Slob (19 page)

“Understood.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. But let me ask you this. How long have you had a crush on my sister?” I said.

“What?” He narrowed his eyes at me.

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out,” I told him.

He blushed, then shot me a shy look. “A while, I guess. Does she still like that Andre dude?”

“Andre’s not worth one of your hangnails, Izzy. Jeremy is no dope. She’ll figure that out.”

Which brings me to the last item on my list . . .

It takes three months for a girl to:

So three months later takes us right into January. It’s one of those January thaws in New York City where the temperature creeps up to over forty degrees and you actually see a few people walking around in khaki shorts. Everyone heads to Central Park to squeeze in a little Rollerblading or bike riding or . . .

Okay, I can’t take it anymore. I’m trying to set the scene for you and make this very literary, but really there is something I’m dying to show you. I’m going to skip over all the literary stuff, if you don’t mind. I’ll just let you know that Mom and I went shopping at Macy’s and bought some new clothes for me. I had stuck to a diet, and although it was torture at first, it became easier as the weeks went on. Now I was swimming in my old clothes. That’s not the thing I’m dying to show you, but I thought you should know that. Jeremy was out at the ice-skating rink with Izzy. Good luck renting a pair of skates in size 13, I thought, but he’d squeeze into a size 10 just to get a chance to flop all over the ice with Jeremy by his side. They’re just friends, good friends, but I wouldn’t be sorry if they dated one day. You know, when Jeremy was eighteen or so.

After Mom and I went shopping, I told her there was something I wanted to show her. We took the bus back uptown and got off by the Museum of Natural History. In January it’s not usually all that crowded outside the museum, but it was today. Good weather and all. There was a big crowd gathered off to the left side of the steps and that was where I led Mom now.

“What?” she said, smiling at me. “What is it?”

“Just wait,” I said.

Some of the people in the crowd were clearly in a line formation, but others were standing around watching something. We joined them. I grabbed Mom’s hand and inched us through the crowd to get a better look.

The momo cart was festooned with its usual flags, and Nima was smiling his usual good-natured pirate smile. What wasn’t usual was a loud clicking-tonk-tonk-slapping noise. Nima saw me almost right away. His smile spread even wider, and he waved me over. I pulled Mom with me.

“This man here, my friend Owen Birnbaum,” Nima announced to the crowd as he put his arm around me, “this the man that built
she
!”

His arms spread wide toward the contraption that was clicking-tonk-tonk-slapping on his cart.

My satellite dish was now a momo Ferris wheel, painted with a bright yellow sun in the center and red and blue rays coming off the sun, like the design on the Tibetan flag (Jeremy had helped me with the painting part). Around its edges I had attached little metal brackets that served as tiny seats for momos. As fast as Nima could make the momos, a pivoting metal arm made of scrap pipe with a pair of food tongs soldered to the end snapped them up and placed them on the Ferris wheel, which spun slowly, turned by a bicycle chain and a washing machine motor attached to the back. The little momos traveled up, up, up. Then as they started their downward ride, the little bracket seats made a fast flipping motion. The momos flew into the air, one after another, like tiny circus performers, and landed in Nima’s large steam pot.

Do you know what the crowd did? They applauded.

It wasn’t the Nobel Prize, but it was still pretty nice.

Mom applauded too, after looking a little stunned. Nima gave us a heaping plate of momos and we sat down on the steps of the museum.

“Owen, you’re a genius,” she said.

“Not quite. I’m one point short.”

 

 

It was one of those perfect days. I love those days. But they also make me nervous because I know that lurking behind every perfect day are a few less-than-perfect bits and pieces. One of those pieces was underneath my desk drawer. I hadn’t known what to do with it after I destroyed Nemesis. I couldn’t throw it away, yet I couldn’t look at it either.

But because today was a perfect day, I opened the drawer up and took out the little green paper with SLOB written on it.

When people die, all the things they’ve ever touched or have ever belonged to them should be buried with them. Like the Egyptians used to do. It doesn’t seem fair that a person’s writing should still exist on this planet while the actual person is gone.

 

 

SLOB

 

 

It was the last thing my mother ever wrote. In a perfect world, the last thing your mother ever wrote would be something like,
My darling son, I love you more than I can ever say. I’ll always watch over you.

But my mother worked in a deli. The last thing she wrote was an order she took from a customer. The customer who killed her.

 

 

SLOB

 

 

Our deli’s shorthand for salami on an onion bagel.

All of a sudden I knew what to do. I put the piece of paper in my back pocket and yanked on my coat and hat.

“Going out,” I called to Mom.

“Where?” she called back, but I was already out the door. I took the stairs because I didn’t want to wait for the elevator. And anyway, I needed to move. I had too much energy chasing around in my body.

I walked down to Broadway, then West End Avenue and past the school, which lately didn’t seem quite as menacing as it once had. Mr. Wooly still hated me, but he mostly ignored me. I’m guessing he didn’t want to be called back into the principal’s office anytime soon.

I entered Riverside Park. It was loaded with people soaking up the sun that was seeping through the cold air. I headed straight for the promenade. There were few boats on the water and there were icy patches here and there, but the water was moving slowly. I took the slip of green paper out of my pocket. A gust of wind made it flap wildly in my hand, but I held on to it.

I said a prayer. I’ve never prayed before, so I don’t know if I did it right. I prayed that the police would one day catch the man who killed my parents. But in case that didn’t happen, I prayed that karma would kick in. I prayed that the murderer would be the unluckiest man who ever lived. That he’d always be losing his wallet, missing the bus when it’s raining, pulling out his back, getting pelted by snowballs, or stepping in dog poop. I prayed that he would feel like crud five days out of the week and have intestinal gas pains for the other two days.

I know that’s not exactly compassionate.

But for now, it’s the best I can do.

I folded the paper in quarters, ripped it in half, then again, and dropped it in the Hudson River. The pieces bobbed around for a moment, like they didn’t know what to do, until they were finally carried off by the wake of a passing tugboat.

At the last minute, I sent off one more prayer. That the man who murdered my parents has someone in his life who thinks he’s a better person than he actually is.

Ok. That really is the best I can do.