Read My Most Excellent Year Online
Authors: Steve Kluger
TCKeller:
Assuming he doesn’t kill you, that’s actually one of the few ideas you ever had that wasn’t at least 60 percent crackpot. If I could sing, I might even use it on Alé.
I can’t believe you thought Dad would rather have had a football kid than you. Where have you been hiding out your whole life??
AugieHwong:
Down in the Depths on the 90th Floor. (Cole Porter wrote that one too.)
TCKeller:
It’s a good thing you told him that you were afraid he wanted a different brand of son—because if you hadn’t, I would have.
AugieHwong:
When
did
you tell him?
TCKeller:
About 4 hours before you watched him figure it out for himself. I knew you wanted me to. When you made
me promise to keep it a secret, you said it in your “Betray me” voice.
AugieHwong:
I didn’t think you’d make me wait 6 days, you rock-head!! What time do you want me to pick up Hucky?
TCKeller:
1:00. I usually keep him out until 4:00 and then take him back to the Residence. Warning: He’s going to invent 30 minutes of excuses to make you stay, so factor that in. Pop says I can’t go outside until Monday. The cough is better, but he thinks I’m still contagious. By the way—except for holding my hand on Plum Island for unrelated reasons, Alé’s not letting me get away with
anything
anymore. Even a casual-looking arm-around-the shoulder thing triggers a military alert. Is she really going to give me a second chance after the “just friends” scam or did I screw it up beyond repair?
AugieHwong:
You want an argument or an answer?
TCKeller:
Groan. That’s what I was afraid of. I’m going to have to pull this off as an honest man. Without any subterfuge. How do I do
that
?
AugieHwong:
Now you want an argument.
TCKeller:
Hey, is “rock-head” new? Because I like it.
AugieHwong:
Actually, I think it’s retro. But I like it too.
Dear Jutes,
While Hucky and I were working our way through Chicken McNuggets at McDonald’s, I tried to put together a responsible itinerary that might get past a six-year-old. I should have known better. It sounded like a battle plan for a divorced dad when he was stuck with his kid for the day.
“Want to see
Spy Kids 3-D
?”
“No.”
“Want to go bowling?”
“Why?”
“Children’s Museum?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Then suddenly it hit me just as I dropped a french fry into my Coke. Oh, duh. Like Tick and I had never been in his shoes before. What
did
happen to my brain?
“Okay,” I said, fishing through the ice for the drowning fry. “I have an idea. But wipe the ketchup off your face first.”
“I like it this way. Wipe your own off.”
“And eat two more bites of your hangabur or we’re not going
any
where.”
HUCKY AND AUGIE
Schedule
Pirates:
We bought eye patches at the 99¢ shop, said “Aye, matey” a lot, and ordered Phyllis to walk the plank. She chased us into the café with a saber disguised as
Angela’s Ashes
.
Aliens:
We came from the planet Twylo and we hatched out of walnuts. (Hucky thought the whole concept was idiotic, so this one didn’t last long.)
Cops:
Between lunch and cookies we arrested Clifford the Big Red Dog, Maisy the Rat, Elmer the Patchwork Elephant, and Dad. (He went quietly to jail without putting up a fight. He was no match for Hucky.)
Dino Hunters:
We were trapped inside Jurassic Park after the last helicopter had taken off. So we had a picnic lunch with Barney and then we shot him. But while we were deciding where to stash the body, I realized that Hucky hadn’t been tugging on his hair all day. Instead, he’d been playing with one of his front teeth.
“Does it hurt?” I asked, automatically thinking “cavity.”
“No. I want it to get loose. What’s taking it so long?”
“You’re already six. The Tooth Fairy’ll be here any minute.”
Hucky glared suspiciously into my eyes as though I were pulling a fast one.
“Who??”
“The Tooth Fairy,” I repeated. “Haven’t you ever heard of her before?” Well, he hadn’t. But I’d really opened a can of worms by asking, because when he found out I wasn’t kidding, he forgot all about Barney’s corpse behind the couch and began beating me up with questions.
“Who’s the Tooth Fairy? What does she do? Is she wicked or nice? Where does she come from? Does she melt?”
Jutes, you’re the actress. You probably could have improvised some kind of an answer without even breaking a sweat. But all I have to my credit so far is “Too Darn Hot” and a pair of blue tights. I don’t know how to think on my toes yet. I stink without a script.
I need lines! What’s there to tell about the Tooth Fairy?? She flies through the window, leaves cash, and peace out—she’s gone. It’s not like she ever had a Who’s Who bio in
Playbill
.
So how was I supposed to answer him?!
But then Hucky gave me just the clue I’d been looking for.
“Tell me about the Tooth Fairy
,” he demanded.
“
All
about the Tooth Fairy. Please?”
Jackpot. “All About the Tooth Fairy.”
All About Eve.
Thank God for Bette Davis.
ALL ABOUT THE TOOTH FAIRY
By Augie, for Hucky
Once upon a time, there was a forty-year-old Tooth Fairy who was filled with fire and music. Each night (and on Wednesday and Saturday matinees), she would fly around the world to visit all of the children whose teeth had fallen out so she could leave them shiny silver dollars under their pillows. Oh, how they loved the Tooth Fairy. But the Tooth Fairy was sad because she thought she was too old to marry her prince, and that all she’d wind up with was a book full of clippings. It’s a funny business, a woman’s career.
One night while the Tooth Fairy was having a little party after work, her best friend came to visit her. She said, “I have a surprise, Tooth Fairy! Outside I found a young
girl who wants to do good things for people—just like you do! She’s gone all across the country, back and forth and back and forth, to watch you visit the little children. Oh please, Tooth Fairy, won’t you let her come in and say hello?”
Well, of course the Tooth Fairy was one of the kindest fairies in the world, so she said to her friend, “The heave-ho!” (which means “Please bring her in” in fairy talk). So her friend brought in the young girl, who was so sweet and so polite and who told such an unhappy story about her gloomy life that when the Tooth Fairy found out she didn’t have a home, she invited her to stay in her castle. That way she could learn everything there was to know about being a Tooth Fairy. She even gave her a new name. “Miss Worthington.”
Now, what the Tooth Fairy didn’t know was that Miss Worthington was secretly mean. She didn’t really like the Tooth Fairy at all. She thought it was about time that Tooth Fairies were young and pretty, and it was her evil plan to become the Tooth Fairy herself. So while she pretended to be nice, she was really studying the Tooth Fairy like she was a play or a book or a set of blueprints, just waiting for the day when she could take away the Tooth Fairy’s job and the Tooth Fairy’s prince from her.
The good news is that the Tooth Fairy found out in time. One morning she heard footsteps
on the ceiling and knew it was her Fairy Godmother Cora—who flew right in through the skylight and said, “Tooth Fairy, get rid of that girl. She is a louse.” Tooth Fairy was shocked. “Miss Worthington?” she asked, hardly believing her ears. “That’s what I said, bub,” replied Cora (which means “yes”). So Cora turned Miss Worthington into a venomous fishwife and everyone lived happily ever after.
Altogether, I maybe knew 25 percent of the words in ASL. The rest of it I either had to finger-spell or act out in pantomime. Did
you
ever try to play a blueprint or a fishwife?? But even if I wasn’t exactly on the money, I put the main points across anyway. Hucky’s eyes opened wide when they were supposed to open wide, he got sad on the right cues, and he knew Miss Worthington was a little witch before I even hit that part.
“I SO don’t like her,”
he signed on our way back to the Children’s Residence.
“Not even at the beginning. She lied.”
I still had an hour to hang out, so we went upstairs to give Mateo the eye patch we’d bought for him. Right after he put it on, he stood in front of the mirror and made Captain Hook faces, and probably could have spent the rest of the day doing it—but the minute he saw Hucky’s reflection turning on the VCR, he lit out of there as fast as a pair of short legs could flee. (I don’t blame him. I know every word of
Mary Poppins
by heart, and the only other movie musical I ever memorized from the ground up was
Funny Girl.
And that was on purpose.) But I had other things to take my mind off the tea parties on the ceiling. While Hucky and I sat on his bed during the opening credits, I glanced around the room and noticed that the wall above his desk was covered with drawings—and most of them were of Tick, me, and Alé. All together, we outnumbered Mary Poppins 8 to 1.
“Augie?”
asked Hucky, looking up from “Chim-Chim-Cheree.”
“Can I be your brother too, like T.C. is?”
“You already are,” I told him, reaching over to pat Shut-the-Door. “Sometimes things like that happen all by themselves.”
Incidentally, this morning his tooth fell out and he told the social worker to make sure the
real
Tooth Fairy got it and not the opportunistic bitch who was trying to take her place (well, that was the subtext anyway).
He’s definitely ready for
Snow White and the Little Foxe
s.
Love,
Augie
AugieHwong:
Before I forget, Tick’s birthday is right after
Kiss Me, Kate
, and I don’t want it to get lost in the shuffle. I was thinking about a surprise party and a pair of box seats to a Red Sox/Yankees home game—but I don’t know any scalpers. Does Clint?
AlePerez:
I’ll check. But I’ve already picked out something on my own. There’s an online registry where you can pay to name an actual star. So now there
really is one called “Anthony Keller.” They’re FedExing me a photo of it with a certificate, and I’m having both of them matted and framed. Do you think it’s too much?
AugieHwong:
I think it’s so spot-on that the only way my Red Sox tickets are going to compete is if they let him pitch. But that’s okay because he deserves something special—particularly from
us
. If it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t be playing Lilli Vanessi, I wouldn’t have Andy, most of Brookline wouldn’t know ASL, and Hucky would still be crying himself to sleep. My brother’s a dreamer who doesn’t like giving up. And it’s contagious.
AlePerez:
Did he tell you we were holding hands on Plum Island? It was only the second time since I’ve known him that he wasn’t plotting his next move. So how could I resist?
AugieHwong:
Actually, Hucky signed me the news while it was still breaking. Sort of like live coverage on CNN.
Dear Jutes,
I accidentally rewrote the last half of
Meet Me in St. Louis
, and you couldn’t have played it any better yourself—even if you’d thought of it first.
www.augiehwong.com
PRIVATE CHAT
AugieHwong:
I was awake last night worrying.
AndyWexler:
Tell me something new, Wonderboy.
AugieHwong:
No, this is serious. Valentine’s Day is in two weeks. What if we buy each other the same thing by accident?
AndyWexler:
So what?
AugieHwong:
So maybe we should go present-shopping together. That way we can make sure we each hit different kinds of stores.
AndyWexler:
I never guessed that life could be so complicated.
AugieHwong:
You want to reexamine your other options before it’s too late?
AndyWexler:
I picked my option back in the fall when you kept falling on me during soccer practice. So it’s
already
too late.
We figured out that the smartest thing to do was plan an afternoon at the Pru. They have a good 2½ million shops in the mall there, which automatically meant that (a) we’d definitely find a pair of unconflicting valentines for each other, and (b) we’d be together for at least four hours. That was actually the whole point, but you can’t
just come out and say, “Dude, I want to spend a day with you.” According to Alé, “Never give it away up front like that.”
It only took me an hour and a half to get ready, which is ten minutes off my previous pre-date-with-Andy record. I couldn’t decide between the tan slacks or the taupe ones (Dad said, “Go with tan”), and it was 50–50 on the blue shirt/yellow shirt crisis too (Mom negotiated for the blue team and won), but we all agreed on Alé’s brown sweater from Christmas. So while I stood in front of the Brookline Village T station waiting for him, I was confident that the cover of
GQ
was the next stop.
Then disaster. Again.