The Big Bazoohley

by Peter Carey

  “But they have jewels and stuff,” Sam whispered. “Why do they need more money?”

  “They’re not rich, Sam. The parents are dressing the kids up in an unnatural way so they can make money from them.”

  Sam turned his baseball hat around backward and pushed his hands deliberately in his pockets. He acted proud, but he would rather have been in their shiny shoes than his dirty sneakers. He felt ashamed of his sloppy sweater, his crumpled jeans, his baseball cap. These kids would still be hanging around the lobby when he was kicked out of the hotel.

  In the elevator his father said, “You thought your life was strange, huh?”

  “Yes,” said Sam, but he could not think what else to say. He just wanted to sleep, to forget everything. He ate his peanut butter sandwich and drank his milk. He cleaned his teeth and kissed his mum good night.

  “You want a story, sweetheart?” she asked.

  “Unh-uh.”

  “You want to read yourself?”

  “Unh-uh. I’m tired.”

  “Okay, but take off your Blue Jays cap before you go to sleep.”

  Sam began to dream immediately, his cap still backward on his head.

  FOUR

  IN SAM’S DREAM, HE was back at the Bloor Street platform, in front of the M&M’s advertisement. He was there because he was going to find Mr. de Vere. He stretched out his hand to the advertisement, and as he touched the big bright red M&M, the poster swung open, like a door.

  At first he thought it was a closet. He could see a cleaner’s mop and a bucket of smelly water. Then, as he listened to the noise of water dripping, he knew he was at the entrance to a long dark hallway. He could smell wet earth and see spiderwebs, but he knew that he had no choice but to go in there. He knew he was the only one who could find Mr. de Vere.

  At first he had to fight his way through a forest of brooms and mops, and then he had to push aside a great pile of cleaner’s rags.

  After he got past the rags he found himself in a long smooth hallway with low soft yellow lights. There were small neat cubbyholes set into the wall at regular intervals. They were like display cases in a museum, and in each one there was a small silver bowl filled with M&M’s.

  Sam took a single M&M and ate it.

  Someone said, “It’s magic.”

  Indeed this M&M did not taste like any M&M’s he had ever tasted. It was filled with something sweet and runny and golden, like honey, but much, much nicer.

  When he looked again the light in the corridor had become golden, and beautiful paintings had appeared on the walls. The carpet on the floor was deep and soft. He knelt down to feel it. When he stood again the hallway had changed once more.

  The paintings had disappeared. Where the paintings had been there were small round windows like portholes in a ship. As he peered into a porthole he realized that he could see Mr. de Vere’s secret mansion.

  On the other side of the little windows he could see Mr. de Vere himself. He was dressed in a red smoking jacket and gold slippers and he was looking at a beetle with a magnifying glass.

  Sam began to hurry along the hallway, looking for an entrance.

  “I’m Sam!” he shouted. “Vanessa Kellow’s son.”

  Mr. de Vere seemed to have forgotten his beetle. He was walking along beside Sam, on the other side of the wall. He was nodding his head and his long mole-like nose was creased in a smile. “The door is just ahead,” he called. “Go down the slide and into the tunnel.”

  And then suddenly it was dark.

  “What slide?”

  “Just keep walking, you’ll find it.”

  Sam took another step, tripped, and then he felt himself falling. He was in a dark, soft, gloomy place. It felt like the cleaner’s closet again, but now a television was playing.

  “That’s right,” Mr. de Vere’s voice called. “Now just walk in the door.”

  Sam could not find any door He was in a sea of cleaner’s rags. “What door?” he called.

  “For heaven’s sake,” Mr. de Vere snapped impatiently, “are you an imbecile? Do you want the money or don’t you?”

  “My father wants it, too,” Sam said. “It isn’t just me.”

  “Can’t even find a door!”

  “I can,” said Sam. “I really can.” And it was at that moment that Sam found a door handle. He grasped it. He turned it. He pulled, and the big brown door swung smoothly toward him.

  It was with a feeling of enormous relief that Sam walked into the long, luxurious, carpeted hallway with little yellow lights along the wall and a big arrangement of dried flowers and a huge gold mirror at the end.

  Sam blinked and looked around. It took a good minute for him to realize that he had been dreaming. Indeed it was only after he had heard the door swing shut behind him that he realized that he had sleepwalked out of his hotel room.

  He was locked out.

  FIVE

  SAM KELLOW HAD WALKED into the hallway. And when he tried to get back into the hotel room, he found it locked against him.

  He knocked on the door. But the door was black and hard and although he hit it with all his might, his small fist made precious little noise.

  He put his ear against the door. All he could hear was thick dead wood.

  Okay, he thought, what now?

  The answer was obvious: get in the elevator, go downstairs to reception, ask them to let him in his room.

  Sam looked down at his faded Sonic the Hedgehog pajamas, the ones his mum had given him when he turned eight years old. They were too short in the legs. They were torn on the shoulder. The truth was, he looked like someone whose parents couldn’t pay the bill, and he would rather have died than go downstairs and be stared at by people in fur coats.

  So he went to the next door along the corridor instead. He knocked once, then twice. He put his ear to the door. All he could hear was the sound of wood.

  He turned his baseball cap the right way on his head. He went to the next door and he knocked, not with his knuckles this time, but with the flat of his hand. He kicked the door. He put his mouth against the door. “Yo!” he called. He took his baseball cap off and smoothed his hair. Then he put his mouth close to the door again. “I’m locked out of my room:”

  And then, like a miracle, he heard distant life on the other side of the door—a noise like leaves rustling, papers being shuffled, or perhaps a pair of leather slippers on a wooden floor.

  “Who’s that?” The wheezy, phlegmy old voice was so close it made him jump.

  “It’s only me.”

  “Who is ‘me’?”

  “I’m Sam.”

  “What do you want, ‘Sam’? What brings you knocking on my door at midnight?”

  “I’m locked out of my room.”

  “How do I know you’re not a robber come to take my money?”

  “I’m just a kid,”

  “That’s what you say. I can’t see you.”

  “Don’t I sound like a kid?”

  “You might be a ventriloquist,” said the voice on the other side of the door. “This hotel is full of kids who don’t look like kids.”

  “There’s a competition,” Sam said. “The Perfecto Kiddo competition.”

  “Those were not kids,” the wheezy old man said “I’ve got five grandsons. I know what kids are like. They have dirty sneakers and baggy sweaters and wear their baseball caps back to front.”

  “That’s me.” Sam put his cap back on his head. “Honest. Mister. That’s me.”

  “I hate those kids,” the old man said angrily Sam heard the door unlock. “I never liked them from the time that they were born.”

  The old man opened the door a chink.

  As the old man tried to undo the chain, Sam knew this was not a lucky room. He ran swiftly along the corridor and stepped inside the cleaner’s closet. It had brooms and rags in it, like in his dream. Through a crack in the closet door he saw a big fat old fellow with a bulgy nose stick his head out of his hotel room. “Ventriloquists!” the
old man said. And slammed the door.

  Sam waited until he heard the chain on the door, and then came back into the light.

  Farther up the hallway he heard the elevator pass. He heard it make a small ringing noise one or two floors below. He knew he should have admitted defeat and gone downstairs in his torn pajamas, but he was not the son of a gambler for nothing. In spite of everything, he believed in luck, the Big Bazoohley. And now he looked at all the numbered doors lined up along the corridor as if they were a deck of cards.

  One of these doors would be a lucky number. He felt the power in his bones, the power to guess the right number. His arms tingled, his fingers went loose, and he made his eyes go out of focus, just like his father did before he placed a bet at the casino. He walked up the corridor and stopped outside Room 2234.

  There were definitely grown-ups in Room 2234.

  Their dinner had been delivered on a trolley and when they had finished, they had pushed the trolley out into the corridor. There were two plates of chicken, hardly touched, and a large slab of chocolate cake with a little flag sticking in the cherry on the top.

  Sam kicked on the door.

  “Just leave it outside,” a woman called. It was a young voice, light and breathy.

  “Excuse me,” Sam said. “I got locked out of my room.”

  “Please go away,” the young man said. “You’re not being very thoughtful.”

  “I’m just a kid.”

  “He wants a tip,” the man said.

  “I gave him a tip,” the woman said. “He got a good tip when he came. He knows we got the Honeymoon Special Rate. Why can’t he just leave us alone?”

  “I’m not a waiter,” Sam cried.

  But then a minute later a crisp new five-dollar bill came sliding out under the door.

  If this wasn’t luck, what was? He folded the money and tucked it into the pocket of his pajama jacket.

  He thought, I’m on a winning streak.

  He took the chocolate cake from the trolley and sat down on the floor and began to eat it.

  Sam was not a tidy eater. He never had been. And now that he was excited, he had no time to think about the chocolate on his nose and ears. He patted the five dollars under his pajamas with chocolaty hands. He asked himself what his dad would have done. Then he put his eyes out of focus. He made his arms and shoulders go loose. He walked up the corridor, waiting for the next lucky number to speak to him.

  SIX

  TWO PLUS TWO PLUS TWO plus one equals seven, the luckiest number of all.

  Sam stood outside Room 2221, his eyes hooded, his arms loose beside him. He was confident that this was a lucky room. He knocked lightly, barely brushing the wood with his knuckles.

  The door swung open so quickly he jumped.

  The first thing he saw were the M&M’s, a packet of them, in a woman’s hand. The woman was short and plump, dressed in a white dressing gown. She had a very small mouth. The eyes behind her spectacles looked red, as if she had been weeping. There was a large lace handkerchief in her hand. When her eyes rested on Sam, the first thing she did was blow her nose, not loudly, but very sharply.

  She tucked her handkerchief in her sleeve and looked at Sam with her head tilted a little to one side. The glass in her spectacles was thick and made her eyes look like little blue fish in an aquarium.

  “A boy,” she said. She seemed to be speaking to herself, but with a sort of wonder. It was as if she had opened her door and seen a green-backed lizard or a space creature.

  “Who is it, Muriel?” a man called.

  A small private smile appeared on her face. She slipped the M&M’s into her dressing gown pocket, “It’s a boy,” she said. “With chocolate on his nose and ears.”

  “I sleepwalked out of my room,” Sam said.

  “Come on, darling.” The woman held out her hand to him. “It’s okay We have a boy, too. He’s nine. I bet you’re nine.”

  But Sam did not need to be invited in. “Our boy is sick,” the woman whispered. A curly-haired boy was sleeping in the big bed.

  Sam looked hard at the man, who had to step back into a closet to let them pass. He was tall and stooped, with a mild, indefinite face. He smiled vaguely at Sam. Sam began to smile back, but Muriel took him by his shoulders, turned him sharp left, and pushed him into the bathroom.

  “A very grubby boy,” she said quietly, to herself, as she turned on the bath and began unpacking bottles from a little plastic Perfecto case on the countertop.

  Sam watched the steaming water rising in the bath

  “Probably.” Muriel said, “the grubbiest boy I have ever seen.”

  “Are you going to give him a bath?” Sam asked.

  Muriel turned and looked at him, her eyes wobbling behind her thick lenses. “What?”

  “Are you going to give your son a bath?”

  “My son is clean, kiddo.”

  “I sleepwalked out of my room,” Sam said. “My parents are probably looking for me.”

  “Of course they are, but I wouldn’t want to see our Wilfred with a filthy face like yours, and I’m sure your parents are no different,” she said. “Quick, out of these. Quick, quick.” She snapped her fingers and Sam saw that she meant that he should get out of his pajamas and into the bath.

  “No,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Nonsense,” Muriel said. She took her pack of M&M’s, found a red one, popped it in her mouth. Then she rolled up the sleeves of her dressing gown and opened a drawstring bag from which she removed a sponge, then a whole series of brushes. “I know how Mommies like to see their little boys.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sam said. “But you’re a stranger.”

  “The kid’s right,” said the man, who was standing in the doorway. “He doesn’t need a bath to wipe his face.”

  “It isn’t just his face, George,” Muriel said. She began to squeeze a bright red solution onto the bristles of the brush.

  Sam knew what that red solution was. He had seen the TV commercial.

  “All right,” Muriel said. “It’s face, arms, hands, and hair. No bath,” she said, and she pulled the plug. “But by golly gee, my kiddo, there’s work to do on you.”

  And without more ado she set to work on him. She washed his face, not once, but twice. She scrubbed his arms and scoured his elbows. He called out to tell her to stop it, but she said she knew how Mommies liked their boys to be. She got her plump arm around his neck and scrubbed away. When she had finished with that, she put a fresh hotel towel across his shoulders and she doused his hair with water and poured green Perfecto shampoo on it. She had strong little fingers and she rubbed his head like no one had ever rubbed it in his life. She rinsed the shampoo off with an ice bucket full of water and then shampooed again.

  This was not a lucky room. Sam saw that now, but when he had seen the M&M’s, he had had this half-crazy idea that they were a magic sign that would lead him to Mr. de Vere. Now the only thing he wanted was to get out of there.

  “I just want my mum and dad,” he called. He had soap in his eyes, water in his mouth. “Please let me go.”

  “You’ll get your mom and dad,” George said. He said this in such a firm way that Sam felt a little surge of hope.

  “Muriel …” George said, his voice rising in a kind of warning.

  “Get me the yellow cleanser,” Muriel said.

  George stepped into the bathroom, looked at all the bottles and tubes on the countertop, and picked one of them up. He held it out to Muriel.

  A boy’s voice called, “Who’s that?”

  “Go to sleep, darling,” the woman called back, “It’s nothing. George, make sure he stays in his bed.”

  But the boy had already appeared at the door, his head tucked underneath his father’s arm. He had lots of blond curly hair and his face was covered with red spots.

  “Who’s that?” the boy asked.

  “Oh, look at you,” Muriel wailed. “Look at my beautiful, beautiful boy.” And she began to cry.

&n
bsp; She put the soap back on the rack. She put the bristly brush back on the countertop. She let go of Sam Kellow, dried her hands, and took the curly-headed boy away.

  “Just let her finish cleaning you,” George said to Sam. “That’s all she wants. Once you’re nice and clean, then you can go. Believe me,” he said, “that’s easiest for all of us.”

  Sam sat down on the toilet seat. “What’s your kid’s name?” he asked.

  “That’s Wilfred.”

  “He’s got chicken pox,” Sam said. “That’s what’s making him feel sick.”

  “We know,” George said. “We know very well he has chicken pox.” Those mild soap-pale eyes were suddenly blazing with temper. “We don’t need grubby little urchins knocking on our door to tell us that.”

  “I’m just a kid,” Sam said. “You don’t have to talk to me like that.”

  “That’s right,” George said bitterly. “You’re an ordinary kid with an ordinary life and ordinary parents. It makes no difference to you if you get chicken pox or not.”

  Sam was about to say that he had already had chicken pox, but then Muriel came back into the bathroom and started rolling up her sleeves again.

  “Muriel,” George said. “I really think he’s clean now.”

  “I can’t give him back in this state,” said Muriel, and she began to take out the brushes again.

  “Muriel …”

  “Don’t lecture me,” she said. “I can’t help myself. I see a filthy boy, I’ve got to make him nice. It’s me. It’s who I am. You knew when you married me. You knew when you met me. I’m a mother. I was born to be a mother.”

  “You wiped my face,” the man said. “The first day we met.”

  “I sponged the mark on your tie.”

  “Excuse me,” Sam said.

  “You just wait,” Muriel said. “You wait until you’re presentable.”