Bingo Brown and the Language of Love (2 page)

“Can’t it wait a bit? Some people are still working on their journals.”

Melissa’s eyes filled with tears. She started to sit down, and Mr. Mark reconsidered. “Gang, is anyone working so hard on his or her journal that their train of thought would be shattered forever by an announcement from Melissa?” His bright eyes looked them over. “Melissa, it’s all yours.”

“This is a personal announcement. Is that all right?”

He nodded.

Bingo’s heart had moved up into his throat. As soon as he had seen the tears, he had started closing the distance between them. He and Melissa were now two feet apart, close enough so that Bingo could see her tears were getting ready to spill.

Bingo could stand tears if they stayed where they were supposed to, but if they spilled …

“My dad,” Melissa said. She looked down at her desk and blinked her eyes. Two tears plopped onto her open journal.

Bingo gasped with concern.

“My father,” she began again with brave determination, “is being transferred to Bixby, Oklahoma, and we’ll be moving next month. I hope some of you will write to me. That’s the end of my announcement.”

Melissa sat down, but Bingo stood there. He vowed with silent fervor to write daily, and to write such letters as the post office had never seen, letters so thick postal workers would marvel at their weight. His letters would go down in postal history. Years later, an unusually thick letter would be referred to as a “Bingo letter.” His letters—

“Bingo?”

“What? Oh, yes, Mr. Mark?”

“Melissa said that was the end of her announcement. I believe you might begin to think in terms of returning to your seat.”

“I’m on my way.”

That memory caused Bingo to pick up his pen with renewed determination.

“Well,” he wrote firmly, “I guess you’re surprised to be getting a letter from me instead of a call, but our telephone bill came today.”

There was a knock on his window. Bingo leaped in alarm. No one had ever knocked on his window before. He was as shocked as if someone had knocked on his forehead.

He got to his feet. Whoever was doing the knocking was either incredibly stupid or incredibly impolite!

Bingo strode to the window and bent down. The reflection of his own face, frowning, was all he could see.

“Who’s out there?” Bingo asked. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to knock on—”

“It’s me, Worm Brain.”

Bingo swallowed the rest of his words.

“Open up.”

“Oh, all right.” Bingo opened the window and looked at Billy Wentworth. Billy was wearing his camouflage T-shirt and his Rambo expression. “What can I do for you?” Bingo asked.

“Why can’t you talk on the phone?”

“Who says I can’t?”

“Your mom. I called and asked to speak to you, and she said, ‘Bingo is no longer allowed to receive calls.’ Bam! She could have busted my eardrum. You being punished?”

“Unjustly,” Bingo said.

“Is there any other way? What’d you do?”

“I ran up a fifty-four-dollar phone bill,” Bingo said. “So, why did you knock on my window?”

“I wanted to ask you something. Well, my mom wanted me to ask you something.”

“What?”

“We’re going on vacation and we can’t take our dog.”

“Misty the poodle?” Bingo asked.

A feeling of dread began deep within Bingo’s soul. Before Misty had moved next door, Bingo had not known it was possible to actually dread being stared at by a dog.

“Mom, she stares at me all the time, right into my eyes.”

“That’s known as eye contact,” his mom had said, in her usual unconcerned way.

“And I don’t know what she wants me to do. Mom, she can stare for hours. Sometimes I have to go in the house!”

“You better get used to eye contact,” his mom had said. “Later on you’ll be having eye contact with girls, and if you run in the house then, you’ve blown it.”

“Yes,” Billy Wentworth went on, “Misty the poodle. How many dogs you think we got, Worm Brain?”

“That’s the only one I know about.”

“You want to keep her?” Billy asked.

“Well, I don’t know. We’re probably going on vacation, too.”

“Go ask your mom.”

“Er, I think she’s in the bathroom just—”

“No, she’s in the living room. I saw her through the window.”

Bingo went into the living room. “We can’t keep Misty, can we?”

His mother glanced up. “The Wentworth dog? Sure, why not?”

Bingo lowered his voice. “Mom, you know I can’t stand to be stared at by that dog. She—”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Bingo Brown, to mind being looked at by a ten-year-old half-blind miniature poodle with kidney trouble!”

Bingo stood in silence. Up until the business of the phone bill, Bingo and his mother had been getting along unusually well. His mother had a new job selling real estate, and even though she hadn’t gotten a commission yet, she was very happy.

“Tell Billy yes!” she went on forcefully. “Tell Billy we will be glad to keep the poodle. Certainly it will make up, in part, for their having to keep you last fall.”

This last humiliation, being put in the category of a dog, made Bingo turn—he hoped with dignity—and start back to his room.

He went directly to Billy, at the open window. “Yes,” he said. He closed the window and went back to his bed.

Well, at least he now had something to write to Melissa. “Billy Wentworth’s poodle, Misty, will be spending next week with me, so this will probably be my last letter for a while. I’ll have to keep an eye on her. Sincerely, but somewhat despondently, Bingo Brown”

He fumbled under the bed for his summer notebook and flipped to “Trials of Today.” He wrote:

1. Continued animosity from my mother and the cruel implication that I am, socially, on the same level with a poodle.

2. Having the privacy of my bedroom invaded by an enemy agent.

3. Inability to create postal history by writing Bingo letters to Melissa.

4. Continued failure in reaching the mainstream of life.

It made Bingo feel somewhat better to have survived four trials of this magnitude, but he still had only one word to list under “Triumphs”: none.

B
INGO TIED ON HIS
apron and looked down at the cookbook on the counter. It was open to page forty-four: chicken breasts in tarragon sauce.

Bingo cracked his knuckles, cheflike.

“Let’s see,” he said. Beneath his breath, he began to read the ingredients. “Chicken breasts—I have those. Onions—I have those. …”

In order to make up for his phone debt, Bingo had agreed to cook supper for his mom and dad for thirty-six nights. His mom had originally wanted fifty-four. “That’s fair, Bingo,” she had argued, “a dollar a night.” But he had bargained her up to a dollar and a half.

“All right, thirty-six,” she’d said finally. “But no Hamburger Helper, Bingo.”

“Of course not.”

This was Bingo’s third supper, and he was ready for something from the spice rack. As he rummaged through the little scented tins, he caught the aroma of ginger, but with a quick glance of regret at the telephone, he continued to rummage.

“Tarragon … tarragon. I wonder if that’s anything like oregano? Garlic … dill …

“What else do I need to do? Oven”—Bingo turned on the oven with a flourish—“three-fifty.” Bingo had already learned that 350 degrees was the perfect cooking temperature. He never planned to use anything else. For example, this tarragon chicken thing called for—he checked the recipe—275, but—

The phone rang and Bingo moved sideways toward it. Bingo was now allowed to answer the phone, but he couldn’t place any calls. With his eyes on the cookbook, he picked up the phone.

“Hello.”

A voice said, “Could I speak to Bingo, please.”

It was a girl’s voice!

Bingo was so shocked he almost dropped the phone. He had not spoken to a girl on the phone since his last call to Melissa. He did not think he would ever speak to a girl again.

Now not only was he going to speak to a girl, but it was a strange girl.

A rash of questions burned out of control in his brain. Why was a strange girl calling him? What did she want? He was too young for magazine subscriptions, wasn’t he? Could she be conducting a survey? Could it be a woman with a little girl voice wanting him to contribute to a good cause? Could it be—

“Is this Bingo?”

“Well, this is Bingo Brown,” he said, emphasizing his last name.

That was quick thinking. After all, there might be other Bingos. He didn’t want to proceed with the conversation only to have it end with something like, “Well, boo, I thought I was talking to Bingo Schwartznecker.”

“Oh, Bingo. Hi!”

There was a faint tinge of that long-remembered deepening of pleasure. How did girls do that? Did they have two sets of vocal cords, one for everyday use and one for special occasions? Did they shift gears like a car and their motor actually—

“Bingo,” she went on in a more businesslike voice, “You don’t know me, but my name’s Cici, with two
i
’s.”

“Oh?”

Bingo’s free hand had begun to twitch nervously, as if it wanted to make some sort of gesture but was unsure what the gesture should be.

Bingo put his hand firmly into his apron pocket.

“Cici Boles.”

“Oh.”

“I’m a good friend of Melissa’s, you know? I lived next door to her. But you probably don’t recognize my name because I’m not in your grade.”

“Oh.”

“I’m the same age as Melissa, but I started school in Georgia, and you have to already be, like, five to start kindergarten in Georgia. … Are you still there?”

“Yes.” At least, Bingo thought, he had broken his string of
ohs.

“Because I, like, panic when people don’t answer me. I think they’ve gone. I think I’m talking to, you know, empty air!”

“I’m still here.”

“Then answer me.”

“I will.”

“You’re probably wondering why I called.”

This time Bingo answered as quickly as a bride. “I do.”

“You’re going to think this is silly, Bingo, but promise you won’t hang up on me.”

“I promise.”

Bingo switched hands, putting his telephone hand—it had started twitching now—into his pocket.

“Well, here goes. Melissa wants me to take a picture of you with my camera and send it to her. See, I knew you’d think it was silly.”

Bingo breathed deeply. This was the last thing he had expected, that a girl would want to take his picture. Even his own parents never particularly wanted to take his picture, and now this! A mixed-sex photography session!

“Are you still there?” Cici asked.

“Yes.”

“See, you have to answer or I panic. Like, he’s gone! I am talking to empty air!”

“Actually, I was thinking.”

“Oh, I never stop to do that. I just, you know, go for it. What were you thinking?”

“Er, when do you want to take this picture?”

“Would right now be too soon?”

“Right now?” Bingo bent down to check his reflection in the toaster oven.

“Yes.”

Bingo reached for his apron strings. He untied them in a flourish.

“I’ll need a few minutes.”

“Sure.”

Bingo wondered if there was any mousse in the house. He hadn’t used mousse since Melissa moved. He had given it up in a sort of religious way, like for Lent.

But if he didn’t use it now, Melissa might not recognize him. Worse, she might think he had gotten ugly!

“Better make that fifteen minutes,” Bingo told Cici Boles.

He turned off the oven and ran for the bathroom.

As he ran, heart pumping in a way it had not pumped in months, Bingo had burning questions.

Could this mixed-sex photography session turn out to be my first Triumph of Today? Or, more likely, will it be just another Trial?

Will there be mousse?

Is a Triumph possible without mousse?

With hands that trembled, Bingo opened the medicine cabinet. “Ah,” he sighed, “mousse.” And he reached for the can.

B
INGO WAS AT THE
window, watching for Cici Boles. He was getting unhappier by the minute.

Bingo was not ready for another mixed-sex conversation. He had realized this when he was moussing his hair. He hadn’t had one in such a long time that he wasn’t sure he even remembered how.

Plus the fact that the only good mixed-sex conversations were those with Melissa. When you had a mixed-sex conversation with Melissa, it was like the Olympics of mixed-sex conversations.

This mixed-sex conversation might be mercifully brief.

“Smile.”

“Like this?”

“Yes.”

Click.

“Thank you.”

“Anytime.”

But still, with girls you could never tell. This Cici Boles might come up with something like, “By the way, are you doing anything Friday night?”

This thought made his heart throw itself against the wall of his chest, as if to escape.

“By the way, are you doing anything Friday night?” was exactly the kind of mixed-sex conversation he wasn’t up to. Probably never would be.

He glanced at his watch. Was it too late to cancel? “Hello, Cici, this is Bingo Brown.” No. No! “This is Bingo Brown’s brother, and Bingo has been called out of town unexpectedly and—”

Bingo gasped. He leaned forward. A bicycle was coming down the street. There was a girl on the bike!

No, Bingo decided, putting one hand over his racing heart, this girl was much too big and too blond to be Cici. This girl was more like a high school girl—no, make that a college girl. This girl even had—

Bingo gasped again. There was a camera around the big blond’s neck.

Bingo ran back to the kitchen so she wouldn’t see him peering out the glass. When the bell rang, he walked in a brisk, businesslike manner to the door.

She said, “Well, here I am. I’m Cici.”

Bingo said, “So you are.”

He attempted to put his hands in his apron pockets, but his apron was back in the kitchen. He slid his hands sideways into his jeans pockets.

“I’ll have to take the picture outside,” Cici said, “because, you know, I don’t have a flash. Is that all right?”

“Yes.”