Bingo Brown and the Language of Love Read online

  He went directly to Billy, at the open window. “Yes,” he said. He closed the window and went back to his bed.

  Well, at least he now had something to write to Melissa. “Billy Wentworth’s poodle, Misty, will be spending next week with me, so this will probably be my last letter for a while. I’ll have to keep an eye on her. Sincerely, but somewhat despondently, Bingo Brown”

  He fumbled under the bed for his summer notebook and flipped to “Trials of Today.” He wrote:

  1. Continued animosity from my mother and the cruel implication that I am, socially, on the same level with a poodle.

  2. Having the privacy of my bedroom invaded by an enemy agent.

  3. Inability to create postal history by writing Bingo letters to Melissa.

  4. Continued failure in reaching the mainstream of life.

  It made Bingo feel somewhat better to have survived four trials of this magnitude, but he still had only one word to list under “Triumphs”: none.

  Chef Bingo

  BINGO TIED ON HIS apron and looked down at the cookbook on the counter. It was open to page forty-four: chicken breasts in tarragon sauce.

  Bingo cracked his knuckles, cheflike.

  “Let’s see,” he said. Beneath his breath, he began to read the ingredients. “Chicken breasts—I have those. Onions—I have those. …”

  In order to make up for his phone debt, Bingo had agreed to cook supper for his mom and dad for thirty-six nights. His mom had originally wanted fifty-four. “That’s fair, Bingo,” she had argued, “a dollar a night.” But he had bargained her up to a dollar and a half.

  “All right, thirty-six,” she’d said finally. “But no Hamburger Helper, Bingo.”

  “Of course not.”

  This was Bingo’s third supper, and he was ready for something from the spice rack. As he rummaged through the little scented tins, he caught the aroma of ginger, but with a quick glance of regret at the telephone, he continued to rummage.

  “Tarragon … tarragon. I wonder if that’s anything like oregano? Garlic … dill …

  “What else do I need to do? Oven”—Bingo turned on the oven with a flourish—“three-fifty.” Bingo had already learned that 350 degrees was the perfect cooking temperature. He never planned to use anything else. For example, this tarragon chicken thing called for—he checked the recipe—275, but—

  The phone rang and Bingo moved sideways toward it. Bingo was now allowed to answer the phone, but he couldn’t place any calls. With his eyes on the cookbook, he picked up the phone.

  “Hello.”

  A voice said, “Could I speak to Bingo, please.”

  It was a girl’s voice!

  Bingo was so shocked he almost dropped the phone. He had not spoken to a girl on the phone since his last call to Melissa. He did not think he would ever speak to a girl again.

  Now not only was he going to speak to a girl, but it was a strange girl.

  A rash of questions burned out of control in his brain. Why was a strange girl calling him? What did she want? He was too young for magazine subscriptions, wasn’t he? Could she be conducting a survey? Could it be a woman with a little girl voice wanting him to contribute to a good cause? Could it be—

  “Is this Bingo?”

  “Well, this is Bingo Brown,” he said, emphasizing his last name.

  That was quick thinking. After all, there might be other Bingos. He didn’t want to proceed with the conversation only to have it end with something like, “Well, boo, I thought I was talking to Bingo Schwartznecker.”

  “Oh, Bingo. Hi!”

  There was a faint tinge of that long-remembered deepening of pleasure. How did girls do that? Did they have two sets of vocal cords, one for everyday use and one for special occasions? Did they shift gears like a car and their motor actually—

  “Bingo,” she went on in a more businesslike voice, “You don’t know me, but my name’s Cici, with two i’s.”

  “Oh?”

  Bingo’s free hand had begun to twitch nervously, as if it wanted to make some sort of gesture but was unsure what the gesture should be.

  Bingo put his hand firmly into his apron pocket.

  “Cici Boles.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m a good friend of Melissa’s, you know? I lived next door to her. But you probably don’t recognize my name because I’m not in your grade.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m the same age as Melissa, but I started school in Georgia, and you have to already be, like, five to start kindergarten in Georgia. … Are you still there?”

  “Yes.” At least, Bingo thought, he had broken his string of ohs.

  “Because I, like, panic when people don’t answer me. I think they’ve gone. I think I’m talking to, you know, empty air!”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Then answer me.”

  “I will.”

  “You’re probably wondering why I called.”

  This time Bingo answered as quickly as a bride. “I do.”

  “You’re going to think this is silly, Bingo, but promise you won’t hang up on me.”

  “I promise.”

  Bingo switched hands, putting his telephone hand—it had started twitching now—into his pocket.

  “Well, here goes. Melissa wants me to take a picture of you with my camera and send it to her. See, I knew you’d think it was silly.”

  Bingo breathed deeply. This was the last thing he had expected, that a girl would want to take his picture. Even his own parents never particularly wanted to take his picture, and now this! A mixed-sex photography session!

  “Are you still there?” Cici asked.

  “Yes.”

  “See, you have to answer or I panic. Like, he’s gone! I am talking to empty air!”

  “Actually, I was thinking.”

  “Oh, I never stop to do that. I just, you know, go for it. What were you thinking?”

  “Er, when do you want to take this picture?”

  “Would right now be too soon?”

  “Right now?” Bingo bent down to check his reflection in the toaster oven.

  “Yes.”

  Bingo reached for his apron strings. He untied them in a flourish.

  “I’ll need a few minutes.”

  “Sure.”

  Bingo wondered if there was any mousse in the house. He hadn’t used mousse since Melissa moved. He had given it up in a sort of religious way, like for Lent.

  But if he didn’t use it now, Melissa might not recognize him. Worse, she might think he had gotten ugly!

  “Better make that fifteen minutes,” Bingo told Cici Boles.

  He turned off the oven and ran for the bathroom.

  As he ran, heart pumping in a way it had not pumped in months, Bingo had burning questions.

  Could this mixed-sex photography session turn out to be my first Triumph of Today? Or, more likely, will it be just another Trial?

  Will there be mousse?

  Is a Triumph possible without mousse?

  With hands that trembled, Bingo opened the medicine cabinet. “Ah,” he sighed, “mousse.” And he reached for the can.

  Worm Brain’s Picture

  BINGO WAS AT THE window, watching for Cici Boles. He was getting unhappier by the minute.

  Bingo was not ready for another mixed-sex conversation. He had realized this when he was moussing his hair. He hadn’t had one in such a long time that he wasn’t sure he even remembered how.

  Plus the fact that the only good mixed-sex conversations were those with Melissa. When you had a mixed-sex conversation with Melissa, it was like the Olympics of mixed-sex conversations.

  This mixed-sex conversation might be mercifully brief.

  “Smile.”

  “Like this?”

  “Yes.”

  Click.

  “Thank you.”

  “Anytime.”

  But still, with girls you could never tell. This Cici Boles might come up with something like, “By the way, a
re you doing anything Friday night?”

  This thought made his heart throw itself against the wall of his chest, as if to escape.

  “By the way, are you doing anything Friday night?” was exactly the kind of mixed-sex conversation he wasn’t up to. Probably never would be.

  He glanced at his watch. Was it too late to cancel? “Hello, Cici, this is Bingo Brown.” No. No! “This is Bingo Brown’s brother, and Bingo has been called out of town unexpectedly and—”

  Bingo gasped. He leaned forward. A bicycle was coming down the street. There was a girl on the bike!

  No, Bingo decided, putting one hand over his racing heart, this girl was much too big and too blond to be Cici. This girl was more like a high school girl—no, make that a college girl. This girl even had—

  Bingo gasped again. There was a camera around the big blond’s neck.

  Bingo ran back to the kitchen so she wouldn’t see him peering out the glass. When the bell rang, he walked in a brisk, businesslike manner to the door.

  She said, “Well, here I am. I’m Cici.”

  Bingo said, “So you are.”

  He attempted to put his hands in his apron pockets, but his apron was back in the kitchen. He slid his hands sideways into his jeans pockets.

  “I’ll have to take the picture outside,” Cici said, “because, you know, I don’t have a flash. Is that all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Front or back?”

  Bingo smiled slightly. “Perhaps you should take it from the front so Melissa can see my face. Otherwise, she might not recognize me.”

  “Oh, Bingo.” Cici blinked rapidly. “I meant front yard or backyard.”

  “Just a little humor,” Bingo mumbled.

  “Oh, I get it. … front … back.” With one finger—this was awkward because she had long, long nails—she pointed to her front and then her back. “Melissa told me how funny you are.”

  She might be as big and blond as a college girl, but that was where the similarity ended, Bingo thought. “Backyard,” he said firmly.

  In silence, Bingo led the way through the living room, the kitchen, past his apron and the half-skinned chicken breasts, out the back door.

  “Oh, let’s do it over here by the fence,” Cici said. “The roses make a nice background. Melissa’s the kind that couldn’t care less about the background. She just wants a picture of you. I’m the kind that always likes to do my best.”

  Bingo stood stiffly against the rosebush, with his hands in his pockets. He said quickly, “How’s this?”-

  “It’s fine, but I’m not in focus yet.”

  “Go ahead and take it,” he said through tight lips. He’d only been smiling for a short time, but the day was so hot his teeth were dry.

  “There! I’ve almost got it.”

  Why had he let this happen? Bingo wondered. Here he was with the sun in his eyes, smelling of mousse, while important chicken breasts waited to be skinned in the kitchen.

  Well, he understood now man’s weakness for having his picture made. He was living proof of it. The trouble with living proofs was that you actually had to become the living proof before you—

  A voice from the other side of the hedge said, “Hey, Worm Brain, is that you over there?”

  It was Billy Wentworth!

  Bingo pulled back into the rosebush. Thorns raked his arms, but he did not feel the sting. He wanted to pull the branches around him like a blanket and disappear.

  “Take it! Quick!”

  “All right! Oops! Now see what you made me do! My thumb was on the lens. I got a picture of my thumb. Now we’ve got to start all over again.”

  “Hurry!”

  But it was too late. Billy Wentworth, in his camouflage T-shirt, peered over the hedge. His monkey eyes landed on Bingo.

  He gave a small smile, as if he had come across an enemy without any means of defense. “Here’s Misty and her stuff,” he said.

  “In a minute,” Bingo said stiffly. The main reason he had chosen the back of the house was because there was less likelihood of being spotted. Now this!

  Wentworth’s smile continued. “What are you taking the Worm Brain’s picture for?”

  “I’m doing it for a friend of mine, you know, Melissa? She wants a picture of him.”

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know. What does anybody want a picture for? To look at. Smile, Bingo.”

  Bingo pulled his lips back into a smile.

  “Not like that. Smile like you mean it.”

  Bingo suddenly remembered how natural it had been to smile at Melissa. Sometimes, at night in the darkness, he had smiled just thinking of smiling at her.

  “Perfect!” Cici said. “She’ll love it!”

  The camera clicked and Bingo started gratefully for the hedge. Without meeting Wentworth’s eyes, he took Misty and her suitcase.

  Cici followed. She said, “Oh, let me get one of you with the dog. This will be so precious. Hold the dog up! Oh, its face is so sweet. Could I pat it?”

  Wentworth said, “Be my guest.”

  Cici rushed forward and scratched Misty’s head with what Bingo now realized were Lee Press-on Nails, some of which needed repressing.

  “Oh, and it has a little suitcase for its things. Can I look in it?”

  Bingo surrendered the handle of the suitcase and stood stiffly, looking over the roof of his garage.

  Cici knelt and unzipped the bag—another awkward move with the Lee Press-ons. She reached inside and pulled out a squeaky rubber newspaper.

  “Oh, isn’t that precious? It has its own newspaper. And I can tell that it really plays with it. And dog food—oh, it eats Mighty Dog! Why, it’s too little for Mighty Dog, or maybe that’s why it’s eating it.” She looked into Misty’s damp eyes. “Are you trying to become mighty?”

  Yes, Bingo thought, big blonds do not always have brains to match.

  Cici browsed through the rest of the suitcase. “Oh, vitamins and a chew stick, and what’s this in the bottom?”

  “Her blanket,” Billy Wentworth said.

  Bingo turned in astonishment. He stared at Billy Wentworth. Billy’s voice had actually deepened on those two words, “her blanket.”

  What was happening here?

  “It’s like a real baby blanket.”

  “It is a real baby blanket,” Wentworth said. His voice was almost purring with pleasure now, like a well-tuned engine. “It was mine.”

  Bingo’s mouth dropped open as he gaped at the faded blue square. Billy Wentworth had once been a baby!

  “She doesn’t have, like, you know, a basket or bed or something?”

  “No, she just drags her blanket around and sleeps where she wants to.”

  “That’s what a little neighbor of mine does! I baby-sit her. Bingo, is this darling little dog yours or”—she nodded to the face above the hedge—“his?”

  “His.”

  “And I,” the deep voice from the hedge said, “am Willy Bentworth.”

  Chicken Chests

  BINGO SAID, “WELL, I’LL be going now.”

  He held out his hand for Misty. “The dog, please.” He said this in the formal way someone on TV asks for the official envelope.

  Cici hugged Misty to her. “I’ll carry her inside for you.”

  “That will not be necessary,” Bingo said.

  “I can’t give her up yet. Please! I just love this little animal.” Billy Wentworth cleared his throat in a menacing enemy-sighted way. Bingo shrugged helplessly.

  With a flick of her blond hair, a flash of Lee Press-on Nails, Cici turned. Bingo followed her to the steps and went up reluctantly.

  In the kitchen Cici. spun around and said, “Who was that nerd?”

  “Billy Wentworth. You don’t know Billy Wentworth?” Then Bingo remembered the deep-throated voice describing the dog blanket and added kindly, “He makes a bad first impression, but you get used to him.”

  “Ugh, I can’t stand jocks.”

  “Actuall
y, he’s not a jock. He’s more into army stuff, ammo. He led our T-shirt rebellion last year. Perhaps you saw him standing on the garbage can at recess, or on the school steps, waiting for a face-off with the principal.”

  “I must have been sick that day. Anyway, I know a jock when I see one. My mom married three of them.”

  Bingo stood awkwardly in the center of the kitchen. He waited; then, when it became obvious that Cici was not going to leave, he reached manfully for his apron and tied it on.

  “You will have to excuse me now, I am preparing, er, chicken chests.”

  He grimaced. He was sorry he hadn’t been cool enough to say breasts, but it was done now.

  “Oh, can I watch? I’ll sit over here and hold Misty. I won’t bother you at all.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “Misty’s mouth is already watering for some chicken, isn’t it, Misty? Do you have any paper napkins, Bingo?”

  Bingo didn’t answer. He turned on the oven—350—and bent over his recipe book. He had decided to pretend that no blonds were present.

  Misty was watching him with her blank, all-seeing stare, but Bingo ignored that, too.

  “Oh, here they are.” Cici pulled out a napkin and dabbed at Misty’s receding chin. Then she turned her attention to Bingo. “You’re probably wondering about how I came to have three jocks for fathers. Everybody does.”

  She waited for Bingo to answer, but there was only the sound of chicken skin being ripped firmly from chicken breasts.

  “The first was my real father. He was a golf pro. He and my mom split up, and she married a man who used to play tight end for the Atlanta Falcons.”

  Bingo browned the chicken chests. Over the sizzle, he heard, “I was flower girl in that wedding. Then they split up, you know, and my mom married a man who manages the Nautilus. They pump iron together. I was the junior bridesmaid in that wedding.”

  Bingo poured the sauce over the chicken and slid the casserole into the oven.

  “If she ever gets married again, I guess I’ll be maid of honor.”

  Bingo wiped his hands on his apron.

  “So, you see, I do know something about jocks.”