Vintage Veronica (15 page)

“Oh my God,” I say. Because the cops are escorting two girls to the squad car. Two girls named Zoe and Ginger.

“Shit,” repeats Bill. “Those two pull some serious shit, but this is some crazy shit.”

“Yeah, crazy,” I agree. Reason number eight hundred and twelve why not to hang out with Bill: Risk of catching a bad case of his stupid stoner way of talking.

My heart is pounding, though. What the hell could Zoe and Ginger have done this time? I feel like I should do
something, say something, but I’m just kind of rooted there with Bill. This has to be a misunderstanding, right? I mean, Zoe and Ginger act pretty insane sometimes, but I can’t believe they’d actually get themselves arrested. Would they?

When the cops drive off with Zoe and Ginger, we shuffle closer to the Mooks. People remain out front, holding their coffees and looking nervous. Bill sidles up to a fellow traveler: a guy with a long, messy ponytail like his, plus a stubbly chin and round wire glasses.

“What went down, man?” Bill asks, bumming a cigarette even though he’s got a pack of his own.

“I don’t know, man,” the guy replies. “Somebody said they saw a cobra or something. Then everybody just went nuts and they called in the goon squad and shut the place down.”

“Whoa,” says Bill.

I feel like I can’t breathe. I sit down right there on the sidewalk, the tulle layers of my prom dress poufing out with a loud
shhhuushh
. I feel cold concrete on my flanks.

Girls can be cruel
.

Bill squats down, trying to balance while holding his cigarette away from my face.

“He’s going to kill me,” I say to myself.

“Aww, man, he’s not,” says Bill consolingly. “If anyone’s going to take the heat for not getting him his apple fritter, it’ll be me.”

I shake my head, but I don’t even try to explain. Bill extends his hand to help me up, but I shake him off. Why do people seem to think I need help getting up? I’m fat, okay? I’m not crippled.

I walk over to the front door of the Mooks and try it.

“Veronica, no!” yells Bill, clearly envisioning me meeting my death at the hands of a vicious monster serpent. Apparently, this is not a scary enough vision to make him drop his cigarette and run after me.

The door is not locked. I pull it open and stride into the Mooks.

s I enter the Mooks, the smell of donuts and coffee is comforting enough to almost make me forget why I’m there. The sight of the place brings me back. It looks like a bomb went off. There are chairs tipped over, tables askew. For reasons that are not immediately clear to me, there’s flour all over the floor and some of the tables and chairs.

Most of the Mookie’s employees are sitting around one of the larger tables. A few of them are behind the counter, and one of them is actually sitting on the counter. The one on the counter is the first to notice me come in.

“We’re closed,” she informs me. Her voice carries none of the false cheer of retail.

“Yeah, uh, I …” I almost turn and leave. But instead I tell her, “I’m, um … it’s … about the snake?”

“Yeah?” she says.

“I, uh … I know something about the snake.”

She stares at me for a moment.

Then she yells, “Mr. Singh!”

A man appears at the counter and I instantly recognize him as the man who gave Zoe the free donuts. He looks tired, and there is flour all over his striped polo shirt.

“Yes?” he says.

“This girl says she knows something about the snake.”

“I …” I suddenly worry that this is going to lead to me sharing a jail cell with Zoe and Ginger. “It’s not my snake!” I blurt out. “I just … I know the guy who owns the snake, and I just thought maybe I could help get it back to him? It’s not poisonous … I mean, venomous … or anything.”

Mr. Singh looks even more tired.

“Your friends,” he says finally. “Tell them not to come into my donut shop anymore.”

“They’re not my friends,” I tell him sadly.

Mr. Singh doesn’t look convinced. He motions for me to follow him and takes me behind the counter.

The display wall of trays of donuts under fluorescent lights momentarily distracts me. I’ve never been so close to so many donuts before, and I am struck by how lovely they are, all lined up in rows. They look almost like jewelry, some of them; edible bracelets painted with glistening frosting and adorned with jewels—colored sprinkles, toasted coconut, cinnamon
sugar. I am tempted to take one, even though I know Mr. Singh will see me and besides, I am not even hungry.

“There,” says Mr. Singh, and I turn and look.

On the floor lies what I almost mistake for a long piece of dough lying in a pile of flour. Then one end twitches and I realize it is Dep the Snake and he is either dead or about to die. There’s flour all around him, too, although the floor shows through here and there like he thrashed around for a while. But the sickening part is there’s a shoe print in the flour right across his middle, and he’s wider there, where he was clearly flattened. Oddly, there is no blood.

“Oh my God,” I say, wincing.

Mr. Singh takes a pair of tongs and pokes Dep tentatively with them. There is a reflexive recoiling, which makes me recoil, too. He pokes again, harder this time. Just to be sure, I’m guessing, but still it is awful to watch. The sharpness of the poke sends Dep onto his back, exposing a creamy yellow underside. I always thought he was black all over, but I guess I was wrong.

“Stop it,” I say.

“Dead,” he announces. I want to say
You think?
but I don’t. I stare hard at Dep, and for a second I almost believe he’s still breathing. But then he looks blurry all over, and before I realize what’s happening, I close my eyes and feel myself start to crumple.

From very far away, I hear a voice saying, “Mees? Mees?! Mees!”

When I open my eyes, the first thing I see is the girl who was sitting on the counter. She’s leaning over me.

“Mr. Singh!” she yells in my face. “She’s awake.”

Mr. Singh, whose polo shirt is a little tight across his belly, runs over. He reaches out to help me to a chair, and I actually let him.

“Are you okay?” he asks me.

“I guess,” I say, even though my head is killing me. I fainted once before, at a blood drive at school, so the feeling was awful but familiar. At school, I fainted before they could even take my blood. I lost it when I walked in and saw a bag of blood, which I guess I should have realized would be part of the scenery at a blood drive. Luckily, like ten other kids fainted, too, including this senior named Tyler Turk who was pretty much universally worshipped, so everyone was too busy talking about him to use the information against me.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I should not have let you see your snake.”

“It’s not my snake,” I tell him again. He nods.

“Can I get you anything?” he asks. “Some water? Donut?”

“Nah, that’s okay,” I say quickly. I just want to leave. But as I stand up, an employee pushes a big flat broom by us and I remember.

“Um, actually,” I say, “can I have the snake? It sort of belongs to someone … I mean, not the people who brought it here, but, I mean, it’s …”

Mr. Singh tilts his head to one side. He looks confused, but also maybe a little concerned.

“Look,” I tell him. “The person who owns the snake? He really cares about it. And since I’m sort of the reason things
got so messed up, I feel like if I bring his snake back, maybe I can sort of make it up to him? A little.”

Mr. Singh sighs and shakes his head. “It has been cleaned up. I’m sorry.”

“Cleaned up where?” I ask.

Which is how I end up standing behind the Mooks, digging through the Dumpster with a pair of tongs that may or may not be the ones used to check Dep for signs of life. In addition to the tongs, Mr. Singh has provided me with a donut box (the correct size and shape for transporting twelve donuts or one dead snake). Thankfully, it seems that Dep was the last thing tossed, so I find him quickly.

See, Len
, I think to myself,
I do care about you
.
Okay, I might be partially to blame for this mess, but it should count for something that I’m willing to go Dumpster-diving to retrieve your dead snake
.

I gently lift Dep, so gently that I end up dropping him again. The sight of him slipping back into the garbage heap and landing with the ungraceful thump of deadweight almost causes me to vomit.

I steel myself and try again. This time, I get a firmer hold on him and manage to land him in the box. I close the lid and feel intense gratitude for the lack of a cellophane window. I walk around to the front of the store and I’m surprised to find that Bill, his hippie friend, and a couple of other people are still standing there.

“Veronica! Hey!” says Bill. “We were just getting ready to send out a search party.”

“Clearly,” I say, looking at the proliferation of butts littering the ground.

“What’s with the donuts, man?” he asks. “I thought they were closed.”

“They are,” I say, but that’s all I say. Bill nods and takes another drag.

“You wouldn’t by any chance have an apple fritter in there?” he asks hopefully.

“Um, no.”

Bill nods again, looking worried.

“Listen,” I say to Bill, “do you think you could punch me out? There’s something I gotta go do.”

I walk quickly to Len’s house, box in hand. I’m not sure what I’m going to do if he’s not there. Worse, I’m not sure what I’m going to do if he
is
there.

As I walk, I try to figure out something to say to him. “I brought back your snake, but it’s dead.”
No
. “There’s no way to explain this, so … here.”
Uh-uh
.

I remember this scene in the movie
A Clockwork Orange
, which Bill made me watch once and which actually turned out to be better than I would’ve thought. The main guy in it has this big pet python or something, and he comes home to find out that his parents have gotten rid of it. “He met with like an accident,” is what they tell him.

Regardless of whether Len has seen the movie, I don’t think this explanation is going to fly.

As I turn the corner and start up his block, I notice movement on Len’s front porch. There’s this huge guy with knee-high
boots like a jockey or something, and he’s backing out Len’s front door, lugging something heavy and looking backward over his shoulder. Almost immediately another big guy emerges (this one is not wearing boots), holding up the other end of what they are carrying, which I realize suddenly is one of Len’s fish tanks. Boots takes a few more steps and almost wipes out on the stairs, apparently due to his buddy’s overeager assistance.

Boots says something sharp that I can’t quite hear. He shifts the tank to where his leg connects to his body and uses the back of his free hand to wipe his brow. As I get closer, I hear Boots mutter, “Let’s go, let’s go. We don’t have all day.”

The other guy says something back. He is shorter and has sort of a mashed nose, making him look like a flounder or something.

I hang back, watching from behind a parked station wagon.
What the hell is going on? And where the hell is Len?
It looks like these guys are stealing his pets, which makes no sense. I mean, they couldn’t be that valuable. Could they? And even if they are, which I doubt, what am I supposed to do? They’re not
my
pets.

I mean, I guess I could call the cops anonymously, or something. But to do that, I’d have to run back to the store, and the burglars would probably be long gone before help arrived. Besides, the cops would probably trace the call to the store, and to me. And then they might put two and two together and ask me about Zoe and Ginger and what happened at the Mooks. How would I explain that? Not very well, considering I am currently carrying a dead snake (THE snake from the Mooks, no less) in a donut box coffin.

Zoe and Ginger. It suddenly occurs to me:
What if they were right after all?
What if Len has been stealing stuff from the store … not just half a pair of pajamas, but lots of stuff, expensive stuff? What if he
is
involved in some big crime ring and this is some sort of, you know, payback or something? You see that in movies all the time. Thugs come and they take the guy’s car or whatever to settle a score.