Five

Ordinarily, if I don’t have anything else to do after school, I go to Gene’s office. There’s always work there for me—sweeping floors or stuffing envelopes or making a run to the post office for stamps. Whatever, I do it. But the day before my birthday, I just didn’t feel like the office. Still no letter from my parents. Okay, that’s cool. Probably Gene would give me a check—that is, if he remembered the big day. I decided not to expect anything, then I couldn’t be disappointed. Very sensible, but I was a little depressed, anyway.

Looking for some conversation, I stopped in to see Martha in her corner store. For once she was busy. She does charcoal and pastel portraits for ten dollars a shot. People think she must be rolling in dough at that rate, but what they don’t understand is how few people are willing to part with a tenner for a portrait of little Janie or Johnny.

She was at work on a charcoal of a little girl with big chipmunk teeth. This kid couldn’t keep all of her still for more than two seconds. Her mother kept saying, “Let the lady draw your picture! Danielle! Don’t wriggle!”

Danielle twitched, fidgeted, sighed, tapped her feet, and twiddled her fingers. “Hey, Danielle,” I said, “watch this.” I flapped my hands in my ears and crossed my eyes. Danielle looked bored.

“Good try,” Martha said.

Christmas is Martha’s big season. The rest of the year she does what she calls “eking.” Gene calls her apartment a little hole in the wall, but Martha always has it filled with big bunches of dried grasses and lots of her own watercolors of barns and streams in autumn, so actually you don’t pay much attention to how dark and small it is. And to listen to her talk about shopping in secondhand stores, you’d think it was a rare privilege for her not to be able to afford new things. “Old clothes have cachet,” she says. “They’ve been broken in, softened, they’re not hard and garish like so many new things.”

Sometimes I feel guilty because Martha has so little money, while I don’t have any money worries at all (thank you, Uncle Gene), but I don’t see what I can do about making things any different for her. Well, actually that ties right into one of my fantasies, too.

This one starts with me as the rising young lawyer who defends a case (brilliantly, for something important like free speech), up to the Supreme Court. My eloquence makes me famous, brings me tons of clients. I get rich and have more money than I know what to do with. I tell Martha I won’t allow her to waste her talents for another moment on ten-dollar charcoal sketches of squirmy brats. She’s going to have a real studio, with northern light, all the expensive oils she wants, canvases, models, the whole works. And what do I want in return? Nothing! Just the satisfaction of knowing I’ve helped her. But Martha is so impressed by my noble unselfishness, she falls in love with me and begs me to make love to her. Which I do, after only a little hesitation. (Tough luck, Uncle Gene.)

When I left Martha, it had started to rain, a kind of warm spring rain. I stopped in the Nut Shoppe to buy a bag of hot peanuts. A girl was sitting on a high stool behind the counter at the back of the store. I say that so casually, but seeing her I thought—Oh!

Her hair was pulled back clean from a high shining forehead with a tortoiseshell band. She had a little round chin and tiny gold birds pinned into her ears. She was reading a book and wore a blue and white checked smock with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. That smock was all wrong. The smock was Peasant. The girl was Princess. She was beautiful, but it was something else that drew me to her. Something about her, something different—I didn’t know what. Not the princess thing. No, quite the contrary—princesses scared me, and in one way, so did she. Yet the moment I saw her, something changed for me. I had to know her.

She looked up, a brief cool glance, clicked her tongue as if I were an annoyance instead of a customer, put a marker in her book, closed it, and slid off the stool. All very deliberate. No hurry. The aliens had captured her, dropped her into this mundane peanut-selling shop and wouldn’t let her leave. But she knew (and now I knew) she was of royal blood.

“May I help you?” she said.

“Peanuts … I mean, a pound—hot—please, thank you.” I all but bent from the waist. I paid for the peanuts and walked over to Gene’s office, thinking about the girl and going ohhh, ohhh, ohhh to myself.

As soon as I walked in, Janice Silk, my uncle’s receptionist, crooked her finger at me. Silky’s worked for Gene as long as I can remember. Once, on some anniversary or other, Gene said she was just like a member of the family, but it’s not true. Silky has her own family, two sons and two daughters, Gene and I have each other, and none of us ever get together outside the office.

“Am I glad to see you,” Silky said, glancing at the couple in the waiting room. “The lab needs a good cleaning. Your uncle was wondering where you were. He’s in room two with a patient.”

The door to room two was open. “Now look at the center of this ruler I’m holding across my nose,” Gene was saying to the man in the chair. He flashed a light into the man’s eyes. “Fine, fine, very good.” Gene always sounds tremendously encouraging as he puts his patients through the routine refractions, as if they’re passing a difficult test. I waved to him, made sweeping motions, and pointed toward the lab.

I got out the cleaning stuff and then just stood there daydreaming. Stop thinking about the Peanut Princess. Discipline the mind. Concentrate on important things, like sweeping. Okay, I’m not thinking about her anymore. (Then why am I thinking about her?)

I leaned on the broom. I had to see her again. The only question was, when? I could act cool (SIR SKINNY LEGS DECIDES TO MAKE PEANUT PRINCESS WAIT FOR HER SECOND ELECTRIFYING GLIMPSE OF HIS INCREDIBLE PRESENCE) and not go there for several days. Good move, but what if, in the meantime, she met another guy, quit the job, or moved away? Obviously, I should act fast. Go back tomorrow. However, in order not to be totally obvious about my interest in her, this time I’d buy pistachios. And while she was weighing and bagging them, I’d impress the hell out of her. (How was I going to do that? The same way I’d knocked her socks off today with my wit and charm? Uhhh, a pound of peanuts … uhhh, hot … uhhh, thank you. What would I do for an encore—show her my legs?)

I pushed the broom around the floor. Why so humble? The Princess and the Peasant! Pete, that is disgusting. Listen up: The Princess is not your type (since when did I have a type?), she wears too much makeup (now I’m an expert on makeup?), and has serious character defects—aloof, cold. (Was I sure about that? What if she was just shy?) She was pretty—I’d give her that. (Generous of me. She was actually gorgeous and probably had truckloads of guys following her every step.)

I swept up the dust and dropped it into the wastebasket. How to make her notice me? How not to be just another one of the drooling mob panting after her?

“Everything okay, Pete?” Gene said, passing by. Typically, he had a mild, worried expression, something like a bighorn sheep, an expression that at certain times could vastly irritate me.

“Everything’s terrific, Uncle G,” I called after him. I pinched my nose and honked, “My dear Miss Nut Shoppe, I have admired you from afar, but now the time has come to speak out.”

All through supper I thought about the girl. All evening when I was supposedly studying I thought about her, and lots and lots when I was in bed. First thing in the morning I thought about her and all day in school. Was the Peanut Princess really that four-star special? Or was I doing a number on myself so I wouldn’t have to think how today was my birthday and how I hadn’t heard from Laura and Hal?

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday, Pete Pax, happy birthday to me. Okay, I was feeling sorry for myself. Poor little neglected birthday boy. I actually felt too sorry for me to even want to go see the Peanut Princess. What for? So she could snub me? I felt so sorry for me that instead of running the couple of miles downtown from school, which always made me feel more athletic than I am, I ate my way home. I stopped in every little grocery and fast-food place I passed. I had:

1. A Giant Benny Burger.

2. Two cones of McDonald’s French fries.

3. Three fat House of Pancakes’ blueberry pancakes.

4. A triple-dip black and white soft ice cream coated with chocolate and sprinkles (fifty cents extra).

5. A large bag of corn chips, a large bag of potato chips, two coconut candy bars, and three soft drinks.

Happy birthday to me.