Free Rich and Famous by James Lincoln Collier

grown up, Agnes Scampi used to babysit me when I was a little kid.
    â€œScampi?”
    â€œI live downstairs.”
    She opened the door a crack and looked out. “I didn’t mean to bother you,” I said, “but there’s some water leaking down. It might be from your radiator. It happens a lot.”
    â€œOh,” she said. “Well, come on in.” She opened the door up. She was around twenty-two or something, and she was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt which was smeared up with paint.
    I walked in. “They’re always having leaks up here,” I said. “Sometimes it’s from the radiators, sometimes it’s from the toilet or the sink. You never can tell where it’s coming from.”
    â€œWell, have a look around,” she said. She had some drawing paper tacked onto Pop’s drawing table, and she was doing some kind of water color sketch, but from where I was standing I couldn’t see what. She went back to the drawing table, but she didn’t work. Instead she sort of watched me. I went into my bedroom. The bed wasn’t made, and there was a lot of women’s underwear flung all over the place. It made me kind of sore to see my room all messed up—I mean I didn’t keep it so neat myself, but at least it was my mess. I fooled around in there for a minute, and then I went into the bathroom and pretended to look at the sink pipes. It was kind of funny to see a lot of lady’s pills and stuff in there instead of our toothbrushes and Pop’s razor and shaving cream and all that. So then I checked the kitchen, which had strange foods in it, too, and finally I went back into the living room.
    â€œWell, I can’t find anything,” I said. “I guess it must have stopped by itself.”
    â€œStopped by itself?”
    â€œYeah, it does that sometimes.”
    â€œWell, okay,” she said.
    But I didn’t want to go. I was still curious to find out if anybody else was living there. I mean maybe her husband was at work and her kid was riding his bike in Washington Square. Besides, I didn’t have anything else to do. “I guess you’re a painter,” I said.
    â€œAfter a fashion,” she said.
    She wanted me to go, I could tell that, so she could get back to her painting. “I’m kind of interested in painting,” I said. “I take art in school.” I walked over to her picture, and then suddenly I saw something out of the corner of my eye that stopped me. It was my little teddy bear key chain. It was hanging from one of the knobs on the swivel lamp Pop had over his drawing table, just sort of dangling down over the table. It made me feel kind of creepy to see it hanging there, I mean considering that it was my special thing and didn’t have anything to do with her. So I blurted out, “I see you have a teddy bear key chain.”
    â€œWhat? Oh that.”
    â€œThe kid who lives here has one like that.”
    â€œIt’s his, I imagine,” she said. “It’s sort of cute.”
    There wasn’t anything more I could say about it. If I’d admitted who I was in the first place maybe I’d have been able to say it was my lucky charm or something, and she’d let me take it, but it was too late for that. “Well,” I said, finally, “I guess I’d better go. Maybe I’ll see you again.”
    â€žFine,” she said. “Although I usually don’t like being interrupted when I’m working.”
    So I left; there was nothing else to do. I checked out the West Fourth Street courts, but it was still drizzling too much for basketball, so I went over to Crespino’s and ate a hamburger and a milkshake, and then I killed some time up on Eighth Street in the record stores; and finally it was time to go up to Grand Central and take the train back to Pawling. What a boring day. And to make it worse, halfway up to Pawling on the train I finished