I also began to find out that girls thought I was good-looking, but the ones who seemed to like me usually weren’t the ones I was interested in—and most of the time I couldn’t get up my nerve to talk to any of them, anyway. I still panicked and got tongue-tied at times, particularly around kids I used to know at Lincoln before I started work on the new me. So I’d finally decided that what I needed was a new start. A new start in a school where nobody remembered how I’d been at Lincoln.
For quite a while I’d been thinking that if Dad would just get a job, or even a new batch of students in a part of town where people had enough money to pay a decent fee for their lessons, we could sell the old house and move into a house or apartment in another part of the city. It didn’t have to be anything fancy. Just a normal place, instead of a kind of perpetual open house for all the kids and bums and college students and animals in the neighborhood.
So Wentworth would have been the answer. But Dad had turned it down already so that was that. I knew from past experience there was no use discussing it with him any further. It all had to do with a difference in the way we looked at things that was absolutely basic.
My dad’s life is the kind of life he picked out for himself a long time ago, and it suits him fine. His mother’s family had a lot of money at one time and Dad was brought up in a very strict and proper home with all sorts of rules and regulations. So, when he was still pretty young he ran away from home and lived in Paris for several years with a lot or artists and writers and types like that. Then when his money was gone and he had to come back home, he just brought his Paris way of living back to Cathedral Street. By renting part of the house and teaching a little, he made enough money to get by and the rest of the time he spends “living” as he calls it. He composes some and plays a little—accompanying and with chamber orchestras—and he goes to all the cheap musical events at the university and to standing room at the opera and symphony. Besides that he reads a lot and spends time with his thousand and one friends—and then there’s the mountains. He has this thing about the wilderness, and every few months he takes off with a friend or two and they back-pack into the mountains for a week or so. I’ve gone with him a time or two, but I’m not much of a hiker because of my leg, so usually I stay home with whoever happens to be living here at the time.
It’s a great life I suppose—a lot of people say so. Phil and Dunc and their friends are always raving about how Dad is one guy who dropped out of the rat-race and made it stick. I don’t argue with them. I can’t even explain to myself exactly how I feel about it. But I know that day on the fire escape I decided it must be a lot bigger kick to drop out of something than not to be in in the first place.
Chapter 7
THE NEXT DAY on my way home from school I stopped by Alcott-Simpson’s again. I was planning on walking right through from the east entrance to the west—just to have a quick look around. At least that’s what I had in mind when I went in. Everything seemed quiet, and there was a fairly good-sized crowd of shoppers. If there still seemed to be something not quite normal—well, I thought maybe it was only my imagination. I was almost to the west entrance when somebody touched my arm.
I glanced around, and there was this fantastically sophisticated-looking woman. Since I couldn’t imagine what she wanted of me, I decided I must have been in her way, so I said, “Excuse me” and stepped to one side. But then this dame, instead of breezing on by, put her arm through mine and smiled at me. I nearly passed out.
She looked like a model who had just stepped out of one of those really far-out fashion magazines. Her hat was an egg-shaped helmet that completely covered her hair and sloped down to a little slanted brim over her eyes. Her suit was kind of egg-shaped too, and made out of some very heavy material with a thick stand-out collar. She was wearing very short black boots with high heels and some huge wrap-around dark glasses that covered more than half her face. Everything she was wearing positively reeked of money, but like most of those high-style things, the whole effect was just a small—but important—inch away from being ugly. But there was one thing you could really say about it, it made a great disguise. Until she started to talk, I hadn’t the slightest idea who she was.
“Don’t you know who I am?” was the first thing she said.
I started to laugh. The minute she opened her mouth, it ruined the whole effect. All of a sudden it was like some little girl dressed up in her mother’s clothes.
“I didn’t even know you,” I said.
“Do you like it?” she asked. She tugged at the helmet where it came down tight and flat against her cheeks. She sounded worried.
“Like it? You look like something from another planet.”
She turned around and looked at herself in a mirror on the counter. “Another planet?” she said thoughtfully. “I saw a model wearing it, and I thought it would make me look different. So no one would know me. But you don’t like it?”
“It’s fantastic,” I said. “You look better than most people would in it.”
She smiled again and took hold of my arm. “Let’s go to the Tea Room and eat something.”
That shook me a little. I’d never taken a girl anywhere to eat anything before, for one thing. And for another, I didn’t have a whole lot of money along. At the Alcott-Simpson Tea Room, even a milk shake isn’t exactly cheap. I didn’t have the slightest idea what I’d do if she ordered a whole lot of stuff. And she certainly might. A teen-age girl who could afford to buy an outfit that probably cost several hundred dollars, just because she wanted to look different, probably wouldn’t think anything of ordering everything on the Tea Room menu. Of course, there was the other possibility—that the outfit was stolen, and Sara was a thief, a shoplifter. But that didn’t make my problem any better. It wouldn’t be any easier to predict what a girl who could steal an outfit like that would do.
But when we got to the Tea Room, Sara didn’t even look at the menu. She just said, “What can we have? I don’t have any money. Do you have any?”
I was right in the middle of making feverish plans to keep her from knowing that I wasn’t carrying a bank roll, but the way she asked—straight out—surprised me into answering the same way. “Not much,” I said. “But we could have a shake or something.”
“Could I have one of those?” Sara asked, pointing to a soda that a waitress was serving. I checked the menu and told her it was okay. I had enough for two sodas.
We didn’t talk much at first while we drank our sodas, but I did get a chance to really look at Sara. Of course, I couldn’t see her eyes because of the dark glasses, but I could see enough to tell that I had been right about her face, it was really fantastic. Every time she looked up and caught me looking at her she smiled—not a come-on smile or a wise one, at least not as far as I could tell. Just a quick straight unconditional sort of smile, like you might get from a friendly four-year-old. I couldn’t begin to figure her out.
After a while I got around to asking some of the questions that I’d been thinking about. For instance, I started out by asking how old she was.
“By the way,” I said. “I’ve been wondering how old you are. It’s sort of hard to tell. Sometimes you look lots older than others.”
She gave a little laugh. “How old are you?” she asked.
“Almost fifteen,” I said.
She just nodded, so I said, “Well?”
“Oh,” she said. “I’m—almost the same.”
“You mean you’re fourteen?”
She puckered her forehead for a minute, and then she smiled and said, “Almost?” But it sounded more like a question than an answer. It wasn’t until later that I realized I still wouldn’t want to bet on how old she was. That’s the way most of the things I asked her seemed to turn out. Like, I mentioned that I’d seen her at Alcott-Simpson’s three times lately and asked how come she spent so much time there.
“Oh, it’s all right,” she said. “I’m supposed to be here.”
That made me think m
aybe I was right when I’d guessed that she was the daughter of some store big shot. That would explain a lot of things. “Do you have relatives here in the store?” I asked.
Sara just looked at me for a minute and then she nodded and said, “Yes. You’re here a lot, too. Do you have relatives here, too?”
So I got started trying to explain why I hung around the store so much. It took quite a bit of explaining. I even went into how I had plans to maybe work there someday, after I’d had business training of course, so I could be something besides just a clerk. Then I asked her if she knew anything about the mysterious stuff that had been going on lately, the dogs and special detectives and everything.
Right away she bit her lip and looked away. I couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark glasses, but I had the feeling that she didn’t want to answer. She poked at her soda with her straw, and then she sighed and shook her head. “Things have happened—accidents. Most of the time it was just an accident.”
“What kind of things?”
“Oh, things get broken. And noises. There have been noises.”
“What do you mean noises?”
“Oh, just laughing and talking. Some of the clerks say they’ve heard laughing and talking.” Sara shook her head and pulled her lips down as if she were disapproving.
“Laughing and talking?” I said. “Why would that bother anyone? I’m talking about whatever it is that made them hire all the extra detectives and dogs. That scream for instance, the other day. Do you know what the screaming was about?”
Sara started playing with her straw again, and I could tell she didn’t want to answer, but after I’d asked her again about the scream she finally said, “Yes, I know. There was a lizard in the dressing room. Just a lizard from the Pet Shop. A big green one.”
I started to laugh. It hit me all of a sudden—the picture of some old dame suddenly noticing she was sharing her dressing room with a big green iguana. That would explain the scream all right. “But how did it get there?” I asked. “The Pet Shop is clear down on the first floor.”
“Someone forgot to put it away. I don’t think they meant to frighten anyone.” Sara was leaning towards me and she sounded very serious and kind of apologetic, as if she were worried about what I would think. I wished I could see her eyes. I couldn’t help wondering if the whole thing was some kind of a put-on. She sounded so sincere and on the level, but the whole thing didn’t quite make sense. The whole conversation seemed to have holes in it, like when you tune in late to a mystery program and miss a bunch of important clues.
“Look,” I said, “I’m not sure I know what we’re talking about. It doesn’t matter to me who put the iguana in the dressing room, and I really don’t care whether it was done on purpose or not. But what I would like to know is exactly who you are and what you have to do with the whole thing—and where you get your information. I’m around this store pretty much myself, and usually I hear a lot about what’s going on but—”
Just about then Sara stood up suddenly and looked around. “I have to go now,” she said; and without even waiting for me to answer, she walked out of the Tea Shop. By the time I’d paid for the sodas, she had disappeared. I looked all over the store but I couldn’t find her anywhere.
While I was looking around, it occurred to me that Madame Stregovitch might know something about Sara. In the past I’d found that if there was any interesting gossip going around the store, Madame would be sure to know all about it. I was almost back to Cosmetics before I remembered that it was Madame’s day off. There wasn’t much else I could do right then, so I started down the Mall towards the west entrance. But somewhere along the way, I drifted into the indoor garden. There was still a quarter of an hour until closing time, and I guess I was thinking that if I waited around there was a chance I might see Sara again.
The indoor garden, or the Garden Court as it was called, was one of the most unusual things about Alcott-Simpson’s. It was a large area in the middle of the street floor that looked so much like a real garden you could almost believe it was, unless you looked up and saw the ceiling instead of the sky. The walks were made of something that looked like stone. There were stretches of green carpeting that looked a lot like grass, and dozens of potted shrubs and bushes and even small trees. Here and there there were singing birds in cages and hanging baskets full of fancy flowers like orchids and begonias. The smaller plantings were always being changed to fit the seasons, and at Christmas time it was always made into a winter garden with artificial ice and snow. All through the garden there were little alcoves with benches for shoppers to sit down for a few minutes and catch their breath. Right in the middle of the garden there was a big fountain.
The center part of the fountain was a pyramid of stone cupids and dolphins. The water came out of the dolphins’ mouths and arched down into a large pool. Around the pool was a stone wall about two feet high and wide enough to make a comfortable place to sit. It was always a good place to kill a few extra minutes.
I sat down on the stone wall and wiggled my fingers in the water to make the goldfish curious. I hadn’t seen anyone near the fountain as I came up, but I’d only been sitting there for a few minutes when a toy ship came bobbing into sight from the other side of the pyramid. It was a typical Alcott-Simpson toy, a beautiful scale model of an old Spanish galleon, with three masts full of tiny sails, and ropes and rigging in all the right places. For a second I wondered if someone had left it there, but then I realized that it was moving too fast to be only drifting. Someone on the other side of the stone pyramid had given it a push or else blown into its sails, probably some little kid whose mother had just bought it for him on the fourth floor and who couldn’t wait until he got home to try it out. I started listening then, and sure enough, in a minute I heard something—little kids’ voices whispering right on the other side of the fountain. Because of the noise of the splashing water, I couldn’t make out what they were saying; but I thought I could tell that they were giggling a little, as if they thought they were playing a trick on me—maybe making me think the ship was sailing around under its own power. I decided to go along with the gag, so when the ship got clear around to my side I leaned way out, caught it, turned it around and blew it back the way it had come. It went bobbing back around the fountain, and in a minute I heard giggling again, and in another minute it came sailing back. I was waiting for it to come alongside, and thinking that this time I’d pick it up and carry it back to them just to keep the game from getting monotonous, when I heard the closing bell begin to ring. So I left the game unfinished and hurried off to take a last look through the homeward bound crowds. I didn’t even think much more about it at the time.
Chapter 8
THAT NIGHT WHILE I was trying to translate some French sentences, I kept thinking about Sara. I’d translate a few words and then just sit there for several minutes staring into space. After a while I began to realize that I was thinking about Sara all the time, even when I was looking up words and practicing pronunciations. I could be right in the middle of some word, with all the old brain cells clicking away normally, but in some strange sort of way, Sara was there, too, like a shadow hovering right there in the back of my mind. I remember that once, right out loud, I said, “Dion, old pal, you’ve got it bad. You are really haunted.”
That is the exact word I used—haunted: I had a feeling even then that it wasn’t just the ordinary boy-girl thing. Of course I wasn’t any great authority on the subject, but I’d spent some time thinking about girls before. Who hasn’t? I mean, nobody gets to be almost 15 without giving quite a bit of thought to people of the opposite sex. And even though I hadn’t had much experience with girls, because or being out of things all those years, I’d had plenty of chances to make observations and get a lot of general information. Among the people who hung around the Val James Combination Music School—Group Therapy Center—and Soup Kitchen, there had always been a certain percentage of females: friends of Dad’s, or of our renters, or just fr
iends of friends. And I’d had lots of opportunities to observe the kind of hang-ups that people can get into over a person of the opposite sex. But this was different. I didn’t know how or in what way, but I knew this was not the ordinary kind of thing.
When I finally finished my homework, I went into the kitchen for a bedtime snack. Dad was out at one of his musical evenings somewhere, but the college crowd was there as usual. Matt was reading, or trying to, and Phil and Dunc and a friend of theirs named Josh were practicing on their guitars.
Josh was one of the characters who hung around our place a lot, and he and I had never particularly appreciated each other. We get some far-out types around our place, and Josh is one of the farthest. He’s supposed to be some sort of expert on the guitar, and that night he was teaching Phil and Dunc some new picks and strums.
Nobody paid any attention to me, which was fine as far as I was concerned, even if it was my kitchen. I looked around for something to eat, but I couldn’t find much except dirty dishes. Finally I put some butter and brown sugar on a piece of stale bread and poured myself a glass of milk. I sat down to listen to the guitar lesson while I ate.
Josh was trying to show Phil how to do something that looked a lot like the Travis pick, but it seemed to me that neither one of them really knew what he was doing.
I was thinking of saying something about it when Matt, who had quit trying to read and was listening too said, “Di used to do a pick something like that. Didn’t you, Di?”
I nodded. “Something,” I said.
Eyes in the Fishbowl Page 6