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The next day I had a staff meeting in Manhattan, so I left at 6 AM to catch an early train to Penn Station. It was a morning meeting so I got home at about three. I had just sat down in the study when I looked up and saw a school bus rumble by. I got up and watched it from the window. It stopped, flashers going, at the end of the block and five or six kids got off. Three of them, two boys and a girl, came walking down the street—but Jenny wasn’t with them. I recognized the girl from the night before. One of the boys had to be in the early grades and was tripping along behind his teenaged brother. They went into the house two doors down from me and the girl went a few more housed down, crossed, and went into the brick split-level with baby blue trim.

A few minutes later the phone rang.

“Tom, come on over. I’ve got some work to show you…a new idea…tell me what you think.”

Charlie met me at the door. “Jenny’s at school,” he said through the vale of pipe smoke.

“I just saw the school bus, she wasn’t on it.”

Charlie stopped for a moment and frowned, then, “She rides a different bus, usually.”

He turned and started to climb the stairway. “Come on, let’s go up to my office.”

He had to take each stair one at a time, pulling himself up by the banister. I followed a few steps behind, wondering if I should offer help. I decided to just be ready to catch him if he stumbled.

His office was just what I expected—wood paneled and a gawd-awful mess. There were papers and magazines in addition to books. “I write everything out long hand, then do my first edit transcribing it into the damn computer. When I’m working I do a chapter a day—either writing or transcribing.”

“Does Jenny help you any?” I asked.

“Help me! Hell, half my material comes from her. She’s comes up with the most amazing ideas.”

He looked at me with a bit of a smile. “Don’t let that little girl exterior fool you—she makes some incredible things up…even some of the bedroom stuff. She’s eleven going on thirty-five. Also, she’s a hell of a typist—over a hundred words a minute—but I usually do the transcription ‘cause I do my first edit then.”

He clumped across the room to some shelves. On them were several piles of neatly stacked papers, loose-leaf. “This is what I’ve brought you up here to see. These are 17 novels I’ve written but haven’t transcribed. I want you to get them published after I die.”

“I’d be honored,” I responded. “You trust me to do all the editing?”

“You do already. Also, I don’t want you to tell people I’ve died—no ‘post-humus’ crap.”

“You’ll have to arrange that with the Pen Books legal office, but I’m sure it can be done.”

“No,” he said as he lowered himself into a chair. He looked at me with a considering expression.

“Tom, I want you to sit down. I have a proposal for you and it’s complicated.”

I turned one of the chairs that was facing the desk, it looked like it came from the early 20th Century. The springs in the cushion were shot.

“I want you to take my place—and my name.”

I started to speak but he waved me silent.

“No, there’s a lot more. I also want you to watch over Jenny. The books are for her.”

I was a little thunderstruck. “What about her mother, don’t you have family?”

“Her mother died a long time ago,” he said. “My family doesn’t even know about her and, well, her mother’s family has sort of faded from view, let’s say.”

“But, you don’t even know me.”

“I know you a lot better than you think—I’ve had you pretty carefully checked out.”

“Raising a teenager,” I said, somewhat to myself.

“She’s pretty self-sufficient,” he said. “It’s complicated. I don’t want your answer now, or even soon. There’s a lot about her that you’ll have to understand.”

“What if I refuse?” I asked.

“As I say, she’s self-sufficient, we’ll set things up for her to take care of herself.”

“How can that happen?”

“You’ll come to understand as you get to know her. Still, she’s a lot better off with an adult helping her.”

His saying ‘helping her,’ rather than ‘looking after her’ or something like that, seemed strange.

“Don’t worry,” he continued, leaning forward, “there’s plenty of time to figure this out.”

He leaned back again. “Now, let me tell you about my latest little sex-and-blood thriller…”

We talked for over an hour, discussing the novel that was our current project. The sun was lighting the room with an almost horizontal orange shaft when Jenny appeared at the door. She looked in, then took a quick step backwards into the shadow of the hallway. I hadn’t heard her come through the front door.

“Oh God,” I said, “I didn’t realize it’s gotten so late. I’d better be going.”

“Don’t worry, we’ve been working,” Charlie said, lighting his pipe.

“You’re up,” he looked at Jenny, then paused, a bit of a confused expression on his face. “Ah, Jenny usually takes a nap when she gets home from school.”

“I didn’t hear you come in,” I said.

“Oh, I usually come in the back,” she responded. “I heard you guys up here so I slept in the basement.”

“I’ve furnished it as sort of a family room for us,” Charlie said.

I stood up. “I have to go to the grocery store, and the dog needs to be let out.”

“Oh,” Jenny said, she looked at the window. “Can I come with you? I need a couple of things for school,…pens and…a notebook.”

“That’d be great.” I looked at Charlie, considering our earlier conversation I knew he’d approve.

“Let me give you a list,” he said, “we need a few things in the kitchen.”

“Let me run home and let Arbutus out and make my own list,” I said. “You come across when you’re ready.”

“OK,” she said.

As I stepped into the hallway I noticed that she look tired—there were dark patches under her eyes and there was no color in her cheeks—her lips were pale.

Twenty minutes later there was a knock on the door.

“Come on in honey,” I said. “I’m just finishing up the list.” When I opened the pantry, Arbutus pawed my thigh expecting a dog chew.

“Oh yeah, you already know where they are.”

He went into the living room with his tail wagging, then lay down between a chair and the wall, the rawhide between his paws. Jenny walked over to him and reached down. He sniffed her hand, then seemed to pull his head away, looking sideways at her, his ears back. I was surprised to see him start to bare his teeth. Jenny pulled her hand back.

“Arbutus!” I scolded him.

“It’s OK,” Jenny said, standing up, “he probably thought I was going to take his toy.”

“Still, he shouldn’t be growling,” I said.

The dog looked at me with a contrite expression.

“I’ve got everything, let’s go then,” I said.

I had to back the car out of the garage before Jenny could get in, my bike was too close to the right side in the narrow space. She sat down and closed the door.

“Put on your seatbelt, dear,” I said.

“Oh.” She looked around, as if she’d never thought of it, then pulled the straps across her lap and chest and, fumbled some with the latch before it clicked in and the warning light went out.

She was wearing a green corduroy jumper. Her knees were kind of knobby and legs a bit too thin. Again I noticed how pale her skin was. I looked closer and saw that the veins in her arms seemed to stand out. The dome light went out when I put the car in gear.

“How was school today?” I asked as we started down the street.

“Fine, I guess,” she responded with little enthusiasm.

“I get the feeling you don’t like school much.”

She looked at me (again there was that strange glow in her eyes), “I just don’t talk about it much. It’s OK, not hard or anything.”

“You don’t hang around other kids much.”

“No, I guess not. I just help my dad mostly.”

We drove the rest of the few blocks in silence. It had started to rain slightly.

As we worked our way up and down the isles, I noticed that Jenny had a way of looking at people that made some of them uncomfortable. She would look at them with an intensity—almost with a craving—that made some shy away from her. When she looked at one old lady she looked back at Jenny with an expression of sadness, almost despair. One boy said ‘hi’ as we went by, Jenny didn’t respond.

She picked up a few groceries, some detergent, but not any pens or a notebook.

“You forgot something,” I said when we got in the check-out.

“What?” she looked at her list.

“School stuff.”

“Oh,” she smiled. “Watch my place?”

“Of course.”

I was surprised to see her move quickly back into the store—it was the first time I’d ever seen the girl behave anyway but borderline listless.

When she returned I was putting my stuff on the belt. She followed and used a debit card to pay—I wrote a check. (Remember, this was 1989, point of sale debit cards had just begun to spread).

When we left the store there was a homeless fellow sitting in the entrance. I ignored him but Jenny stopped. She gave him a dollar, then leaned down and said something to him. He nodded, then she followed me.

“Do you know him?” I asked as I loaded the trunk. “No.”

On the way home she seemed nervous—anxious to get home. She almost ran across the street carrying her two bags of groceries. I put my stuff away and then settled in the living room with a glass of wine. I was surprised to see Charlie’s van back out of the garage and drive away. Twenty minutes later they returned, driving directly into the garage and closing the door before they got out.

Chapter 3

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