“He needs somebody to listen to his prattle. And about the only person that’s buying what he’s selling is an eight-year-old. Michal needs some sort of male in his life. Notice I said male. Not man. I won’t go that far.”
And once again she started giggling at her own humour.
“He’s all flash and shine and razzmatazz. He stole my paycheque right after I cashed it. It was the holidays. I had to take Michal down to eat at the food bank. You gotta be heartless to do something like that. Stealing from a single mother. It’s disgusting.”
“Heartless,” the neighbour said.
“That’s what I said.”
“You think it’s safe, Michal going out with him? I’m not saying this to be mean, but I wouldn’t let my kids around him.”
“What choice do I have? It’s funny, but I know that fool is good for Michal. The Lord puts everybody in your life for a reason. There’s some reason that fool’s in my life.”
The declawed kitten tiptoed on the table in just its stockings.
For Michal’s birthday, Lionel got him a big black journal to record his thoughts in.
“Your ideas are important. Learn to articulate. The more you formulate your thoughts — the more you write them down or say them out loud — the more powerful they will be. Ideas change the world. Everything that you see around you originated with an idea. Bad ideas and grand ideas.”
They were on the bench on the corner. There was an aging black cat that had dyed its fur with a cheap bottle of dye from the pharmacy, but it wasn’t fooling anybody. Michal took out an envelope that had been sealed with what looked like electrical tape.
“I got this in the mail from my grandma. My mom said not to open it in front of her cause she’s mad at Grandma. She always sends a card. It’s got this tape all over it though. Can you help me?”
Lionel took out a pocket knife and slit open the envelope while Michal flipped through the page of the big new book and held it up to his face to smell the new pages. Lionel took out the card that had a dog dressed up in a clown outfit and carrying balloons. He was about to comment on the decline of the fine arts in civilization when five twenty-dollar bills slid out and landed on his lap.
It would have been nothing to put those twenty-dollar bills in his pocket. It would have been easy to get up and split with that money. He held out the bills.
“You have hit the jackpot today,” Lionel said, his voice cracking a bit.
Michal took the money and whooped. He stood in front of the bench and did a chicken dance of joy. There was a bald man sitting at the bus stop whose scalp and neck and hands were all covered with tattoos of birds.
“You are just asking to get us mugged, my man.”
He hadn’t taken the money. But it had crossed his mind. It was always with him, that wickedness. It was unpredictable like the weather, and he knew that.
Lionel was waiting outside the building for the little boy. He was wearing a box that he had cut a hole in the top of to poke his head out of and holes in the sides for his arms to go through. It was painted silver. He had a plastic funnel on his head. He was taking Michal trick-or-treating in a more upscale neighbourhood, where they would get better candy.
Michal came out dressed in a brown lion suit. He had a mane around his head and some whiskers drawn on his cheeks with grease paint. When Michal saw Lionel, he laughed and laughed.
“I used up a whole can of silver spray paint on this thing. I almost asphyxiated myself. My lungs probably glow in the dark.”
“You look ridiculous!”
“What do you think you look like?”
“I won third place in the costume contest at school.”
“Well, la-di-da.”
After two hours, Michal’s pillowcase was full of candy and he couldn’t walk another step. They sat at a picnic table, eating tiny Mars bars. The pigeons all around them had heart murmurs.
“Excellent. State-sanctioned panhandling. I love it.”
Some kids that Michal knew from school walked by. Michal immediately got quiet.
“Don’t be afraid of anybody. That’s the number one thing that keeps people down in this world. This idea that other people are better, scarier, more intimidating. Fuck that, Michal. There ain’t nothing a rich kid knows that you don’t know.”
Lionel looked at Michal to make sure he was getting his point across.
“What do they know that we don’t know?”
“Nothing.”
“Who are we intimidated by?”
“Nobody.”
“That’s right. No-fucking-body.”
Then Michal started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“You have a funnel on your head.”
Andrea was working late and couldn’t go to Michal’s open house at school. Lionel showed up with his hair combed back. He had on a gold dress shirt with diamonds on it and a pair of dress pants that were too long and were scuffing on the floor. He had a long black coat. He looked good. He sat in the seat and looked through all of Michal’s reports.
“I think that the teacher secretly hates me,” Michal said.
“I’ll ask her some discreet questions and I’ll find out for you.”
Lionel went up and introduced himself to the teacher as a friend of the family.
“Michal is the light of our lives.”
“I’m sure he is,” the teacher said. “He was really shy at the beginning of the year. But he’s been really coming out of his shell. He signed up to be in the school play. I was so surprised.”
Lionel turned to Michal and winked. Michal smiled.
“What did you think of the Remembrance Day poem that he wrote?”
“I put it on the wall.”
“I know, right? Wasn’t it amazing! Like how does a little dude like that have so much compassion? I mean the sky is the limit for that guy. He could be a politician even.”
“It’s so nice of you to take an interest in him.”
“Oh, it’s a delight. What’s amazing is the work you do with all these little weirdos. Those handprints you have on the wall that the kids turned into turkeys are hilarious! Where did you come up with something like that?”
The teacher was smiling. Michal’s mother once told the neighbour that in certain lights, in peculiar moods and on rare occasions, Lionel could be quite the ladies’ man. When she first met him, she found him so magnetic. If he wasn’t such a fuck-up, he could seduce any woman he wanted.
Lionel walked Michal home. The surface of the moon on a clear night looked all dented, like it had been out drinking and driving and had now lost its licence after a crash.
“You know what, little guy? When you’re in doubt and you don’t know what a person thinks of you, I want you to go with ‘They’re crazy about me.’ Okay? Not ‘They hate me.’ Will you do that from now on?”
“Okay.”
“Okay. You’re really good about keeping promises. I notice that about you. You’re a stand-up guy. And why didn’t you tell me your teacher is hot?”
“I didn’t know she was!”
Sometimes Michal would take out money that Andrea had given him to buy them both supper. Lionel would protest that he couldn’t take any of her money, but he usually relented. What were they supposed to do, starve? They would go and buy themselves hamburgers and soda pop at one of the fastfood joints. One night they got themselves a window seat and watched all the lights of the world turning on one by one. It was the witching hour.
“Do you believe in reincarnation? I do. Because if you think about it, how else do you explain the fact that there are people out there who are sixteen times more intelligent than others? I think that I have lived dozens of lives. That’s why I feel so weary, you know what I mean? I only have to mend my ways. Act in a more moral way, and then I can be born something else, you know. I’m sick to death of being human. It’s a punishment.”