Anything You Want (10 page)

I got back to school just in time to warm up for the tryouts. I was all set to sing a little bit from “The Merry Old Land of Oz,” even though I can't really sing that great. (I'm probably the forty-second best singer in my class.)

When I arrived at school, however, a couple things went down that made me think maybe I should skip out on that whole shiz.

First, when he dropped me off, Mr. Nussbaum asked me to go to his office right after school on Friday. (It would've been Thursday, but he had to be in court.) “I want you to get rolling, Taco,” he said. “We need to get a routine established.” How could I be in the musical if I had to serve the law after school every day? I couldn't.

Secondly, Maggie Corrigan was not only back. She was standing by my locker when I got to school. I stopped in my tracks when I saw her.

“I've been looking for you all day,” she said.

I approached slowly. It had been so long since we'd talked, and so much had happened. “You should be in class. You have to keep doing well in school,” I said. “People think you're a good person—even if you're not—when you're good at school. You don't want to go to jail like Tweety Bird, do you?”

“Costume loft please,” Maggie said.

That set me off. “Why? You want to get naked? No! That's a stupid idea! I'm not getting naked with you until after our baby comes and you've explained how you can go for a full week without calling or replying to my painful emails!”

“That's what I want to talk about! I don't want to take off my clothes, okay? I just want to go someplace private,” she said. Then she pointed her finger in my chest. “Follow me. Now.”

She moved like lightning, and I had to hurry to keep up with her.

But when we got to the stage area, the whole wide world of musical doink was standing on stage around the baby grand, belting out, “We're off to see the wizard!” so we couldn't go to the loft.

“Crap,” Maggie said. Then she turned on her heel and shot out past the auto shop and the driver's ed room. We burst into the back parking lot, which was highly illegal, given how there was still ten minutes of school before the bell rang.

“Maggie, shit. What the hell are we doing?” I asked. “I'm already in trouble. I was at court today!”

“I'm in trouble too, which means we're in trouble together,” she said.

“How?” I asked.

“My parents are totally harassing me, man.” Maggie's lips were quivering. Tears began to fill her eyes. “I'm going to fold if they don't stop. Mom was hell on wheels in Ohio. Hell on wheels!”

“What do you mean ‘fold'?”

“Abort the mission or…or sign up for adoption,” she said.

“No,” I said. “That can't happen. You're my family. You and the baby.”

Maggie nodded. “You're my family too. That's why this happened, right? Because it was meant to? You're all I love.”

“What can we do to stop them?” I asked.

“I have plan. But it's going to be tough.” Maggie breathed out hard. Then she whispered, “We need to fake not being in love for a while because my mom has to believe that this is
my
decision, and in it we're not together.”

“No,” I said. “I can't do that.” How could I do that? How could I not show my love?

“Shut up, Taco! You have no idea what I'm dealing with.”

“But you're my
family
,” I said.

Maggie paused. She was so serious. “If we don't fake this, they're going to come after you, okay? They'll probably come after you anyway, but maybe we can convince them they don't have to,” Maggie whispered.

I squinted at Maggie. “Come after me? Like rough me up? Break my knees? Go gangster or something?”

“No. They want to pay you off,” Maggie said. “Pay you to go away. With cash.”

“No,” I said. “No way.”

“To get you to sign away your parental rights, they will bribe your ass big-time. They will try to pay you to stay away from me forever. Do you understand? That's how angry they are about what happened.”

“What kind of person do they think I am?” I said, shocked by what the Corrigans were capable of. “My love is not for sale. I won't sell babies.”

“Of course you won't. I hate my mom! And my dad! They're shitty, shitty people.”

I felt like I'd been kicked in the salad, dingus. I stared at the pavement. “Why would they think I'd care about money more than a baby?”

“Because they think you're poor and depraved.”

“Jesus,” I whispered.

“I know better. I know you,” Maggie said. “So here's the deal. Just pretend not to love me, and I'll pretend not to love you. And I'll have this baby, and then you…you come swooping in to be the dad. When I go into the hospital to have the baby—swoop! There you are. And then it will be too late because the baby will be there, and they can't just keep the dad away because they're the grandparents. They can't!”

Then Maggie said more quietly, “When they see the baby, maybe then they'll just be happy for me.”

That sounded peaceful. That sounded like a good plan.

She got loud again. “And when we're married and living together as a family in your house, they won't know what hit them! Mom will shit her stupid pants! I will never let her see the baby! She will cry herself to sleep every night, and it will be her own fault!”

“Oh shit,” I said. Our baby is a weapon? “Really?”

“She can hurt me,” she said. “But I can hurt her more.”

“But…but maybe we shouldn't lie. I want to see you,” I said. “To help you. You know, to care for you when you're supercharged pregnant and stuff. I took care of my mom. I can take care of you too.”

“No, man. The only way you can help right now is to work. I'm not going to be able to stay at Dairy Queen when I'm pushing maximum density this spring. That means we'll have no money unless you get a job. I'm already doing my job. I'm making life in my body, and soon people are going to know I'm pregnant. I'm going to get so much shit for this.”

Maggie was all heated up, pretty much yelling, which was sort of normal for her, and I've always liked how engaged she was in her life, right? This was even better! It was like listening to one of Coach Johnson's wicked halftime speeches.

“I'm doing my damn part! Now you do yours!” Maggie shouted. She grabbed me by my white dress shirt collar. “You do it!”

“Okay. I'm in. In fact, I already tried to get a job. But apparently I'm not qualified to be a dance instructor.”

That made her smile. She took a deep breath and sighed. “Just keep at it, cowboy,” Maggie said. “You're so awesome. You really are, Taco. We're going to do this.” Then she grabbed my ears, and she kissed me so hard, my pants tried to unbutton themselves. When she stopped, I was all dizzy, and she said, “I have to get to the locker room and change for cheerleading before everybody else gets there because you can see I have a baby bump if you look hard enough.”

I looked. Maybe I could see it. A little. My baby in a baby bump. “I love you so much,” I said.

“Shut up about that. No more,” Maggie said, putting her finger to my lips. Then she left.

I hung out in the back lot for a few minutes, tucked behind a Dumpster, trying to compose myself. The bell rang while I was out there. A whole gang of guys, the car shop dudes, came pushing out the doors. A couple of them lit cigarettes. They were all like,
Taco! You're the man
, because those guys always say crap like that to me. But actually this time I felt like the man. Like a real man! Like a man who was about to get a real job and be a real dad. A manly man!

I high-fived a few of those car monkeys and shot back inside and cruised down the hall with my head held high. But when I neared the auditorium, Caitlin Krebs ran up to me and grabbed my hand. “We've been looking for you! You're up, Taco! It's your time!”

Five seconds later I was standing on stage in the bright lights next to Ms. Brogley, who played the piano. I sang “The Merry Old Land of Oz!” At the end, I spread my arms out wide and slid down into a split to show I really meant it. Mr. Lecroy, the choir director, shouted, “A little off-key but plenty of enthusiasm. And those moves! The boy can deliver! I think we've found our Mayor of Munchkinland!”

The kids who were watching the auditions clapped and whooped. Caitlin Krebs flew from stage right and hugged me, pressing her boobs into me. I whooped too. I did because I was pumped! Mayor of Munchkinland? That's like playbill headliner material. I would have lines to say and everything. Mom would be so proud of me. Remember, dingus? She loved musicals. I was going to be the man for Maggie…and for Mr. Lecroy…and for Mom.

Except I wasn't the man. How could I be the munchkin mayor? I had to get a job for Maggie and the baby. And I had to go to Nussbaum's to do the law.

Oh man.

On Friday morning, Mr. Lecroy gave a dramatic reading of the musical cast list over the intercom during announcements. This was a big surprise! I hadn't had a chance to tell Mr. Lecroy that it probably couldn't work out for me to be the mayor.

Maggie didn't sit next to me in English. I figured she was pretending not to be in love with me so that we could fool the world and surprise them when we got married. Our baby could be the best man in a little tux or the maid of honor in a poofy, lacy dress, but then after English out in the hallway, Maggie kicked my ass. She literally kicked me in the ass! Which inflamed my almost-healed coccyx, which I hadn't thought about in a few days, even during my split at musical tryouts.

Pain fired through my nether regions when her pink Chuck Taylor high-top made contact.

I cried out in pain.

“Shut up,” Maggie hissed. “You're in the musical?”

“My ass!”

“Have you found a job?”

“It's only been a couple days since I knew I needed one.”

“How are you going to get a job to support our…” Maggie got very quiet and looked around to see if anyone was looking at us. Of course, every damn monkey in the hallway was staring. She whispered, “To support our habit?”

“Our what?”

“Habit,” Maggie said louder.

“Habit?”

Maggie just glared.

“Jesus. Leave it to me,” I said. My ass hurt so much that I thought I was going to cry, and that jacked me up pretty hard. “You listen,” I said with full-on frying anger because she had hurt my butt and my heart so badly, “You just watch me do my thing. Because I'll do it. But for now I'm going to calc.”

As I limped through the halls, I thought about how my dad wasn't interested in anything except football and beer and how I liked football and dancing and musicals and track and how lucky that baby was to have such a well-rounded dad. Maggie could suck it because I could handle all my responsibilities, and I would do all these activities because my baby deserved awesomeness for a role model.

I got to calc, like, two minutes late, and Mr. Edwards's eyeballs shot daggers at me while he finished giving instructions for working on a problem set. My ass was throbbing so much that I could hardly concentrate.

While we were supposed to be working, Brad Schwartz leaned over. “Are you on drugs? You and Maggie? That would explain a lot to be honest.”

“What?” I asked.

“Katie Faherty texted me because she heard you have a habit.”

“Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Keller, please shut your mouths,” Mr. Edwards said.

“My dad's Mr. Keller!” I shouted. “Call me Taco!”

Mr. Edwards was not pleased by my clarification. He told me to stand in the hall for ten minutes to get my shiz under control. I saw a couple teachers I liked while I was out there and said hi to them, which made me think about how those same teachers wouldn't say hello to Maggie because she was not friendly like I was. Clearly it was another indication that I was a good person and not her. Why would I have such feelings about the girl I love? My ass killed.

And, yes, dingus, I was pissed at Maggie. And now everyone thought we had a “habit,” and I was supposed to go to Nussbaum's law office after school at the same time I was supposed to be at the first musical practice. I'm a good person but not capable of time travel or being in two places at one time.

Plus, my ass hurt.

I am a lucky Taco though. That first day of musical practice was just an organizational meeting that only took like twenty minutes. Mr. Lecroy handed out a schedule of rehearsals that began the following Monday and ran right up to Christmas break (with a few optional meetings during the break) and through early February, when we would perform the musical for two weekends in front of God and Bluffton and also the kids in middle school.

During December, as Mayor of Munchkinland, I'd only have to be at rehearsal a couple times a week. Finding a job? Doing my young lawyering? Seemed sort of possible if I could slide getting a job past Darius without him punching my nose. I'd deal with January when January happened. I had a primo role, so I had to figure it out.

Thank God Sharma was just leaving the building as I was because my ass was grass from Maggie's foot, and the notion of hoofing two miles downtown to Mr. Nussbaum's law office nearly knocked me back on my ass. Sharma drove me in his brand-new Honda Civic.

On the way he asked, “What are you two junkies for? Methamphetamine? That would make sense given your oddly energetic behavior. You certainly don't seem the barbiturate type.”

“Who?” I asked. “What?”

“You and Maggie Corrigan, meth heads. You know, because you're drug addicts.”

Oh, I wanted to tell Sharma the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God, but I'd promised Maggie I'd keep a lid on the baby, so I lied. “Yeah, we're total meth fiends. I'm learning to cook it too.”

“I can't tell my parents. They won't let me help you with calc anymore.”

“No, don't. It's better they don't know,” I said. Oh, I hate lying, dingus, but shouldn't Sharma know better? Did I look like a meth head?

Three minutes later we were on Main Street, and Sharma dropped me off at the Nussbaum Law Office. He asked if Nussbaum was helping Maggie and if I launder our money to avoid prosecution. I told him Nussbaum didn't know about our drugs or our production capacity.

Sharma is a bright dude generally. How could he buy all this
we take drugs
crap?

“I'm here for you if you need help,” he said. “I can give you a ride to rehab anytime.”

“Thanks for the ride,” I said.

Then into Nussbaum's I limped. His office was up above Pancho Steinberg's Mexi-Deli, and I had to climb a long flight of stairs to get there. Never let anyone tell you your butt is not important. Your butt is very, very important to general motility.

Mr. Nussbaum's office had dark wood-paneled walls like a TV law office from the olden days. The first room had a reception area where there was a little desk with fake flowers and pictures of babies on it. No one sat there. I stood in that room for a few seconds and then called out, “Halooo?”

“Hey, hey! Taco!” The Nussbaum voice called from another room. (There were two doors—one on the right of the reception desk and one on the left.) “Come on back here!” he called.

I wasn't sure where his Nussbaum voice was coming from, so I tried the door on the left. The room was dark and smelled like old paper, coffee, and cigars. This, I was to find out, was the file room, which included a coffee station where I would make coffee after I uncovered the coffeemaker, which was buried in unfiled paper—just like the floor and everything else. I shut that door and hobbled around the desk to the door on the right. That was where I found a shirtless, big-bellied Mr. Nussbaum.

“You made it!” he shouted. He sat behind a huge wood desk. There were two leather chairs across from him—leather chairs waiting for clients who would talk serious law business with him.

“You're naked!” I shouted back.

“I have on pants!” he shouted. “Gets so hot in this room that I sweat through my shirts. So I work like this…unless there's mixed company around.”

“Is your receptionist gone for the day?”

“Mallory? She's gone for three months. She had a baby right before Thanksgiving. By statute I only have to pay her for six weeks though, so I got that going for me.”

“Yeah. Righteous,” I said.

“Sit down here. Let's have a chat, Taco.”

I eased myself into one of the leather chairs, and my coccyx nestled in the most delicious leather cloud an ass might ever find.

“What a chair!”

“Yeah. Nice, right? These are the spoils of war, my friend.”

I nodded and smiled, though I had no idea what he meant, and Mr. Nussbaum took off at the mouth.

“Taco, I'm a small business man. I wouldn't do a public service just out of the kindness of my heart. You understand?”

“Yeah?” I didn't though.

“Good. Just so we're straight on the matter. You're not going to be dinking around here, flirting with my secretary. No, sir. You're going to put your nose to the grindstone. You're going to be my secretary. Got that?”

“Yes. Completely,” I said.

“This is a real job, amigo. You will make me coffee on Saturday mornings while I am working. You will run out to get me dinner if I'm working late on a weekday. You will file the reams of paper I get buried under every single day. If you're smart, you'll photocopy cases, read them, highlight important information. And last but not least, you will make this office sparkle—and not just with your personality but with sponges, soap, the vacuum cleaner, and elbow grease.
Comprende?
”

“
Claro que sí
,” I said. But oh my, I wasn't even sure I knew what I'd just said. “You know I have to go to school, right?” I asked.

“Of course! We're on the same page, amigo,” Mr. Nussbaum said. “Now let's get to the business at hand.”

Mr. Nussbaum stood, took two steps to his left, and pulled a shirt off his coatrack. He pulled that puppy around his shoulders and strode across the room, through the reception area, and over to the paper/coffee/cigar room I'd poked my head into when I had first arrived. To follow Mr. Nussbaum, I'd had to jack myself out of that comfortable seat, and my ass didn't agree to this sudden movement. Mr. Nussbaum shouted, “Get the lead out, Taco! Catch up!”

In the coffee room, Mr. Nussbaum flipped on the light—and what an amazing, amazing sight. Paper was everywhere—all over the floor, piled in stacks against the walls, covering the tops of the filing cabinets, jammed underneath the coffeemaker. Everywhere there could be paper, by God, there was paper. You could get buried alive in a room like that.

“Your first task, amigo? Get these documents organized and filed,” Mr. Nussbaum said.

“Organized how?” I asked. “Alphabetically?”

Mr. Nussbaum patted me on the shoulder. “I don't know, son. I'm the lawyer, not the filer. Mallory was out on bed rest before she had her baby, so this is a good two months of paperwork to sort out. You're going to figure out what the hell's gone wrong in this place…because wrong it has gone. Any questions?”

“No. Got it,” I said.

“You are to put in twenty hours a week from now until the middle of February, when Mallory gets back. I want you here after school for a few hours every day and Saturdays for a minimum of eight hours. We'll have to work some Sundays, but not all. By February, you'll be a free boy. Fair?”

“When am I going to learn about the law?” I asked.

Mr. Nussbaum gestured to the mad stacks of paper. “The majesty of the law surrounds you.”

“What about musical rehearsals?”

Mr. Nussbaum squinted at me. “What musical rehearsals?”

“The school's musical. I'm the Mayor of Munchkinland.”

“And I'm the Fresh Prince of your Freedom. You'd better figure it out. Now you might not understand responsibility, given that home situation of yours, but this…” Mr. Nussbaum gestured to the papers again. “This is your primary concern for the next few months…or else.”

“Or else?”

“Right. Or else,” Mr. Nussbaum said. He pointed at me and winked. Then he said, “I'm going to the VFW for a beer. Make sure the door's locked when you go.”

“I don't have keys.”

“I'll leave you a set on Mallory's desk.”

Mr. Nussbaum was gone in a blink, and I was left with this mountain of paper. If I could've gotten to the file drawers without stepping on paper, I'd have tried to figure out how all this “majesty of the law” was organized. But I couldn't walk anywhere without stepping on paper. So I went out to the reception area, locked the door, lay down on the floor, and took a well-deserved nap. My ass sure hurt from Maggie's mighty kick. Pain is exhausting.

When I woke up, it was pitch-dark, and I could hear drunk college kids screaming on Main Street.

It was 9:00 p.m. I spent the next hour just making neat stacks out of all the paper. From what I could see, this was important stuff. Like printed emails from judges and other lawyers and clients and crap. There were documents from actual court cases. Judgments and divorce decrees and lawsuits. Holy shiz. I didn't actually file anything, but by the end of the hour, I'd made a path from the door to the cabinets.

Then I got seriously groggy. I had to call it a day.

I shut off the light and locked the door behind me. There was no light to show me where the stairs down to the street were, no light coming from any offices at the other end of the hallway. I couldn't hear anything either, no noise from the street. It was like I'd been buried underground, though I was above ground. Dingus, I totally froze.

“Mom,” I said to nobody. “Help.”

A door creaked in the dark. I fumbled, bumbled, stumbled toward the stairs. I felt like someone was behind me. I found the stairs and scrambled down as fast as I could. I burst out to the cold street, which was lit with streetlights and loud with screaming sorority girls.

Whoa, dingus. Even in their puffy winter coats, you could totally tell how hot these girls were.

Even if I didn't love all the piles of paper, I did love Nussbaum's office location!

I love life.