Shoebag Returns (11 page)

Miss Rattray intervened. “Well, now, we have seen the prizewinners, so let us move along out of here.”

“But
where
is my daughter’s spider?” Mrs. Flower asked, and she called over her shoulder, “C. Cynthia Ann! Where is your prizewinner?”

“I think it escaped,” said Stanley Sweetsong.

Someone
had to answer Mrs. Flower. Her daughter was too taken with Gregor Samsa to care where her spider was. She stood at the back of the Science Room looking up at the spokesboy, while he beamed down at her.

“The Mexican blonde didn’t escape!” said Mr. Longo. “Someone took her! Someone put that Butterfinger there in her place.”

“If you ask me,” said Mrs. Lampert, “someone has a delightful sense of humor! I am so pleased I almost feel like making a contribution to this school!”

“Almost?”
the quick-eared Miss Rattray said. “Why almost?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want my money to go to more tanks for this room, unless,” and she giggled at the thought, “they were for more Butterfinger tanks.”

“Moi aussi,”
said Mrs. Flower, from whom C. Cynthia Ann had gotten her habit of slipping into French. “I would not want my beautiful daughter poring through more bug catalogs. She should be interested in important things like clothes and cosmetics. Not spiders, not my beautiful daughter!”

“Money is always needed,” said Miss Rattray wisely, “and its use is not necessarily restricted to acquiring more tanks for this room.”

Mrs. Lampert said, “I wish there were
no
tanks in this room. When I was a girl, we did not catch wild creatures and keep them locked in our schoolroom.”

“But this is now their home, Mrs. Lampert,” Miss Rattray said sweetly.

“They’d be better off in a zoo, Miss Rattray. Mr. Lampert and I contribute regularly to some excellent zoos.”

Miss Rattray’s ears perked up at the verb “contribute.” “All things are possible,” said she.

“But what
happened
to the Mexican blonde?” Mr. Longo said. “She was a very valuable spider.”

C. Cynthia Ann Flower couldn’t have cared less, anymore, about her expensive prizewinner.

She hooked her dainty little arm in Gregor Samsa’s long arm and said, “Let me show you the rest of the school.”

Miss Rattray nudged Stanley.
“You’re
his escort, dear. You are the one to show him the rest of the school.”

But when they looked behind them, Gregor and C. Cynthia Ann had disappeared.

The general said, “It seems the lovebirds have flown the coop, too.”

B
UTTER, SLEEPING RIGHT UNDER
Stanley Sweetsong’s desk, drawn by the strong scent of the tarantula, but fearful of her, too, opened one eye.

Cats do not like the sound of cockroach laughter.

Arachnid laughter was bad enough, and rare at that, but something about a roach giggle got on Butter’s nerves.

And something about a particular roach roaming around the premises puzzled Butter, for not only could he change into a human when it suited him, apparently he could rise from the dead, as well.

Or was this another roach up there in the plastic container?

Butter opened both eyes.

More laughter … and Butter was off his rump and in a crouch, creeping carefully toward the desk.

A leap, and he was right next to the plastic container.

There was Cook’s T-shirt with the faces of that old rock group on it!

Butter peered into the tank and saw the Mexican blonde stiffen as he brought up one paw, resting it on the piece of screen. Carefully, while the hairy spider dived behind the rock, Butter reached in. He fished the roach out and flipped him to the floor.

It was the same roach, all right, and Butter decided he should investigate him. Bite away the silk strings around his body. Maybe even taste him.

But a cat’s playfulness always comes before his curiosity, and now that Butter knew the creature was not dead, but only playing dead, Butter would bat him around a bit.

He pushed the screen back in place, for Butter was wary of the tarantula, wary of all those tanksters from the Science Room.

Butter jumped down, ready for a little hockey game, using his paw for a stick and the wrapped-up roach for a puck.

Cats could always find fun games to play.

W
ITH ONE LONG HAND
, its pointed nails beautifully manicured at the end of its long fingers, Miss Rattray plucked Stanley Sweetsong out of the procession leaving the Science Room.

“Don’t think I don’t know who put that Butterfinger in the tarantula’s tank!” she said.

“Why would I do such a thing, ma’am?” said Stanley.

“Butter
finger
, Butter
Club,” Miss Rattray answered. “I am not all that dense that I cannot make that connection, Sweetsong.”

“But only club members have keys to the Science Room, Miss Rattray.”

“And
you
never will have a key to that room, at the rate you’re going!” she told him.

Behind her, the general was waving his checkbook. “Miss Rattray? Let me leave something for you in my daughter’s name. We are off to Tennessee momentarily, but we are in a good mood … and all we need is a pen.”

“I have a pen,” Stanley said, reaching into his pocket.

“Don’t put it away after the general uses it,” Ethel Lampert’s mother called out. “I think I’ll make a small contribution myself. Ethel has never seemed happier. Is that secret club she belongs to a stamp club?”

“If it is a secret club,” Miss Rattray said, thinking fast, “probably its aims are secret, too.”

Under her breath, Miss Rattray told Stanley, “We have a lot to talk about, Sweetsong, and —”

Now Mrs. Flower interrupted, “I have an extra pen, Miss Rattray, and Mrs. Lampert can use it
aprés moi.
For I intend to write a check myself,
providing
my daughter is discouraged from hunting down creatures for those unpleasant tanks!”

“And providing these poor unfortunates in the tanks get good homes in a proper zoo!” Mrs. Lampert called out.

Seldom so flustered she could be sidetracked from a scolding, Miss Rattray did not finish her remarks to Stanley. Instead, she called out, “Check-writers may follow me to my office where there are ample pens … and also chairs to sit on.”

Then she turned back to Stanley. “You had better find Mr. Samsa, Sweetsong! After all, you
are
his escort.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Lucky for you,” she said, “that this day did not end in disaster. … Lucky for you that it had its benefits.”

“Lucky for the snake and the frog, too,” said Stanley.

“Lucky for Miss Rattray’s School for Girls,” Miss Rattray said, and sniffing, added, “and now … one boy.”

S
O THAT WAS AN
actor!

Josephine Jiminez sat in the Music Room where she had reigned as P and thought about Gregor Samsa.

She was not eager to join the crowd flocking after him en route to the Science Room. She was too nervous to witness the Butter Surprise, for as P she would be responsible if anything went wrong.

No one had really understood Gregor Samsa’s speech.

All the other speakers on Career Day had tried to make their jobs sound fascinating, but Samsa had shouted out “If you can give up theater, do it! Fast! Whatever you can give up, give it up! For it’s only what you can’t give up that will always work for you! Whether it’s playing a bass riddle, writing a play, loving someone, or studying to be a marine biologist, if you can’t give it up, you will just have to do it!”

During the question period, someone had asked him what he thought he would be, if he were not a star.

“A roach!” he’d answered. “A cockroach!”

There were gasps from the parents and giggles from the girls, and Miss Rattray had risen from her chair behind him on the podium and said, “Enough!” in the tone she used whenever she feared something was not going as planned.

Then as they’d all filed out of the auditorium, Josephine’s mother had said to her, “Gregor Samsa seems to think as you do, dear: that if you’re not important, you’re like a roach.”

“Gregor Samsa thinks like Dr. Dingle,” Josephine answered. But there was no point, anymore, in trying to explain that misunderstanding. Nothing Josephine could say would change anything now.

After she took one last, long, loving look around the Music Room, Josephine sighed and set off to finish her packing.

As she walked back to her room, for the last time wearing her secret yellow sock under her regulation white one, her yellow
WE’RE BUTTER
badge pinned behind the lapel of her royal blue blazer, an opening line popped into her head.

It was Monroe talking. Act I. Scene I.

MONROE:
“Bagg is your name?
Bagg?”

He was addressing the googly-eyed doll, Huntsville, one of the Cast of Characters who rarely spoke.

HUNTSVILLE:
Yes, Stuart Bagg. Here for the magical crowning of the Q of T.”

MONROE:
The Q of T? T has no Q!

Josephine decided she would call this new creation, “Magic Can Happen Anywhere — Even In Tennessee.”

She felt a slight lift to her walk as she climbed the stairs to the Lower School, and headed down the hall to her room. She was still concentrating on the play-in-progress for the Black Mask Theater when she came upon Butter, booting something about with one paw.

“What are you up to, Butter?”

The cat stopped, paw raised, eyes blinking.

Josephine bent down to see what it was.

The antennae were the only things the roach could move, for he was wrapped up like something left there by a spider.

“Give it up, Butter!” said Josephine. But remembering Gregor Samsa’s assembly speech, and knowing a cat could not abandon such a grand game, Josephine picked the roach up herself.

No sooner had she done that than who should appear from around the corner?

“A cat!” shouted Gregor Samsa. “Oh, no!”

“It’s only the kitchen cat,” said C. Cynthia Ann Flower. “It’s only Josephine Jiminez and the kitchen cat!”

Quickly, Gregor Samsa darted into Stanley Sweetsong’s room. “Oh, no!” he shouted again. “The roach is gone! The roach must have been eaten alive!”

“What is all this about roaches?” said C. Cynthia Ann Flower, testily.

“Oh, no. Oh, no!” cried the Great Breath spokesboy returning to the hall, holding his head with both hands. “The roach has been eaten alive!”

“Who
cares
about roaches?” C. Cynthia Ann Flower said.

“Roaches have been around for two hundred-fifty million years!” said Gregor Samsa. “Now one of them is dead.”

“Not,”
Josephine Jiminez said.

“Not?”
Gregor Samsa said.

“Look,” Josephine Jiminez said.

She opened her hand with the roach in her palm.

“Eeeeek!” C. Cynthia Ann Flower screeched.

“Hooray!” said Gregor Samsa. “May I have him?”

“Don’t hurt him,” Josephine Jiminez said.

“Don’t
touch
him!” C. Cynthia Ann Flower said.

But Gregor Samsa picked him up very gently.

“Put it down and step on it!” said C. Cynthia Ann.

“I don’t step on things,” Gregor Samsa said.

“I don’t step on things, either,” Josephine Jiminez told him.

“Now, let’s get this little guy undone,” said Gregor Samsa. “C. Cynthia Ann? You go on without me.”

“Will you write me?” she asked him.

“Not if you step on things,” he answered.

“I won’t. I never will again!”

“She will so,” said Josephine Jiminez.

“Only if it’s
you,”
said C. Cynthia Ann.

The famous spokesboy was not listening to the girls. He was holding the roach very close to his long, thin face, and he was singing to him. Some strange little song about parties in kitchens.

Definitely a weirdo, Josephine Jiminez decided.

C. Cynthia Ann Flower had her limits:
Mon Dieu!
Singing to a cockroach only proved Gregor Samsa’s point, made that afternoon in assembly.

If you can give it up, do.

She did.

She fled, head held high as Miss Rattray’s, feet moving as fast as Butter’s, who trotted beside her. Red Better sock in place.
WE’RE BETTER
button pinned on.

She had better things to do than listen to a boy sing to a cockroach … and better boys in her future than the spokesboy for a chewing gum, which Miss Rattray’s girls never chewed anyway.

I
’D LOVE TO CHEW
Great Breath with you! Gregor Samsa.

“Do you want it, Stanley?” Josephine Jiminez asked.

“He signed it for
you,”
said Stanley, who didn’t really want an autographed photograph of the Great Breath spokesboy.

“Gregor was nice,” she said. “Weird but kind.”

“Kind of weird.”

“Stars aren’t ever normal.” Josephine flinched after she said the word “normal,” so used to being sprayed by Dr. Dingle’s sneeze. “So maybe
I
have a chance to be a star myself, someday, of something.”

“Someday,” Stanley agreed. “Of something.”

They shifted around and looked away from each other.

“Well,” said Stanley, “you’ll be leaving now, hmmm?”

“Yes, off to the magic of Knoxville (known for coal, marble, aluminum sheeting, and textiles), Tennessee.” Josephine made a face.

Usually Stanley would grin at one of her cynical remarks, but smiling did not come easily at that moment.

It was hard to say good-bye.

“I really like your secret tarantularium,” she said. “The Mexican blonde should be very happy in there.”

“She’ll be going to Castle Sweet in a week to live with Weezer.”

“Will you tell all the Butters good-bye for me?”

“We’ll remember our P every time we meet. We’ll eat a Butterfinger in your memory.”

“Step on C. Cynthia Ann Flower’s toe once a month in assembly, in my memory,” said Josephine.

“I will. It’s the only thing I’ll ever step on.”

“And if you ever see Stuart Bagg again, tell him I’ll get over it, and I’ll get on with it.”