The 10 P.M. Question (6 page)

The smoothie was very good. Frankie sat on his bed with the blender balanced on his raised knees and sucked hard. It was enjoyable being disgusting. When he was full, he was going to lie down and listen to some music, an even more disgusting undertaking because, apparently, you weren’t supposed to lie down on a full stomach. Too bad.

Then he’d go to Upham’s with Gigs, then the supermarket. He’d go to Pak’nSave because it was nearest to Upham’s, even though, as far as he knew, Pak’nSave still had a ban on Louie for shoplifting in Year Ten. Louie’s name was somewhere on a list of Bad Boys, and for years, Frankie had boycotted Pak’nSave out of brotherly loyalty — also a lurking fear that the checkout girls had him marked as a potential delinquent. Louie had eaten a piece of Belgian slice from the in-store deli while he was pushing the trolley around the aisles, and technically this was stealing.

“Damn right, it’s stealing,” Uncle George had repeated every few minutes to Louie. The school counselor had given Uncle George strict instructions not to minimize the eating of in-store Belgian slice in the supermarket aisles. Frankie had heard Uncle George explaining it to Ma. Ma had been upset with Louie, too, but mostly, it seemed to Frankie, for eating supermarket Belgian slice when it was so inferior to her own. Louie had sworn black and blue he’d just forgotten to pay, but Frankie doubted it. Personally, he’d always thought it was Louie’s cunning way of permanently avoiding shopping duty.

That was four years ago. Louie was nineteen now — today! — and a responsible citizen, apparently. He worked for De Souza’s Document Destruction, collecting bins of print material for shredding. It was the perfect job for Louie. He got to drive around the city in a white truck with a car phone and a CD player; he got to take his beagle, Ray Davies, with him; he got to chat up dozens of girls in dozens of offices.

Louie was a big fan of girls. Once Louie had been like Gigs, devoted to soccer and cricket statistics, and roundly contemptuous of all females and female pursuits. Then suddenly, in Year Ten, seemingly overnight in Frankie’s memory, he’d begun talking to girls on the phone for whole evenings at a time. Shortly after that, he’d started going out with Honey Johnson. Honey Johnson was the Bronwyn Baxter of Louie’s year. Her name really was Honey, a fact Frankie had always been rather fond of; she was a know-it-all with a pert blond ponytail and surf shop clothes, and she was very pretty. An alpha girl, Uncle George had said, then sighed. Everyone had his Honey Johnson moment, said Uncle George, and there was no going back after that.

A thought struck Frankie with sudden force. He slid off his bed and changed into his swim trunks. Last week, Gigs had asked Bronwyn Baxter to be his book project partner. Frankie had experienced a moment of terrible disorientation when Gigs had done this. If there was one immutable fact in their lives, it was that Bronwyn Baxter was sillier than a headless gnu. So they
had
to choose new partners, but there were plenty of other people Gigs would have been happy to work with. Solly, for example. Or David Robinson; he was a good guy. Or Vienna. She was fun, even if Gigs didn’t have any time for girls.

But perhaps he did have time for girls now and Frankie hadn’t noticed. Perhaps this was his Honey Johnson moment. Could that be possible? Frankie walked up the stairs slowly and opened the hall cupboard. He stared into it, briefly unseeing. Gigs wouldn’t be thirteen until June. Surely he wasn’t old enough to have a Honey Johnson moment? But then, Seamus Kearney must have had his when he was about five and a half. As long as Frankie could remember he’d been going on about girls in what Mr. A liked to call “a malodorous way.”

Frankie took the shopping bag from the hall cupboard. It was sturdy burlap with a wide reinforced strap that made it perfect for hefting groceries. Gordana had made the bag years ago. She’d dyed it purple and embroidered Ma’s name on it, though of course Ma never took it anywhere. Frankie had admired the bag enormously at the time. He thought Gordana’s embroidered rolling pin and eggbeater were quite brilliant. He thought the way she’d decorated the letters of Ma’s name — F R A N C I E — with wooden spoons and measuring cups and cookie cutters was especially nifty.

It was a pity Gordana didn’t do that sort of thing anymore, Frankie thought. She’d done a lot of sewing and artwork back then. She’d been full of good ideas. She’d planned to be a clothes designer. Frankie didn’t know what Gordana was planning these days. Probably a job in reception; she spent enough time on the phone.

Gigs was turning in the gate, chewing his way down a Killer Python. Frankie was halfway down the path when Ma called out to him from the front door.

“One more thing!” she said. “Some oranges! For zest!” Frankie turned and waved to show he’d heard. Ma stood well back from the open door, her face in the shadow.

“Hey, Francie!” Gigs called.

“Hey, Gigs!” came Ma’s voice. “You coming back for cake?”

“Definitely!”

Frankie checked the letter box. He’d forgotten to do it on the way in from school. The mail was still there. Gigs handed him the Killer Python and he bit off the blue section. That was their arrangement. Frankie always ate the blue and green sections if it was Gigs’s Python; they reversed the practice if Frankie had bought the Python. Neither of them much liked the blue and green flavors, but they did not like to waste a particle of any candy. Frankie couldn’t remember the two of them ever having discussed this; they’d just always done it. There was a lot you didn’t need to discuss with Gigs.

“First one to the library,” said Gigs, punching him on the arm. But Frankie could hit
presto
from a standing start and he pulled ahead of Gigs immediately. Gigs always proposed their races, though he never won any. Frankie was the runner, they both knew that. Just as Gigs was the better batsman.

Frankie pushed through the sticky westerly heat and down the hill, the dust pricking his nose, the supermarket bag flapping like a hefty wing. Behind him Gigs did his bloodcurdling downhill holler.

He didn’t seem like a guy who’d had his Honey Johnson moment. Frankie really hoped not. He didn’t want anything to change.

Frankie gave Louie a Kinks LP for his birthday. Louie had a large vinyl collection at his flat, and an ancient turntable; Uncle George had given it to him as a leaving home gift. Uncle George said that all self-respecting lovers of rock music still owned a turntable, despite the digital revolution. Uncle George’s own turntable was, apparently, a contemporary work of art, a modular triumph, sleek high-end industrial design, unsurpassed during the hi-fi revolution.

“So how come it only plays crap music?” Gordana asked. Gordana was no fan of Uncle George and Louie’s music, and she especially hated their Wall of Sound evenings. These were kind of earsplitting tournaments, with LPs as weapons. Uncle George played something loud (say, an old Black Sabbath record) and Louie responded with something
very
loud (say, a pre-digital Metallica album); then Uncle George played something even louder (King Crimson) and Louie, etc., etc.

Sometimes Gordana began actually screaming at this point, an enraged ascending scale that climbed the stairs, too, and penetrated the Wall of Sound. Uncle George and Louie often had bets as to how quickly they could force a Gordana protest.

“One and a half sides!” Louie would say. “You win, old man.”

“Two whole octaves,” Uncle George would say. “And rising. What a vocal range. That girl should go on the stage.”

Once, Gordana had burst into the living room with Louie’s old Super Soaker and begun spraying Uncle George and Louie, both of them sprawling on the couches but doing the horizontal semi-dance spasms that always accompanied their listening.

Frankie had been sunk deep in the fluorescent green beanbag with Ray Davies — a puppy at the time — asleep in his lap. Ray Davies always slept through Wall of Sound evenings, leaving Frankie a quiet audience of one. Frankie loved watching Uncle George and Louie, wildly competitive, gesticulating, singing, shouting out over the cacophony miscellaneous facts about bands that they both already knew. He loved the music, too — the guitar pyrotechnics, the chord layers, the buzz-saw sound of the feedback. He loved the opulent cushioning of the beanbag, the heat of Ray Davies’s bony bundled-up form, the sweet dusty smell of his coat combined with the cake aromas from the kitchen. He loved the
predictability
of it all, even Gordana’s banshee outbursts.

The Super Soaker attack hadn’t been quite so predictable, of course, and that evening had gotten a little out of hand — Ray Davies had woken up in fright and agitatedly eaten a book. Louie had howled, enraged, and slipped on the wet floor when rising to go after Gordana. Uncle George stood, a hulking human canopy over the turntable and LPs, stretching out his jersey, trying to protect his treasures from the water.

“Stop it, you lunatic child!” he’d yelled at Gordana. “Stop it! Francie! Stop the kid. She’s gone insane!”

There was no insanity tonight, Louie’s birthday — if you didn’t count the Aunties, who always had a distinct aura of the wacky about them. Louie played his Kinks record — not loudly — and told them all (again) about the real Ray Davies suing the Doors for stealing a Kinks song, and winning.

Louie was a big fan of suing. “We should sue!” had been his refrain for years — when his eleventh-birthday roller blades broke at his party; when the fish and chip order was one fish short; when a business proposal of Uncle G’s was undercut by a competing client; when the washing machine malfunctioned; when bread went moldy. In Year Ten he’d wanted to sue his French teacher, Mr. Beaumarchais, for being unintelligible.

Next to thinking about suing, Louie’s favorite pastime was dreaming up ways to make money. At the moment, he was buying and selling secondhand sneakers on the Internet. Last year, he’d designed badges and sold them at the River Market on Saturdays. The badges bore skulls and machine guns and filthy sayings, and they sold like hotcakes. Louie had wanted Gordana to design a line for girls, but Gordana said she’d rather be voluntarily bald and have false teeth than ever be in business with Louie.

The Aunties, on the other hand, loved Louie’s business schemes.

“What’s new in the world of commerce?” said Alma now. She was leaning back on the couch, resting a plate of Black Forest cherry cake on her vast bosom.

“Window cleaning,” said Louie. “Elvis wants to sell his business. You wanna lend me five K?”

“Could do,” said Alma, tipping the cake plate toward her mouth. Frankie wondered if Alma was going to
drink
the cake. It was her third piece. Gigs was on his third, too. The rest of them lay around in various post-dinner positions, very full, defeated by Ma’s cooking.

“When would you have time for window cleaning?” said Gordana. “You already work all day Saturday.”

“
I
won’t be doing the windows,” said Louie. He was standing beside the stereo, preparing to flip the record. “The secret to making money is getting
other
people to work for you. . . .”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot,” said Gordana. “That’s why you subcontracted Ma’s cakes to the Watson boys.”

“Ha, ha,” said Louie.

“No bickering, please,” said Ma.

“Let’s
not
rake up the unsavory past,” said Uncle George.

“Ooooh, the Watson boys’ debacle,” said Nellie. “That really wasn’t your finest moment, Louie.”

Louie let the stylus down gently on the other side of
The Kinks: 18 Original Golden Greats
and held his arm high, waiting one, two, three, four seconds and then giving the downbeat for the first guitar chords of “Lola.” They all laughed. You had to give it to Louie, Frankie thought. He was very funny. Even his disasters were funny.

Take the Watson boys’ debacle, as Nellie styled it. Louie had convinced Ma that he could organize the delivery of her cakes to her various clients around the city. He had his van! He could do it cheaper than her current courier service! He was reliable and efficient!

You really couldn’t argue with that, Ma said later. But it paid to remember that Louie’s vision nearly always outstretched his capacity to realize it. It was true Ma paid him a good rate. But, privately, Louie calculated he could make even more if he subcontracted the cake delivery and took a second job. Subcontracting to the Watson boys was, he reckoned, his master stroke. The Watson boys were gearheads who would work for small potatoes as long as they could drive a car, any car, any old beater with four wheels.

So, Louie packed Ma’s cakes in the van, drove around to the Watsons, gave them the list of deliveries, then had them drop him at Vander’s Deli, where he made peanut sauce, hummus, tarama-salata, and various other dips for three hours. (He’d learned these all from Ma; Louie was an excellent cook.) The Watsons picked him up after they’d had a hard-and-fast out the back of the airport. At the end of a working day, Louie had a wage and a half.

Of course, Louie never told Ma about this happy arrangement, because the Watsons were famous idiots who’d been fired from every after-school job in the suburb and couldn’t be relied on to deliver a note to the teacher, let alone a dozen exotic — and expensive — cakes to restaurants and cafés around town. It wasn’t until the Summit Restaurant had phoned Ma to inquire after their Dunkel Mandeltorte that Louie got caught.

The Dunkel Mandeltorte was no longer recognizable; it was completely crushed along with two Sacher tortes, a three-layer lemon ricotta, a vegan chocolate cake, a hummingbird cake, four boxes of petits fours, and two trays of baklava. The great sticky mess was down a steep gully in Mount Pleasant, which was where Zevon Watson had plunged the van after misjudging a sharp bend.

Miraculously the Watson boys were unharmed, but Louie’s van was a write-off and Louie himself was grounded for a month. For sheer
greediness,
Uncle George said.

“What about my sheer
enterprise
?” Louie had shouted.

“Avarice!” Uncle George shouted back.

“Don’t bicker,” Ma had begun.

“This isn’t bickering,” Uncle George yelled. “It’s
war
!”