Fathead
Illustration: Ansellia Kuilkku. Max and I wandered up Madison Avenue after school, scuffing the pavement with our sneakers, making fart noises with our armpits, angling the mirrors of parked cars in the hopes that drivers would see their own eyeballs during crisis moments in midtown traffic. At the twin phone booths outside Taso’s Pizza, we flicked the coin return levers but couldn’t get any change that didn’t belong to us. Then I had the idea to make a collect call from one pay phone to the other, inches away.
Max was magnificent. He let it ring twice before answering and he didn’t crack up when the operator told him that a Mr. Julius Rosenberg wished to reverse the charges.
“Why, yes, operator,” Max said graciously, thrusting his chin against the puffy collar of his down jacket to deepen his prepubescent voice, “I’d be more than happy to pay for a call from my dear old dad. I’ve really been missing his electric personality.”
We jabbered awhile on the phone company’s dime, grinning at each other and saying lame things like “long time, no see.” There was something remote and echoing about the way Max’s voice came to me: in one ear, he was very close; in the other, he was miles away.
When nobody came along and got annoyed at us for tying up both phones, we left the receivers dangling in their booths and went around the corner to Jolly Chan’s, where I had an egg roll and Max chugged half a bottle of soy sauce just because.
On our way out, we ran into Fathead, shlumping along Madison in that Eeyorey way of his. He was wearing his ridiculous chemical-warfare fatigues—“vo-looom-inous green pants that gather at the ankles,” as Max always mocked them. You could tell by the hopeful look on his face that he’d been following us. He was always following us.
“Hi guys,” he said. “Is it okay if I hang out with you?” He was moving his hand around in the pocket of his big pea jacket, and I thought he was actually going to show us his stupid Susan B. Anthony dollar again. It was uncirculated and shiny, and he carried it around in a clear plastic slipcase he’d probably gotten from the Gimbels coin department. Sometimes he even brought along a little magnifying glass so he could point out the fine detail of Susan B’s hair (blah-blah-blah) and show you how the tiny letter D under the wreath meant the coin was minted in Denver.
Nothing in my life was as important to me as that silver dollar was to
