The Schwa Was Here

My dad says that at Pisher Plastics they believe anything can be marketed and sold. “They’d put a price tag on a dead rat if they thought it would sell,” he once told me. “Then they’d hire an advertising firm to show beautiful women wearing them on their shoulders. It’s all part of a free-market economy.”

I can’t vouch for the dead-rat theory, but I do know that in our local free-market economy, the Schwa was a high-ticket item—and as his manager, lining up his jobs, I got a decent percentage of the money he made. I gotta admit, though, the money was just gravy. It was great for once to be the center of attention—or at least positioned next to the center of atten­tion. Fu

“It’s a waste of time,” Ira said, when I asked him if he and Howie wanted in on our business venture.

“Yeah,” said Howie. “I can think of a hundred better ways to make money.”

They were still pretty a

“Why don’t you forget this Schwa thing and help with my next movie,” Ira said. “Gerritsen Beach Beauties.”

“I’m casting director,” says Howie, beaming with pride that may have just been hormones.

I told them no, because I couldn’t just bail on the Schwa.

“Suit yourself,” Ira said. “But when we’re surrounded by babes begging for a part in the film, don’t come crying to us.”

In the end no girls were stupid enough to audition for them, so they had to settle for Claymation. Stealth Economics, on the other hand, turned out to be a much better business decision than anyone thought.

Once Mary Ellen MacCaw spread the word, people began to devise more and more uses for the Schwa’s unique talent. A bunch of jocks paid the Schwa ten bucks to eavesdrop on a gaggle of cheerleaders and find out which guys they were talk­ing about. I negotiated an eighteen-dollar deal for the Schwa to slip a kid’s late book report into a teacher’s briefcase, right be­neath the teacher’s nose.

“We want to put the Schwa on retainer,” our eighth-grade student officers told us barely a week into our little business. In other words, they wanted to pay him a lot of money ahead of time so they could ask him to do whatever they wanted, when­ever they wanted it.

“Cool,” the Schwa said.

“How much?” I asked.

I negotiated them up to ten bucks a week for service-on-de­mand. The Schwa cost more than cable!

They used him a lot in the first few weeks he was on retainer. Mostly they asked him to go into the teachers’ lounge, hang out in a corner, and report back to the student government on all gossip. He always slipped in right behind one of the fatter teachers, and never got caught. The student officers also had him hang out in the cafeteria kitchen to see who was mooching all those missing snack cakes, because the principal was blam­ing it on students. It turned out to be Mr. Spanks, the school security guard.

“We’d like to sign him up as an investigative reporter,” the journalism class said, after they heard how old Spanky got busted. But the class officers made a big stink since they al­ready had him on retainer, claiming we couldn’t work for both government and the press, so we had to tell them no.

The jobs made us decent money for doing nothing more than not getting noticed—but it was dares that payed the most, depending on how many kids paid into it. Since I acted as the bank, paying out of my own pocket when we lost, the Schwa and I shared our dare wi

“I dare the Schwa to walk into the principal’s office, thumb his nose at Principal Assinette, then leave, without being seen.”

Piece of cake. Total take: $32.

“I dare the Schwa to cut in front of Guido Buccafeo in the lunch line without being noticed, then dip his finger in Guido’s mashed potatoes, and not get beaten up.”

No problem. Total take: $26.

“I dare the Schwa to spend an entire day at school wearing nothing but a Speedo and not be noticed by his teachers.”

We lost twenty-two bucks on that one, but he made it all the way to third period!

I told the Schwa he was like Millard Fillmore—the president famous for going u

“It’s all go

I reminded him we had already scientifically proven that the odds were on our side. “We can still cut you in on the action,” I offered him—and then I had to add, “You can take your money and buy more clay.” Ira was not amused.

Still, no matter how much he and Howie frowned on our scheme, it didn’t faze the Schwa, so I tried not to let it faze me.

“You oughta go into business school, Antsy,” the Schwa told me as we scarfed down fries at Fuggettaburger. “You’ve got a real knack for it.”

“Naah,” I said. “I’m just leeching off of you.” But still, what he said struck a chord in me—and no minor chord either. It was the first time anyone ever accused me of having any real talent. I mean, my mother sometimes says I should go into astrophysics, but that’s just because I’m good at taking up time and space.

I don’t know what came over me then. Maybe I felt I knew the Schwa well enough—or maybe I was just talented at screw­ing up a good situation. Whatever the reason, I turned to him and asked: “So, Schwa—what really happened to your mother?”

I felt him go stiff. I mean I really felt it, like we were con­nected in some freaky way. He finished his fries, I finished mine. We left. Then, just as we hit the street, he said, “She dis­appeared when I was five.” And then he added, “Don’t ask me again, okay?”

As for what happened next, call it fate, call it luck, call it what­ever you want, but the next dare was the one that changed our lives. It could be that both of our lives were leading up to this moment. But I always wonder what would have happened if we didn’t take Wendell Tiggor’s dare.

I already told you about Old Man Crawley—the hermit who lived on the second floor of his massive restaurant that took up a whole block on the bay. I think every neighborhood in the world’s got a shut-in. There’s all these reasons for it, y’know, like outdooraphobia, or whatever they call it. They love to make movies about shut-ins, and it always turns out that it’s some lonely dude who’s just misunderstood. But that wasn’t the case with Charles J. Crawley. Nothing to misunderstand about him. He was old, he was rich, he was cranky, and although no one ever saw or actually spoke to him, he made it very clear he was not to be messed with.

There was this one Halloween, for instance, some of the neighborhood kids, including my brother, went on an egg pa­trol—and there are lots of windows to egg on that second floor of Crawley’s restaurant. We never did see Crawley himself look­ing out of the windows, but there were always Afghans poking their noses out. So, anyway, my brother and some of his friends, they go out on Halloween a few years back, toss a few eggs at Crawley’s upstairs windows, and run off. We heard nothing about it, except for one thing . . . from November 1 until New Year’s Day, not a single market in the neighborhood had eggs— not even the big supermarket chains. “It’s a local shortage,” peo­ple were told—but everyone knew that it was Old Man Crawley He had pulled some strings and shut down the egg supply to the whole neighborhood. No one ever egged his windows again.