I said, "I have a question that I was just wondering." He said, "Shoot." "Shoot?" "Shoot. Go ahead. Ask." "Are you Frazer, or are you Son?" "I'm Grandson, actually. My grandfather started the shop." "Cool." "But I suppose I'm also Son, since my dad ran things when he was alive. I guess I'm Frazer, too, since my son works here during the summers."
I said, "I have another question." "Shoot." "Do you think I could find the company that made this key?" "Anyone could've made it." "Well then, what I want to know is how can I find the lock that it opens?" "I'm afraid I can't help you with that, any more than telling you to try it in every lock you come across. I could always make you a copy, if you'd like." "I could have a googolplex keys." "Googolplex?" "A googol to the googol power." "Googol?" "That's a one with one hundred zeroes after it." He put his hand on my shoulder and said, "You need the lock." I reached up real high and put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Yeah."
As I was leaving he asked, "Shouldn't you be in school?" I thought fast and told him, "It's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day." Lie #4. "I thought that was in January." "It used to be." Lie #5.
When I got back to the apartment, Stan said, "You've got mail!"
Dear Osk,
Hello, lad! Thanks for your glorious letter and the bulletproof drumsticks, which I hope I'll never have to use! I have to confess, I've never thought too much about giving lessons...
I hope you like the enclosed T-shirt, which I took the liberty of signing for you.
Your mate,
Ringo
I didn't like the enclosed T-shirt. I loved it! Although unfortunately it wasn't white, so I couldn't wear it.
I laminated Ringo's letter and tacked it to my wall. Then I did some research on the Internet about the locks of New York, and I found out a lot of useful information. For example, there are 319 post offices and 207,352 post office boxes. Each box has a lock, obviously. I also found out that there are about 70,571 hotel rooms, and most rooms have a main lock, a bathroom lock, a closet lock, and a lock to the minibar. I didn't know what a mini-bar was, so I called the Plaza Hotel, which I knew was a famous one, and asked. Then I knew what a minibar was. There are more than 300,000 cars in New York, which doesn't even count the 12,187 cabs and 4,425 buses. Also, I remembered from when I used to take the subway that the conductors used keys to open and close the doors, so there were those, too. More than 9 million people live in New York (a baby is born in New York every 50 seconds), and everyone has to live somewhere, and most apartments have two locks on the front, and to at least some of the bathrooms, and maybe to some other rooms, and obviously to dressers and jewelry boxes. Also there are offices, and art studios, and storage facilities, and banks with safe-deposit boxes, and gates to yards, and parking lots. I figured that if you included everything—from bicycle locks to roof latches to places for cufflinks—there are probably about 18 locks for every person in New York City, which would mean about 162 million locks, which is a crevasse-load of locks.
"Schell residence ... Hi, Mom ... A little bit, I guess, but still pretty sick ... No ... Uh-huh ... Uh-huh ... I guess ... I think I'll order Indian ... But still ... OK. Uh-huh. I will ... I know ... I know... Bye."
I timed myself and it took me 3 seconds to open a lock. Then I figured out that if a baby is born in New York every 50 seconds, and each person has 18 locks, a new lock is created in New York every
That night, I put on my white gloves, went to the garbage can in Dad's closet, and opened the bag that I'd thrown all of the pieces of the vase into. I was looking for clues that might lead me in a direction. I had to be extremely careful so that I wouldn't contaminate the evidence, or let Mom know what I was doing, or cut and infect myself, and I found the envelope that the key was in. It was then that I noticed something that a good detective would have noticed at the very beginning: the word "Black" was written on the back of the envelope. I was so mad at myself for not noticing it before that I gave myself a little bruise. Dad's handwriting was weird. It looked sloppy, like he was writing in a hurry, or writing down the word while he was on the phone, or just thinking about something else. So what would he have been thinking about?
I Googled around and found out that Black wasn't the name of a company that made lockboxes. I got a little disappointed, because it would have been a logical explanation, which is always the best kind, although fortunately it isn't the only kind. Then I found out that there was a place called Black in every state in the country, and actually in almost every country in the world. In France, for example, there is a place called Noir. So that wasn't very helpful. I did a few other searches, even though I knew they would only hurt me, because I couldn't help it. I printed out some of the pictures I found—a shark attacking a girl, someone walking on a tightrope between the Twin Towers, that actress getting a blowjob from her normal boyfriend, a soldier getting his head cut off in Iraq, the place on the wall where a famous stolen painting used to hang—and I put them in Stuff That Happened to Me, my scrap-book of everything that happened to me.
The next morning I told Mom I couldn't go to school again. She asked what was wrong. I told her, "The same thing that's always wrong." "You're sick?" "I'm sad." "About Dad?" "About everything." She sat down on the bed next to me, even though I knew she was in a hurry. "What's everything?" I started counting on my fingers: "The meat and dairy products in our refrigerator, fistfights, car accidents, Larry—" "Who's Larry?" "The homeless guy in front of the Museum of Natural History who always says 'I promise it's for food' after he asks for money." She turned around and I zipped her dress while I kept counting. "How you don't know who Larry is, even though you probably see him all the time, how Buckminster just sleeps and eats and goes to the bathroom and has no raison d'être, the short ugly guy with no neck who takes tickets at the IMAX theater, how the sun is going to explode one day, how every birthday I always get at least one thing I already have, poor people who get fat because they eat junk food because it's cheaper..." That was when I ran out of fingers, but my list was just getting started, and I wanted it to be long, because I knew she wouldn't leave while I was still going. "... domesticated animals, how I have a domesticated animal, nightmares, Microsoft Windows, old people who sit around all day because no one remembers to spend time with them and they're embarrassed to ask people to spend time with them, secrets, dial phones, how Chinese waitresses smile even when there's nothing funny or happy, and also how Chinese people own Mexican restaurants but Mexican people never own Chinese restaurants, mirrors, tape decks, my unpopularity at school, Grandma's coupons, storage facilities, people who don't know what the Internet is, bad handwriting, beautiful songs, how there won't be humans in fifty years—" "Who said there won't be humans in fifty years?" I asked her, "Are you an optimist or a pessimist?" She looked at her watch and said, "I'm optimistic." "Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each other as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon." "Why do beautiful songs make you sad?" "Because they aren't true." "Never?" "Nothing is beautiful and true." She smiled, but in a way that wasn't just happy, and said, "You sound just like Dad."