“Hold on, wait, I wanted to ask you first“-can’t you just turn around?!-“how do you know Mr. Klimchock? How come he got so upset when he saw you?”
Mr. Upchurch snorts to himself. “That’s a long story. But I suppose it might help to share it with you.” He paces the room as he speaks. “Klimmy and I went through school together, just like you and Phillip. Believe it or not, we had some things in common: good singing voices, and a strong interest in Felicia Maniscalco. His interest was more romantic, mine was purely physical. Our senior year, the class musical was The King and I. Everyone knew Felicia would play Anna-no one else could compare. That’s why Klimmy and I both wanted to play the king: to get close to her. But, while Klimmy assumed his talent would win him the part-and he really did have a terrific voice, much better than mine-I wanted it more. I made an arrangement with the kid who was playing the piano during auditions. In exchange for an outrageous fee, he messed up while playing for Klimmy. Your Mr. Klimchock was a high-strung young man; the fumbling piano threw him completely off. He had a fit, right there on the auditorium stage, in front of Felicia and everyone else. It was sad to see.” Upchurch smirks, still tickled by the memory. “So, I played the king, and he ended up playing Tuptim’s secret boyfriend-the monk. I’ll tell you something: bouncing around the stage with Felicia, singing ‘Shall We Dance?’ under the lights, that’s still one of the best memories of my life.”
An incredible thought distracts Karclass="underline" he sympathizes with Mr. Klimchock!
“Did you end up marrying her?” he asks.
“Are you joking? She was an airhead. Her talents were all anatomical.”
At this moment, Karl’s main concern is getting Upchurch to turn around and face the mike. But he’s afraid of being too obvious. “I’m not sure I get the point of the story.”
“I’ll be blunt, then. I’m still the same guy, Karl. When I want something, I get it. That includes winning the mayoral race, and getting my son into Harvard.”
Some inner instinct tells Karl that it might help to taunt Upchurch. Maybe then he’ll get mad and spell out his demands without wasting more time.
“Why do you want to be mayor so badly? Are you a megalomaniac?”
Upchurch raises one eyebrow, surprised but not impressed. “No, it’s not about power for power’s sake. It’s about what you can do with it. There are opportunities in this town that have gone to waste.”
“Such as?”
“I can’t go into specifics. But I’ll say this much: after I’m elected, there’ll be a lot more than ducks in Swivel Brook Park.”
This is getting way off the subject, but-Upchurch wants to build houses in the prettiest park in town?!
“I see you’re surprised. Don’t worry, it’ll be very tastefully done. How do you like the name Brookside?”
Nurse Francesca interrupts them with a cheerful “Hi, Karl.” She’s pushing a haggard man with a mustache in a wheelchair. The man’s foot is thickly wrapped in bandages. “Say hello to your new roommate, Mister Prell. Or, excuse me, Officer Prell. He stopped a robbery at the TCBY today.”
“It wasn’t a robbery, it was a drunk waving a gun around,” says Officer Prell unhappily. “I just wish I had bulletproof shoes.”
As Nurse Francesca sets the policeman up in Mr. Hydine’s old bed, Karl and his visitor share a scowl. They have important things to say, private things. How can they talk now? (You had to blab about your real estate projects!)
Karl’s plan is ruined. He’s stopped-defeated-destroyed.
Randall Upchurch, however, won’t let a mere wounded cop foil his scheme. “Excuse us,” he tells the nurse and her patient, “Karl wanted to tell me something in private.”
He draws the curtain all the way around the bed and comes within six inches of Karl’s nose. (Bless you, Nurse Francesca!) “No time for chitchat now,” he whispers. “You’re going to take the SAT Saturday. You’ll transmit the answers to Phillip and the others. He told me about the scheme with the pencil-it’s brilliant. I’ll make it worth your while. Let’s say, five thousand dollars cash, in two installments, one after the test and one after the scores come back.”
“But what if I say no?”
“Then a pack of hungry dogs will enter your home while you sleep and leave nothing but three sets of bones.”
“Um-literally or figuratively?” Karl asks.
Mr. Upchurch gives Karl a long, hard, contemptuous glare-an especially scary experience because of the microphone in his hair. A fresh torrent of sweat pours from him. The tension is too much. He twitches, and that sudden movement undoes the rubber cement’s grip. He can feel the little black box slip a quarter-inch to the side.
“Hey, Karl,” Nurse Francesca calls through the curtain, “in case I don’t see you before you go home, good luck in school and everything.”
“Thanks,” he tells the curtain. “Am I going home soon?”
“Any time now.”
Her footsteps fade away. They’re going to discharge him before he gets Klimchock on tape. But it doesn’t really matter, because Randall Upchurch will murder him when he sees the microphone fall off his head.
“I would take a shower first thing, if I were you,” Upchurch tells him. “You sweat like a pig.”
“Mm-hm,” Karl replies.
“You won’t let us down, right?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Good man. And just to make sure, I’ll be listening from my car across the street.”
That’s it-he’s gone. Karl has escaped the first of the swinging axes, but there’s no time for celebration. He grabs the mike and speaks straight into it, whispering. “Lizette! Come! Emergency!”
“You’re soaked!” she observes as she slips inside the curtain. “What’d he do, hose you down?”
He holds up the little mike. “The glue lost its grip. And they’re going to send me home any minute now. I don’t know what to do!”
Her father didn’t leave the rubber cement, and even if he had, there’s not enough time for it to dry.
Drowning in a sea of despair, banging his bones against the rocks of hysteria, Karl shakes his head and lets out a thin, high squeak.
“Stop it,” Lizette commands. “Just calm down.”
Since he can’t stop shaking his head, she takes drastic action, grabbing him by the shoulders and really shaking him. His head flies around like a bobble-head doll’s.
She keeps her grip on his shoulders even after she stops shaking him. For a moment or three, it looks as if she may crash through the invisible wall and kiss him-but then she lets go and takes the microphone from him. “Let’s just get this done,” she says.
Taking the Orbit gum out of her mouth, she flattens it against the dried rubber cement on the bottom of the microphone and sets it back on Karl’s head, pushing painfully hard. Then she fluffs his damp hair around it. “You’ve looked better,” she says, and hurries out.
She doesn’t get far, though. “Excuse me,” says a friendly old lady, just outside the curtain. “I’m looking for Karl Petrofsky. I have his discharge papers.”
“I just saw him run into the toilet to throw up,” Lizette replies. “He said something about the food here.”
“Oh,” says the pleasant lady.
“Maybe you should come back in a half hour or so,” Lizette suggests.
“I’ll do that. Could you tell him to have someone with him who can take him home?”
“I’ll let him know. Soon as he stops heaving.”
“Thank you.”
Before Karl can fully comprehend his debt to Lizette, a hand yanks the curtain open.
“What was he doing here?” Mr. Klimchock whispers, red-faced.
“He? Nothing. Why?”
Klimchock goes to the doorway and checks the hall, then returns to Karl’s bedside. “I’ll ask again. What was HE doing here?”