Small Steps (Holes 2)

If he told him, X-Ray would never let him live it down. Why would she sing “Armpit?” It was impossible. There was no possible way. He must have fallen asleep for a second and dreamed it.

In line behind them were five men who seemed especially dirty and ragged. Armpit might have guessed they were street people, except for the fact that they were waiting in line to buy sixty-dollar tickets. From the way they smelled, he thought maybe they worked for the sanitation department and had come here after work.

“I’m thinking third row,” X-Ray said. “Third or fourth. As long as we’re somewhere in the first five rows we’re golden.”

Armpit looked at the people in line ahead of him. Nearly all were white, even though Kaira DeLeon was African American. Several wore shirts and ties.

“I don’t know,” he said. “If everybody buys six tickets—”

“Not everyone’s going to buy six tickets,” X-Ray interrupted. “Besides, you really don’t want to be too close. It’s better to be a few rows back. The best seats are between row three and row seven. Those are the ones that will bring in the big money.”

Shortly after sunrise, Armpit opened his book and tried to understand the difference between fixed costs and variable costs. Graphs illustrated how these changed as more goods were produced. The line representing fixed costs was flat, and the one representing variable costs angled upward.

It might as well have been written in Chinese.

“Look at all the people behind us!” X-Ray pointed out. “They’d pay a hundred dollars just to have our place in line.”

“I’ll take it,” said Armpit.

X-Ray laughed. “We’re going to make a lot more than that, my friend. A lot more.”

After a while a guy wearing a Lonestar Arena T-shirt came out and tried to adjust the line so that instead of sticking straight out from the ticket window, it went parallel to the building. This caused a lot of grumbling from the grubby guys sitting behind Armpit.

“What difference does it make?”

“I was just gettin’ com

fortable.”

“Just because you got the T-shirt doesn’t make you God!”

But they got up and moved along with everyone else.

The mystery of who they were was solved shortly after seven-thirty, when the guys who were paying them showed up. One was a fast-talking, skinny white guy. With him was a big dude wearing a cowboy hat and boots.

“Now listen up, ’cause I’m not going to repeat myself,” said the skinny guy. He wore a pearl earring and had a face that needed to make a choice—either shave or grow a beard. “When you get to the ticket window, Moses here will give you an envelope containing three hundred and thirty dollars. You don’t have to count it. You just hand it to the ticket agent and ask for six tickets. You then give the tickets to Moses, and he will pay you twenty-five dollars.”

“Twenty-five dollars!” complained one of the guys. “We’ve been sitting here for five hours! I could make more than that sitting on the corner of Mopac and Spicewood.”

“You want to go, go,” said the skinny guy.

The big guy in the cowboy hat—Moses, apparently—had a thermos of coffee and a bag of breakfast tacos, which he handed out. He tried to give Armpit a taco.

“I’m not one of them,” Armpit said, somewhat offended.

“We’re not part of your crew,” said X-Ray.

“Oh yeah?” said the skinny one. “Just a Kaira DeLeon fan, are you?”

“We’re independent,” said X-Ray.

“Well, we got a couple of extra tacos if you want ’em.”

Armpit and X-Ray looked at each other, then happily took the tacos.

Moses filled a Styrofoam cup of coffee for X-Ray. Armpit didn’t drink coffee.

“I’m Felix,” said the skinny guy. “This is my man Moses.”