headhunters happening on the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. Yet we still smelled the perfume when a really pretty girl walked by.
Pretty girls. There she was again. Right?
Jane Bent.
Head lowered, arms folded across my chest, I pondered the mystery enfolding Jane like an aura with ever-changing colors—on the one hand anxious for Monday to come when I’d be seeing her again and could get to the bottom of some things, and on the other already dreading the approaching end of the weekend and returning to the drabness of school, most especially with winter coming on when in the morning instead of walking five blocks in the freezing rain with cardboard in my shoes to plug the holes, I’d want to fake a bad cold so I could stay snug and warm in my bed while endlessly polishing my vast collection of secret decoder rings and badges and listening to grown-up radio serials like Pretty Kitty Kelly and The Romance of Helen Trent , although never The Romance of Consuelo Chavez , I noticed, or Pretty Sandra Shapiro. Only summer seemed livable to me then, and I even welcomed chubby old Sister Louise’s constant warnings of the dreaded June Regents exams in her husky, sandpaper voice, “In the merry of month of June you’ll be sweating,” a threat she invariably personalized by always turning to glare at Bill Choirelli and adding a heartfelt “You fat tub of guts!”—which today might bring a lawsuit and find Sister Louise in an orange hood and jumpsuit doing the perp walk into some courthouse croaking loudly, “On the merry Day of Judgment all you ACLU scumbags will be sweating!” This followed by Foley, Baloqui and a few other bystanders quietly applauding and murmuring, “Hear, now! Hear! Hear, hear!” Foley idolized Sister Louise. Her position on torture would have never been in doubt.
Now my thoughts swirled back to Jane, this time to the puzzle of her cryptic words: “It’s okay to love me, Joey. But don’t be in love with me.” What on earth could she possibly have meant? As I turned my head to the left and stared down the walkway with an ever-dwindling hope I’d see her walking toward me quickly with that moonrise smile and her arms held out to me, I saw someone quickly duck behind a group of strollers. It was Baloqui. Frimmled, I got up and started walking to the right, but when I turned and looked back I saw him stalking me again and then he jumped behind a tree to the left of the walkway. Grimfaced, I strode over to the tree and stood in front of it, arms akimbo as I growled, “You flaming refugee from a third-rate Toledo sword factory, why are you following me?”
“I’m not following,” I heard Baloqui’s voice answer hollowly.
“You were!” I said firmly.
“I was not. I was walking where you walked. Nothing more.”
“Come on out from behind there!”
“No, they know me here now.”
“You’re standing behind a sapling! I can see you!”
“Touché.”
Baloqui skulked around, looking grave.
“I am always your friend,” he said somberly, “your most loyal, truest friend. But you are right. I lied. I have been following you.”
“Why?”
“I guard.”
I guard?
I’d been getting these déjà vu feelings lately and, looking back, I was having an unusually strong one because of this spook movie called The Uninvited , where Ruth Hussey and Ray Milland smell the scent of mimosa whenever a ghost named Carmel comes around, though in the end the ghost’s good and she explains what she’s been doing all this time, which is just those two words: “I guard.”
But the movie wouldn’t be made for another three years!
That was then. This is now.
But which is which?
“What do you mean, ‘I guard,’” I said, and by now I was actually smelling mimosa as Baloqui said, “I seek to protect you,” and then added his brand-new favorite coda, his increasingly annoying “Nothing more.”
I looked over my shoulder as just for a second a suspicion sliced through my mind like a white-hot
Pretty girls. There she was again. Right?
Jane Bent.
Head lowered, arms folded across my chest, I pondered the mystery enfolding Jane like an aura with ever-changing colors—on the one hand anxious for Monday to come when I’d be seeing her again and could get to the bottom of some things, and on the other already dreading the approaching end of the weekend and returning to the drabness of school, most especially with winter coming on when in the morning instead of walking five blocks in the freezing rain with cardboard in my shoes to plug the holes, I’d want to fake a bad cold so I could stay snug and warm in my bed while endlessly polishing my vast collection of secret decoder rings and badges and listening to grown-up radio serials like Pretty Kitty Kelly and The Romance of Helen Trent , although never The Romance of Consuelo Chavez , I noticed, or Pretty Sandra Shapiro. Only summer seemed livable to me then, and I even welcomed chubby old Sister Louise’s constant warnings of the dreaded June Regents exams in her husky, sandpaper voice, “In the merry of month of June you’ll be sweating,” a threat she invariably personalized by always turning to glare at Bill Choirelli and adding a heartfelt “You fat tub of guts!”—which today might bring a lawsuit and find Sister Louise in an orange hood and jumpsuit doing the perp walk into some courthouse croaking loudly, “On the merry Day of Judgment all you ACLU scumbags will be sweating!” This followed by Foley, Baloqui and a few other bystanders quietly applauding and murmuring, “Hear, now! Hear! Hear, hear!” Foley idolized Sister Louise. Her position on torture would have never been in doubt.
Now my thoughts swirled back to Jane, this time to the puzzle of her cryptic words: “It’s okay to love me, Joey. But don’t be in love with me.” What on earth could she possibly have meant? As I turned my head to the left and stared down the walkway with an ever-dwindling hope I’d see her walking toward me quickly with that moonrise smile and her arms held out to me, I saw someone quickly duck behind a group of strollers. It was Baloqui. Frimmled, I got up and started walking to the right, but when I turned and looked back I saw him stalking me again and then he jumped behind a tree to the left of the walkway. Grimfaced, I strode over to the tree and stood in front of it, arms akimbo as I growled, “You flaming refugee from a third-rate Toledo sword factory, why are you following me?”
“I’m not following,” I heard Baloqui’s voice answer hollowly.
“You were!” I said firmly.
“I was not. I was walking where you walked. Nothing more.”
“Come on out from behind there!”
“No, they know me here now.”
“You’re standing behind a sapling! I can see you!”
“Touché.”
Baloqui skulked around, looking grave.
“I am always your friend,” he said somberly, “your most loyal, truest friend. But you are right. I lied. I have been following you.”
“Why?”
“I guard.”
I guard?
I’d been getting these déjà vu feelings lately and, looking back, I was having an unusually strong one because of this spook movie called The Uninvited , where Ruth Hussey and Ray Milland smell the scent of mimosa whenever a ghost named Carmel comes around, though in the end the ghost’s good and she explains what she’s been doing all this time, which is just those two words: “I guard.”
But the movie wouldn’t be made for another three years!
That was then. This is now.
But which is which?
“What do you mean, ‘I guard,’” I said, and by now I was actually smelling mimosa as Baloqui said, “I seek to protect you,” and then added his brand-new favorite coda, his increasingly annoying “Nothing more.”
I looked over my shoulder as just for a second a suspicion sliced through my mind like a white-hot
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