Okay for Now (6 page)

the god Creativity was still being good to her.

But I needed the $22.78.

I swung open the door out of the kitchen and went into a dining room. It was cool and dark and full

of roses—big red ones on black wallpaper, and big red ones in a vase in the middle of a dark table

that looked like it should be in a museum or something.

I followed the sound of the typing and the dinging. Down a long, long hall with walls hung with

framed photographs of actors and actresses—Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and Yul Brynner

with his bald head and Telly Savalas with his bald head and Danny Kaye and Lucille Ball even, all

posing on stages. Then the hall let into a bright sitting room, all yellow and white again. And then

down another short hall there was a glass door with diamond panes and behind that I could see Mrs.

Windermere typing wildly—sometimes her hands went high above her shoulders before they dropped

down to smack at the keys. And by the way, there wasn't any god sitting on the chair by her desk with

his wings folded. He couldn't have sat there if he wanted to. The chair was filled with books, most of

them lying open, one on top of another.

I waited before knocking at the glass door. I'm not lying, her typing was a sight to see.

But I couldn't stand there forever. So I knocked.

Typing not stopping. Little bell still dinging.

I knocked again. Twice.

Without turning around, she waved her hand to shoo me away.

So I knocked again.

Both hands up above her shoulders this time. Both hands dropping down to the typewriter. She

turned around. Slowly. There was this look on her face that ... well, if she had reached for one of the

sharp pencils stabbed through her bun, I would have been gone.

"What is it now?" she said.

"I have the bill," I said. "Twenty-two seventy-eight."

You have to remember that we were talking through the door here, which made the whole thing kind

of weird. It was like I was talking through glass to some sort of prison inmate.

"Put it on my account," she said. She turned back to the typewriter to sort out all the keys that were

jammed together now.

"I can't," I said. "Mr. Spicer wants me to bring the cash back to him."

She was working over her typewriter.

"Mrs. Windermere?" I said.

"Arrrgghh," she said. I'm not lying. "Arrrgghh." Just like that. Then she stood up and grabbed the

door handle—which was glass too, by the way—and threw the door open. "You fix the typewriter

keys," she said. "I'll get the money."

I went into the room. It was bigger than I had thought. Its walls kept going back and back, and every

wall had dark wood bookshelves to the ceiling, and every bookshelf was crammed. Out on the floor

there was a round table heaped with books. Beside that was a dark couch covered with rows of

books. Everywhere on the floor, piles of books leaned into each other. On the sides of her desk and in

front of her desk, more piles leaning. I never thought that one person could own so many books. I

picked one up off the desk and smelled its pages. The smell of old paper.

I worked at separating the keys in her typewriter. I found out pretty quickly that the trick is to take

one key at a time and just let the ink get all over your hands, and I got most of them done by the time

Mrs. Windermere got back. She threw twenty-five dollars at me.

"I don't think I have any change," I said.

"Keep it," she said. "Splurge. Go on a shopping spree. Book a trip to Monte Carlo. Do whatever

you want. But do it away from me. Here, stop fussing with that. You'll just get everything all inky."

She took over the typewriter keys, and I think by the time I backed out of the room with the twenty-

five dollars, she had forgotten I was there.

Two dollars and twenty-two cents. It was the only tip I had gotten all day, but it was a good one:

$2.22. Do you know what you can do with $2.22? I had never had that much money all my own.

$2.22.

So maybe it was because I was thinking about the $2.22 that I turned the wrong way in the short

hall and got into a room I hadn't been in before. It was all light blues with white furniture and a white

fireplace with small stone lions on either side and another vase on a dark table filled with pink roses.

And over the fireplace, a huge picture of birds. The same size as the one of the Arctic Tern. And by

John James Audubon again. You could tell.

But this one was different. One bird was the mother. Two were swimming away, doing what they

felt like doing, not even looking at her. And there was this small bird, pretty young. It was looking

like maybe it wanted to swim where the other two birds were, but maybe not. And anyway, he was

afraid to try. And the mother? Her neck was turned all around about as far as it could possibly go, and

she was looking far away, at something a long way out from the picture. She was looking at a place

she wanted to go but couldn't, because she didn't know how to get away.

There were flowers beside her.

I stood there looking at that picture for a long time—even after the typing and dinging started up

again. The little one didn't know what he wanted to do at all. I reached up and touched the glass over

it.

Cold.

Then I found the kitchen again, went out, locked the door behind me, and hid the key in its so-secret

spot that no one would ever think to look in. I wiped my inky hands on the grass and dragged the

wagon back to Spicer's Deli.

When I pulled the wagon inside, Mr. Spicer looked at his watch, then at me, like I hadn't been

paying attention.

"Did you see Mrs. Windermere?" said Lil.

"Yup," I said. I handed Mr. Spicer the twenty-five dollars. He counted it, took it to the register, and

paid out my tip. "Pretty nice," he said.

I nodded.

"Well?" said Lil.

"Well what?" I said.

"I pay salary every other Saturday," Mr. Spicer said.

"Okay," I said. I still had my $2.22 in hand. "That's fine."

I know. I'm a chump.

"So what happened?" said Lil.

Then Mr. Spicer handed me a Coke.

You remember, right, that I know what to do with a really cold Coke?

I did it. Except the burp, since Mr. Spicer was right there.

"Not a thing," I said when I finished.

"You skinny thug," said Lil.

I handed her the bottle.

I burped when I got out onto the street. I'm not lying, it was a pretty good one. Birds flew out of the

maples.

I put the $2.22 in my pocket and went up to the library. Mrs. Merriam looked at me, then went back to

whatever she'd been working at to let me know that I wasn't worthy of Her Majesty's attention.

So what? So what? It wasn't like I needed her attention. I just came to the library to see if I could

get that beak right, which I probably couldn't on account of how I don't draw. Like I told Mr. Powell.

So what?

I went upstairs. The lights were on. Mr. Powell hadn't turned the page of the book; it was still open

to the Arctic Tern.

But there was one thing that was different. There were three large blank sheets of paper on the

glass display case. And there were five colored pencils: gray, black, green, blue, and orange. Dark

orange. They were all sharp. There was an eraser too. Waiting like I had ordered them.

I ran my hand over the glass on top of the Arctic Tern. Then I left. I didn't touch anything, since I

don't draw. Remember?

That night at supper, my father asked if I started the job.

I nodded.

Did I get paid?

Tips.

Tips? That's all? Tips? Didn't I get paid for the day?

I told him I got paid every other Saturday.

He told me I was a chump, and he and my brother laughed at me like I was the jerk of the world.

Like I was never going to see any of that money. Like I was about as useless as a rubber crutch.

My mother turned and looked out the window, at something far away.

***

The first time, I had finally jumped under a sprinkler because it was so hot the sidewalks were

white and shimmering, and if there was any place within ten miles to go swimming, I didn't know

about it. I guess I got desperate. So I jumped under a sprinkler not so far from the library, and it was

perfect, and I had just come out from under it when, of course, Lil Spicer turned the corner on her

bike, looking as cool as if she had been in Monte Carlo or something.

As soon as she saw me, she started to laugh.

"Did you fall into a pool?" she said. It took her a while to say this, since she was mostly snorting.

"No, I didn't fall into a pool," I said.

"Did you—you did! You went under a sprinkler!"

I didn't say anything. What would you have said?

"You're trying to stay cool by running under sprinklers. Just like when you were a cute little boy

instead of a skinny thug."

"Yes, I'm trying to stay cool."

"I suppose that's one way to do it."

"Yes, it's one way to do it."

Lil Spicer started to laugh again.

"It's a pretty dumb way," she said.

"Thanks for pointing that out," I said, and went on down the white-hot sidewalk, wishing that I

wasn't squishing so much.

"You're leaving ... you're leaving footprints," she pointed out. She was laughing so hard, she was

almost crying.

I hate this town.

The second time was on Friday. I was heading toward the library—and yes, I know it's not open on

Friday but who knows if a miracle might happen and it would be open after all? So I was heading to

the library, and when I turned the corner, there, two blocks away, was my brother, with a new group

of criminals. It hadn't taken him long. They were in front of Spicer's Deli, probably figuring out how

to rob it. My brother sat on a Sting-Ray that wasn't his—I guess it belonged to some weaker member

of the pack—and he was probably talking about how hard life was where we had come from, and

how he'd been in knife fights that were for real, and how he'd even seen a teacher get knifed—which

was all a lie, but when he pulled up his shirt and showed the long scar he had gotten from climbing

over a fence—which was what he was doing right now, pulling up his shirt—who could tell it wasn't

a scar from a blade?

I moved back into the shadows beneath the tall maples in front of the library. I didn't move. That's

how packs detect you. You move, they see you out of the corners of their beady yellow eyes, and then

they swarm for the kill.

Which was why I did not move when I felt a large, wet, sloppy plop drop down from the branches

overhead.
Large
isn't the right word, and
drop
isn't either. Think
pour down
for
drop down
and you

have it about right. There was a rustle, and a crow flew away, grinning. I did not move. The plop

slimed down my hair, over my ear, and then along my neck and into the collar of my T-shirt, and still I

didn't move. I waited. I could feel the bird poop starting to crust over in the heat, and still I didn't

move. I waited. Until finally, finally Mr. Spicer came out and hollered, and my brother hollered back

and stood up on his Sting-Ray—he was really pretty good at balancing on the thing—and then he

looked my way. I think my heart stopped. I almost panicked and moved. But someone must have said

something—probably God—and so he turned and headed the other way on his bike, hollering once

more at Mr. Spicer before he left, the jerk.

My heart started up again.

I waited in the shadows until he biked around the corner with the rest of the pack, and then I

reached up to wipe off the bird poop.

Except before I got to it, I heard Lil's voice.

"Did you know that half of your head is covered in bird droppings?" she said.

"It's not bird droppings," I said.

"It's not?"

"Dropping. It's one dropping. Not droppings. It's not like I stood here and let this army of birds

poop on me."

"So you stood there and let only one bird poop on you. Good for you."

"I didn't
let
it poop on me."

"Oh," she said.

Do you know how she said
Oh?
It wasn't like she was figuring something out and had just gotten it.

It was like she was saying that I was the jerk of the world, which I had been hearing a lot lately.

"It sure is a mess," she said. "When you have hair as black as yours, it really shows well."

"Thanks," I said.

"Do you need some help cleaning it up?" she said.

By the way, and not that I think you're not too smart or anything, but I just want to make sure: You

do know that she wasn't really offering to help, right?

"No," I said. "I don't need any help."

"If you ask me," she said, pushing her bike past, "you are someone who needs a lot of help." She

turned and looked back at me. "Maybe you should try going under a sprinkler," she said, and smiled

helpfully.

I smiled back and watched her ride away.

Then I reached up and felt the bird poop in my hair. It was crusty all right, but it was still sticky