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Bring in a dish towel. Bring in some upholstery fabric. Bring in a piece of old bedsheet, for all I care. Just so long as it’s roughly the size of your desktop. And I’ll answer your next question before you ask it,” she added. “You will need the cloth for your first sewing project of the year.”

S IX
The Return of Napoleon
    P
anty
hose!” P.W. exclaimed as soon as class let out.
    Leon nodded gravely and turned to Lily-Matisse. “Did your mom tell you why the Hag keeps her underwear in school?”
    “Nope,” said Lily-Matisse. “But she did see her changing glass eyes in the teachers’ lounge.”
    “She stores the spares in the cabinet,” said Leon. “There must be twenty different kinds.”
    “I’m pretty sure today’s were snake eyes,” said P.W.
    “How do you know?” said Lily-Matisse skeptically.
    “The slitty pupils,” said P.W. matter-of-factly.
    “I’ll tell you one thing,” Leon said. “I’d take a snakebite over sewing class any day.”
    “Ditto,” said P.W.
    “Double ditto,” said Lily-Matisse.
    The sound of a car horn interrupted them. Leon quickly spotted Napoleon de l’Ange, the cheery taxi driver from the day before.
    “Need a lift, Monsieur Leon? No charge for friends.”
    Leon hesitated. He liked Napoleon. He was funny and nice. But there was a problem. Napoleon camefrom Haiti, and Haiti was already pinned on his map. Leon worried his taxi collection would never grow if he kept using the same driver.
    “Go for it,” P.W. urged. “That way you can spend your cab fare on candy.”
    “And potato chips,” Lily-Matisse added.
    Leon considered his options. “Sure,” he said, accepting Napoleon’s offer.
    A few minutes into the ride, he tapped the hack license and said, “I’ve been wondering, Napoleon. Why are you named after a pastry? Were your parents bakers?”
    Napoleon let out a deep-bellied laugh. “No, no, Monsieur Leon. I was named for a famous French general and so was the pastry. But the famous Napoleon was short, and I am tall. He was white, and I am black. He was powerful, and I am … well, I drive a taxi. And on top of all that … I
hate
napoleons.”
    “Me too,” Leon admitted. “Too custardy.” He waswondering about how he’d feel eating a leon (if such a pastry existed) when Napoleon said, “We do that in Haiti.”

    “Do what?”
    “Name our children after important people. I have three brothers: Moses, Charlemagne, and Zeus—plus a sister, Cleopatra. You Americans are not interesting with your names.”
    “I guess not,” Leon admitted.
    “But tell me,” said Napoleon, “did my prediction come true? Did you have a nine-and-three-quarters day?”
    Leon sighed. “Hardly. More like a
negative
nine and three quarters.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “It’s my teacher,” Leon complained. “All she cares about is sewing.”
    “But art class is a good thing, Monsieur Leon. Sewing can be very useful.”
    “I’m not talking about my
art
teacher. I’m talking about my
teacher
teacher.”
    “And she makes you sew?”
    “Yup,” said Leon glumly.
    Napoleon shook his head in disbelief.
    “Plus she has these disgusting-looking ears—they’re like radar dishes—that she keeps hidden under her possibly fake hair.”
    “Mon Dieu!”
Napoleon exclaimed. “You had better tell your mother about all this.”
    The cab pulled up to the hotel a few moments later. Napoleon parked and, as he had the day before, jumped out to open the passenger door. “Au revoir, Monsieur Leon,” he said with a tip of his imaginary hat. “And let us hope tomorrow will at least be a seven.”
    “I’ll settle for a five and a half,” said Leon before he pushed through the revolving door. He negotiated his way past a drably dressed woman walking a peacock and headed over to the reception desk, where his mother clearly had problems of her own.

    One of the guests, a rail-thin mime covered in white face paint, was shouting at her. “Look, lady! We