It

it’s on the house. I always have one in the office around this time of day. Good energy, unless you need to watch your weight, and I’d say neither of us do. My wife says I look like stuffed string. Your friend there, the Hanscom boy, he’s the one who needs to have a care about his weight. What flavor, Eddie?’
‘Well, my mother said to get home as soon as I — ‘
‘You look like a chocolate man to me. Chocolate okay for you?’ Mr Keene’s eyes twinkled, but it was a dry twinkle, like the sun shining on mica in the desert. Or so Eddie, a fan of such Western writers as Max Brand and Archie Joceylen, thought.
‘Sure,’ Eddie gave in. Something about the way Mr Keene pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up on his blade of a nose made him edgy. Something about the way Mr Keene seemed both nervous and secretly pleased. He didn’t want to go into the office with Mr Keene. This wasn’t about a soda. Nope. And whatever it was about, Eddie had an idea it wasn’t such great news.
Maybe he’s going to tell me I got cancer or something, Eddie thought wildly. That kid-cancer. Leukemia. Jesus!
Oh, don’t be so stupid, he answered himself back, trying to sound, in his own mind, like Stuttering Bill. Stuttering Bill had replaced Jock Mahoney, who played the Range Rider on TV Saturday mornings, as the great hero of Eddie’s life. In spite of the fact that he couldn’t talk right, Big Bill always seemed to be on top of things. This guy’s a pharmacist, not a doctor, for cripe’s sake. But Eddie was still nervous.
Mr Keene had raised the counter-gate and was beckoning to Eddie with one bony finger. Eddie went, but reluctantly.
Ruby, the counter-girl, was sitting by the cash register and reading a Silver Screen. ‘Would you make two ice-cream sodas, Ruby?’ Mr Keene called to her. ‘One chocolate, one coffee?’
‘Sure,’ Ruby said, marking her place in the magazine with a tinfoil gum wrapper and getting up.
‘Bring them into the office.’
‘Sure.’
‘Come on, son. I’m not going to bite you.’ And Mr Keene actually winked, astounding Eddie completely.
He had never been in back of the counter before, and he gazed at all the bottles and pills and jars with interest. He would have lingered if he had been on his own, examining Mr Keene’s mortar and pestle, his scales and weights, the fishbowls full of capsules. But Mr Keene propelled him forward into the office and closed the door firmly behind him. When it clicked shut Eddie felt a warning tightness in his chest and fought it. There would be a fresh aspirator in with his mother’s things, and he could have a long satisfying honk on it as soon as he was out of here.
A bottle of licorice whips stood on the corner of Mr Keene’s desk. He offered it to Eddie.
‘No thank you,’ Eddie said politely.
Mr Keene sat down in the swivel chair behind his desk and took one. Then he opened his drawer and took something out. He put it down next to the tall bottle of licorice whips and Eddie felt real alarm course through him. It was an aspirator. Mr Keene tilted back in his swivel cha ir until his head was almost touching the calendar on the wall behind him. The picture on the calendar showed more pills. It said SQUIBB. And —
— and for one nightmare moment, when Mr Keene opened his mouth to speak, Eddie remembered what had happened in the shoe store when he was just a little kid, when his mother had screamed at him for putting his foot in the X-ray machine. For that one nightmare moment Eddie thought Mr Keene would say: ‘Eddie, nine out of ten doctors agree that asthma medicine gives you cancer, just like the X-ray machines they used to have in the shoe stores. You’ve probably got it already. Just thought you ought to know.’
But what Mr Keene did say was so peculiar that Eddie could think of no response at all; he could only sit in the straight wooden chair on the other side of Mr Keene’s desk like a nit.
‘This has gone on long enough.’
Eddie opened his mouth and then closed it again.
‘How old are you, Eddie? Eleven, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Eddie said faintly. His breathing was indeed shallowing up. He wasn’t yet whistling like a tea-kettle (which was how Richie put it: Somebody turn Eddie off! He’s reached the boil!’), but that might happen at any time. He looked longingly at the aspirator on Mr Keene’s desk, and because something else seemed required, he said: ‘I’ll be twelve in November.’
Mr Keene nodded, then leaned forward like a TV pharmacist in a commercial and clasped his hands together.