The Fourth Stall Part II (2 page)

“Oh, right. How much will it be?” she asked.

“Well, dealing with teachers is normally a pretty costly service, due to the risk involved, but I can probably cut you a break. How does twenty-five dollars sound?”

“I'll give you ten.”

“Fifteen,” I countered.

“Eight,” she said.

I stopped and looked at her. She grinned at me. Most customers would have gotten the boot right then and there for that kind of stunt. But most customers didn't remind me of a seventeen-foot rattler with nine-inch fangs.

“Hey,
you
came to
me
for help, remember?”

She laughed. “Okay, fifteen. But only because I like you, Mac.”

Could have fooled me.

“Payment is usually due up front,” I said.

“I'll pay you when I'm sure Kjelson is off my back. It was nice doing business.” She held out her hand.

When I reached out and shook it, I expected her fingers to be sticky and slimy, for some reason, but they were just cold. Freezing, actually. After she left, I cupped my hands and blew into them, trying to shake off the fact that I'd just been manhandled like a slab of ground beef about to become a dozen fried hamburgers.

W
e didn't really even have time to start thinking about how to solve Trixie's problem that day because the customers just didn't stop showing up. It was one of the busiest days we've ever had in the history of our business. At lunch that Tuesday I had two more customers show up with pretty major problems.

The first was this kid Jonah. He was a seventh grader and was known around school for being a real health freak, the kind of grade-A nut job who liked to go on “fun runs.” He'd made the school varsity cross-country team that year as a sixth grader, which was downright unheard of. Personally I'd rather take a honey bath followed by a flesh-eating-ant shower than spend my Saturdays running eighty-eight miles in six hours or whatever other psychotic kind of stuff happened at cross-country meets, but just the same he became the team's star runner, and our school had been getting a lot of attention lately around the county because we always seemed to be the best at every sport and the local private high schools were always trying to recruit us away from the district public schools.

Anyway, Jonah showed up in my office that day at lunch wearing a gray T-shirt and running shorts that were borderline vulgar, they were so short, and were also a bad choice given that it was still below forty degrees outside and would be for the next few months. Seriously, runners are insane.

After Vince showed him in, Jonah jogged in place across from my desk in my cramped office while trying not to kick the fourth stall's door behind him.

“You can have a seat,” I said, finding his high steps particularly distracting and grotesque.

“Nah, I'm good,” he said, picking up the pace of his steps.

I sighed, but I don't think he heard me, which was probably good since that was pretty unprofessional of me. “Okay, what can I help you with, Jonah?”

He didn't answer because he was holding two fingers against his neck with his left hand while looking at a watch on his right wrist. He kept jogging in place and then said, “Shoot, only ninety-one,” and then picked up the pace even more.

This was going to get old in a hurry.

“Look, Jonah,” I said, “I'm going to need you to sit down if you want my help.”

He looked at me as if he'd forgotten I was there. He kept jogging in place, and for a second I thought he might just keep doing that until I'd have to call in Joe to forcibly remove him. But Jonah nodded and then sat in the plastic chair across from me.

“Okay, thanks,” I said. “Now, how can I help you?”

“Well, I'm here about the school lunches,” he said as his knees started bouncing up and down.

Man, this kid was restless. He was basically running in place while seated. I didn't know if he had one of those letter diseases that parents were always freaking out about, like ADD or DUD or whatever, or if he was just that obsessed with running, but either way he was driving me crazy.

“Lunch? Yeah, what about it?” I asked while calmly putting my Books inside the desk and out of harm's way.

“Haven't you noticed how bad the meal options are lately?”

I actually hadn't noticed anything different about the school lunches at all, since I brought my own lunch most days and spent every lunch period in here seeing customers. But, I mean, who was this kid kidding? Everybody knows that school lunch is awful. It's, like, common knowledge. It's one of those things you're just born knowing, like how cats know how to catch mice even if they didn't ever have their mom around. It's instinct for kids to avoid school lunch. At the very least hadn't Jonah ever seen any of those lame shows on Nickelodeon or read any books about kids in school?

“Lately?” I said. “I mean, they've always been terrible, based on what kids have told me. And like I told all of them, there's not much I can do about that. . . . I mean, I can get you McDonalds or something for lunch on certain occasions or even regularly if you pay the right price, but getting the lunch ladies to cook even halfway decent food is a lost cause. It would be like asking me to get them to cancel school forever so we could all go live in some magical land where there are no adults except for a ship full of pirates and a tiny fairy who glows. You know?”

“No, no, no,” Jonah said, waving his hands. With his feet bouncing even faster and his arms waving about, he looked certifiably crazy. If I'd had a Taser right then, I might have used it on him. For his own safety. “Not bad as in ‘they taste bad.' I meant how bad they are for you. They've been incredibly unhealthy lately, like mucho trans-fat and simple-carb type unhealthy.”

He said that last part while nodding with bugged-out eyes as if those words were supposed to say everything I needed to know. But the fact was I didn't have a clue what he was talking about. So I just nodded calmly, hoping that he'd take that as a sign to go on. Or leave.

“I mean,” he continued, “yesterday for lunch they served us deep-fried bacon and frosted pancakes with double-berry syrup, and last week it was fried chicken with sides of fried chicken skin and double-fried French fries and chicken-fried steak with fried mashed-potato cakes and double-cream gravy. Basically, if a dish contains the word ‘double,' ‘gravy,' or ‘fried,' then it's been on the menu during the past few weeks!”

I opened my mouth to ask him what the big deal was, since I thought all that stuff sounded really good. In fact, I was starting to think I might need to try this new school lunch. But he started screaming before I could say anything.

“Do you know how many calories are in that stuff? I mean, it's like a ton of calories! Or how much saturated fat? How much LDL cholesterol?” He was on his feet again now, jogging in place. That seemed to be the only thing holding Jonah together right then so I allowed it.

I tried not to laugh because my mom and her friends were always going on and on about those evil calories and it just sounded so strange coming from a seventh grader. He didn't seem much like my mom and those weird ladies she hung out with who wore tracksuits all the time and sat around the kitchen talking about calories and exercises while eating all of the double chocolate chip cookies they'd just baked.

“Okay, Jonah,” I said, “we'll help you, but you've got to calm down.”

The truth was I wasn't too sure I wanted to solve this problem. If these lunches were as good as they sounded and then I somehow fixed the “problem” and the student body found out it was me . . . well, then I'd be as good as dead. Or worse yet, they'd probably douse me in breading and double fry me and then take turns dunking me in ranch dressing and taking bites. Okay, that's pretty gross, but it's also probably pretty accurate. But I had to help Jonah, regardless. I mean, look at this kid; he clearly wasn't going to survive this if I didn't figure out what was going on. And, well, a whole bunch of disappointed kids is still better than a bunch of happy, gorging kids and one calorie-exploded cross-country runner. Plus, he had a point—it was pretty strange for the school to be serving that kind of food.

“Do you know how many calories, Mac? Do you?” he yelled again.

“We'll help you, Jonah. Just calm down,” I said again.

He didn't seem to hear me; he just kept on rambling and running in place. “I mean, this isn't a recommended diet. No, not at all. We're supposed to have a well-balanced meal consisting of lean proteins and vitamin-packed green vegetables and a few complex carbohydrates, like plain brown rice or whole-grain bread. But this . . . oh, this is just not ideal, not at all. I mean, the calories alone, not to mention the trans-fats and simple carbohydrates . . . and . . . and the calories!”

“Vince?” I called out.

“Yeah, Mac?” I heard him say, and from the way he said it, I knew he was laughing so hard out there that it was likely he was rolling on the floor.

“Tell Joe we need a peaceful extraction,” I said.

“I'm on it!” Vince said through a loud laugh.

Jonah didn't seem to notice; he was still just jogging in place and muttering about calories over and over again. Then he seemed to be counting silently for a bit before saying to nobody in particular, “That must be like three thousand calories!”

Joe entered and grabbed Jonah's shoulders, but not in a rough way, and led him out of the stall and then out of the office. Every once in a while we had to extract kids, usually for my protection, but this time it was for Jonah's own protection. In that cramped stall he was pretty likely to have hurt himself had he kept going on and on like that. I gave Vince, who was still laughing, a look and then went back to my office to make a note to be sure to discuss payment terms with Jonah sometime the following day.

Jonah's problem was pretty typical, actually. Kids seemed to have pretty big problems with the school lately. The usual customer needed his homework done for him, or test answers, or something I could fix easily. But lately they'd been asking for some pretty major fixes, like getting a teacher fired and changing an entire school's lunch menu. That said, I wasn't complaining, because this would probably end well for us—very well, actually. The more difficult a problem is, the more money I get to charge. Which is why I was actually kind of happy when another kid showed up with a major problem later that lunch period.

Tony Adrian walked into the office looking like he was trying to float inside. I mean, he shuffled his feet very close together, and his steps were so light, it looked like they were barely touching the ground. I saw that he had his backpack with him, and I looked at Vince, who was standing just outside the fourth stall.

He nodded that it was okay. Normally we didn't allow kids to bring stuff inside my office, but after a search and if they had a reason, we sometimes allowed it. I wasn't sure what Adrian's reasoning was, but if Vince had okayed the backpack, then I wasn't going to say anything. I trusted Vince more than I trusted myself sometimes.

“Have a seat,” I said to Tony, who was still standing there as Vince closed the stall door.

Tony dug inside his backpack and removed a small plastic container. I tensed as he reached inside, but then all he took out was a little white disposable towel, the kind that restaurants put on the plate when you order barbecue ribs or buffalo wings. You know, the towels soaked in so many cleaning chemicals that they smell like they could burn your skin right off your hands.

Tony wiped down the plastic chair with the towel and then sat down. I gave him a look and he shrugged sheepishly.

“So what can I help you with?”

“Well, it's something I've been finding in my locker lately—” He put his hand to his mouth as if he was going to puke, then he swallowed hard and continued. “I like to keep my stuff pretty clean, you see, and the past few days I've been finding droppings in my locker.”

He shuddered at the end of his sentence and then breathed hard, as if just saying that had taken as much energy as running a lap.

“Droppings?”

“Yes . . . feces of some kind. I think probably from a mouse, but it's hard to say. I can . . . barely look at it.” His sentences were choppy because he had to keep putting his hand to his mouth and swallowing, as if every word carried the danger of coming out covered in Tony's breakfast.

“Rat poop in your locker, eh?” I said as if this was something that happened all the time. It wasn't.

He nodded, seeming relieved to be using wordless gestures.

“So you just want me to help you clean it up?” I asked. “You don't want to touch it, I'm assuming?”

It wasn't hard to see that this kid was a neat freak of epic proportions. I thought my mom was bad, but this kid would probably make her look like the Ron Santo of cleaning, which is pretty good, but just not good enough for the Hall of Fame, for some reason.

“Yeah, help me clean it, but also maybe try to find out where it's coming from? And get it to stop? It's been kind of piling . . . up.” He struggled to get out the last few words, and I slid back from the desk as far as I could, sure that this was it, that he was going to lose it.

But he controlled himself, probably because the sight of the mess he'd have made would have instantly caused him to combust into a ball of fire.

“Okay, I'm sure we can figure something out,” I said. “But poop duty isn't exactly our favorite thing to do, right, so it'll probably cost you about four bucks every time we need to clean your locker. And then a little more to solve the problem entirely, maybe like eleven dollars. How does that sound? Unless you'd rather pay with a favor?”

“Can I think about it?” he asked. “I mean, I can pay you now for the cleaning, but for the rest can I think about the money or favor part?”

“That sounds fair,” I said.

He nodded and dug inside his backpack. Well, he didn't so much as dig as he carefully extracted a small Tupperware container as if it contained highly unstable radioactive uranium. It did not contain explosives, though, but instead several neatly folded and impeccably clean plastic sandwich bags. Inside each bag was a different type of money. One bag had all pennies and one had dollar bills, etc.

He carefully opened the bag with one dollar bills like he was performing a complicated and risky brain surgery. He reached inside and took out four of the crispest one-dollar bills I'd ever seen. They were so straight and neat and crispy that I bet they would have crunched like Pringles if I decided to take a bite out of one.

He handed me the money and then gathered his things. I filed away the money and made some notes in my Books.

“It was good doing business,” I said with my hand outstretched.

He looked at my hand as if it were a giant ball of boogers or something even more disgusting. I wasn't sure if I should be offended. I mean, okay, I wasn't like Mr. Clean over here, but I wasn't exactly like Dirty Mike, the kid who hadn't showered in four years, seven months, and fourteen days—yes, he actually kept track; he claimed he was trying to beat a world record of some sort, though I don't know why anyone would ever keep a record book for who's the dirtiest, grossest person on earth.