“Mom!” I yelled down the stairs. “I can’t find my boxers!”
You’d think that after four moves in seven years I’d be better at packing and unpacking my stuff. But after dumping three boxes of clothes onto my bed, I’d found plenty of sweaters, jackets, and gloves (very helpful considering it was the middle of summer), but no underwear (unless you count an old pair of tighty-whities that were two sizes too small). It had reached the point where I’d had to put on a bathing suit after my shower.
“Mom!” I tried again.
There was still no response so I went looking for her. I was halfway down the stairs as I called out, “Do you know where my boxers . . .”
My words trailed off when I saw that she was at the front door talking to a girl. The last thing I wanted to do was discuss my underwear in front of some random girl, so I tried to make a save.
“Boxes,” I said with a fake cough, trying to cover the change. “Do you know where my boxes are?”
Judging by the girl’s smile, I had fooled exactly zero people.
“Florian, I’d like you to meet one of our new neighbors,” Mom said. “This is Margaret.”
The first thing that stood out about Margaret wasn’t that she’s African American or even that she’s about three inches taller than me. It was that smile. Bright white teeth with silver braces across the bottom row. There was something so easy and friendly about it. I’ve always wanted a smile like that. In pictures mine just looks like I’m scared of some creature lurking behind the camera, but hers radiated confidence.
“Welcome to the neighborhood,” she said, holding up a plate of cookies.
“Thanks,” I answered. “I was just looking . . . for . . . my . . .”
“Boxes,” she said.
“Right, boxes.”
There was an awkward silence until Mom came to the rescue. “Why don’t I find them while you two have some cookies,” she suggested. “In the kitchen, where there’s less mess.”
Margaret and I snaked our way though the unpacked chaos of the front room into the kitchen.
“Milk?” I offered.
“Yes, please.”
Rather than sit down at the table, she poked around the piles of stuff stacked on the counter, more curious than snooping. “So where’d you move from?”
“Rome,” I said.
She looked up. “The one in Italy?”
“Is there another?” I asked.
“I think there’s one in Georgia,” she said.
“It definitely wasn’t Georgia,” I replied. “It had the Colosseum and lots of Italian people riding around on scooters.”
“Is that where you always lived?”
“No. Before that we were in Boston, London, and Paris,” I said. “We move a lot. My parents work in museums.”
“That sounds cool. Mine are just lawyers,” she replied as she plopped down at the kitchen table. “The boring kind, not the murder-trial kind. By the way, I love this house.”
“Thanks,” I said as I handed her a glass of milk. “I think yours is great, too. My mom’s insanely jealous of the flowers in your front yard.”
The instant I saw her reaction I realized my mistake and wished I could rewind the conversation and try it again.
“You know where I live?”
I stared at my cookie for a moment before nodding. “Four doors down and across the street. The yellow house with the brick chimney and a piano next to the big window in the front room.”
She tilted her head to the side and asked, “How did you know that?”
I could have just told her that I saw her in her yard or something, but I didn’t want to start with a lie. So I told her the truth. “Well, I saw the house. And just now I saw you. And I could tell that you live there.”
“You could? Do I look like I live in a yellow house? Like I have a chimney and a piano?”
“Of course not,” I replied. “It’s just that I went for a walk this morning and . . .”
“You saw me then?” she asked.
“No, I’m pretty sure you were asleep.”
“What time was it?” she asked.
“Five.”
“I was definitely asleep. Do you normally go for walks that early?”
“Not normally. But we just got here a couple days ago and my body still thinks it’s on Italy time. I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to get to know the neighbors.”
She laughed. “And how many neighbors did you meet at five in the morning?”
“None,” I replied. “But I don’t really need to meet them in order to get to know them. You can tell a lot about someone just by what you see from the sidewalk.”
“And you were able to tell that the yellow house with the brick chimney and the piano is mine?”
I nodded.
“How?”
Past experience had taught me that people are turned off by this particular skill. But I was too far along to stop now.
“There’s a girl’s bicycle in the side yard,” he explained. “The seat is set high for someone tall, like you.”
“Just because there’s a girl’s bike, that doesn’t mean—”
“I’m not done,” I said, cutting her off. “You’re wearing a University of Michigan T-shirt and there is a University of Michigan Law School decal in the window of the silver station wagon in the driveway. There’s also a DC Dynamo sticker on the bumper and an identical one on the bumper of the green sedan parked on the street.”
“So?”
“Your soccer shorts,” I said, pointing to them. “It says ‘DCD’ right there on your shorts. I’m guessing you play for the Dynamo.”
She took another bite of her cookie as she thought through it all.
“Anything else?”
“Well, judging by the way you dip your cookie in your milk, I’d say you’re left-handed. But that’s about it.”
She sat there for a moment with her mouth slightly open.
“That’s amazing,” she finally said. “I don’t know if it’s superfreaky amazing or unbelievably cool amazing. But it’s definitely amazing.”
“Usually people just think it’s strange and they never talk to me again,” I said. “But it would be great if you think it’s cool because, from what I saw, only two other houses in the neighborhood have kids and they’re way too young. You’re my best bet for a friend.”
“Is that so?” she said. “And did you do this with all of the houses in the neighborhood?”
I nodded.
She had a spark of an idea and I could see the wheels turning as she leaned forward and asked, “Which house belongs to the insane person who screams at you if you so much as put one toe in her front yard?”
“Easy,” I replied. “Three doors to the left, blue house with the crazy perfect hedges.”
“Who puts up way too many Christmas decorations?”
“Gray house across the street from you.”
She gave me a look. “How could you possibly . . .”
“You can see the nails along the roofline where they hang the lights,” I explained.
“Okay, let me come up with something you can’t figure out from the street.” She flashed an evil smile. “Where would you find a ridiculously large comic book collection?”
I toyed with her for a moment to let her think she’d stumped me. Then I answered, “The green house on the corner with the double security bars on the basement windows and the Fantastic Four license plate holder on the car.”
At this point even I thought I was weird. But she just smiled and shook her head.
“I want that,” she said. “I. Want. That.”
“The comic book collection or the license plate holder?”
“No, that skill,” she said. “Can you teach me how to do that?”
It had never dawned on me that this was something I could actually share with someone else. “You want me to teach you TOAST?”
“Toast?” she asked.
“You’ve tasted my cookies, which are . . . epic. Don’t you think I know how to make toast?”
“Not that toast,” I said. “ ‘TOAST’ stands for the Theory of All Small Things. That’s how I read people and places. The idea is that if you add up a bunch of little details, it reveals the larger truth.”
“And where did you learn this theory? Philosophy class? Spy school?”
“I . . . invented it . . . I guess.”
This made her laugh. “You invented TOAST?”
“It’s based on some things I learned from my parents,” I said. “But I put it all together and came up with the name. So yes, I invented it.”
“You said your parents work at museums, right?”
“My father designs security systems, and one day he explained that the key to his job is finding the tiny flaw or inconsistency that the bad guys can take advantage of.”
“Like the saying that ‘a chain is only as strong as its weakest link’?”
“Exactly,” I said. “And my mother’s an art conservator. She restores old paintings and says the best way to understand a painting is by finding the smallest detail that tells the whole story, like the smile on the Mona Lisa.”
“And this led to TOAST?”
I nodded. “Even though their jobs are incredibly different, they both rely on the idea that tiny things can be hugely important,” I explained. “Once I even used TOAST to help my dad catch a criminal.”
“This I have to hear,” she said as she grabbed another cookie and chomped happily. “How’d you do that?”
“There was a museum in Spain that was robbed three times in a year. The stolen items were small but extremely valuable. No one could figure out how the thief was doing it. They hired my dad and he checked everything out and was just as stumped as they were.
“But one day he had a bunch of reports spread out on the kitchen table and I started looking at them. Most of it was technical stuff that I didn’t understand, but I noticed all the robberies had two traits in common.”
“What?” she asked eagerly.
“They all happened on Saturdays when it was raining.”
Margaret considered this for a moment. “And you were able to figure it out from Saturday and rain?”
“No,” I said. “I just noticed it. My dad was the one who figured it out. You see, museum attendance usually doubles on the weekend.”
“That makes sense.”
“And with that many people when it was raining, the coatroom didn’t have enough space for all of the raincoats. They had to open an additional room to handle the extras. When they did that, they shut off part of the alarm system to keep it from sounding all day.”
“That’s brilliant,” she said.
“Dad’s pretty smart,” I replied.
“And you’ll teach me this?”
“Sure,” I said. “But it will have to be some other time.”
“Why?”
“Because I think you have to go somewhere right now.”
“What time is it?” she asked, suddenly panicked. “I’ve got to get to soccer practice.” She got up to go, and then stopped in her tracks and looked back at me.
“How did you know that?” she demanded. “Did you just TOAST me again?”
I laughed. “It’s not a verb. But no, I didn’t TOAST you. I can see the driveway through the side window. And your car just got here. My guess is that the woman headed to the front door is your mother.”
Just then the doorbell rang.
“See you later,” Margaret said as she rushed out of the room. When she reached the front door she turned back and added, “By the way, in case you’re wondering whether I think it’s cool or freaky?”
I took a nervous breath.
She flashed the smile and said, “Very, very cool.”
3.
Napoleon’s Candle
THERE ARE SOME THINGS, LIKE breathing and walking, that you do automatically. And since you don’t really think about them, they’re hard to teach. For example, how would you teach somebody to breathe? Would you make up a list of step-by-step instructions?
1. Suck air through nose
2. Blow air back through nose
3. Repeat twenty thousand times every day
That might work, but it’s kind of cheating because “suck air” and “blow air” are just two other ways of saying “breathe.” You haven’t actually explained how to do it. You’ve just swapped the words.
TOAST is like that for me. It’s more instinct than idea. So when Margaret asked me to teach her, I wasn’t sure how to break it down into something that made sense. I took her to the National Gallery of Art, the museum where my mom works, and showed her a painting of a man with red hair and a beard.
“Margaret, I’d like to introduce you to Vincent van Gogh,” I said.
“Hey, Vince, how’s it going?” she replied, playing along. Then she turned and asked, “Why do you want me to meet him?”
“Because he’s the artist I know best,” I told her. “Mom’s crazy about him, so she’s taught me a lot. Like for instance he only painted for about ten years but still created more than two thousand works of art.”
“That’s pretty amazing.”
“And he usually couldn’t afford to hire models, which is why he painted so many self-portraits, like this one. I love the colors: the orange beard, the blue background, the little flecks of green in his face.”
Margaret studied the picture. “It’s very cool, but he looks kind of sad.”
“I think he was sad a lot of the time,” I said.
“Is that why he cut off his ear?” she asked.
“How’d you know about that?”
“Everybody knows Van Gogh cut off his ear,” she said. “It’s common knowledge.”
“I guess it is,” I said. “But here’s the funny thing: Everybody’s wrong.”
She gave me a curious look. “He didn’t cut it off?”
“Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. It’s hard to say. But let me introduce you to someone else.” I led her to a self-portrait on the opposite wall. “This is Paul Gauguin.”
“Okay, this guy looks shady,” she said.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because he’s got a halo over his head, but he’s holding a snake. So which one is he? An angel or a devil? A hero or a villain?”
“He might be a villain,” I replied. “There’s a chance he’s the one who cut off Van Gogh’s ear. They lived together and fought all the time. Gauguin loved to fence, and sometimes he’d grab his sword in the middle of an argument and threaten Vincent. The theory is that one time he did and accidentally cut off the ear with his sword.”
“If that’s what happened, why didn’t Van Gogh tell anybody?” she asked. “Why did he let everyone think he’d done it to himself?”
“He worshipped Gauguin, so maybe he was embarrassed about what happened. Or maybe he wanted to make sure his friend didn’t get into trouble. All we know for certain is that they never saw each other again after that night.”
Margaret considered this. “It’s interesting, but like you said, maybe he did or maybe he didn’t. It’s just a theory. If you can’t know for sure, then you can’t say that everybody’s wrong.”
“I don’t think everybody’s wrong because they believe Van Gogh cut off his own ear,” I tried to explain. “I think they’re wrong because they’re certain he cut off his own ear. Once you’re certain about something, you no longer question it. And if you don’t question what you think you know, then you’ll only ever see the big things and TOAST is worthless to you.”
“Let me get this straight,” she replied. “You’re saying that big things, like everybody believing something, block the important details from view.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And now that you know that, we can get started.”
We walked across the hall and I showed her a large portrait of Napoléon standing in his study. “Okay, here’s Napoléon,” I said. “What
time is it?”
“That’s easy,” she said, looking at the grandfather clock in the picture. “Four thirteen.”
“A.m. or p.m.?”
She scrunched up her face and thought about it for a moment before saying, “I don’t know.”
“See if you can figure it out,” I said. “Use TOAST.”
It took her a minute, but when she did she flashed an aha smile. “A.m.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because the candle’s lit,” she said. “It’s the middle of the night. Four a.m.”
“That’s TOAST,” I told her. “Now let’s try it out on some living people.”
The museum turned out to be the perfect place to practice. It was filled with different types of people, so we had a broad cross-section to study. And they all moved slowly, which gave us plenty of time to observe. We started with a couple in the Rembrandt room. The woman had on a black dress, and the man wore a shirt and tie.
“What can you tell me about them?” I whispered as we stood across the room.
Margaret looked and answered quickly, “Both in their twenties. She’s got brown hair and is about five foot four. He’s got black hair and is almost six feet tall.”
“Let me rephrase that,” I said. “What can you tell me . . . that isn’t on their driver’s licenses? Ignore the big things. What does TOAST tell you?”
She looked again, but after thirty seconds she turned to me, frustrated. “You know, if I already knew how to do it, I wouldn’t need you to teach me.”
“Fair point,” I said. “How about if I ask you some questions?”
“Questions might be helpful.”
“Is there anything that doesn’t seem like it belongs?”
“You mean like their clothes?” she asked.
“What makes you say their clothes don’t belong?”
“They’re dressed for work, not for sightseeing.”
“That’s good,” I told her. “Build on that. Do you think they work here at the museum?”
“No,” she replied. “Because they’re walking around and looking at the paintings like visitors, not employees.”
“Give me another detail that stands out.”