I said, “Do you think it’s weird that Booker tricked us into going on a blind date and yet neither of us seems mad or upset? I’m not upset. Are you? I mean, you could be pretending. But you seem pretty okay with tonight.”
He blinked a few times as if he was surprised by my words, and then the sentences that came out of his mouth were both wonderful and sad. “Honestly? This is the best night I’ve had in years. Maybe in my entire lifetime.”
“Seriously?”
He nodded a bit too eagerly, and I could see the little-kid face still hidden behind his long hair and stubble beard, but it was cute, and I suddenly realized that maybe it was the best night I’d had in years, too.
We talked some more over our espressos before we “retired” to Booker’s sunroom for a game of Scrabble, which Booker won by thirty or so points, playing the word qi on a triple-word score, trash-talking the whole time, but Little Lex and I didn’t really mind losing.
When the game was over, Booker and I walked Lex to his car—a brand-new Jeep Wrangler Unlimited with a soft top—and said an awkward good-bye, especially because Booker said, “No kissing my girl on the first date! I’ve got a shotgun inside! I’ll put a bowling-ball-sized hole in your stomach if you don’t treat her right!”
All the blood drained from Little Lex’s face—not because he thought Booker would ever be violent, but because our hero was bringing up our teenage lust before we had properly dealt with it ourselves—and then Lex just drove away without saying anything else.
“What are you up to?” I asked Booker. “Why did you humiliate us like that?”
“Just speeding up the process a bit for you. You won’t be young forever! You should read Philip Larkin’s poem “Annus Mirabilis.” You’ll thank me someday.”
“What?”
“And when you read that poem in your pocket, you’re going to be head over heels. The kid has talent and quite an impressive heart, too.”
“Were you eavesdropping the entire time you were in the kitchen?”
“Of course!”
“You’re a crazy old man.”
“That’s the best kind to be!”
That night, in my perfectly-decorated-by-my-mother bedroom, where I am not permitted to hang a single thing on the pistachio-green walls, I opened up the folded tracing paper.
9
Just to Get Rid of the Cannonballs
LITTLE LEX
By Alex Redmer
“Call him LITTLE,” one of them said, “because he is not”
So they started calling him LITTLE Lex
He was fat and round and short and scared
Like a meteorite that had fallen from the sky
Wondering where he had landed and why
But never getting an answer as he cooled
And he winced when they called him LITTLE
And he puked in the locker room stall after
They stole his shirt and rattail-whipped him with theirs
And then he was punished
Because he was late for class
Because he had no shirt
For not being LITTLE
And he asked his father why
But his father didn’t know
And his teachers didn’t seem to care
Because they rewarded the ones who invented
Cruel names for the ones the teachers never rewarded
And it went on like this
It went on and it went on and on and on and on
But then Little Lex grew tall like an oak tree,
Or a rocket ship
And he was no longer round but rectangular
And his hands were heavy as cannonballs
And his fists could knock the lights out
Of the name-callers’ eyes, which happened
More than once
Easy as snuffing a candle
After licking your fingers
There was blood
And then there were lawyers
And the school principal held a meeting
And everyone agreed
The name LITTLE Lex
Would be banned
Along with his cannonball hands
So the boy named himself LITTLE Lex
And refused to be called by any other moniker
Even when they didn’t want to call
Him LITTLE
He made them
The teachers
The parents
The principal
Everyone
He said, “Call me LITTLE now or else!”
And they did
Just to get rid of the cannonballs
To keep the blood where it belonged
In the name-callers’ bodies
And he was glad to have a choice
And he was
No longer afraid
And no one stole his shirt
Or poked his soft belly with a bony finger
Or punished him unfairly
Or laughed at him when they called him LITTLE
But he was lonely
If only a little
Because he missed the old Alex
—JUST PLAIN ALEX
Who had never hurt anybody
10
Let’s Plug Our Phones In and Sleep Together
Little Lex had written his e-mail address at the bottom of the poem, along with his cell phone number.
We were texting back and forth five minutes after I finished reading “LITTLE Lex,” and then we were FaceTiming on our iPhones, both of our heads under the covers, which were illuminated by the screens like flashlights in tents.
We talked about his poem.
We talked about The Bubblegum Reaper.
We talked about Booker.
We even talked about our parents and kids in our schools and how we both sort of felt lost—and it was wonderful to be so honest with someone my own age, someone who also knew “the great invisible solitary” that Booker talks about in his novel.
I mentioned Philip Larkin’s poem “Annus Mirabilis,” and Lex said, “The title’s Latin for ‘year of wonders.’ ”