Frank and I didn’t talk about the movie. After we left Theater Two, Frank walked straight up to the snack stand and convinced the guy to refill his popcorn. Just like that. Then on our way outside to play kick the can in the parking lot while we waited for my dad to pick us up, we spotted the new Space Invaders video game in the corner next to the restrooms. It wasn’t the greatest location, but we’d never seen that game before. Not in real life, I mean. I’d seen it plenty of times in the ads in my comic books, and it looked like the coolest thing ever. Turned out it was even better than the coolest thing ever. We spent the next hour shooting aliens and using up all of our quarters. By the time my dad arrived, we’d forgotten all about those missing boats and airplanes.
Except they came back in my dreams.
I was hoping to talk to Frank about the movie the next morning. But when I brought it up on our walk to school, he only shrugged. Then he went on and on about how his brother Raymond was saving up for a jukebox from the money he made bagging groceries at the market, and how he wouldn’t have to put coins in it or anything to get the records to play. Then he wondered if he could do something to save up for his own Space Invaders video game that he wouldn’t have to put money in either. It wasn’t a half-bad idea.
As I headed home from school that afternoon, I heard our neighbor Mrs. Albertini call my name.
“Can you give me a hand, Danny?” she yelled out from her second-story window. “The door’s unlocked.”
I wanted to pretend I didn’t see or hear her. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Mrs. Albertini; I was just in kind of a hurry. If I didn’t get home before Alice, I’d have no chance of watching any of my shows.
“Up here, Danny!” she called again. Half of her tiny body dangled out of the window. Even the tiniest breeze might pull her all the way out, and the last thing Croyfield needed was a little old Italian lady splattered on the middle of the sidewalk.
So I stopped walking. “Be right there, Mrs. Albertini.”
Her front door was heavy, and it creaked when I pushed it open. It was probably as old as she was. Not that I knew how old she was, but she had a ton of wrinkles. Her house smelled the same as Grandma Esther’s: a combination of cleaning products and stale cheese. I tried to breathe only through my mouth to keep the smell out, ’cause I knew from experience that once it entered your nose, it could take hours to leave.
Mrs. Albertini was already in the foyer waiting for me. I couldn’t believe she’d gotten downstairs so fast. “In here.” She waved me into the kitchen.
She pointed to a tall cabinet next to the stove. “I don’t know why my son insists on putting things on the top shelf where I can’t reach them.”
Mrs. Albertini’s son, Anthony, owned the market three blocks away. Mom complained every week about his prices, but she shopped there anyway ’cause she swore he had the best corned beef on the East Coast. I thought it was pretty good, but I didn’t think it was the best. Once, when my pop-pop was still alive, he took me into the city for a ball game. Afterward, we stopped for corned beef sandwiches at some tiny deli. That corned beef was really good.
“He waits until I’m not paying attention,” Mrs. Albertini continued, sliding over a step stool that only gave her a small boost off of the ground. “And then he puts everything where I can’t reach it.” She shook her head. “Not that I don’t appreciate him coming over here once a week with groceries for his mama. He’s a good boy, my Anthony. And good boys take care of their mamas.” She reached over and took my chin in the palm of her hand. “You’re a good boy too, Danny. Make sure you stay that way.”
“Yes, Mrs. Albertini.” I glanced at the step stool again, then at the top of the cabinet. I was the same height as Mrs. Albertini. If she couldn’t reach up there on her stool, I wasn’t going to be able to either. “Can I use one of those chairs?” I pointed to the dining set in the corner of the kitchen. The table looked like the ones made in Dad’s factory, but the chairs were metal and had shiny plastic-covered seat cushions that made fart sounds every time you sat down and got up. Grandma Esther used to have the same set before she moved into the nursing home. That’s how I knew. Maybe that’s where the stale cheese smell came from.
“Take your shoes off first,” Mrs. Albertini replied. “And your coat. You’ll get overheated and then catch a chill when you go back outside. It’s nippy out there today.”
It was actually super warm out. Mom said it was ’cause the groundhog saw its shadow, and Dad said it was ’cause of all the pollution from the factory. All I knew was that it was the middle of March, and I’d already traded in my winter coat for my zippered sweatshirt.
Mrs. Albertini watched as I followed her instructions. Then I pulled one of the chairs over, being careful not to scrape it across the floor.
I climbed up and opened the top cabinet. “What am I looking for?” I asked.
“Lokshen.”
“What?”
“Lokshen,” she repeated. “Egg noodles. The skinny ones. Doesn’t your mother cook with them?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. She doesn’t make a lot of Italian food. Well, except lasagna. Her lasagna is really good.” I found the package Mrs. Albertini wanted and handed it to her before getting off of the chair.
“This isn’t for an Italian dish. It’s for my homemade chicken soup. A secret recipe handed down from my great-great bubbe.”
“Bubbe?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Albertini said. “Don’t you call your grandmother Bubbe?”
“No,” I told her. “She’s just Grandma. But my dad called his Bubbe. I just didn’t know Itali—I mean, I thought only Jewi . . .”
“I am Jewish,” Mrs. Albertini interrupted.
“You are?” I asked.
She nodded. “I wasn’t always Lola Albertini. A long time ago, I was Lillian Gerstein.”
“What happened?” I asked.
She laughed. “I married Mr. Albertini. That’s what happened. And he started calling me Lola. Well, it’s a long story. Not one that would interest a young boy.”
“What about Anthony?” I asked. “Does that mean he’s Jewish, too?”
I waited for her to answer my question, but she didn’t. She only said, “Thank you for being so helpful, Danny. How about a treat? I’ve got Scholly’s pound cake with chocolate frosting.” Mrs. Albertini put a teakettle full of water on the stove and then bent down to pull a large pot from a bottom cabinet. She filled that with water, too.
The clock read 3:15. I still had a fighting chance of getting to the television before Alice. But Mom hardly ever bought Scholly’s pound cake, and the one with chocolate frosting was my favorite. I put the chair back by the table and took a seat. Sure enough, it made the fart sound.
“Mrs. Albertini?” I asked.
She joined me at the table with two thick slices of cake. “Yes, Danny?”
“Have you ever heard about the Bermuda Triangle?”
I don’t know why I brought it up, except it was still on my mind, and Frank didn’t seem to want to talk about it. I didn’t blame him, honestly. The whole thing was pretty weird. Plus, that doll had been the creepiest doll I’d ever seen.
Maybe Mrs. Albertini knew something about it. She was old and probably knew about a lot of stuff.
“Oh, sure,” she said. “I remember hearing about a whole fleet of planes that vanished over the ocean. A few ships, too. That was back in the forties, I think. Don’t tell me it’s happened again. One would have to be a brave soul to travel through those waters.”
“No,” I told her. “It was just something I saw at the movies. So it’s real? I thought it might be, but I wasn’t sure.”
She walked over to the stove and poured her tea. Then she sat back down with me. “That’s what they say. It’s one of the great mysteries of our time.”
“Yeah,” I agreed and finished the rest of my cake.
When I got home, Alice was already watching TV.
I raced upstairs to my bedroom, opened the third drawer of my desk, and reached under the fifth comic book in the pile to grab my Super-Secret Spy Notebook. On the Unsolved Mysteries page, directly under Is Mr. Schneider a spider?, I wrote Bermuda Triangle.