Jack's Black Book

by Jack Gantos

  “Evolved,” he said, and turned over onto his hands and knees.

  “Criminal,” I growled. “Sick. Perv.” I turned toward the girls and smiled. “I’m sorry,” I said. “He gets this way sometimes. Water on the brain.”

  The four of them smiled weakly, stood up together, held hands, and jumped back into the water. They didn’t even say anything to me. But I wasn’t concerned with all of them. When they turned upside down I noticed a red dot where I had jabbed the leg I picked. That’s the one, I thought. That’s my destiny.

  I walked back to my chair. I pulled out my black book and started to write. This is great stuff, I thought. The weirder, the better.

  “Help,” Pete said again. I looked up. I still had his cane, so he crawled across the patio on all fours until he got tangled up under a table and chairs.

  “Suffer,” I yelled over at him. “It’ll make a man out of

  Four

  In the morning Pete and I got up extra-early and rode our bikes down to the beach before the crowds arrived. I went just in case the typewriter had finally washed up. Pete went with me because it was the only time he could take a swim and keep his eyes open.

  I held his blind-boy getup and camera, and was picking through the flotsam and jetsam when in front of me a huge mound of sand was beginning to move around.

  “Oh, my God,” I shouted. “A monster!”

  An arm emerged and wiped a wad of sand away and I saw a single giant eye blinking at me. I took Pete’s stick and jabbed it right where the creature was sizing me up.

  “Argh!” it growled and rose up onto all fours. Then, before I could get my feet in gear, it stood up and shivered like a dirty dog. When the sand flew off I recognized the convict who threw my typewriter in the ocean. He must have been hiding from the law disguised as a giant sand slug.

  He covered his sore eye with one hand and stared out at me with his other. “You again!” he shouted. “You still owe me ten bucks, and I need it now more than ever.”

  “Hurry,” I called to Pete as I began to back up.

  Pete ran through the surf until he circled behind me and then we turned and dashed up to Atlantic Avenue. I looked for the convict but he gave up on us and was just splashing around in the surf, trying to wash the sand out of his eye. If he had used my postcards he probably wouldn’t be having this problem, I thought.

  I gave Pete his blind-boy supplies and camera, and a twenty-dollar bill for film. “Go get breakfast at the Cuban-Chinese restaurant and I’ll meet up with you in an hour.”

  “Can I order a dinner?” he asked. “Betsy’s cooking really stinks.”

  “Anything you want,” I said. “Knock yourself out. Just be there when I return.”

  I watched as Pete safely stepped out into the oncoming traffic. Tires screeched and horns blared as he tapped his way across the street. Then I made my way down to Madame Ginger’s tent.

  “Good morning,” she said, as she wrapped her turban in circles around her bald head. “You’re a little early.” The gold silk was so tight it pulled her eyes up at an angle. She looked like a plump Siamese cat. “I can wait,” I said. I took a seat and examined her crystal ball. I was hoping to see where the convict went, or if Pete was spending my twenty on tourist junk. But I didn’t see anything except for tiny bubbles of air trapped in the glass.

  After she tucked the loose end into a seam behind her head, she leaned forward and inserted her mirrored contact lenses.

  “Okay.” She sighed, and poured herself a cup of coffee from a thermos. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  “I need to know more about the upside-down leg,” I said, and shot my palm out. “What’s the next step?”

  She plucked the five out from between my fingers, then held my hand. “It’s not just the leg that is upside down,” she said, after a minute. “It’s the whole world.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing is as it appears to be,” she continued, and stirred the air above her head. “Everything has a hidden meaning.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like your brother,” she said. “He’s not blind. And you are not as stupid as you seem.”

  Not that stupid label again! Mr. Ploof was right. The IQ test would dog me for the rest of my life.

  “I see a young man in uniform trying to give you money,” she said.

  “Excellent. I love money,” I murmured, as she pressed her fingers over my eyes. “What else?”

  “If you need to know more about the leg, you’ve got to take control,” she advised. “Be aggressive. You will have no tragedy, no major humiliation, no money, and no answers to life’s big questions unless you go out on a limb.” Then she slumped back down into her chair. She was so deflated her turban slipped down to one side.

  “What about another clue?” I asked. “Something I should watch out for. Tip me off to trouble.”

  She thought about it. “Crushed ice,” she replied.

  “Is that it? That doesn’t sound too tragic.”

  “I must warn you,” she said seriously. “If you want to write about tragedy, you have to live it first. Remember, art imitates life.”

  I shrugged. “Well, I’m ready for anything,” I replied.

  “No, you aren’t,” she disagreed. “That’s why I’m warning you.”

  Suddenly she sounded like Betsy. She was giving me orders on how to live my life, rather than helping me to manage it myself. “One last thing,” I said, testing her powers. “Does my sister’s French cooking get any better?”

  She thought about it. “No,” she replied. “It just gets more dangerous. Very dangerous.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” I said. I stood up and carefully peeked between the tent flaps.

  “Don’t worry about that convict,” she said, reading my mind. “By now he’s all the way down at the other end of the beach.”

  I walked over to the Cuban-Chinese restaurant. Pete was sitting at a table playing checkers with some kid. “Come on,” I said. “Time to make the donuts.”

  “One minute,” he whispered. “I bet this kid a buck I could beat him even though I was blind.”

  I threw a buck down on the board and grabbed Pete by the shoulder. “One of these days,” I said, “you’re going to go too far.”

  By midafternoon Pete and I were sitting at a table drinking Cokes. I was chewing on the ice and feeling very suave. I had a wad of cash in my pocket that was big enough to choke a horse. I was at a cool hotel. I had my black book on my lap, pen in hand, and tragedy was only a hundred feet away and heading in my direction.

  On the other side of the pool, one of the synchronized swimmers walked across the patio. She wore a sports jacket that said “Fort Lauderdale High Flying L’s Swim Team.” She took it off and draped it over the back of her chair before she took a seat. She was the one I was supposed to meet, since she was the one with the bruised spot on her thigh.

  “Psst,” I hissed at Pete, and nodded in her direction. “Check out the upside-down leg.”

  He lifted his dark glasses and squinted at her. “She seems too nice to be trouble,” Pete said. “Shouldn’t she be covered with tattoos or something?”

  “Madame Ginger said nothing is as it appears,” I said knowingly. “She could be a killer. I could be her next victim. Now watch this.”

  I strolled up to the bartender. Earlier he had told me he was a college kid on summer break. I figured he’d know what to do. “See that girl over there,” I said.

  “That beautiful girl?” he replied.

  “Shh,” I whispered, and turned my back toward her. “Not so loud.” I peeled a couple singles off my wad of bills. “I want you to give her a Coke on me.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Is there something special you’d like me to tell her?” he asked. “Something romantic?”

  I couldn’t say what I was thinking, which was that she had a nice upside-down leg. “You think of something,” I replied.

  He stuck out his hand. I put a doll
ar in it. He snapped his fingers. I gave him another dollar. I was so entranced with the girl that if he’d kept snapping his fingers I’d have given him everything I had.

  He plopped a couple extra cherries into the Coke, and set it on a tin serving tray. Then in one smooth move he lifted the tray off the bar, up over his shoulder, way above his head, glided over to her table, then brought it down as if he were going to behead her, but at the last second he whipped the tray clean out from under the glass. For one breathless instant the glass floated in midair, and then with his free hand he snatched it and, without spilling a drop, lowered it onto her table.

  She looked up at him, smiled, and gently clapped her hands together. I read her lips. “Bravo, bravo,” she mouthed.

  He lowered his head, then whispered something in her ear. She giggled, then turned her eyes toward me. I gave her a slow, two-fingered salute and my shy-guy smile. It worked. She smiled back and waved her fingers at me, one at a time. Even her fingers were perfectly synchronized. Then I crisply swiveled around on my barstool and returned to my table as I pulverized a mouthful of ice.

  Pete was watching me like a hawk.

  “You’re supposed to be blind,” I reminded him.

  “Watch this move,” he whispered. “I’ll show you why fish have feet.” He stood up and slowly, painfully tapped his way over to her table. Each time he rammed his hip into a chair or kicked a table leg he let out a whimper until he had her full attention. Finally he reached her side and said, loud enough for me to hear, “Would the lady like a free picture?”

  She glanced over at me. I nodded my approval, and gave her my cool, two-fingered salute and the same shy smile.

  She smiled back and said something to Pete.

  “Then sing loud,” Pete instructed as he moved the camera around in a figure eight.

  She sang, “Do you believe in magic…”

  I nearly melted down off my chair. I believed in magic, but this was too good to be true. I crunched down on some more ice and sent little shards of it darting through the air.

  Pete took the shot, pulled it out of the camera, and then quickly took another. He gave her the first picture, then tapped his way back to me. When he sat down he whispered, “Ten dollars for the picture still in the camera.”

  “Three,” I shot back.

  “Eight.”

  “Four.”

  I got it for five. He pulled it out of the camera and as it developed before me it was as though an entire dream was shaping up into reality. I felt bliss. I felt love. This was not tragedy. Madame Ginger must have gotten her wires crossed. This wasn’t about crushed ice. It was about my crush on the girl with the upside-down leg.

  I got up to walk toward her. She saw me coming and, just as quickly, stood up and dove into the pool.

  “I told you,” Pete said when I plopped back into my seat. “Trouble. Nothing but trouble.”

  I had forgotten that humiliation was supposed to be literary medicine for me. “Time for you to get back to work,” I snapped, feeling a bit grumpy. I checked his camera. There was one shot left. “Take my picture,” I said. “And I’ll change the cartridge.”

  As soon as Pete had tapped his way back to the beach, the young bartender came over.

  “I noticed you are a writer,” he remarked.

  “Yes,” I said, with pride. “I am.” I glanced at the pool. She was still swimming.

  He followed my eyes. “Would you like me to deliver a special note to her?”

  “Do you have her address?” I asked.

  “Can’t give you that,” he replied. “But for a little something extra I can see that she gets it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Give me a minute.” I sat down and wrote on the back of the photo, “I believe in magic.” I gave her my address and phone number. “Call me. Ask for Jack.” I wanted to add, If my sister answers, hang up and try again. But I thought of Betsy strapping the rat cage to my face, so I didn’t write anything more.

  When I returned to the bar I gave him the photograph.

  “That blind kid sure is talented,” he said, admiring the picture. He read the back, then held out his hand for a tip. I gave him a buck. He snapped his fingers. Two bucks. He snapped again. Three bucks. He snapped again. I hesitated. Something was wrong. Madame Ginger said he was supposed to give me money.

  ‘Just make it five,” he demanded. “This is special-delivery love mail.”

  I blushed, and gave him the money.

  “I know this girl,” he said. “She’s very sweet.”

  “Don’t worry,” I replied. “I only write about really sweet things.” I knew that wasn’t true. But there was a first time for everything.

  “Would you like to know her name?” he asked coyly.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Absolutely.”

  He snapped his fingers.

  I gave him a buck. He frowned. I gave him another.

  “This is for her name,” he stressed, and then he lowered his voice and leaned a little closer. “And the tragic story behind it.”

  That gave me goose bumps. I gave him three more bucks. Now I know why writers have to write so much. Tragedy is expensive.

  “Her first name is Virginia,” he said. “She’s named after Virginia Woolf.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “She was a famous writer,” he said. “She went insane and one day filled her pockets full of rocks and walked into the river.”

  “Did she drown?”

  “Yes,” he whispered. He turned to look at Virginia. She was still swimming. “Her parents,” he said confidentially, “are very concerned about her fascination with water.”

  I was wrong, I thought to myself. Madame Ginger is right. This could be a tragedy. I looked over at Virginia. She had stopped doing laps and was upside down with her legs kicking back and forth. Please come up for air, I thought. Please.

  She did, and I sighed with relief. I wanted her to live at least long enough to crush me like a bug.

  That night Betsy continued to experiment with dangerous foods. No wonder BeauBeau committed suicide, I thought, after Betsy made me eat a butter-soaked, three-pound Monte Cristo sandwich the size of an English-French dictionary. Afterward, she served up a platter of cherries jubilee. She went into the liquor cabinet, then poured half a bottle of mint schnapps on the cherries. “Who would like the honor?” she asked, holding up a box of wooden kitchen matches.

  Pete ran to the other side of the room. I grabbed the baby and ducked down behind a chair.

  “Jack,” she said. ‘Just before you came home some girl called.”

  “She did! What’d she say?” I asked anxiously.

  She handed me the matches. “First things first,” she sang.

  I knew what to do. “Stand back,” I shouted. “Monsieur Henri shall perform a death-defying feat.” I struck a match and flicked it at the dessert. The flames shot up like the Olympic torch and melted a hole in the plastic light shade hanging over the dining-room table.

  Betsy grabbed the platter with cooking mitts and whisked it over to the sink. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We can pick the plastic bits out.”

  “Well, what did Virginia say?” I asked, standing behind her and breathing down her neck.

  “She said thanks for the photo, and that you are very cute.”

  “Yes,” I hissed. “Victory is mine.”

  “But I worry about this girl already,” Betsy said. “Because if she thinks you are cute, then she might think you are nice, and if she thinks that, then she might think you have the heart of a human when we all know you have the heart of a rat.”

  I didn’t tell Betsy she was wrong. Really, I had the heart of a loser. Or at least I hoped so. My literary future depended upon it.

  Five

  I was crossing Atlantic Avenue when I looked down the road and saw about a hundred baby sea turtles. Every one of them had been flattened by a car. When they hatched out of their nests on the beach, some of them went the wrong way and ended up on t
he road. Others went the right way and made it to the water. It got me thinking about the difference between real tragedy and fake tragedy. Some people think it is tragic when an innocent person crossing the street is flattened by a runaway cement truck. But that is not tragedy. That is just plain old bad luck. Real tragedy happens to people who are trying hard to do something great, like me, but through some stupid fault of their own, they screw up and everything falls to pieces. Like all the high-and-mighty heroes in Shakespeare who have a tragic flaw and end up dead, dying, or insane.

  As far as I could tell, everything was going too well for me. The upside-down leg thought I was cute. Pete was making enough money to keep the rats from eating my brain. And Madame Ginger said the worst thing that could happen to me would be about crushed ice. If I didn’t work a little harder to screw things up, my tragic writing was going to look like a rack of Hallmark greeting cards.

  I marched over to the Yankee Clipper and took a seat at a patio table. I pulled out my black book and started making notes, when the bartender saw me and came over.

  “You know, I was thinking,” he said. “About what you could do to really make Virginia feel special.”

  “What?” I replied.

  “When you aren’t here and she is, I’d still deliver her a Coke on your tab.”

  I thought about that. “But I wouldn’t be here to watch her drink it,” I said.

  “That’s not the point,” he countered. “The Coke is for her to enjoy, with or without you. Believe me, women love guys who know how to give them room to breathe.”

  He lost me. “How much will it cost?” I asked. I knew how to understand the bottom line.

  “Give me twenty bucks,” he said. “That will cover four Cokes and tips.”

  I winced. That was almost a whole day’s work for Pete. “When can I speak with her?” I asked.

  “I’ll ask her,” he said. “Don’t worry, you’re doing very well here. Every time I deliver a Coke to her, she says, ‘Is it from that nice handsome young man?’ And I say, Yes Isn’t he a prince? She’s warming up to you.”