Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (4 page)

I didn't
like
the enclosed T-shirt. I
loved
it! Although unfortunately it wasn't white, so I couldn't wear it.

I laminated Ringo's letter and tacked it to my wall. Then I did some research on the Internet about the locks of New York, and I found out a lot of useful information. For example, there are 319 post offices and 207,352 post office boxes. Each box has a lock, obviously. I also found out that there are about 70,571 hotel rooms, and most rooms have a main lock, a bathroom lock, a closet lock, and a lock to the mini-bar. I didn't know what a mini-bar was, so I called the Plaza Hotel, which I knew was a famous one, and asked. Then I knew what a mini-bar was. There are more than 300,000 cars in New York, which doesn't even count the 12,187 cabs and 4,425 buses. Also, I remembered from when I used to take the subway that the conductors used keys to open and close the doors, so there were those, too. More than 9 million people live in New York (a baby is born in New York every 50 seconds), and everyone has to live somewhere, and most apartments have two locks on the front, and to at least some of the bathrooms, and maybe to some other rooms, and obviously to dressers and jewelry boxes. Also there are offices, and art studios, and storage facilities, and banks with safe-deposit boxes, and gates to yards, and parking lots. I figured that if you included everything – from bicycle locks to roof latches to places for cufflinks – there are probably about 18 locks for every person in New York City, which would mean about 162 million locks, which is a crev
asse
-load of locks.

'Schell residence…Hi, Mom…A little bit, I guess, but still pretty sick…No…Uh-huh…Uh-huh…I guess…I think I'll order Indian…But still…OK. Uh-huh. I will…I know…I know…Bye.'

I timed myself and it took me 3 seconds to open a lock. Then I figured out that if a baby is born in New York every 50 seconds, and each person has 18 locks, a new lock is created in New York every 2.777 seconds. So even if all I did was open locks, I'd still be falling behind by .333 locks every second. And that's if I didn't have to travel from one lock to the next, and if I didn't eat, and didn't sleep, which is an OK if, because I didn't actually sleep, anyway. I needed a better plan.

That night, I put on my white gloves, went to the garbage can in Dad's closet, and opened the bag that I'd thrown all of the pieces of the vase into. I was looking for clues that might lead me in a direction. I had to be extremely careful so that I wouldn't contaminate the evidence, or let Mom know what I was doing, or cut and infect myself, and I found the envelope that the key was in. It was then that I noticed something that a good detective would have noticed at the very beginning: the word 'Black' was written on the back of the envelope. I was so mad at myself for not noticing it before that I gave myself a little bruise. Dad's handwriting was weird. It looked sloppy, like he was writing in a hurry, or writing down the word while he was on the phone, or just thinking about something else. So what would he have been thinking about?

I Googled around and found out that Black wasn't the name of a company that made lockboxes. I got a little disappointed, because it would have been a logical explanation, which is always the best kind, although fortunately it isn't the only kind. Then I found out that there was a place called Black in every state in the country, and actually in almost every country in the world. In France, for example, there is a place called Noir. So that wasn't very helpful. I did a few other searches, even though I knew they would only hurt me, because I couldn't help it. I printed out some of the pictures I found – a shark attacking a girl, someone walking on a tightrope between the Twin Towers, that actress getting a blowjob from her normal boyfriend, a soldier getting his head cut off in Iraq, the place on the wall where a famous stolen painting used to hang – and I put them in
Stuff That Happened to Me
, my scrap-book of everything that happened to me.

The next morning I told Mom I couldn't go to school again. She asked what was wrong. I told her, 'The same thing that's always wrong.'

'You're sick?'

'I'm sad.'

'About Dad?'

'About everything.' She sat down on the bed next to me, even though I knew she was in a hurry. 'What's everything?' I started counting on my fingers: 'The meat and dairy products in our refrigerator, fistfights, car accidents, Larry – '

'Who's Larry?'

'The homeless guy in front of the Museum of Natural History who always says 'I promise it's for food' after he asks for money.' She turned around and I zipped her dress while I kept counting. 'How you don't know who Larry is, even though you probably see him all the time, how Buckminster just sleeps and eats and goes to the bathroom and has no
raison d'etre
, the short ugly guy with no neck who takes tickets at the IMAX theater, how the sun is going to explode one day, how every birthday I always get at least one thing I already have, poor people who get fat because they eat junk food because it's cheaper…' That was when I ran out of fingers, but my list was just getting started, and I wanted it to be long, because I knew she wouldn't leave while I was still going. '…domesticated animals, how I
have
a domesticated animal, nightmares, Microsoft Windows, old people who sit around all day because no one remembers to spend time with them and they're embarrassed to ask people to spend time with them, secrets, dial phones, how Chinese waitresses smile even when there's nothing funny or happy, and also how Chinese people own Mexican restaurants but Mexican people never own Chinese restaurants, mirrors, tape decks, my unpopularity at school, Grandma's coupons, storage facilities, people who don't know what the Internet is, bad handwriting, beautiful songs, how there won't be humans in fifty years – '

'Who said there won't be humans in fifty years?' I asked her, 'Are you an optimist or a pessimist?' She looked at her watch and said, 'I'm
optimistic
.'

'Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each other as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon.'

'Why do beautiful songs make you sad?'

'Because they aren't true.'

'Never?'

'Nothing is beautiful and true.' She smiled, but in a way that wasn't just happy, and said, 'You sound just like Dad.'

'What do you mean I sound just like Dad?'

'He used to say things like that.'

'Like what?'

'Oh, like
nothing
is so-and-so. Or
everything
is so-and-so. Or
obviously
.' She laughed.

'He was always very definitive.'

'What's 'definitive'?'

'It means certain. It comes from 'definite.'

'What's wrong with definitivety?'

'Dad sometimes missed the forest for the trees.'

'What forest?'

'Nothing.'

'Mom?'

'Yes?'

'It doesn't make me feel good when you say that something I do reminds you of Dad.'

'Oh. I'm sorry. Do I do that a lot?'

'You do it all the time.'

'I can see why that wouldn't feel good.'

'And Grandma always says that things I do remind her of Grandpa. It makes me feel weird, because they're gone. And it also makes me feel unspecial.'

'That's the last thing that either Grandma or I would want. You know you're the most special thing to us, don't you?'

'I guess so.'

'The
most
.'

She petted my head for a while, and her fingers went behind my ear to that place that's almost never touched.

I asked if I could zip her dress up again. She said, 'Sure,' and turned around. She said, 'I think it would be good if you tried to go to school.' I said, 'I am trying.'

'Maybe if you just went for first period.'

'I can't even get out of bed.' Lie #6. 'And Dr. Fein said I should listen to my feelings. He said I should give myself a break sometimes.' That wasn't a lie, exactly, although it wasn't exactly the truth, either. 'I just don't want it to become a habit,' she said. 'It won't,' I said. When she put her hand on the covers, she must have felt how puffy they were, because she asked if I had my clothes on in bed. I told her, 'I do, and the reason is because I am cold.' #7. 'I mean, in addition to being hot.'

As soon as she left, I got my things together and went downstairs. 'You look better than yesterday,' Stan said. I told him to mind his own business. He said, 'Jeez.' I told him, 'It's just that I'm feeling worse than yesterday.'

I walked over to the art supply store on Ninety-third Street, and I asked the woman at the door if I could speak to the manager, which is something Dad used to do when he had an important question. 'What can I do for you?' she asked. 'I need the manager,' I said. She said, 'I know. What can I do for you?'

'You're incredibly beautiful,' I told her, because she was fat, so I thought it would be an especially nice compliment, and also make her like me again, even though I was sexist. 'Thanks,' she said. I told her, 'You could be a movie star.' She shook her head, like,
What the?
'Anyway,' I said, and I showed her the envelope, and explained how I had found the key, and how I was trying to find the lock it opened, and how maybe black meant something. I wanted to know what she could tell me about black, since she was probably an expert of color. 'Well,' she said, 'I don't know that I'm an
expert
of anything. But one thing I
can
say is it's sort of interesting that the person wrote the word 'black' in red pen.' I asked why that was interesting, because I just thought it was one of the red pens Dad used when he read the
New York Times
.

'Come here,' she said, and she led me to a display of ten pens. 'Look at this.' She showed me a pad of paper that was next to the display.

'See,' she said, 'most people write the name of the color of the pen they're writing with.'

'Why?'

'I don't know why. It's just one of those psychological things, I guess.'

'Psychological is mental?'

'Basically.' I thought about it, and I had the revelation that if I was testing out a blue pen, I'd probably write the word 'blue.'

'It's not easy to do what your dad did, writing the name of one color with another color. It doesn't come naturally.'

'Really?'

'This is even harder,' she said, and she wrote something on the next piece of paper and told me to read it out loud. She was right, it didn't feel natural at all, because part of me wanted to say the name of the color, and part of me wanted to say what was written. In the end I didn't say anything.

I asked her what she thought it meant. 'Well,' she said, 'I don't know that it
means

anything. But look, when someone tests a pen, usually he either writes the name of the color he's writing with, or his name. So the fact that 'Black' is written in red makes me think that Black is someone's name.'

'Or
her
name.'

'And I'll tell you something else.'

'Yeah?'

'The b is capitalized. You wouldn't usually capitalize the first letter of a color.'

'Jose!'

'Excuse me?'

'
Black
was written by
Black
!'

'What?'

'Black was written by Black! I need to find Black!' She said, 'If there's anything else I can help you with, just let me know.'

'I love you.'

'Would you mind not shaking the tambourine in the store?'

She walked away, and I stayed there for a bit, trying to catch up with my brain. I flipped back through the pad of paper while I thought about what Stephen Hawking would do next.

I ripped the last sheet from the pad and ran to find the manager again. She was helping somebody with paintbrushes, but I thought it wouldn't be rude to interrupt her. 'That's my dad!' I told her, putting my finger on his name. 'Thomas Schell!'

'What a coincidence,' she said. I told her, 'The only thing is, he didn't buy art supplies.' She said, 'Maybe he bought art supplies and you didn't know it.'

'Maybe he just needed a pen.' I ran around the rest of the store, from display to display, looking to see if he'd tested any other art supplies. That way I could prove if he had been buying art supplies or just testing out pens to buy a pen.

I couldn't believe what I found.

His name was everywhere. He'd tested out markers and oil sticks and colored pencils and chalk and pens and pastels and watercolors. He'd even scratched his name into a piece of moldable plastic, and I found a sculpting knife with yellow on its end, so I knew that was what he did it with. It was as if he was planning on making the biggest art project in history. But I didn't get it: that had to have been more than a year ago.

I found the manager again. 'You said if there was anything else you could help me with, that I should just let you know.' She said, 'Let me finish with this customer, and then you'll have my full attention.' I stood there while she finished with the customer. She turned to me. I said, 'You said if there was anything else you could help me with, that I should just let you know. Well, I need to see all of the store's receipts.'