Masterpiece (4 page)

“It’s ink,” said Karl.

James said nothing, turning it over in his hand. Marvin could tell he was disappointed.

“It’s a pen-and-ink set. For drawing.” Karl rustled in the bag and pulled out a flat black case. “Here’s the pen.
Look, your initials, so everyone will know it’s yours.” Marvin could see that there were three crisp gold letters on the top. “And I got you a pad of good paper, too,” Karl added.

James tilted the bottle of ink, watching the liquid shift inside, catching the light. “Cool,” he said. He looked up at his father. “Thanks, Dad. It’s really cool.”

“Is that permanent ink?” Mrs. Pompaday demanded. “Does it stain?”

“Well, yes. . . . That’s what you use for pen-and-ink drawings.”

Mrs. Pompaday sighed. “It had better stay in your room, James. On your desk. I don’t want ink splattered all over the house.” She shook her head. “Really, Karl. That doesn’t seem a very appropriate gift for an eleven-year-old.”

Karl shifted uncomfortably. “He’ll be careful with it, you know that. James is careful with everything.”

Mrs. Pompaday snorted.

“It will be fun for him to experiment,” Karl said, looping one arm over James’s narrow shoulders and pulling him close. “Look at the pen, buddy.”

James lifted the pen and unscrewed the cap. Marvin could see that the pen was slim and elegant, with a delicate silver nib.

“Wow,” James said, clearly trying to muster some enthusiasm.

“This is how you fill it,” Karl said, demonstrating. “Watch the position of your hand while you’re drawing,
so you don’t smear the ink. It’ll take a while to get the hang of it.”

The doorbell rang again.

“Oh, here they are,” Mrs. Pompaday cried. “Boys! James, hurry, the goody bags.” She nudged Karl toward the door. “You can show all this to him tomorrow when he’s with you,” she said. “You’ll pick him up at noon?”

“Yeah, or a little after. That okay, James?”

James looked from his father to his mother and nodded quickly. “Sure, Dad.”

Mrs. Pompaday pursed her lips, sweeping past him. “Well, I’d like to know what time to expect you. We have plans tomorrow afternoon. If you’re going to cancel like last time, you need to at least call! It isn’t fair to James, and it certainly isn’t fair to me. I have a life too, you know.”

“Sorry about that,” Karl said sheepishly. “Stuff comes up, that’s all.”

Mrs. Pompaday swung open the door and smiled broadly. “Julie! We’ve had the most wonderful time; we didn’t even notice it was so late. You’re going to have trouble dragging Ryan away! Oh, this is James’s father, Karl Terik. Yes, that’s right, the artist. He’s just leaving.”

T
hat night, when the house was quiet, Marvin and Elaine sorted through the treasure box. Their parents were playing a game of staples in the other room. Staples was the beetles’ modified version of the human game horseshoes, in which two teams threw staples at broken toothpicks stuck in the floor. Because each beetle could throw as many as four staples at once, using his front legs, the air was filled with sharp whizzing objects, and the grown-ups preferred to sequester the children in another part of the house before they began.

“Watch out, Albert!” Marvin heard his mother cry. “We have enough holes in the wall as it is.”

Marvin and Elaine peered into the treasure box, looking for the perfect gift for James. “There’s the nickel,” Marvin said.

“Oooo, a buffalo nickel!” Elaine cried. “He’ll like that, don’t you think? They’re rare. He can sell it and buy something better. That’s what I’d do.”

Marvin touched the dull surface of the coin. “I guess it’s the best thing in here,” he said, “but I’d rather give him something to keep.”

“Well, maybe he will keep it,” Elaine said cheerfully. “Boys like to save the silliest things. Look at you with your tack collection. What will you ever use those for?”

“Those are
weapons
,” Marvin protested.

Elaine laughed so hard that she fell off the edge of the box and lay on her back, feet waving in the air. “Oh! Help me! Marvin, turn me over.”

But Marvin ignored her. He burrowed under the nickel and used his shell to flip it out of the treasure box. Then he heaved it upright and rolled it through the hole in the wall into the black expanse of the cupboard.

“Marvin!” Elaine called. “Come back!”

The journey through the dark apartment to James’s room was an arduous one. Rolling the nickel across the kitchen tile went relatively smoothly, but hoisting it over the door-sills left Marvin exhausted and panting. He had to watch for trouble every step of the way, not just night-roving Pompadays, but the booby traps of forgotten gum or Scotch tape on the floor or, worse yet, a foraging mouse.

When he finally reached James’s bedroom, he had to sit for a minute to catch his breath. A streetlamp outside the window cast dim light across the walls, and in the bluish blackness Marvin saw the mountainous silhouette of James, asleep under the blankets. He heard the boy’s deep breaths.

Marvin thought about the birthday party. Had it been a good day for James? The boys at the party weren’t his friends. The presents had been an uninspired mix of electronic games and designer clothing. Mrs. Pompaday was as fussy and self-centered as always, and even James’s father, whom Marvin liked a lot, hadn’t come up with a present that seemed to please his son. Marvin glanced down at the worn face of the buffalo nickel. Would the coin make up for everything else? Probably not.

Suddenly, Marvin felt so sad he could hardly stand it. A person’s birthday should be a special day, a wonderful day, a day of pure celebration for the luck of being born! And James’s birthday had been miserable.

Marvin rolled the nickel to a prominent place in the middle of the floor, away from the edge of the rug where it might be overlooked. James would see it there. He looked around the dark room one last time.

Then he saw the bottle of ink. It was high up on James’s desk, and it appeared to be open.

Curious, Marvin crawled across the floor to the desk and quickly climbed to the top. James had spread newspaper over the desk and two or three sheets of the art paper his father had given him. On one page he’d made some experimental scribbles and had written his name. The pen, neatly capped, rested at the edge of the paper, but the bottle of ink stood open, glinting in the weak light.

Without really thinking about what he was doing, Marvin crawled to the cap of the bottle and dipped his
two front legs in the ink that had pooled inside. On his clean hind legs, he backed over to an unused sheet of paper. He looked out the window at the nightscape of the street: the brownstone opposite with its rows of darkened windows, the snow-dusted rooftop, the street-lamp, the naked, spidery branches of a single tree. Gently, delicately, and with immense concentration, Marvin lowered his front legs and began to draw.

The ink flowed smoothly off his legs across the page. Though he’d never done anything like this before, it seemed completely natural, even unstoppable. He kept glancing up, tracing the details of the scene with his eyes, then transferring them onto the paper. It was as if his legs had been waiting all their lives for this ink, this
page, this lamp-lit window view. There was no way to describe the feeling. It thrilled Marvin to his very core.

He drew and drew, losing all sense of time. He moved back and forth between the ink cap and the paper, dipping his front legs gently in the puddle of black ink, always careful not to smear his previous work. He watched the picture take shape before his eyes. It was a complicated thatching of lines and whirls that looked like an abstract design up close, as Marvin leaned over it. But as he backed away, it transformed into a meticulous portrait of the cityscape: a tiny, detailed replica of the winter scene outside the window.

And then the light changed. The sky turned from black to dark blue to gray, the streetlamp shut off, and James’s room was filled with the noise of the city waking. A garbage truck groaned and banged as it passed on the street below. James stirred beneath his bedcovers. Marvin, desperate to finish his picture before the boy awakened, hurried between the page and the ink cap, which was almost out of ink. At last he stopped, surveying his miniature scene.

It was finished.

It was perfect.

It was breathtaking.

Marvin’s heart swelled. He felt that he had never done anything so fine or important in his entire life. He wiped his ink-soaked forelegs on the newspaper and scurried behind the desk lamp, bursting with pride, in a
fever of anticipation, just as James threw off his blankets.

James stumbled out of bed and stood in the center of the bedroom, rubbing his face. He looked around groggily, then straightened, his eyes lighting on the floor.

“Hey,” he said softly. He padded over to the nickel and crouched, picking it up.

Good for James
, thought Marvin. Of course there was no reason to worry that he’d overlook it.

James turned the coin over in his palm and smiled. “Huh,” he said, walking toward his desk. “I wonder where this came from.”

Marvin stiffened and retreated farther behind the desk lamp.

James gasped.

Marvin watched James’s pale face, his eyes huge as he stared at the drawing. He quickly looked behind him, as if the room might hold some clue that would explain what he saw on his desk.

Then slowly, brows furrowed, James pulled out the chair and sat down. He leaned over the picture. “Wow,” he said. “Wow!”

Marvin straightened with pride.

James kept examining the drawing, then the scene through the window, whispering to himself. “It’s exactly like what’s outside! It’s like a teeny-tiny picture of the street! This is amazing.”

Marvin crept around the base of the lamp so he could hear the boy better.

“But . . . how?” James picked up the pen and uncapped it, squinting. He lifted the bottle of ink and frowned, screwing the ink cap back on. “Who did this?” he asked, staring again at the picture.

And then, without planning to—without meaning to, without ever thinking for a moment of the consequences—Marvin found himself crawling out into the open, across the vast desktop, directly in front of James. He stopped at the edge of the picture and waited, unable to breathe.

James stared at him.

After a long, interminable silence, during which Marvin almost dashed to the grooved safety of the wainscoting behind the desk, James spoke.