Shoebag Returns (7 page)

“Continue, please, Josephine.”

“I’m thinking, Doctor.”

Josephine would have to cope with club problems herself.

On her own, she would have to deal with the fact that it would be very hard to be both the president of the Butters
and
the director, producer, and lead playwright of the Black Mask Theater.

A lot would be expected of her!

“If
I
were a cockroach,” Dr. Dingle was pleased as punch with his new insight, “I would want to be
anything
but a cockroach!”

Josephine’s hands went from behind her head down to the pockets of her blazer. Had she kept the receipt for the new box of Butterfingers? Stanley had said there would be dues, so that she would be paid back for all that she was spending on the candy. She would have to decide the amount and collect it from the members.

She had so much responsibility in her new situation.

“Well, what about it, Josephine?” the doctor said. “Isn’t that how a cockroach thinks?”

“I suppose,” Josephine answered, though she had lost the gist of the conversation by then.

“Finally!” said Dr. Dingle. “Now we’re getting somewhere! Someday, if we continue to progress, you may forget all about your dolls. Or if you must have dolls, you might give them dolly names like Barbie, Suzy, or Betty Lou.”

“My parents gave me those dolls,” said Josephine. “Every time we got transferred to a new post, I got one. I got Monroe when we moved to Fort Monroe. I got one when we moved to Alexandria, Virginia. I got one when we moved to Fort Sam Houston, and when we moved to Washington, DC. And when we moved to Arlington, Virginia; Heidelberg, Germany; Huntsville, Alabama, and Seoul, Korea. That’s how they got their names.”

But Dr. Dingle was eyeing the clock, then shuffling papers as he always did at the end of a session.

“Time is up!” he called out. “Never mind your dolls, Josephine. Next session we’ll talk more about why you feel like a cockroach!”

T
HERE WAS NOTHING AS
exhausting as a session with a shrink!

Shoebag longed to head for Josephine Jiminez’s room, where he could curl up for a brief nap in the ear of Monroe, the masked Kewpie doll.

But first, he must stop by the Macintosh, for a brief game of hide-and-seek with Radio and Garbage Pail.

As concerned as he was about his human friends, he was not one to forget his roach family.

His human clothes were hidden in the Changing Room. That night after dark, he would become Bagg again. He would meet with Stanley, and tell him Josephine had not told the shrink anything about the underground Butters.

Trudging past the Music Room, he saw the Butters heading in for their first meeting. And he saw Butter, the cat, sprawled on the piano top, licking his paws contentedly.

But as he went down the steps leading to the kitchen, his antennae lifted, and his cerci shuddered.

There was something in the air: something familiar and foul.

He could hear Cook telling someone, “Don’t get that stuff in my kitchen! Hear me?”

A man’s voice answered her, “Just tell me where the roaches were.”

“I told you!” Cook was in her usual bad mood. “They were in the computer, but the computer is gone!”

Gone? With his entire family inside?

Shoebag’s reflexes quickened with the panic he felt throbbing under his shell.

Not only was his family gone, but in an instant he knew the source of the foul odor.

It was Zap! Cooks’s conversation was with the Zap man, the much feared world-class fumigator.

ZAP ZAPS COCKROACHES DEAD!

ZAP … FOR THINGS THAT DON’T DESERVE TO LIVE!

Shoebag would never forget those heartless slogans.

As fast as his six legs could carry him, he fled under the door of the Changing Room.

He must try to become Bagg again, only suddenly Shoebag felt himself falter. His tiny legs collapsed under him. He struggled for breath. With great effort he dragged himself back under the door to the hall.

“Just do that little room where the computer was!” Cook was shouting at the Zap man.

“I
did
the little room!”

“What you did was the Changing Room!” the cook answered.

Shoebag fastened himself against the light socket near the hall floor. He fell off it immediately, dizzy from the poisonous dose of Zap he had been exposed to in the Changing Room.

Shell-side down, legs up, he struggled for the strength to flip over, and flee.

“Close the kitchen door, Cook!” the Zap man called out. “I’m getting ready to zap the varmints!”

“I just step on them!” Shoebag heard Cook say, and he wiggled his antennae weakly, in protest.

I
T HAD BEEN TEN
days since Stanley Sweetsong had seen Bagg. Sometimes he wondered if his pal had been only a mirage. Mr. Longo talked about optical illusions in science: sheets of water that seemed to appear in deserts. Tricks of the eye, aided by imagination.

Had Stuart Bagg been such a thing? Could a mirage leave behind a Hootie & The Blowfish T-shirt?

Now the October days in Pennsylvania had turned cold suddenly. But it was always nice and toasty in the Music Room. And thanks to Bagg the Music Room was not just warmth and rhythm. At certain times its operas and concertos masked the meetings of the underground Butters.

The girls and Stanley Sweetsong gave one another the secret handshake with thumbs-up and touching.

“Ahoy!” they chorused. “We’re Butter!”

Josephine Jiminez called the meeting to order.

“Attention everyone!” said Josephine Jiminez. “We will now have roll call. Ethel Lampert, a founding member, will take charge.”

“Sweetsong!”

“Here!”

“Jiminez!”

“Here!”

“Greenwald!”

“Here!”

On and on down the list, all of their yellow Butter badges were pinned under the lapels of their blazers. The one yellow sock each member wore was also hidden, under a regulation white sock.

After roll call, Stanley Sweetsong stood and addressed the gathering.

“As you know we are secret secret!” He yawned and rubbed his eyes.

“We are
not
sleepy sleepy, however,” said Josephine Jiminez. “Did you have another of your nightmares, Vice President Sweetsong?”

“Yes. I dreamed again that there was a fourth tank in Mr. Longo’s Science Room, and
I
was in it.”

“Pull yourself together, Vice President Sweetsong! We have club business to attend to!” Josephine Jiminez said.

Stanley Sweetsong straightened his shoulders and blinked his eyes, continuing. “The rumor is that C. Cynthia Ann Flower suspects that the Butters still exist!”

“Ha!” snorted Millie Greenwald. “She can’t believe she’s not Butter!”

“Butters are better than Betters!” the club members chorused. “Betters cannot believe they’re not Butters!”

“We have to be on guard,” said Stanley Sweetsong.

“I would like to put that tarantula in C. Cynthia Ann’s bed!” said Cleo Kanowitz.

“That poor tarantula is suffering enough in that stuffy tank!” Stanley said. “I would like to set him free. And the African frog, too, and the king snake! … No wonder I have bad dreams!”

Josephine Jiminez gave Stanley Sweetsong the elbow and said impatiently, “Make the major announcement.”

“The major announcement,” said Stanley Sweetsong, “is that Miss Rattray has asked an actor to come for Career Day.”

“An
actor!?”
Cleo Kanowitz said. “We have never had an actor here!”

“Exactly!” said Josephine. “But now one is coming, thanks to my shrink! I believe he thinks it will control my rage.”

“So you won’t be the Doll Smasher anymore,” said Stanley.

“Yes,” Josephine agreed, “although with all my new duties, the Black Mask Theater has had very few performances lately.”

Just like Stuart Bagg, the whacking of the walls was no more, too.

“The Butters,” Josephine continued, “are underground. But there is no sense being underground if above ground no one knows you still exist. So we must plan something dramatic to do on Career Day!”

“An
actor!”
Cleo Kanowitz couldn’t get over it. “A famous actor?”

“Fairly famous,” said Josephine Jiminez.

“But not
that
famous,” said Stanley.

“We must come out of hiding on Career Day with a bang!” said Josephine.

“What actor?” Cleo Kanowitz said.

“Everyone’s favorite,” said Josephine. “He is the spokesboy for Great Breath chewing gum.”

“He’s C. Cynthia Ann’s favorite, not
mine!
You call
him
an actor?” Cleo Kanowitz was the argumentative type, a saucy little blonde from New York. “Gregor Samsa just does that one commercial! All he says over and over is ‘Does your smile smell?’”

“I
didn’t choose him,” said Josephine. “Miss Rattray did. Now let us put our heads together and decide on a plan of action.”

Stanley Sweetsong closed his eyes as his father always did when
he
was concentrating on something very serious. (Should our next car be an Infiniti or a Porsche?)

Everyone was silent, except for Cleo Kanowitz, still saying “Gregor Samsa” to herself, making a face as though she had just smelled something putrid.

Stanley thought and thought, but it was hard to concentrate, hard not to think of Bagg.

Bagg would know what to do. He could come up with an answer as easily as he fit into Stanley’s clothes. And Stanley missed that, too, having another boy around. Having a pal.

S
OMETIMES COOK HAD TO
tidy the halls herself, a task she felt was beneath her.

What she did was sweep them, then scoop it all up with her Dustbuster and put it back in its slot without emptying it.

It was pitch-dark inside.

There was not just dust in there, but also lint, the corpses of a cricket, and a fly, the leg of a spider and half his dragline, a paper clip, a third of a Life Saver, a yellow M & M, and Shoebag.

Awake, Shoebag said the Cockroach Prayer for the Dead, for he was sure that he would die.

“Go to a better life,” he murmured, licking the M & M, shifting his shell away from the burden of the paper clip.

When Shoebag could sleep, he dreamed that Under The Toaster was scowling at him, saying
“I TOLD YOU SO!”
and pushing Drainboard aside as she held out her legs to embrace Shoebag. But there was only one real leg with him in the Dustbuster: the spider’s hideous, hairy one.

Sick as Shoebag still was from the Zap dose, he was even sicker thinking of his family en route somewhere without him.

Sick as Shoebag was from this tragic blow by the Fickle Finger of Fate, he wondered if he would ever see Stanley Sweetsong again. Or ever again be Stuart Bagg.

Knowing Cook’s lazy ways, knowing she hated emptying the Dustbuster, Shoebag forced down the fly corpse, thinking of it as his last meal. For the piece of Life Saver was too hard to chew, and the M & M was licked down to a sliver.

How could he eat a cricket which was from the noble old order of orthoptera, as Shoebag was himself?

T
HAT SUNDAY, AFTER CHURCH
and before Sunday dinner, Stanley Sweetsong called home.

“What a strange name for a club,” said his mother.

“And why are you only the VP?” his father said. “Why aren’t you the P?”

“Because Josephine Jiminez is the P.”

“She’s only the P because her father is a famous general, I’ll bet,” said Mrs. Sweetsong.

“She’s a good president,” Stanley defended her. Not only good, but also in agreement with Stanley about what the Butters would do on Career Day.

“In an all-girl school,” said Mr. Sweetsong, “what chance does one boy have when they vote for a president?”

“There was no vote,” said Stanley.

“No vote?” his father said. “What kind of a school is that?”

“It’s changed since my day,” said Mrs. Sweetsong. “In my day there was always a vote. And in my day the parents did not get letter after letter asking for money.”

“The school wants to build a larger Science Room,” said Stanley, “so Mr. Longo can imprison more poor creatures in tanks.”

“Now,
don’t
dwell on those tanks in the Science Room!” said Mrs. Sweetsong. “That’s all you write about in your letters. Snakes and frogs and whatnot in those tanks.”

“And a tarantula, too, like Tattle’s, only this one is a Mexican blonde!”

His father said, “What do you call two spiders who just got married?” Mr. Sweetsong was always trying to cheer up his only son and sole heir.

“What
do
you call two spiders who just got married?”

“Newlywebs,” his father laughed.

But Stanley did not need that much cheering up where Mr. Longo and his ugly tanks were concerned. On Career Day the Butters would strike! One tank would be empty. They could not let the snake or the frog go free, for they had been captives too long. They would not know how to fend for themselves, and it would be impossible for the Butters to care for them.

But Stanley could care for the tarantula until Thanksgiving. Then he would take him home to Tattle, who knew all about this king of spiders!

And the Mexican blonde was the perfect choice, since it had been donated to the Science Room by none other than C. Cynthia Ann Flower.

There
had
been a vote on that, and it was unanimous!

In honor of Gregor Samsa, there would be nine glowing smiles on the faces of the Butters, and none of the smiles would smell.

The tarantula would have a new, safe home, and to replace him in the tank, there would be a Butterfinger.

“You haven’t said you miss us,” said Stanley’s mother.

“You haven’t said you wish you were back at Castle Sweet,” said his father.

“I have been very busy,” Stanley said.

“But never forget,” his father said, “someday this will all be yours!”

“I can make my own bed now,” Stanley said.

“You won’t have to here,” said Mrs. Sweetsong.

“But I am not there,” said Stanley. “And I have eight friends here.”