Changing Michael

by Jeff Schilling

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Fleeting?”

  “Yes.”

  We came to the end of his street. Route 30 was clogged with traffic. Along this artery, strip malls and small office buildings elbowed each other for the best view. I was somewhat familiar with the area, but not enough to feel comfortable finding my way back to school if the bookstore was another half hour of side streets and shortcuts away.

  Michael took a left, walking against the rushing traffic.

  “Why’s that?” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why is this world fleeting? It doesn’t seem so fleeting to me,” I said.

  “So you’re going to live forever?”

  “Yes, Michael, I am.”

  We walked in silence for a while.

  “You’re not going to kill yourself, are you, Michael?” I asked.

  Nothing.

  “You’re a troubled youth, aren’t you?” I said.

  “Why are you following me?”

  “You’re not a very good listener. I told you: ‘I’m here to help.’”

  Actually, I was there to see if I could convince Michael to let me in his house, but somehow we were getting farther and farther from it.

  “I don’t need help,” said Michael, turning left and away from the noise of the road.

  I stopped to watch.

  “You can’t run away from the people who care about you!” I yelled. “I know where you live!”

  Michael stopped and stared.

  “The bookstore’s this way,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “And could you please stop yelling?” he said as I caught up to him.

  “Maybe.”

  The side street took us past a few more brick houses, although these were bigger than Michael’s and more like the ones near school. Someone had converted one of the houses into a second-hand bookstore. The sign outside was hand-painted—a woman’s face, with hair that grew and flowered like a vine: “Hole in the Wall Books.”

  “I’ll bet she’s magic,” I said. “I wonder if she gets bees in her hair.”

  Michael ignored me. He bounded up the three stairs to the front stoop and barged through the door. Little bells rang as he disappeared inside.

  I lingered at the bottom, watching the door as it shuddered to a close.

  Do I really want to follow Michael into a used bookstore?

  I hadn’t been in many, but the handful I’d visited seemed to have a few things in common:

  1) They smelled.

  2) The people who worked inside were always very eager to help.

  It would mean yet another sacrifice, and still more discomfort, but I’d come this far and felt I had to see things through.

  I reluctantly turned the doorknob, sounded the little bells, and stepped in. As I imagined, the air inside was musty. Tall, mismatched bookcases formed a maze of tight passageways. No sign of Michael, but that didn’t bother me. If I needed him, I’d just make a scene.

  Here and there, little cardboard arrows pointed the way to “German Philosophers” and “Tolkien Lore.” Not exactly “Fiction” versus “Nonfiction.” I picked through a section devoted to elves and elf culture that eventually merged with dwarves and dwarf history. It was kind of cool, in a geeky sort of way.

  I squatted down to look at the section on “Elf Culture.”

  I had to admit: Some of the covers were pretty interesting.

  A city suspended in a giant tree. A dragon peering from behind a half-opened door in the middle of an overgrown field.

  I started to feel like a little kid again. For a minute, I almost started to think like one—as if maybe, if I read these books, I’d know where to find the places on the covers.

  Anyway, I could see why Michael was so into them. And I guessed it wouldn’t take much to convince him that a bathroom door was actually a portal to an alternate universe.

  And if my life was like Michael’s, I’d probably take the first portal I found.

  Speaking of Michael, where is he, anyway?

  I stood up and almost had a heart attack.

  Some dork in a stained green t-shirt was smiling at me from around a bookshelf. He had little round glasses and a chin beard that looked like a miniature mud flap.

  “You like Eager?” Mud Flap asked.

  It sounded like some kind of pick-up line.

  “What?”

  “You into Eager?” he repeated, nodding at the book in my hand.

  “Oh,” I said, noticing the name on the cover. “Not really.”

  “You should check it out,” he said. “I think you’d like it.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said, putting it back.

  He kept smiling at me, so I opened my eyes real wide and stared. He got the message and pulled his fat head back around the bookcase.

  I stood up, deciding I’d done enough research for one day. I headed down the aisle, took a few turns, and ended up right back with the elves and dwarves. I tried another direction, but then found myself in a corner surrounded by graphic novels, manga, and whatever else they call comic books.

  There was a small, rectangular table in the middle of the alcove. Lidless white boxes were packed tight across every inch of surface space. In fact, the lucky boxes on the outside, stuffed with comics, actually hung over the edge of the table, a few inches too long. I decided to conduct a little physics experiment, wondering how many comics I could remove from the back of a box before it tipped forward and “accidentally” plummeted to the ground. It took some muscle, but I managed to wrestle a few free.

  Each was encased in its own sterile sandwich bag. I paused, glancing at the covers. Apparently, I’d struck a set of Silver Surfers.

  “Naked guy surfing,” I muttered. I remembered my friend in the stained shirt. “Seems about right.”

  I tossed his erotic literature on top of the boxes, deciding to resume my search for the exit. This time, I found it.

  I smacked the “someone’s here” bells to see if anyone would come running, but no one did.

  I was about to leave when I caught the edge of a conversation. I moved a little closer, down a narrow aisle that was almost a tunnel.

  “Did your friend leave?” a voice asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to catch up with him?” the voice asked. “We can talk later.”

  “No.”

  I found a break in the shelves and peered through. I could just see Michael hunched over a wobbly stack of books on the floor. He reminded me of a caveman beside his kill. Mud Flap was standing above him, leaning against a bookshelf, arms folded.

  “What’s his name?” Flap asked.

  “Who?”

  “Your friend, Michael,” he said patiently.

  “He’s not my friend. He just followed me here.”

  “Was he giving you a hard time?” Flap asked, straightening.

  “No.”

  “Oh. I’m confused.”

  Michael sighed. “He helped me out the other day.”

  “Helped you?” asked Flap.

  “This kid at school was bothering me.”

  Flap didn’t say anything right away. Then, finally, he said, “Why?”

  Michael looked up.

  “You said he wasn’t your friend, right?”

  Michael nodded.

  “So why did he get involved?”

  “He said he wants to help me,” Michael said.

  “Help you what?”

  Michael didn’t answer. He pulled a book from the stack on the floor and studied the cover.

  “Are you still having those dreams?”

  Michael shrugged.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Kind of.”

  “I’
m concerned about the violence, Michael.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Have you called my doctor yet?” Flap asked.

  “No.”

  “It’s just someone to talk to, Michael. That’s all it is.”

  “I talk to you, Jimmy.”

  Flap smiled. “But I’m just some guy who runs a bookstore. You need to get in touch with someone who knows what they’re doing. Someone who can actually help you.”

  “You help me.”

  “Well, thanks, but . . .”

  I decided to leave. The interesting part was over. Michael had violent dreams. Mud Flap’s name was Jimmy.

  Jimmy Flap.

  Jimmy Flap corn and I don’t care.

  I made it to the front of the store, grabbed the bells with one hand, and opened the door with the other.

  I said goodbye to the woman on the sign, the one with the flower hair, and walked back to the main road. It didn’t take long to find Michael’s street again.

  On the way back to school to pick up my car, I realized that Michael was now more than a diversion. His violent dreams had lifted him to the status of passing interest. I decided to make a surprise visit to the cafeteria tomorrow before school. Jimmy Flap was right—he did need to talk to someone. There was something pathetic about the way he’d said, “But I talk to you, Jimmy.” No one should have to talk to a guy with a mud flap.

  I remember thinking the whole thing might actually turn into a good deed of some kind. It might even be possible to make a few tweaks and reduce the size of the target on Michael’s back. Well, it would take more than a few tweaks, but you know what I mean.

  I started to daydream, preparing for any interviews that might result from my noble work with Michael.

  “So Matthew, tell me why someone like you, someone at the apex of the food chain, decided to help a bottom-feeder like Michael.”

  “Well, it was pretty clear to me that he desperately needed some help.”

  “And you say his only friend was some guy with a beard?”

  “Mud flap, actually. Mud flap.”

  Falling asleep that night, I was almost looking forward to seeing Michael again. There was only one problem, though: The next day, Friday, Michael wasn’t there.

  I had to find him.

  Fortunately, Mom was working from home again. Getting the car on two consecutive days was unusual, so I had to deal with a few objections.

  “What if I need to go to the store?” Mom complained.

  “You’re working from home,” I said, taking the keys from their little hook over the writing desk in the kitchen.

  “And?” she said, impatiently.

  “And you should be working, not going on joyrides to the store.”

  In the middle of her response, I slipped into the garage, jumped in the car, strapped myself in, and waited. I sat for about thirty seconds, watching the door, then shrugged and pulled out of the garage.

  I was glad to have the car but vaguely disappointed. I’d expected a better fight. It’s not like the garage is half a mile from the kitchen. The least she could have done was scream at me from the door as I left.

  It was a fairly quick trip by NOVA standards. On the way, I tried to work out an opening line—one that would at least get a foot in the door—but I found Michael’s house too quickly.

  It’s important to have some lines ready when asking someone to do something they don’t want to do. I always try to have a little something—even if it’s not much.

  I parked on the street and headed up the cracked asphalt to the side door. I still wasn’t sure whether an angry dog lived behind the fence, and I wasn’t about to get caught halfway to the front door when one rumbled around the corner of the house.

  I banged on the thin metal door, trying to look through the cloudy plastic window. I couldn’t see much—just the back of an ugly brown couch that looked like a piece of furniture you’d see at the end of someone’s driveway with a sign that said “Free.”

  So here I am, squinting through the plastic, when this big fat stomach suddenly blocks my view.

  Michael’s father?

  Beer gut, scraggly goatee, blue work shirt (untucked). Replace the blue shirt with a sleeveless white one and you’d have an exemplary ensemble.

  “Yeah?” he said, pulling the door toward him.

  I almost said, “You can’t be Michael’s dad. You’re not a geek.”

  Instead, I said, “Michael home?”

  “No. You know where he is?”

  I paused for a minute. “Nooo . . . that’s why I’m looking for him.”

  “Yeah, well, he left last night and didn’t come back,” Beer Gut said. “His mom’s all upset.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s what I said,” Gut said. “I keep tellin’ her he’ll come back when he gets hungry.”

  “You got that right.”

  “Probably at that bookstore,” he said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  Gut nodded. “Playing that game or something. Probably ran up against a couple mean-ass dwarves and had to fight ’em all night.”

  I laughed. Good one, Gut.

  “You want me to let you know if he’s there?” I said.

  Gut shook his head. “He’s there. He don’t have nowhere else to go.”

  “Want me to tell him you said ‘hi’?”

  “Tell him his mom’s about to have a stroke,” he said as he disappeared back inside.

  Gut—you’ve get old if you had to live with him. And judging from our brief conversation, I figured it was a safe bet that Gut and Michael weren’t best buds.

  I could see Michael getting all worked up about something Gut said or did, which isn’t productive at all. You need to study your opponents/parents. Understanding the how and why of the parent is essential. You have to learn to distance yourself from your subjects. Otherwise, your work is tainted. If you let feelings get in the way, you’ll never develop the techniques that will help you get what you want.

  Obviously, Michael didn’t know how to have fun with someone like Gut, an exercise that might make a good starting point for our “reconditioning.”

  Unfortunately, Michael was “sensitive.” I was sure he took Gut seriously, and there’s just no reason to take someone like Gut seriously. People like Gut remind me of dinosaurs—large creatures with walnut-sized brains. You’d think someone who reads all the time would be able to outsmart a dinosaur, but I guess not.

  Anyway, I found my way to the bookstore again and parked near my girlfriend with the flowery hair. The sign could really use a swarm of angry bees fighting over her. Unfortunately, I’d need a Sharpie or paintbrush to do the job well, and I didn’t have either. Besides, I’m really not much of a vandal.

  I opened the front door two or three times and really got the bells going. I wanted everyone to know I was there. I didn’t really feel like wandering around the little maze today.

  Someone tapped my shoulder and I almost swung a fist. It was Jimmy Flap.

  “I’m going to sue you if I have a heart attack in your store,” I said.

  “You won’t get much,” Flap said. He was smiling again. Now I knew he was trying to pick me up.

  “I can tell. Is Michael here, or do you have him chained up in the basement somewhere?”

  “Didn’t I see you yesterday?” Flap asked, smiling.

  I nodded.

  “Maybe you could tell me your name,” he said.

  “Woodrow.”

  “As in Woodrow Wilson?” he asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “Sorry, Woody—”

  “Woodrow,” I said.

  “Michael stepped out, Woodrow. Anything I can help you with?”

  “So he’s been here?”

  Flap didn’t respond.


  “Are you guys in the middle of some big Magic tournament?”

  “No, that’s in August,” he said.

  I checked his face, but it wasn’t a joke.

  “So does he sleep in an empty bookcase or something?”

  “There’s a futon in the back room,” he said.

  “I bet there is,” I muttered.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Sounds like you’re pretty concerned about him,” Jimmy Flap said, moving into a row of books.

  “Very,” I said, following.

  “That’s funny—Michael’s never really mentioned you before,” he said, rearranging a pile of thick reference books that had fallen across the floor.

  “Oh, we go way back,” I said.

  “Which makes me wonder why he’s never mentioned you.”

  “I’m pretty sure he mentioned me yesterday,” I said, casually leaning against a shelf.

  Flap looked up from the floor, but I just inspected my fingernails.

  “That’s interesting,” he said, returning to the books. “I thought you’d left.”

  “I’m everywhere,” I said.

  “Really?”

  I nodded. “I’m all-knowing.”

  “So you know about his mother?” Flap asked.

  “Yep.”

  “You know about the car accident?”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to frown.

  “Then you know which arm she lost.”

  “The right one,” I said. Fifty-fifty chance.

  “She wasn’t in a car accident,” Flap said, taking a couple of books from the pile and heading down the row.

  It took me a few seconds to recover.

  “I know about his violent dreams,” I tried, following.

  “Do you?” he said, studying a shelf.

  “Yep.”

  “What was the last one about?” he asked, finding a spot for one of the books.

  “Violence?”

  He smiled and continued around the corner.

  “So when he goes Columbine, I’ll just tell the police to come see you about the dreams,” I said.

  I turned the corner. Flap was standing in the aisle, studying the ground and stroking his beard.

  “Do you have a special comb for that?” I asked.