The feature was beginning, The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant, starring Bruce Dern.
Sydney passed me some popcorn. “Did you ever see Ghidra, the Three-Headed Monster? He was two hundred feet tall besides.”
“I saw The Thing with Two Heads here, last summer.”
“That was boring,” he said. “Ray Milland had his head grafted onto Rosie Grier’s and they spent the whole time talking about racial issues.”
“I know it,” I said, “but it was on with Curse of the Werewolf, which was what we’d really gone to see, and never got to see because we could only see one and it was last.”
“It was good,” Sydney said. “It was about a feral creature. There’s a science fiction writer called—”
People behind us went, “Shhhhh!”
“Philip José Farmer,” Sydney whispered. “He wrote a whole anthology about feral men called Mother Was a Lovely Beast.”
“You read a lot of weird stuff,” I whispered back.
“Shut up!” a man yelled.
“You read Sara Lee,” Sydney whispered back.
We ate all the popcorn and tossed the empty container under the seat. Just as Bruce Dern began to stitch two heads onto one body, I grabbed Sydney Cinnamon’s hand and said, “Operations give me the creeps.”
He looked over at me and smiled, and then he said something I couldn’t hear.
“What?” I whispered.
“I said I’m planning on having dental work done,” he said.
He had his free hand across his mouth so I could hardly hear him.
“What did you say about the dentist?”
“I’m hoingtoonehoon.”
“Take your hand away from your mouth I can’t hear you.”
“Skip it,” he said.
I watched the two heads being stitched on the body as I thought about what he could mean and then I got it. “Oh,” I said. “Your front tooth bothers you.”
“I’m going to have my fang capped,” he said.
“How very Sara Lee,” I said.
He gave me a shove in my ribs with his elbow.
We sat there staring up at the huge screen, holding hands tightly, when what sounded like a herd of elephants charging down the aisle produced my father.
“Little Little, I’d like to talk to you!”
“This man is my father, Sydney.”
“How do you do,” said Sydney.
The people behind us began shouting at us to shut up.
“Little Little, come out into the lobby!” my father demanded.
“Daddy, we’re in the middle of the movie.”
“You heard me,” he said, and Sydney let go of my hand.
I said to Sydney, “You don’t have to come.”
“I’ll come,” he said.
My father waited for us to get out of our seats and then followed behind us. I could see that he had on his pajama top under his overcoat, he had left our house in such a hurry.
The three of us stood in the lobby, my father crouched over with his knees bent and his hands on his knees. “It is now one in the morning. You have a big day ahead of you tomorrow, Little Little.”
He didn’t look in Sydney Cinnamon’s direction at all.
I said, “Daddy, this is Sydney Cinnamon.”
“I know who it is.”
“How do you do, sir,” Sydney said.
“Howdoyoudo,” my father said so fast it sounded like one word, still not looking at Sydney. “Did you hear what I said, Little Little? You have a big day tomorrow, beginning very early in the morning.”
“We’ll only stay through the first feature,” I said.
“I’ve come to take you home.”
“Thanks, but I have my car.”
“We’ll pick up your car tomorrow.” He finally gave Sydney Cinnamon a fast glance. “You can get a cab—there’s a cab stand across the street.”
“This is what I call really humiliating!” I said.
“Call it anything you want,” my father said. “I’m taking you home!”
Then my father straightened up and barked out, “Lit-toe, Lit-toe, right now!”
“But—” said Sydney Cinnamon.
“Right NOW!”
“On my eighteenth birthday?” I said.
“Hey,” Sydney smiled at me, covering his tooth with his hand. “Happy Birthday!”
He had barely finished the sentence when my father picked me up bodily and carried me out of the lobby, into the street.
“That is the last you’ll see of The Roach!” he said.
17: Sydney Cinnamon
WHEN I WAKE UP in my room in Wilton, the first thing I see is myself reflected in the full-length mirror across the room. I am in my little bed, made especially for me by a Wilton carpenter, and next to it is the bureau he built to my size, and the desk and chair. I know the real world begins just outside my door and down the hall, where the bathroom confronts me with the toilet and sink, which take great effort to reach, and I am again like a mushroom growing in a forest inhabited by giants. But for that space between waking up and getting up, I am myself. I wiggle my toes and see them reflected at the foot of my bed, pulling the covers away from the mattress. I sit up and put a pillow behind me, and my feet stretch out a quarter of the way down my mattress.
When I am traveling and lonely, I miss my own room, and I woke up in The Stardust Inn to find my body lost in the enormous double bed, as the events of the night before came back to my consciousness. I put the huge pillow behind me and sat up, my feet coming just to the part of the sheet turned over at the top of the mattress.
I remembered Mr. Gruberg, who drove me back to the Inn so I didn’t have to get a taxi. He was leaving The Palace anyway, he said, and said he had to laugh when he saw Larry La Belle just pick up his little girl and carry her off kicking and pounding with her little fists.
“Oh, no offense,” he said, “I know you didn’t feel so hot about it. I’d like to be able to take my own kid in hand that way, though. Well, don’t worry, young fella, you are a young fella, aren’t you. How old?”
“Seventeen,” I said.
“Don’t worry, because there are other fish in the sea.”
“Not in my sea there aren’t,” I said.
“In
