The Schwa Was Here

“What will you pay us?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“That’s slavery!”

“No,” said Crawley, with a grin so wide it stretched his wrin­kles straight. “That’s community service.”

6. As If I Didn’t Already Have Enough Annoying Things to Do Every Day, Now I Gotta Do This

I wasn’t too hungry at dinner that night. Sure, I was no stranger to failed schemes, but never had one backfired so badly. The fifty-four bucks were the least of my worries, now that Crawley was pulling our strings. It was enough to kill any appetite.

For the entire meal I just sort of moved my food around my plate. My parents didn’t notice, mainly because I wasn’t Frankie or Christina. If Christina doesn’t eat, right away they’re feeling her forehead to see if she’s got a fever. As for Frankie, not eating isn’t one of his problems. He’s more likely to get yelled at for taking all the food. Once I tried to take a huge plateful like Frankie does, just to see what my parents would do. While I wasn’t looking, Frankie moved some food from my plate to his, and my parents got on his case instead of mine. He always complains that I get away with everything. Well, there are two sides to that wooden nickel.

I was unnaturally quiet for most of the meal, which was probably a mistake, because it threw off the entire family equi­librium.

Mom and Dad had begun a conversation about what sort of carpeting to put down in our unfinished finished basement. You have to understand that my parents live to bicker. You could stick them at the beach and they’d argue whether the ocean was bluish green, or greenish blue.

They rarely argued over dinner, though, I think because when you eat, your blood rushes from your brain to your stom­ach, putting you at a strategic disadvantage, because how are you going to come up with the real zingers when your brain isn’t at full power?

Like I said, it started as a discussion, and then it began heat­ing up to the point where I would usually throw in some wise­crack. When I didn’t, the discussion suddenly evolved into an argument.

“We already agreed it should be Berber!” Mom says.

“I never agreed to anything! The carpet in the basement should match the rest of the house.” It’s escalating to the point where food is flying out of their mouths while they talk. Frankie just shakes his head, Christina’s reaching for her journal, and I start thinking about dog collars, maybe because dogs are on my mind after being at Crawley’s. When dogs bark too much, you can put on special collars, so each time the dog barks, it squirts out a funky smell. It doesn’t really teach dogs not to bark, but it distracts them long enough to make ’em forget they were bark­ing.

I decided to let the carpet argument build just a bit more, then dropped my fork on my plate loudly. “Jeez! What’s the big deal? Put down a hardwood floor and each of you can buy a rug.”

“Watch that fork, you’ll break the plate!” Mom says.

“What? Are you gonna pay for a wood floor?” Dad grumbles.

“My friend’s got a wood closet to keep away bugs,” says Christina.

“That’s cedar,” Mom explains.

“We oughta build a cedar closet,” says Dad.

And that was that. The conversation lapsed into an endless stream of other topics, and I went back to pushing my food around my plate. They never noticed I had stopped the argu­ment, just like they didn’t notice I wasn’t eating. Sometimes the Schwa had nothing on me.

***

“What do you think he’ll make us do?” the Schwa asked as we walked as slow as we dared from school to Crawley’s the next afternoon.

“I really don’t want to think about it.” Truth was, I spent most of the night thinking about it. I could barely get my homework done, which is not all that unusual, but this time it wasn’t because of TV, or video games, or my friends. It was be­cause all I could think of were the many forms of torture Craw­ley could devise. I once had a teacher who said my imagination was about as developed as my appendix, but I don’t agree, be­cause I came up with a whole bunch of possibilities of what Crawley could do. He could make us clean his dog-fouled patio with our toothbrushes—they do stuff like that in the army, I hear. He could send us on dangerous errands to Mafia types where we might get whacked, because anyone that rich in Brooklyn has gotta know a few of those guys. Or what if he wanted us to move the bodies he’s got locked up in a cellar be­neath the restaurant? At three in the morning, when you’re tossing in bed, it sounds almost possible, proving that my imag­ ination is alive and well, or, I guess I should say, alive and sick.

“I think we’re gonna wish we were arrested,” I told the Schwa.

The restaurant only had a few customers at this hour of the afternoon. We identified ourselves to the maitre d’, who I guess doubled as Crawley’s doorman for what few visitors he got.

“Ah,” said the maitre d’oorman, “Mr. Crawley is expecting you. Follow me.”

He glided up the grand staircase real smooth, like it was a fast escalator and not stairs, then he took us through an unused part of the restaurant stacked with dusty old tables and broken chairs. We went down a hallway that led to the door of Mr. Crawley’s private residence.

“Mr. Crawley, those boys are here,” the maitre d’oorman said as he knocked. Barking and the pounding of paws followed. Then I could hear all the bolts sliding open on the other side, and Crawley pulled open the door while blocking the escape of the dogs with his wheelchair.

“You’re five minutes early,” he said, the tone in his voice like we were half an hour late.

We stepped in, he pushed the door closed behind us, a dog yelped because his nose got caught in the door for an instant, and there we were.

Crawley reached into the pocket of his fancy robe—a dinner jacket, I think it’s called. The kind of thing Professor Plum would wear before killing Colonel Mustard in the ballroom with the candlestick. From the pocket he pulled a few doggie treats and hurled them over his shoulder so the dogs would leave us alone.

“I’ve decided to sentence the two of you to twelve weeks of community service,” he said. “Mr. Bonano, from this day for­ward, you shall be responsible for the sins. You, Mr. Schwa, shall be responsible for the virtues. Take all the time you need each day, but by no means are you to complete the task any earlier than five P.M. Now get to it.”

I looked at the Schwa, the Schwa looked at me. I felt like I had just been called up to the board to explain an Einstein the­ory, but I don’t think Einstein could figure this one out, even if he was alive.

“Why are you staring like imbeciles? Didn’t you hear me?”

“Yeah, we heard you,” I said. “Sins and virtues. Now would you mind speaking in English that people who aren’t, like, ninety years old can understand?”

He scowled at us. He was really good at that. Then he spoke, very slowly, as if to morons. “The seven virtues, and the seven deadly sins. Comprendo?”

“Oigo,” I said, “pero no comprendo.” I hear, but I don’t under­stand. At last my two years of Spanish had paid off! It was worth it for the surprised look on Crawley’s face—to see that, as Howie would put it, I was only half the moron he thought I was.

“Great,” mumbled the Schwa. “Now he’s really gonna be pissed off.”

But instead of saying anything, Crawley put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. All the dogs came running.

As they crowded around him, jockeying for position, he touched each of them on the head and announced: “Prudence, Temperance, Justice, Fortitude, Faith, Hope, and Charity.” He took a breath, then continued: “Envy, Sloth, Anger, Lust, Gluttony, Pride, and Avarice. Do you understand now, or shall I get you a translator?”

“You want each of us to walk seven dogs each, every day.”

“Gold star for you.”