waved her teaspoon wildly and almost poked Pete in the eye. “I’m NEVER going to speak to him again!”
“Until next time,” said Spike. He winked at Pete. “I can’t see what she sees in him. But I guess he is handsome for a short, fat, bald …”
“Your fifteen minutes are up!” snapped Mrs Burton. “Get your big bottom out of my house, you lazy animal!” She grabbed the broom, shooed him out of the door, and closed it behind him.
Then she smiled. “Such a dear boy, but he drives me up the wall. If I didn’t give birth to him myself …”
“I’ll ask Mr Humperdinck about the traps, but I still think you should speak to him yourself,” said Pete.
And then he blurted out, “Mrs Burton, why is my dad always drunk?”
“Oh dear,” Mrs Burton said. She straightened her blue-grey hair and sat down at the table. “Do you know what happened to your father and mother?”
Pete scowled. “How would I? Dad never speaks to me. He’s been drunk for as long as I can remember.”
“Well, maybe you should ask him! I’m sure he’d tell you if you asked him.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“I only know what I read in the papers. I didn’t know your dad before you moved in here. He wasn’t always a drunk, you know. He was a famous lawyer. One of the best in town.”
“And my mom?”
“Oh, Jennie was a beauty, all right. A medical doctor. Your father must’ve loved her very much. But she became very ill at a time when he was busy with an important case. It was in the papers and on television nearly every day. She died in hospital while he was in court. I don’t think he ever forgave himself for not being there. He started drinking, and losing cases. One day in court he was so drunk that he could hardly stand on his feet. When the judge called him to order your dad cursed him. Never worked again after that.”
Mrs Burton got up and from the bottom of one of her kitchen drawers she took a wrinkled old newspaper clipping. “A few months ago I found this among some rubbish your dad had dumped in the hallway. It’s not the kind of thing he would’ve thrown away if he was in his right mind.”
Pete stared down at an old faded picture of two happy people: a proud young man in a tuxedo suit who vaguely resembled his father, and a radiant, beautiful bride at his side. Whiz kid lawyer marries his dream princess.
“This man is your real father, not the drunk who lives with you now. Remember that.”
Pete went to Mr Humperdinck’s bicycle shop on the ground floor. The doorbell played a slow, sombre tune as he opened the door. Pete had always wondered how an old-fashioned copper bell mounted on a spring screwed to the door could play a tune. Maybe it worked as some kind of switch, but no matter how hard he looked, he could never find any electrical connections. He thought he heard the doorbell sigh at the end.
As always, Mr Humperdinck ignored it.
“Hi there!”
The old gentleman’s brushy moustache trembled. “Hello.”
“You okay, Mr Hump?”
“I suppose so …”
Something was wrong. Way wrong. Mr Humperdinck was usually a friendly, talkative man. Pete didn’t want to bother him about Mrs Burton’s rats while he was in such a bad mood, so he busied himself with the chores that he usually did for the old man.
The shop was a place of marvels; apart from a few bicycles (that were seldom sold), it was filled with junk. Layers and layers of junk, on rows and rows of shelves, from top to bottom. There were Thingamabobs from the Far East, Gadgets from Egypt, Gizmos from the Amazon. In fact, you could ask Mr Humperdinck for absolutely anything. A truck for your skateboard, a toilet seat or a hard drive for your computer? He would find it. A fuel valve for a Concorde’s left jet engine, a submarine porthole or even a grand piano? He would disappear in the shadowy depths of his back room and produce a perfectly good second-hand product, covered with layers of dust.
But of all the wonders in the shop, Pete loved Squeak, the white mouse that lived in the wire cage next to the till, the best. Unlike usually, the little mouse seemed agitated, running back and forth in his cage and chewing on the bars. For a moment it seemed to signal to Pete to open the door. Pete dismissed the thought. Mice couldn’t signal! He filled its bowl with seed, and the water bottle with fresh water.
And then there was the big white cat that usually lay asleep on an old piece of canvas on a shelf. Most people in the building thought it belonged to Mr Humperdinck, who called it Snow White. This wasn’t a very good name, because it was a tomcat. But Mr Humperdinck didn’t seem to care. Maggie thought the cat belonged to her, because she fed it tuna once a day, and she called it Here-Kitty-Kitty.
Pete looked for it in all its favourite places, but the cat was gone.
“Have you seen Snow White, Mr Humperdinck?”
The old man banged something with a hammer. “He’s away on business.”
The doorbell rang and Maggie walked in. The bell played that same sombre tune again, even slower than before. This time, Pete was sure he heard a sigh.
Maggie owned AUNT ANNIE’S CONFECTIONERY next door. It would be a little rude to describe what she looked like, so let’s just say that she was her own best customer.
“Pete, I need you to do a few errands,” Maggie said. He was her delivery boy, and she paid him with a meal a day. He didn’t want money, since his father always took whatever he had earned to buy booze.
When Mr Humperdinck saw Maggie his face went red. He stomped off to his back room and slammed the door behind him.
“I wonder what’s eating him,” said Maggie. “He was even ruder to me yesterday.”
“What did he say?” Pete asked as they left the bicycle shop and entered the bakery.
She giggled, and bit a fingernail right off. “He shouted at me, like this, ‘Aaarrgh!’ and then he said, ‘GET OUT!’”
Pete knew it was difficult to provoke Mr Humperdinck. “Why? Did you do anything to upset him?”
“Nothing at all. I just came looking for you, but you weren’t back from school yet.” Perfect innocence, but Pete didn’t quite believe her.
Suddenly he saw something. “A butterfly! Look, there is a butterfly in the bakery!”
There were in fact quite a few flitting about – but Maggie ignored them. “There’s an order for twenty-two doughnuts from that guy at the bank. He tells me he’s on a doughnut diet and he’s already lost a lot of weight. I should try it myself.” Maggie giggled again.
Pete kept a straight face. She had been on a doughnut diet most of her life anyway.
“After that you have to deliver a party pack to that woman in the office on the tenth floor on the corner of Main and 22nd Street. And then three meat pies to Carlo’s restaurant across the road. I think he’s tired of his own food.”
