The Schwa Was Here

Dad secretly loved when Mom wasn’t around for di

“Did you break Ma

I shrugged, fettucine dangling down to my chin. “I’m not sure. His body survived detonation, but his head is missing. It could be in orbit for all we know.”

“If he really turns out to be unbreakable, your old man gets a raise and a promotion.”

I nodded and sucked in some more fettucine. The silence re­turned. I like being with my dad, but sitting across from him with nothing but food between us makes me uncomfortable. I guess I’m so used to being semivisible at home I don’t know how to handle being the only available focus of attention. And now as I sat with Dad, avoiding eye contact, it hit me that maybe he felt the same way.

“They won’t do both,” I told him.

“What?”

“They give you a promotion so they don’t have to give you a raise. They give you a raise just so they don’t have to give you a promotion. They don’t do both.”

He looked at me, gri

I shrugged and thought about what the Schwa had once said about me having business savvy. “I don’t know. It just makes sense.” And then I added, “I probably heard it on TV or some­thing.”

We chowed down more food, barely looking at each other.

“Mom tells me you’re walking dogs for that old guy who owns Crawley’s.”

“Yeah,” I told him. “I’m being a good Philistine.”

“Samaritan,” he said. “I didn’t even know you liked dogs.” “Neither did I.”

I toyed with telling him about Old Man Crawley’s threat to get him fired if I didn’t walk the dogs . . . but didn’t. Crawley and his dogs were my problem.

I finished up my fettucine and began thinking about what the Schwa’s di

“Listen, I was thinking about having a friend over for di

“Someone new, or the usual suspects?”

“New.”

“Girlfriend?”

“No such luck.”

“Who?”

“They call him the Schwa.”

My dad piled some more fettucine onto his plate. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Does something have to be wrong with him for him to be my friend? Is that what you mean?”

“Take it easy. I just thought I heard something fu

I didn’t think my dad had it in him to tune into someone’s tone. He never seemed to be able to tell when Mom was about to get mad at him, and he usually needed one of us kids to tell him what brainless, insensitive thing he had done. But this time he called it right.

I decided to be direct. “He’s invisible,” I said.

To my dad’s credit, he took this in stride, although he did stop chewing for a few seconds. “Does he become visible again when he takes off his ring?” Dad asked. “Does he hang out with elves and dwarfs?”

It took me a few seconds, then I got it, and laughed. “Yeah,” I said. “He’s got hairy feet, too.”

“Well, make sure he wipes them on the doormat, or your mother will brain him.”

7. The Lowest-Paid Male Escort on the Entire Eastern Seaboard, Except for Maybe the Bronx

Life is like a bad haircut. At first it looks awful, then you kind of get used to it, and before you know it, it grows out and you gotta get another haircut that maybe won’t be so bad, unless of course you keep going to SuperClips, where the hairstylists are so terrible they oughta be using safety scissors, and when they’re done you look like your head got caught in a ceiling fan. So life goes on, good haircut, bad hair­cut, until finally you go bald, and it don’t matter no more.

I told this wisdom to my mother, and she said I oughta put it in a book, then burn it. Some people just can’t appreciate the profound.

Anyway, the deal with Crawley and his dogs was like a bad haircut I was begi

“Let Mr. Schwa go ahead. I want to talk to you alone.”

Crawley always called us “Mr. Schwa” and “Mr. Bonano.” At first it a

This was the third week of our dog days. Until now, Crawley had little to say to us except to comment on our unacceptable wardrobe, how unpleasant my acne was, and couldn’t we find some better deodorant, because according to him, after a day of school we smelled worse than fourteen dogs. It was always an adventure with him, never knowing what he was going to gripe about when we showed up. He was usually much more on my case than the Schwa’s. I assumed it was just the Schwa Effect at work. Little did I know he was sizing me up for a higher position in the Crawley Universe.

“Mr. Schwa, I said you could go.”

The Schwa looked at me and shrugged. “Fine. I’ll notify your next of kin, Antsy.”

“Yeah, I appreciate it. If I live, I’ll call you.”

Once the Schwa was gone, Crawley stared at me from his wheelchair across the room for way too long.

“So what’s up, Chuckles?” I had stopped calling him “sir” or Mr. Crawley. The way I figured it, those were terms of respect, and he really hadn’t earned mine. Chuckles was my little nick­name for him. It started as Chuck, but Chuckles seemed so much more appropriate—especially because of the way he frowned when I said it.

“I am not a clown,” he said. “Kindly refrain from calling me that.”

I just gri

“That’s not fair,” I told him. “It’ll take him till nighttime.”

“I will pay him,” Crawley said. “Ten cents per dog per day.”

“Twenty-five.”

“What are you, his attorney?”

“His manager.”

“I see. All right. Twenty-five.”

“And that’s only if he agrees.”

Crawley didn’t answer that—maybe because it was a fact of life that no one ever disagreed with him. “As for you, I have another task for you.”

“Do I get paid, too?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. This scared me, because Crawley gave money like bulls gave milk: not at all, and you got gored for asking. If he had already decided this was a paying job, it must be horrible beyond words.

“Your salary will depend on how well you perform your duties.”

“What’s the job?”

Sloth came sniffing at Crawley’s pocket for treats, and the old man pushed him away. “My granddaughter will be spending the next few months with me. You will spend time with her. You will entertain her. You will pretend to like her.”

I was sensing this haircut was going to be one nasty Mohawk. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Why does something have to be wrong with her?” he snapped.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Something in your tone of voice.”

Crawley wheeled himself around, banging his knee on a little end table. I knew it must have hurt, but he refused to give me the satisfaction of a groan. “As it happens, my granddaughter does have a handicap.”

“So she’s in a wheelchair, too?”