I Got a D in Salami #2 (10 page)

I followed his gaze to see what had gotten his attention. There, sitting in the middle of the rug listening to Mr. Gristediano, was the largest dog I have ever seen. I think it was a Great Dane. You could have stacked up thirty-five Cheerios and still not have reached its head.

In a split second, Cheerio jumped out of my arms and made a beeline for that mountain of a dog, which could have easily eaten him for a snack.

“Cheerio!” I yelled. “No!”

Mr. Gristediano stopped talking and turned to look at us. I didn't know what else to do. I waved. My friends were faster at thinking than I was.

Ashley pointed to Mr. Blue Suit's shoes.

“Sir,” she said, “your shoe's untied.”

As he looked down, the four of us darted around him and ran inside. That Ashley, she has a great mind, even in a crisis.

Cheerio had reached the huge dog and was standing nose to nose with her. Cheerio sniffed her. The Great Dane sniffed back. Her sniff was so powerful that it was like a vacuum cleaner that almost lifted Cheerio's front paws off the ground. Cheerio didn't growl like he usually would have. In fact, it looked like was still smiling.

Mr. Gristediano stared at us. “Who are you, and what exactly do you think you're doing?” he demanded. The other people in the room whispered to one another. I couldn't make out their exact words, but I was pretty sure they weren't saying how great it was that we popped in for a visit.

“Mr. Gristediano,” I answered, “I can't tell you how happy we are to be here. What a nice house you have.”

I had never seen such a fancy apartment. Every space was filled with beautiful objects—African sculptures, china lamps, crystal candlesticks, and even a pink marble chess set.

“You haven't answered my question,” Mr. Gristediano said.
“WHO . . . ARE . . . YOU?”

“Here's the truth, Mr. Gristediano, sir,” I said. “It all started yesterday afternoon at about three-twenty, or maybe it was three-twenty-five, when I came into my mom's deli with my report
. . .
”

Before I had a chance to finish the sentence, I heard a sound coming from Cheerio's throat. It was the weirdest sound he'd ever made, something between a purr and a howling love song.

“I don't like the sound of that, Zip,” Frankie whispered. “Your dog's going off the deep end.”

Frankie has known Cheerio since he was a puppy, and he knows that when Cheerio gets started on his spinning thing, there's no stopping him.

Sure enough, Cheerio started to spin. Usually, he chases his tale because he's upset or stressed. I'd never seen him spin happily. He started to spin around so fast that you couldn't tell his head from his tail. I think he was doing it to impress the Great Dane. It worked, because before you know it, Mr. Gristediano's dog got up and started to spin too. She followed Cheerio all around the living room—to the grand piano, around the potted plants, along the front of the fireplace—like two spinning tops completely out of control.

“Nina! Down, girl!” Mr. Gristediano commanded.

“Hank,” said Ashley, “I think Cheerio has a crush on Nina.”

“He should pick on someone his own size,” said Frankie.

But it was too late for that. Cheerio and Nina were spinning around a mile a minute in what I guess was some kind of weird doggie love cha-cha. I'm telling you, those dogs were twirling all across the apartment like two crazed ballerinas.

Now, when Cheerio spins, it can get pretty messy. He's been known to get our rugs twisted up in a bunch or maybe knock over an occasional lamp. But a Great Dane spinning faster than the speed of sound is a whole other thing. Nina was like a tornado traveling across the floor.

“Stop it, Nina! Stop it now!” Mr. Gristediano yelled.

He grabbed her collar. Nina escaped his reach and followed Cheerio, who had twirled himself under the coffee table. Nina tried to get under there, too, but she couldn't fit, so she spun around next to it
. SWISH!
Her tail whipped around and landed smack on the pink chess set. The pieces shot into the air like missiles, and all the well-dressed people sitting on the couch scattered so they wouldn't get hit by a flying bishop or a knight on horseback.

“What on earth is going on?” asked a woman with short, black hair.

“Take cover!” hollered a chubby man with a bow tie. He crawled behind the couch, but he wasn't fast enough to avoid getting smacked in the behind by a flying rook. Luckily, his tush was well padded, and the chess piece just bounced off and fell onto the carpet.

One of the pawns landed on Cheerio's tail, and he let out a little yip. He bolted from under the coffee table and spun himself over toward the picture window that looked out at the Hudson River.

“Cheerio!” I hollered. “Come! Or if not come, then stop!”

Nina went galumphing after Cheerio, who was now dangerously close to one of the African sculptures. It was a sculpture of a man holding a baby up to the sky.

“Oh, no,” Frankie said.

But
oh, yes
. Nina's tail thrashed into the wooden sculpture. The sculpture toppled, like a quarterback getting sacked. It landed on the floor with a thud. A few of the guests gasped, but one man, who I recognized as the manager of our local Gristediano's, actually chuckled a little.

“Clean up on aisle five,” he said, giving the woman next to him a nudge. The woman next to him didn't even laugh a little.

Mr. Blue Suit ran to the sculpture and tried to stand it up again.

“Here, let me help you,” I said.

“Stay away, whoever you are!” he yelled. “You've done all the damage you're going to do!”

That's what he thought.

By now, Cheerio and Nina were doing their dance across the center of the room, taking down everything in their path.
Bam
went a vase with blue flowers all over it.
Rip
went the pillows on the fancy purple couch.
Smash
went the carved crystal candlesticks.
Bam! Pow! Crunch!
went the three china ducks on the end table. Boy, if I had ever seen break dancing, this was it.

Cheerio was having the time of his life. If he had cheeks and they weren't furry, they would have been glowing. Nina was having quite a fun time herself. She didn't seem to care that Mr. Gristediano was shouting every command he knew.

“Stay! Lie Down! Sit! Come! Heel! Up! Down! Off!” he screamed.

Nothing was working. All the people in their business suits were crouched in the corners of the room and behind the sofa. Mr. Gristediano was running after Nina, and I was running after Cheerio. Those two lovesick dogs couldn't have cared less about us. They totally ignored us, spinning their way to the center of the room near the table of my mom's cold cuts. The vibrations made the platters rattle and shake. One of the platters had shifted to the edge of the table and was about to fall. I pushed it back and grabbed a slice of soy salami from it. I held it up.

“Here, Cheerio!” I said. “A treat!”

I thought if I got his attention, he'd stop spinning for a minute and then I could grab him. Instead, I got Nina's attention, which was not my plan.

Nina jumped up to get the salami, and as she came down, her giant tail swept across the table, knocking all the platters into the air. There were trays of lunch meat sailing around like Frisbees. Slices of soy salami flew everywhere, scattering like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Nina was grabbing them out of the air. She got them before they even hit the ground, ate some of them, and gave a few to Cheerio, since jumping isn't exactly his strong suit.

I looked at some of the salami that landed on the rug. I think I saw the word
sloppy
in one and the word
fail
in another. I know I saw
Ms
.
Adolf
in another one—the words, not actually her.

Cheerio must have gotten one with a big chunk of something in it, because he was having a tough time chewing up his slice. I looked down at him. He held the salami between his front paws, trying like crazy to gnaw through a chunk of manila folder that was wadded up in it. He was so busy concentrating that he was standing still for the first time since he crashed the party.

“Let's get him,” I said to the others.

Frankie, Ashley, Robert, and I joined hands and made a tight circle. We crept up on him, and before he could say “arf,” we had him surrounded. I scooped him up and held him tight in my arms.

Poor Cheerio. Love was hard on him. He was exhausted. His little heart was racing, and he was panting. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth, and it still had a piece of soy salami clinging to it. I lifted the salami out of his mouth so he wouldn't choke on it. When I looked at it, I couldn't believe my eyes. There, lying in the salami for all to see, was my
D
in spelling.

That rotten grade was going to follow me wherever I went.

WE'RE FRIENDS, RIGHT? So you know me by now—at least a little bit. So you've probably figured out that when bad things happen to me, I make lists in my head.

That's exactly what I did as I looked around the mess that used to Mr. Gristediano's beautiful apartment.

1. Mr. Gristediano, who is really a genie in disguise, will grant me three wishes. For my first wish, I will wish that none of this ever happened, and it won't have.

2. For my second wish, I will wish for front-row season tickets to the Met's games. I will get them.

3. While sitting in my box at the Mets game, I will catch more foul balls than any fan ever did.

4. They will offer me a position on the Mets as center fielder. I will accept the position and become the youngest baseball player in America.

5. For my third wish, I will wish for world peace, because that's what Papa Pete always wishes for when he blows out his birthday candles.

6. I will become world famous as a peace-loving baseball star.

YOU MUST HAVE guessed by now that Numbers 1 through 6 didn't come true.

Instead, what happened was that Mr. Gristediano called my parents and said that he had to see them right away about a very serious matter.

So much for my predictions. I guess I don't have much future in the crystal ball business.

THE HARDEST THING in the world is waiting, especially when you're waiting for bad news. It only took twenty minutes for my parents to get to Mr. Gristediano's, but it seemed like twenty years.

I asked Papa Pete if he would take Ashley, Frankie, and Robert home. They got into this mess to help me out. I didn't see any reason for them to have to be there to take the blame. Papa Pete told me he was proud of that decision, because I was taking responsibility for my own actions. Before he left, he took my face in his hands and whispered, “Remember, Hankie:
truth
. That's the magic word.”

Papa Pete took Cheerio home, too. Poor Cheerio. After Mr. Gristediano's store managers left, Cheerio flopped down next to the fireplace and started to lick the bricks as though they were doggie candy. Don't ask me why. You just can't explain a lot of what Cheerio does. Nina wanted to play with him, but Cheerio had lost all interest in her. That's him. In love one minute, licking bricks the next.

When we were alone, I offered to help Mr. Gristediano clean up the mess in his apartment.

“I think you've done enough damage already,” he said. He was holding the pieces of one of the china ducks that had broken in half.

“I bought these ducks in Italy,” he said. “I paid a pretty penny for them, as I recall.”

“I'm really sorry, Mr. Gristediano,” I said. “I didn't mean to break anything.”

He didn't answer. I couldn't blame him. I'd be angry at me, too, if I were him.

I bent down and started to pick up the chess pieces that were scattered all across the floor. I had to do something to help. Very carefully, I put them back on the board the way they were supposed to go.

“I see you play chess,” Mr. Gristediano said.

“My grandpa taught me.”

He began to sweep up the pieces of the blue-flowered vase. It was quiet.

“Do you play chess?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “My father taught me. He played a lot of chess.”

“My dad does crossword puzzles,” I said.

“Do you do them, too?”

“No way. I'm a terrible speller.”

“Me too,” he said. “I was a teenager before I could spell my name correctly.”

“Really?”

“Really. Of course, it's not that easy when your name is Vincenzo Giovanni Giuseppe Gristediano. My brother got off easy. His name is Mike.”

I laughed. Mr. Gristediano smiled for the first time since the disaster. I couldn't believe he could smile after the all the trouble I had caused.

The doorman downstairs rang the buzzer to say my parents had arrived. I sighed. And there it was—the moment I definitely had not been waiting for.

When my mom came in and saw the mess, she shot me one of her mom looks. It was the one that says, “I don't know what you've done, but how could you have done it?” You've probably gotten that look sometime in your life. My dad had a different look on his face. It was the same one he had the time he went to the dentist for a root canal on his back molar.

“Let me just say that we are so sorry,” my mom began.