Six

The idea came into my head without warning; full blown, perfect, beautiful. Why not ask Ms. Bolton if she’d like to come to Al’s Health Club for a free tryout? Nothing like a good workout to get your mind off your problems, I always say.

No sooner had the thought occurred to me than I heard Al’s special ring: two, then one, then two.

“It’s Al!” Teddy roared, beating me to the door against all odds. I stuck out my left foot, which is bigger than the right one, and he soared over it like an Olympic champion.

“You can’t come in!” he shouted, flinging the door open. “We’re quarantined!” A kid in Teddy’s class had the mumps and the doctor said he was quarantined until he got over the contagious part. Teddy was mad with jealousy. He longed to be quarantined too.

“Get lost, buster,” I said, shoving him aside. “Come on, Al. We need our privacy. I’ve got something very important to discuss.”

“Yeah,” she said, “me too.” Then Teddy leaped on her, hoping to wrestle her to the ground. But she was too strong for him. She got his head in a tight grip and he was powerless.

“Slap me five, bro,” Al said when at last she freed Teddy. “How’s it going, o prince of the realm? What’s happening, man? How’s things up in the nutmeg state, as we aficionados call it?”

It blows Teddy’s mind when Al talks that way. She might as well be talking in tongues, but he eats it up.

Teddy visits our cousins up in Connecticut a lot. When he comes home he’s more impossible than when he left. The things that go on up there, Teddy tells us, shaking his head despairingly, are beyond belief. He hints at all kinds of outrageous events. I guess the kids up there figure Teddy’s the big cheese from the Big Apple and probably spends most of his time hanging out in massage parlors and checking out the porno films in Time Square.

“We saw some Mafia guys this time,” Teddy told Al. He’s got a thing about every second person in Connecticut being a Mafia guy.

“We were standing in line at the movies,” Teddy went on. “And they were right ahead of us. They were real stuff, all right.”

“How’d you know?” Al asked.

“On account of the lumps,” Teddy said.

“The lumps,” Al said.

“Yeah. That’s how you tell they’re Mafia guys,” Teddy said. “They got these lumps under their jackets. That’s the tip-off.”

“What kind of lumps?” Al wanted to know.

“Rods,” Teddy said, softly so my mother wouldn’t hear. “Guns. They pack their rods in holsters under their jackets in case they get ambushed. There’s lots of people trying to rub ’em out. They have a price on their heads. That’s what my cousin Craig says and it’s true.”

Craig’s eleven. He calls all the shots. What he says is what Teddy believes.

“Come on,” I said, pulling Al toward my room. “We haven’t got all night.”

We heard my mother coming. Teddy jumped as if he’d been stung by a wasp and hid behind the curtains. “Shhh,” he said, finger to lips. “Don’t tell her. If she knew she wouldn’t let me go there anymore.”

“Why, hello, Al,” my mother said. “I didn’t hear you come in. I saw your mother in the elevator the other day and I couldn’t get over how well she looks. You’d never even know she’d been sick.”

“Yeah, the doctor says she’s in good shape,” Al said. “But she still has to take it easy. I make sure she eats the right foods and gets plenty of rest.”

“You sound like a TV commercial,” I told her.

Al’s mother had to go to the hospital this summer with pneumonia. Al called off her plans to go to a barn dance at her father’s farm to stay with her mother. She wanted to go in the worst way, but she said her mother wouldn’t walk out on her if she had pneumonia. They were going to have home-made ice cream and Brian was going to be there. Al’s father and Louise, her stepmother, sent Al a T-shirt with AL(exandra) THE GREAT on it to show her how they felt about her. She loves that T-shirt so much that sometimes she wears it to bed.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Teddy peering furtively from behind the curtains, waiting for my mother to split.

“One last warning, Teddy,” my mother said briskly. “Clean up your room. I won’t say it again,” and she sailed out of the room like a ship under full sail.

“Come on,” I said to Al again.

“I wanna hear too,” Teddy sniveled.

“This is top-level stuff, Ted,” Al said. “It’s only in the planning stage. When we get to liftoff time, we’ll let you in on it.”

Teddy bought that and we zipped into my room and locked the door.

Al smiled and said in her deep, dark, swami voice, “It is ordained. Ms. Bolton goes to health club, tightens bod to gorgeous, meets fab billionaire, sweeps him off his feet. After knot is tied, Ms. Bolton rewards us for turning her life around, hands over keys to limo, Tiffany charge card, fur coats and diamonds for distribution to the poor. Peels off roll of C notes, says ‘Do with these what you will.’”

“Names first kid after me,” I said, getting into it, “and second after you.”

Trust Al. I plug around at my usual turtle trot and she’s already mapping out Ms. Bolton’s exotic new life.

Outside the locked door, Teddy scratched and barked, wanting in.

“You got a dog?” Al said, surprised.

“Yeah. A rottweiler named Boris,” I said. “He looks fierce, but he’s a real pussy cat.”

“I’d love a dog but my mother says nix,” Al said. She took one look at Teddy on all fours and said, “Looks more like a poodle than a rottweiler to me.”

Teddy woofed woofed and Al patted him on the head.

“Keep the burglars out, Ted,” she told him. “I have to split.” We went to the door.

“Know what?” Al said halfway down the hall. “I say we give the roll of C notes to the homeless. Like that woman with her hand out.”

We’d seen a desperate-looking woman begging last month. Al had gone back several times to the place we’d seen her and tried to find her, but neither of us ever saw her again. There were lots of women who looked like her, but Al wanted to find that one and give her money.

“I’m serious,” Al said.

“Hey, it’s a gag,” I said. “There is no roll of C notes. Don’t you remember? You made it all up. It was all in fun.”

Al was at the door, opening it with the key she wore on a string around her neck. She used that key even when her mother was inside, she’d got so used to it.

She raised a finger and said, “Mother Zandi says it will come true.”

I nodded. When Al gets intense, the best thing is to stay cool.

“Have a weird day, comrade,” she said, and went inside.