Seriously, Norman!, page 21
nurrma
don’t vorry yur hed which is pritty liddle. am not keednappt. hiy tu nurrmin.
“‘Nurrma’? ‘Nurrmin’?” said Leonard.
“Mom, didn’t you suspect anything when Dad misspelled your own name?” said Norman.
“Well, he can be an awfully bad typist when he’s in a hurry,” she said, now pacing.
Norman opened another letter.
am vine. no nid to be konsernt. am about you thinkink hallveys.
“Really, Mom, ‘about you thinkink hallveys’?”
“I guess I’ve been a little distracted,” she said, rubbing her hands.
The letters continued:
hilloo—do nat think I am in any trubbel.
bussi bussi.
“‘Bussi bussi’? Weird,” said Leonard.
“‘Bussi bussi,’ Mom?”
“Oh, Orman!”
The front doorbell bombilated.
“The twins!” shouted Norman and Leonard.
Indeed, the twins had walked themselves over with their belongings and now stood in the front hall, bombarded by both Norman and Leonard, who had run in from the kitchen with the enormous news.
quite prepared
“Kidnapped?” said Anna.
“But who would want to kidnap your dad?” said Emma.
“That’s what I said,” said Leonard.
“Just look at who sent the e-mails,” said Norman. “Imperialalfurnianspies.org! Darn those Alfurnians!”
“All right, girls, Leonard, let’s not just stand around here upsetting ourselves,” said Mrs. Normann, holding her hands tightly to her chest. “There’s nothing we can do about this now,” and she moved her hands to her cheeks. “Now, Norman, I wish you would stop making me so upset with your crazy notions, because that’s all they are—crazy notions.”
She straightened herself, putting a hand now to the back of her hair and looking in the hall mirror. “Listen, I’m going out for the evening, as Norman may have already told you. I have arranged for Mr. Balthazar to arrive here in twenty minutes with the pizza.”
“All right, Mrs. Normann!” said Leonard.
“I’ll show everyone to their rooms,” said Norman.
“Now wait. Before you do that, Norman, I want you to show everyone to their rooms.”
“The twins in the spare room, and Leonard in his sleeping bag on the floor in my room.”
“Hold on. Wait a second,” said Mrs. Normann, brushing her hair. “The twins are in the spare room and Leonard is in his sleeping bag on the floor in your room, Norman.”
“Okay, Mom. Love you oodles, Mom. Have a nice evening,” said Norman, giving his mother a quick squeeze around the middle before grabbing Anna’s bag and leading the others up the stairs.
Twenty minutes later, Balthazar Birdsong stepped through the kitchen door, preceded by the wonderful aroma of pizza. Another tutor might have recoiled from the explosion of young voices that rained on him as he entered, but he, having set down the pizza, calmly removed his coat, scarf, mittens, and hat and said, somewhat austerely, “Indeed?”
“My dad’s been kidnapped! I know he has!” said Norman, for the seventh time.
“I don’t disbelieve you,” said Mr. B. “However, before we take this up, let us lay a pleasant table in your charming kitchen, pour ourselves generous glasses of water or wine, and pass around the pizza, so that our discussion may be both unhurried and thorough.”
Accordingly, the table was set, under the strict guidelines of Mr. B., who sent Norman and Emma to hunt for cloth napkins and candles, and Leonard and Anna to look for real glasses and china plates.
When they were at last seated, Balthazar Birdsong lifted his glass to his lips, drank, put his glass down, and said, “Now, Norman, what’s it all about?”
Norman, through many a mouthful of pizza, proceeded to tell of his father’s e-mails and his own earlier premonitions that something was wrong and now his conviction that his father was in real danger. “I knew that my dad wasn’t exactly a model citizen, but I wasn’t prepared for this!” he said, taking a rather savage bite of his slice of broccoli with olive.
“There I disagree with you,” said Balthazar. “You are quite prepared. Has it not been my task this year to prepare you for your test?”
“But not this test!” said Norman, choking a little.
“Who is to say? Who is to say?”
“Mr. B., no offense and all,” said Leonard, “but, seriously, how have you prepared our friend Norman here for this, as you call it, test?”
Balthazar merely smiled and looked over the top of his wineglass.
Anna added, “From what I can tell, all you’ve taught Norman is how to walk, take care of rats, fly kites, notice people’s clothes or celestial domes, look at the sky, and read the dictionary.”
“Precisely so,” said Mr. B., putting his glass down and folding his hands, “and all in service of two of the pillars of my tutuorial methodology: observation and imagination.” He leaned forward and nodded at Norman. “And see, Norman has observed his father and now imagines that he is in trouble. I have no reason to think Norman is wrong.”
There was a silence.
“Norman,” Mr. B. continued, “can you tell me what your father was wearing when you saw him last?”
“I think so,” said Norman. “His brown suit with a light blue shirt and a red tie and his good brown shoes with a black winter raincoat. I’m pretty sure he packed his gray suit, his black shoes, which he always does, and he mentioned the beach, so I imagine three Hawaiian shirts, his swim trunks, and his flip-flops, which are green. And a bunch of other stuff.”
“Fine work, Norman. Now do you see?”
Leonard put away another bite of pepperoni and onion with a large gulp and said, “All I see is a man in a brown suit.”
“Yes. Well, at least you see that. Really, at this juncture, there remains but one thing more. To the two pillars we add a third—you observe, you imagine, and now you must act.”
Norman, who had stopped eating, was gazing out the window into the backyard and wondering where in the world his father was.
The remainder of the Quadrumvirate looked at Norman.
“So, Norman,” said Emma, “what are we going to do?”
“Yeah, Norman,” said Leonard, “what’s the answer?”
Norman looked at the slice of pizza in his hand, then back out the window, and finally at his friends. “Well,” he said, “I guess, I guess”—he took a bite and swallowed—“I guess we’re going to Singapore.”
“Bravo, Norman,” said Balthazar. “You pass the test.”
* * *
Later in the evening, after much further discussion and argument, Norman and Balthazar Birdsong stood at the bus stop at the end of the street, where the half-moon seemed to drift low over the trees and the lights of the city behind them.
“Maybe you could come with us to Singapore,” said Norman.
“Not me, my dear,” said Balthazar. “I must remain in the city due to inescapable obligations.” He put his hand on Norman’s shoulder. “Besides, this is your adventure. Just remember who you are: Norman Normann—conqueror, discoverer, seafarer! I have no doubt you will meet every challenge with a well-chosen karate chop and just the right answer.” Balthazar gave the cold air a couple of silent chops, and smiled. “Ah, here’s the bus.”
The bus door opened, throwing light onto the dark sidewalk. Norman gave his tutor a sudden hug around the middle, and then Balthazar Birdsong hopped on and, turning, said, “Give my regards to your father when you find him, Norman. Farewell!” And the bus door closed.
As the bus hummed and rumbled away, Norman walked, then ran down the dark sidewalk toward the brightly lit windows of his home, observing the faces of his neighbors’ houses, imagining a monster or two in their bushes, and acting like the toughest little superhero he could think of.
more prepared
“Where is Singapore, anyway?”
“Beats me,” said Leonard.
Leonard and Norman lay in their sleeping bag and bed the following morning, staring at the ceiling.
“Let me check,” said Norman, scrambling out of bed and over Leonard to retrieve a globe from his desk, then placing it on the floor. They sat one on either hemisphere.
“I found Copenhagen,” said Leonard.
“Here’s Tokyo,” said Norman.
“Spin the globe once.”
Norman spun it.
“Aieeeyeee! We’re flying through space!” said Leonard.
“We are flying through space. Keep looking for Singapore. How are we supposed to go to Singapore if we don’t even know where it is?”
“All right, all right. Lima, Peru!”
“Johannesburg.”
“Mexico City.”
“Athens.”
“Look, I found where we live,” said Leonard, placing his finger on New York City. “Right here where my finger is. Let’s see what’s on the other side, exactly. I’ll keep my finger on the top over here, now you look on the bottom over there.”
“Okay,” said Norman, bending down to see the bottom half of the globe, “exactly on the other side of the world from New York is . . .”
“Is?”
“. . . is blue. Ocean.”
“Which ocean?”
“I don’t know which ocean. Let’s see. The Indian Ocean.”
“Well, what’s around there?”
Norman swiveled the globe left and right. “Australia. So that’s where Australia is.”
“What else?”
“Sumatra and Java.”
“Isn’t Java coffee?”
“I’ll ask Mr. B. Oh, and one more thing,” said Norman, with his right index finger on a spot just above the equator. “Here’s Singapore.”
* * *
The boys peeked into the spare bedroom. The girls were awake and reading.
“We found Singapore!” said Leonard.
“I didn’t know it was missing,” said Anna. “In fact, I would put it at two degrees north latitude, one hundred and five degrees east longitude, at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula.”
Norman and Leonard deflated.
“We looked it up online,” said Emma.
“All right, now how do we get there?” said Leonard.
Norman and Leonard sat down at the foot of Anna’s bed, and the Quadrumvirate scratched its four heads.
Norman said, “I don’t know about how we get there, but this is all starting to make sense to me. I was thinking about it some more last night. Mr. B. says your brain works on things even when you sleep.”
“No wonder I’m so tired in the morning,” said Leonard. “So, when does your brain sleep?”
“Well, in your case,” said Emma, “I’d say from about nine to five.”
“Ha. Ha,” said Leonard.
“Let me finish,” said Norman. “We thought the Alfurnians were chasing us, when all along, really, they were chasing my dad. Every time we saw them was on a family outing. Remember the Halloween parade? Dad always goes, he loves Halloween. They obviously thought he was with us!”
“But why would they want your dad, that’s what I still don’t get,” said Emma.
“Who would really want to spend a lot of time with your dad?” said Anna.
“Besides you and your mom, of course,” said Emma.
“I know it sounds pretty unlikely. But I’m sure it’s them. And I’m sure he’s in trouble,” said Norman. “My guess is it has something to do with the deal he’s been trying to close with the Alfurnians all year. Maybe the Alfurnians lured my dad to some secluded spot to grab him so’s they could find out all he knows about the Katong Luangans or the Blinesians or the Jakartians or something. Maybe they want him for their grand vizier or something. I don’t know! He’s a shady used-bomber salesman! Anything’s possible! Darn it. Why isn’t my dad a shoe salesman?”
“Everybody needs shoes,” said Leonard. “Who needs bombs, anyway?”
“The Alfurnians,” said Anna.
“Getting back to what are we going to do . . .” said Emma, beginning to brush and braid her sister’s hair.
“Here’s what I propose,” said Norman. “Anna and Emma, you go online again and find out how we get to Singapore, all five of us. I think we’ll have to bring my mom along, although maybe we won’t tell her what exactly is going on. I think if we all just smile and act like we know what we’re doing, she won’t be any trouble.”
Anna began to brush and braid Emma’s hair.
“Leonard, you go back down to the kitchen, my mom’s computer should still be down there. Print out all the e-mails from the Alfurnians or from my dad in the last month. Then see if you can discover some kind of code or hidden coincidences, or something to help us figure out where exactly my dad is right now.” Norman stood up from the bed. “And in the meantime, I’ll get my mom to go out and get us doughnuts for breakfast so she’s safely out of the house, and then I’ll go to my dad’s study and see what I can find there. Let’s meet back here in seventy minutes.”
“Why seventy minutes, exactly?” said Anna.
“I don’t know, it just sounds cool,” said Norman.
* * *
An hour and ten minutes later, they sat again on the spare beds and ate the doughnuts Mrs. Normann had dutifully gone out for, saying merely, as she handed them around, “Try not to drop any crumbs.”
“So what have we got?” said Norman, his mouth full of half a marble-frosted.
“Not a whole lot,” said Leonard. “All the e-mails were pretty much the same, full of dahlinks and nurrmas, N-U-R-R-M-A, and nurrmins, N-U-R-R-M-I-N. And they were full of things like, I am devinitely not in eny dencher and sur hevenot bin keed-nappt. I mean, how dim do they think your mom is, anyway?”
“Oh, I’d guess about fifteen watts,” said Anna.
“Fluorescent or incandescent?” said Emma.
“Incandescent.”
“Oooh, that is dim.”
“Hey!” said Norman. “Well, I guess they know her pretty well.”
“After all,” said Emma, “it worked until now, and would have kept working if you hadn’t gotten suspicious.”
“Wasn’t there anything else?” said Anna.
“Well, in what looks like the last genuine e-mail from your dad, sent on December sixteenth—”
“Beethoven’s birthday,” said Emma.
“Sh!” said Anna.
Leonard continued, “He mentions a meeting with the Alfurnians in the Tall Bar of the Snaffles Hotel.”
“All right!” said Norman. “That’s where we’ve got to pick up the trail. That fits with what I found in my dad’s office. Listen, there were a bunch of different copies of various contracts lying all over. Two things I know about my dad. One, except for the occasional catalogue in code, he rarely puts anything away. And two, he eats a lot of fast food. Keeping this in mind, I made careful observations of the papers on his desk. By a close visual analysis of the relative hardness of the mayonnaise, ketchup, and french-fry stains, I concluded that the most recent bomber contract in my dad’s office was one for the Alfurnians. But it was unsigned. That means he really was going to try one last time to close an Alfurnian bomber deal, if they would meet with him again. And that would confirm what Leonard found in the last e-mail.”
“Brilliant!” said Anna.
“But disgusting!” said Emma.
“Brilliant and disgusting,” said Leonard.
“Okay, so that puts my dad in the Tall Bar at the Snaffles Hotel in Singapore in the third week of December. Now we’ve got to get there ourselves. We’ve done everything we can here.”
“That’s where we come in,” said Anna.
“Look,” said Emma, turning her computer around for Leonard and Norman to see. “We’ve booked five seats on Singapore Airlines.”
“Two windows, three aisles, all together, so we can trade around during the flight, which by the way is going to be kinda long.”
“And kinda expensive.”
“How kinda long and expensive?” said Leonard.
“Don’t worry about the expense,” said Norman. “I can handle my mom. I call it giving her the moisturizer. I raise this eyebrow this way, this eyebrow this way. I let the corners of my mouth twitch thusly, and the hands and fingers work like this.” Norman twisted his hands together and contorted his face. “Or if Mom’s hands are available, I work them like this.” Norman twisted his hands over Emma’s, who tried to yank them away. “It’s never taken me longer than forty-five seconds to get the American Express extracted and into action.”
Norman let Emma’s hands go. “All right, we’re ready to get this operation under way.”
“By the way,” said Leonard, “what’s the name of this operation going to be?”
“How about Operation Hooner Po?” said Norman.
“Didn’t we use that already?” said Leonard.
“How about Operation Bad Dad?” said Norman.
“He’s not my dad,” said Anna.
“Operation Bomber Bummer,” said Emma.
“Winter Summer Bomber Bummer!” said Leonard.
“Winter Summer Bomber Bummer!” chanted the four, and so it was decided.
“There’s just one thing,” said Anna.
“Yeah,” said Emma. “Because we’re getting these tickets kind of last minute, we could only get them for Wednesday night.”
“Uh-huh,” said Norman.
“But?” said Leonard.
“So, the flight takes eighteen hours.”
“But—” said Leonard.
“And according to the flight times, we leave on Wednesday night and we don’t arrive until Friday morning.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But—”
“Wednesday night is Christmas Eve,” said Anna.
“So?” said Norman.
At last Leonard burst in, “But that means we’ll completely miss Christmas! Christmas Day will come and go, and the whole time we will never have one toe on the ground!”
“Exactly,” said Emma.
“I think that’s maybe against Santa’s rules!” said Leonard.
