Smiles to Go (6 page)

It’s all Mr. Bontempo’s idea. He’s going to have a museum, he says. About twenty years from now, he figures, all this common stuff will start looking old and interesting. He says people will flock to his Museum of Yesterday, happy to pay admission so they can see what toilet paper wrappers used to look like. This is why there’s a sign over the front door:

WHATEVER COMES HERE, STAYS HERE

As BT and I walked through pillars of stacked magazines, I heard snoring. A man was lying on the sofa. It wasn’t BT’s father.

“Who’s that?” I whispered as we went up the stairs.

“Tom.”

“Tom who?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“Sleeping.”

I knew better than to ask more. Jelly jars, homeless people—Mr. Bontempo welcomes them all equally. Tom will probably hang around for a couple of days and next time I show up, he’ll be gone. I’ve seen it happen before.

There are piles in BT’s room, too, but of only one thing: books. They’re crammed into a bookcase and stacked in piles alongside it, in front of it, in the corners of the room, on the windowsills. All paperbacks. He gets them for quarters and dimes at thrift shops and yard sales, for nothing on trash pickup days at curbsides. They’re ratty, stained, many with no covers. He’s a pack rat in training.

The rest of the room is pretty boring. No posters on the walls. No TV. No CD player. No computer. No dartboard. No trophies.

No pictures.

I thought I might see a picture of Mi-Su. I tried not to look obvious as I scanned the
room for any sign of her.

Nothing.

Screams in the hallway. A flash of jeans and sneakers past the doorway. BT’s little twin sisters. They’re like chipmunks—darting, flitting. I never see anything but scraps of them. I don’t think I’d recognize them by face in a police lineup.

BT went off to take a pee. I sneaked peeks under the bed, in the closet, in his dresser drawers. No sign of Mi-Su.

We talked for a while in his room. Tossed a tennis ball back and forth. I wanted to ask him questions, about the star party night, but he never gave me an opening, he never mentioned the night. Or her.

And then his father arrived. We could hear him pull up outside in a noiseball of squeals and chugs and a long, fading death rattle. He drives a truck. A big one, with slatted sides, like they haul mulch with. Somebody just gave it to him because it was junk and everybody knows Mr. B is The Human Dump. And a “piston magician,” as he calls himself. So he fixed it up and now the truck is his ride.

He came up the stairs calling, “I smell
kids!” I thought of my father. Silent car. Silent entrance. I usually don’t know he’s home from work until I hear Tabby running and shrieking.

First through the doorway was a long-handled contraption that reminded me of a floor polisher, then came the brim of his cowboy hat, then his beaming smile. “My new toy,” he said.

It was a metal detector. He’s had them before. “New model?” I said.

“The newest. Pro Series VLF Discriminator. Eight-inch coil. We’re hitting the beach this summer. Hundred dollars a day. Minimum.”

He took a nickel from his pocket and tossed it under the bed. He put on earphones. He flipped a switch, the meter on the handle lit up. He swept the platterlike head of the detector under the bed. After a few seconds the needle on the meter leaped to the other side. I could hear a faint hum. He yipped: “Gotcha!”

So we went out to hunt treasure (Tom still snoring on the sofa). We piled into the truck and went bouncing through town on the way to Smedley Park. Mr. B kept up a constant
chatter. I often wonder what it would be like to grow up as Mr. B’s kid. (Amazingly, Mrs. B seems pretty regular. She runs the cafeteria at the hospital.) Mr. B doesn’t work—I mean, regular nine-to-five work. His one steady job is—tah-dah!—newspaper boy. Every morning at five o’clock he zips around in his truck flipping papers onto driveways. After that, he could be doing anything: hauling furniture, painting houses, handymanning, fixing cars, planning his museum. It’s not like he’s never busy. It’s just that from day to day—or, really, minute to minute—you never know what he’s going to be busy
at
. Because even when he’s working—fixing a car, painting a house—all he has to hear is “Daddy, come play!” and he’s gone. He always has time.

HERE LIES
MARIO BONTEMPO
…FOR THE MOMENT

It’s easy to see why BT blows through life like a candy wrapper in a hurricane. That’s why, as much as I love Mr. B, I’m afraid that
when I look at him I’m seeing a preview of who BT will become.

When we got to Smedley Park, Mr. B said, “Okay, Anthony, you want first crack at the Discriminator?”

“Sure,” said BT.

Mr. B handed him the detector. “Go for it. Try the monkey bars. Upside-down kids. Falling money. Me and Will are gonna scout around a little.”

BT nodded and put on the earphones and headed off, natural as you please. He never seems to be embarrassed about his father or his dumpy house or his ratty, off-the-junkpile skateboard.

We rode off. I figured by “scout around” Mr. B meant we would check out some curbside trash, looking for things for his museum. But we didn’t. He pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot and cut the motor. He took off his cowboy hat and laid it carefully on the dash. He turned to me and said, “So. Will. What’s bothering you?”

I just sat there, stunned. All I could say was “Huh?”

He grinned. “Don’t huh me. You’ve been the
Very
Big Think lately. It shows.”

That’s what he calls me sometimes: the Big Think. Because I always have this serious look on my face. It’s not true, but that’s what he says.

Maybe it was the way he leaned back against the cab door. Maybe it was the way he smiled and held out his hand, inviting, and said, “So…?” Maybe it was knowing how safe Mr. B is to talk to. Maybe it was knowing that of the two things on my mind lately, the one I couldn’t possibly talk to him about was Mi-Su.

Whatever, suddenly the words were tumbling out of my mouth: “I see tiny flashes.” I knew how crazy it sounded, but he looked as if he heard people say it every day. I told him about Yellowknife and the proton that died. “It was seventy-seven days ago. I can’t help keeping track.”

I blathered on and on. I said things to him that I hadn’t even said to myself. I asked him if he realized what it meant, the proton vanishing. Did he realize nothing would last, that sooner or later every last speck and smidgeon of matter would disappear?

He steepled his fingers under his chin. He nodded. “Interesting.”

“See, here it is,” I said. “I know I’m not going to live forever. I know that. I’m not stupid.”

He nodded. “So?”

I chuckled. “So, I’m in the grave. Here lies Will Tuppence.”

“And a fine lad he was.”

“Yeah.” Chuckle. “But here’s the thing. Even though I’m dead, it’s still me in there, in the coffin. It’s still my stuff, Will Tuppence stuff. Will Tuppence’s bones and calcium and molecules and atoms and protons.”

He blinked, grinned, gave me a pistol finger-point. “For a while.”

Sometimes I think he’s read every book stacked in his house. “Yeah! Right! Okay! You’re ahead of me.” I was talking about the grimmest thing imaginable. Why was I excited? “You’re thinking after eons of time even my coffin and bones will disintegrate and scatter and the sun will gobble up the earth and my protons will wind up in a star somewhere or just drifting through empty space.”

He gave me wide-eyed wonder. “Did I say all that?”

I smacked his knee. “Absolutely. But see, even then, those particles were still me once. Somewhere in the universe, forever and ever, my protons—
my
protons—will be out there.
My
stuff.”

“Will Tuppence was here.”

“Exactly!” I loved him.

“But—”

“Yeah.
But.
But now we find out that stuff doesn’t last. Not even protons. It
won’t
be forever and ever after all. It’ll be like I was never here. Never even here.”

“Will Tuppence
wasn’t
here.”

“But.”

“Ah. The old double-but.”

“
If
Heaven is a dimension, and angels are non-stuff, and Forever is…like, forever…”

He waited. “So? Then?”

“I’m afraid to say it. It sounds so goofy.”

He tapped my knee. “No problem. I’ll say it for you. If the second
but
is true, then maybe, somehow, in some form, you’ll go on forever. Never-ending Will.”

I winced. “It sounds even more crazy when somebody else says it. Why should I care what happens to my protons a gazillion years from now?” I turned to him. “Mr. B, what’s wrong with me?”

He smiled. He squeezed my hand. “Nothing. You’re smart enough to know you don’t have all the answers, that’s all.”

“I’m god-awful at not being sure.”

“You’ll get better.”

“But the tiny flashes—what about them?”

He gave a little chuckle. Wasn’t he taking me seriously? “Are they like those little Fourth of July sparklers? Or those sparkling birthday candles?”

I nodded. “Both. And sometimes fireflies.” I sighed. “I’m a nutcase!”

The neon lights of the 7-Eleven came on, giving his ears a green glow. He reached for his cowboy hat. “You’re a kid trying to figure out the world you were born into, that’s all. And I got news for you—you’re no nuttier than me.” He put the hat on. “Better get back to Anthony. He’s probably rich by now.” He turned the key. The truck rumbled to life.

PD78

E
ureka!

I know BT’s secret!

It came to me early this Saturday morning. I ran up to the dormer. I trained my telescope on the clock tower of the Brimley Building. It was now an hour and fifteen minutes slow.

I was right!

I called him up.

“You buffoon! You
total
buffoon!”

“Huh?” he said. Sounded like I woke him up.

“I know what you’re doing. You’re setting the Brimley clock back. You’re doing it a little bit at a time.”

Silence.

“Right?”

“Bingo. Good night.”

“Don’t ever try to keep a secret from me again,” I said, but he had already hung up.

I try to imagine how he does it. I can’t.

PD80

M
ail was waiting for me when I got home from school. From Mr. B. Postal mail. He doesn’t have a computer. I opened it. There were just three words:

Beware of solipsism

Funny word. Sounds like it means “love of melons” or something. I looked it up. It means believing that “the self is the only reality.”

Am I a solipsist?

PD84

I
’m going to kiss her.

It came to me during biology lab today. She was at another table, leaning over her fetal pig, and I couldn’t stop staring at her. And somehow it was all the better because she didn’t know I was staring. I don’t know why, but I zeroed in on the back of her neck. Her black hair is short, so her neck shows, and it has this thin gold chain around it that holds her little
amber sea horse, which at the moment was dangling over the fetal pig, and after years and years of knowing her, suddenly I couldn’t take my eyes off the back of her neck.

I thought about her through the next class and I haven’t stopped since. I think it will be OK. I mean, if she kissed BT, why not me? And I’m pretty sure (sometimes) there’s nothing going on between them. No new jewelry has suddenly appeared on her. No sign of her in BT’s room. No sneaky glances between them at Saturday-night Monopoly.

I keep thinking of what she said on the phone that day. I wrote things down:

“…wasn’t about me and BT…”

“…the place…the night…the stars…”

“…I would have kissed
anybody
…”

I try not to think too deep into that one.

What I need to do now is come up with the time, the place. The moment. Too bad there are no star parties till spring. But there are still the stars. And light pollution. And clouds. Can’t do anything about light pollution. Clouds, I can pray against. At least I can count on night to show up.

I’m thinking…

PD88

T
hinking…

PD89

L
etter from Mr. B:

Why does a back scratch feel better coming from somebody else than if you do it yourself?

PD90

T
hinking…

PD91

B
ingo! Christmas vacation. It’s almost here. That’s when I’ll do it. I’m working on the details.

PD92

M
y mother is on the warpath.

Tabby found her Christmas presents, three days before Christmas. She tore the wrapping off every one. She knows everything she’s getting.

They were hidden on the top shelf of the winter/summer clothes closet that my father had built in the basement. They were completely covered with summer shirts, bathing suits, etc. She had first tried standing on a chair, but she still couldn’t reach. So she dragged the half stepladder down from the garage. Still not high enough. So she dragged down the full stepladder. Nobody knows how she did this without being seen or heard. (Or, I’m thinking, without help. I wonder if she lured Korbet. Or BT.)

My mother made the discovery around noon. It’s like a crime scene. You can feel the frenzy. The chair and small stepladder flung across the basement. Summer shirts and bathing suits everywhere. The floor covered with ripped paper, bows, ribbons. Gift boxes
ripped open, covers gone. One lid is twenty feet away, under the dartboard. So far there’s no evidence that she actually took anything. It seems like she looked, then left everything there, in their boxes, on the floor, for all the world to see.

And my mother is calling: “TABBY! TABBEEEEE!”

PD96

I
got it! The Exacta. My very own atomic watch. It doesn’t look special. Just a gray plain-looking face with digital numbers, stainless-steel band. But its coolness lies beneath its looks. Its tiny receiver picks up the radio signal from the Atomic Clock, keeping me accurate to one second every million years. I wore it to bed Christmas night.