Al(exandra) the Great: The Al Series, Book Four Read online

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  Al(exandra) the Great

  The Al Series, Book Four

  Constance C. Greene

  To

  Pat Murphy Pullman,

  with love

  CHAPTER 1

  “Did you see that?” Al hissed, grabbing my arm so hard it hurt.

  “Cut it out,” I said. “That hurts.”

  “Now I’ve seen everything.” Al let go of me. She shook her head in amazement.

  We were on our way to the zoo in Central Park. School ended last week. Summer was upon us. You could almost see the heat rising from the pavement. The buses roared by, sending out great smelly clouds of exhaust. There were guys selling freshly squeezed orange juice on practically every corner. At a buck a throw, it better be freshly squeezed.

  “What’s your problem?” I said.

  “That girl. Woman. Whatever. The one that just passed.” We turned and looked behind us. Whoever she was she wasn’t in sight.

  “She must’ve dropped through a trapdoor,” Al muttered. “Either that or someone dragged her into the bushes. She had the most incredible shape I’ve ever seen.”

  “What was the matter with her shape?”

  “Well—” Al’s eyebrows went up. “Well, it would depend on how you look at it. I didn’t say anything was the matter with it. I simply said it was incredible.”

  “Don’t be mysterious,” I said. “It’s too hot for mystery. Spit it out.”

  “She jiggled,” Al told me.

  “You mean she jogged?”

  Al eyed me scornfully. “If I meant jogged, I would’ve said jogged. I mean she jiggled. Inside her shirt she jiggled. Like a bowl full of Jell-O.”

  “Probably she had big bosoms,” I said. I’ve noticed that big bosoms jiggle more than small ones.

  “How many could she have?” Al asked me. “It looked to me as if she had more than she could possibly need”

  “She probably wasn’t wearing a bra.”

  “With a shape like that she wasn’t wearing a bra?” Al said disdainfully. “Good night nurse! With a shape like that she should not only be wearing a bra, but also an all-in-one, not to mention a chastity belt.”

  Not only did I not know what an all-in-one was, I also had never heard of a chastity belt. They both sounded absolutely bizarre. But I wasn’t going to ask Al. Not right away. Let her stew a little. It would do her good. She likes to use words she thinks I don’t know the meaning of, and, unfortunately, she’s usually right. She likes to throw them at me and then sit back and give me the bilious eye, waiting for me to say, “What’s an all-in-one?” or “What’s a chastity belt?” like some little wimp. Not this time.

  I kept on walking.

  “Did you hear me?” Al said, giving me one of her famous piercers. When Al shoots a piercer at me, I can almost feel it. She has the most pointed eyeballs of anyone I know. I decided to let her stew some more.

  “Look!” I said. A person was slinking toward us. She was a symphony in blue. She had on blue satin pants, a blue sweat shirt, blue high-heeled shoes, and a tiny blue hat perched on the side of her head, looking as if it might take off at any minute. She also had blue hair. She looked like a chorus girl in a musical comedy. She also looked very pleased with herself. Nobody except us paid any attention to her.

  We observed a respectful silence until she passed.

  “That’s what I like about New York,” I said. “Where else could you see someone got up like that walking down the street and have hardly anyone turn to stare? I mean, where else? Certainly not in East Ely, Nevada.”

  “Who ever heard of East Ely, Nevada?” Al snapped. She was mad because she’d never heard of East Ely and also because I wouldn’t ask her about the all-in-one and the chastity belt.

  “It’s a real place,” I said. “My father knows someone from there. Look it up in the atlas if you don’t believe me.”

  Al stomped along, muttering to herself. We stopped on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Sixtieth Street and watched a couple kissing each other like they were trying out for a part in a movie. Either that or they were kissing good-bye because one of them was going around the world on a tramp steamer and would be gone for about ten years. The girl had beautiful long red hair and wore jeans so tight she probably couldn’t have sat down in them. The man had on a cowboy hat and a leather bomber jacket. In this heat. Insane. They were a very mod couple. Also very unselfconscious. If anyone ever kissed me like that out in the open and all, I would’ve died. It didn’t bother them.

  “Fools,” Al said. “What do they know of love?” We crossed the street. On the other side Al stopped and said, “Don’t you want to know what a chastity belt is? If you don’t ask me before I count to ten,” she said—“One, two,” she counted—“I won’t tell you. No matter how much you beg and plead, I won’t tell you.

  “Three,” she said slowly.

  “It’s a belt to keep your chastity in,” I said, taking a wild guess. “Sort of like a money belt,” I added very firmly. I’ve noticed if people say something in a firm tone of voice, in a very convincing way, even if they haven’t a clue as to what they’re talking about, other people tend to believe them.

  “I think they sell them at L. L. Bean’s,” I said, even more firmly.

  “You think they sell chastity belts at L. L. Bean’s?” Al said, pronouncing each word carefully.

  “Yes. It seems to me I saw them advertised in the spring catalogue. I’m sure I did,” I said, getting carried away.

  Al laughed so hard she almost choked. Her face turned beet red, and I had to smack her on the back so she could get her breath.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “It’s—it’s what you said. A chastity belt from Bean’s. Oh-oh-oh.” She clutched her stomach. “A chastity belt,” she said at last when she recovered, “if you must know, is to keep people chaste.”

  “How can you keep people chased?” I said.

  “C-H-A-S-T-E,” Al spelled out. “That means pure. Virgin. You savvy?” She gave me a piercer.

  “Boy,” I said in my super-sarcastic voice, “they must sell a lot of those these days. From what I hear, at least one person in a thousand is a virgin.”

  “In the Middle Ages,” Al explained slowly, as if I might not have all my marbles and she wanted to be sure I understood, “when the knights went off to war, they locked up their wives in these chastity belts to keep them pure until they returned. Which might be years from when they left.”

  She watched me to see what I thought about that.

  “They locked them up!” I hollered. “Why didn’t those wives tell them to buzz off? They had some nerve!”

  Luckily, Al was in a patient mood. “They didn’t say, ‘Buzz off,’ in the Middle Ages,” she said. “They probably would’ve said, ‘Begone,’ or something like that. Maybe, ‘Begone, sire.’ That’s the way they talked in the Middle Ages.”

  All of a sudden she’s an expert on the Middle Ages.

  “I never heard of such a thing,” I said. “Why didn’t they just whip off those old belts the minute the knights were out of sight?”

  “Because the knights took the keys with them,” Al told me. “And the belts—well, they were really more like a pair of drawers—were made of iron.”

  “Iron?”

  “Yup. They locked them up and took away the key. How about that? That way they made sure there was no hanky-panky going on while they were out jousting.”

 
“Then their wives should’ve decked them,” I said indignantly. “I never heard anything so disgusting in my life.”

  “They did things differently in the good old days.”

  “That’s the understatement of the week.” We headed toward the monkey house to see the new baby monkey.

  “Just tell me one thing,” I said when we were halfway there.

  Al stopped, crossed her arms on her chest, and inclined her head slowly, graciously, like a school principal giving a kid permission to ask one question.

  “O.K. How did those virgins go to the bathroom? If they were locked into iron drawers to keep them chaste, would you kindly tell me how they went to the bathroom?”

  Al stared intently into the distance, a sure sign she didn’t have the answer. Joy filled my heart. I had her. I knew I did. History books always skip good stuff like that.

  “Trust you to think of something gross like that,” she said, glaring at me. “Trust you.” She went charging down the path, and I followed, smiling.

  CHAPTER 2

  Outside the monkey house we filled up our lungs with enough air to last us. Once inside, we only breathe through our mouths, not our noses. The smell is something fierce.

  The guard stood propped against the wall, watching us. Maybe he thought we were planning to rip off a couple of monkeys.

  “Ask him,” Al said, nudging me. She doesn’t like to ask people things, directions, anything like that. She always makes me do the asking. I went up to the guard. He was new.

  “Where’s the baby monkey?” I said. “They told us last time we were here that the baby was coming in a couple of weeks.” He just looked at me.

  “There was this pregnant monkey,” I said. “Has the baby been born yet?”

  He folded his arms on his chest and kept looking at me. Just when I’d about given up and was preparing to look for myself, the guard said, “You got me. I’m part-time. I don’t know nothing about no pregnant monkey. Come back when Larry’s here. Larry knows.”

  “Where’d Larry go?”

  “Atlantic City. Honeymoon. Him and the missus like to play the slot machines.” He pushed his hat back on his head. His forehead stretched on and on, hairless and smooth. “They give you a good deal. You get your bus fare, your hotel room, a nice, classy-type hotel, breakfast thrown in. Plus,” he said, “plus you get a free champagne cocktail. Courtesy of the management. All for thirty-six bucks a day, plus tax, double occupancy.” He must’ve memorized the ad.

  “Well,” I said, “I guess if Larry and his wife are on their honeymoon, it must be double occupancy, right?” I gave him a smile, reluctantly. He didn’t look like the kind of man who would know what to do with one.

  “Yeah. Right. So come back in a coupla weeks. Larry should be back by then. I’m just filling in. Sure stinks in here, don’t it?”

  “It’s not so bad if you hold your breath,” I told him

  “Try holding your breath for five hours, the whole five hours I’m standing here,” he said in an aggrieved voice.

  Al was circling the room on her own.

  “Hey!” she said. “Over here! He’s here! Come see!” She was hanging on the bars of a cage, looking in at two gigantic monkeys who were busily picking fleas or lice off each other. They were really concentrating. Between them, almost squashed, was this little tiny face peering out at us.

  “That’s a face that only a mother could love,” I said.

  “I think he’s adorable,” Al said. “He looks sort of like Teddy.” Teddy is my brother. He’s nine.

  “Boy, you better not let my mother hear you say that,” I told her. I was sort of hurt. It would’ve been all right if I’d said the baby monkey looked like Teddy. But I didn’t think Al should’ve said it.

  “I’m sorry.” Al can be very quick at catching bad vibes. “I meant it in a nice way. He’s adorable. So’s Teddy.” She smiled at me. “And Teddy smells better.”

  “That’s what you think,” I said. We leaned on the bars and made dumb faces and talked baby talk to the little monkey. His parents kept picking stuff off each other. One thing about monkeys, they take care of each other. They have very strong family feelings.

  On our way out I waved at the guard, who acted as if he’d never seen me before. “See you,” I called. “We found him. In cage three. In case anyone wants to see the baby. Cage three.”

  He caught on I was talking to him and said, “Oh, yeah,” but I doubt he was tracking. Probably he was thinking about Atlantic City and slot machines, not to mention double occupancy.

  “Come home with me and watch me pack,” Al said as we hit the street and breathed in the wonderful, polluted New York City air.

  “Isn’t it a little early to start packing?” I said. Al’s going to visit her father and his new wife, Louise, and Louise’s three sons: Nick, Chris, and Sam. That was one big plus for Al. She inherited three stepbrothers when her father married Louise. She really likes them. I only have Teddy. He’s my blood brother. They say that blood is thicker than water. Whatever that means.

  “You’ve got loads of time,” I told her. “If you pack now, everything will be wrinkled when you get there.” Al’s leaving next week. She plans on staying for three weeks. They asked her for a month, but she doesn’t want to leave her mother for that long. She and her mother might go on a cruise when she gets back from her father’s farm. They’re having a barn dance there for Al, with a fiddler and homemade ice cream. And the boy named Brian that Al likes will be there. It sounds exciting.

  “Listen,” Al said. “Don’t think it’s easy, packing for that long. Because it isn’t. I’m only taking one bag. But I have to make sure I take the right clothes. I don’t want to look out of place. I don’t want it so’s when I walk down the street, they look at me and say, ‘Wow. Look at that creep. She must be from the big city.’ I definitely don’t want that to happen.”

  Oh, boy. Al was going to get plenty heavy about her farm wardrobe. When Al gets heavy about something, she doesn’t fool around.

  “If you’re on the farm all the time,” I said in my soothing voice, “probably all you have to have is blue jeans and sneakers. And some T-shirts. Maybe a dress if you go to church or anything. And don’t forget the white gloves,” I said, kidding. Al got all steamed up when she went to her father’s wedding to Louise. She was afraid her mother would make her take white gloves. Al’s mother works in Better Dresses. She’s very style-conscious.

  Al frowned. “It’s easy for you to kid around,” she said. “But I definitely don’t want to look like a city square. You have to be careful not to look out of place. Especially when you’re from the city and you go to the country. You don’t want the kids there to think you’re a snob.”

  “You couldn’t be a snob even if you went to snob school,” I told her. It’s true. Al is very down-to-earth. She is practically the most down-to-earth person I know.

  “You’re a very down-to-earth person,” I said. “Even if you went to Buckingham Palace to have tea with the Queen, you’d be down-to-earth.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she agreed. I could tell she was pleased. People are always pleased to be called down-to-earth. I have to reassure Al a lot. She’s a year older than me, but she still needs a lot of reassurance.

  We headed across Fifty-seventh Street. There are a lot of art galleries there. Usually we stop and check out the paintings, chose the ones we wouldn’t mind having if we could afford them. Which we couldn’t. But today we didn’t stop. I wouldn’t have minded. But Al was in a hurry to get home and start packing.

  “Come on,” she said, charging along at a fast clip.

  “O.K.,” I said.

  I’m not going anywhere. That I know of.

  CHAPTER 3

  Al and I have been friends for almost a year. Well, actually, about eight months. I feel as if I’d known her forever. When Al and her mother moved into our building, right down the hall from us, Mr. Richards was the assistant super. Then he died. Now we have one crummy a
ssistant super after another. Mr. Richards was a retired bartender, a superior person, a prince among men. We miss him. He told us he thought we’d be stunners someday. We’re still waiting. Al will be fourteen in August. I’ll be thirteen in September. Al keeps waiting for something exciting to happen to her. I do too—to me, I mean. I think she’s had enough excitement for a while. She’s going to the farm, and she got a postcard from Brian, from Chicago, where he was on a trip with his 4-H club. Now it’s my turn.

  When we got off the elevator, I saw an envelope on our hall table. It was a letter from Polly. Polly stayed with us while her parents went to Africa. Now she’s up on the Cape visiting her aunt and uncle. I tore open the letter.

  “It’s from Polly,” I told Al. “She’s having a blast. She goes sailing and swimming and clamming every day.”

  “That’s not so much,” Al said. “Write her back and tell her we went to the zoo and saw the baby monkey. That’ll make her wish she was back here, pounding the pavements, smelling the good smells of New York in July.”

  Al did a couple of bumps and grinds and opened her front door at the same time. She’s getting really good at her burlesque routine. We grabbed a handful of carrot sticks from the refrigerator and went into Al’s bedroom. Her bed was piled so high with clothes it looked like a rummage sale was going on.

  “What’s this?” I pointed to a box of clothes sitting on the floor. On top was Al’s brown vest. She only wears that vest when she’s in the pits.

  “Everything in that box is going outsville,” she said. “It’s nothing but stuff that freaks me out when I wear it. I’m sick of being drab, wearing drab clothes. From now on I only wear stuff that enhances my personality.” She went over to the mirror and examined her gums to see if they were receding. She’d read about how receding gums are a big problem these days. Lots of people’s teeth fall out due to receding gums, so Al keeps a close eye on hers.

  “I’m heavyset,” she announced after she checked her gums. “There are no two ways about it. I’m heavyset.”