On the Blue Comet (21 page)

Claire spooned me some very warm beef soup. Eating it brought strength back to me. She gave me two aspirin with a glass of milk. I could see almost nothing in the dark room. “Where are we, Claire?” I asked her when the soup was done, fingering the tape up and down my small rib cage.

“We’re in a maid’s room in our apartment house. We’re on the third floor. Mummy and Daddy have a triplex. Nobody knows we’re here, except Lisl, the maid. She won’t talk because I gave her the Bonwit Teller gift certificate my granny gave me for Christmas. She’s got New Year’s Eve off. All the servants do. So no one’s up here.”

I did not ask Claire what a Bonwit Teller gift certificate was. “Your mother and father don’t know you’re home yet?” I asked. “Is the thirteen-state alarm still on for you?”

“Lisl told me it’s still on,” said Claire. “But we’re safe. The cops have searched the whole apartment three times. They’re standing downstairs in the lobby bored stiff. Mummy and Daddy are in the living room listening for the telephone to ring. We came up the servants’ stairway. It’s separate from the main lobby, so Bruno, the doorman, didn’t see us.” Claire took my soup bowl and spoon and set them on the floor.

“Who . . . who did this rib taping?” I asked.

“Oh,” said Claire airily, “I did. I got out the
Boy Scout Handbook
. I figured you might have cracked ribs, and so I got the tape from my brother’s Boy Scout kit and taped you up just the way the handbook says to do. Oscar,” she said suddenly. Something was glinting in her hand. “What’s this? I found it on a string around your neck with your religious medal when I taped you up.” Claire held out my dime on a string.

“It’s my dime on a string,” I said. “Mr. Applegate glued it on for me. We dropped it into the slot and ran the trains in the bank as much as we wanted.”

“Oscar,” she said cautiously as she handed the dime back to me, “this dime’s from 1931. It’s a genuine U.S. mint silver dime from five years into the future.”

I was not surprised. I looked at Claire quizzically.

“Oscar. Can you get up out of bed?”

“I think so.” Slowly I eased my aching body out from between the comfortable covers and pillows. The aspirin was helping. “What now?” I asked.

“Can you take this letter?” asked Claire. “Could you make it down the back stairway? It leads out the side door of the building. Then slip into the main lobby. Can you do that?”

“I think so, Claire. I’ll try.”

“Good! The cops are probably watching, but they won’t be looking for a six-year-old boy. They won’t even see you. Take this letter and put it in the mail-room basket at the back of the lobby.” Claire looked at her watch. “The building superintendent brings up the mail three times a day. His next run’s about ten minutes from now. Once you drop the letter off, disappear quickly, Oscar. Whatever you do, don’t call attention to yourself. Here’s twenty cents. Outside the building, go left. On the avenue is a Schrafft’s. Go in there.”

“What’s at Schrafft’s?” I asked.

“Chicken salad sandwiches for my granny and her pals who shop and have lunch. And the best ice cream in New York,” said Claire. “Sit at the counter and order a chocolate malted. And dawdle, Oscar. Take half an hour to drink it up. When you’re finished, walk around the block and keep your eyes peeled for police hanging around. If the cops have left, go back to Bruno, the doorman. Make sure there’s no policemen hanging around the lobby. Bruno should have a reply letter for you from Mummy and Daddy. Grab it. Make sure you’re not followed. Then come back the way you came.”

“Can I read what’s in your letter first?” I asked.

“Of course!” said Claire.

The envelope was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. Bister.

The letter had been written on Claire’s own stationery. The words were block letters in red pen, straight and crisp as if lettered with a ruler.

Claire gave me an old set of her brother’s clothing, and I put them on. They fit better than the Bullock’s clothes, which now hung on my peewee frame. I crept into the hallway and down the stairs. Every step felt like a kick from a mule.

There were three policemen, lollygagging around in the lobby. Claire was right about them not noticing me any more than they might have seen a fly buzzing by. I dropped her letter in a large wicker mail basket that stood in the middle of the mail room. The building was so swank that even the lobby smelled of melted butter and lilies.

Unseen, I glided out of the building, almost whistling, past Bruno, who was chatting with the police about the Dodgers’ chances in the coming baseball season. No one even looked up. I strolled two doors down and saw the big red and white sign,
SCHRAFFT’S
. I had never been to a restaurant and ordered by myself, even when I was eleven. Would they laugh at me or throw me out? I sat at the counter. It was not too different from the counter in Mr. Kinoshura’s drugstore, where Dad and I used to go for sodas together, except my feet didn’t touch the footrest on the stool. Brave as I could sound, I ordered a chocolate malted.

“You’re awfully young to be ordering in a restaurant, honey,” said the waitress a little doubtfully.

Would she call the police and turn me in somewhere? My forehead began to sweat at the thought. “My mother’s coming to meet me,” I explained. “She’s just doing some shopping and then she’s coming right along.”

The waitress brought my soda and set it down on a paper doily in front of me. “There you are! Now, sip it slowly,” she chirruped. Then she took my napkin and tucked it in under my chin for me.

“May I ask the time, ma’am?” I said politely.

“Of course!” said the waitress. She took off her wristwatch so I could see it. “Now, that’s the big hand and that’s the little hand. Do you know what the big hand and the little hand say?”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am?” I said.

“Can you count yet?” she asked with a smile. “Can you tell time?”

“Count? I can do long division and fractions,” I answered.

“But you can’t be more than five years old,” she said.

“Don’t call attention to yourself, Oscar!”
Claire’s warning came flooding back.

I put my twenty cents on the counter, hoping to distract the waitress. She brought me five cents in change. “One, two, three, four, five pennies!” she said merrily.

“Keep the change, ma’am,” I mumbled.

But the waitress looked at me even more curiously than before and slyly checked the door to see if my mother was coming in for me.

Happily for me, church bells down the block tolled the half hour. Outside, on Park Avenue, two police car sirens went off. The patrol cars sped past Schrafft’s big front window on their way downtown. Their sirens faded in the noise of the traffic outside. I squirmed off my counter seat and sidled out the door before the waitress could ask me any more questions about my mother.

I ambled casually past the entrance of Claire’s building. No cops in sight. I checked across the street, peering into corner phone booths and parked cars. No cops. I cleared the whole of the block and then moseyed into the lobby of the building. There were no cops anywhere, allowing me to trot right up to Bruno. “Letter for Miss Claire Bister, please,” I said.

Bruno seemed to go into shock. “But you’re only a —”

I snatched the letter out of his hand and scooted back out through the revolving glass door before he could say anything more. Then I disappeared into the side entrance, where the servants’ stairway let out. No one had followed me. I bolted up the steps as fast as my aching ribs would let me.

I collapsed onto the bed. “I’m not moving again today,” I groaned.

Claire opened the letter. “Aha!” she said. “I knew they’d sign! I won! They agreed to everything! Oscar, I’m going downstairs now. If you want to hear what happens, go to the laundry chute outside in the hall, open it up, and listen!”

I heard very little except the echo of the laundry chute itself for a few minutes. Suddenly a woman’s voice shrieked. Claire’s mother, no question about it. A man’s deep baritone, her father, started hallooing and hooting and slapping something that sounded like leather. They all started singing, “For she’s a jolly good fellow!” There was great happiness on Claire’s arrival, that was certain. Claire’s family might be a little slow on the uptake about their daughter, but they didn’t sound like totally bad parents to me.

“Where were you, darling?” asked her mother over and over again when the dust had settled.

“Out and about!” said Claire. “Here and there!”

“Were you abducted?” asked her father sternly. “Were you kidnapped?”

“No,” said Claire. “I never actually left the apartment.”

Her mother managed a laugh like bells tinkling. “Darling,” she said, “you can have any Christmas present you want, and we’ll never send you to boarding school. You can go right here in town to Brearley School! Or The Spence School! Any school you want!”

Mrs. Bister’s trilling voice sounded eerily like Mrs. Pettishanks. It was an accent. Actors and actresses used that English-y accent in the movies, too.

“I want to go to plain old public school,” said Claire. “P.S. 6. It’s perfectly good.”

Mr. and Mrs. Bister met this request with silence. I reckoned they would never spring for public school, but they would also not argue about it now. And they wouldn’t talk about the coming-out party either, since it was seven years off. They’d hope Claire would change. I knew she wouldn’t.

Someone brought food in to Claire. I could hear the clink of silver and glassware.

“After lunch,” Claire said, “I’d like to go over to FAO Schwarz if it’s okay with you.”

“Anything you want, darling,” her father chimed in. “We’ll go together! Name it. You can have three train sets! Just don’t disappear on us again.”

“Thank God the police are gone, dear,” said Claire’s mother clearly to Claire’s father. “Their uniforms smelled like donkeys! We should write the police department and tell them to provide showers for their officers and send those uniforms to the dry cleaners.”

“You sound like a socialist, dear!” teased Mr. Bister good-naturedly.

What was a socialist? I think I remembered that Aunt Carmen had used the word to describe darkly clad people who didn’t go to church and met in basements to overthrow the government.

As the Bisters’ lunch progressed, I lost interest in their chatter and went back to bed. I fell back against my pillows gratefully. I was happy for Claire. She was going to get her train at last. But my heart was as cold as a stone inside me. How would I ever get back to Cairo? Would I ever see my dad again and hear his gravelly, comforting laugh? Would I ever cook him dinner again or watch him light up one of his cigars? I drew the pillow over my head and said ten Hail Marys for deliverance, but if anyone in heaven heard them, they were lost in the shuffle.

It was then that the telephone downstairs began to ring.

It rang and rang and no one answered. Did that mean the house was empty? Wouldn’t a stray servant answer it? It was New Year’s Eve afternoon. Claire said the servants had the day off.

Twelve unanswered rings. A sneaky voice inside me nibbled like a mouse. It whispered, “Oscar, how about calling your dad on the Bisters’ telephone! It’s New Year’s Eve, and he’s probably home.” I stopped myself.
Don’t trouble trouble, Oscar!
I warned myself. But I didn’t listen. Our Cairo telephone number was stitched into my heart.

My ribs, too, screamed at me to stay put. Nonetheless I got up and crept into the hallway. Not a sound greeted me. The entrance through the servants’ quarters to the apartment down below was in front of me. I went through the doorway.

Better not risk it,
I argued with myself as I slid snakelike, one bare foot after another, down the stairs to the main rooms of the Bisters’ apartment.

Like fingers, my toes grasped the carpet beneath. I could have heard a feather flutter to the floor, the house was so quiet. Supposing I ran into Claire’s brother? Was he hanging around somewhere? I didn’t want to think about him.

Careful, Oscar
.
Still plenty of time to turn around and go back to bed! Go back where it’s safe! Do it now!
I instructed myself in an inner yell. But again I did not listen to a word I said. The possibility of my dad’s “Hello!” along the telephone wires was too great a pull.