Slot Machine (20 page)

Brother Percy took it as a compliment. He inhaled deeply, as if he could breathe all the mentalness in. “Yes,” he said. “Aren’t we?”

Mama,

Whole new me, volume eighty-seven.

There once was a boy from Massachusetts

Whose mother thought him dumb fat and useless

So she threw him a bone

Ninety miles from his home

And today he was slotted with the fruitses.

Yours,

Elvin, Lord Bishop

When I showed up the next morning, the first person I saw was Oskar. Because he was doing his work outside on the lawn.

“Steee-rike!” he yelled after nailing a three-by-three-foot cardboard square with a glob of paint. “Elvin,” he called happily when he saw me. He stretched both hands to the hazy white sky in greeting. It looked like he was wearing psychedelic gloves, paint coating his hands and halfway up his forearms. “Congratulate me—I did it. I got ejected from the previously unejectable Arts Sector.
God
, I’m a man,” he said, scooping a handful of black from a jar and slinging it.

“You didn’t,” I said.

“Nah, not really. Partway, though. I was making such a mess, they asked me to take it outside. I can go back in when I’m done.”

I looked around. There was not a brush anywhere near him. He was exclusively throwing paint at his canvas. And having a ball.

“Yar!” he said. “A little titanium white there. Yar! A bit of vermilion up there.”

“Looks like fun, Oskar. Can I have a throw?”

He turned on me darkly, stopping his fun for a minute. “What do you think, this is a joke? This is no game, this is a work of art I’m doing here. I can’t let you just come in and screw it up.”

I stared at the work. “Oh. Sorry.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said, returning to his work, and to his bright mood. “Indigo!” he called.
Splatch
.

“Um, what is it?” I asked, half ducking in anticipation.

“You don’t know?”

I shook my head.

“Come on, Elvin, it’s right there. It’s our class picture. It’s us.” He rushed up to the portrait, pointed excitedly to a gob of green half on, half drooping off, the lower right-hand corner. “That’s you.”

I don’t know what happened to me there—maybe it was Oskar’s intensity, or his pride and enjoyment of it all, but I saw it. It looked like me. It looked like all of us.

“I like it,” I said. “Except I have a little more hair than that, and I part it on the other side.”

He held up his dripping hands as if to stop me: “Sorry, man. That’s my vision.”

I left him with his vision. I went inside.

“Drink?” Brother Clarke said cheerfully, hunched over his espresso machine again.

“No, thank you,” I said, walking on past toward the busy crafts table. Just as I got there, three guys plunked their faces down into bowls of puttylike goop. Three other guys pushed the heads down deeper from behind, held them there, then helped them back out. I crept closer to check it out as they toweled off, and saw perfect impressions of their faces in the bowls.

“Beautiful,” Brother Fox crowed, clapping. “Then we’ll pour liquid into this mold to make the mask. And when that is hardened, you can paint it or do whatever you like, to make it look however you want it to look.”

“Cool,” I said, not meaning to say it to anyone but me.

“Come on over, Elvin,” Lennox said. “Do one.”

I was already backing away. “Nah, I’m just looking,” I said.

I backed into Brother Percy. “Morning, Elvin,” he said. “You ready to do some work?”

Now I backed in the other direction. “Um, no. I thought I’d float for a while. You know, investigate other stuff.”

“Bravo,” he said, and walked away just like that.

The music was hard to ignore. It was also hard to like. Anyhow, it drew me down to the farthest end of the library, under the short balcony that ran the width of the building with stairs at either end. The door to the conservatory was ajar, so I nudged it, not really accidentally.

Brother Crudelle was seated at an upright piano, wearing a starched white short-sleeved shirt buttoned to the collar, but still looking cool crisp white. Opposite him, leaning on the top of the tall piano with their elbows, were the two giants. Eugene and Paul Burman. Singing.

Sort of. They didn’t sound good. They didn’t blend. They weren’t singing words, only sounds to match whatever chord Crudelle hit. They sounded like old cars, with the springs gone and many small holes in the mufflers.

But as far as I could tell, they didn’t know it. They were up on their toes, both of them, as if they needed it, trying to reach notes that would bring the rest of us to our knees. When Eugene saw me, his glossy face beamed, and he made a “yo” fist power sign. Paul couldn’t see me because he had his eyes shut tight.

When I first followed that sound, I was hoping it would be good for a laugh. But when I got there, it was a whole different show. I left the room and closed the door quietly. I sat down on the steps with my chin on my fist. This was a better place, I could already tell, because everyone here seemed so comfortable. But they were gripping something I wasn’t quite gripping. I mean, I was happier here, but I was no less confused.

“Ready?” Brother Percy said, calling down to me from the balcony at the top of the stairs.

“No,” I said.

“Start with this,” he said, dangling a book between his thumb and index finger. When it was obvious that I was looking at it, he let it drop, and I caught it.

It was
Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe
. I looked at it for a few seconds, didn’t open it, then threw it back up.

“Listen, you,” I said boldly. “I hate this stuff. I hate poetry. I hate Edgar Allan Poe except for the detective stories. The horror stuff is about half as scary as Barney the Dinosaur. I saw all the movies with Vincent Price. They were hysterical. I read ‘The Raven’ a hundred times in school, and it got more boring every time. Nevermore, already.”

He didn’t speak. He smirked like he knew everything. Then he dropped a second book.
The Poetry of Robert Frost
.

“Car commercials,” I snapped, and threw it back.

The third book dropped, and Brother Percy’s smile along with it. It was a paperback with a bright-pink cover.
Final Harvest
, poems by Emily Dickinson.

“I think I’m going to try clay modeling today,” I said, and tossed the book back. He refused to catch this one. It rose, arced, then fell back to me.

“Fine, but hold on to that one anyway. It’ll fit in your back pocket, and you can read it when you feel like it.”

This seemed like a good escape point, so I gave in. Even though he was exaggerating a bit—good thing I have large back pockets. I stashed the book and made busy, spending most of my time just poking around, looking at other people’s work, watching, feeling the textures of what everybody else was working, the clay, the paint, the piano keys, the soft metal, the wet paper. Watching it all from over shoulders.

Once, just after lunch, when nobody was looking, I picked up a brush and tried to make a picture. Of a house, and a small car, and a road and two people. When the painters returned, I crumpled mine up and threw it in the trash, burrowing to get it underneath the other trash.

“What is
that
?” Frankie demanded as he walked up behind me at Nightmeal. He pulled the book out of my pocket and took it with him to the other side of the table.

“It’s a book, ape boy. Give it back.”

He stared at it in his hands as if it was a talking severed head. “El, it’s a
poetry
book. It’s a
pink
poetry book.”

I made a stab to get it back, but Frankie was too fast. Then, quick as a cobra, Mikie snatched it and gave it to me.

“God, this is the worst slot yet, Elvin,” Frank said, real concern on his face. “How are we gonna get you out of this one?”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Don’t help me anymore.”

Mike extended his palm. He wanted to have another look at the book. “You really into poetry, El?” he said, browsing as he talked.

“NO,” I insisted. “That’s just what I backed into. Now I have this poetry teacher who has absolutely nothing to do except follow me around, haunting me with this stuff. He’s got
nobody
but me.”

“Do you have to stay?” Mike asked.

“No. Everybody’s pretty free over there.”

“So move, then.”

“Ya, Jesus, move out of there for god’s sake,” Frank said. “That stuff’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Move to where?” I asked. I asked Mike, not Frank.

“Good question,” Frank answered. “That whole Arts Sector gives me the creeps. All the weird guys are there.”

Mike and I banded together to try to ignore him. “Well is there something else you want to do? Like do you want to paint or something?”

“No. I don’t know. Ya. I don’t know.”

“That’s good, Elvin,” Frank jumped in. “Things are clearing up nicely now.”

“Okay, so here’s what I’m doing. I’m watching. I’m watching a couple of guys mixing paints together, and you wouldn’t believe it. They combine this kind of yellow, that I’ve seen somewhere before, and that kind of blue, which I’ve seen before, and they mix and mix, and add a drop and another drop, and they come up with a green I have
never
seen before. Mike, I watched paint mixing for an hour and a half. And all this one guy did when he got the color just right was he painted a circle, like a moon or a planet or something near the top of his canvas. Then he went on and mixed something else.”

Frank said nothing, just stared at me like I was retarded. Mike said nothing. But he stared and waited for the
more
of it.

“But I felt like I
did
something there. Like I had
been
someplace. Seeing what they did, being there for it, hanging over their shoulders, was like, so satisfying. So I tried it. The kid saw me hovering, offered me a brush, and I tried.”

Mike thought this was the big discovery part of the story. “There we go,” he said.

“No, there we
don’t
go,” I said. “I hated it. I painted with watercolors for ten minutes, then went crazy and threw a glass of water all over what I’d done.”

“You’re getting really
weird
, Elvin,” Frank said, looking at me sideways.

“So painting wasn’t for you.” Mikie shrugged.

“No, it wasn’t.” I said, banging my fist on my supper tray. “And neither was music or pottery or collage. All that was for me was
watching
. Watching. Watching and watching. Mikie. I found out, that’s all I really want to do. But when I’m doing the watching, I feel like I’m doing the
doing
. You know? I mean, it’s much better than when I do it myself.”

“We have to get you fixed. El,” Frankie said, drop-dead serious now. “I don’t like the way you’re sounding. You’re not your old self.”

I thought I wasn’t listening to Frank, but he was getting to me anyhow. I leaned more desperately toward Mikie, who had the ignoring Frank thing locked. “Is that all right?” I asked. “Can I do that? Is something wrong with me? Is that a slot a person can have? Watcher?”

“Does anyone mind, that you’re doing all the watching?”

“No. I think they like it, even, having an audience.”

“Then it should be fine.”

“Ya. I suppose. Except that poetry guy. He seems to think I should be doing something.”

“We have to get you straight,” Frank repeated, shaking his head slowly. “Listen. Last night of camp, this Saturday, Obie and the guys are having a send-off party. Gonna be a big blast. Now this time, you guys are
not
invited, because of your awful behavior in the past, but I bet I could get you in, seeing as I’m like the guest of honor and all.”

“No, thank you,” I said quickly. “Actually, the Arts Sector is having its own little party Saturday night in the library.”

“What do you mean, the guest of honor?” Mike finally addressed Frank.

“My debut party. My coming-out party. Passing of the torch stuff. I told you guys this from the beginning. I told you these guys were the people to know. Now they’re handing the keys over to me, making me the new king. Like I said, they’re leaving, I’m coming in. Changing of the guard. I’m going to be king. But don’t worry, I won’t forget you guys.”

Frank grinned. He had been waiting a long time to make that speech, or one just like it. Mikie went stone cold again. I was—no surprise—confused. I was happy for Frank, because Frank was happy for himself and that didn’t happen as often as most people thought. But I was afraid too. I didn’t think I wanted him to be King of All the Wild Things.

“So they’re having a party, your whole Sector?” Mike asked, shutting Frank’s story off.

“Ya,” I said. “Goofy, huh? They’re all really weird, Mike.”

“Basketball Sector’s just going to show a highlight film of the Knicks-Rockets finals. Even big hoops fans don’t want to look at
that
.”

“Yuck.” Frank and I finally agreed on something.

“And you’re allowed to do pretty much whatever you want?” Mike went on.

“Pretty much,” I said.

“Cool,” Mikie said.

“
Cool
?” Frank said. “Please, Mike, we only have a few days left here. We need at least
you
to come out of it the same as when you came in.”

I
SAT AT A
table early the next morning, watching the only other guy in the place. I was the second person here, as I was getting up earlier each day now, running and showering and eating faster than I had before. This guy, though, was always here. He was here at night when the last of us went to get Nightmeal, and he was here no matter what time we got here in the morning.

He liked glass. He was always doing things with glass. His dark face pressed right up against whatever he was working on, squinting hard through his own glasses, which were two fingers thick.

This morning he was cutting—cutting a green, then a brown, then a clear, then a black bottle into strips like long glass French fries, with a glass cutter. There wasn’t a sound yet in the building other than the
scratch-chink
ing of the tool ripping the glass. Then he super-glued a piece of fishing line to the top of each, carefully cutting very specific different lengths and assigning each to just the right shard. When he had them all assembled into the mobile, he picked it up and held it high above his head for us both to examine.