Just Plain Al: The Al Series, Book Five Read online

  “Whose head?” Al managed to get out.

  “The calf, or maybe the pig’s. It depends.”

  Slowly, slowly, Al spit out what was left of her free sample. Mine lay heavy at the bottom of my stomach.

  “Is there a trash can around?” Al whispered, not looking at what lay in her palm.

  “Gee, I don’t know,” the girl said brightly. “I’m only here for the day.”

  Al stomped off. I had a hard time keeping up. She went through the revolving door like a whirling dervish and hit the street at a gallop.

  “Did you hear her? I almost barfed!” Al clutched her throat. “I almost lost my cookies all over Bloomie’s food shop. Do you think she was putting us on? Do you think she made that up?”

  “No,” I said, “I think she was telling the truth.”

  “I have a feeling this is not my day,” Al said. Somehow we’d lost our interest in shopping. “Look,” I said, pointing. “There’s one of those cheapo hot dog wagons on the corner. Let’s get one.” Despite the headcheese inside me, I was hungry.

  “You’re kidding me!” Al yelled, still clutching her throat. “I may never eat again. Besides, you know what they say is in hot dogs. Unspeakable ingredients. Dog’s hair, sweepings off the floor, and worse.”

  “With sauerkraut,” I said. “And lots of mustard!”

  “Oh, well.” Al was a pushover for hot dogs. “With all that stuff on it, we won’t even be able to tell it’s a hot dog, right?”

  It was one of those days that sometimes drops down at the end of summer. Just when you think fall will never come, there it is, like a present. As we headed for the hot dog wagon, I saw the man. He was one of those New York crazies. Shouting, gesticulating, he lurched through the crowd. People tucked in their elbows to make a path for him, pretending he wasn’t really there. He was harmless. No one so much as flicked an eye in his direction.

  “Let’s cross,” I whispered. I’m chicken. I’m always afraid guys like him might say or do something. I don’t know what I’d do if he did.

  Al had her hot dog money out, held high in her hand. It was then that I saw the woman. She was standing on the corner under the digital clock over the bank. It was 1:24. The temperature was 72 degrees. The woman’s face was so deeply red it was almost purple. She wore a filthy gray sweater and billowy pants held up by rope. Her hands were huge and swollen, the same color as her face. She held a sign that read Please Help Me.

  Al saw the woman the same instant I did. She veered toward her without missing a beat, the dollar bill waving in the wind. I knew Al was going to give the woman her money.

  The man swooped without warning. He snatched the money out of Al’s hand and took off, darting and dodging into the crowd. The Artful Dodger had nothing on him.

  “Hey!” Al bellowed. “Catch him! Police!” Several people turned to stare, but nobody got excited. Things like that happen every day. I stayed where I was and watched Al also disappear into the crowd in pursuit.

  I wanted to leave, wanted to forget the sight of the woman standing there holding her sign, but I didn’t dare. In a strange way, I felt responsible for her. She had turned to stone and stood, eyes closed, as if she couldn’t bear another thing.

  If Al caught up with the man, what would happen? Maybe he’d turn on her, attack her. I should’ve gone with her. My feet wouldn’t move. I felt as if I’d been glued to the sidewalk.

  I shivered, the way you do when someone walks over your grave. Then, just when I was giving up, I saw Al threading her way through the throng of shoppers. Her face was scarlet, and perspiration ran down the sides of her face.

  “Can you believe that creep?” A mustache of sweat glistened on her upper lip. “That lousy creep took it right out of my hand.”

  The woman opened her eyes and looked straight at us. They tell you to avoid eye contact. Yet we looked into her eyes. They were dark gray or maybe blue. I couldn’t be sure. I fumbled in my pocket and came up with eighty cents, all I had. I held the money out to her. She wouldn’t look down at my hand, only in my eyes.

  Then I saw her hand creep out, cupped into a little bowl, its broken fingernails curved jaggedly over the tips of her fingers. I put the eighty cents into the little bowl. Her eyes never wavered. I was the first to look away. Maybe she was deaf and dumb, I thought. Maybe that was it. Then she said something to me, maybe thanks, maybe not. Maybe she was cursing me. I couldn’t tell.

  “What’s going on here, anyway?” Al said. “How come all these people are starving? How come all these fat cats are eating caviar and lots of people don’t even have a place to sleep when it gets cold? I don’t get it. How come things are so uneven?”

  Al shook her head despairingly. Her face was bleak.

  “What can she buy with eighty cents?” I asked. Al didn’t answer me. We walked all the way home, thirty blocks, without talking to each other.

  There was nothing to say.

  chapter 4

  All that night, awake or asleep, I kept seeing the woman’s face. She and her children probably lived in one horrible little room filled with cockroaches, which scuttled under the bed and kept them awake all night. And the hallways were filled with strange, lurking people, with gray faces, making odd noises. And the children cried a lot because their stomachs were empty. It must be terrible to be really hungry. And to have no money to buy food. Sometimes, when I’m hungry after school, I try to imagine how I’d feel if there were no food in the house and no prospect of any. I can’t imagine what it’s really like, but I try.

  So I gave her eighty cents. Big deal. I was ashamed of giving her so little, even though it was all I had.

  In the morning I leaned against the sink and drank my orange juice and watched my mother getting ready to go out. This was her day to work at the hospital thrift shop. They were pricing donations today, she told me, to prepare for the grand opening next week.

  “If I see a dress that might suit you,” she told me, “I’ll bring it home with me. We get some very nice things there.”

  “A secondhand dress for the Rainbow Room?” I tried not to sound snotty. And failed. My mother is a scrounge. She can always find a way to beat the high cost of living. My father says she works miracles, but I wish she wouldn’t try to work one on me.

  My mother shot me a dark look. “There are plenty of people who would be glad to be given some secondhand things,” she reminded me. “There are also people who never wear anything but other people’s castoffs. Don’t be a snob.”

  After my mother had given me a cool cheek-brush in farewell and told me to put some potatoes on to boil for potato salad, I was alone. Teddy had gone to day camp. So there I was, sitting in the kitchen, alone with the clicking refrigerator, the dripping faucet, and myself. Being by yourself isn’t always easy, especially if yourself turns out to be a not-so-nice person.

  I’ve gotten much more introspective since I’ve known Al. Before she came into my life, I was a happy-go-lucky slob. Now I tend to brood, though not nearly as much as she does. Al says knowing me has made her much more laid back than she used to be. I guess we’re good for each other, the way friends should be.

  When you come right down to it, though, I’ll be thirteen in September and what have I got to show for it?

  Nada, as Al would say.

  Then Polly called. Boy, was I glad to hear her cheerful little voice!

  “You sound like you’ve lost your last friend,” Polly told me. “And you haven’t. Here I am.”

  She asked me and Al over for supper. “I’m making chicken cacciatore tonight,” Polly said. “The spécialité de la maison.” Polly is a star cook. She’s going to be a chef and have her own restaurant when she’s eighteen.

  “Sounds good,” I said. Polly and Al and I are all very different. Polly stayed at our apartment when her parents went to Africa, and Al got a little uptight. Two’s company, three’s a crowd, as my mother says in her infinite wisdom. And she’s right. Al flailed around awhile, then she got over whateve
r was bugging her, and now we all get along fine. We laugh a lot. Mr. Richards said a good laugh was good for the soul. He also was right.

  Mr. Richards died eight months ago. He was the assistant super in our building. He was also our friend. Not a day goes by but that something he said or did doesn’t remind us of him.

  “You go,” Al said when I told her Polly had invited us. “I’m always horning in. Polly’s your friend, after all.”

  “Don’t be a klutz,” I told her. “She’s your friend, too. Polly doesn’t ask anyone she doesn’t like. You know that.”

  Al smiled. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “Polly’s making chicken cacciatore.”

  “Is that anything like headcheese?” Al asked nervously.

  The dictionary said “cacciatore” means cooked with tomatoes and various herbs.

  “Whew! That was close.” Al wiped off imaginary perspiration on her sleeve. “I better leave my mother a note. She’s dining with Stan again tonight.” Al rolled her eyes. “I think it’s serious.”

  “I’ve heard that one before,” I said. “Remember when you thought she was going to marry Ole Henry and go to Bermuda on her honeymoon?”

  “Yeah, well, I called that one wrong, all right,” Al admitted. “But there’s something about the way her voice goes all soft and cuddly when she says ‘Stan’ that makes me think this might be the real thing.”

  Al’s mother is loaded with sex appeal. For a woman her age, I mean. She must be at least forty. Maybe more. But I’ve noticed that whenever one of her beaux takes a walk, there’s another one standing in line. I wonder if my mother has sex appeal. If she and my father ever get divorced, would men line up to take her out? Well, they might take her, and even me, but one thing is sure: we’d have to drown Teddy.

  “Listen,” I said, “if her face goes all soft and cuddly over a name like Stan, it must be love.”

  “I didn’t say ‘face,’ dummy, I said voice. Do you realize if she gets married to Stan, I’d probably move away, probably to a mansion in the suburbs, and we wouldn’t be best friends, anymore? You and Polly would be best friends.”

  Before my very eyes, Al’s face grew long and doleful. “Of course,” she said, “I’d invite you to sleep over, meet my new friends, stuff like that, but it definitely wouldn’t be the same. As living down the hall, I mean.”

  Holy Toledo. Al’s mother hardly knows this Stan guy and already they’re moving to a mansion in the suburbs.

  “What’s eating you? One minute everything’s fine, and the next you’re all bent out of shape.”

  “Sorry,” Al said. “I’m uptight. Yesterday freaked me out.”

  “You’re probably going through the change of life,” I told her. “Thirteen is one thing, fourteen is another. Fourteen is practically sixteen, and we all know what that means. You’re a woman when you hit sixteen.”

  “Yeah,” Al agreed, “that’s it. My hormones are bent out of shape, too. You called it.”

  “Your mansion, the one you’re moving to, does it have a Jacuzzi?” I wanted to kid Al, make her laugh.

  “You got it, baby.” Al grinned at me. “And a hot tub. Hot tubs are very big in the ’burbs, I hear.”

  “Did you tell your mother? About yesterday?” I asked her.

  “Nope. Did you?” I shook my head. We don’t tell our mothers lots of things. We protect them from the facts of life.

  “Just give them what they want,” my mother is always telling me. “Just hand it over and they’ll leave you alone.” My mother is sometimes quite naive. But I don’t have any gold chains, or an expensive wristwatch, or any cash. I figure I’m pretty safe. I know enough not to walk down alleys or in bad neighborhoods. I know not to cut through Central Park, ever. Or to open the door to a guy dressed in a Santa Claus suit who says he’s selling Girl Scout cookies.

  Al and I have a lot of street smarts.

  But you know mothers.

  chapter 5

  The elevator had barely come to a stop before Polly flew out and hugged us both. For a skinny person loaded with bones, Polly is surprisingly strong. “Boy, am I glad to see you!” she cried. “I thought you’d never get here. Come on in.”

  Polly’s apartment smelled delicious, as always. We followed her into the kitchen and sat on high stools watching her grate and mince and chop. Polly could be on television, she really could. She can talk and cook at the same time. And that’s not easy. I tried it and I know. I almost took my thumb off.

  “We have the joint to ourselves,” Polly said. Her parents were at a diplomatic reception, and Evelyn, Polly’s sister, was in the Maine woods. “She’s doing research.” Polly sighed. “She’s in love with this handsome forest ranger, and she figures she better learn how to chop wood and build fires without matches, all that junk. She doesn’t even have a telephone up there. My father says that means she’s serious about the guy. My mother said she better watch out for bears. The Maine woods are loaded with bears, and they eat people if provoked. My father says forget the bears, he’s saving money hand over fist with Evelyn out of reach of a telephone.”

  We watched, silent with awe, as Polly diced a defenseless tomato.

  “How’s Thelma?” Al asked when Polly had finished dicing.

  “Thelma’s in a dither,” Polly said, throwing onions and peppers into a big pot. Thelma’s this really shallow person who’s friends with Polly. Al and I can’t figure out how a good, true-blue person like Polly can be friends with a shallow person like Thelma.

  “What’s she dithering about?” I said.

  “Well, her parents told her she can have either a new car or a nose job when she turns sixteen,” Polly said.

  Al and I looked at each other.

  “Which did she choose?” Al wanted to know.

  Polly finished browning some chicken legs, then turned down the heat and put a lid on the pot.

  “A nose job.”

  I laughed. For some reason this struck me as very funny. Al’s face was inscrutable.

  “What kind of a car did they have in mind?” Al finally said.

  Polly shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe a Chevvy. Nothing fancy.”

  “I never even noticed Thelma’s nose,” I said.

  “It’s not really gross. She can live with it, she says. She’s been living with it for almost thirteen years, right?” Polly said. “Thelma broke it when she was four, going the wrong way down a one-way street. She totaled her tricycle. They set it wrong, I guess. Anyway, it’s got this big bump. Thelma’s very self-conscious about her nose.

  “Besides,” Polly threw a pinch of salt into the pot, “Thelma wants to be a rock star. She figures a cute nose is very important to a rock star.”

  Al started choking, she was laughing so hard. I thumped her on the back. “Cool it,” I told her in a low voice. Thelma was Polly’s friend, after all.

  “Thelma a rock star?” Al said, sort of gurgling. “How come? She has a terrible voice.”

  “So what’s that got to do with being a rock star?” Polly said. “She plans on dying her hair bright red and wearing really outrageous clothes and makeup. Then she’ll go to a special school where they’ll teach her all the moves, what you do with your hands, all that stuff. Then you memorize some lyrics and practice like mad in front of the mirror, and if you get a good agent, he gets you a couple of spots and you get some publicity, like your picture in magazines and all, and you’re on your way.

  “Of course, all this is three years away, so it gives Thelma time to get her act together. She thinks her life is going to change when she gets her new nose. I told her to take it slow, but you know Thelma.”

  “Yeah,” Al said in a slow, wicked drawl.

  “Thelma’s father says he’ll spring for part but not all of the expense. A good plastic surgeon costs big bucks.” Polly went on. “So Thelma’s saving her allowance like mad. We went shopping the other day, and everything she fell in love with she didn’t buy. She tried on a sensational pair of pants but di
dn’t buy them; she’d tried on some shoes, she didn’t buy ’em; she even tried on a fake fur coat.”

  “Yeah, I bet she didn’t buy it, either, right?”

  “Hey, it’s Thelma’s nose, not mine,” Polly said. “Give me a break.”

  For some reason both Al and I started to tell Polly about the man who’d snatched Al’s money and the woman with the sign saying Please Help Me.

  “I chased him,” Al said, “but he got away.”

  “She wouldn’t let me look away,” I told Polly. “I thought she might be deaf and dumb, then she said something to me, only I couldn’t understand her.”

  “Oh, boy,” Polly said. “That sounds like something that might happen in Africa.” With a long-handled fork, she poked at the chicken and said it was done.

  We sat down and dug in. After a couple minutes of silence broken only by sounds of chewing, Al said, “This is the best.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Tell Polly about the headcheese,” I told Al.

  Al really knows how to tell a story. By the time she was halfway through, we were all practically rolling on the floor.

  “So I wanted to spit it out, but there wasn’t a waste-basket around, and I held it in my hand until we got outside. That’s the last time I’m eating any old free sample,” Al said.

  “Next time you come I’m fixing a headcheese soufflé,” Polly said, wiping her eyes. “How’s your mother doing, Al?”

  The smile dropped off Al’s face and bounced on the floor.

  “She’s fine, thanks, Polly,” Al said, dead serious, “but my name’s not Al any more.”

  “It’s not? What is it, then?” Nothing surprises Polly.

  “I can’t decide. Maybe Sandy. Or Alex. Or how about Zandra?”

  Polly said, “Why not stick with Al?”

  “I can’t exactly explain,” Al said, frowning down at her plate, “but I’m hitting fourteen next week, and I figure it’s time to have a more dignified name. One with more”—she looked over at me—“more pizzazz.”