The Big Bazoohley

by Peter Carey

  Sam could see this subject had also been on George’s mind because he now cocked his head and looked at Sam with great interest.

  “Go on,” he said, eating one M&M after another. “Go on.”

  “Well,” said Sam, “it’s no big deal. I just thought I’d write a note and say I was okay and that I’d be back—”

  “For a late lunch,” said George. He held out the pack of M&M’s to Sam for the first time. “For a late lunch,” he said. “This is excellent.” This is exactly what we should do. We’ll be on the road by one, one-thirty at the latest.”

  Muriel looked at George. She gave him a long, long look that suggested she was somehow very disappointed in him for being so easily persuaded. But then she fetched some paper with the hotel’s name printed in gold letters and placed it on the table where Sam had been practicing.

  “Give him your pen,” she said to George.

  George hesitated, as if his pen were a toy he didn’t want to share.

  “Give him your pen, honey bear,” said Muriel.

  George took a very expensive-looking black-and-gold pen from his pocket, removed its cap, and handed it carefully to Sam, who immediately began to write with it. It was a peculiar pen with a hard steel nib and it was not easy to write with, but after two bad starts and two new sheets of paper, he succeeded in writing this message:

  George took back his pen and looked carefully at the nib. Then he screwed the top back on and put the pen in his pocket. Then he picked up the letter Sam had written and blew on the ink to dry it.

  “Big Bazoohley?” said George. “Bazoohley?”

  “It’s a hide-and-seek game,” Sam said quickly, “that we play at home.”

  George narrowed his watery blue eyes and knelt down so his red pointy nose was level with Sam’s. “The Big Bazoohley?” he said. He had been drinking last night and his breath did not smell nice. “If it’s hide-and-seek, how could you come home with it? If it was hide-and-seek, you would come home after playing it. But you”—he picked up the paper and peered at it closely—“you wrote, ‘I’ve gone to get the Big Bazoohley.’”

  “Oh. for heaven’s sake,” said Muriel, “this is no time to argue about grammar.”

  “Darling,” said George, and his long neck was now excessively red. “This is not grammar I am arguing about.”

  “You always say that,” she said, “but it always is. If you make a joke, it is about grammar. If I see you smile, it is because I made a mistake with my grammar. Now, please, you go and put this letter under their door.”

  “It’s number 2235,” said Sam.

  “You put this under the door at Room 2235,” Muriel said, “while I have a little chat with our guest.”

  As George left the room, Muriel turned to Sam and took his hand. She held it lightly and stroked the back of it. “If you run away, my sweetie,” she said, “if you play this Big Bazoohley with me, you will find you are dealing with a Big Bazoohley expert. Because I’ll come after you. And I will find you, wherever you are hiding. And I will take you by the ear and I will pull you back and make you eat soap and string with ink on it. Do you believe me?”

  Sam looked into Muriel’s wild swimming eyes. “Yes,” he said.

  “And do you know how I would find you?”

  “No,” said Sam.

  “By smell,” said Muriel. “Because I am a witch, I am a real-life witch. Do you believe me?”

  “Yes,” said Sam.

  “All right,” said Muriel, and then she actually kissed him on the cheek. “Then you stay put, and everything will be just fine.”

  And with that she picked up her purse and walked briskly out of the room.

  “Of course,” said Wilfred, when the door shut behind her, “she’s not a witch.”

  “I knew that,” Sam said.

  “But she can get kind of scary, too,” Wilfred said. “Even when she worked as a checkout clerk at Woolworth, people were scared of her. There’d be long lines at the other checkouts, and she’d be just standing there waiting for someone to check out with her. I was only four, but I used to watch how people stayed away from her.”

  Sam felt sorry for Wilfred. He thought how terrible it must be to have such a scary mum.

  “She’s not so bad,” said Wilfred, who seemed to guess what Sam was thinking. “I just wish she’d let me wear a baseball cap.”

  “All kids wear baseball caps,” said Sam, “even in Australia, where I’m from. We play cricket, but we wear baseball caps. If you go to Sydney, you’ll see kids with caps from Boston, New York, Philadelphia—”

  “But I’m from Philadelphia,” Wilfred said. “I’m an American.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “It’s our game,” Wilfred said. “I’m American. I’m entitled to the cap.”

  “Do you know who the Toronto Blue Jays are?” Sam said.

  “Do you know?” Wilfred sniffed. “That’s more the point. You’re the Australian, not me.”

  Sam ignored this. “They sell Blue Jays caps downstairs,” he said. “There’s a little shop.”

  Wilfred’s eyes got a sad faraway look. “I know,” he said. “I saw them. If we were here in summer, we could see them play at the SkyDome. Except,” he said sadly, “you could, but I couldn’t.”

  “But you could have the cap,” Sam said.

  “Might as well be on the moon” Wilfred said. “They’d never buy me one.”

  “But I’ve got money,” Sam said.

  And he went to the bathroom, where his pajamas were neatly folded just where Muriel had placed them. His five-dollar tip was still in the pocket. He brought it back and showed it to Wilfred.

  “Wow,” said Wilfred. He took the money and held it for a moment. Then he passed it back to Sam.

  “No,” Sam said, giving the bill back to him. “This,” said Earl Kellow’s son, “is for you to buy your Blue Jays hat.”

  For a moment he thought Wilfred was going to cry.

  “You’d buy me a baseball hat? Why would you do that?”

  “Because they’re not being fair to you. Why do they eat M&M’s all the time and never offer any to you?”

  “They’re being much less fair to you,” Wilfred said. “They’re being total jerks.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” Sam said.

  For a moment Wilfred’s eyes looked like his father’s, emotional and suspicious. “This is a trick,” he said. “You’ll give me the money and when I leave the room, you’ll run away.”

  “I could have run away a hundred times. I could run away right now if I wanted.”

  “Cross your heart you won’t run away.”

  “Ridgey-didge.”

  “Is that like Big Bazoohley?”

  “Ridgey-didge. It’s Australian. It means ‘honest.’ It means ‘I swear it.’”

  “What if they see me?”

  “Cross your fingers,” Sam said.

  Wilfred crossed the fingers of his right hand. Sam put the five-dollar bill in his left.

  “But I’ve got chicken pox. I’ve got spots all over my face.”

  “Here” said Sam. “Take my cap and pull it down over your face.”

  Wilfred put the hat on and pulled it down.

  “Do I look okay?”

  But Sam was already relaxing on the bed doing his favorite hotel thing: watching an NBA game on cable TV.

  ELEVEN

  WILFRED HAD THE shining new Blue Jays cap perched on top of his head when Muriel came into the room. He should have been caught, but his mother was so excited about the Big Bazoohley, she did not look at anyone but Sam. She came into the room with a Perfecto hairbrush in her hand, ready for action, and by the time she actually looked at Wilfred, he had hidden the baseball cap under his pillow. There was now only half an hour to go and even Sam was getting excited, though not half as excited as George and Muriel. They combed and brushed. They sprayed. They sponged and patted. They kneeled at his feet, pulling and tugging at his suit, putting a pin here, remov
ing a little lint there.

  “When you walk into the ballroom,” Muriel called up to him, “you will see there are a lot of tables with white cloths. That is where you will eat, but you must not sit there.”

  “That’s not the right way to tell the boy,” said George, unscrewing a bottle of shoe polish and applying it with a tissue.

  “Oh no, my dearest? And how should I tell him?”

  “What you must do, young fellow,” George said, speaking carefully as he applied more polish to Sam’s left shoe, “what you must do is walk to the line of chairs on the wall at your left.”

  Looking down, Sam saw him fold a yellow cloth and then begin to buff his left shoe furiously.

  “You will already be being judged,” George puffed. “They will be looking at your hair. They will watch how it catches the light, how it moves, how it shines. But as the commercial says—you’ve seen the commercials?—‘Perfecto isn’t just about hair.’ They’ll be judging your clothes, the way you walk, the way you sit. To sit in someone else’s chair would lose you ten points. Can you remember that? Tell me the number.”

  “Thirty-two.” They had told him that last night. Sam never forgot a number.

  “There,” said George, smiling up at Muriel. “He knows now.”

  “He knows nothing,” said Muriel.

  She stood slowly, glowering at Sam from behind her weird thick glasses. “Who is Mr. Lopate?” she asked.

  Sam shrugged.

  “You see.” Muriel looked down at George, who was carefully packing up his shoe polish and cloth in a shoe box. “He’s a foreigner. He knows nothing. He knows totally nothing. First you will absolutely not touch your hair, ever, no matter. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even if it itches.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sometimes the shampoo might make your head a little itchy. If you scratch, you are out.”

  “What about Mr. Lopate?” Sam asked.

  “He is a very famous movie star. I can’t believe he isn’t famous in whatever horrid little place you come from. You will see him in front of you the moment you take your seat. He will be seated at the podium. Do you know what a podium is?”

  “It’s a sort of platform.”

  “Correct. On this ‘sort of platform’ you will see a remarkably handsome gentleman sitting on a chair. That is Phillip Lopate, and all that matters in your little life is that Phillip Lopate likes you.”

  “Seat thirty-two is right in front of Mr. Lopate’s nose.” George stood, holding his box of shoe polish. “It is a very good number. He cannot miss you.”

  “You will have a blue number thirty-two. And when you stand to dance,” Muriel said, “you will go to the little girl who will have a pink thirty-two. Her name is Nancy See and she has particularly good hair. She dances nicely too, which is why all the old hands are so jealous of her. She’s new to the competition circuit, but everyone thinks she’s going to win.”

  “You never said anything about dancing,” Sam said.

  “Well,” said Muriel, “I am saying it now.” And they both began to laugh.

  “I can’t dance,” Sam said.

  There was sudden absolute silence in the room. Everybody was staring at Sam.

  “You fox-trot at least,” Muriel said at last. “That’s all that’s needed. You can get by on fox-trot. That horrid little blond boy who won in Tokyo—that’s really all he could do, the fox-trot.”

  But Sam had never even heard of a dance called the fox-trot, and he could see the Big Bazoohley slipping out of his grasp. “I can’t dance the fox-trot,” he said quietly. “I just can’t dance.”

  “Oh, heavens,” said Muriel. And she sat on the bed with her head in her hands. “Oh, Lord help us.”

  Wilfred slipped off the bed. “I’ll teach you,” he said “It isn’t hard.”

  “How can you teach anyone to dance in half an hour?” wailed Muriel.

  “I’m a fast learner,” said Sam.

  But Muriel started yelling at him: “You tricked me! You tricked me into this—”

  “Muriel!” said George. “Relax!”

  “Relax!” she shrieked, leaping off the bed so high she seemed to fly. “I did all this work. I’ve added body and bounce to his filthy hair. He never told me he couldn’t dance. I pinned my hopes on him. I bribed that stupid man so he would give him seat thirty-two.”

  “No one told me I had to dance,” Sam said.

  “How could it be a Perfecto Kiddo Prize if you couldn’t dance?”

  “Chop, chop,” said George. “It’s not too late to learn. Come on, Wilfred, you’ll have to be the girl. Okay now. I’m the orchestra.”

  And, still seated in his straight-backed chair, the strange stooped man in the cardigan began to wave his arms around and thump his foot and croon in a strange high voice.

  TWELVE

  SAM WALKED INTO THE elevator in front of George and Muriel. He was their dancing bear. He had a blister on his heel from trying to fox-trot in Wilfred’s shining shoes.

  “Don’t limp,” hissed George as he pressed the button for the lobby. “The Perfecto Kiddo never limps.”

  Sam was about to explain about the blister, when out in the hallway a man’s voice called, “Hold that lift.”

  Straightaway George’s long white finger darted out. He did not press the OPEN DOOR button. He pressed CLOSE DOOR and the elevator doors began to slide shut. But before they could close completely, a large square hand hooked around one of them, and then a tall man pushed his shoulder in between the doors and forced them back open.

  And there, in the elevator doorway, stood Sam’s dad.

  Earl Kellow had such a worried face, Sam hardly recognized him. He was normally such a big man, such a smiling man. But now, as he pushed his way into the elevator, he was kind of shrunken and stooped over and even Sam’s mother—who was only a second behind him—was huddled inside her parka, her arms crossed tight across her chest, her eyes red, her hair untidy.

  Sam felt terrible to cause his parents so much pain, but he also knew straightaway that if they saw him, he could never have a chance to get the money. So he hunched over, too. He pushed his hands into his pockets and looked down at the floor so no one could see his face.

  “Stand up,” said George. “You’ll never win if you hunch.”

  Muriel turned to him.

  “What does it matter,” she said bitterly. “He can’t dance worth a whistle. He doesn’t have a chance.”

  The elevator car was smaller than Sam’s bathroom at home. There was no way to hide from anyone. Sam stood up straight and looked straight ahead.

  His mother was looking up at the lighted numbers as the elevator descended, but Earl Kellow’s eyes were looking around the car. Sam felt his father’s eyes pass over him. It was only then Sam realized how much he had changed since his parents tucked him into bed the night before and kissed him good night. His baseball cap was gone. His long straight hair was gone. He now had curly hair. He had a velvet suit and a bow tie. He had clean, manicured nails. He had scrubbed and polished skin.

  It was like being invisible. It was the weirdest, most confusing feeling. One part of him felt powerful, the other part really lonely.

  His parents looked so sad. He wanted to hug them and tell them that he wasn’t lost, that he was on a winning streak, that he was going to win the Big Bazoohley even if he couldn’t dance very well. He was going to hire a private detective. He was going to find Mr. de Vere. Everyone was going to be happy again.

  But of course he couldn’t say a word. He had to stay with Mad Muriel and Droopy George.

  “There must be a casino in the hotel,” his mother said quietly. “That must be what he meant.” The look she gave her husband was full of blame, as if it was his fault that his son was hanging around casinos.

  “There are no casinos in Toronto,” his father said.

  But Sam could see that his mother was so worried she would not believe him. She turned to the stra
nge woman with the red spectacles and dancing blue eyes. “Excuse me,” she said to Muriel, “do you know if there’s a casino in this hotel?”

  “No,” Muriel said huffily, “certainly not.”

  “If you want to throw your money away,” George sniffed, “you’ve got to go across the border.”

  Sam’s mother turned away from Muriel and spoke to her husband in a lower voice. “Perhaps,” she said, “he went back on the subway. I think he’s trying to find Mr. de Vere.”

  “No, no,” his father said. “He’s a good kid.”

  “He is a smart kid,” his mother said. “When he says he’s getting the Big Bazoohley, he can only mean Mr. de Vere. Earl, he’s gone to find Mr. de Vere.”

  When she said Bazoohley, Sam felt George and Muriel go rigid. They held their hands by their sides. They looked up at the lighted numbers. They held their breath. They knew they were in the car with Sam’s parents. And when the car arrived in the lobby, they took Sam, one on each side, and marched him, fast, toward the ballroom.

  “What does it mean?” George hissed.

  “What?” said Sam, as if he did not know.

  “‘Bazoohley’,” Muriel said. “What does it mean?”

  But there was no time for Sam to answer. They were at the registration desk outside the ballroom.

  THIRTEEN

  YEARS LATER, WHEN THE adventure was all over, Vanessa Kellow painted Toronto in a Matchbox, the masterpiece that made her famous.

  This painting fit inside a standard-size matchbox and it showed the city of Toronto as it looked on the day that Sam went missing.

  It showed the entire city covered with six feet of deep dry-powder snow. It was snow so deep that even the skyscrapers had soft white hats; snow so deep that the Gardiner Expressway closed down, and men and women traveled in from the airport on cross-country skis.

  If you look for the corner of Yonge and King Streets in the painting, you will find the beautiful new King Redward Hotel, and if you take a powerful magnifying glass and peer into that line of lighted yellow windows on the second floor, you will find yourself, miraculously, looking at another, even smaller, painting of the great ballroom.