Page 8
Story: Whistle
Annie put aside her dream for a time and continued to design websites. John went into the animation factory every day. Life had settled into a routine that bordered on the mundane. They made a living that would have been decent had they lived someplace other than New York, but rent was a killer. They had no car. They rarely took cabs and relied on public transportation, or they hoofed it.
John’s one extravagance was his smartphone, which he used to connect to the Internet so he could watch animation clips on YouTube and elsewhere. It was his addiction, he freely admitted, to the point that even as they walked down the street, he’d be looking down at his phone, laughing at some snippet of a Daffy Duck cartoon or a politically incorrectFamily Guymoment. Annie repeatedly warned him his obsession would be the death of him. She’d showed him online surveillance videos of people falling into open sidewalk cellar doors, which were all over the place in New York.
He paid no mind.
One day, eyes fixed on his phone’s screen, watching the Looney Tunes classic Bugs Bunny cartoonRabbit of Seville, he walked right into a streetlight pole, hard enough to raise a bump on his forehead. Annie felt bad about laughing, but, honestly, he had it coming.
Bottom line was, as long as they didn’t have any unexpected expenses, they’d get by. And God forbid one of them got sick, because neither of them had a decent health plan.
And then came a surprise.
“Oh shit,” John said when she came home from the doctor’s office and gave him the news that she was pregnant.
Not exactly the words she was hoping to hear.
But he did some fast backpedaling. “We can do this,” he said, and then, unexpectedly, began to laugh. “I have no fucking idea how, but we can do this.”
And they did. Seven months later, Charlie was born, and despite them now being down a salary, it was joyous. John took a part-time second job in the evenings working in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant around the corner. (At least he got to score the occasional free pizza.) John’s parents—Annie’s had both passed by the time she was twenty-three—sent them checks when they could, but they were working-class folks who had their own financial worries.
There were no websites to design, at least for now, but even when Annie nursed, Charlie in her arms, the pen and sketch pad were not far away.
One night, up for a feeding when the baby was seven weeks old, so tired she could barely keep her eyes open, Annie thought about a penguin who wanted to explore the world beyond Antarctica.
When Charlie napped, Annie would sketch out her character in more detail. She made up another wire armature and created a three-dimensional model, just as she had done with Barry the Bear. She would name her penguin Pierce. He would ask his fellow penguins why the hell (okay, nothell, but why on earth) they had wings if they couldn’t use them to become airborne. They were about as useless as those forearms on aT-Rex. He wasn’t going to let his superfluous wings keep him from traveling, so he saved up his moneyfrom his bookshop job (a store that sold mostly thrillers, and was called Chillers) to buy airline tickets. He always took off from Antarctica International Airport, where the jumbo jets were fitted with skis.
The first book Annie put together wasPierce Goes to Paris. He visits the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, buys himself a beret, and damned if he isn’t the jauntiest-looking penguin who ever walked the Champs-Élysées. He returns to the South Pole with tales of his adventures, but decides he won’t be staying long. There is so much more to see!
One of the editors who had rejected her eco-minded polar bear book had said some nice things about her drawings, so she decided to send a copy of her first Pierce Penguin story to him.
A week went by. Then two. A month without any response. She was getting ready to send the manuscript to another house when her cell phone rang.
It was Finnegan Sproule.
“You know the Gramercy Tavern?” he asked.
Well, she hadheardof it. But she had never stepped inside the doors.
Over their first lunch, he said to her, “This is very special. It has tremendous potential. Do you have an agent?”
“An agent?”
“A literary agent. Look, I could make you an offer right now, something you’d jump at that might seem like a lot of money to you but would be lunch money for my publisher. You need someone in your corner. I’m going to suggest a few to you, all reputable. Or you can ask around, find someone else. But I want this, and I’m prepared to do a preempt.”
“A who?”
“A preemptive offer. An agent will explain.”
Annie found an agent. A deal was made. Was it a fortune? No. But it was enough to calm some nerves, to allow Annie and John and Charlie to move to a slightly larger apartment in a better neighborhood.
The book came out. It did nothing.
Okay, not exactly nothing. It sold in the low four figures. Annie signed at a couple of Barnes & Nobles in Manhattan to thin crowds. There was no tour.
“Not to worry,” Finnegan told her. “Get cracking on the second one.”
That book becamePierce Goes to London. The penguin met with the Queen; this was before her passing, of course. Toured Buckingham Palace, went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, rode around in a London cab. Ate fish and chips.
After the lukewarm reception to the first book, Annie didn’t get her hopes up for Pierce’s sophomore outing. She’d been thinking of a third book where Pierce went to Tokyo, but was there any point?
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8 (Reading here)
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154