Eyes in the Fishbowl (2 page)

“Sure,” I said, “me and Mr. America. As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of going into business. Like—
EYES GLADDENED. TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!
It ought to beat shining shoes.” I usually do all right wising-off around adults. It’s only around kids my own age that I get tongue-tied.

Madame Stregovitch just narrowed her eyes and nodded slowly. She always appreciated a joke that way. We talked for a few minutes more about various things and, when I started saying I’d better go, she got something out from under the counter and gave it to me.

When I first knew Madame, she used to work in Alcott’s Sweet Shop, and we got in the habit of her always keeping something for me under the counter. In those days it was usually a piece of fudge or a gum-drop. But this time it looked like a few pages from a newspaper. “It is for your collection,” she said. “I’ve been saving it for you since before Christmas.”

I thanked her and started to unfold the paper, but just about then I caught a glimpse of a familiar face. It was one of the store detectives, a musclebound character named Rogers. He was always cruising around the store looking as neat and chummy as a penguin, but I’d discovered a long time before that he could lose his Alcott-Simpson manner in a hurry, when he was sure nobody important was looking. A couple of times when I was younger he’d escorted me out through one of the storerooms and sort of bounced me off a few walls along the way. I wasn’t really afraid of him. I had learned not to allow myself to be taken out through a storeroom, without putting up a fuss—a fuss is something that all of Priestly’s henchmen were trained to avoid at all costs. But Rogers was looking particularly determined, and I wasn’t in the mood for an argument. So I nodded to Madame, tucked the paper into my pocket and started for the door.

But Rogers had a head start on me and he was coming as fast as humanly possible for someone who was supposed to pretend to be just another shopper. He was already past the escalator and shopping up a storm right through the middle of the Knit Shop, I saw right away that he was going to cut me off unless I broke into a run, and of course I wasn’t about to do that. Alcott-Simpson’s is the kind of place where no one would think of running unless his life depended on it; and personally, I probably wouldn’t run if it did—because of my crummy limp. I’d just about resigned myself to an unpleasant discussion—at the very least—with old Rogers, when all of a sudden I realized he was after somebody else.

It was a girl. When I first saw her, she was looking back over her shoulder at Rogers and I couldn’t see her face; but from what I could see, she was a typical Alcott customer. At least she was dressed like one. She was wearing high narrow boots, a kind of sleeveless thing of orangish suede and a cashmere sweater; all very latest fashion and expensive-looking. Her hair was long and straight and very black.

I’d hardly had time to wonder why on earth Rogers should be after her when she brushed past me in the aisle, so close I could have reached out and touched her—and I noticed something that really gave me a jolt. She was wearing the sweater just hanging over her shoulders, and on the empty sleeve there was a cardboard tag. It was an Alcott-Simpson price tag!

That could only mean one thing—and it was right then that I remembered the rumor I’d heard a few days before. José, at the flower stand, had told me that he’d heard from one of the Alcott janitors that there was a bunch of plainclothesmen hanging around the store, and that there was talk about some kind of gang of thieves and vandals.

As the girl turned the corner at the end of the next counter, she looked back at Rogers again, and I got my first real look at her face. It wasn’t at all what I expected. I can’t exactly explain why it was a shock, but it was. Actually, I don’t know what kind of face I expected on a shoplifter, but I knew right away that this wasn’t it.

She was quite young, for one thing. Maybe about my age, or even younger. And her skin was dark—not darker than a beach tan, maybe, but with a different shade to it, like a shadow of purple under the brown. But most of all I noticed her eyes. They were very big and dark—black, but clear and deep—like the night must be to a cat. For just a second she looked right at me and smiled like she thought the whole thing was a joke, and then she hurried on.

On the other side of Hosiery she turned quickly to the left, and I almost yelled at her to go the other way. If she had turned to the right, she just might have made it to the Palm Street entrance in time; but the way she was headed, she was walking right into a trap. Behind the hosiery counter there was only a short corridor that led to some storerooms, and the doors were always kept locked.

But I didn’t yell, and the girl disappeared into the corridor and a few seconds later Rogers followed. I knew he had her then, and I could just imagine the smug look on his slick face. But the girl was obviously a thief all right, and that was her problem. There was no reason for me to get involved. I had plenty of troubles of my own. I told myself that the thing for me to do was to turn around and cut out, while Rogers was occupied. But I didn’t, and when I reached the end of the hosiery counter, I met the great detective on his way back—all by himself. Behind him the short corridor was empty. The girl seemed to have completely disappeared.

It occurred to me that maybe one of the storeroom doors had been unlocked after all. But that didn’t explain why Rogers came back so quickly, or the look on his face. I got a good look at him as he came back past me, without even glancing my way. His eyes were wide open but without any focus, like a sleepwalker looking at his dream.

Out on the sidewalk the wind was colder than ever and full of freezing mist. As soon as I picked up my stuff from José, I turned up the collar of my jacket and headed south towards Cathedral Street. I kept thinking about the girl on the way home.

O
UR HOUSE IS AN
old Victorian brownshingle in the Cathedral Street district. Matt Ralston, who studies sociology and lives in our attic, says the whole district is in what is called a “changing neighborhood,” but I don’t know what that means, because what neighborhood isn’t? I mean, as long as there’s people in it? But as far as our street is concerned, the change seems to be towards more kids on the sidewalks and less paint on the houses. And our house is no exception.

It must have been quite the thing when my dad’s family built it, but it’s pretty beat up now, and getting worse all the time. It has so many missing or crooked shingles that it looks like a moulting chicken, and the yard is bare except for clumps of mangy grass and broken toys and an iron pole with a sign that says James Music School—Second Floor. The toys belong to the Grovers who live on the first floor, and James is my father.

My dad is Arnold Valentine James, music teacher and neighborhood philosopher, known as Val to his many friends and students. He is also sometimes known as Prince Val. The “Prince” is as in “he’s a Prince of a guy.” He is also the world’s worst business man and the most famous soft touch in this part of town. He really is a great music teacher, but he doesn’t charge enough to make people think he’s any good, and half the time he doesn’t collect even what he does charge. He’s always letting people give him some worthless piece of junk instead of money. As a matter of fact, when I was younger, I used to wonder sometimes if that was how he got me. I couldn’t remember my mother and I’d never heard much about her, so it occurred to me that maybe somebody with kids to spare got a little behind on his lesson payments and talked my dad into a trade. It wouldn’t be the first time he got the worst of a deal.

Anyway, Dad and I live on only the second floor of the old house, now. The downstairs is rented to this family with three noisy little kids, and three university students live in the attic. The Grovers pay their rent most of the time, but the college guys only paid for four months last year; and so far this year they’re still working on November—on the installment plan. Anybody but my dad would have kicked them all out a long time ago.

And besides not paying their rent, the whole bunch of them, at least the students and the kids, spend half their time in our apartment. The students come down to get away from the cold—there’s not much heat in the attic; and the kids come up to get away from their mother who is the nervous type.

That day, the first day I saw Sara, was typical. When I got home, there were seven people, two cats and a dog cluttering up our apartment. My dad and Matt, the sociology student, were playing chess on the kitchen table. Phil and Duncan, the other two so-called collegians, were sitting in front of the fireplace playing a banjo and a guitar; two of the Grover kids were tearing around shooting each other with cap pistols; and in the studio somebody was trying to play a march on the piano. Tiger, the Grover’s mutt, was leaning against the kitchen door and whining because somebody had just fed our cats, Prudence and Charity, and they wouldn’t let him have any. Everybody was suspiciously glad to see me.

“Dion! Welcome home.”

“Here’s Dion.”

“It’s Dion.”

“Hey look. It’s the teen-age tycoon of Palm Street.”

I looked around and just as I thought—even though it was almost six o’clock, there wasn’t a sign of anything to eat around the place; unless you wanted to count the cat food. That probably meant it was up to me if there was going to be any dinner.

“Look Dad,” I said, “I thought you were going to collect from the Clements for sure, today.”

“I tried, Dion. I went over there. But they’ve had a lot of illness—”

I slammed out of the room without waiting to hear the rest. It was a very old story. Every now and then towards the end of the month, I had to chip in with some of my money to buy stuff for dinner—or else go hungry. I didn’t mind so much for Dad and me, but when it included everybody in the neighborhood who happened to be broke, it burned me up. Strictly speaking, it was usually just one or more of the guys from upstairs—but not always. My Dad would invite a perfect stranger with six inch fangs and three eyes up for dinner if he found him on the corner looking like he needed a square meal.

Out in the hall I let off a little steam by chasing the Grover kids and Tiger downstairs. The noise level went down several decibels right away. The kid in the studio kept forgetting to flat the same note. It was enough to drive you out of your skull, so I went in and chased him home, too. He wasn’t there for a lesson anyway. My dad lets several neighborhood kids who don’t have their own pianos at home come over to practice whenever they feel like it. Prudence and Charity weren’t making any noise, but they’d finished their cat food so I threw them out, too—just for a finishing touch. By then I was feeling better so I went back into the kitchen.

“Look, Di,” Matt said. (If you can picture Abraham Lincoln with a curly blond beard, you’ve got Matt to a T.) “We have some spaghetti and a fairly youthful head of lettuce upstairs. If you could chip in enough for some odds and ends for a meat sauce, etcetera, we’d be in business. And I’ll finance a real feast next week when my check comes.”

“Sure you will,” I said. “If you don’t find some girl to spend it on first.”

“Not a chance. I’ve reformed.” He grinned at me coaxingly. “I’ll shop, and we’ll make Phil and Dunc do the dirty work.”

I weakened. I was tired and hungry, and Phil really was a good cook. So I handed over a couple of dollars and went in my room to rest and wait for dinner. I kicked off my shoes and flopped down on the bed. My room is way at the back of our floor. It’s little and dark, but I keep it sort of neat and peaceful looking, and no one ever goes in there but me. I’d been saving money for over a year to buy a Danish modern desk like one I saw at Alcott-Simpson’s, but I still needed about thirty dollars. It was an executive type desk, big and solid looking, and long enough to fill up all one end of my room. I’d spent a lot of time lying there picturing how great it would look, right at the end of my bed—big and smooth and shiny; and I couldn’t help thinking that it might already be there if I didn’t have to feed so many scrounging renters.

But thinking of Alcott-Simpson’s reminded me of Rogers and the girl, and I went over that whole thing again. But no matter how I looked at it, it just didn’t make much sense. About the only explanation I could come up with was that the girl had unlocked the storeroom door earlier, or else someone did it for her. But even that didn’t explain why Rogers didn’t go on into the storeroom after her. Finally, I’d gone over it so much that I was beginning to think in circles, so I decided to think about something else. That was when I remembered about the papers that Madame Stregovitch had given me.

It was a few pages from the magazine section of the Sunday
Times,
with an article about Alcott-Simpson’s. A long time ago I’d started a scrapbook about the store, and of course I’d told Madame about it. Actually it had been quite a while since I’d added anything to the book, but since Madame had gone to the trouble to save it for me, I decided to tape it in. So I got the book out of my closet and opened it to the first empty page.

It was one of those five-and-dime store scrapbooks with the picture of a collie dog’s head stamped on the front. Inside, there were no pictures on the first page—only some big careful printing that said:
ALCOTT-SIMPSON’S THE GREATEST STORE ON EARTH
—by Dion James. It was pretty stupid and childish, but I’d started it when I was only eight. After the fancy title page there were dozens of pages of pictures—some with corny comments written under them in green ink. They were mostly newspaper pictures, like a spread the
Times
did when Alcott’s opened the remodeled mezzanine; plus some advertisements that I happened to think were particularly interesting. There was a magazine story that came out when the store had a big fiftieth anniversary and some nice slicks of display windows that Madame got for me from the art department. It was all put together very carefully and neatly and I could remember how much time I used to spend working on it or just looking over the pictures.