Swine Not? Read online

  The captain continued, “I just wanted ya ta know dat me and da fellas here will discuss da matter at hand, and findin’ your bruddah will be a priority patrol for dis squadron. Right, fellas?”

  All the Pigilantes nodded their heads in agreement.

  The captain continued, “I would suggest that maybe yuz postpone dat trip ta Tennessee for a while and continue ta dwell in your present surroundings. You kin use dat telloscope of yours to better advantage now dat ya have air reconnaissance along.”

  “You saw that?” I asked, interrupting the captain.

  “Sista, we got a boid’s-eye view of everyting dat happens in dis city. Anywayz, while you and doze kids figger a way ta get ya back on da street, we will find your bruddah.”

  Then he saluted me and signaled the other Pigilantes. His army launched from the ledge in unison and circled over our heads.

  “Ma’am, we got a pig ta find. Ciao for now.” With that, Captain Frostbite catapulted into the sky and took up his position at the head of the Pigilante squadron.

  I watched their air show until they were out of sight, and the sun broke through a ribbon of clouds to the east. At last, my days were getting brighter — much brighter.

  IT WAS RAINING the next day, but I was one upbeat pig. I had a head full of new ideas, but before I could begin putting them to work, I trotted into the kitchen and actually had an early breakfast with the family. Everyone noticed the new bounce in my step, and Ellie even made me a fresh-fruit salad with pineapples that had just arrived from Hawaii — hula-hula!

  CHAPTER 33

  Something to Fit the Occasion

  BARLEY

  THE LAST WEEK of October began with two big news items.

  First, the boiler was fixed, so the workmen left the roof. This meant we could resume Rumpy’s walks outside. Royal T and her entourage had packed up their protective tunnel and security team and moved on to another town, but after our last close call, Maple and I weren’t ready quite yet to resume the room-service-table missions to the park.

  The second big announcement came from Maple and involved the big school dance on Halloween night. The grand prize for the best costume was tickets to the House of Wu Fall Fashion Show and lunch with Karen Wu. Needless to say, all of Maple’s attention was on that costume, and she had no time for much else.

  As for Mom, high season in Manhattan was in full swing, and Flutbein’s was booked solid for months. Of course Boucher was taking all the credit, as he had done during Royal T’s self-imposed isolation; for a week, it turned out, she’d been sitting in her room ordering Mom’s pastries while she watched her boyfriend play hockey. The Hunchback from Hackensack’s behavior never seemed to bother Mom like it did us kids. She always believed that one day her good work in the kitchen would produce its own just dessert.

  And if all that wasn’t enough activity, another blip on my radar screen was that the Red Bulls were playing D.C. United for the Eastern Conference Championship the day before the costume contest. I had e-mailed Dad, reminding him of his promise to take me, but I hadn’t heard from him. Just to be sure, I had a backup plan. I had made friends with one of the trainers at the Red Bulls Academy, and he had promised me two tickets if I would help him get a reservation for his mother at Flutbein’s. Mom worked out some kind of trade-off with the maître d’. That was kind of how New York worked, and I liked it.

  With all that going on, we still had to take care of Rumpy. When she wasn’t working on her costume, Maple had pulled together a Plan B to get Rumpy back to the park.

  “Rumpy. Wake up. We have something to show you,” Maple whispered in her ear. Rumpy twitched as if she were having a nightmare.

  “No, no, no,” I said. “No more room-service tables, Rumpy.”

  Her eyes popped open; she stretched her short legs and wiggled her head, which was her sign to snuggle. Maple and I surrounded her on the couch.

  “We figured with it being Halloween week in New York, everybody is probably going to start showing up in all kinds of outfits. This would be the week to spruce up that sheepdog look,” Maple said. “Come on, Rumpy. Come see what I’ve got to show you,” she coaxed.

  Rumpy rolled off the couch and followed us to Maple’s room.

  “Ta-da!” we exclaimed together. It was Maple’s finest sewing accomplishment yet. She had redone the dog costume. It was so real that it almost looked alive, sitting on the bed. I could tell Rumpy was pleased.

  “When we get home from school, we will have a fitting, and by the weekend, you should be free to roam the park again,” Maple said.

  We kissed her on the snout and headed off to school, talking about our costumes. As always, Maple kept her outfit a secret, but this year, I had a little costume idea of my own.

  CHAPTER 34

  A Stitch in Time

  RUMPY

  I COULDN’T HAVE been happier to spend the day in the fish tank with my new escape outfit. I stayed in Maple’s room, just examining the costume for a long time. I don’t know what kind of dog I was becoming, but I knew I had seen a similar character on one of the thousands of cartoon shows I had watched since coming to New York.

  Maple had done the work of a genius. The costume was so limber that after about thirty minutes working with it, I was able to get in and out of the dog suit by myself in seconds. The mask was comfortable, and I could see normally. I kept taking it off, putting it back on, and prancing in front of the mirror, practicing my “dog moves” — which doesn’t take much. I wasn’t even hot in the costume. Maple had sewn air vents under the legs and into the rump. The dog suit was a sensation with ventilation.

  Sometime in the afternoon, I was awakened by the sudden slamming of a door, and Ellie’s voice called for me. I abruptly came to my senses and dragged the costume under the bed, then climbed back on top of the mattress and faked a recognizable sleeping position.

  “Poor thing, I ran out of here so fast, I forgot to feed you.” Ellie used her chopping skills, which equaled — or bettered — any sushi chef’s I had seen on the Food Network. In minutes, I had a fresh vegetable platter in my bowl.

  “In France, they call this crudités,” she said as she scratched my head and put the bowl on the floor. “Got to run, girl. See you later.” She disappeared out the door again.

  I was chomping on the last stalk of celery when I heard a tap at the window. I was overcome by fear. I was about to bolt for the closet, but first I peeked at the big window. Fear turned to excitement when I saw Captain Frostbite and several of the Pigilantes perched on the windowsill. I nudged the window open, and a big rush of wind gushed in, bringing the pigeons with it. They lit on the sofa.

  “We have news,” Captain Frostbite reported. “I tink your bruddah was spotted today, but I wanna confoim it foist. No need for you ta be takin’ risks for no reason.”

  The words were music to my ears. My head was swirling. I had been living on hope for so long that even a possible sighting of Lukie made me dizzy. I didn’t know whether to snort for joy or cry. What I did know was this: Captain Frostbite and the Pigilantes had pecked my path from that icy ledge. I knew they were birds I could trust.

  “What should I do?” I asked.

  “We got it on a good source dat your bruddah, Lukie, was spotted by da elephants in da zoo,” he explained.

  “The zoo in the park?” I asked.

  “Dat would be da one. Just cool your hooves till weez gets a confirmation, and den we can come up wid a plan.”

  I told them about the dog costume that Maple had made for me and about the twins’ idea to use Halloween weekend as a cover to get me out. Frostbite seemed to think that was an excellent idea because it also gave them enough time to run down the lead on Lukie.

  Through the open window, a scent crossed my radar. It was the kids. They were on their way home from school. I told the Pigilantes, and they headed for the window. They reminded me that the unwritten rule about this kind of stuff was very strict: No humans could know. With that, they ducked through
the crack in the window and took off for the park.

  I watched them disappear behind the trunk of an oak tree and said a prayer to the pig gods to send me a sniff of my brother’s whereabouts.

  CHAPTER 35

  Let Them Eat Pizza

  BARLEY

  BACK IN Tennessee, when Halloween rolled around, Mom would run me to the local Wal-Mart to pick out some cookie-cutter, store-bought outfit — just in time to go trick-or-treating around Pancake Park. Maple, as expected, made her own costumes. Over the years, she was everything from Barney to Barbie.

  That seems like ancient history now, because once Maple came to New York, her costume creations leaped to a different level. If you thought my sister’s work on Rumpy’s escape suit was good, you won’t believe what she did for our first Halloween in Manhattan.

  Once Maple finished Rumpy’s outfit, she went back to working on her costume for the school dance. She was determined to win that trip to the House of Wu. One day, after class, Maple was waiting for me at the entrance to Barton, which was unusual. She told me she had some errands to run and wanted me to go downtown with her.

  Our first stop was a large gray building near Times Square. It was the House of Wu, and it was lined with display windows filled with mannequins showing off their stuff. Maple had made pilgrimages to the windows ever since we had come to New York, but every visit, she was as excited as she was the first time. She looked like a kid let loose in her first candy store, and I finally had to grab her arm and bring her back to reality. “What are we doing, other than looking at clothes?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  She led me back to the subway station, and our next stop was Greenwich Village. The street was crowded with costume stores like you have never seen. We just walked around, looking at outrageous costumes and all kinds of masks, capes, fake body parts, alien eyeballs, gowns, goblin heads, and a thousand other things. I was starting to get excited, but then I began looking at the price tags. Man, New York was expensive!

  “What are we doing here, Maple?” I asked. “We can’t afford this stuff.”

  “Oh yes we can,” she said with a sly smile and produced an envelope packed with twenty-dollar bills.

  “Oh my God, you robbed a bank. Mom is going to kill you!”

  “Noooo, Barley. I e-mailed Dad and told him how much we were looking forward to our first Halloween in New York — and that I wanted to design a really special outfit that might get me lunch with Karen Wu.”

  “A large bowl of guilt soup served up to the absentee father,” I said.

  “Exactly,” she replied, not missing a beat.

  “I e-mailed him about the play-offs and haven’t heard a word,” I said.

  “His selective memory at work,” Maple replied. “I must have caught him in one of his fat moments, because I got a Halloween card and a check for three hundred bucks — and it didn’t bounce. If he doesn’t come through for you on the tickets, I will buy you some. Now, let’s shop!”

  And that is what we did. You would have thought Maple was designing a dress for J. Lo to wear to the Grammys, but knowing my twin sister the way I do, I knew this was not a haphazard spree. She checked off everything on her small red notepad.

  “What are you making?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  I have to admit that I kind of got into it, too, and I started my own costume project as well. I decided to go to the dance as a miniature spaceship. I cut two large sheets of cardboard into a saucer shape, and then I snipped a hole out for my head and covered the cardboard with aluminum foil. Finally, I put on my hooded hockey sweatshirt and painted a third eye in the middle of my head. I wrapped my waist and legs with strands of Christmas lights and stuck a battery in my pocket. To top it off, I converted a set of bunny ears into antennae and stuck them on my head.

  Maple’s room looked as if a nuclear clothes bomb had gone off. Piles of fabric and zippers and spools of thread were everywhere, but the costume was hidden behind a black curtain Maple had hung in the corner. Rumpy was a constant observer, stretched out on top of the bed. Syrup had taken up a position to prevent any curious bystanders from getting a peek. Since Mom had been using her few spare hours after work to help Maple, that left only me to be guarded, and I wasn’t messing with that cat.

  Finally, a few days before Halloween, Maple was ready for her costume debut. She, Mom, Rumpy, and Syrup were all gathered behind the curtain, giggling and gabbing, and then classical music began playing from Maple’s iPod. Out stepped Marie Antoinette in a green velvet dress with pink-and-green flowers running down the puffy sleeves, and she held . . . her bloody head in her hands!

  Poking out of the collar of the dress was Marie’s blue-gray neck and the stem of her spinal cord. I stared at the head.

  “Let them eat pizza!” Marie screeched.

  Rumpy snorted, and Mom was rolling on the floor, laughing.

  “Maple, is that you?” I asked.

  “How dare you address the queen in such an informal way! Mind your manners, or you will join me at the guillotine.”

  I took about a hundred photos from all angles and then helped Maple out of the costume. Over dinner, she took me through her whole process of construction. It was remarkable. There would have to be something unbelievably good and freaky to beat her out at the contest.

  Speaking of freaky, Mom told us the story that the mother of the mayor of New York City had been in the restaurant, and Boucher had escorted her around. It seemed the mayor’s birthday was coming up, and she wanted to surprise him with a dinner party Saturday night at Flutbein’s. She had specially requested one of Mom’s famous cakes that she had heard so much about from her friends. Mom was on the mayor’s radar! How cool. New York is like its own country, and the mayor is a very popular and powerful person in this town. Boucher, of course, promised to grant her request, laying layer upon layer of schmooze about all the preparations he would be making. Thinking of him was almost enough to spoil our dinner, but not quite. As Mom dished out our lobster omelets, she sighed. “I don’t know how much more of that suck-up, stuck-up sausagehead I can take.”

  Mom gasped and looked at Rumpy. “Oh, honey, what was I thinking? I am so sorry for using the S word.” She went over and gave Rumpy a kiss on the top of her head. “And what are you going to dress up as, Miss Rumpy?”

  We froze in place, stiff as statues, and then Maple regained her composure. “I’m working on something,” she said.

  “Do that, honey,” Mom told her. “It would be fun to sneak the old girl out of the hotel for a while.”

  Maple and I must have looked shocked.

  “Just remember, you two, I was a kid once.” Mom smiled.

  CHAPTER 36

  Blood Is Thicker than Cotton Candy

  RUMPY

  THE OBSESSION with the creation of the Marie Antoinette costume was just the diversion this pig needed. After the news from the Pigilantes about sighting Lukie, and Ellie’s news to the kids that I could go out, I was on pins and needles. My big break was finally coming, and I could hardly wait. I also watched the Doppler radar on the local news. The chubby weatherman kept talking about the perfect weekend ahead for trick-or-treating.

  Meanwhile, the hotel was a circus all day Friday. Along with the daily routine of arriving and departing guests, the preparations for the mayor’s surprise dinner added everything from serpentine salesmen to SWAT teams, banner hangers to bomb dogs. The kitchen was a war zone, and Ellie was covered in flour both day and night. She was starting to look like the cake she was attempting to bake for Saturday night.

  One really good thing about all this activity was that Boucher actually had to work, too. That kept him out of the dining rooms and hallways, according to Barley and Maple. They had been scouting his moves in preparation for my big adventure of leaving the hotel for our Halloween excursion.

  Early the next morning, before anybody was awake, Captain Frostbite tapped on the big picture window. I nudged the smaller vent wi
ndow open and let him in. “Have you made contact with Lukie?” I asked excitedly.

  “Not exactly, ma’am,” he answered. “We are confident, doh, dat wit da messages we have carried all over da zoo and da city, he will find out dat we need ta tawk ta him.”

  I told Captain Frostbite of our impending plan to go trick-or-treating with the kids in my new disguise.

  “Brilliant!” he squawked. “Dat makes da plan much easier to carry out, now dat we don’t havta rescue you offa dat roof.” He paused for a moment, rotated his head in a circle, and then said, “I tink dis is what we do.” He proceeded to lay out a plan in military terms.

  First, I was to go trick-or-treating Sunday with the kids before their big dance. Then, as soon as we were clear of the hotel and got to the park, I would give the twins the slip and join up with Frostbite. We would search for Lukie while a couple of pigeons kept an eye on the kids. I would join back up with the twins — hopefully with Lukie by my side — by the end of the evening.

  Captain Frostbite approached the plan with utmost seriousness. “The important and difficult ting is for da kids not to know your intentions ta leave ’em. It will be hard, but we havta take our best shot at findin’ your bruddah.”

  I knew he was right. I felt really bad about skipping out on Maple and Barley, but finding Lukie was the one thing that would make life in New York complete. Barley had his sports, Maple had her designing, and Ellie had her cakes. All I had was a ragged football with a fading face.

  I told Captain Frostbite I was in, and I wouldn’t tell a soul.

  WITH ALL the anticipation, Friday passed slowly. To keep my nervous jitters to a minimum, I played with my Lukieball for the better part of the day. That afternoon, when Maple came home from school, I was subjected to my final fitting — with a few pin pokes and alterations. That night, before Ellie went down to the restaurant for a staff meeting in preparation for the mayor’s dinner, it was my turn to take the runway. Barley set the blaster by the sofa and pushed the button. “Who Let the Dogs Out” blared from the speakers, and out I came from the bedroom. After my prance through the living room, though they could never quite decide on my pedigree, I was pronounced stunning as a dog — from the hair extensions on my tail to the faux diamond–studded collar around my neck.