I was unnaturally quiet for most of the meal, which was probably a mistake, because it threw off the entire family equilibrium.
Mom and Dad had begun a conversation about what sort of carpeting to put down in our unfinished finished basement. You have to understand that my parents live to bicker. You could stick them at the beach and they’d argue whether the ocean was bluish green, or greenish blue.
They rarely argued over dinner, though, I think because when you eat, your blood rushes from your brain to your stomach, putting you at a strategic disadvantage, because how are you going to come up with the real zingers when your brain isn’t at full power?
Like I said, it started as a discussion, and then it began heating up to the point where I would usually throw in some wisecrack. When I didn’t, the discussion suddenly evolved into an argument.
“We already agreed it should be Berber!” Mom says.
“I never agreed to anything! The carpet in the basement should match the rest of the house.” It’s escalating to the point where food is flying out of their mouths while they talk. Frankie just shakes his head, Christina’s reaching for her journal, and I start thinking about dog collars, maybe because dogs are on my mind after being at Crawley’s. When dogs bark too much, you can put on special collars, so each time the dog barks, it squirts out a funky smell. It doesn’t really teach dogs not to bark, but it distracts them long enough to make ’em forget they were barking.
I decided to let the carpet argument build just a bit more, then dropped my fork on my plate loudly. “Jeez! What’s the big deal? Put down a hardwood floor and each of you can buy a rug.”
“Watch that fork, you’ll break the plate!” Mom says.
“What? Are you gonna pay for a wood floor?” Dad grumbles.
“My friend’s got a wood closet to keep away bugs,” says Christina.
“That’s cedar,” Mom explains.
“We oughta build a cedar closet,” says Dad.
And that was that. The conversation lapsed into an endless stream of other topics, and I went back to pushing my food around my plate. They never noticed I had stopped the argument, just like they didn’t notice I wasn’t eating. Sometimes the Schwa had nothing on me.
“What do you think he’ll make us do?” the Schwa asked as we walked as slow as we dared from school to Crawley’s the next afternoon.
“I really don’t want to think about it.” Truth was, I spent most of the night thinking about it. I could barely get my homework done, which is not all that unusual, but this time it wasn’t because of TV, or video games, or my friends. It was because all I could think of were the many forms of torture Crawley could devise. I once had a teacher who said my imagination was about as developed as my appendix, but I don’t agree, because I came up with a whole bunch of possibilities of what Crawley could do. He could make us clean his dog-fouled patio with our toothbrushes—they do stuff like that in the army, I hear. He could send us on dangerous errands to Mafia types where we might get whacked, because anyone that rich in Brooklyn has gotta know a few of those guys. Or what if he wanted us to move the bodies he’s got locked up in a cellar beneath the restaurant? At three in the morning, when you’re tossing in bed, it sounds almost possible, proving that my imagination is alive and well, or, I guess I should say, alive and sick.
“I think we’re gonna wish we were arrested,” I told the Schwa.
The restaurant only had a few customers at this hour of the afternoon. We identified ourselves to the maitre d’, who I guess doubled as Crawley’s doorman for what few visitors he got.
“Ah,” said the maitre d’oorman, “Mr. Crawley is expecting you. Follow me.”
He glided up the grand staircase real smooth, like it was a fast escalator and not stairs, then he took us through an unused part of the restaurant stacked with dusty old tables and broken chairs. We went down a hallway that led to the door of Mr. Crawley’s private residence.
“Mr. Crawley, those boys are here,” the maitre d’oorman said as he knocked. Barking and the pounding of paws followed. Then I could hear all the bolts sliding open on the other side, and Crawley pulled open the door while blocking the escape of the dogs with his wheelchair.
“You’re five minutes early,” he said, the tone in his voice like we were half an hour late.
We stepped in, he pushed the door closed behind us, a dog yelped because his nose got caught in the door for an instant, and there we were.
Crawley reached into the pocket of his fancy robe—a dinner jacket, I think it’s called. The kind of thing Professor Plum would wear before killing Colonel Mustard in the ballroom with the candlestick. From the pocket he pulled a few doggie treats and hurled them over his shoulder so the dogs would leave us alone.
“I’ve decided to sentence the two of you to twelve weeks of community service,” he said. “Mr. Bonano, from this day forward, you shall be responsible for the sins. You, Mr. Schwa, shall be responsible for the virtues. Take all the time you need each day, but by no means are you to complete the task any earlier than five P.M. Now get to it.”
I looked at the Schwa, the Schwa looked at me. I felt like I had just been called up to the board to explain an Einstein theory, but I don’t think Einstein could figure this one out, even if he was alive.
“Why are you staring like imbeciles? Didn’t you hear me?”
“Yeah, we heard you,” I said. “Sins and virtues. Now would you mind speaking in English that people who aren’t, like, ninety years old can understand?”
He scowled at us. He was really good at that. Then he spoke, very slowly, as if to morons. “The seven virtues, and the seven deadly sins. Comprendo?”
“Oigo,” I said, “pero no comprendo.” I hear, but I don’t understand. At last my two years of Spanish had paid off! It was worth it for the surprised look on Crawley’s face—to see that, as Howie would put it, I was only half the moron he thought I was.
“Great,” mumbled the Schwa. “Now he’s really gonna be pissed off.”
But instead of saying anything, Crawley put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. All the dogs came running.
As they crowded around him, jockeying for position, he touched each of them on the head and announced: “Prudence, Temperance, Justice, Fortitude, Faith, Hope, and Charity.” He took a breath, then continued: “Envy, Sloth, Anger, Lust, Gluttony, Pride, and Avarice. Do you understand now, or shall I get you a translator?”
“You want each of us to walk seven dogs each, every day.”
“Gold star for you.”
Crawley peered at me, but I just returned his unpleasant gaze. “Why not Greed?” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“Avarice is Greed, right? That’s the way I learned the seven deadly sins. So why not just name the dog Greed?”
“Don’t you know anything?” Crawley growled. “Avarice is a much better name for a dog.”
He spun his wheelchair and rolled into the deeper recesses of his apartment. “Leashes are hanging in the kitchen.” And he was gone.
At first we tried to walk them two at a time, but they were so strong, so untrained, and so excited to be outside, they practically pulled us into oncoming traffic. There were no shortcuts. We each could only handle one dog at a time. Walking dogs for no pay for two hours a day wasn’t exactly my idea of fun. But the Schwa and I did it. We could have gotten out of it. We could have just told our parents what we had done, and taken whatever punishment they dealt out. Even if Crawley went to the police, they wouldn’t do much about it—especially after we had shown what decent guys we were by volunteering to walk his dogs for those first few days. Still, we kept on doing it. Maybe it’s because there was a kind of a mystique to it, walking the infamous Old Man Crawley’s dogs. Everyone knew whose dogs they were—it’s not like the neighborhood is teeming with Afghans. Somehow it made us important. Or maybe we kept on doing it because we gave him our word. I can’t speak for the Schwa, but for me, my word had never really meant much of anything. I can’t count all the times I gave someone my word, then flaked out. This time was different, though, because if I didn’t keep my word, Crawley would be able to sit in his dark apartment and gloat. He’d see it as proof that I was at the shallow end of the gene pool, and I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction, no matter how many barking sins I had to walk.