Нил Шустерман - The Schwa Was Here

I was going to ask him why he told me, but stopped myself. I decided just to feel grateful that he did.

I sat down on the couch, feeling awkward about the whole thing, but still not wanting to leave. I offered to get him a beer, but he said no, that he just wanted to sit there for a while get­ting used to the feeling of being jobless. Like maybe the air might be thinner for the unemployed.

“So what’s new with you?” he asked.

“Not a whole lot,” I told him. “Remember my friend? The one who’s invisible-ish?”

“Vaguely,” he said, which was better than “not at all.”

I told him the whole story. Everything—from the butcher to the billboard to the box of letters.

“Ran away with the butcher!” Dad said. “Ya gotta love that.”

“So, was letting him know the right thing to do?”

He thought about it. “Probably,” he said. “Did you do it be­cause you wanted to tell him, or because he needed to hear it?”

I didn’t even have to think about the answer to that one. “He needed to hear it. Definitely.”

“So your intentions were good. That’s what matters.”

“But isn’t, like, the road to hell paved with good intentions?”

“Yeah, well, so’s the road to heaven. And if you spend too much time thinking about where those good intentions are tak­ing you, you know where you end up?”

“Jersey?”

“I was thinking ’nowhere,’ but you get the point.” The expres­sion on his faced darkened again. I could tell he was thinking about work.

“I’m really sorry about your job,” I told him.

“I was just fired from a company whose biggest contribution to civilization is a urinal strainer,” he said. “That’s nothing to feel sorry about.” He smiled as he thought about it, then shook his head. “Although sometimes I wonder if ’the Man Upstairs’ is working me over for something I did.”

The Man Upstairs, I thought, and something began to trou­ble me. Because I knew a man upstairs, too.

“Uh ... Dad. What reason did they give for firing you?”

“It was the weirdest thing. They gave me this story about someone making a massive investment in our product develop­ment, but only if they fired me.”

I suddenly felt my skin begin to pull tight, like shrink-wrap on the Night Butcher’s steaks.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Why would anyone do that?”

Someone gave a ton of money . . . but only if my dad was fired. There was only one person I knew twisted enough to do something like that. Someone who had made a threat to get my dad fired once before.

When I got to Crawley’s place, the old man didn’t seem sur­prised to see me. That was my first clue that my suspicions were right on target.

“I need someone to walk my dogs,” he said as he opened the door.

“I couldn’t care less,” I told him. “You got my dad fired, didn’t you, you twisted old—”

“Careful, Mr. Bonano. I don’t take kindly to crude insults.”

I paced away from him, my fists clenched. Controlling your temper isn’t easy when you really don’t want to control it. If I blew a gasket now, though, I knew it could be a whole lot worse. This guy could end up punishing my whole family for the things I did.

“You’re a monster,” I told him. “My father worked nine years for that company, and now what is he going to do?”

He calmly returned to his place on the living-room sofa. “Why is that my problem?”

I felt like charging at him, but instead let loose a scream of pure rage that got all the dogs barking. And when the dogs qui­eted down, Crawley said, “Perhaps I can offer him some menial position.” He gave me the nastiest of smirks. “Floor scrubber ... janitor ... dog walker.”

I was about to tell him exactly what he could do with his me­nial position, but then he said, “Of course there is that new restaurant I recently acquired ...” He looked off, scratching his temple like this was something that just occurred to him, when clearly it wasn’t.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve decided one restaurant isn’t enough, so I bought a sec­ond one a few miles away. An Italian place.”

“My father is not sweeping your floors!”

“No, I don’t expect he would.” Crawley looked at me, drag­ging this out like a sick kid pulling the wings off a fly. “What I really need is a business partner for the new restaurant. Some­one who can run it. Someone who knows Italian cooking.”

I tried to speak, but all that came out was a stuttering, “Duh ... duh .. . duh.”

“Do you know of anyone in need of employment who might fit those qualifications?”

“H-h-how much does it pay?”

Crawley grinned like the Grinch. “Certainly more than Pisher Plastics.”

How was I supposed to respond to this? Did Crawley get my father fired just so he could offer him what he always wanted? How twisted is that? It’s like the guy who throws somebody overboard just so he can rescue him and be the big hero. Craw­ley was so good at pulling strings, and at underhanded manip­ulation. Did I want my father under Crawley’s thumb? And then I realized with a little bit of relief that it wasn’t my deci­sion to make. It was my father’s.

“Tell him to pay me a visit,” Crawley said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, sure.” I turned to go, in a bit of a daze. All that was left of my anger was a whole lot of smoke for me to choke on. But before I escaped, Crawley stopped me.

“One more thing. I have a job for you, too.”

“Walking dogs?”

“No.” He grabbed his cane, stood up, and crossed the room toward me. “I understand that you are no longer dating my granddaughter.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I would like you to pretend that you are when her parents return from Europe.”

“Excuse me?”

“You see, her parents absolutely despise you, so that makes you my best friend.”

“How can they despise me? They’ve never even met me!”

“They despise the concept of you.”

There are a whole lot of things about rich people I don’t think I’ll ever understand. But somehow I think it’s better that way. “I don’t want to be paid to date Lexie, so keep your money in your grubby little hands where it belongs.”

“That’s not the job I’m talking about.” He took another step closer, and for the first time, I sensed in him just a little bit of uncertainty. He squinted, like he was examining me, but I could tell he was deciding whether or not to offer me this “job” at all.

“For the monthly stipend of one hundred dollars, plus ex­penses, I would like you and my granddaughter to kidnap me once each month.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” he snapped. “You are to kidnap me. You are to catch me by surprise. You are to plan some creative and ad­venturous event. And if I don’t threaten to have you jailed at least once during the day, then you shall be fired.”

Then he turned around and went back to the sofa, refusing to look at me again.

“Kidnap you, huh? I woulda done that for free.”

“Telling me that is bad business,” he grunted. “Now leave.”

Even before I mentioned it to my father, I called the Schwa. He knew Crawley—he’d be able to commiserate. But when I dial his number, I get this recording. The number’s been discon­nected. At first I thought it must be a mistake, so I dialed again, and got the same thing. There was no forwarding number.

The feeling I had deep down in my gut was even worse than what I felt when my dad told me how he got fired. It was sun­down now. Flurries were falling, and the wind had gotten bliz­zard cold. Still, I got on my bike and rode at full speed to the Schwa’s house.