It was grade nine at D.H. Embey Secondary. They were never really friends until all three of them signed up for the junior badminton team. They were all so different. On the surface, they had nothing in commonâdifferent personalities, backgrounds, tastes and interestsâbut badminton brought them together.
Their friendship didn't happen instantly. At first Teddy thought Jello was brash and conceited, Jello thought Teddy was a snob, and they both thought Byron was aloof or possibly stupid, but by the end of that first season they were best friends.
"I need a new name," Jello said, out of the blue.
"How about 'Jelgar of the Bog People'?" said Byron.
"Nah," said Jello. "Something good. Like 'Montgomery Clift'."
"How about 'Montgomery Clift'?" said Byron.
"Or 'Clontgomery Mift'," suggested Teddy.
"Or maybe... 'Tfilc Yremogtnom'?" said Byron.
"No, I'm serious," said Jello.
"How do you do that?" said Teddy to Byron in admiration.
"My name is 'Angelo Muscat'," Jello went on. "I'm named after an Oompa-Loompa, you know? It's bad enough being five-foot six without being named after a damn Oompa-Loompa!"
Safi's Pizza was the closest thing the guys had to a regular hangout. It was nearby and the pizza was cheap and not too bad as long as you stayed away from the Seafood Medley. Safi was OK. A bit gruff maybe, and he never seemed to remember their names, but he let them hang around even if they didn't order much. Safi's younger brother, Bash, was a bit nicer. He actually smiled and talked to them. Jello's Uncle Joe delivered pizzas for Safi and the family connection made the place feel a bit more like home.
"I thought you were named after your grandfather," said Byron.
"He was," said Teddy.
"But their names are identical and my grandfather wasn't famous!" said Jello, raising his voice enough that people at nearby tables looked over. "The Oompa-Loompa guy was. And he was, like, I swear, four-foot three!"
"Oh right," said Teddy sarcastically, "Angelo Muscat, world famous Maltese actor. He's been dead for, like, fifty years! Nobody knows about him except you. Besides, are you sure he was an Oompa-Loompa? I watched that movie and I didn't see his name in the credits at all."
"The old one. The Gene Wilder one."
"Yeah, that one."
"Uncredited," said Jello, "but it's him."
The server finally came over. Her name was Rhianne and they'd been recipients of her world-weary table service many times in the past. She was probably about thirty and had been waiting tables for longer than most career counsellors would advise. Still, Jello thought she was hot so he constantly attempted creative and, to this point at least, totally unsuccessful ways to flirt with her. On this occasion he suavely ordered in the voice of Oscar Levant or some other long-dead movie star too obscure for anyone under the age of about seventy to remember.
"Make it a gin martini," said Jello/Oscar. "Extra dry," he added, with a wink.
Old movies were Jello's main passion, after girls. If you asked him about anything made after about 1970 he was lost, but he could recite entire scenes from movies like The Dirty Dozen, An American in Paris, The Barefoot Contessa, Arsenic And Old Lace, Ninotchka, Some Like It Hot or Double Indemnity.
Rhianne completely ignored him and his attempt at humour. She knew that all three of them were still a year shy of legal drinking age. She asked Byron what he wanted.
"Coke, please," he said quickly and politely. Byron was slightly afraid of Rhianne.
"I'll have iced tea, please," said Teddy.
"K, and I'll bring your friend a glass of milk." she said, and walked off.
Teddy and Byron laughed, but Jello seemed to take no offence. He was too busy scanning the room.
"Wow, her eyes look amazing," he said.
It took Teddy and Byron a moment or two to realize that he was not talking about Rhianne, but had turned his attention to a group of four girls who sat at a booth across the room.
Teddy looked over at the girls. He had no idea which one had captured Jello's attention, but he said, "Yeah, and her ears sound really good too."
Byron picked up Teddy's drift. "Yeah, and I really like the way her nose smells."
Teddy and Byron laughed while Jello ignored them completely, staring across at his latest love interest. "I bet her skin feels nice," he said.
Teddy and Byron burst out laughing. "Exactly!" said Byron, barely able to get the word out he was laughing so hard.
"You two clowns," said Jello in a Leo Gorcey voice, "always with the wise-cracks."
The fact that they all knew who Leo Gorcey was, and what he sounded like, set them apart from pretty much every other kid they'd ever known, and drew them together in a tight bond of geekhood.
"Observe the female of the species," Jello said, now in his David Attenborough nature-show voice, his attention still on the girls. "When considering a potential mate, she will use a wide range of criteria to weed out suitors who fail to measure up to her standards..."
Teddy and Byron still laughed, more at their own jokes than at Jello's routine.
"See how she glances over at the males," Jello went on. "She seems uninterested, but silently studies each of them, weighing their merits, ruling out those she finds too ugly...," pointing at Byron.
"Hey!" said Byron.
"... too nerdy...," pointing at Teddy.
"What?" said Teddy.
"... too interested in manga... too badly dressed... too obsessed with video games..." pointing alternately at Teddy and Byron.
Rhianne returned with the beverages, distracting Jello from his bit. When she planted a tall glass of milk in front of him, Teddy and Byron burst out laughing again. They caught their breath and ordered some of Safi's special cheese sticks and Jello ordered some spiced olives to go with his milk. Rhianne gave no indication of having heard him as she walked away.
"Hey, I thought you couldn't date girls with blue eyes," Byron said.
Even from across the room they could see that the blonde girl had striking sky blue eyes.
"Yeah," said Teddy, "won't Nana G think she's got, you know, the Evil Eye?"
"No no, that's not how it works," said Jello. "It's mostly if they have dark hair and light-coloured eyes, but there's more to it than that. Anyway, this one's fine."
"Besides," said Byron. "He always dumps them before they ever get to meet his family anyway."
Nana Guza was Jello's grandmother on his father's side, and she'd been living with the family for years. She was eighty-five or eighty-six, no one was quite sure, under five feet tall, spoke very little English and maintained a mind-boggling array of superstitionsâcurses, hexes, jinxes, good and bad omens (mostly bad)âleft over from her life in Malta. Growing up, Jello had often been sent off to some obscure little grocery store or church basement or the back room of a small restaurant to meet with Mrs. Briffa, or Father Ruzar, or Luca-who's-deaf-in-one-ear, to get herbs or olive leaves or a chicken's foot or whatever to bring back to Nana Guza so she could perform whichever ritual was required to remove a specific curse or jinx, to ward off some evil or prevent an impending catastrophe. Jello said he didn't believe any of that stuff about curses, etc., but he was always very careful to get exactly what Nana asked for.
As he put it, "Hey, none of those things have ever come true..."
"I'm not saying I'm superstitious, cuz I'm not," he'd say. "But if it turned out that a loved one got sick just because you didn't want to go pick up some stuff for your grandma, well, you'd feel pretty stupid, wouldn't you?"
Now Jello got up from the table and tugged his shirt straight. "He's going in!" said Byron.
They watched him weave a path between the tables and approach the booth where the girls were sitting. The girls saw him coming too and whispered to each other. Where other guys might have been intimidated by the presence of the three friends, Jello was unfazed and immediately struck up a conversation with them. Teddy and Byron couldn't hear what he was saying, but whatever it was, it made the girls laughâespecially the one with the blue eyes.
Jello homed in on her. The guys could tell he was in good form. She was smiling and looking at him in a way that unmistakably signalled interest. A moment later he passed her his phone. She tapped on it for a few seconds then handed it back to him. Jello said something else and the girls laughed again, then he turned and walked back toward Teddy and Byron. Done deal.
"Impressive work," Teddy said.
"Caylie..." Jello said dreamily, admiring her name in his contact list a moment before putting his phone down. "Now, where are my olives?"
Things may not have gone his way every time but Jello had a success rate that most guys could only dream about. Over the years Teddy and Byron had spent many hours analyzing the Muscat Method: the self-deprecating humour that somehow instantly turned being short from a liability to an asset, the smooth charm that ran in his family, as well as his unnatural degree of confidence. There was also body language to consider, eye contact, the tone of voice. He came across as friendly but at the same time there was a hint of predatory danger. Whatever the exact mix, it was enough, in most cases, to trigger attraction.
As much as they tried to learn by observation, the challenge for Teddy and Byron was putting it into practice. Their own embarrassing experiments in the field taught them the hard lesson that the techniques could be copied but never mastered by anyone but Jello. He added something to the equation, some nuance that gave him his true power. They knew him and his magical way with girls as well as anyone in the world, but they were at a loss to figure out what the secret ingredient was.
Sure he had that Mediterranean charm, but there had been many times when he acted like a total jerk and still got girls. It definitely wasn't his looks either. He was OK, but a little goofy-looking and too short by just about anyone's standard. Sweet talk? Sometimes they overheard him as he talked to girls and really, it didn't sound like anything special. The two of them still talked about it once in a while when Jello wasn't around, but they'd given up trying to figure it out. Jello's effect on girls was as much a mystery to them as girls themselves.
The cheese sticks and olives arrived and Rhianne seemed amused that Jello was obediently drinking his milk. She smiled at him, and said, "Good boy" as she walked away.
"Oh my god!" said Byron, "She actually smiled. Dude, if you get somewhere with Rhianne, I'll officially start worshipping you as a god."
Jello just shrugged, "Might as well get on your knees now, Bobo, cuz it's just a matter of time."
"So T," he said, turning to Teddy, "this girl you and your Mom ran over..."
"Darwin," said Teddy, "and we didn't run her over, we hit her."
"Yeah, that one. So you guys hit her with your car, and she's fine now?"
"Yeah! She's got some bruises, I guess, and aches and pains, but that's about it."
"So did she just bump against the side or was it more...?" Jello asked, smacking his fist into the palm of his other hand.
"No, we hit her with the front, and it was definitely, like, wham! We were pulling away from a stop but, you know, picking up speed. She totally went flying over the car!"
"And she'zh okay?" said Byron, mouth full of half-chewed cheese stick. "Izh she a shuperhero?"
"Could be a cyborg... or maybe undead," said Jello, then turning to Teddy, "So, is she cute?"
"No!" said Teddy loudly. "Well... no, she's totally not cute. And definitely not your type anyway."
"You hesitated!" Jello said, pointing at Teddy. "That means she's cute, and you just don't want me to come over and steal her away with my sex-monkey pheromones!"
"Niiice," said Byron, nodding.
"Dude, no," said Teddy. "She's, like, weird. She's messed up. She's crazy, or on drugs or something."
"Right. I bet she's crazy hot and you want to keep her as your own personal plaything, your hot little she-toy, your FemiSapien, your sexy love-doll locked up in your room..."
"FemiSapien?" said Byron.
"You are one sick individual," said Teddy.
"FemiSapien?" repeated Byron.
"Me?" said Jello. "I'm sick? I'm not the one ramming girls with my car so I can keep 'em as love slaves!"
"Yeah," said Byron, "but that's only cuz you don't know how to drive."
Teddy and Byron dissolved in laughter while Jello ignored them. "Uncle Joe!" he shouted.
Teddy turned to see Jello's Uncle Joe talking to Safi's brother, Bash, at the front desk. Uncle Joe looked over and gave a nod. Joe was the older brother of Jello's father and he lived with their family, having a bedroom in the basement off the TV room. A big-bellied, barrel-chested man, he made up for his lack of height with a booming voice and a personality entirely free of shyness or anything that could be called subtlety. He was dressed in a black t-shirt, a satiny royal blue bomber jacket with a huge Safi's Pizzeria logo on the back and, though summer was long gone, baggy camo shorts. The shorts revealed sturdy legs hairy enough to keep him warm and the impressive look was completed with overly long black socks and a pair of old, dirty runners. With only minor variations, this outfit was Uncle Joe's standard year-round attire, both on pizza delivery duty and off.
Joe and his younger brother, TonioâJello's dadâwere about as different as you could get. Tonio was thinner, quieter, more practical, more responsible, more conventional in every way. Tonio had a good job and a good marriage, he dressed sensibly (in clothes bought for him at the department store by Mrs. Muscat), owned a nice house, paid his taxes, and changed the oil in the Infiniti every 3000 kilometres. On the surface of it, Tonio seemed to have everything that Joe wanted, and yet Joe seemed to be happier than his younger, more successful brother by far. Byron's theory was that since Tonio was the responsible one, Joe was free to live a frivolous life of fun with no worries or obligations. Jello would say, mysteriously, that it wasn't as simple as that.
"There's some history. Families are complicated."
Jello never seemed embarrassed by his Uncle's antics or his odd way of dressing. He was close to his Uncle Joe and so were Teddy and Byronâso much so that they called him Uncle Joe too. Just calling him Joe would have seemed weird, and "Mr. Muscat" was definitely out (and besides, that's what they called Jello's Dad).
Uncle Joe came over to the table. "So what kinda trouble are you guys getting into tonight?"
"Oh, you know, the usual," said Teddy.
"Fraud, extortion, identity theft..." said Byron.
"You're drinking milk?" Uncle Joe said to Jello.
"Hey, it's an excellent source of bovine growth hormones," said Jello.
"Eww," said Byron.
The four girls across the restaurant were getting up to leave. They looked over and smiled at the guys and the blonde girl gave a little wave to Jello before she left.
"Oh!" said Uncle Joe. "Do we have a new contender?"
"Caylie, yeah." said Jello. "How cute was that wave?"
"Could you shut up now?" said Byron.
"So you're spreading the Safi joy tonight?" Teddy asked Uncle Joe.
"The what?" asked Uncle Joe.
"He means delivering pizzas," explained Jello.
"No," said Uncle Joe, "just came in to talk to Safi about something."
"Oh, hey Uncle Joe," said Byron, "did you get the private eye kit yet?"
"No... should be coming any day though."
"What's this?" Teddy asked.
"Private investigation and surveillance course. Ordered it online. Time for a real job, you know? I'm getting too old for this," he said, gesturing toward their pizzeria surroundings. Bash, out of earshot, looked at them and smiled.
"Whoa, for real?" said Teddy. "You're gonna be a P. I.?"
"Yup," Uncle Joe said. "Certified. Don't tell Safi though. I'll tell him when I'm ready."
"Hey," said Byron, "maybe you could combine the two, you know? Pizza guy and private eye? It'd make a great cover."
"You know, that's not a bad idea," said Joe. "That's what made me think of doing it in the first place. You'd be surprised the things you see delivering pizza. I could tell you stories..."
"You have," said Jello.
"Many times," said Byron.
"But I thought you were gonna get into electronics repair," said Teddy.
"I was, but Angelo here talked me out of that. Tell 'em what you said, Ange."
"I don't know," said Jello. "What did I say?"
"You know... about technology."
"Oh right. I just said that technology keeps changing and if you're starting a new career you should choose one where you're riding the wave, not getting run over by it."
"You did not say that," said Byron.
"He did! And he's right!" said Joe. "Because as a P. I. I'd be making technology work for me, not constantly trying to keep up with it." Uncle Joe turned to Teddy and Byron. "Smart guy, my nephew."
"Plus being a P. I. is a billion times cooler!" said Teddy.
Uncle Joe started talking about the profession of private investigation, its history and how the way it was depicted in movies, TV and novels was mostly inaccurate but served to at least give a glimpse of its gritty reality to the uninitiated.
"It has a place in society," he said sincerely, "as a valued and respected adjunct to traditional law enforcement."
"Wow," said Teddy and Byron in unison.
Joe went on to explain that the requirements of the job were a surprisingly good fit for a person of his specific background and talents. It was when Uncle Joe began to touch on some of the lesser-known tricks of the trade that Teddy's mind began to drift. As Uncle Joe talked, Teddy was soon wondering again about Darwin. How could he not? It wasn't like he was used to having strange girls come and stay overnight in his basement.
She was weird. Everything seemed to have some secret, personal meaning for her. Even a smile didn't seem like just a smile but was meant to cover up some other hidden feeling or thought. What was really going on with her? She made him feel so uncomfortable. Who needs that in their own house? Thank God it was only temporary, but what if he saw her around town? Would she remember him? That would be so weird.
Uncle Joe was now discussing the relative merits of different brands of night vision binoculars. Teddy left some bills on the table to cover his tab, got up and said goodnight.
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â D.B.