The boy detective pounds on the ticket counter once more and the agent returns. He points toward the bank of lockers, the ticking very audible now—
tick-tick-TICK-TICK-TICK
. The ticket agent pushes his glasses tightly against his face, stares at Billy, stares at the lockers, and then, very professionally, closes the ticket booth, leaving a sign that says,
We will reopen in fifteen minutes.
He follows Billy outside, and with the young mother and her child, stares back inside the glass windows of the bus station, waiting. There, in the last aisle, the man continues reading his paper. He looks up at the strange people shouting to him outside and shakes his head, perturbed. He flips the page. He shifts in his seat. One second goes by.
In a moment, the bus station simply disappears. The man inside, unhappily reading his paper, also vanishes, while somewhere very near, a siren begins howling.
Flat on his back, the boy detective holds the young mother’s hand and stares up at the stars, feeling as if he is somehow flying.
At twilight the next day, the boy detective feels obliged to help the Mumford children give a proper burial for their pet bunny. There in the soft muddy earth beneath the front porch, Billy and the Mumford children sit, hand in hand, staring down at the slight mound of earth, unsure what it is they should be doing.
“I’m sad, Billy,” Effie Mumford whispers.
“Yes, I understand. It’s very natural to be sad in a moment like this.”
“But why did it happen? It was just an innocent animal.”
The boy detective twitches his nose. “There are people in this world who mean to do us harm.”
“I know,” the girl says.
“Yes, but you should try not to fear them.”
Gus Mumford hands Billy a note that reads:
Why not?
“We are watching out for them. You and me and Effie, we will watch out for them together.”
The girl nods silently. She looks up and smiles and Billy’s heart breaks momentarily. He remembers Caroline, his sister, many months after her dove’s unexpected death, hiding under the slanted white wood porch, burying her bird, Margaret Thatcher, the small pile of earth beside her white shoes, staring at the tiny grave of the stiffened dead dove.
Billy blinks, holding back the sting of tears in his eyes, and then, opening his black briefcase, presents the Mumford children with a small white and blue package. The two children open it silently, Effie removing the bow and ribbon, Gus tearing the paper very careuvz fully, and soon they discover it is an ant farm—
Ant City!
the bright packaging reads.
“Ants,” Billy simply mumbles, smiling.
“They look safe,” Effie Munford says. Gus Mumford nods, staring at the small red ants hurrying behind the shiny pane of protective glass. He hands Billy a note:
We really love ants.
Billy blushes.
“They are quite lovely,” Effie Mumford adds.
Billy nods, staring down at the busy little creatures. “Yes, well, I hope you enjoy them.”
It is very quiet beneath the porch then as all three watch the ants bustling about their tiny, invisible lives. Together, Billy and the Mumford children follow their movements for a while, and then the girl, Effie Mumford, stares up at him, questioningly. Her eyes have gone small with tears and her bottom lip is trembling.
“Billy?”
“Yes,” he replies.
“Everyone at school thinks I’m a gaylord.”
“It will be all right,” he says, nodding. “It will all be OK.”
The boy detective is doing his best to play Ghost in the Graveyard. He is not very good at it. He does not really understand when he is supposed to shout, “Ghost in the Graveyard!” He is tagged out by Effie Mumford three times in a row. The other children on the block laugh when he stumbles and gets dirt on his knees, but he tries not to get angry. When it is his turn, he finds Gus Mumford hiding behind a parked car and Effie Mumford pretending to be a tree. When it gets late, someone’s mother says it’s time for the neighborhood children to go to their homes. Billy says goodnight and returns to Shady Glens. In his room, in the dark, with the light switch on and the soft cloud of snow gently falling, Billy takes his dose of Clomipramine and lifts Caroline’s notebook above his chest, quietly turning the pages. He is holding his breath. He listens carefully for a voice he might recognize, the snow drifting above him until it is no longer evening.
Some frequently asked questions
regarding the boy detective:
Does the boy detective like sweets?
—No. He does not. He has a very
healthy diet and rarely eats candy.
Does the boy detective have a lovely singing voice?
—No. No, he does not.
Is the boy detective happy?
—No. He is not. He has not been happy for more than a day or so at a time.
Why not?
—Ah. Because he is irrevocably alone and incurably lonely.
The boy detective falls out of bed. The sight of him lying on the floor sure is something. He moans, turns off the ringing owl alarm clock, and begins dressing. All the clothes in his wardrobe are, of course, exactly the same: blue cardigan sweater, dark pants, white shirt, blue and orange owl tie. This is his uniform from when he was a boy and, when forced to buy new clothes, wanted to waste no time choosing what might look nice.
The boy detective waits for the bus, checking his watch every ten seconds. It is raining and gray. Early morning commuters stand around him, some listening to headphones, some cowering beneath their shiny umbrellas. The boy detective did not think to bring an umbrella. He did not think to check the weather. He has not checked the weather in almost ten years. If it was raining at St. Vitus, he was sent to the television room. If it was nice, he was allowed to go outside. He does not yet remember how to read the weather. He knows a lot, but he has forgotten many, many important things and so at the moment, he is getting very wet. His socks make a sucking sound as he paces back and forth. No one will share an umbrella with him, no matter how sad he makes his face look, and so he begins making a high-pitched noise like a motor boat starting. People at the bus stop slowly step away from him.
The boy detective is on the bus, staring ahead. It is still raining. People talk on their cell phones or read their magazines or newspapers. Someone famous is marrying someone else famous. Someone got a boob job. Some country set fire to another country and now they are sorry for it.
Billy sighs, touching his wrists and the bald spots on his head. He wonders if he will be fired today for some reason. He wonders if people at the office will still be nice to him. If they are not nice to him, he decides, he will stand up, shout,
I got screwed!
and never go back. Thinking about his job is enough to make him very anxious and so he pops an Ativan, covering his eyes with his hands. He peeks through his fingers and notices that a young man with a mustache has buttoned his dress shirt incorrectly—there is an extra buttonhole near his neck. Billy must then sit on his hands to stop himself from reaching for the strange man’s shirt. He closes his eyes and tries not to think of the open buttonhole, but it is too much and so he stands and hurries toward the back of the bus.
The boy detective stands in front of a large skyscraper, staring up through the oncoming rain nervously. He is already hyperventilating. He does not like calling sick people. He does not like calling the dead. Businessmen hurry around him, knocking him from side to side. He imagines what would happen if the building were to suddenly fall over. He imagines the sound as the steels gives, the people screaming, the glass breaking. He gets nervous as he approaches the large glass revolving door, and waits, tries again, stops, and then—gaining enough speed and courage—he hurries through, holding his breath. The lobby is black marble, and standing among all the people, he feels like he is drowning. He is forced into an elevator before he realizes he cannot remember where he is supposed to be going. Someone is whispering in his ear, saying, “Hey buddy, can you hit thirty-five?” but Billy is too afraid to hit anything.
The boy detective, one hour later, stands in the same crowded elevator with some other very wet people, who are all sighing. Someone’s collar is poking him in the eye. Someone’s umbrella is stabbing his ankle. He is trying not to get upset, but this is not easy. His first thought is to strike a sharp-faced woman with bangs beside him. But he doesn’t. He holds his breath again and hears the blood moving in his ears and when that clears he notices something: Someone is singing along with the elevator music, something with violins and pianos by Burt Bacharach. The voice is high and steady like a girl’s. People begin to stare at him. It is a long moment before he realizes, strangely, that
he
is the one singing. He thinks that if he can keep singing, he will not punch anybody. The elevator doors open to his floor and for some reason, when he exits, he says goodbye to everybody.
The boy detective is at his desk, on the phone, selling mass-produced wigs to very lonely old women.
“Yes, ma’am. As I said, we do have that exact hair color, but not in the Young Starlet style.”
Larry, from across the cubicle aisle, stares at Billy. He stands and points. “OK, kid, try this one on for size. Guess what train I took today? OK? Go on, give it a try.”
Billy eyes Larry, glancing at his shiny white wing tip shoes. “You took the C train. There’s tar on your shoes. I saw them paving the street over by the C station.”
Billy glances at Larry’s glossy black hairpiece. There are minute white feathers in it.
“Then you stopped in front of St. Franklin’s Cathedral. Those are pigeon feathers in your hair.”
Larry is dumbfounded and claps with amusement.
“You’re amazing, kid, just amazing! How’d you know all that?”
“St. Franklin imported all white doves from Hamburg, Germany. It’s the only place in the entire city that has snow-white doves this time of year.”
Larry smiles, slapping Billy on the shoulder, and returns to his desk. Billy returns to the phone call.
From the salesperson script, Billy says: “Yes, ma’am. Fully flameproof and flame retardant. Yes, of course, I think you’d be very happy with the Nordic Princess style. It’s very popular with the younger set these days. Yes, I’m sure your dearly departed husband would approve. Well, yes, ma’am, you can take as much time as you’d like to think about it. I can have a catalog sent out to you today. No, I’m not sure. What other color options would you like?”
The phone gets heavier in his hand.
“Yes, it’s exactly that, ma’am, a miracle. A miracle of modern living. Hair-replacement surgery can be expensive and dangerous. So why risk it? What we offer you is quality hair replacement without the serious dangers and side effects.”
Billy pages through the catalog to a still photo of a female model wearing a brown wig, the Domestic Enchantress, #318.
“Yes, ma’am. No, but we do have the Metropolitan Debutante model in three different colors: summer sensation, autumn reunion, and springtime mist. No, that’s a kind of platinum-blond. Yes, yes, ma’am.”
The boy detective is on the bus, staring straight ahead, careful not to make eye contact with anybody. If he makes eye contact with someone and looks away first, they will own him. He does not want that to happen. Is it still raining? Yes, it is. Everyone’s hair looks wet and misplaced, hanging in clumps over their foreheads and faces. It makes everyone look crazy. It is also very crowded on the bus. People are standing and talking on their cell phones or reading their evening papers and the headlines are somewhat different but still somewhat the same: Someone has called someone else a liar. Someone has made a new movie. Another building in town has disappeared without reason. Some other country is bad for doing something.
Billy sighs, touching the soft white scars on his wrists, and then looks down the aisle and sees a short, mousy-looking young woman in drab brown and pink. The lady has very large glasses on her very tiny face and she frowns as she makes her way toward an opening in the busy line of people who are all still very wet with rain.
A strange thing then happens—it is strange, yes.
The young woman looks over her shoulder, very suspiciously, looking to see where other people are now glancing. The lady adjusts her pink pillbox hat, then slowly approaches a matronly woman near the rear of the bus, eyeing the other woman’s great black handbag which is hanging open vulnerably. The young woman is trying to stare surreptitiously, but great invisible dashes - - - - - - - - - - are being directed from her eyes toward the other woman’s purse, and the way her narrow black eyebrows are arranged—pointed, with intent—it is clear where the young woman is looking.
The boy detective takes notice of the young woman, leaning forward in his seat. She inches her hand from her pink coat pocket toward the other lady’s handbag, her small fingers, nimble and quick, reaching into the matron’s purse. The young woman takes something from the purse and quickly slides her hand back into her coat pocket, concealing it. Then, turning away, she makes her way toward the exit in a hurry.
The boy detective watches the young woman’s movements moment to moment, his hands clenching with impotent fury. He cannot help what he is about to do—no. He cannot help himself. A bluebird, falling from the sky, cannot stop itself from flying. A clipper ship, adrift in the ocean, cannot stop itself from floating. A magnolia, rising in the water, cannot stop itself from growing. So it is that the boy detective stands and begins making his way toward the lady thief. Just as he reaches his hand out to grab her pink sleeve, she moves and quickly gets off the bus, the glass doors nearly closing in his face. Billy follows just as quickly, accidentally stepping into a gutter full of rain. The lady ties a pink scarf around her head, ducking from tree to tree, almost disappearing in the soft gray haze. Billy catches up with her. From behind, he touches her right hand, scaring her, staring into her face.
“Excuse me, miss? Miss?”
The lady is very startled.
“
Yes? You … you frightened me.”
“I believe I saw you take something from that woman’s purse.”
“No … I …”
Like that, the lady in pink runs off, darting between people. Dark umbrellas hide her path. Billy follows, hurrying past people on the street. The lady, out of breath, stops ahead and leans against a parked car. Her face is wet with tears or rain. Billy catches up with her and takes her hand again.
“You did take something from that woman, didn’t you?”
The lady is now crying. “You. You scared me.”
The lady reaches into her pocket and takes out a cheap plastic pen. She throws it down. It floats in the rainy gutter, slowly turning. Billy leans over and picks up the pen as the lady runs off, her pink scarf blowing behind her head. Billy watches, speechless, the pink scarf a dot, a speck, then gone, gone, gone. The boy detective slips the pen into his pocket, watching her disappear, and wonders what is the meaning of any of it.
The boy detective has never kissed a girl. Shhh—it is a secret. It makes him feel very bad.
At school, Gus Mumford breaks the other children’s arms. He is the best at it. He is doing it right now.
Ow. Ouch. Yikes.
He shoves Benjamin Radcliffe against a bank of lockers, smashing the boy’s ear, pummeling his face into the puke-green metal door with glee. Gus Mumford does not know why he is doing this. It just seems it is what the other children expect of him and so he does it to the best of his ability.
Gus Mumford’s greatest maiming—the one of which he, to this day, is most proud? Blackening both of Jeremy Acorn’s eyes with a single, deftly dealt blow to the nose.
In the middle of third period—spelling, Gus Mumford’s worst subject—there is a knock at the classroom door and a small creature enters the room: It is strange because Gus is unsure whether it is a girl or a boy standing there. The child’s skin is bright pink and its head is almost completely bald: There is a single blond strand of hair at the top of its head and its eyelashes are long and white. When it takes off its jacket, it is wearing a small white shirt and a patterned pair of slacks. Gus Mumford twitches his nose and watches Miss Gale lead the small pink child to an empty seat at the front of the classroom. Immediately there is a crowd of whispers and exclamations, and one of the girls, Missy Blackworth, the child who is always called on first in class, says a single word that seems to speak to the entire class’s feelings: “Bald.” Gus Mumford returns to his drawing—a graphic depiction of gigantic ants with swords, feasting on the various limbs of his teacher—every so often looking up from his page to stare at the back of the bald pink head before him. At recess, in between delivering a heretofore unheard of ten Indian burns to children on the playground, Gus watches the pink child, still unsure if it is truly a boy or girl, who is sitting on the bicycle rack making a cat’s cradle with a string of yarn.
Gus Mumford looks at the pink child’s nose and decides it must be a male. Still, he is the most lovely male Gus Mumford has ever seen: small eyes, small lips, blond eyelashes more dainty than any young girl’s.
When Missy Blackworth slowly takes a seat beside the pink boy, Gus stops punching a first grader named Clancy Seamen in the belly, turning the poor soul loose, and watches with squinted eyes what might happen next. On the other side of the playground, two third-graders quietly sit on the metal bike rack side by side, whispering to each other. All is well until Missy quickly reaches up, touches the boy’s soft pink head, and runs off giggling in horror, jumping up and down, laughing as she hurries back to her circle of friends, holding her hand out before her as if it is now glowing. Gus Mumford wipes Clancy Seamen’s spit off his fists and walks quickly over to Missy Blackworth. Without another thought, he breaks the laughing girl’s wrist.
Gus Mumford has a secret: He has been talking. He has been saying words out loud, but only to the inhabitants of Ant City, the ant farm his neighbor Billy generously gave to his sister. Hiding quietly beneath the front porch of his house, he holds the rectangular glass metropolis in his hands and says—his voice unfamiliar and creaky—“I have a new friend at school. He thinks very highly of me.” He is lying, of course, but is quite sure the citizens of Ant City will be unable to recognize that.