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“I didn’t say that, did I?”
I waited for more details, but Crawley gave none. So now I was moved from walking dogs to babysitting for some spoiled Veruca Salt-ish little girl.
“You will be here at ten o’clock sharp tomorrow. But first you will introduce yourself to the shower in your house, and you will dress in something presentable. You will also refrain from calling me Chuckles in front of her.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’ve got stuff to do on Saturday.”
Which was actually just a whole lot of lying around, and I guess he figured that out, because he said: “Don’t force me to make your life more miserable than it already is.”
I finally realized who he reminded me of: the Emperor in Star Wars. “Fine. But right now I’m go
“You’re such a Boy Scout.”
“Hey!” I said. “Enough with the insults!” I hooked Gluttony to a leash, and left.
“Maybe she’s like the Elephant Man.”
Howie, Ira, and I hung out in my unfinished basement later that night, for the first time in a few weeks. We didn’t find much to say to one another, so we resorted to our old standby, playing video games. Our current choice was “Three Fisted Fury,” in which steroid-pumped opponents, having been exposed to radiation, have grown more than the usual number of arms and must battle for ultimate dominance of the world. You know—just like the movie.
It was Howie who suggested the Elephant Man theory. We had all been trying to figure out what condition Crawley’s granddaughter suffered from that was bad enough for him to pay me to spend time with her.
“I mean, she’s got to be ugly in some basic, u
“Maybe not,” said Ira. “Maybe it’s Tourette’s syndrome.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s where you have these little seizures and can’t stop cursing people out.”
“Sounds like most people I know.” I swung at his character on the screen with my left and right arms, then caught him off guard with an uppercut from my third arm. He lost ten points of life.
“Hey,” says Ira, “what if she’s the surviving half of Siamese twins co
“It sounds logical,” says Howie. At this point his screen character sneaks up from behind and nails me with a dropkick from a leg I didn’t even know he had.
“Hey, no fair—you took an extra dose of radiation, didn’t you?”
I turned from Ira’s bruiser, who was still dazed, and began a few roundhouse kicks on Howie’s guy. “Maybe it’s just something simple,” I suggested, “like she’s got a peg leg or something.”
“Maybe two peg legs,” says Howie.
“Or a peg head,” says Ira. “I’d pay to see that.”
“You’re not the one paying—Crawley is.” I spun on Ira, gave his character a double-death blow, and he was finished. Ira dropped his controller in frustration. Now it was just Howie and me. I tore into him brutally. It wasn’t because I cared about beating him; I just wanted it done. Kind of like the way you finish that last piece of pizza, just because it’s there.
It only took a minute for the game to be over, and my character was raising all three of his arms in triumph to the sound of ca
Ira and Howie don’t have an opinion. Somehow I didn’t expect them to. “The new version comes out in a month. It’ll be tons better,” says Howie.
I nodded in agreement because I didn’t want to talk about what was really going through my mind. I was thinking about bamboo. Last year, my science teacher said that when a bamboo plant is established enough, you can actually watch it growing before your eyes. I wondered if it was sometimes the same with humans—because I was feeling this weird vertigo, like I had suddenly sprouted far beyond Howie and Ira. I knew it just like I knew that no future version of “Three Fisted Fury” was going to interest me like it did a year ago.
I heard footsteps coming down the stairs, but at first glance I didn’t see anybody there.
“Hey, Schwa,” I said.
The moment Howie and Ira realized who it was, they picked up their game controllers and quickly started a new game, ignoring him. It made me mad, but I didn’t say anything. For Howie and Ira, it was okay when the Schwa was just a plaything—just some weird object that had strayed into their airspace like a UFO—but once they lost interest in him, he was no longer welcome on their radar screen.
“I’ve solved at least part of the mystery,” the Schwa said, ignoring Ira and Howie just as well as they ignored him.
“Which mystery?”
“Crawley’s granddaughter.”
At this, Ira and Howie couldn’t help but show a little bit of interest.
“What did you find out?” I asked.
“Take a look for yourself.”
He hands me this printout of a page he must have gotten from some old Internet newpaper archive. An old society page from the Daily News. It shows a picture of a baby with the caption: Mr. and Mrs. Charles Crawley III a
As Ira and Howie huddled around me to look at the picture, Schwa got shouldered out of the way.
“Lexis?” said Ira. “She’s named after a car?”
“Spelled differently,” I pointed out.
“Well,” says Howie, “it looks like she didn’t have a peg head at birth.”
In fact, it didn’t look like there was anything wrong with baby Lexis at all. “Hey, wait a second,” I said. “Look at the date on that article—she’s not a little kid at all. She’s our age.”
“Hmm,” said Ira. “Whatever’s wrong with her, maybe she wasn’t born with it.”
“Maybe she developed leprosy at puberty,” says Howie. “I hear that happens.”
“Yeah, maybe in Calcutta or something, but not in Brooklyn.”
“Maybe she traveled,” says Howie, “and brought it back with her, like the flu or mad cow.”
“Well,” says Ira, “whatever’s up with her, you’ll find out soon enough.” He and Howie returned to their spot on the floor and picked up their game controllers.
“C’mon, Antsy, you playing or what?”
The Schwa may have been used to being treated like he wasn’t there, but it didn’t mean he had to like it. I could see an anger begi
“Hey!” he shouted to Howie and Ira. “The ice cream man’s giving out free Popsicles,” he said. If they heard him, they ignored him. He got louder. “Did you hear Martians invaded Long Island?” No response. His Crock-Pot began to boil. “Tidal wave’s headed for Brooklyn,” the Schwa shouted at them. “We have five minutes to live.”
Howie and Ira just kept on playing.
I could see what was about to happen here. It was what you call “en passant.” It’s a move in chess. One pawn gives an enemy pawn the cold shoulder as it moves two squares ahead. So the ignored pawn has the right to kick the rude pawn’s sorry butt off the board, just because it wants to. It’s the only move I know where you get busted just for ignoring the enemy.
So here I am standing in my own basement, watching Howie and Ira walking straight into an en passant. It was their way of putting our friendship to the test. We’ve had enough of the Schwa, is what they were silently saying. Are you our friend, or are you his?
I should have done what I always do when I’m losing a chess match: accidentally knock over the board. But the Schwa made his move before I could do a thing, cutting in front of me and advancing on Howie and Ira. I stood back and let him do it. It was his right, and I wasn’t going to rob him of it. He got in front of them, blocking their view of their video game. “Hey, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m here.”