Slob - Ellen Potter [32]
After all the clothes were in the duffel bag, I zipped it up. Done, I thought. I’ve seen them, and I won’t ever have to see them again.
I couldn’t figure out if that made me happy or sad.
I took the bus to Arthur’s house because the duffel bag was too heavy to carry the whole way if I walked. She lived on the fifth floor of an old walk-up apartment building, and the duffel bag wasn’t light, so by the time I pushed the door-bell, I was huffing and puffing and sweating like a hog.
Arthur’s mother answered the door. She looked perplexed for a moment to see a kid she didn’t know holding a duffel bag, like I was coming to stay for a few weeks. Thankfully, Jeremy and Arthur had hurried up behind her, dragged me into Arthur’s room, and closed the door.
I looked around the room in amazement. Without Arthur, eBay probably would collapse.
The entire room was decorated with retro television paraphernalia. Her walls were covered with posters of Charlie’s Angels, Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, plus a bunch of other shows I’d never heard of. There was a special section by her bed devoted entirely to some greasy-haired guy in a leather jacket. She had a bookshelf without any books. Instead the shelves were crammed with retro TV lunch boxes and action figures.
In every direction you looked there was something retro TV. Even up. A cheesy paper mobile hung from a thumb-tack in the ceiling with photos of the leather jacket guy dangling from wires.
The Retro TV Magazines, however, were nowhere in sight.
I felt a tug at my duffel bag.
“Is this them?” Arthur asked. She looked practically feverish, she was so excited.
“Yes,” I said, tightening my grip on the bag. “Where are the Retro TV Magazines?”
“Oh. Okay.” She said this like she was disappointed I had remembered the bargain. She went to her dresser and pulled open the drawers, one by one, six drawers all together.
Holy cannoli.
The Retro TV Magazines were there, pressed together in their little plastic bags. No clothes. Just Retro TV Magazines. She had even made dividers to separate the years.
“Wow.” I said.
“I told you,” Jeremy said.
I started to walk toward the dresser, but Arthur quickly turned around with her arms spread protectively in front of the drawers. She went over the rules again. I agreed again. Still, she hesitated.
“How about he swears on Him?” Jeremy suggested.
“Good idea,” Arthur said.
“Who’s Him?” I asked. I looked around the room for a shrine, like Nima has. The entire room was a shrine.
Arthur went to her bookshelf and picked up a little action figure. A greasy-haired man in a leather jacket, with his hands shaped in a thumbs-up position. It was the guy on the mobile.
“Arthur Fonzarelli. The Fonz,” Jeremy explained. “He’s on this old TV show Happy Days. She worships him.”
“Oh, got it.” So I held The Fonz in my left hand, put my right hand over my heart, and solemnly swore that I would take excellent care of the Retro TV Magazines and would always remember to wear the gloves.
That seemed to do the trick.
She packed them up. I only needed the ones from the past two years, and the most current one—which she hated to part with, but did—so they actually fit into a single carton. She also put a pair of white gloves in the box and gave me a meaningful look.
Jeremy helped me home with the carton, and I spent the rest of the afternoon looking at lists of TV shows, deciding what television channel to zero in on. And yes, I wore the white gloves. The nature of Retro TV Magazine narrowed down my options quite a bit. It was like the people who wrote this thing were still living in the 1970s. Sure, it listed the names of the people who would appear on the late-night talk shows and it gave very brief descriptions of what you could expect to see on the new shows. But when it came to the old reruns, it gave these long, detailed descriptions of the episodes. Like “The Love Boat, Episode Title: