Christopher Paul Curtis (12 page)

And his receptionists!

They were such hotties that if they'da took off those five-hundred-dollar dresses they were wearing and started running around in a bikini top and some thongs you'da swore you walked into the middle of a 50 Cent video!

Sparky went up to the one at the desk and said, “Excuse me, my name's Sparky and I got a three-thirty appointment to see the D.O.G.”

“Just a moment, sir, I'll announce you to Mr. Gaddy.” Her voice was just as smooth as the rest of her.

She pressed a button on a control board that looked like it came straight out of the Science Fiction Network
and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Gaddy, your three-thirty appointment, Mr. Sparky, is here.”

A familiar voice came out of the control board. “Wonderful! Wonderful! Let Mr. Sparky know I've really been looking forward to meeting him and please show him in, Ms. Havens.”

She got up and said, “This way, gentlemen.”

We followed her down a long hall full of pictures of Dontay Gaddy with a bunch of celebrities. Yeah, in some of them it looked like he'd snuck up behind the celebrity and told someone to real quick take the picture, but in a whole lot of them he was actually shaking the famous person's hand.

As we got closer to his door the pictures stopped being of famous people and started looking like they were of regular Flint folks. They were all smiling and shaking hands with Dontay Orlando Gaddy and holding up giant checks.

The receptionist knocked on this big wood door, waited a second then walked us into the baddest office I'd ever seen.

At the far end of the office was a desk the size of a king-size bed and walking from behind it with his hand stuck out wearing the same serious expression he'd made famous on TV was the D.O.G. himself! And let me tell you, the brother was G'd up!

His suit was another Versace, this one pale blue. He had a thick gold and diamond Rolex on his wrist and was wearing some pale blue Ferragamos that matched the suit.

He grabbed my hand with his right hand and squeezed my wrist with his left. He looked real hard into my eyes and
said, “Mr. Sparky, I'm so glad you could make time in your busy schedule to come see me.”

I said, “No, sir, I'm Luther T. Farrell. He's Sparky.”

Dontay Gaddy kept shaking my hand. He repeated my name, “Mr. Farrell.” He sounded so serious that it seemed like he was getting ready to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or something. Instead he said, “It's a pleasure to meet you.”

He let go of my hand and grabbed Sparky's and gave him the same two-handed squeeze and stare. “Mr. Sparky,” he said, slowly shaking his head up and down, looking so serious that you'da thought he was your doctor getting ready to ask if you had a favorite color in coffins.

He said, “Thank you for coming today.”

Sparky was grinning like a fool. “Oh, snap, Mr. Gaddy, thank you for seeing me!”

“Uh-uh, you hold right there, my young brother. My momma named me Dontay, and that's what I want you to call me. From this moment on we're a team, and whoever heard of teammates calling each other Mr. or Sir or”—he pointed at a diploma hanging behind his desk that had “honorary PhD” written on it—“or even Doctor? That's not the kind of team I'd ever want to be a part of.”

Sparky said, “Me neither! So you can call me Sparky!”

If that confused Dontay Gaddy you'da never known it.

He kept looking in Sparky's eyes and said, “Sparky.”

I got a chill running up my back when he looked over at me with that same creepy soulful and deep stare that the Sarge does and said, “Luther. Gentlemen, please be seated.”

Me and Sparky sat in these two bad leather chairs that
felt like they kind of reached up and eased you down into them. We looked at each other and grinned. Sparky's hand was doing the same thing mine was, rubbing back and forth across the arm of the chair. The leather was so smooth and soft that it felt like you were sticking your hand into a pot of warm butter.

Our boy Dontay sat on the edge of his desk, just like he does in his commercials, crossed his arms and said, “Now, what do we have to do to help each other out, gentlemen? Who has left you aggrieved, and what can I do to make you feel better?”

Sparky said, “I just came in here today to check you out and get my free half hour, Dontay. I wanted to run some things by you and see what you thought.”

Dontay said, “Just a minute, Sparky.”

He walked around to the back of his desk and sat in his chair. He opened a drawer and pulled out this big timer with bright red numbers lit up across it. He pressed something on the back of the timer and the numbers 30:00 came up.

He said, “Sparky, for the next half hour I'm yours.” He tapped the side of his head and said, “And when I say I'm yours, I don't mean just my mind, either, I mean my heart is yours too.” He slapped his hand on his chest twice.

He said, “Now tell my mind what it is you need my heart to feel. Normally my fee is eight hundred dollars an hour but in the spirit of the team I'm going to give you four hundred free dollars' worth of my mind”—he tapped his temple again—“my heart”—he smacked his chest twice— “and my time.” He tapped the top of the timer and the red
numbers began counting down from 30:00, 29:59 … 29:58 … 29:57 …

Dontay said, “You may be asking, ‘Why is this brother willing to dedicate himself to us so quickly?’ And that's a good question, I'm glad you asked it.”

I thought, “Huh?”

But Dontay was on a roll. He said, “I'm willing to do it just so you can see how seriously I want to guide you to what you deserve, it's just so I can show you how badly I want to lead this team.”

He leaned back in his chair and said, “Now enlighten me.”

Sparky didn't want to waste a second. He started by telling the D.O.G. about his bad night at the Taco Bell.

Dontay Gaddy slapped the desk and said, “Brilliant, absolutely brilliant! A little weak in the execution but conceptually inspired!”

Sparky could tell these were encouraging words and started spilling his heart, telling about that sergeant's cousin's brother's nephew and the cat that got blowed up on the way to Cleveland and a thousand other stupid schemes that he had. Dontay Gaddy sat there looking like he was listening to Jesse Jackson instead of my boy Sparky.

I started checking out Dontay's office. Either he'd spent a lot of time in Kenya or he was wearing out the Africana section at Value City. There were enough spears and shields and masks on the walls to get a good Zulu nation uprising going. And a lot more pictures of Dontay and other famous people.

Sparky was going on and on. I checked the timer to see
how much of the D.O.G.'s four hundred dollars he'd used, it was at 22:52. Then, with Sparky jaw-jacking at the speed of light and Dontay Gaddy nodding and going “Uh-huh” and “Really?” and “That's scandalous,” every few seconds and my eyes right on the timer, the bright red numbers jumped from 22:17 to 12:17!

I couldn't believe it! I kept my eyes on the timer.

There must've been some kind of foot pedal or remote to it 'cause the next time Dontay leaned forward to slap the desk and say, “Oh, I wish you'd've called me earlier, you shouldn't've let them get away with that!” the numbers dropped from eleven minutes and forty-one seconds to five minutes and forty-one seconds. I'd heard of time flying, but this was crazy!

The D.O.G. leaned forward again and the timer lost another four minutes, leaving Sparky with a little less than a minute to go.

Dontay said, “Sparky, this has been fascinating. Your heart is in the right place, but it looks like we're just about out of time.”

Sparky looked at the timer and got his confused look on again. “But…” He looked from the D.O.G. to me to the timer. “Oh, snap, I could swear I only started talking a minute ago! But anyway, Dontay, what do you think? Where do you think I'd have the best luck putting a suit in on someone?”

The timer hit four zeroes and Dontay got up and walked around the desk. “Sparky,” he said, “I'm going to give careful consideration and due deliberation to that query, but in the meantime I want you to ask yourself, and I hope that
you delve deeply within before you answer, who is it that has caused you the most harm? What uncaring, callous, wealthy miscreant has exposed you to some type of imminent peril? Who is it that has put you in a position that a fair mind would call untenable?”

You gotta give Dontay Orlando Gaddy credit, even though he sounded like he'd spent five years in Jackson Prison memorizing the dictionary, he could tell all this was going miles over Sparky's head so as he walked us toward the door of his office he switched gears. “In other words, my brother, who you know with a cold heart and a good insurance policy who it'd be worth the team's while to take to court?”

Sparky was taking Dontay's advice to heart, I could tell by the crazy look on his face that he was delving deep within himself to find an answer. As he walked us down the hall Dontay pointed to the pictures of him and the regular Flint folks and said, “Call me optimistic, call me unrealistic, call me a fool for the little people if you must, Sparky, but I believe that one day your picture is destined to be hanging from this very wall.” Dontay smacked his palm on an empty spot amongst all the pictures.

Sparky said, “I don't mind, Dontay, you can put my picture up if you want. The way I see it you're the captain of the team and anything you want goes.”

Dontay said, “Oh no, Sparky, you've got to earn your way up here. Every citizen in each of these pictures is a true American hero, every one of them is one of the common folk who let me lead their team and let me work to get
them what they deserved. To get up on this wall you've got to come out on top of a lawsuit winning at least half a million dollars! Call me a dreamer, Sparky”—Dontay slapped the empty spot again—“but I see your likeness right here, and sooner rather than later!”

Sparky seemed desperate. “But how'm I gonna do that? I'm ready to take one for the team, D.O.G., all you gotta do is tell me how!”

Dontay said, “Be observant, Sparky, opportunities are everywhere. For example, do you own your own home?”

“Uh-uh, I live out in Stonegate Meadows with my momma.”

The D.O.G. said, “Well, there you go, in a complex that large there must be all kinds of attractively dangerous situations. You must be able to find something.”

Sparky said, “I'm trying, Dontay, I just can't seem to—”

Dontay stopped walking and put both of his hands around Sparky's head like one of those preachers on the Healing Network.

He said, “Sparky! The good Lord has blessed you with a great imagination, now all you are required to do is to use it! Listen to what that imagination is trying to tell you! Don't you hear it, don't you hear what it's saying?”

Sparky said, “You got your hands over my ears, D.O.G., I can't hear much of nothing.”

Dontay said, “It's in your head, young brother, it's that same great inspiration that had you laid out in front of that fast-food joint, it's calling, Sparky, and what it's saying is, ‘Ask not for whom the Taco Bell tolls, it tolls for thee!’”

It was like Sparky could actually hear the ringing. He said, “How about if I was taking the trash out one day and got bit by a giant rat with skin disease?”

Dontay let go of Sparky's head and said, “Why, that would be utterly unconscionable and negligent on your landlord's part!”

Sparky said, “Dang, I didn't think that would work, but that's all I could come up with that quick.”

Dontay said, “No, no, no, my brother, that would be something that we could use. I like it, think of it, not only attacked by a rat, but a rat with viscous eruptions all over its skin! It almost brings tears to my eyes to think of the emotional turmoil you'd undergo wondering if you, too, would be coming down with some dreaded dermal disease! The only problem I can visualize in that scenario is that although it would be good if you were able to present at the hospital with a horrible wound, it would be a couple of hundred thousand times better if you presented there with both the wound and the vermin that inflicted this trauma upon you.”

Dontay saw that he needed to downshift gears again.

“Catch the rat after it bites you and you'll see a whole bunch more benjamins.”

Sparky smiled. “Dontay, you take care of your end of the teamwork and let the brother take care of his.”

Sparky slapped his hand against the empty spot on the half-a-million-dollar wall. “Only thing is when you snap my picture we gotta make sure my good side is showing!”

Dontay Gaddy laughed. “Sparky, I think all you've got
are good sides. I'm looking forward to quarterbacking this team to the Super Bowl of Litigation! And when I make that final pass into the end zone guess who's going to be there to catch it?”

Sparky said, “Me?”

Dontay said, “Oh yeah, baby. I want you to go home and start practicing your celebration dance.”

He put his serious look back on, gave us both the double handshake and the deep look into our eyes, and told the gorgeous receptionist, “Ms. Havens, please make certain brother Sparky and brother Luther receive our calendar, and if we have any more of those fridge magnets see that they get a couple. And to show them how much we want them on the team, I'm waiving all charges for today. I should be paying these young men for the great ideas they have and the suffering they've been through.”

Ms. Havens sounded like she was reading from a script. “But, Mr. Gaddy, that's over four hundred doll—”

Dontay Gaddy raised his hand and said, “I know, but I got a feeling about this. Like I said, no charge today.”

When we got outside Sparky was pumped. He said, “Next stop, Wager Avenue, home of Marcel Marx.”

“What's going on there?”

“Marcel's momma kicked him out so he's apartmentally challenged and is squatting in this abandoned crib over there.”

When we pulled up on Wager I should've known, the Sarge used to own the house that Marcel Marx was living in. She'd let it go back for taxes 'cause it had been so
run-down that not even Darnell Dixon could bring it back to life. It wasn't even worth having Darnell burn it down for the insurance.

Every door and window was covered with plywood, there were Condemned signs and a spiderweb of yellow police tape all over what was left of the front porch.