“Nooo, ma’am,” he said, wagging his head like some old Lincoln Park bluesman testifying a song. “I’m here because Mr. Dubie is out of town, as I understand it, or I would be speaking with him myself.”
“I see,” she said. “This is a business matter of some kind, then?”
“Nooo, ma’am,” he repeated. “I am here in Chicago, far from my home back east, for an assignment with the war effort. I haven’t been able to make many friends due to my responsibilities. But I have been lucky enough to make the acquaintance of your charming daughter, Brenda.”
They both turned and looked at me. I felt like a goldfish in a round bowl, exposed to any and all.
Charlie pressed on. “I’ve come today to ask, though I have no family nearby who can vouch for me as a decent young man, if I might take Brenda out to a show on one of my evenings off from the war effort. Would that be acceptable to you?”
All at once I was peeved. How about asking me? First things first, mister.
“Charlie, you seem like a good, polite boy,” my mother announced. “And I’m of a mind that manners still matter a great deal in this madhouse world.”
Charlie nodded. “Maybe more than ever.”
She sighed. “I suppose it would be all right, if you weren’t out too late.”
“Nooo, ma’am,” he declared for a third time. “Not a chance of that. My work starts very early in the morning.”
“Do you drive, Charlie?”
He shook his head. “It would be strictly walking or cabs for us.”
“Good. I’ve always maintained that driving was a job for husbands. You people are too young.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Charlie said.
“Very good,” she said, preening like a mother hen. “I approve.”
“Thank you, ma’am. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work now.” He strode by me, a skip in his step, pausing to tip his hat. “See you soon, Brenda.”
“Yes, soon.” And he was gone.
“What a nice young man,” my mother said. Which was a wonder, since she had never acknowledged any boy I’d dated before enough to have any opinion of him at all.
“He won’t buy an organ,” I said, “but he has many good qualities.”
She stood beside me, looking out at the street where Charlie had paused to wave before hurrying off. She hooked her arm in my elbow. “Oh, he’ll buy an organ, all right.”
4.
That afternoon in the math room, Mather did not come back after lunch. Charlie returned from the organ store to see Mather’s chair empty, the normally tidy desk a messy splay of papers. Mather’s photo of his sister was gone too.
Santangelo stood by the front windows, dancing a little jig. “Gentlemen, a great pimple in the world has now been popped.”
Laughter rang through the room.
“Back to work, you lazy dogs,” Cohen snapped, hurrying in from the hall. “You especially, Steel Wool.” Setting a cardboard box on the desk, he swept Mather’s papers in unceremoniously.
Charlie bent to his calculations. Because he’d spent the better part of the morning imagining where he might take Brenda on their date, he’d made little progress on his assignment. The real question was which Brenda he would be taking out: the cagey girl who masked her insecurity with sass, or the sweetheart whose face went soft when she switched on the organ. One of these Brendas was entertaining, but the other was lovely.
Meanwhile Santangelo could only watch Mather’s things disappear into Cohen’s box for so long before sauntering over to Charlie. “Quite the going-away party.”
“He got promoted,” Cohen snapped, grabbing all of Mather’s pencils in his fist, and tossing them into the box. “If you must know. Reassigned to New Mexico.”
“What could there possibly be in New Mexico?” Santangelo asked.
“Sand, I think,” Charlie ventured. “Mountains?”
Cohen was opening drawers one by one, dumping the contents into his box, but he paused to sneer. “Every time I think you boys could not be any more stupid—”
Santangelo wagged a finger at him. “Stupid is not the same thing as being deliberately kept uninformed.”
“New Mexico . . .” Cohen began, but he checked himself. “You don’t need to worry about New Mexico.” He addressed the whole room. “Probably none of you do. Let’s accept that it’s important military strategy. If it works.” He slammed the last drawer. “Mather jumped past all of us to get there, leap-frogged our whole business. Even me.”
“Is that why you’re peeved?” Charlie asked. “Because he was promoted instead of you?”
Cohen tipped Mather’s in-box tray into the cardboard box, papers tumbling. “Where do I start with you idiots?”
“I have an idea,” Santangelo said. “When we ask you a question, why don’t you actually answer it?”
“Because I can’t.” He bustled out of the circle of desks toward the door. “I’m not allowed, and you’re too stupid to figure it out for yourselves.”
“Mather was right,” Santangelo said. “You’re a power-hungry jackass.”
It hit him like an arrow between the shoulder blades. Cohen dropped the box on the floor, pencils flying up, and Charlie considered that several boys in that room could probably describe in great detail the effect that happens when a falling object lands, and the force causes pieces to rise in the opposite direction.
Cohen turned slowly, like a gunfighter. For the first time, they realized that he was physically fit, lean and muscled.
“Steel Wool, I would really enjoy teaching you a lesson based on four years of boxing at Columbia,” Cohen growled. “But it wouldn’t be worth the inquisition I’d face afterward. You’re too numbskulled to learn anyway.”
“Maybe we wouldn’t call you names,” Santangelo said, “if you showed us some respect.”
“I would if you deserved it. You could know everything you want, if you used your thick heads.” Cohen scanned the room. “Fish. What are you calculating right now?”
“The arc of an object launched at three hundred and fifty-seven miles per hour.”
“Right. And is there anything that actually goes that speed?”
One of the far-desk boys raised his hand. “The Flying Fortress?”
“Bingo. The B-29. What you’re calculating, you dunce, is aerial trajectories.”
“Fine,” Charlie said. “But why are we fiddling with all of these different drop altitudes? It’s not like we’re going to fly over Tokyo at eleven thousand feet, and expect to be welcomed with roses.”
Cohen stood still, waiting, watching them sort it out.
“It can’t be a bomb,” Santangelo offered. “It must be some other kind of weapon, like a tank, and they want to drop it from lower so it doesn’t smash on landing.”
“Eleven thousand feet wouldn’t change anything,” Charlie said. “A tank only needs fifteen hundred feet to reach terminal velocity.”
“Point proven.” Cohen bent and picked up the box. “Stupid as a box of bricks.”