The Schwa Was Here

“Ah,” said the maitre d’oorman, “Mr. Crawley is expecting you. Follow me.”

He glided up the grand staircase real smooth, like it was a fast escalator and not stairs, then he took us through an unused part of the restaurant stacked with dusty old tables and broken chairs. We went down a hallway that led to the door of Mr. Crawley’s private residence.

“Mr. Crawley, those boys are here,” the maitre d’oorman said as he knocked. Barking and the pounding of paws followed. Then I could hear all the bolts sliding open on the other side, and Crawley pulled open the door while blocking the escape of the dogs with his wheelchair.

“You’re five minutes early,” he said, the tone in his voice like we were half an hour late.

We stepped in, he pushed the door closed behind us, a dog yelped because his nose got caught in the door for an instant, and there we were.

Crawley reached into the pocket of his fancy robe—a di

“I’ve decided to sentence the two of you to twelve weeks of community service,” he said. “Mr. Bonano, from this day for­ward, you shall be responsible for the sins. You, Mr. Schwa, shall be responsible for the virtues. Take all the time you need each day, but by no means are you to complete the task any earlier than five P.M. Now get to it.”

I looked at the Schwa, the Schwa looked at me. I felt like I had just been called up to the board to explain an Einstein the­ory, but I don’t think Einstein could figure this one out, even if he was alive.

“Why are you staring like imbeciles? Didn’t you hear me?”

“Yeah, we heard you,” I said. “Sins and virtues. Now would you mind speaking in English that people who aren’t, like, ninety years old can understand?”

He scowled at us. He was really good at that. Then he spoke, very slowly, as if to morons. “The seven virtues, and the seven deadly sins. Comprendo?”

“Oigo,” I said, “pero no comprendo.” I hear, but I don’t under­stand. At last my two years of Spanish had paid off! It was worth it for the surprised look on Crawley’s face—to see that, as Howie would put it, I was only half the moron he thought I was.

“Great,” mumbled the Schwa. “Now he’s really go

But instead of saying anything, Crawley put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. All the dogs came ru

As they crowded around him, jockeying for position, he touched each of them on the head and a

Gluttony, Pride, and Avarice. Do you understand now, or shall I get you a translator?”

“You want each of us to walk seven dogs each, every day.”

“Gold star for you.”

Crawley peered at me, but I just returned his unpleasant gaze. “Why not Greed?” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“Avarice is Greed, right? That’s the way I learned the seven deadly sins. So why not just name the dog Greed?”

“Don’t you know anything?” Crawley growled. “Avarice is a much better name for a dog.”

He spun his wheelchair and rolled into the deeper recesses of his apartment. “Leashes are hanging in the kitchen.” And he was gone.

At first we tried to walk them two at a time, but they were so strong, so untrained, and so excited to be outside, they practi­cally pulled us into oncoming traffic. There were no shortcuts. We each could only handle one dog at a time. Walking dogs for no pay for two hours a day wasn’t exactly my idea of fun. But the Schwa and I did it. We could have gotten out of it. We could have just told our parents what we had done, and taken whatever punishment they dealt out. Even if Crawley went to the police, they wouldn’t do much about it—especially after we had shown what decent guys we were by volunteering to walk his dogs for those first few days. Still, we kept on doing it. Maybe it’s because there was a kind of a mystique to it, walking the infamous Old Man Crawley’s dogs. Everyone knew whose dogs they were—it’s not like the neighborhood is teeming with

Afghans. Somehow it made us important. Or maybe we kept on doing it because we gave him our word. I can’t speak for the Schwa, but for me, my word had never really meant much of anything. I can’t count all the times I gave someone my word, then flaked out. This time was different, though, because if I didn’t keep my word, Crawley would be able to sit in his dark apartment and gloat. He’d see it as proof that I was at the shal­low end of the gene pool, and I wouldn’t give him that satisfac­tion, no matter how many barking sins I had to walk.

“Hey, Bonano,” said Wendell Tiggor from across the street while we walked Charity and Gluttony that first week. “So I like your new girlfriend,” he says, pointing to the dog. “She’s got real animal attraction.”

“We’d let you have one,” I told him, “but we don’t got one called Stupidity” The Schwa and I high-fived as best we could with two dogs pulling us down the street.

Walking dogs also meant there was less time to hang out with my other friends. Namely, Howie and Ira. It’s not like they made any extra effort to see me anyway.

During our second week of canine slavery, however, Howie did join the Schwa and me for a few minutes one afternoon while we walked Hope and Lust.

“I can’t hang out long,” says Howie. “I gotta walk my little brother to tae kwan do.”

“Is he a sin or a virtue?” the Schwa asked, but it goes right over Howie’s head.

I thought he might offer to help us walk the dogs, at least for a minute, but his hands stayed firmly shoved in his pockets. “Is Crawley as crazy as they say?”

I tugged on the leash to keep Lust from going after a passing poodle. “Well, let’s put it this way: If he’s got bats in his belfry, he nails them to the wall to watch them wriggle.”

The Schwa laughed.

“He’s real mean, huh?” says Howie.

“He hates the world and the world hates him right back.” What I didn’t say was how much the nasty old guy was grow­ing on me. I actually looked forward to seeing him, just so I could irritate him.

Right about now Howie looks over his shoulder like the FBI might be reporting his activities to his parents, who have re­cently begun a policy of preemptive grounding. “Listen, I gotta go. So long, Antsy,” and he takes off.

It would have been all fine and good, except for one thing. He didn’t say good-bye to the Schwa. It seemed to slip his mind that the Schwa was even there. I could tell the Schwa didn’t like this, but he didn’t say anything about it—he just looked down at Hope, who was happily sniffing gum spots on the sidewalk.

We were heading back to Crawley’s for the next two dogs when the Schwa broke the silence. “They didn’t even notice it was orange?” he said.

“What?”

“The sombrero. Not a single person noticed it was orange? Not a single person even noticed it was a sombrero?”

It was the first time he had mentioned the experiments. When we were doing them, he seemed fine. He took a scientific interest in the results. It had never occurred to me that they might have bothered him.

“Not one.”

“Hmm,” he said, shaking his head. “Go figure.”

“Hey, it’s not a bad thing,” I told him. “This Schwa Effect. It’s a natural ability—you know, like those people who can memo­rize the phone book and stuff—’idiot savants.’” This was just getting worse by the minute. “Anyway, it’s a skill you oughta be proud of.”

“Yeah? Well, tell me how proud you feel when you don’t get a report card because the teacher forgot to make you one. Or when the bus doesn’t stop for you because the driver doesn’t notice you’re at the stop. Or when your own father makes din­ner for himself but not for you because it slipped his mind that you were there.”