by Lev Grossman
Betsy cackled.
“Sketchy! I love that. You’re talking to a bird in an airport Marriott.”
Betsy had a point. Quentin badly wanted to get Plum alone and ask her why she was doing this and what she knew about it and if she was all right. He was worried about her, and what’s more he needed an ally, and she was the likeliest candidate. Betsy picked up the phone and began whispering confidingly to room service.
“You’re sure we don’t need more people,” he said. “What about a psychic? A healer?”
“I am sure.”
“When do you expect this all to happen?” Pushkar asked. “How soon?” Of them all he looked the least like a master thief. He didn’t look like a magician at all. Maybe it was camouflage; he certainly seemed to be the most comfortable with the whole situation.
“We don’t know,” Lionel said.
“Yes, but weeks? Months? I must notify my family.” He was also the only one of them wearing a wedding ring.
“I am not living in Newark Airport Marriott for months.” Betsy broke off her phone conversation. “FYI. Or weeks. Or one week singular. The only natural fibers in my room are the hairs in the bathtub.”
“We’ll tell you as soon as we know.”
“So to recap,” Quentin said. “Two bad people—known killers who are, with respect, much scarier than we are—have a suitcase somewhere on the eastern seaboard, precise location unknown, contents unknown, under an incorporate bond. And we are going to take it away from them.”
“We have the numbers,” the bird said. “And the element of surprise.”
“If this works I for one will be very surprised,” Pushkar said cheerfully. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”
“What about that incorporate bond?” Plum said. “How are we going to break it? What with that being impossible and all.”
“We will have to do the impossible,” the bird said, “which is why I hired magicians and not accountants. I mentioned resources earlier. We will discuss each of your needs individually.”
The meeting gradually disintegrated. Quentin stood up. They could talk about his needs later, whatever they were. For now he needed some air, and some food, and maybe a drink to celebrate the beginning of his new life of crime. Something soft brushed his ear and prickled his shoulder, and he had to resist the instinctive urge to slap at it. It was the bird.
“Christ!” he said. “Don’t do that.”
Maybe you got used to it. Julia had.
“Do you know why I asked you here?” it whispered, putting its beak right up against his ear.
“I could make a pretty good guess.”
“It is not for your skill at mending.”
“That wasn’t going to be my guess.”
The bird flew off again, back to Lionel’s shoulder, which Quentin now noticed was worn and stained with use.
—
Plum agreed to meet him in the hotel bar.
The lights were too bright, and there were too many TVs, but it was a bar, and that was another place, like bookstores, where Quentin felt at home. Drinks were a lot like books, really: it didn’t matter where you were, the contents of a vodka tonic were always more or less the same, and you could count on them to take you away to somewhere better or at least make your present arrangements seem more manageable. The other patrons appeared to be business travelers and tourists who’d been stranded by canceled flights; looking around Quentin was pretty sure there was not one single person in the bar who was actually there by choice.
It was no time for half measures. He took a seat next to Plum and ordered a gin martini, dry, with a twist.
“I thought you were a wine person,” Plum said. She’d ordered mineral water.
“Lately I’ve had to up my dosage. I thought you were a wine person.”
“I’m thinking right now I’d better try to keep my wits about me.”
They watched TV for a minute, a soccer game. The green pitch looked cool and inviting; it was almost a shame it was covered with soccer players. She didn’t seem eager to go first, so he did.
“So how’d they get to you?”
“A letter,” she said. “When I got back to my room that night it was already on my bed. I’m still trying to figure out how they did that. So far it’s the most impressive thing about this whole operation.”
“Are you really sure you want to be here?”
“Of course I don’t want to be here!” Plum snapped. “I want to be back in my damn dormitory, finishing my damn senior year like a normal person! But that’s not going to happen. So.”
“I’m just concerned about the risk.”
“Well, me too. But I don’t happen to have a lot of other choices right now. Don’t worry about it. I’m not your responsibility anymore.”
“I know that.”
“And that’s not your cue to hit on me.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Give me some credit.”
He was pretty sure that it wasn’t really him she was upset with. He wanted to help her. His own transition from Brakebills to the real world hadn’t exactly been graceful either. When he graduated he’d thought life was going to be like a novel, starring him on his own personal hero’s journey, and that the world would provide him with an endless series of evils to triumph over and life lessons to learn. It took him a while to figure out that wasn’t how it worked.
His martini came. A thick curl of gold lemon peel lay sunken in its silvery depths; it had spread a thin oily sheen across the surface. He drank quickly, before it had a chance to warm up.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Plum said. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. God knows this isn’t your fault. It’s just—I’m having trouble.” She shook her head helplessly. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I haven’t told my parents what happened yet. I don’t know how to do it. Brakebills was a big, big deal to them. I guess they’re kind of overinvested in me. I’m an only child.”
“Do you want me to talk to them?”
“Hmm.” She sized him up. “No, I don’t think that’s going to help.”
“I’m an only child too. Though my parents were more like underinvested in me.”
“Right, see, but for me, it’s going to mess them up.”
“But it’s good that they care,” Quentin said. “I don’t want to sound like a Pollyanna, but if they really love you they’ll love you whatever happens.”
“Oh, they’ll love me.” Plum’s voice was rising again. “They’ll love me, all right! They’ll just spend the rest of their lives looking at me like a sick bird with a broken wing that will never get better!”
She sucked fiercely at her mineral water through a straw. Then she went on:
“I don’t know. Anyway, this came along and I don’t know what I’m doing, and I thought I’d take a look, and here I am taking it. It’s different, anyway. What about you?”
“Similar,” Quentin said. “I got a letter. I was going to ignore it, but then I found myself suddenly without employment. I was curious. And here we are.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said, “I do feel some responsibility for that.”
“Forget about it.”
“I just—”
“Seriously, forget it. I made my own choices.”
He said it without heat. It was the truth.
“So do you think we can pull this thing off?”
“I have no idea,” Quentin said. “That bird is spending a lot of money. It has to be reasonably confident.”
“Or reasonably desperate.”
Quentin could feel the martini doing its wintery work, frosting over his mind, silvering over his frontal lobes, preparing the ground for a proper hard freeze. He hadn’t eaten dinner, and it was coming on fast. He thought he might just order another one.
“Do you miss Brakebills?�
�
She didn’t look at him. On TV, a headed ball pinged off the crossbar.
“Of course I do,” he said. “All the time. But I’m getting used to it. It’s not the worst feeling in the world. And there’s a lot more to life than school. I’m trying to make the most of it.”
“Now you do sound like a Pollyanna.”
Quentin grinned. It was pretty clear that Plum was going to get through this—she was young and unworldly but she was also very tough. And very smart. Maybe they could help each other. He caught the bartender’s eye and tapped his glass.
“I’ll tell you what I’m wondering about,” he said. “I’m wondering about how we’re going to get that suitcase open, if the Couple can’t.”
“I have a theory about that. I don’t think you’ll like it though.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t like it,” Plum said. “There’s something about me you should probably—”
“Chochachos!” Somebody clapped them both on the shoulder at the same time. It was Stoppard. “What are we drinking?”
He looked happy the way only somebody who was inebriated for the first time in his life could be happy. It was incredible that they were even serving him here, considering that he was both underage and overdrunk. He frowned at them blearily.
“Wait,” he said. “You two know each other or something? From before?”
“You could say that,” Quentin said.
“It’s not what you think,” said Plum.
“Uh-huh.” Stoppard leered knowingly.
“It really isn’t.”
“I just ruined his life, that’s all,” Plum said. “And mine. And I think maybe I’ll have that drink now after all.”
CHAPTER 7
You could say it all started out as an innocent prank, but that wouldn’t strictly be true. Even Plum had to admit it wasn’t all that innocent. And maybe, deep down, that was why she did it.
Plum was president of the League, unelected but undisputed, and also its founder. In enlisting the others she had presented the League as a glorious old Brakebills tradition, which it actually wasn’t, though since Brakebills had been around for something like four hundred years it seemed very likely to Plum that there must have been another League at some point in the past, or at any rate something along the same general lines.
You couldn’t rule out the possibility. Though in actual fact she got the idea from a P. G. Wodehouse story.
The thing was this: Wharton was behaving badly, and in the judgment of the League he would have to be pranked for it. Then maybe he would cut it out, or behave a little less badly, or at least the League would have the satisfaction of having caused Wharton to suffer for his crimes. You couldn’t call it innocent, but you had to admit it was pretty understandable. And anyway, was there even any such thing as an innocent prank?
Plum loved Brakebills. It was November of her senior year and she still wasn’t sick of it, not a bit. She loved its many and varied and intricate traditions and rituals and mythologies with an unironic and boosterish love that she refused to be embarrassed about. If anything she thought there should be more of them, which was one reason she started the League.
They met after hours in a funny little trapezoidal study off the West Tower that as far as Plum could tell had fallen off the faculty’s magical security grid, so it was safe to break curfew there. She lay full length on her back on the floor, which was the position from which she usually conducted League business. The rest of the girls were scattered around the room on couches and chairs, limp and spent, like confetti from a successful but exhausting party that everybody was kind of relieved was now all but over.
Plum made the room go silent—it was a little spell that ate sound in about a ten-yard radius. When Plum did a magic trick, everybody noticed.
“Let’s put it to a vote,” she said gravely. “All those in favor of pranking Wharton, say aye.”
The ayes came back in a range of tones: righteous zeal, ironic detachment, sleepy acquiescence. From Plum’s vantage point on the floor, with her eyes closed, her long brown hair splayed out in a fan on the carpet, which had once been soft and woolly but which had been trodden down into a shiny hard-packed gray, it sounded more or less unanimous.
She dispensed with a show of nays. They were doing this. Wharton’s crime was not a matter of life and death, but a stop would be put to it, this the League swore.
Darcy, sitting slumped down on the couch, studied her reflection in a long mirror with a scarred gilt frame. She had a big poufy 1970s afro; it even had an afro pick sticking out of it. She toyed with her image in the mirror—with both of her long, elegant brown hands she worked a spell that stretched it and then squished it, stretched then squished, stretch, squish. Her head blew up to the size of a beach ball; it stretched out like a sausage balloon. The technicalities were beyond Plum, but then mirror-magic was Darcy’s discipline. It was a bit show-offy of her, but it’s not like Darcy had a lot of opportunities to use it.
The facts of the Wharton case were as follows. At Brakebills most serving duties at dinner were carried out by First Years, who then ate separately afterward. But by tradition one favored Fourth Year was chosen every year to serve as wine steward, in charge of pairings and pourings and whatnot, and trusted with the key to the wine closet. Wharton had had this honor bestowed upon him, and not for no reason. He did know a lot about wine; or at any rate he could remember the names of a whole lot of different regions and appellations and whatever else.
But in the judgment of the League Wharton had sinned against the honor of his office, sinned most grievously, by systematically short-pouring the wine, especially for the Fifth Years (the Finns, in Brakebills parlance), who were allowed two glasses each with dinner.
Seriously, these were like two-thirds pours. Everybody agreed. Plum wasn’t much of a drinker personally, but the League took any threat to its wine supply seriously. For such a crime there could be no forgiveness.
“What do you suppose he does with it all?” Emma said.
“Does with what?”
“All that extra wine. He must be skimming it off. I bet he ends up with an extra bottle every night, off the books.”
There were eight girls in the League, of whom six were present. Emma was the only Second Year.
“I dunno,” Plum said. “I guess he drinks it.”
“He couldn’t get through a bottle a night,” Darcy said.
“He and his boyfriend then. What’s his name, it’s Greek.”
“Epifanio.” Darcy and Chelsea said it together.
Chelsea lay on the couch at the opposite end from Darcy, knees drawn up, lazily trying to mess up Darcy’s mirror tricks. It was always easier to screw up somebody else’s spell than it was to cast one yourself. That was one of the many small unfairnesses of magic.
Darcy frowned and concentrated harder, pushing back. The interference caused an audible buzz, and under the stress Darcy’s reflection twisted and spiraled in on itself.
“Stop,” she said. “You’re going to break it.”
“He’s probably got some permanent spell running that eats it up,” Emma said. “Has to feed it wine once a day. Like a virility thing.”
“Wait,” Plum said, “you’re suggesting that Wharton has a wine-powered spell going twenty-four-seven on his penis?”
“Well.” Emma flushed mauve. She’d overstepped herself in the presence of her elders and betters. “You know. He’s so buff.”
While everybody else was distracted by the question of Wharton’s virility Chelsea caused Darcy’s reflection to collapse in on itself, creepily, like it had gotten sucked into a black hole, and then to vanish altogether. In the mirror it looked like she wasn’t even there, except that the couch cushion was slightly depressed.
“Ha,” Chelsea said.
“Buff does not mean viril
e.” That was Lucy, a pale and intensely philosophical Finn; her tone betrayed a touch of what might have been the bitterness of personal experience. “Anyway I bet he gives it to the ghost.”
“There is no ghost,” Darcy said.
Somebody was always saying that Brakebills had a ghost. It was a thing this year—there was practically a cult around it. Emma claimed to have seen it once, watching her through a window; Wharton said he had too.
Plum secretly wanted a ghost sighting of her own, but you could never find it when you were looking for it. She wasn’t completely convinced it existed. It was like saying there used to be a League, no one could prove it either way.
“Come to that,” Chelsea said, “what does virile mean?”
“Means he’s got spunk in his junk,” Darcy said.
“Girls, please!” Plum said. “Neither Wharton’s spunk nor his junk is germane here. The question is what to do about the missing wine. Who’s got a plan?”
“You’ve got a plan,” Darcy and Chelsea said at the same time, again. The two of them were like stage twins.
It was true, Plum always had a plan. Her brain just seemed to secrete them naturally, leaving her no choice but to share them with the world around her. She had a bit of a manic streak.
Plum’s plan was to take advantage of what she perceived to be Wharton’s Achilles’ heel, which was his pencils. He didn’t use the school-issued ones, which as far as Plum was concerned were entirely functional and sufficient unto the day: deep Brakebills blue in color, with BRAKEBILLS in gold letters down the side. But Wharton didn’t like them—he said they were too fat, he didn’t like their “hand-feel.” The lead was mushy. He brought his own from home instead, very expensive ones.
In truth Wharton’s personal pencils were remarkable: olive green and made from some hard, oily, aromatic wood that released a waxy aroma reminiscent of distant exotic rainforest trees. The erasers were bound in rings of a dull-gray brushed steel that looked too industrial and high-carbon for the task of merely containing the erasers, which were, instead of the usual fleshy pink, a light-devouring black. He kept them in a flat silver case like a cigarette case, which also contained (in its own crushed-velvet nest) a little knife that he used to keep them sharpened to wicked points.
