I remembered that it had cost five dollars.
“Do you have any cashmere sweaters that would fit my sister?” I asked the saleslady.
“Not in Junior Misses, but I’ll get something for you, dear. Meanwhile, you just pop into the fitting room and try on these other things. Are your parents in the store with you?”
“No way,” Amy said.
I coughed. Meaning, be careful. “We’re meeting them when we’re done here,” I told Mrs. Krinsk. “I have a debit card.”
“You and your sister don’t look at all alike.”
“Different dads,” I said.
Mrs. Krinsk came back a few minutes later with three cashmere sweaters: gray, pink, and sky-blue. I sneaked a quick look at one of the labels. A hundred and twenty nine dollars and ninety five cents. I wondered if people really felt better if they saved a nickel.
“They’re reduced,” Mrs. Krinsk said.
Amy came out of the dressing room. On her way she picked up a white miniskirt with a black belt. She tossed it in the pile with the other things. Then she studied the sweaters.
“I like the blue and the pink,” she said.
“Get them both,” I said. “They’re reduced.”
Amy took the camera out of the red sack and asked Mrs. Krinsk to take a flash picture of us with all the stuff we’d bought piled on the glass counter next to us.
The only other things Amy bought, after I’d picked out a denim jacket, a pair of pants, pajamas, some T-shirts, socks, and underwear, were a pink nail polish, a new hair brush, some junk beads from Peru, a pair of wraparound blue sunglasses, a nail file, a calculator, a Sony Walkman, and a gray cotton sweater that was on sale. Mrs. Krinsk gave me the total and I handed her my debit card.
“I have to ask you for I.D.,” she said.
“That’s okay.” I took out of my wallet and gave her my middle school I.D. card that had my photograph on it. She stared at it.
“Is something the matter?”
“Well, I’ve never had one of these school cards presented to me. But I can’t ask you for a driver’s license, can I?”
“You could ask,” I said, “but what good would it do you?”
I made two more stops. One was in the greeting card department. My mom’s birthday was next week. At Christmas, Hanukkah, and birthdays, she and Jack loved to line up the cards above the fireplace and on the tables in the living room. My mom would be happy that in the midst of so much turmoil I remembered her birthday.
The second stop was in the art department. I bought colored pencils and charcoal and two pads of drawing paper, and gave them to Amy. I paid cash for the cards and the art supplies.
Macy’s was giving postcards with the picture of the store. They said they would mail them to anywhere in the USA. I took two and scribbled, “Having a terrific time. Best Regards, Billy Braverman,” and addressed them to Mrs. Ostrow at the middle school and my climbing buddy Duwayne Williams c/o East Hampton High School.
Loaded with our stuff, we took a cab back to the hotel. It was seven o’clock of an early summer evening, the sky turning gradually from blue to indigo. I was thrilled to be there in New York. A bellhop jumped to help us with the packages. Señor Garcia wasn’t at the desk anymore but the man who gave us the room key was just as friendly.
In the living room of the suite, I collapsed on the sofa. Amy wound up her red-lips toy and let it chatter around the carpet. Then she turned on the television and watched The Simpsons.
“I wish we could live here,” she said.
“In a hotel?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
I thought for a minute, but in the end all I said was: “Nothing, except that I couldn’t afford it.”
She looked suddenly grave. “Did we spend too much money?”
“That’s what money is for, Amy.”
“I can return all that stuff. The real fun was buying it. All I really needed for wearing was the underwear and a couple of T-shirts .”
“You don’t have to return anything.”
“Are you sure, Billy? I don’t mind. If we return those things, can we get the money back?”
“I don’t want the money back.”
“Are you absolutely sure? This is your chance.”
“I’m sure.”
“Well, we won’t go shopping at Macy’s every day. Only when we need things.”
“I have a better idea than living here at the hotel,” I said. “We’re going to the baseball game at Shea Stadium tomorrow night. A friend of mine invited us. He’s a pitcher for the Rockies, the team that’s playing the Mets. You said you wanted to live on a ranch out West, right? Guess what? My friend has one in Texas. And we can go there.”
Chapter 27
The sun was shining through the drapes and flooding across a luxurious carpet the color of ocean waves. I woke up sleeping across the bed instead of up and down it. The bed was called a California King, which meant that it was bigger than a king-size. Four people could have slept in it, and maybe in California they do.
When I wandered out onto the balcony, morning light bounced off the windows of the other hotels on Central Park South. Across the avenue, in what they called the Sheep Meadow, kids were already flying kites and throwing frisbees. What a day. If I had known how, I would have sung an operatic aria. Get the place warmed up for Luciano.
I threw on some shorts and a new white T-shirt, cleaned Iphigenia’s new cage, and then I knocked on the door to Amy’s bedroom. She mumbled something that sounded like “Come in,” so I went in.
Everything she had bought yesterday at Macy’s was scattered across the carpet and on the sofa and chairs, like at a garage sale. Amy was curled motionless under the covers of her own California King.
Then her head shot up, as if she was wide awake and had been waiting. She said, “Whoopee!”— and, with a big grin, she held out her arms to me. She was wearing her new pink night dress, but it had slipped off one shoulder.
I felt suddenly shy. I didn’t know what she expected. I walked across the carpet.
“G’ morning,” I said. I bent and kissed her on the cheek. She did the same to me. Then she dropped back against the pillows. She yawned. I asked if she was hungry.
“You bet.”
“Want to eat up here in the room?”
“Cool.”
We’d got a discount on the suite but I knew that we weren’t going to get any discount on the food. Amy’s eyes would roll if she knew what breakfast would cost—it might ruin her appetite.
When she went to the bathroom, I dialed Room Service. “Do you have those menus that are without prices?”
“Absolutely, sir. Shall I send one up?”
“Send up two,” I said.
“Yes, sir.”
When the menus were delivered Amy examined hers. “Look, Billy, no prices. That means the breakfast comes with the room. I’m going to eat up a storm. Then we can skip lunch and save money.”
We went to FAO Schwartz (“Tom Hanks was here,” Amy told me, “in Big.”); we walked down Fifth Avenue and rode the elevators to the top of the Empire State Building, where we had the lunch we’d intended to skip in order to save money; and then we went to the Museum of Modern Art. Amy explored nearly every wing and nook. She examined every Cezanne and Picasso from a distance of about eighteen inches, and she stood in front of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” without budging, for ten minutes. She didn’t just stand in front of it, she practically glued herself against the canvas. She got so close that a museum guard came over and asked her not to touch it.
“I’m not touching it,” Amy said. “I just want to see it better.”
I remembered my dad sitting at his desk, putting his nose six inches from his papers and muttering, “I need new glasses…”
I was about eight feet away from the painting. I said to Amy, “Can’t you see it if you stand back here where I am?”
She moved back and stood at my side. “Not good,” she said.
“Is it blurred?”
“Sort of.”
We went down to the gift shop, where I found a book for her that told the life story of Vincent Van Gogh. I put it on the counter top, opened it, and said to Amy, “You like this?”
She bent down until her nose was almost on top of the page.
“Looks interesting,” she said.
“Amy, you need glasses.”
“No, I don’t need glasses.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll look weird.”
“You’ll look more intelligent.”
That was a new idea. I could see she was running it through her mind. “Have your eyes tested,” I said. “See how the glasses look. Then decide.”
“Well…”
“As a favor to me.”
We walked over to Madison Avenue and found an optician’s shop. The woman at the counter said, “Yes, young man, that’s what we do here, but the young lady will have to make an appointment for an examination.”
They always say things like that.
“Ma’am, we live ninety miles away at the end of Long Island. It would really help us if you could do it this afternoon. Can’t you please squeeze my friend Amy in?”
She vanished, and when she came back she said, “In fifteen minutes, Amy.”
The test was a slam-dunk — Amy needed reading glasses. Without any hesitation she picked out a pair of Giorgio Armani frames.
“That’s the absolutely latest European fashion,” the saleslady explained. “Two ninety five plus tax.”
It seemed like a lot of money, because it didn’t include the examination or the lenses, but those were the ones Amy had picked out, and if I tried to talk her into getting something plainer and cheaper I might win the battle and lose the war.
I brought out my wad of cash and began peeling out bills.
“What are you doing?” Amy asked.
“Paying.”
“It’s only two ninety five, Billy. Those are hundred-dollar bills.”
When I explained, her mouth fell open. “Don’t worry about it,” I said.
Walking back to the hotel, she held my hand. And then she said, “Billy, why are you doing all this for me?”
“Like, paying for your glasses?”
“Yeah. And everything else.”
“Because—”
It’s hard to answer a question like that. She had never asked it to me before now. There are so many things to say. “Because you’re my best friend.” Or: “It makes me feel good.” Or: “When you’re happy, I’m happy.”
I was too slow. Amy turned toward me. With a funny look on her face, she said, “It’s not because you want something from me, is it, Billy?”
What did she have that I wanted, except her friendship, and her company? I already had them. I shook my head.
We were crossing Seventh Avenue, and even though the light was with us, cars were turning and coming from both directions. New York was a three-ring circus. So in the tumult, somehow, except for the shake of my head, her question was left unanswered.
I had planned to get back to the Mayflower to rest up before we went out to Shea Stadium, but the day had rolled along too quickly. When we got up to the suite Amy said, “My feet hurt, Billy. Can we go to the baseball game another night?”
“I have no way to reach Tom Egan.”
“You can go without me.”
“Amy, this is important. I want you two to meet. This is our future.”
She still didn’t seem excited at the idea, but I said he’d paid for the tickets and he was pitching tonight and he’d be disappointed if we didn’t show, so at last, without much debate, she agreed. We put a cut-up apple and pear into Ipigenia’s cage, because she wasn’t at all keen on hot dogs, and in the late afternoon we took the subway to Shea Stadium in Flushing.
We waited five minutes at the gate and then Tom Egan showed up. He wore a ten-gallon hat, a buckskin shirt, jeans and high-heeled boots. His face and neck were as brown as leather. He gave me a shake with that slab of beefsteak he called a hand, and then I introduced him to Amy.
“I sure am pleased to meet you, Miss Amy.”
She seemed to pick up new energy. “Are you a real cowboy, Mr. Egan?”
“When I’m not a baseball pitcher, I reckon I’m a cowboy.”
“Billy says you live on a ranch.”
“That’s a fact.”
“You ride horses and those bulls with the horns? Like in the rodeo?”
He threw Amy a wide smile. “I ride ‘em on the ranch. Now and then, when I’m feeling brave, I climb on board in the local rodeos.”
“That’s so neat.”
“Let’s mosey round to the locker room,” he said.
I wondered if he was putting on some of that cowboy lingo just for Amy’s sake. I didn’t care. She liked it.
When we reached the Rockies’ locker room a few of the players had already arrived. They were getting out of their street clothes and into their baseball uniforms. The room smelled of after-shave and deodorizer. Tom stood at the door, blocking our view, cupped his hands and shouted: “Twelve-year-old young lady in the pit. No frontal nudity. No rear nudity. No nudity, period. Twelve years old. Everybody got it?”
“That’s okay,” Amy said to him, “just so long as they don’t put their hands on me.”
Tom didn’t say anything for a few seconds. I saw him blink.
“Miss Amy, I guarantee that will not happen.”
Then he turned back to the players. “Guys, this young fella is my ski buddy, Billy Braverman. And in that black bag he’s carrying Miss Iphigenia, the most intelligent monkey I’ve ever met, excluding some of you jokers. Billy, Amy, these three handsome sluggers you see before you are, left to right, Larry Walker, Dante Bichette, and Todd Helton. Sad to say, I can’t make a living without their help. Billy, why don’t you let the monkey out of the bag?”
We fooled around with Iphigenia for about five minutes, she ate a spider she found in Larry Walker’s locker, and then Tom drew me aside and said, “You wanted to talk to me. Can it wait until after the game?”
We had seats in a box behind third base near the Rockies’ dugout. I watched batting practice while Amy dozed. I woke her up when the game started. In the first inning Tom struck out two of the Mets and got the third to pop up to the catcher. I applauded and yelled, “Way to go, Tom!”
All the Mets fans sitting around me gave me dirty looks.
“You like it?” I said to Amy.
“It’s more fun when they score runs.”
“The Rockies will do that.”
In the second inning Tom walked a batter, and the next guy up crashed the ball down the left field line for a home run. The crowd roared. In the third inning the Mets scored three more times on a walk and a bunch of hits. A coach came out of the dugout to talk to Tom. In the fifth inning Tom walked the first two men up. The coach came out again, and Tom handed him the ball. He didn’t hang his head, he just ambled to the dugout. The Mets kept pounding the ball. At the end of that inning it was ten to one their favor. Amy went to sleep again.
Not too long after that an usher bent to my ear and whispered: “Mr. Egan says that if you don’t mind skipping the rest of the slaughter, I should take you to the locker room.”
I woke Amy again and we followed the usher. Tom Egan came out of the locker room freshly showered, cheeks all pink, hair and big brown mustache glittering under fluorescent lights.
“Not the way it was meant to go, pardner” he said.
“You’ll beat them the next time.”
“Good thinking.” He led us through a door into a room where there were two easy chairs, half a dozen folding chairs, and a television set. “Will you be comfortable here, Miss Amy?”
She nodded, curled up in one of the easy chairs, shut her eyes, and in five seconds was asleep again. Tom and I went to a far corner of the room and sat down on a wooden bench.
“What’s up, Billy? Fire me that fastball.”
“Tom, who cooks for you on your ranch?”
“Bonnie Rae cooks for me and the baby. I got three hands live in a bunkhouse and they take turns rustling up their own grub.”
“I’m a terrific cook,” I said. “I cook French, Spanish, Italian, American, and Middle Eastern. I’m talking Cordon Bleu quality. I’ll cook anything. The thing is, I need a job for the summer and maybe even longer than that if there’s a good middle school out there in West Texas. Not just any kind of job — I need a job on a ranch. I’ll cook for you and Bonnie Rae, or for your ranch hands, or for all of you. Amy could clean the house, wash the dishes, whatever you and Bonnie Rae wanted. We’d do that for room and board and riding lessons. No pay. I don’t need money, Tom. The thing is, Amy’s always wanted to live on a ranch. Ride horses and bulls. It’s her dream. What do you think, Tom? Can all that happen?”
Tom Egan waited a long time before he answered. I hung in there, sweat popping out on my forehead.
“Billy, I’m flattered. I have to tell you, summer in the Panhandle, it’s hot enough for a hen to lay a hard-boiled egg. What I mean is, we’re not down at the ranch until the end of September. I’m in Denver with the team, or on the road, like now, so Bonnie Rae and I have a little house in a suburb of Denver. Bonnie Rae’s mom is there with us, to keep company, kind of help out. What I’m saying is, we couldn’t squeeze in a tic, much less two young ‘uns. Not that I don’t want to try your cooking — pardner, my mouth is already watering.”
I’d been kidding myself. I’d been positive that this was going to work out. He wouldn’t have to pay me, so how could he say no? Another con job of wishful thinking. What was wrong with me? Why did I keep doing that?
Tom took a swig from a Gatorade bottle. “Billy,” he said, “you’re holding something back.”
“What do you mean, Tom?”
“You two kids have run away from home, right?”
“How did you know?”
“Well, you just told me. You didn’t say your folks and her folks were moving to Texas. So you’re running away.”
I’d never used those words, or even thought them, and the harshness of them didn’t describe how I felt or what had happened. But they were real enough to other people.
Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller Page 22