On the way home from school, I stop at Bennie’s to buy a pack of Starbursts. I notice a pile of Chicks, Ducks, and Bunnies SweeTarts and think again how weird it is that Candy’s name is Candy. Not that I’m judging.
Bennie is chatting, which means I have to wait to pay, because Bennie does only one thing at a time. I debate the morality of eating a Starburst before the pack is paid for and decide not to.
“Do you know a girl named Candy?” I ask Bennie when he comes to the register.
“Sure do,” he says. “One of my best customers.”
I give him my dollar and he counts out my change: “Seventy-five cents for the Starbursts!” he announces. “A nickel makes eighty, a dime makes ninety, and another dime is one dollar.” That’s another thing about Bennie—he always counts your change back to you.
“Do you know her brother—Safer?”
“The tall guy?”
Bennie shakes his head. “Don’t know him.”
“Did you know that she calls this place the Chock-Nut? Candy does, I mean.”
I didn’t even know I was going to say that. It all just seems so weird, how I thought Bennie’s was kind of my place all these years and it turns out to be some other person’s place, too—and some other person might even be one of Bennie’s best customers, but she calls it the Chock-Nut.
He shrugs. “That’s what it says on the sign.”
“But what do you call it?”
“Me?” He cracks open a roll of dimes against the edge of the counter. “I call it work.”
I’m in the lobby of our building, waiting for the elevator, when a teenage girl walks in with a boy who’s maybe four years old. The girl is talking on her cell phone, saying, “I’m telling you, forget it. Vanessa holds a grudge forever. Forever!”
We all stand and look at the arrow that shows what floor the elevator’s on.
“Six! Five! Four!” the little kid yells, and then he starts spinning in circles, just for fun. I remember doing that.
The elevator comes, and we get on, the boy bumping into the walls because he’s dizzy from the spinning. He leans back into a corner and looks up at me, all woozy.
“Knock, knock,” he says.
“Who’s there?” I say.
“Interrupting cow.”
“Interrupting cow wh—”
“MOOOOO! MOOOOOO!”
The kid totally cracks up. He’s laughing so hard he almost falls over. Unless he’s just still really dizzy. They get off on two, with the girl still on the phone. I can hear the kid laughing even after the elevator door closes behind them.
My stupid key sticks in the lock, and it takes me three tries to get the apartment door open. The whole time I’m fiddling with it, I can hear the phone ringing inside.
“Hello?”
“MOOOO!”
It’s actually even weirder than you might be thinking. I sort of shake my head and try again.
“Hello?”
“It’s Safer.”
“Oh. Hi. How did you know about the—?”
“Apartment 6A. Come on up.”
I’m supposed to call Mom or Dad after school so they know I got home okay. Dad has a meeting with a “potential big client,” which he says is good news for our “potential summer vacation at the Cape,” where we always rent a house for two weeks, except last summer, when we didn’t.
I call him on his cell, and then I quick call Mom because Dad says I have to. Her number at the hospital is stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. She sounds tired. I tell her school was good, lunch was good, coming home was good, I don’t have a lot of homework, and yes, I will make myself a snack. I don’t tell her about Carter Dixon’s incredibly stupid new “gay test,” which has something to do with what finger is longer than some other finger.
I run up the three flights to 6A. I ring the bell. A thumping sound comes closer and closer, and then the door flings open. It’s Candy. There’s a long hallway stretching behind her.
“Grand tour!” she announces, pumping one fist into the air. She pivots and marches away from me, leading me down the hall with her hand up in the air as if I might otherwise lose her.
She points as we pass a series of doors. “My room, Safer’s room, bathroom, Pigeon’s room, bathroom, Mom and Dad’s room, Mom’s photography studio—quiet, she’s in there working—kitchen, dining room, and here’s the living room.”
It’s a big apartment. I wonder if Safer and Candy go to private school.
In one corner of the living room, I see Safer, sunk into a beanbag chair, reading. He doesn’t look up. I can see only the top of his head and his legs from the knees down.
“Safer!” Candy shouts at him. “Your friend is here!”
She turns to me. “You have to talk loud when he’s reading. Otherwise he just ignores you.” Then she marches away, down the hallway.
“Welcome to Uncle,” Safer says.
“Uh, thanks.”
“You know what Uncle means, right? It’s spy slang for the headquarters of an espionage organization.”
“Oh. But I thought your office was in the basement.”
He makes a face. “It’s nicer up here, don’t you think?”
I look around at the couches, the rugs, and the beanbag chairs. “It’s definitely nicer up here,” I say.
“So. Have you been practicing?”
“Yeah. At school, a little.”
“What was Candy wearing? Start with the feet.”
“Um, shoes?”
“Bare feet,” he says. “What else?”
“Jeans?”
“Carpenter pants.”
“What are carpenter pants?”
“Let’s switch subjects. I’m going to train you on the lobbycam.”
He walks over to the intercom, which is attached to the wall near the kitchen. It matches the one in our apartment: a white plastic square with what looks like a tiny little television screen set into it, and three buttons underneath, labeled VIEW, TALK, and DOOR.
“I already know how to use it,” I say. “My dad showed me. You push View to get the picture on the screen. You push Talk to talk to whoever is down in the lobby. You push Door to buzz them in.”
“You know how to use it as an intercom. But do you know how to use it as an observation tool?”
He pushes the View button. The screen flickers, and then the lobby comes into focus. “What do you see?”
“The door in the lobby.”
“What else?”
“Nothing. The floor.”
“Very good.” He nods and continues to gaze at the screen. “Now what?” I say.
He takes a spiral notebook from his back pocket, flips it open, and pulls a pen from behind his ear. “Now we wait.”
“Just standing here, you mean?”
“Of course not. We can bring stools from the kitchen.”
“Ewwww! There’s stool in the kitchen? Gross!” Candy runs into the hallway from her bedroom. I make a mental note that she is now wearing a sundress and her fuzzy pig slippers.
She stops in front of me. “Do you know what stool means? What it really means?”
“Cut it out, Candy!” Safer tells her.
“Stool means ‘poop,’ ” Candy tells me. “It’s the real word for it, the one that doctors use.”
“CANDY!” a woman’s voice says from somewhere. “Enough!”
Candy rolls her eyes and disappears into her room.
“Is that true?” I ask Safer while we carry two wooden stools from the kitchen.
“Yeah,” he says, “it is, actually.” We push the stools together in front of the little intercom screen. Safer goes back into the kitchen and reappears thirty seconds later with his flask.
“Coffee?” he asks, holding it out.
I tell him no thanks. We watch the lobby door.
We watch the lobby door some more.
Then we watch the lobby door a little more.
“Does this ever get boring?” I ask.
He looks like he can’t believe me. “No,” he says. “It doesn’t get boring. Boredom is what happens to people who have no control over their minds.”
“Oh.”
I tell myself that no matter what, I will not speak for the next ten minutes. I will not take my eyes off the lobbycam. I will not even look at my watch.
We stare at the screen. Every once in a while it goes dark because there’s an automatic timer that shuts it off, and Safer has to push the button to make the picture come back. When I am positively, absolutely, one hundred percent sure ten minutes have passed, I check my watch.
Six minutes.
Safer is completely intent upon the screen, his pen hovering over his spiral notebook.
At first I try to stifle my yawns, but it’s hopeless. I’m yawning and yawning. Safer doesn’t catch a single yawn. Maybe the coffee helps.
I think I’m falling asleep when Safer says “Look!” He elbows me in the ribs and I almost fall off my stool, knocking his pen on the floor. I bend over to pick it up and smack my head against the wall. I stand up with one hand on my forehead.
“You missed it!” Safer says. He snatches his pen from my hand and scribbles in his notebook. He grabs my wrist, looks at my watch and mumbles, “Four-fifty-one.”
“What?” I say. “What happened? Four-fifty-one what?”
“It was him. Mr. X.”
“No way.”
“Way.”
“What was he doing?”
“Coming into the building. With his key.”
“Oh. Right. What was he wearing? Was he wearing black? Did he have any suitcases?”
“Of course he was wearing black. I told you, he only wears black. No suitcases this time. But he looked …”
I wait. “He looked like what?”
Safer clicks his pen a few times. “He looked furtive.”
“Furtive,” I repeat.
“It means ‘secretive.’ ”
“I know what it means.”
“Don’t feel bad,” Safer says. “You’re still in training, remember?”
I think about what Candy said, that it took me and Dad forty-three minutes to get pizza. A tiny little kid can sit still in front of this thing without falling asleep, but I can’t.
Something occurs to me: “How did Candy know we went for pizza yesterday?” I ask Safer. “We didn’t bring it home. We ate at DeMarco’s.”
He looks at me thoughtfully. “Good question. Let’s ask her.”
“Oh, that’s okay, I don’t need to—”
“Candy!”
In two seconds, Candy is in front of us. In case Safer decides to quiz me, I take note that she’s changed again, into overalls (denim, with front and back pockets) and a long-sleeved green T-shirt. She’s still wearing the pig slippers.
“How did you know that Georges and his dad went for pizza yesterday?” Safer asks her.
“Cup,” she answers.
He nods.
“What?” I say.
“It was a cup,” Safer says. “Were you or your dad carrying one?”
Then I remember that Dad had a lemonade from the fountain at DeMarco’s, and he finished it on the way home. The cup must have been in his hand when we came in.
“You memorized what the cups look like at DeMarco’s?”
She shrugs. “Everyone goes to DeMarco’s. I’ve been going there my whole life.”
“Well, so have I,” I tell her.
“Then close your eyes,” Safer says. “Don’t you know what their cups look like?”
I close my eyes. “White,” I say, “and there’s writing … Have a Nice Day or something like that.…”
“Thank You for Coming,” Candy says.
“Yeah—Thank You for Coming! Written over and over, in a spiral. And the letters are green and red?”
Candy claps for me and then heads back to her room. To change clothes again, I’m guessing.
Safer nods at me. “Now you’re beginning to think like one of us.”
I guess I am.
I have to go downstairs to start homework. Safer walks me down the hallway toward his front door.
“Safer?”
“Yeah?”
“Who’s Pigeon?”
“My brother.”
“Is he here?”
“No. He’s never here. See you at the next meeting.”
“When’s that?”
“I’ll be in touch.”
Which reminds me. “Safer?”
“How did you get into my room yesterday?”
“Oh, I come and go,” he says.
I don’t say anything.
“Wait—did it bother you?”
“Kind of.”
“Say no more. It won’t happen again.”
I smile. “Thanks.”
Downstairs, I can’t find my protractor, which I need for geometry. I go into Dad’s bedroom closet, where he crammed all the drawing supplies that used to be in his home office, behind our old kitchen. As soon as I pull the light cord, I see a stack of Mom’s nursing uniforms on a shelf, perfectly folded into neat Dad-squares, with one of her plastic name-tag pins resting on top. I decide to forget about homework. I chill out with Sir Ott on the couch and watch some America’s Funniest Home Videos instead. When Dad gets home, he looks worn out. We order from the bad pizza place with the yellowy cheese. I tell him I met a kid in the building, because I know it will make his day, and it does.
The phone rings a few times, and Dad goes into his room to talk with the door closed. Maybe it’s another potential client.
I leave Mom a note with the Scrabble tiles: