Page 8 of Whistle

Annie put aside her dream for a time and continued to design websites. John went into the animation factory every day. Life had settled into a routine that bordered on the mundane. They made a living that would have been decent had they lived someplace other than New York, but rent was a killer. They had no car. They rarely took cabs and relied on public transportation, or they hoofed it.

John’s one extravagance was his smartphone, which he used to connect to the Internet so he could watch animation clips on YouTube and elsewhere. It was his addiction, he freely admitted, to the point that even as they walked down the street, he’d be looking down at his phone, laughing at some snippet of a Daffy Duck cartoon or a politically incorrectFamily Guymoment. Annie repeatedly warned him his obsession would be the death of him. She’d showed him online surveillance videos of people falling into open sidewalk cellar doors, which were all over the place in New York.

He paid no mind.

One day, eyes fixed on his phone’s screen, watching the Looney Tunes classic Bugs Bunny cartoonRabbit of Seville, he walked right into a streetlight pole, hard enough to raise a bump on his forehead. Annie felt bad about laughing, but, honestly, he had it coming.

Bottom line was, as long as they didn’t have any unexpected expenses, they’d get by. And God forbid one of them got sick, because neither of them had a decent health plan.

And then came a surprise.

“Oh shit,” John said when she came home from the doctor’s office and gave him the news that she was pregnant.

Not exactly the words she was hoping to hear.

But he did some fast backpedaling. “We can do this,” he said, and then, unexpectedly, began to laugh. “I have no fucking idea how, but we can do this.”

And they did. Seven months later, Charlie was born, and despite them now being down a salary, it was joyous. John took a part-time second job in the evenings working in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant around the corner. (At least he got to score the occasional free pizza.) John’s parents—Annie’s had both passed by the time she was twenty-three—sent them checks when they could, but they were working-class folks who had their own financial worries.

There were no websites to design, at least for now, but even when Annie nursed, Charlie in her arms, the pen and sketch pad were not far away.

One night, up for a feeding when the baby was seven weeks old, so tired she could barely keep her eyes open, Annie thought about a penguin who wanted to explore the world beyond Antarctica.

When Charlie napped, Annie would sketch out her character in more detail. She made up another wire armature and created a three-dimensional model, just as she had done with Barry the Bear. She would name her penguin Pierce. He would ask his fellow penguins why the hell (okay, nothell, but why on earth) they had wings if they couldn’t use them to become airborne. They were about as useless as those forearms on aT-Rex. He wasn’t going to let his superfluous wings keep him from traveling, so he saved up his moneyfrom his bookshop job (a store that sold mostly thrillers, and was called Chillers) to buy airline tickets. He always took off from Antarctica International Airport, where the jumbo jets were fitted with skis.

The first book Annie put together wasPierce Goes to Paris. He visits the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, buys himself a beret, and damned if he isn’t the jauntiest-looking penguin who ever walked the Champs-Élysées. He returns to the South Pole with tales of his adventures, but decides he won’t be staying long. There is so much more to see!

One of the editors who had rejected her eco-minded polar bear book had said some nice things about her drawings, so she decided to send a copy of her first Pierce Penguin story to him.

A week went by. Then two. A month without any response. She was getting ready to send the manuscript to another house when her cell phone rang.

It was Finnegan Sproule.

“You know the Gramercy Tavern?” he asked.

Well, she hadheardof it. But she had never stepped inside the doors.

Over their first lunch, he said to her, “This is very special. It has tremendous potential. Do you have an agent?”

“An agent?”

“A literary agent. Look, I could make you an offer right now, something you’d jump at that might seem like a lot of money to you but would be lunch money for my publisher. You need someone in your corner. I’m going to suggest a few to you, all reputable. Or you can ask around, find someone else. But I want this, and I’m prepared to do a preempt.”

“A who?”

“A preemptive offer. An agent will explain.”

Annie found an agent. A deal was made. Was it a fortune? No. But it was enough to calm some nerves, to allow Annie and John and Charlie to move to a slightly larger apartment in a better neighborhood.

The book came out. It did nothing.

Okay, not exactly nothing. It sold in the low four figures. Annie signed at a couple of Barnes & Nobles in Manhattan to thin crowds. There was no tour.

“Not to worry,” Finnegan told her. “Get cracking on the second one.”

That book becamePierce Goes to London. The penguin met with the Queen; this was before her passing, of course. Toured Buckingham Palace, went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, rode around in a London cab. Ate fish and chips.

After the lukewarm reception to the first book, Annie didn’t get her hopes up for Pierce’s sophomore outing. She’d been thinking of a third book where Pierce went to Tokyo, but was there any point?

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