Antsy Does Time

going to be fine.”

“Fine might be pushing it,” I said. “I would go with ?less screwed up than most people.’” That made Gunnar laugh—which was good. It meant I was getting through to him. “Who knows,” I said, “maybe your dad will turn himself around someday, and you’ll hear his wooden shoes walking up to your door.”

“Wooden shoes are from Holland, not Sweden,” Gunnar said, but I think he got the point. “And even if he does come around, who says I will?”

“You will,” I told him.

“I don’t think so,” he said bitterly.

“Yeah, you will,” I told him again. “Because you’re not him.”

Gunnar snarled at me, because he knew I had him. “Now you sound like my mother,” he said.

“No, it’s much worse than that,” I told him. “I sound like my mother.”

The fact is, Gunnar and his father might have been a lot alike—embracing their own doom, whether it was real or imagined. But in the end, Gunnar stopped carving his own tombstone. In my book, that made him twice the man his father was.

20. Life Is Cheap, but Mine Is Worth More Than a Buck Ninety-eight in a Free-Market Economy

On Monday I finally listened to my phone messages—they were all back from the night we first went to the hospital, because my voice mail maxed out in just a couple of hours. The messages were all pretty much the same; people wondering how my father was, wondering how I was, and wanting to talk. The wanting-to-talk part always sounded urgent, suggesting something that was, at least in their worlds, of major importance.

And so on Monday I finally went back to school for the first time since Black Wednesday, ready to take care of business.

At first people slapped me on the back, offered their support, and all that. I wondered who would be the first to say what was really on his or her mind. I should have guessed that Wailing Woody Wilson would be the first to cross the line of scrimmage, and go deep.

“Hey, Antsy, I’m glad your dad’s okay and all—but there’s something I need to talk about.” The awkward look of shame in his eyes almost made me feel bad for him. “About those months I gave Gunnar. I know it was just symbolic and all, but I’d feel a whole lot better if I could have them back. Now.”

“Can’t do that,” I said, “but how about this?” Then I pulled a notebook out of my backpack, snapped open the clasp and handed him two fresh contracts, which I had already signed. “That’s two months of my life,” I told him. “An even trade for the ones you gave Gunnar. All you have to do is sign as witness, and they’re yours.”

He looked at them, considered it, and said, “I guess that works,” and he left.

It was like that with everybody. Even easier with some. Sometimes people never got past “Listen, Antsy—' before I handed them a month, told them vaya con Dios, which is like French or something for “go with God,” and sent them on their merry way.

I witnessed the true nature of human greed that day, because everyone seemed to be on the dole. Once people realized what I was doing, it became a feeding frenzy. Suddenly everyone claimed to have given multiple months, even people who never gave at all. But I didn’t care. I was willing to go the distance.

By the time the bell rang, ending the school day, the feeding frenzy was over, and I had given away 123 years of my life. I told Frankie this when I got to the hospital that afternoon. I thought he’d call me an idiot like he always does, but instead he was very impressed.

“You had an Initial Public Offering!” he told me. Frankie, who was on the fast track to being a stockbroker, knew all about these things. “A successful IPO means that people believe your life is worth a lot more than it actually is.” And then he added, “You’d better live up to expectations, though, otherwise you go bankrupt and gotta file chapter eleven.”

And since chapter eleven was pretty annoying, I’d just as soon avoid it.

Of all the conversations I had that day, the most interesting was with Skaterdud, who was skating up and down my street when I got home from school. As it turns out, things were not well in the world of Dud.

“Bad news, Antsy. I’m reeling from the blow, man, reeling. I knew I had to talk to you, because not everyone couldn’t understand like you, hear me?”

“So what happened?”

“The fortune-teller—the one who told me about my burial at sea. Turns out she was a fake! Wasn’t even psychic. She’s been ripping people off, and telling them stuff she just made up. Got arrested for it. She didn’t even have no fortune-telling license!”

“Imagine that,” I said, trying to hide my smirk. “A fortune-teller making stuff up.”

“You know what this means, right? It means that all bets are off. There ain’t no telling when I do the root rhumba. It’s all free fall without a parachute until I meet the mud. Very disturbing, dude. Very disturbing. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.”

“You probably won’t.”

“But I could, that’s the thing. Now I gotta restructure my whole way of thinking around a world of uncertainty. I ain’t none too unhappy about this.”

I thought I knew where Skaterdud was leading me, but with the Dud, conversational kickflips are not uncommon, and directions can suddenly change. “So I guess you want your year back, right?”

He looked at me like I had just arrived from someone else’s conversation. “No—why would I want that?”

“The same reason everybody else does,” I told him. “My dad’s heart attack suddenly made you all superstitious, and you’re afraid you’re going to lose all that time.”

He shook his head. “That’s just stupid.” He put a scabby hand on my shoulder as we walked, as if he was an older, smarter brother imparting deep wisdom. “Here’s the way I see it: that fortune-teller’s a crook, right? Tried and convicted. And in a court of law when someone is guilty of theft, they usually gotta pay damages to the plaintiff, right? And is there not justice in the Universe?”

“Probably, yeah.”

“So there you go.” And he tapped me on the forehead to indicate the passage of knowledge into my brain.

“Uh... I lost you.”

He threw up his hands. “Haven’t you been listening? That year will come from the fortune- teller’s life, not mine. Damages, see? She pays cosmic, karmic damages. Simple as that.”

In this world, there is a fine line between enlightenment and brain damage, and I have to say that Skaterdud grinds that line perfectly balanced.

21. We’ll Always Have Paris, Capisce?

The Saturday before their flight, the Umlauts had a garage sale. It was more than a garage sale, though, since official foreclosure was three days away, and everything had to go before the bank took possession of the house. Most of what they owned was either on the driveway or on the dead front lawn. The rest was in the process of being carried out. I added my muscle to the effort until everything that could fit through the front door was outside in the chilly morning.

They had advertised the sale in the paper, so scavengers from every unwashed corner of Brooklyn had crawled out from under one rock or another to pick through their belongings. No question that there were deals to be made that day.

Gunnar seemed less interested in the sale than he did talking about what lay ahead.