Shoebag (8 page)

He gave Shoebag a long look, so long that Shoebag saw in the mirrored glasses the tiny black hairs on all six of his own legs, and his cerci.

“That means we were both born in warm, snug places,” Shoebag said.

“And it is why we cannot step on things, too. We are neither of this world nor of that. But I plan to be in one place all the time, as soon as I decide which one.”

He removed his arm from Shoebag’s shoulder, reached into his pocket and took out his Sony Watchman. “I watch the soaps in the afternoon,” he said. “Do you mind?”

“Go right ahead.”

“I cannot be without my TV, Shoebag. Do you know why?”

“Because you have your own little Watchman?”

“No, it’s because I’m star struck. It’s because I think there is no business like show business … or I did think that until a moment ago. Now I can see I may have to change my plans. Now I can see that even with practice I could not be that selfish or that heartless.”

“But you are going to star in the school play, aren’t you?”

“It may well be my last performance.”

Shoebag felt sorry for his only real pal, because he sounded so downcast. Shoebag wanted to ask him more about when he was not Gregor Samsa, about when he was back and when he was there, and where exactly he was called In Bed. But first, Shoebag wanted to thank Gregor for saving him from Tuffy Buck again, and that was what Shoebag did.

Then Shoebag added, “You’re lucky, too. You only have to look at him to make him stop being a bully. You never have to fight him.”

“It’s a good thing I don’t. Our kind do not excel in fighting. We are a peaceable lot, satisfied with warm, dark places and our crumbs.”

“You
are
lucky!” Shoebag said. “If Tuffy Buck knew you could not fight, he’d beat you up, too.”

“It isn’t luck I have. It’s these glasses. People never see what their faces look like when they are being mean or petty. I come along when they are, and so they do. They can’t believe they are seeing themselves. What they see stops them in their tracks.

“I should get glasses like that,” said Shoebag.

“Only if you go back and forth and here and there,” Gregor told him. “Dark glasses help your eyes adjust.”

“When I go back, when I go there, I am still a little person,” Shoebag told him.

“You must have dreamed very hard of being bigger.”

“I did dream of being bigger.”

“And something must have awakened you in the middle of that dream.”

“The seven-legged, black jumping spider was letting down his dragline, right in the middle of my dream.”

“Aha!” said Gregor. “You were not given the formula for going back. That comes at the end of the dream.”

“And you? Were you given the formula?”

Gregor shook his head. “Do not ask me for it, though, even though I am your only real pal. If I tell it to you, it loses its power for me.”

Gregor was playing with the Watchman, channel-hopping as they ambled through the park.

“I would give anything to see my old familiar self again,” said Shoebag, “somewhere besides in mirrors.”

“Maybe you will. You’ll see. You’ll see.”

“What will I see, Gregor? The Persian cat staring at me with her jaws moving,
drooling?
Because she knows something, Mildred does. She is not fooled.”

“You’ll see. You’ll see,” said Gregor Samsa.

“What will I see? Tuffy Buck waiting for me tomorrow in the cloakroom? My own father complaining that I am too dirty to bear? Let me tell you, Gregor, let me tell you, In Bed, my life is not easy. There is the black jumping spider to worry about, too, and—” Shoebag stopped in mid-sentence, for suddenly he realized that he was walking through Beacon Hill Park talking to himself.

His only real pal had vanished.

M
RS. BIDDLE COOKED A
roast chicken for dinner that night, telling Shoebag that it was Pretty Soft’s favorite meal.

While Shoebag set the table, he watched Mrs. Biddle taste the potatoes as she mashed them, and he thought of how Drainboard loved potatoes that way, particularly ones left in the pan and crusted over.

Stopping in the park had made him late getting home from school, so he had not seen his family that day.

“Tonight is a special occasion,” said Mrs. Biddle, popping a spoonful of lima beans into her mouth. “We always celebrate the night before Pretty Soft goes to the television studio to make a new commercial. That makes her wake up happy, and when she is happy she looks her best.”

“When will she have enough money saved so she doesn’t have to work anymore?” Shoebag asked.

“She likes to work, Stuart, and college is very expensive. Every year it costs more money to go to college. My parents never had enough money to send me.”

“I guess I won’t go, either,” said Shoebag.

“Oh, there are always ways to get there if you’re determined to go. Pretty Soft’s just lucky she won’t have to worry about all that.”

“I will have to worry, I guess,” said Shoebag.

“What you have to worry about right now is how to stay out of fights, and after dinner Mr. Biddle will help you.”

When Pretty Soft came down to eat, she had adhesive tape near her mouth and near her eyes.

“How did
you
hurt
your
face?” Shoebag said, surprised.

Mr. Biddle said, “She didn’t get hurt. She’s just delighted about tomorrow, so she has to be careful not to smile too hard and leave lines.”

“A big long white limousine is picking Mildred and me up tomorrow morning at seven-thirty, Stuart Bagg,” said Pretty Soft as she helped herself to chicken with mashed potatoes and lima beans. “Madam Grande de la Grande will go to the studio with us and drill me in spelling, while I sit on the set waiting for them to shoot my commercial.”

“She is wearing her new red-and-white polka dot dress,” said Mrs. Biddle.

“They take an hour to put on her makeup,” Mr. Biddle said.

“I have a director’s chair with my name on it,” said Pretty Soft, “and Mildred has a cat case with hers on it.” She smiled across at Shoebag, then said, “Ouch! I’ve got to stop smiling this way. I just get so excited the night before a shoot!”

“She always has trouble getting to sleep on these nights, too,” said Mrs. Biddle, “so you must be very quiet tonight, Stuart.”

“I have lines to learn,” Pretty Soft said. “I have to say to Mildred, ‘Purrfection! That’s Pretty Soft! The purrfect toilet tissue!’”

“You’ve already learned your lines then,” said Mr. Biddle.

“But I say them over and over the night before,” said Pretty Soft. “It is a star’s responsibility to uncover the innermost secrets of the heart, and put them on display for all to see and applaud.”

While Shoebag waited for the house to become quiet, so he could sneak down to visit his family, he wrote in his journal.

Mr. Biddle taught me some judo, to defend myself. “When anyone makes a grab for you,” he said, “instead of ducking back, go forward to meet him.” And he showed me a secret move to do. I am very homesick and wish I could go back and wish I could be there and wish I was me again.

The rain began just after the eleven o’clock news, when all the lights were off and everyone was in their bedrooms.

As Shoebag went downstairs, he could hear the distant thunder, and see the lightning through a window.

Drainboard always said nights like this were bad for late night picnics. People often got up to close windows, and to tell little children not to be afraid. Lights were turned on suddenly and bad storms made people too alert and active.

Was that why no one seemed to be around when Shoebag called out to them?

He felt his way in the dark, then stopped when he came to the kitchen stool.

He listened.

Since the Zap man had been there that day, Shoebag knew that all of roachdom was walking carefully to avoid cracks and crevices where the insecticide had been sprayed.

Very faintly he could hear a rustling and a murmur. Then what any roach most dreaded hearing, he heard: The Cockroach Prayer for The Dead.

“Go to a better life. Amen.”

It was Under The Toaster’s voice.

“Papa? Papa? It’s me. Your son, Shoebag. Who died?”

“You dare to come to this memorial service?” said Under The Toaster. “You who would do nothing about the jumping spider? And now he has killed your little brother Coffee Cup.”

“I hardly knew Coffee Cup. I only saw his two back legs once in my life, but I am terribly sorry, Papa.”

“That’s not all. Right this moment, rolled up in the dragline, way way up on the electric clock, is your mother! She is being saved for the jumping spider’s breakfast!”

“I’ll rescue her!” Shoebag cried out.

“Watch that hot breath of yours!” his father told him. “I am only a few feet away from you! How are you going to rescue her without a ladder?”

“I’ll find a ladder!” Shoebag said, and an enormous roll of thunder shook the house.

“P
URRFECTION! THAT’S PRETTY SOFT
! the purrfect toilet tissue!”

Pretty Soft said her lines over and over to herself.

Mildred was under the bed. She would probably never come out now that it was thundering. Pretty Soft had hoped to get some practice in, holding her at the right camera angle, but Mildred never cooperated, anyway, until the TV producer got the dope inside her. Then Mildred went limp, and you could do almost anything with her.

Pretty Soft did not mind the storm, but there was something she did mind late that night.

She could not forget what Gregor Samsa had said to her. Sometimes as she was practicing her part, the wrong words came to her head: words she should have spoken to him.

“If I was so selfish, would I be working my way through college?”

She should have said that.

Or she should have said, “If I didn’t have a heart, how could I sell toilet paper to all of America?”

“Maybe
you
can’t see anything in my face,” she should have said, “but viewers can, or I wouldn’t be a famous TV spokesgirl!”

Pretty Soft tried to put him out of her mind, but it was hard for her to put someone out of her mind who had mirrors for eyes. She decided to concentrate until all thoughts of him were gone.

“Purrrrfection!” she said again, aloud, “That’s Pretty Soft! The purrrfect—”

Shoebag came running into her room without knocking.

“Go back outside and knock!” she told him.

“There isn’t time! I need a ladder!”

“What is the matter with you, Shoebag? What if I’d been asleep, and you’d interrupted my beauty rest?”

“Pretty Soft, please! I need a ladder. The jumping spider has captured a roach and taken it up into the electric clock!”

“He probably wants it for his breakfast tomorrow,” said Pretty Soft.

“But I must rescue it! I must capture it alive, to take to my science class tomorrow!”

“Madam Grande de la Grande would never let
me
study roaches,” said Pretty Soft. “In
my
science lessons, I study caterpillars that turn into beautiful butterflies.”

Now lightning danced across the sky through Pretty Soft’s window, and Mildred darted out from under the bed.

“There’s no time for conversation!” said Shoebag. “What is Mildred doing loose?”

“I always keep her with me the night before we make a commercial. Otherwise, she hides in the morning, the moment I get her cat case out.”

“Will you please, please help me find a ladder? What if the jumping spider gets hungry and eats the roach for a late night picnic?” Shoebag was wringing his hands and pacing up and down the room in his pajamas and robe.

Pretty Soft sat up straighter in her big pink bed.

“Is Gregor Samsa in your science class?”

“Of course he is!”

“Then I will get you the ladder if you promise one thing.”

“Anything!” Shoebag was close to tears. Pretty Soft had never felt that intense about any of her science assignments.

“Promise me that you will tell Gregor Samsa I got the ladder for you.”

“I promise you!” Shoebag said.

“Not many people would get out of bed in the middle of the night to do this,” said Pretty Soft. “Only someone who is very unselfish would!”

“You are right, Pretty Soft! It is very unselfish of you!”

“Thank you, Shoebag,” Pretty Soft said. “Fetch me my robe over there on the chaise.”

Down the stairs they went, with Mildred racing ahead of them.

“Why can’t that cat stay back up in your room?” Shoebag said.

“Maybe she wants the jumping spider for her own late night picnic.”

“If I told Gregor that you killed it for her, he would think that was unselfish, too,” panted Shoe-bag, out-of-breath from running and from panic.

“He would know I was not heartless, too, if I would kill for Mildred.”

“But how would you ever kill it?” Shoebag shouted over his shoulder as he hurried along.

“Easily! With a flyswatter!” said Pretty Soft. “There’s one on a hook in the closet, right behind the ladder.”

“Make sure you don’t hurt the roach!”

“I’ll go up on the ladder myself,” said Pretty Soft. “I’ll hand you down the roach, and then you pass the swatter up to me.”

“You are a real pal, Pretty Soft!”

“Remember to tell Gregor that he is not your only pal, and that I am not selfish and heartless.”

“Oh, I will, Pretty Soft, I definitely will!”

Shoebag helped Pretty Soft drag the ladder from the closet, across the floor, to the sink. The electric clock was directly above the sink.

“Go sit in the corner, Mildred!” Shoebag hollered at the cat, who was nipping at his ankles.

“Shhh! You’ll wake up Mom and Dad,” Pretty Soft cautioned Shoebag, “and there is no sense telling Mildred to do anything. Cats do as they please!”

Mildred was sitting on the floor staring at Shoebag, her nose twitching.

“Hold the ladder firmly!” said Pretty Soft. “Once I did a commercial on a ladder. I was handing down rolls of toilet paper from a closet and I was saying”

“Never mind all that now!” Shoebag said. “I am too nervous.”

Pretty Soft went up the rungs slowly, singing her favorite song softly, under her breath, “Six hundred sheets a roll and soft as any kitty.”