One Man Show (13 page)

“Hey, you never officially RSVP’d! That doesn’t count as a blow-off.”

The bells on the door jingled, but I was too busy with my fort to turn around and see who’d come in.

“Oh, hi, Dustin Grubbs. Hi, Wallace Dorkin.”

“Hi, LMNOP,” Wally said. “See, at least
she
calls me by my right name.”

My annoying neighbor dropped some coins in the Paws Across America pet-adoption canister next to the cash register and came
bouncing over to us.

“I just ran into Pepper Pew, and she told me the play is on again!” she said. “Are you guys psyched? Are these the posters?
Spectacular!”

Her lisp shot spittle clear across the room.

“Say it, don’t spray it!” I said.

“Sorry. I could take a bunch and post them around town, if you want.”

“Sure. Knock yourself out.”

LMNOP grabbed some posters and struggled to fit them under her scrawny arm.

“So, I hear Jeremy Jason Wilder’s gonna be in it,” she said.

Wally slammed the menu down.

“Yep,” I said.

She probably wants my undying gratitude for taking her up on her suggestion.

“I have to talk to you,” she said in my face. “It’s important.”

“We’re kind of in the middle of something,” I said.

“But I think you’re really going to want to -”

“Later, okay?”

LMNOP swung her backpack over her shoulder, nearly toppling to one side, and stood there, staring. I wasn’t sure which thing
grossed me out more - her muddy fingernails or the
I’m Terrific!
pin on her backpack.

“All righty, then,” she said, finally heading out. “Bye, Wallace Dorkin. Bye, Dustin Grubbs.”

I went back to building my fort.

“That girl is just so sweet,” Bunny said, bringing Wally his greasy bag of fries. “Comes in here every other day to give money
for the homeless animals. Ain’t that something?” She slapped the check onto the counter.

“Skinny little thing,” Mr. Kravitz said, chuckling. “I thought she was a crack in the wall.”

“Oh, Frank, stop!” Bunny said, flipping through her order pad.

“She said ‘Grubbs,’ didn’t she?” Mr. Kravitz said, shaking a crooked finger at me. “Are you Ted Grubbs’s boy?”

My Sweet ‘n’ Slim fort collapsed.

“Guilty,” I said.

“I remember when you were knee high to a grasshopper. Nice man, your father - always with the jokes,” Mr. Kravitz said, standing
up. He tucked a dollar under his empty glass. “Used to bring you and your brother into my drugstore on Sundays for root-beer
floats way back when I still had the soda fountain.”

I could barely remember stuff like that.

“Give my regards to your pop, son,” Mr. Kravitz said, drifting toward the exit. “And tell him to be sure and stop by the store
real soon.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” I mumbled.

“How’s that?”

“You bet.”

“Miss?” Wally said. “Do you think I can get some water to go too? With lots of ice? There’s no charge for that, is there?”

“It’s on the house,” Bunny said, raising a painted-on eyebrow. “Adam’s ale, extra hail!” she called out on her way to the
ringing phone.

I started again from scratch with Fort Sweet ‘n’ Slim. Wally looked over the check and took his wallet out of his backpack.
Well, he called it a wallet, but it was really a change purse.

“Oh, crud!” he said, looking inside it. He zipped it, unzipped it, then zipped it again. “I totally can’t believe it!” He
searched through all his pockets, then his backpack. More pockets.

“Okay, Ed,” Bunny yelled, hanging up the phone. “Burn one, take it through the garden, and pin a rose on it!”

“Come again?” the cook said.

“Hamburger with lettuce, tomato, and onion!” Bunny said, storming into the kitchen. “How many times do we have to go over
this?”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just say ‘hamburger with lettuce, tomato, and onion’?” I asked, turning to Wally - but he wasn’t
there. I heard rattling. The Walrus was by the cash register, trying to shake coins out of the Paws Across America can. I
slid down off my stool and hurried over to him.

“You can’t do that!” I whispered. “It’s illegal.”

“Not if I put the money back tomorrow,” he said, plucking
a nickel from the slot in the canister. “Besides, it’s none of your business.”

I looked to see if anyone was watching us. There was only one man at the counter now, and he was buried in a newspaper. Black
smoke that smelled like deep-fried sneakers was seeping out of the kitchen, and Bunny was waving a rag around, chewing out
the cook.

“Jeez, Wal,” I whispered, “I can’t believe you’re so pigheaded that you’d rather commit a crime than ask a friend for help.”

“Okay, then,” he said, slamming down the can. “Can I borrow fifty cents?”

I checked my jacket pockets and pulled out some loose change.

“All I have are a few pennies and that Canadian nickel from when those jerks threw them at us during the play,” I said, and
handed him the coins. “Otherwise I’m bankrupt.”

“Some help.”

Wally rattled the canister again and three dimes fell out.

“Jackpot!” he said, scooping them up. “Okay, now I’ve got exactly enough. But no tip.”

“Here comes the waitress!” I warned. “I think maybe she saw.”

Bunny poured a coffee refill for the man at the counter, then swung behind the cash register with Wally’s cup of ice water
and a straw.

“You ready?” she said, giving us a suspicious look.

Wally paid his bill mostly in pennies. Bunny counted the change out loud, moaning every ten cents or so. She shoved the register
door closed with her hip and gave us a limp salute. “Have a Yankee Doodle day, now.”

Wally and I grabbed our stuff with Bunny staring us down. We were almost out the door when she called, “I wish you boys all
the luck in the world with that play of yours!”

We hit the sidewalk running and didn’t stop until we got to Main Street.

“I don’t think she really meant it when she said to have a Yankee Doodle day, do you?” I asked Wally, catching my breath.

“Why? She wished us luck with the play, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, but there are
two
kinds of luck. Think about it. Good luck and…”

Even with the clue, it took a while before Wally’s face registered that he got it.

We headed down Main with Wally walking a few feet away from me. That meant he was still mad, but things were definitely moving
in the right direction. I tried to stay in rhythm with the
thwack-thwack-thwacking
of Wally’s bassoon case as it hit his leg. By the time we reached Cubberly Place, we were walking side by side. I think we’d
automatically slipped back into being full-fledged best friends.

“Watch this,” Wally said with a bunch of fries sticking out
of his mouth. “The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue. The lips, the teeth, the -”

“Knock it off,” I said. “We’re in public.”

“Fry?”

“No, I’m good.”

That felt like a normal moment. I was out of the woods.

“Wow, look at that sky,” I said.

Fiery orange and pink streaks were melting into the horizon ahead of us. Wally and I were practically melting too. It was
unusually hot out, considering it was barely spring - and even though the sun was setting, it was still packing a punch. We
stopped to put up a poster on the bulletin board in the Laundromat. It was boiling in there, but at least it smelled like
clean sheets. That’s when Wally saw the flyer.

“Oh, look! My bassoon teacher said he could get me two free tickets to this,” he said, all excited. “I almost forgot. He’s
performing with the Verdant Valley Chamber Ensemble at the high school Saturday night. Wanna come?”

I knew I should’ve jumped at the chance, just to get on his good side. But classical music gave me a stomachache. I’d rather
listen to alley cats in heat.

“Can’t you take your mom?”

“Come on, man, you owe me big time,” Wally said. “And they’re doing a piece featuring bassoon. Nobody ever does a piece featuring
bassoon.”

“Maybe there’s a reason for that,” I mumbled.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

After we left the Laundromat, we took our usual route home. Except for the sound of Wally chomping on ice cubes, we passed
by four antique stores in complete silence. The distance between us was widening again. We got to the end of the block, stepped
off the curb, and then -

“Selfish.”

“What?” I said. I smelled another fight brewing - and after we’d barely made up.

“You can really be selfish sometimes,” Wally said.

“Just because I can’t go to the stupid concert with you makes me selfish?”

“Won’t - not can’t - it’s not stupid - and yes.”

“How?”

“I did you a favor by being in your
stupid
play, and you can’t do me a favor by - oh, forget it.”

We stopped when we got to the other side of the street. Wally crushed the empty bag and paper cup and lined them into a garbage
can.

“Favor? You have a great part,” I said, digging a roll of tape out of my backpack. “The King is a great part!”

“Oh, who cares? I only agreed to do the play in the first place ‘cause you’re my best friend. It’s turning out to be a real
pain.”

“How can you say that?”

I ripped off four pieces of tape with my teeth and stuck them to the corners of a poster.

“News flash!” Wally said. “The whole world doesn’t want to be an actor, you know.”

“Well, if you’re into being a musician so much, why’d you put ‘Dentist’ on your index card for the hall bulletin board?” I’d
been meaning to bring that up.

“I dunno,” he said, wiping the sweat off his forehead. “My dad’s a dentist.”

“Oh, well, that makes sense,” I said, ‘cause it obviously didn’t. “Whatever.”

I whacked the poster up on the side of a telephone booth, and we continued walking at a faster pace.

“You know, sometimes people do stuff just to make other people happy,” he said. “You should try it sometime.”

Wally sped up and stayed about a half a block ahead of me until we got to the corner of Chugwater and Spruce. That’s where
we always split off in different directions.

“Here, take these - I’m not putting ‘em up,” Wally said, handing me his stack of posters. “That play is just a freakin’ waste
of time. I’ve got better things to do.”

“So, what does that mean?” I asked. “Are you quitting?”

“I’ll get back to you on that.”

“That’s what you said about the party!” I wanted to sock him, but I held back. “I need an answer right now,” I said as calmly
as I could. “Are you quitting, or what?”

“Maybe I am, and maybe I -
am!”

“Fine! Have a nice life,” I hollered, and tore down Chug-water.

“Fine!” Wally said, heading up Spruce.

A few seconds later I heard him call out to me, “Oh, by the way - about your play… ?”

I stopped to hear what he had to say without turning.

“I wish you all the luck in the world!”

Trudging down Chugwater Road, I got a lungful of exhaust fumes from an oncoming Lotustown bus. It kicked off another one of
my black-and-white movie memories: the night our whole family went to see Dad do his comedy act in Lotustown. I was around
seven years old, I think. It was talent night in some little coffeehouse or something. Dad mainly talked about how crazy our
family was: how Granny never bothered to close the door when she used the bathroom, and how birdbrained Aunt Birdie used air
freshener for perfume ‘cause she liked the smell. The family hated his “airing their dirty laundry,” but the rest of the audience
laughed. “Growing up Grubbs,” Dad kept repeating. “And that’s what it was like growing up -”

“Grubbs, Dustin Grubbs! Wait up!”

Oh, no. This is all I need right now.

LMNOP darted across Chugwater and ran to catch up with me, annoyingly cheerful as always.

“Great, we’re both going in the same direction,” she said, flashing her metal-mouth smile. “You’re headed home, right? So
now’s the perfect time to talk, right?”

“Not really.”

“Just so you know, I put up five posters already,” she said, sliding her glasses up her nose. “One in the minimart at the
gas station; one on the telephone booth at Cedar and Cubberly Place; one in Sow’s Ear Antiques -”

“Okay, I get the picture!” I snapped.

I shifted gears into a power walk, but LMNOP had no problem keeping up with me. A clanking came from her backpack. It was
probably jars filled with worm guts or something. I didn’t want to know.

“I just bought some masking tape to put the posters up with,” she said, “but you don’t have to pay me back or anything. Oh,
yeah! I put one in Finkelstein & Sons Hardware. That’s four, right?”

“If you say so.”

“Oh! And one in the Jukebox Café.”

“Not now!” I yelled.

Some people aren’t good at getting subtle signals, such as dirty looks and sharp answers. You have to whack them over the
head with a two-by-four to get your point across. And even then -

“I hate to be a pain,” she went on, “but my mom wants her plastic container back.” And on and on and on. “Remember, the one
that the brownies were in? It’s part of a set.”

“Uh-uh,” I said, practically jogging.

“Hey, you’ll never guess who I saw hanging out with Jeremy Jason Wilder at the Hinkleyville Mall,” LMNOP said, panting and
clanking beside me. “Guess! Guess who was hanging out with -”

“Aaargh!”
I stopped short and slapped my hands over my ears, dropping the posters.

“What’s wrong?” she squeaked.

“Stop it, Ellen!”

“Stop what?” Her eyes were darting back and forth.

A little voice in my head pleaded with me,
Don’t do it! Just keep walking.
But my real voice drowned it out.

“Stop
this!
Stop stalking me, stop annoying me, stop trying to be my friend, okay?”

I’d never seen two eyes flood so fast. A fat tear streaked down her cheek I should’ve ended it there, but I let my volcano
erupt.

“You’re
not
my friend, you’re just my next-door neighbor. I saved your diseased cat once, about a million years ago, and I’m sorry I
did, ‘cause ever since then you won’t stop bugging me! You’re nothing but a
monumental pain!”