Adam Selzer Read online

  “The poor oppressed workers at Fat Johnny’s,” said Brian, not sounding too serious. “They should go on strike.”

  “I doubt they’re unionized,” I said. “They can’t go on a strike.”

  “Even if they were,” said Brian, “could they go on strike to have all middle schoolers banned from the premises? That’d never fly.”

  “Yeah, but we should really lay off the poor guy. That’s probably going to be you or me working that crappy job in three or four years, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Edie. “Brian, quit burning stuff, okay? We need to be nicer to him.”

  Brian made a whiny puppy noise, but Edie countered with one of her own and he put the lighter back in his pocket. If there’s anything more disgusting than mayonnaise and raisin casserole, it’s listening to couples make puppy noises at each other. Even if they’re doing it as part of a debate on ethics.

  Just as I was about ready to get up and see about wasting a few bucks on pinball, I heard a voice saying “Hey” and turned to see Anna standing next to the booth, wearing a dark blue T-shirt with Kermit the Frog on the front that was at least five sizes too large for her. It hung down to her knees; you couldn’t even tell if she was wearing shorts or was naked underneath it or what.

  “Have a seat!” I said, sliding down the booth and trying my best not to seem too eager. “This is the best seat in the house if you want to watch Brian and Edie going at it.”

  “I’m sure I can offer constructive criticism,” she said, sitting down and helping herself to a sip of my Coke. As she sat down, her shirt moved just enough that I could see that she did have denim shorts on. I immediately went for another drink myself; putting my lips on the straw was kind of like kissing her, in a secondhand sort of way. This made me feel both excited and rather pathetic at the same time.

  “How’s your video coming?” she asked me.

  “Slowly,” I said. “Still kicking around ideas.”

  “I can help you out on it if you want,” she said.

  “Sure,” I said, “but aren’t you busy with your own?”

  “No,” she said, “I’m finished.”

  I think all three of the rest of us at the table said “What the hell?” at the same time. The thing had been assigned all of three days ago, we had another month to go on it, and she was already finished?

  “I hate your kind,” said Brian.

  “Overachiever,” I muttered.

  “Am not,” she countered, “it was just really easy. I decided to make it about smoking and drugs at the same time. It was all about how most of the people whose books they make you read in English class were on drugs.”

  “Poe was into morphine,” said Brian.

  “Yeah,” said Anna. “They think so, anyway. And F. Scott Fitzgerald drank like a sailor on shore leave. Everyone did in those days.”

  “That’s brilliant,” I said. “It’s history, so they can’t tell you that you can’t do it.”

  “Exactly,” said Anna. “It’s educational about both drugs and literature. They can’t complain.”

  “But you know they will,” said Edie with a laugh. “You’re supposed to make kids not want to take drugs.”

  “Well, all the people in the movie are dead now,” said Anna, “so it’s not like it’s saying that drugs are healthy. And anyway, most of the kids in school wouldn’t read F. Scott Fitzgerald if you put a gun to their heads.”

  “I’m not sure I’d be able to ready anything with a gun to my head,” I said.

  “We should start a gang,” said Anna. “We’ll put guns to people’s heads and make them read F. Scott Fitzgerald. If they don’t, we’ll blow their brains out!”

  We all chuckled and continued to hang around, being as nice to the waiter as we could, for a good hour after that. Most of the kids there pretty well ignored us, but I didn’t particularly care. I didn’t like half of them, and the other half were busy talking about the football game. But the amount of ruckus everyone else was making reassured me that people were ready to raise a bit of the usual hell in class again. As much as the jerks who threw paper around all day bugged me, I had to admit that it had been a boring couple of weeks in class.

  Looking around the room, I saw a general scene of pandemonium. Even Joe Griffin, who was sitting at a table with two or three other kids, was grinning like he was up to no good, though I sort of doubted that. Joe Griffin was probably the most religious kid in school, or at least, he tried to act like he was. He was one of those kids who got off on wearing shirts that said stuff like WITHOUT JESUS, THERE’S HELL TO PAY! all the time, and he was always telling people what was and wasn’t appropriate and what God thought about abortion, evolution, and Democrats. Even most of the kids who went to church youth groups thought he was sort of a creep. His dad is Gordon Griffin, one of those slimy ambulance-chaser lawyers who advertise on TV that they’ll get you a hundred thousand dollars for getting hurt in a car wreck. At Fat Johnny’s, though, Joe seemed to have put the angel act to rest for the evening. He’d probably be doing penance the whole rest of the weekend.

  As we were getting our bill, Walter Wendt, who was probably the school’s biggest football fan, stood up on a table and shouted out, “Monks rule!” It was kind of cool to see that, in his own way, he was just as big a dork as any of us were. It was also fun just to see if the table could hold him; Walter was not a small kid.

  “That’s funny for so many reasons,” said Edie as Walter jumped down.

  “Yeah,” said Brian. “Seeing as how the Monks suck this year.”

  “Also, he’s Presbyterian,” said Edie. “I don’t think Presbyterians have monks.”

  Anna shook her head. “Nope. What the hell kind of name is the Monks, anyway? People probably think we’re the Catholic school.”

  “Well, nobody thinks the San Diego Padres are all Catholic,” I said.

  “So? They aren’t a school. Calling the school football team something religious is way against the law. Church and state are separate.”

  “Good point,” Edie said. “But they’d never manage to change it. All the old ladies in town would picket.”

  The school wasn’t Catholic, but some of the old ladies in town liked to think it was. When Mr. Link got hired as a chemistry teacher the year before, there was a lot of protesting because he was gay. I was convinced that someone had probably told the protesters that, as part of his “homosexual agenda,” Mr. Link was planning to teach us to mix up a chemical that would turn us all gay, and further convinced that most of them were dumb enough to believe it. If they were that concerned, there was a Catholic school called St. Julian’s right down the road where they could send their kids so they’d be safe from things like gay-inducing chemicals and sex education. Then again, I had a couple of friends at St. Julian’s, and their minds were even dirtier than mine.

  “You know, I didn’t think about that,” I said. “I’ll bet some people are gonna get really mad about my movie.”

  “If they even let you show it,” said Anna. “Some people get mad that we have sex ed at all. They say it’s like giving us a how-to manual.”

  “Well, I guess if it’s avant-garde enough, they won’t be able to learn that much,” Edie said.

  “They wouldn’t really learn anything new, anyway,” said Anna. “The people who complain are just fooling themselves.”

  Everyone agreed with that. Saying sex ed is giving kids a how-to manual is like saying that showing a cat a Tom and Jerry cartoon will teach them how to chase mice. They already know. If they aren’t born knowing, all the other kittens in the pet store will tell them the basics.

  The Fat Johnny’s manager, a middle-aged guy who looked as though he’d been up for five days straight, shouted that they were closing in fifteen minutes, so we all had to finish up. I’d never seen a manager do that, but having helped cause one to do so made me feel a little guilty. A little proud, but guilty, too.

  Brian and I dug in our pockets for cash for the bill, which came to about
two bucks. I threw in a couple more for good measure.

  “We’ve gotta tip the guy like crazy,” said Edie. “Half the kids here are gonna stiff him.”

  Anna threw in a five, even though all she had was a sip of my Coke. Edie put in a twenty with the words “Long live the people’s revolution” scribbled over the picture on the back. She could afford it; she’s all for the working class and all the other commie stuff, but she lives in a huge brick home in Cherrytree Meadows, the gated subdivision near the golf course, and is known to get a huge allowance. When someone calls her on that, she explains that she can’t help the fact that her parents are lawyers, but she’s planning to move to an organic farm in Oregon as soon as she finishes college.

  I started pulling out my phone, and Anna asked what I was doing.

  “Calling to get a ride,” I said.

  “Come on,” she said. “You should just walk. I’ll go with you.”

  I was under strict orders not to go for walks in the dark, for one reason or another. But I wasn’t about to skip the chance to take a walk with Anna, even if it meant getting disowned and having to live in a foster home. Anyway, if I ended up in one of those, the foster family probably wouldn’t have a fit if I had my middle name legally changed to something like Arthur. And the trip was just about half a mile, tops, and all down residential streets. I really didn’t think there were any muggers or pedophiles lurking in the bushes of Iris Way. There were still a couple of lawn gnomes on that street that hadn’t been stolen, for God’s sake.

  So I followed her behind Fat Johnny’s, through some split-level house’s backyard, and we came out on Garden Way, in the middle of the Flowers’ Grove neighborhood. Outside of the particularly wimpy name, I love that neighborhood; it was built during the sixties, during the days of the Space-Age school of suburban design. The houses all have oddly shaped roofs, huge bay windows in the kitchen, and little pods jutting out everywhere. Most of the front doors are on the second story, with stairs leading up to them. And, though you couldn’t tell very well in the dark, all the houses are different colors. All the houses in the newer neighborhoods are pretty much white or gray. Yawnsville.

  As we got onto the sidewalk, Anna suggested that we play a game of “What Do They Have?” while we walked along.

  “How do you play that?” I asked.

  “Easy. You look in people’s windows and see what they have.”

  “Sounds slightly illegal,” I said.

  “Not from the sidewalk,” she said, and laughed, making me feel like a real wuss. “If they come out and ask why you’re staring at their house, tell them you’re studying split-level design in school and you love the eaves on their dormers or something.”

  “Okay. Let’s start.” I wondered if we’d see any naked people. I asked if she ever had, and she said, “Nobody you’d want to see naked.”

  We ran down the sidewalk until we came to a house where the lights inside were on, so we could see in the window.

  “These people,” I said, “have a very dull living room.” All I could see was a large cabinet full of dishes. Like fancy china dishes.

  “Why do people think dishes make great decorations?” asked Anna. “They probably never even use those.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “If they’re gonna decorate with dishes, they should at least order some of those commemorative plates with cartoon characters on them.”

  “Those ones they sell on the Sucker Channel?”

  “Right.”

  We kept walking and saw a house where the people had a chandelier and a table with flowers on it (“People who want you to think they’re rich and fancy,” Anna decided) and one with an ugly print of a boring painting of lily pads on the wall (“They let the same guy who did the waiting room at the dentist’s office do their decorating,” I said). But the real score of the game came at a house on the corner of Garden Way and Snapdragon Lane, where the entryway was graced by a very large painting of an old woman who did not look happy in the slightest. As soon as we saw it, we both started cracking up.

  “I’ll bet it’s someone’s mother,” said Anna. “They probably had it painted from a photo after she died or something.”

  “They could’ve picked a photo where she didn’t look like she was ticked off,” I said. “If I came in the door and saw that, I’d certainly remember to wipe my feet before I stepped on the carpet. I’d be afraid she’d come haunt me if I didn’t!”

  “At least that’s not the worst place they could put it,” said Anna. “Think of how it would be to have a picture of their dead mother glaring down at them in bed!”

  We laughed so hard at that that we fell into the people’s yard. Then we both thought we heard the door opening and took off running.

  My house was only about another block down the road; I was pretty sure that the house was one of the ones I could see from out of my window. We got to my place just a few minutes later.

  “Talk to me on Monday,” she said. “We’ll figure out what we’re doing about the video.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Are you sure you’ll be okay walking the rest of the way home yourself?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked. I didn’t have an answer. So I went up to my door, waved good-bye to her, and stepped inside. It occurred to me about five seconds later that that would have been a perfect time to ask her out, like on a date, but that might’ve just made things weird. How could I go on working with her on the video if she said no?

  However, as it turned out, I didn’t have all that long to think about it. As soon as I stepped into the living room, I saw my mother waiting for me. She appeared to be absolutely distraught.

  “Leon,” she said, shaking her head slowly, “you’re in big trouble.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “Remember how you were supposed to call and get a ride from us tonight?”

  Oh. That. I had forgotten about that.

  “You know perfectly well that you aren’t allowed to go for walks after dark,” she continued. “And it’s after midnight now. How were we supposed to know where you were?”

  “Well,” I said, only trying to be helpful, “you could have just called my phone. And anyway, I was never far. If you stood on the porch and shouted, I probably would have heard you.”

  “Don’t smart-mouth me, Leon,” she said. “We need to know where you are in case you get in trouble.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “After all, if you get in trouble and we don’t know where you are, we can’t help you.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And what if something went wrong here and we needed to get you right away? We wouldn’t be able to.”

  “Okay!” I said a little bit angrily, hoping she would figure out that I already got her point and was being nice enough not to simply give her the finger and walk away. I really hate it when they keep talking after I’ve gotten the message. But she just glared at me.

  “I want you to go talk to your father about this. He’s in his workshop.”

  The workshop was actually the garage. Dad had set up a little lab in there that made it impossible for us to fit two cars in. I walked over to it through the kitchen.

  Nothing ever looks like it does in the movies; Dad’s lab looks more like a junk shop than a lab. There are no shiny tables, no large flasks full of bubbling pink ooze, and no rats in cages. Just a couple of long card tables covered with assorted gears, bolts, and tools. A person who didn’t know that Dad was trying to invent something might see him at work and think he was just building a spice rack, like any normal dad.

  When I walked in, he was hunched over one of the tables, screwing something together.

  “I heard your mother talking to you,” he said, without looking up. “Sounds like you’re in the doghouse.”

  “I was supposed to call and get a ride, but I walked instead. It was only a couple of blocks through Flowers’ Grove.”

  He nodded and looked up. “Well, personally, I don’t think it�
�s such a big deal. You weren’t anywhere dangerous, as far as I know. But you know the rules.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Mom said I was supposed to come out here and talk to you.”

  He put down his gears.

  “Well, I guess I’m supposed to punish you, then,” he said.

  “I guess so.”

  He turned back around and started tinkering with things again. “Did I tell you what I’m working on now?” he asked.

  I groaned as quietly as I could. “Is it the switch to turn off all the electricity?”

  I watched him shake his head from behind. “Letting that one slide for a while, Leon. I got a better idea.”

  “Something for the world of accountants?”

  “Not yet, but I’ll get to that. I’m going for a novelty for now.”

  “A novelty?”

  “A novelty. Something that’ll make me rich enough to buy a bigger lab and be able to concentrate all my efforts on inventing a kind of pen that will just disintegrate when it runs out of ink, which is the invention that will revolutionize accounting.”

  “So,” I asked, “what kind of novelty are you working on?”

  “A special kind of matchstick,” he said. “This kind will light itself at the sound of someone snapping their fingers.”

  Now, that, I had to admit, was pretty cool.

  “How would it work?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s the tricky part,” he replied. “There are lots of ways to make matches. They used to be made by adding phosphorous to the tip of a stick, but that killed an awful lot of factory workers. Now they use lots of different stuff. I think. Anyway, it’ll work sort of like the Clapper, that thing that lets you turn lights off and on by clapping. Only without having to plug it in.”

  “How are you going to manage it?”

  “Oh, I have some ideas,” he said, “involving wires and some chemicals and stuff that’ll react to sound waves. There’s a lot of math involved—but that’ll give me something to do at the office when things are slow.”

  I’d been in Dad’s office, a little joint near the mall called Heimlich and Robbins or something, a couple of times. I privately referred to it as the Boredom Factory. It was staffed by a bunch of men who wore bow ties and enormous glasses and annoying women who actually bought those books of wise things kids said with all the writing in crayon.