LITMIR.BIZ

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the wind whistled in through the cracked windowpane. One naked bulb lit the whole, worked by a greasy switch. In the corner, in front of a bricked up fireplace, lay a single mattress topped by a crumpled sleeping bag. There were no toys, unless you counted one dirty bit of yellow and black battered plush that lay shoved over between the dirty mattress and the floor. It might have been the remains of a teddy bear. Then again, it might not. It was hard to tell.⁷

      “Can’t say I’m going to miss it much,” Snotty said, shrugging to himself. And I don’t think anyone would have missed it much, either. Except that Snotty was only twelve years old, and this was the only room he had ever known.

      He went over to the window for one last look out over Widdleshift. It was dark and it was gray and it was scattered with rusting iron fences and yellowing patches of grass on which pieces of broken glass sparkled in the twilight. The dirty brick houses huddled together, tilting this way and that. This was the only sight that Snotty had ever known.

      “Or that, either,” Snotty said, trying to keep his courage up. He was mean and ugly, but he was brave, too. You have to be brave to leave your home when it’s time to go, even if that home is mean and ugly.

      Snotty lingered, then, for a minute, but not because he was afraid. He stayed to look at a sight that had long puzzled him, off and on, when he had the time to be puzzled—which was not often, given the business interests that would tonight, he hoped, be taking him to a more ambitious field of action altogether.

      “Six houses,” he said to himself. “But seven gardens. Why should it be like that? When everybody knows that six houses should have six gardens.”

      Because that was what he could see, from his attic room, at the top of Hamercy Street. In the middle of the street, in the part where it leveled off before heading on to the church and the pub and the police station, there were six mean little dirty brown brick houses. But behind them, in a back alley—an alley, incidentally, that Snotty knew very well—there were seven gardens. He could see from where he stood that the gardens were mingy and wretched, covered with broken glass and rotting, creosote-soaked lumber, matted with a tangle of nettles, dandelions, and stunted blackberry leaves. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that there were too many of them.

      “Six houses. Seven gardens.” Snotty shook his head. “It’s not right.”

      But after tonight, he would never see those houses or those gardens again. He brightened at the thought. So there was really no use worrying about them. And since Snotty very rarely did anything that was of no use to him—he couldn’t remember the last time, in fact—now he put the gardens and the houses out of his mind. And lifted up a heavy, frayed backpack onto his scrawny little back.

      His cool eyes raked the miserable room one last time. Then he turned off the one light, and went out, closing the door behind him.⁸

      “Evening, Snot,” a small boy said as he swept a bit of glass out of our hero’s way. “Nice night, isn’t it?” His face shone in the darkness with an expression of anxious deference. Snotty was something of a legend to the smaller ones on Hamercy Street, and the boy timidly hoped for a word of encouragement from his hero.

      Snotty ignored him. One of the first lessons he had learned on Hamercy Street was that kindness equals weakness. He never made the mistake of being nice to anyone smaller or more helpless than himself. So he passed the small boy by as if he hadn’t even seen him, and speeded up his already fast pace. So energetic, purposeful, and efficient was his stride that if he hadn’t been scrawny, ragged, and just twelve, he might have been mistaken for a district manager on his way to a very important meeting. The smaller boy looked after him with helpless admiration, vowing to be like him some day.

      Snotty’s energy and purpose and efficiency faltered only once, and that was down in front of the six houses that fronted the alley of Back Hamercy Street. Here, unable to help himself, he stopped and stared and frowned.

      He looked at the houses and counted them. There were definitely six. Six houses. Even though he had better things to think about, this positively annoyed him. Then he noticed a paint-peeled Garden Gnome leering at him from the weeds in front of the sixth house. Snotty aimed a kick at the Gnome’s head and stomped it efficiently into the cracked concrete of the pavement.

      He felt better after that and continued on his way.

      “BZZZZZTTT.”

      Snotty walked onto the waste ground that lined the other side of Hamercy Street and ducked under the phone mast there. It spat out a thin blue light as he passed.

      “BZZZZZTTT.”

      On the other side of the phone mast was a billboard. On this billboard, fading and peeling as it was, was pictured the beautiful face of the most beautiful young man in the world. He was elegant and slim and dressed in creamy white. His skin was tan and his hair was luxuriant and black. His teeth were pearly. His nose was straight. His eyes were the color of turquoise. His hands were in his pockets, and he was laughing. And over his head was just one word: BIG.⁹

      He was cool and elegant and young and strong, even with a strip of paper peeled off his side. Snotty paused for a moment to gaze up at him.

      “I’m going where you are,” Snotty said to himself. And the young man locked eyes with him and seemed to understand. As if some message had been sent and received, Snotty picked up his pace and, with a renewed sense of purpose, strode into the darkness ahead.

      “BZZZZZTTT.”

      Behind him, the thin blue light from the phone mast flashed again.

      It lit up the waste ground with a faint and sickly glow, and Snotty could see five boys his own age standing around the cracked, weedinfested concrete of a schoolyard. They stared dejectedly at an object on the ground.

      An old man lay there, moaning and clutching at his head, his pockets turned inside out. The boys had robbed him. But he had been a disappointment.

      Snotty stopped to have a look. One of the boys held out the handful of change they’d gotten for their trouble. The others looked away, ashamed. They knew what a successful businessman like Snotty would think of this kind of profit margin.

      “That’s it?” Snotty said, disgusted. He shook his head. “You guys should go in for another line of work. You’re no good at this one.”

      There was an embarrassed pause. “Well,” said one of the boys finally, wiping his nose on his sleeve, “it’ll be better when we’re old enough to join the Police.”¹⁰

      “It’s your own stupid fault,” Snotty scolded, and the boys hung their heads. “Who do you think is going to come by this place, the amount of times you’ve robbed somebody here? Show a little innovation! Try somewhere else for a change!”

      The shamed expressions on the boys’ faces turned to smiles as this advice went home.

      “Thanks, Snot,” one of the boys said gruffly, holding out his hand. Snotty gravely shook it, and then shook hands all around. And the boys went into a huddle to construct a new business plan.

      Snotty smiled a superior little smile and continued on his way. One of the boys—his name was Stan—ran after him. (At this, the old man on the ground took advantage of the opportunity to crawl off the playground into the shelter of the boy’s toilet, where he would wait until two mornings later, when the school’s half-pay janitor would find him and call the fire brigade.)

      Stan caught up with Snotty and grabbed at his arm. “Put in a good word for me with your boss,” Stan pleaded. “Put in a good word for me with Mr. Big.”

      Snotty

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