“Reciprocate?”
She sighed. “Respond in kind, do the same.”
“Oh, my name is Jack, Jack Thatch.”
“A common name for a common boy. What is your real name? Nobody is really named ‘Jack,’ it’s usually the informal of ‘John’ which never made sense to me—not like Mike and Michael, it’s more like Bill and William, which is even stranger.”
“My full name is John Edward Thatch,” I told her. “Everyone always calls me ‘Jack,’ though.”
“Of course they do. And who is Edward to you? Surely a family name.”
“My dad’s name was Edward. Everyone called him Eddie. How old are you? You talk funny.”
Her eyes drifted to the older woman, then to the cover of her book. She fidgeted with the pages. “I’m eight.”
“You don’t sound like you’re eight. I’m eight, too.”
“Well, you don’t sound like you’re eight, either.”
“Stella?” The woman said this in a low tone, almost a scolding tone, drawing out the name, then: “We need to go.”
Stella sighed again and closed her eyes. She said something softly, too soft for me to hear, yet the older woman seemed to understand her words even though she was further away.
The woman shook her head and Stella frowned, slipping off the bench, one hand smoothing her skirt. She started across the grass toward the woman.
“Bye,” I said, raising a hand.
She stopped then and turned back to me. “It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, John Edward Jack Thatch.”
With that, she started up the hill toward the awaiting SUV. The woman fell in behind her. As the older woman turned, as she spun around, the wind caught the edge of her coat and I saw something beneath it, an image that is still clear as day in my mind; the barrel of a shotgun resting against her leg.
I watched Stella climb into the back. The woman closed the door on her, then she was gone, lost behind dark tinted windows growing smaller as they drove away.
2
“I left ten dollars on the counter for the pizza man. I already ordered. When he gets here, give him the full ten—eight for the pizza, two for a tip, got it?”
“Got it,” I replied. My eyes were glued to the television. Auntie Jo scored an Atari 2600 at a yard sale last year, and the game system had come with a box of game cartridges. Pac-Man was my current game of choice, and I was pretty good. I was even better at Ms. Pac-Man, but I had to go to the arcade to play that one. Pitfall was fun, too.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“Pizza, money, tip, got it,” I muttered.
“Okay, and what don’t you do while I’m gone?”
“Open the door.”
“Except for the pizza guy.”
“Except for the pizza guy.”
Auntie Jo bent down and kissed the top of my head. Her uniform smelled like pancakes and burnt toast. “I’m closing tonight, but I should be home by midnight. Maybe a little earlier, if I’m lucky.”
“What if the pizza guy is an axe wielding murderer and he wants to chop me up into little pieces?”
“Well, then don’t tip him. I’ve got to go.” She was out the door a moment later, fresh cigarette smoke trailing behind her.
Blinky the ghost caught me in the corner and I lost my third life, game over. “Dang.”
When I was younger, Auntie Jo employed a series of babysitters when she went to work, that stopped last year when I turned seven. She couldn’t afford it. She said it would be cheaper if she skipped work than going in and hiring someone to watch me. I didn’t need a sitter, anyway. Most of them sat around and talked to their boyfriends on the phone (a few in person), and they all completely ignored me.
We came to an arrangement. No more sitter, and she would give me one dollar to stay out of trouble and the dinner of my choosing. I always picked pizza. There was nothing better than pizza. I used some of my newfound wealth to purchase comic books. The rest went into a mason jar hidden under my bed. At last count, I had thirty-two dollars saved.
Standing, I stretched and went to the window.
Auntie Jo was about a block down the road, across the street. I waited for her to duck through the door of Krendal’s Diner, where she worked, counted to ten, then put on my shoes and slipped out of the apartment.
I crossed the hall and knocked on the door to apartment 304. When nobody answered, I knocked again, louder this time. I was about to knock a third time, when the door opened about three inches, held in place by the metal security chain.
A pair of beady eyes came around the side of the door. Those eyes were behind a thick pair of glasses taped at the center on a wrinkled old face topped with an unruly mop of gray hair. Ms. Leech. “What?”
“You’ve got books, right?”
“You’ve got books? Is that really a proper greeting for one of your elders?”
I knew Ms. Leech had books because she used to watch me for the brief period that fell between the babysitters and Auntie Jo letting me stay home alone last year. She had shelves of books, newspapers, too. Auntie Jo said she was a hoarder.
“I need to find a copy of Great Expectations by Charles Dickers.”
“Charles Dickens?”
“Yeah, him. Do you have it?”
Ms. Leech looked past me to the open door of my apartment. “Where is your aunt?”
“Working.”
“You’re not supposed to leave your apartment when she’s working.”
“I didn’t leave it. It’s right there,” I gestured toward the open door. “If you let me borrow the book, you can have some of my pizza.”
Her eyes brightened at this. “You have pizza?”
“Not yet, but he’ll be here soon.”
Ms. Leech had a weak spot for pizza, particularly pepperoni. Sometimes she even put pineapple on her pizza. Auntie Jo said she might be going senile; I think I agreed. Pineapple had no business on pizza.
She closed the door, removed the chain, and ushered me inside. “Yes, I have books. I have lots of books. I think I have that one somewhere.”
When she went to close the door, I reminded her we’d have to listen for the pizza guy. She left it open about an inch. She didn’t want to. I caught her looking back at it twice. Ms. Leech had been robbed once, about ten years ago, from what Auntie Jo told me. They busted right through her door, came into the apartment, and did bad things. Nobody told me exactly what those bad things might have been, but she didn’t go out much. She said they followed her home, and as long as she didn’t go out anymore, nobody could follow her back again. Auntie Jo bought her groceries when she got ours. I don’t think I ever saw Ms. Leech outside the building.
“I’ll watch the door,” I told her. “You go find the book.”
This seemed to calm her.
She nodded and began her trek through the living room, careful not to knock any of the newspaper stacks over. “It’s nice to see you take an interest in the classics, but don’t you think you should start out with something like Hucleberry Finn? Mark Twain is so much better than that Brit ever was. Dickens gets all flowery and wordy. I sometimes think he checked the cover to remind himself what book he was writing, he gets so wrapped up in his own words. Twain is nice and direct, to the point, much more concise.”