea what they had just taken. And she’d only spoken to them because she had a pretty good idea that they had no idea what she was saying.
She dragged herself back across town to Goldsmiths. At least there she could point to the building and say, “The show’s in there.” An hour in front of the uni produced no results at all, until she turned to find herself face-to-face with a guy who had to be about her age. He was black, with short dreadlocks and sleek rimless glasses.
“Want to go see this show tonight?” she asked, pointing at the flyer with the dive-bombing coffee cup. “It’s really good. I have free tickets.”
He looked at the flyer, then at her.
“Free tickets?”
“It’s a special promotion,” she said.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of a promotion?”
“A…special one. A free one.”
“For what?”
“Just to get people to go.”
“Right,” he said slowly. “Can’t. Busy tonight. But I’ll keep it in mind, yeah?”
He gave her a lingering glance before going inside. That was as close as she got to success.
She sank down onto the bench at the bus stop and pulled out her notebook.
June 25
7:15 p.m.
Dear Miriam,
I have always been kind of proud that I have never lost it over a guy. I have never been one of those people who freaked out in the bathroom or did something lame like
1. making a mock-suicide attempt by taking an entire bottle of vitamin C (Grace Partey, tenth grade)
2. failing chem by repeatedly skipping class to make out behind the cafeteria Dumpster (Joan Fassel, eleventh grade)
3. claiming sudden interest in Latin culture and switching from French II to Spanish I to be in same class as a hot freshman, only to get put in a different period (Allison Smart, tenth grade)
4. refusing to break up with a boyfriend (Alex Webber) even when he was arrested for setting fire to three sheds in his development and had to be put under observation in a mental hospital (Catie Bender, student council VP, valedictorian, twelfth grade)
Clearly, hormones do not help our IQ.
I have always been very whatever about the whole thing. The guys I would have liked were just totally unattainable, so, given the choice between making a huge effort for guys I wasn’t really interested in or being an independent human being (hanging out with my friends, making plans to escape New Jersey, injuring myself on household appliances), I decided to be an independent creature.
I know you think that I’m due for a “major romantic breakthrough” anytime now, preferably before I leave high school. And you know I think you need “major hormone therapy” because you excel at obsessing. You were obsessed with Paul all last summer. I mean, I love you dearly, but you do.
But just to make you feel better, I’ll tell you something:
I am kind of sort of interested in someone who could never, ever like me. His name is Keith. He does not know me.
And before you even start with the “Of course he’ll like you! You’re so great!” just put it in park for a second. I know that he can’t. Why? Because he is
1. a good-looking British guy
2. who is an actor
3. and who is also in college
4. in London, where he wrote a play
5. which I have just purchased ALL OF THE TICKETS FOR because of this letter thing and have only managed to give away SIX of them.
But just for fun, let’s review my romantic history, shall we?
1. Den Waters. Made out with him exactly three times, all three of which he did the scary lizard-tongue thing and thanked me afterward.
2. Mike Riskus, who I obsessed over for two years and never even spoke to until right before Christmas last year. He was behind me in trig, and he asked, “Which problem set do we have to do?” And I said, “The one on page 85.” And he said, “Thanks.” I lived on that for MONTHS.
So, as you can see, my chances are incredibly good, given my wide appeal and experience.
Enclosed you will find a copy of the program from Keith’s show.
I miss you so much it’s giving me a pain in my pancreas. But you know that.
Love,
Ginny
The Hooligan and the Pineapple
Only three people showed. Since two people had already purchased tickets before Ginny got there and she had used one herself, this meant that absolutely no one she had given tickets to had come. Her Japanese girls had let her down.
The result of this was that the cast of Starbucks: The Musical outnumbered the audience, and Jittery seemed very aware of the fact. That might have been the reason he decided to skip intermission and keep right on going, eliminating any chance of letting his audience escape. For his part, Keith didn’t seem to mind at all that hardly anyone was there. He took the opportunity to dive into the seats and even to climb one of the fake palm trees that sat on the side of the room.
At the end, as Ginny leapt up to make her escape, Jittery suddenly jumped down off the stage as she was reaching down to get her bag. He dropped into the empty seat next to her.
“Special promotion, eh?” he said. “What was that about?”
Ginny had heard tales of people being tongue-tied, of opening their mouths to find themselves incapable of any speech. She never thought that was literal. She always thought that was just another way of saying they couldn’t think of anything good to say.
Well, she was wrong. You could lose the ability to speak. She felt it right at the top of her throat—a little tug, like the closing of a drawstring bag.
“So tell me,” he said, “why did you buy three hundred quid worth of tickets and then try to give them away on the street?”
She opened her mouth. Again, nothing. He folded his arms over his chest, looking like he was prepared to wait forever for an explanation.
Speak! she screamed to herself. Speak, dammit!
He shook his head and ran his hand over his hair until it stuck up in high, staticky strands.
“I’m Keith,” he said, “and you’re…clearly mad, but what’s your name?”
<
br /> Okay. Her name. She could handle that.
“Ginny,” she said. “Virginia.”
Only one name was really necessary. Why had she given two?
“American, yeah?” he asked.
A nod.
“Named after a state?”
Another nod, even though it wasn’t true. She was named after her grandmother. But now that she thought of it, it was technically true. She was named after a state. She had the most ridiculously American name ever.
“Well, Mad Ginny Virginia from America, I guess I owe you a drink since you’ve made me the first person in all of recorded history to sell this place out.”
“I am?”
Keith got up and went over to one of the fake palm trees. He pulled a tattered canvas bag from behind it.
“So you want to go, then?” he asked, tearing off the Starbucks shirt and replacing it with a graying white T-shirt.
“Where?”
“To the pub.”
“I’ve never been to a pub.”
“Never been to a pub? Well, then. You’d better come along. This is England. That’s what we do here. We go to pubs.”
He reached behind once again and retrieved an old denim jacket. The kilt he left on.
“Come on,” he said, gesturing to her as if he was trying to coax a shy animal out from under a sofa. “Let’s go. You want to go, yes?”
Ginny felt herself getting up and numbly following Keith out of the room.
The night had become misty. The glowing yellow orbs of the crossing lights and the car headlights cut strange patterns through the fog. Keith walked briskly, his hands buried in his pockets. He occasionally glanced over his shoulder to make sure Ginny was still with him. She was just a pace or two behind.
“You don’t have to follow me,” he said. “We’re a very advanced country. Girls can walk beside men, go to school, everything.”
Ginny tentatively stepped beside him and hurried to keep up with his long stride. There were so many pubs. They were everywhere. Pubs with nice English names like The Court in Session and The Old Ship. Pretty pubs painted in bright colors with carefully made wooden signs. Keith walked past all these to a shabbier-looking place where people stood out on the sidewalk with big pints of beer.
“Here we are,” he said. “The Friend in Need. Discounts for students.”
“Wait,” she said, grabbing his arm. “I’m…in high school.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m only seventeen,” she whispered. “I don’t think I’m legal.”
“You’re American. You’ll be fine. Just act like you belong and no one will say a word.”
“Are you sure?”
“I started getting into pubs when I was thirteen,” he said. “I’m sure.”
“But you’re legal now?”
“I’m nineteen.”
“And that’s legal here, right?”
“It’s not just legal,” he said. “It’s mandatory. Come on.”
Ginny couldn’t even see the bar from where they were. There was a solid wall of people guarding it and a haze of smoke hanging over it, as if it had its very own weather.
“What are you having?” Keith asked. “I’ll go and get it. You try to find somewhere to stand.”
She ordered the only thing she knew—something that was conveniently written on a huge mirror on the wall.
“Guinness?”
“Right.”
Keith threw himself into the crowd and was absorbed. Ginny squeezed in between a clump of guys in brightly colored soccer shirts who were standing along a little ledge. They kept punching one another. Ginny backed as far into the wall as she could go, but she was sure they would still manage to hit her. There was nowhere else to stand, though. She pressed herself in close and examined the sticky rings on the wood shelf and the ashy remnants in the ashtrays. An old Spice Girls song started playing, and the hitting guys began to do a hit dance that brought them even closer to Ginny.
Keith found her there a few minutes later. He carried a pint glass full of a very dark liquid that was coughing up tiny brass-colored bubbles. There was a thin layer of cloudy foam on top. He passed her the glass. It was heavy. She had a brief flash of the thick, warm Ribena and shuddered. For himself, Keith had gotten a Coke. He glanced behind him and placed himself between the dancing guys and Ginny.
“Don’t drink,” he explained, seeing her staring at the soda. “I fulfilled my quota when I was sixteen. The government issued me a special card.” He fixed her again with his unwavering stare. His eyes were very green, with a kind of gold starburst at the center that was just a little off-putting and intense.
“So, are you going to tell me why you did this strange thing or not?” he asked.
“I…just wanted to.”
“You just wanted to buy out the show for the week? Because you couldn’t get tickets for the London Eye or something?”
“What’s the London Eye?”
“The bloody great Ferris wheel across from Parliament that all the normal tourists go to,” he said, leaning back and eyeing her curiously. “How long have you been here?”
“Three days.”
“Have you seen Parliament? The Tower?”
“No…”
“But you managed to find my show in the basement of Goldsmiths.”
She sipped her Guinness to buy herself a second before answering, then tried not to wince or spit. Ginny had never tasted tree bark, but this was what she imagined it would be like if you ran it through a juicer.
“I got a little inheritance,” she finally said. “And I wanted to spend some of it on something I thought was really worth it.”
Not totally a lie.
“So, you’re rich?” he said. “Good to know. Me, well, I’m not rich. I’m a hooligan.”
Before he began setting the names of coffee drinks to music, Keith had led a very interesting life. In fact, Ginny soon found out, he spent the ages of thirteen to seventeen being a parent’s worst nightmare. His career began with crawling over the fence to the garden of the local pub and begging for drinks or telling jokes for them. Then he figured out how to lock himself into his local at night (by hiding in an under-used cupboard) and get enough alcohol for himself and his friends. The owners got so sick of being robbed that they gave up and hired him under the table.
There followed a few years of breaking things for no reason and setting the occasional small fire. He fondly recalled razor blading the word wanker into the side of his schoolmaster’s car so that the message would show up in a few weeks, after it rained and rusted. He decided to try stealing. At first, he stole little things—candy bars, newspapers. He moved up to small appliances and electronics. It finally ended for him after he broke into a takeout shop and was arrested for grand theft chicken kebab.
After that, he decided to turn his life around. He created a short documentary film called How I Used to Steal and Do Other Bad Things. He sent this away to Goldsmiths, and they thought enough of it to accept him and even give him a grant for “special artistic merit.” And now he was here, creating plays about coffee.
He stopped talking long enough to notice that she wasn’t drinking her Guinness at all.
“Here,” he said, grabbing the glass and finishing off the remainder in one long gulp.
“I thought you said you don’t drink.”
“That’s not drinking,” he said dismissively. “I meant drink.”
“Oh.”
“Listen,” he said, moving closer, “as you’ve effectively paid for the entire show—and cheers for that—I might as well tell you this. I’m taking it to the Fringe Festival, in Edinburgh. You know the Fringe?”
“Not really,” Ginny said.
“It’s pretty much the biggest alternative theater festival in the world,” he said. “Lots of celebrities and famous shows have come out of it. Took me forever to get the school to pay to send us up there, but I did it.”
She nodded.
�
�So,” he said, “I take it you’ll be coming to the show again?”
She nodded again.
“I’ve got to pack everything up after the show tomorrow and move it out for the night,” he said. “Maybe you’d like to join in.”
“I’m not sure what to do with the rest of the tickets….”
Keith smiled confidently.
“Now that you’ve paid for them, they’ll be easy to unload. There aren’t a lot of people around since it’s June, but the international office will take anything free. And the foreign students are usually still here, wandering around.”
He looked down at her hands. She was clutching at her empty glass.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you to the tube.”
They left the smoke of the bar and stepped back into the fog. Keith walked her along a different route, one that she would never have been able to find on her own, to the glowing red circle with the bar cutting through it that read underground.
“So, you’ll be back tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Tomorrow.”
She fed the ticket eater and passed through the clacking gate, descending down into the white-tiled tube station. When she got to the platform, she saw that there was a pineapple sitting on the rails of the tracks. A whole pineapple in perfect condition. Ginny stood on the very edge of the platform and looked down at it.
It was hard to figure out how a pineapple could end up in a situation like that.
She felt the whoosh of wind that she now knew accompanied the approach of the train. Any second now it would come blasting through the tunnel and cross right over this spot.
“If the pineapple makes it,” she said to herself, “he likes me.”
The white nose of the train appeared. She stepped away from the edge, let the train go, and waited for it to pass away.
She looked down. The pineapple wasn’t broken or whole. It was simply gone.
The Not-so-Mysterious Benefactor
13 Little Blue Envelopes Page 5
