The Schwa Was Here

relax and Aunt Peggy did the cooking? Then I wondered if Aunt Peggy ever forgot to set a plate for him, like his dad.

“Listen, I was thinking about having a friend over for dinner.”

“Someone new, or the usual suspects?”

“New.”

“Girlfriend?”

“No such luck.”

“Who?”

“They call him the Schwa.”

My dad piled some more fettucine onto his plate. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Does something have to be wrong with him for him to be my friend? Is that what you mean?”

“Take it easy. I just thought I heard something funny in your voice.”

I didn’t think my dad had it in him to tune into someone’s tone. He never seemed to be able to tell when Mom was about to get mad at him, and he usually needed one of us kids to tell him what brainless, insensitive thing he had done. But this time he called it right.

I decided to be direct. “He’s invisible,” I said.

To my dad’s credit, he took this in stride, although he did stop chewing for a few seconds. “Does he become visible again when he takes off his ring?” Dad asked. “Does he hang out with elves and dwarfs?”

It took me a few seconds, then I got it, and laughed. “Yeah,” I said. “He’s got hairy feet, too.”

“Well, make sure he wipes them on the doormat, or your mother will brain him.”

7. The Lowest-Paid Male Escort on the Entire Eastern Seaboard, Except for Maybe the Bronx

Life is like a bad haircut. At first it looks awful, then you kind of get used to it, and before you know it, it grows out and you gotta get another haircut that maybe won’t be so bad, unless of course you keep going to SuperClips, where the hairstylists are so terrible they oughta be using safety scissors, and when they’re done you look like your head got caught in a ceiling fan. So life goes on, good haircut, bad hair­cut, until finally you go bald, and it don’t matter no more.

I told this wisdom to my mother, and she said I oughta put it in a book, then burn it. Some people just can’t appreciate the profound.

Anyway, the deal with Crawley and his dogs was like a bad haircut I was beginning to get used to. I wasn’t expecting to get clipped again by a hit-and-run barber.

“Let Mr. Schwa go ahead. I want to talk to you alone.”

Crawley always called us “Mr. Schwa” and “Mr. Bonano.” At first it annoyed me on account of my teachers call us “Mr.” when they were mad at us. But then, since Crawley was always mad at us, it kind of had some logic to it.

This was the third week of our dog days. Until now, Crawley had little to say to us except to comment on our unacceptable wardrobe, how unpleasant my acne was, and couldn’t we find some better deodorant, because according to him, after a day of school we smelled worse than fourteen dogs. It was always an adventure with him, never knowing what he was going to gripe about when we showed up. He was usually much more on my case than the Schwa’s. I assumed it was just the Schwa Effect at work. Little did I know he was sizing me up for a higher position in the Crawley Universe.

“Mr. Schwa, I said you could go.”

The Schwa looked at me and shrugged. “Fine. I’ll notify your next of kin, Antsy.”

“Yeah, I appreciate it. If I live, I’ll call you.”

Once the Schwa was gone, Crawley stared at me from his wheelchair across the room for way too long.

“So what’s up, Chuckles?” I had stopped calling him “sir” or Mr. Crawley. The way I figured it, those were terms of respect, and he really hadn’t earned mine. Chuckles was my little nick­name for him. It started as Chuck, but Chuckles seemed so much more appropriate—especially because of the way he frowned when I said it.

“I am not a clown,” he said. “Kindly refrain from calling me that.”

I just grinned. He frowned some more. “From now on, Mr. Schwa will walk the dogs alone.”

“That’s not fair,” I told him. “It’ll take him till nighttime.”

“I will pay him,” Crawley said. “Ten cents per dog per day.”

“Twenty-five.”

“What are you, his attorney?”

“His manager.”

“I see. All right. Twenty-five.”

“And that’s only if he agrees.”

Crawley didn’t answer that—maybe because it was a fact of life that no one ever disagreed with him. “As for you, I have another task for you.”

“Do I get paid, too?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. This scared me, because Crawley gave money like bulls gave milk: not at all, and you got gored for asking. If he had already decided this was a paying job, it must be horrible beyond words.

“Your salary will depend on how well you perform your duties.”

“What’s the job?”

Sloth came sniffing at Crawley’s pocket for treats, and the old man pushed him away. “My granddaughter will be spending the next few months with me. You will spend time with her. You will entertain her. You will pretend to like her.”

I was sensing this haircut was going to be one nasty Mohawk. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Why does something have to be wrong with her?” he snapped.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Something in your tone of voice.”

Crawley wheeled himself around, banging his knee on a little end table. I knew it must have hurt, but he refused to give me the satisfaction of a groan. “As it happens, my granddaughter does have a handicap.”

“So she’s in a wheelchair, too?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?”

I waited for more details, but Crawley gave none. So now I was moved from walking dogs to babysitting for some spoiled Veruca Salt-ish little girl.

“You will be here at ten o’clock sharp tomorrow. But first you will introduce yourself to the shower in your house, and you will dress in something presentable. You will also refrain from calling me Chuckles in front of her.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’ve got stuff to do on Saturday.”

Which was actually just a whole lot of lying around, and I guess he figured that out, because he said: “Don’t force me to make your life more miserable than it already is.”

I finally realized who he reminded me of: the Emperor in Star Wars. “Fine. But right now I’m gonna walk dogs so the Schwa doesn’t have to do all the work.”

“You’re such a Boy Scout.”

“Hey!” I said. “Enough with the insults!” I hooked Gluttony to a leash, and left.

***

“Maybe she’s like the Elephant Man.”

Howie, Ira, and I hung out in my unfinished basement later that night, for the first time in a few weeks. We didn’t find much to say to one another, so we resorted to our old standby, playing video games. Our current choice was “Three Fisted Fury,” in which steroid-pumped opponents, having been ex­posed to radiation, have grown more than the usual number of arms and must battle for ultimate dominance of the world. You know—just like the