“I’m thinking maybe one favor begets another, comprende?”
I nodded again, hoping he hadn’t suddenly become bilingual. It was hard enough to understand him in one language.
“So you’ll do it?” he asked.
“Do what?” I had to finally ask.
He looked at me like I was an imbecile. “Write my Cultural Geography paper for me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because,” he said, “I’m gonna give up six whole months of my life to your boy Gunnar.”
That got my interest. No one had offered that much. The Master of Time was intrigued.
Skaterdud laughed at the expression on my face. “Ain’t no biggie,” he said. “It’s not like it’s never gonna matter—’cause don’t I already know when I’m gonna be pushin’ up posies? Or seaweed, in my case? That date with destiny ain’t never gonna change, because the fortune-teller’s prediction would have already taken into account whatever life I’d give away to Gunnar. Smart, right? Yeah, I got this wired!”
I was actually following his logic, and it scared me. “So ... why just six months?” I said, playing along. “If your future’s all set in stone no matter what you do, why not give a year?”
“Done,” said Skaterdud, slapping me on the back. “Don’t forget—that Cultural Geography paper’s due Friday.”
“Whoa! Wait a second! I didn’t say it was a deal.” I was getting all mad now, because I felt like I was a sucker at a carnival, and had gotten tricked into this—so I said the first thing that came to mind, which, sadly, was: “What’s in it for me?”
Skaterdud shrugged. “What do you want?”
I thought about how stockbrokers get commissions when they make a deal, so I thought, Why not me? “One extra month commission for me. Yeah, that’s it. An extra month to do with as I please.”
“Done,” he said again. “Let me read the paper before you turn it in so I know what I wrote.”
I, Reginald Michaelangelo Smoot, aka Skaterdud, in addition to the twelve months donated to Gunnar Ümlaut in the attached contract, do hereby bequeath one month to Anthony Paul Bonano for his own personal use in any way he sees fit, including, but not limited to: a. ) Extending his own natural life. b. ) Extending the life of a family member or beloved pet. c.) Anything else, really.
RM. Smoot
Signature
Ralphy Sherman
Signature of Witness
8. Who Needs Cash When You’ve Got Time Coming Out of Your Ears?
I have never been in the habit of cheating at school. I mean, sure, the occasional glance at my neighbor’s paper on a multiple-choice test or a list of dates written on my forearm, but nothing like what Skaterdud wanted me to do. Now not only did I have to write two passing papers, but I had to make one of them sound like he wrote it—which meant sounding all confusing but making enough sense to get a passing grade.
The Dud’s paper got a B with an exclamation point from the teacher, and since I used all the good stuff in his paper, I got a C-minus on mine. Serves me right. The Dud gave me my month commission the morning we got our grades back, slapped me on the back when he saw my grade, and said, “You’ll do better next time.”
That day I went off campus to get pizza for lunch, because the lunch ladies were secretly spreading the word that this was a good day to do a religious fast.
Problem was, I didn’t have any money. Rishi, who ran the pizza place down the street, was Indian. Not Native American, but Indian Indian—like from India—and, as such, made pizza that was nothing like the Founding Fathers ever envisioned. Not that it was bad—actually each type he made was amazing, which is maybe why the place was always crowded, and he could keep raising his prices.
I stood there, drooling over a Tandoori Chicken and Pepperoni that had just come out of the oven, and began rummaging through my backpack for spare change—but all I came up with were two nickels, and a Chuck E. Cheese game token that came out as change from one of those high-tech vending machines that was either defective or knew exactly what it was doing.
Rishi looked at me, and just shook his head. Meanwhile the people in line behind me were getting impatient. “C’mon,” said Wailing Woody, his beefy arm around his girlfriend’s shoulder. “Either order or get out of the way.”
What I did next was probably the result of low blood sugar. I opened my binder to see if maybe some coins got stuck under the clasp, and saw the page I had gotten from Skaterdud. My commission. I pulled it out, looked once more at the pizza, and desperately held it up to Rishi.
“I don’t have cash, but what about this?” I said. “One month of some guy’s life.”
A couple of people in line snorted, but not everyone. After all, I had been on Morning Announcements. I was legit. People actually got quieter, waiting to see what Rishi would do. He took it from me, laughed once, laughed twice, and I figured my religious fast was about to begin ... until he said, “What kind of pizza would you like?”
I was still staring at him, waiting for the punch line, when Woody nudged me and said, “Order already!”
“Uh ... how many slices is it worth?”
“Two,” Rishi said, without hesitation, like it was written on the menu.
I ordered my two slices of Tandoori Chicken-and-Pepperoni, and as he served them he said to me, “I shall frame this and hang it on the wall, there.” He pointed to a wall that held a bunch of photos of minor celebrities like the Channel Five weatherman, and Cher. “It will be the cause of much conversation! Next!”
At this point, I’m just figuring I’m lucky—that this is a freak thing. But like I said, other people saw this—people who hadn’t eaten, and maybe their brains were working like that high-tech vending machine, which, when I got back to school, gave me a can of Coke for a Chuck E. Cheese token, thinking it was a Sacagawea dollar coin.
The second I popped that soda open, Howie appeared out of nowhere, in a very Schwa-like way, complaining of the kind of thirst that ended empires. “Please, Antsy, just one sip. I swear on my mother’s life I won’t backwash.”
I took a long, slow guzzle from the can, considering it. Then I said, “What’s it worth to you?”
I walked away with two weeks of his life.
There’s this thing called “supply and demand.” You can learn about this in economics class, or in certain computer games that simulate civilizations. You also can blow up those civilizations with nuclear weapons—which is only fun the first couple of times, and then it’s like enough already—why spend three hours building a civilization if you’re just gonna blow it up? That’s three hours of your life you’re never gonna get back—and ever since time shaving became a part of my daily activities, I’ve become very aware of wasted time—whether it be time wasted on the couch watching reruns, or time spent destroying simulated nations. When I first got that game, by the way, it cost fifty bucks, but now you can get it in the sale bin for $9.99. That’s supply and demand. When everybody wants something and there’s not enough to go around, it costs more. But if nobody wants it, it costs next to nothing. In the end, it’s people who really decide how much something is worth.
As the undisputed Master of Time, I was the one in complete control of the time-shaving industry. That meant I controlled the supply, and now that I knew I could trade time for other stuff, I began to wonder how big the demand could be.