Teddy could almost hear the sha-ring of a cash register. He didn’t respond right away. “I have to work most days,” he said apologetically. “I can’t afford to skip too often.”
Eldon said, “There will be a stipend for all research participants.”
“Enough to lay off a day’s work?”
“A significant stipend.”
“Well then, that sounds fine,” Teddy said.
Dr. Eldon said, “I’m afraid we have to stop now; there are other participants waiting. When you go back to the room, could you, ah, send the next person in?” Then with a wry smile he couldn’t repress: “I think you can guess who it is.”
Teddy played dumb, even as his heart tightened in his chest. “I’m sorry? Is this part of the test?”
“You mentioned to Beatrice—that’s my secretary—that you got a flash of a young woman meeting with me.”
“Oh, right!” Teddy said. “Is she back there?” He was proud at how steady his voice was. “Who do I ask for?”
Dr. Eldon glanced down at a list of names that lay on the desk in front of him. All but the last three had been checked off. “Her name’s Maureen McKinnon.”
This was the first time he’d heard her name spoken aloud. He liked the music of it. “No problem, sir.” He bent over the list as if making sure of her name. “Miss McKinnon. Got it.”
He walked to the classroom down the hall, the same room where he’d filled out the application forms two weeks earlier. It had been empty and dim before his interview, but now three people were there: the young black man, wearing the same tie and maybe the same shirt; the white, slick-haired mole boy; and the girl of his dreams. She sat in the first row, legs crossed under a blue skirt with yellow polka dots, one dainty yellow shoe like a ballet slipper kicking nervously.
The black man sat several rows back, but mole boy was right next to her, talking eagerly. See what happens? Leave a girl alone in the room, and some pimply-faced kid immediately starts bird-dogging her.
The kid held a copper-colored key in his hand, and he was saying, “It’s all about concentration. Imposing your will.”
“Whatcha doing?” Teddy asked Maureen. Ignoring the boy.
She looked up and smiled. “He’s trying to bend a key.”
“With my mind,” the kid said.
“You don’t say! Is your name Russell Trago?”
“That’s right.”
Teddy had read his name off the list, and took a guess that this was Russell. Which made the black man Clifford Turner. “You’re up next, Russell. Good luck in there.”
“Okay! Thanks.” He put the key on the desk, then said to Maureen, “Remember what I said. Impose your will.”
Teddy slid into the seat he’d vacated, and picked up the key. Weird that he’d left it behind. Usually a man liked to keep his props with him. “Still flat,” he said.
“He barely got started,” Maureen said.
“That’s too bad; it looked fascinating, just fascinating. I’m Teddy, by the way. Teddy Telemachus.”
“I’m—”
“Don’t tell me. Mary. No. Something like Mary, or Irene…” A pen and a piece of paper sat on the desk in front of her—the invitation from Dr. Eldon. He could use that paper if it came to it. Maybe do the Three Wishes routine for her. “Wait, is it Maureen?”
“Aren’t you a clever one,” she said. He liked that gleam in her eye. “It’s not really Russell’s turn, is it? They sent you out here to get me.”
“Ah. You’re too smart for me, Maureen McKinnon.”
“What did he have you do?”
He told her about the guess-the-drawing game, but refrained from explaining how he’d done it—or how easily.
“They seemed quite excited when I picked the first one,” he said. “I thought it was a triangle, but it turned out to be a pyramid.”
“Oh! Really?” She seemed a little too surprised.
“Why, you think ol’ Trago is the only one with powers beyond those of mortal men?”
“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s just that—”
He picked up the key and said, “Let me give it a try.”
“You bend keys, too?”
“Among other things,” he said. He closed his fist around it. “But I may need your help with this one.” He scooted the desk closer to her. “It’s not about imposing your will. You just have to ask the object to bend. The object wants to listen to you. All you have to do is think, Bend…Bend…And you know what happens?”
“I hope ‘explode’ isn’t on the menu,” she said.
He laughed. “Only if you yell at it. You have to ask sweetly.”
It was a simple trick. He’d already passed the key to his left hand. When he’d moved the desk, he’d jammed the tip beneath the desk lid and pushed down. The bend wasn’t much, just twenty or thirty degrees, but all the best magic tricks started small.
“Let’s see how we’re doing,” he said. He began rubbing the closed fist, which let him pass the key back into his right palm. He allowed the tip of the key to appear between thumb and index finger.
“You say it now,” Teddy said. “Bend.”
“Bend,” Maureen said.
“Please bend,” he said.
“Please bend,” she said.
He slowly pushed the key up, between thumb and index finger, letting more and more of it appear, exposing the bend.
“Oh no,” Maureen said.
“What’s the matter?”
“I might have trouble getting back into the house.”
“It’s your key?”
“I thought you realized—”
“I thought it was his! You gave that kid your only house key to play with?”
“I didn’t think he could actually do anything,” she said.
This seemed hilarious to both of them. They were laughing when Russell Trago returned to the room, looking wounded. Maureen covered her mouth. Trago seemed to sense he was the target of their laughter.
“They said they wanted Maureen,” he said. Looking at Teddy.
“Oh,” Teddy said. “Sorry. My mistake.”
Maureen slid out from her desk, then held out her hand. He pressed the warped key into her palm.
“What happened?” Trago said. His eyes widened. “Did I bend it?”
Teddy saluted her as she walked away. “Knock ’em dead, Maureen McKinnon.”
She’d left behind the pen and paper. She’d folded it over, hiding it from Trago maybe when he sat beside her. Teddy unfolded it. There were three drawings:
Pyramid.
Airplane.
Mickey Mouse.
“Holy Christ on a stick!” Teddy exclaimed.
He ticked through the usual methods, then ruled them out one by one. Yes, he’d told her about the first drawing, but not the other two. The distance to Dr. Eldon’s office made eavesdropping impossible. Plus, Trago had been in the room with her during most of Teddy’s interview, trying to bend her God damn house key, with Clifford Turner as witness. There was no method that Teddy knew of to see those drawings, from this far away.
There was only one explanation. Maureen McKinnon, nineteen years old, was the best damn scam artist he’d ever met.
Teddy drove home from the diner thinking about amazing coincidences. He didn’t believe in them unless he engineered them himself. But how to account for meeting Graciella, the most interesting woman he’d talked to in years, on the same day that Destin Smalls strolled back into his life? Like Graciella, he smelled a setup, but it wasn’t Smalls who set it up. Not his style. The agent moved in straight lines like a righteous ox.
Teddy parked his Buick in the garage, went out the side door, and stopped dead. A hole had appeared in the backyard, and Buddy was in it, thigh deep, and shoveling deeper.
“Buddy!”
His son looked up at him, curious. Naked from the waist up, which only made him look fatter.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Buddy looked down
at the hole, then back at Teddy.
“It’s a God damn hole in the middle of the yard!”
Buddy didn’t say anything. Of course. Buddy had decided he was Marcel Marceau.
“Put it back.” He waved at the mounds of dirt all round him. “Put it back now.”
Buddy looked away. Jesus Christ. The kid used to be so talented. Could have made them all rich, just by sitting around writing numbers with his crayons. Now he’d turned into a God damn golden retriever, digging holes in the lawn.
Teddy threw up his hands, marched into the house. There were dishes in the kitchen sink, but at least all the appliances were still in one piece. In the front room, Matty sat cross-legged on the couch, swami-style, his eyes closed.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Matty’s eyes snapped open. “What? Nothing!” Then: “Thinking.”
“You’re doing a hell of a job.” Teddy placed the Borsalino atop the rack. “Why aren’t you at school?”
The kid hopped up. “School’s over.”
“What?”
“Half day for the last day of school. It’s summer vacation.” He was chubby, pale like Maureen’s side of the family, short like Teddy’s. Poor bastard. Literally. His mom was broke, and his dad had abandoned the family years ago.
“And now what?” Teddy asked.
Matty blinked up at him.
“You’re going to be around here all the time?”
“Uh…”
How had he lost all control of his house? Home is a castle my ass. More like a refugee camp. He picked up the pile of mail on the front table, started shuffling through the envelopes. Bill, bill, junk mail. Another one of those computer disks. America Online. Got one every damn day, sometimes two in the same day.
“Why don’t you clean up the kitchen,” Teddy said. “We’ll start cooking when your mom comes home.” That was the best thing about having Irene back in the house. When it was just Teddy and Buddy, it was Chinese takeout three nights a week. Takeout or omelets.
Matty moved past him, and Teddy put out a hand, a five-dollar bill between his fingers. “Say, kid. You got change for a five?”
Matty put his hands in his pockets. Too early and too obviously, but they could work on that. “I don’t know, mister. Let me check.” A little telltale smile. They’d have to work on that, too. “Yeah, I think so.” Plucked the fiver from Teddy’s fingers, started folding it.
“Hey, I said I needed change,” Teddy said, playing the gruff customer.
“Oh, I’ll change it.” Teddy had taught him the patter, too. Matty unfolded the bill carefully, then stretched it out between his hands. “How about that?”
The five had turned into a two-dollar bill.
“Give it a little snap,” Teddy said. “Like a towel. Make ’em hear it. And don’t smile till the end. Tips ’em off.” The kid nodded, then went off to the kitchen without offering to return his five. At least he’d learned that much: never give the money back.
Teddy looked at the last envelope in the pile and felt a pinprick in his heart. Recognized the handwriting, that graceful, quick hand. Say what you will about Catholic school, those nuns knew how to teach cursive. Above the house address it said simply “Teddy.” No return address.
He dropped the rest of the mail back onto the table, then walked upstairs to his bedroom, gazing at the envelope, feeling heavier with every step.
God damn it, Maureen.
He went into his bedroom and shut the door. As always, he was tempted to leave the letter unopened. But as always, he couldn’t stop himself. Slit open the envelope, and read what she’d written. Then he dialed open the door to the little safe in his closet.
Inside, above the velvet tray that held his watches, was a stack of older envelopes. He used to get one every week. Then every few months. The last one had come a little over four years ago.
He held the envelope to his nose. Breathed in. Couldn’t smell anything but the old paper. Then he tossed it onto the stack with the rest and shut the door.
3
Irene
Nothing killed nostalgia for your childhood home like moving back into it. She’d come limping back to Chicago in her eight-year-old Ford Festiva, a teenage son in the passenger seat sprouting and stewing from every pore, dragging a U-Haul crammed with the entirety of her possessions: a mattress and box spring; a wood-veneer coffee table; two sturdy kitchen chairs; and two dozen wet cardboard boxes labeled HUMILIATION and DISAPPOINTMENT.
She was thirty-one years old. She’d failed to achieve escape velocity, and the crash landing was brutal.
There’d been a few Christmases, back when things were going almost okay in Pittsburgh, that she’d feel a thrill of warmth when she turned the corner into her old neighborhood and saw that pale green house, the hedges glowing with fat red and green lightbulbs, and the little square window on the second floor that marked her bedroom. Behind the house loomed the huge weeping willow, and when she saw its naked winter limbs she’d think of five-year-old Buddy up there, fearless in those years before their mother died, swaying in the high branches.
Now the first look at the house when she came home from work made her chest tighten in something like despair. She’d pull up after a nine-hour shift at Aldi’s, feet aching and brain punch-drunk with boredom, and realize, again, that the house was a trap.
Lately it had been a trap under construction, and today was no exception. She couldn’t even get into the driveway because of a stack of lumber. Annoyed, she parked on the street and went in through the front door. In the front hallway were three white boxes of various sizes, each splotched with black Holstein patches.
“Mom!” Matty shouted. He practically threw himself down the stairs. “Is this ours? Did you buy this?”
“I don’t even know what it is.”
“It’s a Gateway 2000! And a monitor. And a printer, I’m pretty sure.” He squatted beside the biggest box. “It’s got a built-in modem, with a Pentium.” The back of his head was matted and greasy.
“Don’t touch it. We might have to give it back. What time did you sleep to?”
“Uh, pretty late.”
“Did you take a shower today?”
“Sure.”
She looked hard at him.
“I mean, not yet. I was about to, then the computer—”
“You’re fourteen, Matty. You can’t walk around like a caveman.” And he should have known, too, that he couldn’t lie to her. Was he hoping that someday she’d be so distracted she wouldn’t notice?
“Can’t I just look at it?” Matty asked.
“Where’s your grandpa?”
“Out back, talking on the phone. Somebody called Smalls? Deep voice. He wanted Grandpa.”
“Destin Smalls?”
Matty shrugged. She started for the kitchen and the back door.
“I promise, I won’t even break the packing material,” he said.
“Do not open anything,” she answered.
Out on the patio, Teddy sat in a lawn chair reading a newspaper, his knees crossed, shoes gleaming. He wore his suit jacket despite the heat. The air smelled like cigarette smoke, but there was no cigarette in sight. His left hand rested mock-casually on the aluminum arm of the chair. The cordless phone lay on the cement beside him.
“Why is Destin Smalls calling you?” Irene asked.
Teddy didn’t look up from the news. “It’s none of your business.”
“Is he going to arrest you?”
That got him to lower his paper. It was the Tribune, which was weird. They were a Sun-Times family. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Teddy said. “He’s practically retired.”
“Then why’d he call?”
“Old friends check in, Irene. That’s a normal human activity.”
“Since when is he your friend?”
“Jesus Christ.” He raised the paper again—and immediately dropped it. “And could you get those boxes out of the front hall? Nearly broke my neck.”
“T
hey’re not mine. Did Buddy order a computer?”
“Who the hell knows what Buddy does.”
“Where would he get the money? That’s, like, two thousand dollars.”
“Two grand? For a computer? What do you do with it?”
“You can go on the Internet,” Matty said. “Or do homework on it.” He’d appeared in the doorway, keyed up as a puppy.
“I’m not having you sit around this house playing computer games,” she said.
“Can we ask Uncle Buddy if we can open them?” Matty asked.
“What’s for dinner?” Teddy asked.
“I’m not making dinner tonight,” Irene said.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“I think you just did. I’m busy enough, making a cake.”
“A cake? Why would you—oh. Maureen’s birthday.”
“Buddy would have a fit if we didn’t celebrate.”
“Did I say I didn’t want to celebrate? Of course I do.”
“Good, because Frankie and Loretta are coming over.”
“Hey, maybe Buddy bought the computer as a birthday present,” Matty said.
“For his dead mother?” Irene said.
“It’s Buddy,” Matty said reasonably.
“You make the cake, I’ll take care of dinner,” Teddy said, as if it was his idea. “I was thinking pizza.”
“You hate pizza,” Irene said.
“No, I hate most pizzas. I have high standards. I used to stop by this restaurant in Irving Park. Nick Pusateri ran it. He could do this crispy crust, just snap in your mouth like a God damn cracker. I used to bring them home for you guys.”
Irene had forgotten all about them. He’d carry them in on a cardboard bottom with a puff of white paper over them, no boxes. You’d break open that paper and delicious steam would bathe your face.
“He had a son, Nick Junior,” Teddy said. “Not the brightest bulb. Somehow managed to become a real estate developer and get rich.”
“You don’t say,” she said.
“So last week, I run into this woman at Dominick’s. Never met her before. Her name’s Graciella, has three kids. And guess who her husband is?”
“If it’s not Nick Junior, then you’re shitty at telling stories.”
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