Amberville Read Free Page B

pieces of cloth not far from Tom-Tom; the other was over at the register, ironing aprons marked down twenty percent.
    Complete calm prevailed in the department. Eric Bear placed himself at a safe distance, in the shelter of a bunk bed, and gathered courage. It seemed almost impossible that the slow needle-sorter was the same bird Eric had once known. Twenty years earlier the crow had been able to break two bricks between his wings. Back then Eric had laughed many times at the poor things who disturbed Tom-Tom by mistake when he sat absorbed in his thoughts; you couldn’t imagine a more meaningless way to have an arm torn off. Most often Tom-Tom Crow was nicer than most, but sometimes he exploded in a madness that he couldn’t control.
    And now? Could the crow’s loyalty still be counted on?
    Eric took a few cautious steps into the sewing notions department and carefully avoided landing in the ironing sow’s way. As Eric passed the embroideries, the crow looked up from his needles. For a fraction of a second a surprised worry was seen in his small, black eyes. Slowly he pushed the needles aside and got up from the stool.
    “I’ll be damned!” he burst out.
    The crow ran over, taking the bear in his arms and lifting him up from the floor in a mighty embrace that caused Eric to laugh. Above all in relief, but also because he realized how ridiculous this had to appear.
    After the friends exchanged the phrases that two old friends exchange when they haven’t seen each other for a long time, Tom-Tom sat down on his stool and resumed his sorting. Eric leaned toward the table and watched for a while.
    “And how the hell did you end up here?” he finally asked.
    The swearword was a clumsy attempt to ingratiate himself. Nowadays Eric Bear swore so seldom that it rang falsely when he tried.
    “What do you mean?” asked the crow.
    “Yes…well,” said Eric, less cocksure, “how did you end up here…knitting and crocheting and…sows?”
    “Josephine and Nadine,” said Tom-Tom, smiling, “are the flipping best. They help me with the embroideries. At home I’m working on a big frigging wall hanging. It’s for the bedroom. It’s going to be a fantasy landscape. Stay for lunch, then I can show you. I have the sketches here somewhere…”
    Tom-Tom looked around with uncertainty. His sketches were somewhere.
    “To be honest,” said Eric, “I was thinking about freeing you from lunch. For good.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with lunch,” said Tom-Tom. “They have an employee lunchroom in the basement. Today there’s vegetable soup. Maybe it doesn’t sound so frigging cool, but it’s better than you might think.”
    “I thought we could do a thing together,” said Eric. “You and me and Sam and Snake.”
    “A thing?” repeated Tom-Tom.
    Eric had a hard time reading the crow’s tone of voice. He nodded.
    “All four of us?” asked Tom-Tom.
    Eric nodded again.
    “Snake is never going to join in,” objected the crow. “Iran into him a few years ago, here at the department store. He pretended not to recognize me. I thought it was a frigging joke, I thought…I called him a few times, but he never answered.”
    “Snake will join in,” Eric assured him.
    “You guarantee?”
    “I guarantee.”
    “I’ll be damned,” said Tom-Tom.
    The crow became absorbed in thought.
    “Economically you’ll be set for the rest of your life,” Eric interjected without having any idea of how he could fulfill that promise.
    “You say so?”
    “I say so.”
    “And if it goes to hell?” asked Tom-Tom, wise from experience.
    “Then it goes to hell,” confirmed Eric.
    The crow nodded as though something profound had been said, and sank into reflection. When Eric started to doubt whether Tom-Tom even recalled what he was thinking about, the crow got up from the stool. It was a slow movement, not hesitant but not aggressive either.
    “What the hell,” he said. “Let’s go, then.”
    “Good,” answered Eric without