“That is a fact,” I said. “I’m not so sure about the ‘fun’ part. But my brother would be very impressed—he loves stuff like that.”
“A man of excellent taste.”
“He’s ten,” I pointed out, and Cary laughed. I noticed he seemed to do this easily, with no hesitation. I liked it. “What’s with the interest in Mr. Peanut?” I paused. “There’s a sentence I’ve never said before.”
Cary laughed again. “You always want to be well versed in the things that could kill you. Here we are.” He’d stopped in front of a building with a lobby and pulled the door open for me. There hadn’t been a doorman outside, but there was one behind the desk just inside, wearing a military-style long coat with gold braid on the shoulders. “Hey, Wes,” Cary said, approaching the desk.
The doorman—Wes—smiled when he saw him. “Was wondering if I’d see you tonight.”
“Well, wonder no more,” Cary said with a grin. He squinted down at the paper that listed all the drop-offs and pickups. “Tonight it’s dry cleaning for Three C, laundry for our friends in the penthouse, and a pickup for Eleven A.”
“Gotcha,” Wes said, already dialing the phone as Cary started setting things down on the desk and sorting through bundles. “How’s the movie going?”
My head whipped over to him. “Movie?”
He gave me a quick, embarrassed smile, but before I could ask him for more information, Wes was talking to us, lowering the phone slightly. “I can take the dry cleaning and I have the pickup here, but the penthouse would prefer you bring it up right away. They don’t want to wait until I can go off the desk.”
“Oh.” Cary exchanged a look with Wes. “I take it…”
“Yep,” Wes said with a nod. His eyes wandered to me and he raised an eyebrow. “Is she…”
“She’s helping,” Cary said quickly as he took one of the bundles out of the big black bag—until tonight, I had no idea laundry was delivered to people in cubes—and left the rest down by the desk. “Be right back.”
Cary nodded toward the elevators at the other end of the lobby, and we walked toward them. I could see a Christmas tree in the corner—at least ten feet tall—but it wasn’t decorated yet, and I hoped it wasn’t real, since it was still early November and I didn’t see a real tree hanging on for another six weeks.
“Okay,” I said as Cary pressed the up arrow. “I have so many questions.”
“Fire when ready.”
“What movie was he talking about?”
Cary cleared his throat and looked at the numbers lighting up above the elevator, letting us know where it was. “It’s nothing. It’s stupid.”
“Do you act too?” My voice rose in excitement. “You should have said something—”
“God, no.” Cary shook his head. He set the bag of laundry at his feet. “I’m…” He looked at me for a moment, like he was making a decision. “Well—what I really want to do is make animated movies.”
“Wow,” I said, impressed. “That’s really cool.”
He gave an embarrassed shrug and looked up at the elevator lights again. “I mean—it’s not a movie yet. Not even close. But I’ve been working on storyboards, and one night when I was here, someone took about an hour to get their dry cleaning together for me to pick up, and Wes saw me sketching.…”
“What’s it about? Your movie, I mean.”
“It’s an adaptation,” he said, looking back at me, the tips of his ears slightly red. “Of ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener.’ It’s a short story by Herman Melville. Do you know it?”
I shook my head. I’d never read any Melville. My dad carted around an old copy of Moby-Dick on our lake vacation every year, always promising that this would be the year he read it, but my mother and I had decided that this was just because he liked telling people that finishing it was his white whale. “What’s it about?”
“It’s about this guy—”
“Bartleby?”
“I thought you hadn’t read it.”
I rolled my eyes at that, and Cary grinned and continued. “Anyway, he’s a scrivener—he writes documents. And then one day he stops. When his boss and the other clerks ask him why, he just says ‘I would prefer not to.’ ”
“I would prefer not to?” I echoed.
“Yeah. And so he refuses to work, and then refuses to leave the office, always just telling people he’d prefer not to. And eventually he’s thrown in jail, and won’t eat—because he’d prefer not to—and then eventually dies of starvation.”