A few years ago Twentieth Street would have been a maze of broken glass and Coke cans and half-eaten doughnuts for Kyle to hop over or zigzag around or crack or pop or squish. But no more. It was still a city block. Garbage cans still stood guard by the curbs. But the city sweepers had begun to keep the streets clean. And the folks who lived in the neighborhood stopped being litterbugs. And I’m not trying to compare New York to Oz, where Dorothy could have followed the Yellow Brick Road barefoot. I’m just saying Kyle no longer had to scrape his shoes every fifteen steps or hold his nose when he passed the alley behind the pizza parlor on his way to school.
One thing hadn’t changed, however. Lucinda still passed him three days a week. Not five days. That would have been too obvious. And not the same days. That would have also been too obvious. Because that’s what you did when you had a mad crush on someone who didn’t have a mad crush back. You studied his schedule. You found out where he was going to be and when he was going to be there. And then you showed up.
And ignored him.
Totally.
Which was what Lucinda was doing at that very moment. She was pushing open her front door and skipping down the steps. Her sandy blond hair bouncing. Her clogs clicking the concrete. Her T-shirt showing off just enough of her belly to make her dad spill his coffee all over the morning newspaper.
Did Kyle check her out?
Nope.
Lucinda knew. She peeked. Through the same wrap-around sunglasses that Carrie-Anne Moss wore in The Matrix. She wore the sunglasses so Kyle couldn’t see her eyes. Since she wasn’t really ignoring him, but only pretending. Which only worked if the guy wasn’t ignoring you. Which he was. As far as Kyle was concerned, Lucinda may as well have been a crack in the sidewalk. Better if she had been. At least he was stepping on that. Which was when it hit Lucinda, like a sock on the jaw. Kyle wasn’t ignoring her. He didn’t even know she existed.
Can you blame him?
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that Kyle had never been faced with a problem before. Like two months ago when he wanted to wear his Dave Matthews T-shirt to a Mets game and it was still in the wash. Or last Tuesday when he had to choose between cheesecake and a chocolate sundae for dessert because his mom told him he couldn’t have both. But neither of these was in quite the same category as getting your dad’s book published to save your parents’ marriage. Especially if it was a book you hadn’t even read. Not a chapter. Not a page. Not even the first sentence.
Why?
Simple. His dad wouldn’t let anyone near it. Including Kyle’s mom. Oh, sure, he sent it to editors at publishing houses. And they read it. Or didn’t read it. And sent it back rejected. And then Kyle’s dad rewrote it. And sent it out again. And it got rejected again. And, of course, Kyle’s dad kept a copy for himself. But only one. And a backup disk.
He locked the copy in his top desk drawer. He locked the disk inside his wall safe behind a beat-up framed photograph that he’d had bought at the flea market on Twenty-sixth Street. And not just any photograph. But a photograph of Ernest Hemingway. Who, Kyle’s dad told Kyle about six million times, was his hero. Because he wrote The Old Man and the Sea. Which was Kyle’s dad’s all-time favorite. Which didn’t surprise Kyle. The old man part, I mean. Since the guy in the photograph had a thick, white, old-man beard and tired, angry, old-man eyes.
It was the eyes that always got to Kyle. They never blinked. They never moved. They just stared at you in kind of a dare. As if they were saying, “Let’s see what you got.” Like life was a race. And if you weren’t trying to win, then what the heck were you doing on the track?
But there was something else. Not in the photograph. But the way it was framed. Or, more precisely, on the brown paper that sealed the back so no dust could get inside the frame. Glued to the paper was a pocket. You know, to hold something. Hold what, no one knew for sure. Since the pocket was empty. Long empty, probably. Though that hadn’t stopped Kyle’s dad from making up a story right there on the spot.
“Can you feel it, Kyle?” he’d said. And flicked his eyebrows. And winked. “This is no ordinary photograph. Not even close. It was a gift from Ernest Hemingway to one of his children. That’s why that pocket is here. To hold his note: ‘From Papa. With all my love.’”
“Oh, please!” Kyle’s mom had said.
“Close your eyes, Polly. Run your fingers over the glass. The great man touched this. He gripped it in his hands.”
“I’d like to grip you in my hands.”
“Where’s your imagination, Polly? Where’s your sense of adventure? This photograph’s an omen. It’s going to bring us luck.”
“It’s a waste of money.”
“No, Polly. Trust me on this one. I’m buying it. I’m hanging it over the wall safe in the office. And someday you’ll thank me. Someday you’ll say it’s the best investment we ever made. You know why, Kyle?”
“Because you can find anything anywhere,” Kyle had said.
“That’s right, son. You can find anything anywhere.”
Which was a quote from Cadillac Jack, a book by Larry McMurtry. You see, Kyle’s dad always quoted books. Especially that book. Especially that quote. “You can find anything anywhere.” It was kind of like Kyle’s dad’s code. The words he lived by. Though none of it meant all that much to Kyle. Since he’d never read Cadillac Jack. Or The Old Man and the Sea. Or, for that matter, was he dying to read either one.
Love in Autumn?
That was different.
Why?
Because it was his dad’s book. His dad’s dream. Which had now become Kyle’s dream. So, yeah, Kyle was going to read it. Not because he figured anything his dad wrote would be chock-full of androids or gladiators or someone sucking blood from someone else’s neck. But if your major goal in life was to come up with a way to get your dad’s book published, it probably helped if you knew something about that book. Which in Kyle’s case meant he had to read it. Which meant he had to steal it. Which tightened that knot in his stomach. Which was pretty darned tight to begin with.
So I guess we can forgive Kyle for not knowing Lucinda existed. Since he didn’t know anyone existed. Not the guy on the corner without any shoes, mumbling, “Spare a quarter?” Not the taxi driver running the red light and nearly sideswiping the umbrella stand. Not even Ruben Gomez calling him (Kyle) “Chicken Legs” four hours later during gym.
Because Kyle was in a zone.
A zone all his own.
And he pretty much stayed that way. Until the school bell rang after last period. And Kyle burst out of geometry and ran every step of the way to Greenwich Avenue. Even after his lungs turned to fire. Even after his backpack felt like it weighed a ton. Because Kyle knew exactly where his dad was. And even more important—at least, to Kyle—he knew his dad would be waiting.