IF YOU THINK I SKIPPED out of Mister McGovern’s office happy to have gotten a second chance, you’re dead wrong. As soon as that bastard lapsed back into something that sounded like a recording, I begged pardon and excused myself on the pretense of having to use the restroom. I headed down the hall and peeked into Mister Needleman’s social studies class. Mister Needleman had been wearing the same exact sweater vest every day for two and a half weeks. Zuk and I had been keeping track. His brogues were kicked up atop his walnut desk, and he was sipping coffee from a Harvard Club mug while holding up a magnifying glass to a back issue of the New Yorker. His students were all listening to an audio recording of a JFK speech. I tried to get Zuk’s attention, but he was too busy taking notes. So I continued down the stairwell lined with portraits of our founders, through the dining hall, and past a bunch of third graders eating with their mouths open and slipped out between two food-service employees smoking a cigarette.
I tossed my blazer into the nearest trash can I could find and vowed never to return. I was pissed. I mean, half the time that Mister McGovern was bawling me out, I had no choice but to keep my mouth shut, knowing full well that Mom would interpret any defense I mounted as back talk, indisposed as she was to draw a meaningful distinction between a sham excuse and a heartfelt one. The other half, I was worrying myself sick about how the heck I was going to get out of the building without anyone seeing me and Mom together. Fact is, rumors of her being a housekeeper had spread like wildfire, and the fact that she insisted on dressing that way everywhere she went wasn’t helping.
On the northwest corner of Madison and Ninety-Third Street there was a bank of phone booths that started in front of the corner bodega and stretched nearly halfway down the block. I stopped and slid a dime into a phone and made a discreet call to the local NBC affiliate, informing them of a suspicious package in the second-floor bathroom at Claremont Prep. When the switchboard operator hacked into the receiver and said, What makes it suspicious, toots? I said that I could hear the damned thing ticking.
Claremont?
You know, the place where Rutherford B. Hayes went to school? Jesus, and here I thought I was the dumb ass.
When she put me through to the police, I blurted out, Free Bobby Seale! and split. I popped into the corner bodega and bought myself a Coke and Devil Dogs, then stood in the doorway and peeled back the wrapper amid the wail of sirens roaring past. There were several bicycles leaning against the side of the bodega’s brick facade, right beside me. One of them was unlocked. I did a double take. You wouldn’t see a bike like that lying around unlocked in my neighborhood in a million years. It had a green fade paint job, chopper forks, chrome fenders, and a banana seat. It was brand new. I mean, who does that? It was bad enough that these jerks had dough coming out of their ears, but did they have to leave their expensive stuff lying around unlocked right under my nose? I looked both ways and hopped on. I tested the brakes—they were squishy. Good enough. I rode off like a bat out of hell around the block. I crossed Fifth Avenue in a virtual speed wobble and tore ass through Central Park, and on the way it dawned on me that you can’t go a block in this city without seeing some bumper sticker slapped across a stop sign.