Mort Ziff Is Not Dead by Cary Fagan

Author:Cary Fagan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PRH Canada Young Readers
Published: 2017-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

Meet me in the coffee shop in ten minutes.

Amy

I looked sneakily around, slipped the note into my pocket and headed for the coffee shop.

Grilled Cheese

The coffee shop was at the very end of the corridor and didn’t even have a real name, just one of those signs on a stand with magnetic letters stuck on crookedly that said Coffee Shop. The wooden booths and scuffed linoleum floor and faded wallpaper made it feel like I had gone backwards in time, into one of those black-and-white movies my mother liked to watch on television. Along the walls were signed photographs of past celebrities that I didn’t recognize. One was a cowboy on a horse, playing guitar. Another was a woman in a fur coat holding up a martini glass and laughing. And then I did recognize one, a thin young man with wavy hair and a thin mustache. It was Mort Ziff. Even back then he didn’t smile.

A waitress in a uniform was leaning on the counter reading the newspaper while clipping her nails. The only customers I could see were an ancient couple eating bowls of tomato soup. Should I leave? And then I saw Amy’s head pop up from a booth near the back. She must have been hiding.

“Did I surprise you?” she asked as I walked over to the table.

“A little. Not as much as your note.”

“I didn’t want my sisters to see me talk to you. They would have called me a traitor and taken revenge.”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

I sat down across from her. Like her sisters, she had long dark hair with bangs over her eyes. Unlike them, she wore glasses. She said, “Okay, the reason I called you here is because I want you to hand it over.”

“Hand what over?”

“The secret formula.”

“The what?”

“The formula for invisibility. Come on—don’t play dumb. Hand it over.”

“But I don’t have any formula, I swear.”

Amy laughed. “I’m just kidding, Norman.”

I felt myself blushing. “I knew that,” I lied.

Just then the waitress came over. “If you two are finished your business deal,” she said, “maybe you want to order something.”

“Okay,” I said. “How is the chicken pot pie?”

“We use only chickens who volunteer.”

Amy said, “Did the cheese volunteer to be in the grilled cheese sandwich?”

“Do I look like somebody who talks to cheese?”

“I’d say yes,” I said, wanting to get in on the joke.

The waitress smiled. “So I’ve got a couple of wise guys here. Just my style. My name’s Deloris. How about you two big spenders share a grilled cheese sandwich and an order of fries?”

“Deal,” Amy said.

We watched the waitress go back to the kitchen. “Why did you ask me here?” I said.

“Because of your brothers and my sisters. Maybe you like all this competition and rivalry and being enemies. But it drives me crazy.”

“Me too,” I said. “But it’s hard standing up to my brothers. It’s always two against one.”

“Same here. But I could see you were different. So let’s call it a truce between you and me and be friends.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.