Journey to an 800 Number (6 page)

I heard mumblings as the two of them had a conference while a hand was held over the telephone’s mouthpiece. At last Sabrina was on the phone. She lost no time in apologizing. “Oh, Maximilian,” she said, “I’m so sorry that we couldn’t make it at twelve-thirty, but Mother had a very important business deal to discuss, and the man asked her to lunch, and he included me, and Mother felt it would look bad if I didn’t go with her because she
had rather insisted that he include me. She wanted me with her as sort of a chaperone, if you know what I mean. Have you ever had to chaperone your father?”

“Have I ever had to what?”

“You know,
be
there so that someone won’t lay some heavy passes on your parent.”

“No, I have never chaperoned my father, and—truth be told—I’ve never chaperoned my mother either.”

“Maybe your mother, being more of a house-wife, doesn’t meet as many men as Lilly does being at conventions.”

“My mother works. Not right now, of course, she’s on her honeymoon, but she worked up until the wedding.”

“Your mother got remarried?”

“Yes. She married F. Hugo Malatesta the First.”

“The First? Are there others?”

“Two and Three.”

“If he’s a clone, that interests me.”

“He’s not a clone. He’s a very rich man with a son who is the second F. Hugo, and a grandson, F. Hugo, who’s the third.”

“Well, congratulations,” Sabrina said.

“For what?”

“For having a First stepfather.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Whatever you want it to mean.”

“Will you be at the exhibition hall tomorrow?”

“I have to check with Lilly.”

“I think you ought to come. These people pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars rent to put on displays for your pleasure and education. I’ll introduce you to the dwarf who is playing a leprechaun.”

“Okay, we’ll be there. But don’t count on me for lunch.”

“The exhibits come down at two.”

“See you tomorrow,” she said.

I hung up and made my way back to the door into the exhibition floor, and the guard stopped me. I had left my badge pinned on my burnoose, and he would not allow me back in without it. I protested. I told him who I was, and he would not give in. I told him that I knew the names of the men at Mideast Airlines, that I knew the name of the camel-keeper and the name of the camel, but he would not give in.

Then I saw Maurice, one of the men in black tights who wore the dragon costume for Cathay Airlines. He was on his way out of the exhibit hall for a smoke. I asked him to please ask Father to bring me my burnoose with my badge. He said he would. Maurice tucked his cigarettes in his jersey sleeve and headed back inside the exhibition hall. Maurice was nice, but he had the look of someone who is doing something he doesn’t want to do and who has been doing it a long time. The ninth-grade English teacher at Fortnum had more of that look than anyone else I’ve ever met. Maurice was a dancer by profession,
and he said that he does gigs at conventions to earn his bread. A gig is a job, and he said he did gigs for the bread.

I had also talked to the chicken soup lady at El Al. Her name was Arabella Simpson. She told me that she was a pastry chef but what with everyone in the world worried about cholesterol, she had to give up on pastries and go into chicken soup. Jake Stone, the man who built the model of the Eiffel Tower, had started out his life as a sculptor. And Brumba, the African Safaritours man, was an actor who also did gigs at conventions to earn his daily bread. Only Scotty Devlin, the leprechaun, always worked conventions or side shows.

Father came to the door with my burnoose and my badge, and the guard let me in.

“Did you get Sabrina on the phone?” he asked.

“She’ll stop by sometime tomorrow,” I replied.

Father never asked why Sabrina had not stopped by, and I was glad he didn’t. I didn’t want him to get the notion that Lilly might want Sabrina to chaperone her when he was around. Of course, I’m not sure Father would get that notion, but I didn’t want him to think it, and I wasn’t sure why.

Ahmed emptied his bowels once while Father went out for our supper. I scooped it up, and circled around the room so that I could walk by the door where the guard who would not let me back in before was posted. As I passed him, I said, “The badge is under lumps one and two,” and I walked on by. I
carried it to the men’s room and flushed it down, and I didn’t even mention to Father about how helpful I’d been or about the shortcut I had discovered.

We were more tired that second night than we were after the first when we had done much more. Father said that it was always that way. That as far as he could tell, newness was the best vitamin pill in the world. We went to bed immediately after settling Ahmed.

The following morning I told Scotty Devlin that I had a friend who wanted to meet him. I told him even before I put on my burnoose. I twice approached the seven-foot man at the Air India Booth, but I didn’t bother to introduce myself. Seven feet isn’t so unusual. Not as unusual as three feet ten. To a basketball team, seven feet is almost basic. Besides, the man in the Air India Booth did not look at all talkative like Maurice or Scotty or Brumba. From where I stood he didn’t even look friendly.

About a quarter to two Scotty, the Leprechaun, came over to our booth and said, “Where’s your friend, Max?”

“She must have gotten detained,” I answered.

“Well,” Scotty said, “they paid me, so I’ll be making my way out of here strictly at two.”

“Sure,” I said. “I understand.”

At five minutes to two, Sabrina appeared in our booth without Lilly.

“Where’s your mother?”

“She had to check us out of the hotel and load
up the car. We had a late lunch again. Mother didn’t want me to come, but I insisted. I came only because I promised.”

I saw that Father was consulting with the men from Mideast Airlines for our pay. I said to Sabrina, “Wait here. Let me see if I can catch Scotty.” I started running toward the Irish Tourist Bureau booth. The man from Mideast called me and asked me to please return my burnoose and turban. I could understand his wanting me to. I could understand his thinking I was going to make off with them just as he was closing up shop. I could understand him. I really could. But I didn’t have to like it. I saw Scotty just as he was waving goodbye to the Irish Tourist Bureau and walking out the service exit.

I ran back to our Mideast booth. Sabrina was sitting on the rolled rug. “You missed him,” I said.

“I guess so,” she said.

“Here was your one chance to meet a real freak, and you blew it.”

“I guess I did,” she said, “but I got to see Ahmed in all his finery. Aren’t you glad that it’s his now?”

“What’s his?”

“That saddle. Those beautiful saddle bags. Everything belongs to Ahmed now and forever.”

I looked over at the two swarthy men from Mideast. They were speaking to one another in a foreign language. I didn’t understand what they were saying,
but I knew that they were disagreeing about something. Disagreement is a universal language.

Sabrina pointed over her shoulder. “One of them thinks the other should have charged your father more.”

“How much did they charge?”

“Five hundred,” Sabrina said.

“But that’s two days’ pay for this gig,” I said.

“It’s this last day they’re arguing about. The chief Arab over there says that your father should get only one hundred seventy-five for today since it was over at two o’clock, and your father says that he was promised two hundred fifty dollars for each of the days.”

“How do you know which of those two swarthies is the chief Arab? I’ve been here two and a half days, and I don’t know which is the more boss.”

“Where did you say you went to school?”

“I didn’t. I said I was going to go to Fortnum. You’ve never told me where you go. I don’t even know where you’re from.”

“I told you, Maximilian. I told you that Tours de Lilly is in Rahway, New Jersey. And, naturally, I go to school there.”

“How did school in Rahway teach you which one of these two was the chief Arab?”

She shrugged. “It’s after school where I learn those things.”

“What’s going to happen? Will my father get two fifty or one seventy-five?”

Sabrina tossed a look over her shoulder and said, “They’ll compromise at two hundred.”

At that moment Father came toward us folding a check into his wallet. I would like to have been able to tell how much it said, but I could not, and I would not ask, for I was afraid that Sabrina would be right, and I did not mind her being right. I really didn’t. I just minded her being terribly right.

Father said to Sabrina, “How did you get here?”

“Taxi.”

He told her that with so many people leaving at once, it would be difficult to find a taxi, and he would drive her back to the Fairmont. So Sabrina came with us to the sub-basement where our truck was parked. Father unbridled Ahmed and laid the new saddle down in the back of the truck, in the end where the worse thing Ahmed could do would be to spit on it.

The three of us piled into the cab with Sabrina between Father and me. It was an awful ride. Because there was a question I wanted to ask Sabrina. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to look as if I wanted to know the answer. So the ride to the Fairmont was short and silent. I realized that I would have to get down out of the truck to let Sabrina out. I thought that when I did so, I could walk her from the curb to the door of the hotel and ask her for her address and ask her if she would write back if I wrote first. I wanted to tell her that I would watch out for news of Renee. But once we pulled around
the driveway, a doorman opened the door of the truck cab and I got down, reaching my hand up to help Sabrina. She stepped down, her hair bouncing once and twice, prettier than she had a right to be at her age and size. She turned, waved her hand once, then twice, and walked into the hotel. Another doorman held the door for her, and she gave him a half-nod, as practiced as an heiress in a basic adventure story. I saw Lilly waiting just inside the door.

We pulled out of the Fairmont’s driveway, and Father said, “I guess you can get in touch with her at Tours de Lilly in Rahway, New Jersey.”

“What makes you think I’m anxious to get in touch with her?”

“I thought that if you found out something about Renee, you might want to let her know.”

There was no reason why my father, a man I hardly knew better than I knew F. Hugo Malatesta, should know what I was thinking. The fact that he did made me mad.

“How much money did you get for this last day’s work?” I asked.

“We settled for two hundred,” he said, “and Ahmed’s old saddle.”

I didn’t say another word until Father asked me where I wanted to go for supper, and I said that I didn’t care.

From Dallas we headed for Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Tulsa State Fair is held there in Expo Square. It appears that Father and Ahmed did the Fair every year. Father charged $1.00 for kids and $1.50 for adults for a four-minute ride on Ahmed. I don’t know why he charged less for kids because it seemed to me that they were a lot more trouble, but I was not interested enough to ask. If you calculate that the Fair was open twelve hours a day and then calculate that he had a rider every four minutes (and allow one minute to load and unload the beast) and calculate that one rider every hour would be an adult, Father would make $150 a day, if we were kept busy every minute. The Fair lasted five days, so the most, the very, very most that Father could make at the Oklahoma Fair would be $750, which is less than it cost Mr. F. Hugo Malatesta to become a member of the dining club on top of the First Guaranty Bank Building in Philadelphia. But I didn’t say anything.

I found out Father had paid booth rent in advance, and for that we also had the privilege of
hooking our camper up on the fairgrounds.

We no sooner pulled into the fairgrounds and no sooner took Ahmed off the truck and tethered him to the hitch than a pack of kids came running over to Father calling, “Woody! Woody!” The smallest one made a running jump into his arms while the other three walked over to Ahmed and started stroking him and talking to him as if he were some kind of world-class animal.

Father lifted the one who had leaped at him high in the air. “How is my friend, Emmy?” Father asked. So it was a girl. All four of the kids looked alike: color-coded to mark them as a set; each one only slightly different in size. All except the smallest had boys’ names: Manuelo, Iago, and—would you believe?—Jesus, pronounced Hay-soos. I wondered if he had gotten his name from some ancient Mexican Indian blindfold custom. I had to congratulate Father for being able to tell them apart when he introduced them to me one at a time.

“Wait until you see what I got,” he said. He went to the truck and brought out Ahmed’s new saddle and bridle. Those four kids each took a step back and looked afraid to touch it like it was some museum piece never to be touched instead of something to throw over a camel’s back and sit on. The biggest of the four kids—who I thought was my age, but who I later found out was two years older-said, “Hey, Woody, did you keep the old one so that we can still ride?”

“No,” Father said. “You still ride, but you ride the new saddle. Who’s first?”

Emmy ricocheted out from a forest of legs and said, “Me! Me! Me!”

Manuelo not only saddled up Ahmed, he also helped Emmy get up, and then he led Ahmed around the paddock, tugging on the bridle, clicking his tongue and saying soft words. Whatever combination of things he did was right, for Ahmed didn’t kick or spit. His stomach just rumbled, but nothing could stop that except a bullet to his brain.

Father leaned against the door of the camper and asked the middle boy, the one I would learn to distinguish as Iago, how was his mother.

“She’s good. She didn’t want to come this year. Said it was too much work. But we told her we wouldn’t have no vacation at all if she didn’t work the Fair. Emmy cried so much that Mama said her tears gonna make the tacos salty.”

Father said to Iago, “Look, do you think you can unhitch Ahmed and settle him down for the night? I’m going to lie down for a few minutes.” Father started into the camper and called out, “Say
hello
to your mamma for me.”