Reality Check

by Peter Abrahams

  Ike walked into the tack room, a toothpick sticking from the side of his mouth. He came to the workbench, checked Cody’s work, grunted. Cody could smell him: stale sweat, wood smoke, 199

  onions. Ike turned his bloodshot eyes on Cody. “I seen that cop, Orton, comin’ the other way. Was he here?”

  “Not that I saw,” Cody said.

  “One sneaky bastard,” said Ike.

  “Yeah?” said Cody. “Like how?”

  Ike’s forehead got all pinched. “How? Two-faced is how.”

  Ike waved his finger, the nail blackened, at Cody. “He comes round here again, you keep your trap shut, want my advice.”

  “Keep my trap shut about what?” Cody said.

  Ike’s eyes narrowed. “You bein’ a smartass?”

  “No.”

  “Can’t work with a smartass—tol’ Mrs. McTeague once, tol’ her a thousand times.” He glanced at his watch. “Twelve thirty,” he said. “Your lunchtime.”

  “It is?”

  “No one said? Whole country’s in the toilet.”

  “How long is lunchtime?”

  “Today? Take an hour. Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on, not with this snow and the search bein’ deep-sixed.”

  Something about that strange expression, the search being deep-sixed, made him ask, “Are there any lakes in the woods?”

  “Lakes? Nothin’ you’d call a lake. Ponds, maybe.”

  “Did they get searched?”

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  “Makes no difference.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She ain’t out there.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know these woods,” Ike said. “World’s leading expert. She ain’t there, no way, nohow.”

  “Then where?”

  “Why you askin’ me?” Ike said. He checked his watch again. “Down to fifty-seven minutes on lunch. And counting.”

  “Blast off,” he added a few seconds later, as Cody went out the door. Cody, in the car, passing the snowed-over tennis courts with the pattern of dark net posts, thought: Weirdo. A weirdo who knew the woods; more than that, knew she wasn’t there. The mole was starting to burrow.

  Fifty unexpected bucks in his pocket: Cody remembered the taste of that $10.95 burger and drove to the Rev. It was crowded inside—businesspeople, a big group of guys in snowmobile suits, a few Dover Academy students—all tables and barstools taken. Cody, standing just inside the door, spotted Larissa alone at a small round table by a potted plant. She was bent toward her laptop, her glossy hair sloping down in two wings over her face, but suddenly looked up, right at Cody, and waved him over.

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  “They called off the search?” she said as he sat down.

  “Yeah,” said Cody. “The snow.”

  “Called it off forever?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, God. This is so awful. And now her father’s in a coma, back in Wyoming or wherever it is.”

  “Colorado,” said Cody. “And how do you know about her father?”

  “Someone said, I forget.”

  The Irish waitress came over, served Larissa coffee and a muffin. She smiled at Cody, recommended the special, broccoli quiche and a cup of chili. Cody had tasted broccoli once—never again—and hadn’t heard of quiche. He ordered the burger again, with a Coke, but skipped the side of onion rings this time for fear of appearing uncouth in some way. Larissa cut her muffin in quarters, picked at one of them.

  “I was just writing about you.”

  “About me?”

  “I keep a diary,” Larissa said. “It’s part of working for the lit mag.” She turned to the laptop, scrolled down. “‘We sat on a bridge over a stream, drinking some kind of brandy Simon had brought from home. All that did was add a buzz to this helpless feeling. Then a kid from the town appeared, a big kid, lightly dressed as though he didn’t feel the cold. He said his name was 202

  Cody. It was one of those cases, unlike my own, where a name fits.’” Larissa stopped reading, looked up.

  “My name fits and yours doesn’t?” Cody said.

  Larissa nodded.

  Cody didn’t get it. Hers didn’t fit because Larissa wasn’t a Chinese name? Could it be that simple? And his did fit because . . . ? Cody saw no way of asking for an explanation without appearing stupid, but found himself, for some reason, making a stupid joke. “I remind you of Buffalo Bill?”

  Larissa laughed. “Exactly! A young Buffalo Bill, fresh out of the wild, wild West.” Uh-oh. Did she know something? Cody was trying to think of some subtle way to reinforce his cover story when Larissa went on. “Oh, I know you’re a townie—

  excuse me, a local—but at the lit mag trope trumps all. Hey!

  Pas mal. ” She typed something on the laptop, so quickly her fingers were a blur.

  Cody, a little lost, headed for more solid ground. “Alex said Clea sent in a poem.”

  “‘Bending,’” Larissa said. “It’s great.”

  He had a sudden thought. “Did she keep a diary too?”

  “Not that I know of. The diary thing only applies to staff, not contributors.” Her eyes opened wide. “Are you thinking there might be some . . . clue there?”

  “Clue about what?”

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  “Whatever happened. Isn’t it time we started coming up with new ideas? That’s what Townes was saying last night. Maybe she didn’t get lost in the woods at all, maybe she just took off for New York or someplace.”

  “Townes said that?”

  Larissa nodded. “Look at the time.” She closed her laptop.

  “You think she’s that kind of girl?” Cody said.

  “She’s new—no one really knew her that well.”

  “What about Townes? Weren’t they going out?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “I don’t know the details.” She rose. “Have to get to class. Nice seeing you.”

  “Wait,” said Cody. “I’d like to read the poem.”

  “You’re interested in poetry?”

  “Yeah,” he said, praying there’d be no follow-up. But follow-up came immediately. “Like what kind of poetry?”

  “‘Screw your courage to the sticking-place / And we’ll not fail,’” Cody said. “For one example.”

  Larissa smiled, a huge glowing smile. “Macbeth,” she said.

  “Numero uno, playwise.” She regarded him in a whole new way. “Know where Baxter is? Come by at eight, ring for room thirty-one. I’ll get you a copy.”

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  The line was from Macbeth? Had he ever studied the play? Cody did have a few vague memories of Romeo and Juliet, like a long-ago dream.

  Cody ate his lunch. The Rev emptied out, leaving only Cody, dipping the last few fries in a pool of ketchup, a round-faced man writing on a pad at a corner table, and the waitress, polishing the bar. The front door opened and a big guy in a long leather coat, almost floor length, walked in: a big guy Cody had seen before, with long lank hair and a bandito mustache. He scanned the room, his gaze passing over Cody and settling on the waitress, who had her back to him.

  “Hey, Deirdre,” he said.

  The waitress turned, an abrupt movement that knocked a glass off the bar; it shattered on the floor. “Len,” she said. “You startled me.”

  Len smiled. “Wouldn’t want to do that, not in a million years,” he said. “That boyfriend of yours around?”

  Deirdre had very fair skin; Cody could see her face flush from all the way across the room. “It’s Mick’s day off,” she said.

  “He went to Boston.”

  Len’s smile vanished, just like that. “Any chance he’s avoiding my company?”

  “Oh, no,” Deirdre said.

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  “Whew,” said Len. “I consider him a pal, when all is said and done. My Irish buddy.” Len laughed, loud and sudden, almost a bark. “Tell him the pipes, the pipes are calling.” He looked very pleased with himself.

 
; Deirdre’s mouth opened, a round black O. Len turned, his gaze again passing over Cody—this time with the slightest pause—and walked out of the Rev. Over at the corner table the round-faced man watched him go.

  Deirdre swept up the glass and disappeared through the kitchen door. Someone else came out and handed Cody his check.

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  CODY WALKED ACROSS the Dover Academy campus. He could have been just another student, but he wasn’t a student here or anywhere. A thin crescent moon, edges sharply defined, hung in the black sky. Looked at in a certain way, it could have been a rip in the darkness, an opening to somewhere else. Cody felt a sudden longing for home. He slowed down, stopped, leaned against a tree. She was no runaway; but then came the thought that he, looked at in a certain way, was a runaway himself. The notion to call his father, try to explain, patch things up, just touch base, passed through his mind. But how could that end well? He had to focus, do what he’d come here to do and nothing but. Was it remotely possible she was a runaway after all? Cody took out his cell phone, pressed 11: Clea.

  “Hi, this is Clea. I’m not here right now, but please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”

  Cody held tight to the phone. The message beep sounded. He didn’t speak, just clicked off. I’m not here right now. But where? He had to focus, had to deal in facts. Here was an obvious one: Her cell phone still worked. What did that mean? He called again, left a message this time: “I’m here,” he said. “Let me help.”

  Cody crossed the quad, stood in front of Baxter Hall, the big brick building with the yellow trim and yellow columns by the door. He heard a girl’s voice on the other side. “I think the pizza guy’s here.” The door opened and a girl with some kind of green paste all over her face peered out. Her gaze went to his empty hands.

  “Is Larissa around?” Cody said.

  The girl looked him up and down, very quick. “One sec.”

  She motioned him inside, turned, and climbed a broad carpeted staircase of a type Cody had seen in movies, and vanished around a corner at the top.

  Cody found himself in a big entrance hall with a vase of flowers on a glass table, and on the table some newspapers—

  The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe. Against one wall stood rows of small wooden boxes, cubbyholes, each with a name tag. He found Clea Weston, middle 208

  of the third row, the box empty. Cody was feeling around in it, just to be sure, when he heard footsteps at the top of the stairs. He turned. Larissa was coming down the stairs, a sheet of paper in her hand. “Hi, Cody. Playing detective?”

  “No, uh, I—” He moved away from the cubbyholes.

  “Too late, anyway,” Larissa said. “The police cleared out all her personal stuff a few days ago, computer and everything.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Did they find anything?”

  “Evidently not,” Larissa said. “Doesn’t mean there was nothing to find, though—I don’t have much confidence in their ability.”

  “How come?”

  “I had a brief conversation with that sergeant the other day, down at the barn. Maybe he was just having an off day, IQwise.” She took Cody’s arm. “Let’s go in the lounge.”

  Larissa led Cody through double doors and into a huge room with plushly furnished sitting areas and stone fireplaces at each end, fires burning in both. But only one other person in the whole place: Simon, sprawled on a distant couch, a scarf around his neck and a book propped on his chest.

  “Guys and girls live in the same dorm?” Cody said. Larissa shook her head. “They have to be out by nine on weekdays. Most of the junior and senior guys live in DeWitt.”

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  “DeWitt?”

  “Named after Townes’s grandfather or great-grandfather or some even moldier old fart.” She motioned him toward two leather easy chairs angled toward each other in a corner of the room, a footstool between them. Cody took one of the chairs; Larissa sat cross-legged on the footstool. She was barefoot, her toenails gleaming with some kind of pearly polish. “I just love this poem,” she said, handing it to Cody. A typed poem, the lines somehow dense looking and hard to penetrate, the kind of thing that gave him trouble.

  Bending

  by Clea Weston

  Water above, heavy and dead,

  Black Rocks all around

  and I down here holding my breath,

  trophy kid come to this.

  He swims to me in smiling bubbles

  twisting between my legs and up my back and around my neck.

  “A little bending, nothing to fear my dear.”

  Oh, temptation!

  Far above—is there air still, still air?—

  I lose sight of your face through the wet burial layer heavy and dead. Don’t go.

  “Well?” said Larissa. “What do you think?”

  Cody didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t ignorance of any of 210

  the specific words that stood in his way—he knew every one, not usually the case in his experience with written material—but he couldn’t have explained the poem at that moment, wouldn’t have known where to begin. All he knew was that the sheet of paper was trembling slightly in his hands. He laid it on the footstool.

  “‘Trophy kid come to this,’” Larissa said. She shivered in an exaggerated way. “And that snake imagery, simply nailed by the Edenic allusion.” Now she’d lost him completely. “My sister’s on the lit mag at Princeton,” Larissa said. “She showed it to the adviser, who just happens to be some famous poet. He—the famous poet—wants Clea to apply there.”

  “Where?” Cody said.

  “Princeton. Are you even listening?”

  Cody felt blood flowing into his face, embarrassed by the brainpower gulf between them. He remembered how Clea’s dad was pushing for Harvard and blurted out, “What about Harvard?”

  Larissa put a finger to her chin, looked thoughtful. “I would have said Clea’s more Princeton than Harvard.”

  Cody realized he had nothing to say on this subject. They were just names to him, like Shangri-la. “Anyway,” he said,

  “that’s not the problem right now.” Had he raised his voice on that last part? Larissa looked a little taken aback. “Can I keep this?” he said.

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  “Be my guest,” Larissa said. Cody folded Clea’s poem and stuck it in his pocket. Larissa was watching him. He met her gaze. “You think I’m unfeeling?”

  “No.”

  “Because I’m not. I’m very upset about this. And you didn’t even know—you don’t even know her.”

  Cody came close to blowing his cover right there, blowing it with some hotheaded reply. Instead he took a deep breath and lowered his head. “Sorry,” he said. He had to focus, be smart, keep things inside.

  “It’s all right,” Larissa said. She flexed her bare feet; small beautiful feet, high arched and finely shaped. Cody tried to picture Clea’s feet and found he couldn’t; he felt sick in the pit of his stomach. “Did you notice she capitalized Black Rocks?”

  Larissa said. “That caught my attention, for some reason. Not for some reason—the English department here has a fetish for close textual analysis. Anyway, I Googled Black Rocks, and guess what?”

  “What?”

  She leaned forward. “There’s a quarry by that name in the town Clea’s from. Little Bend, by the way. What do you think of that?”

  He was actually a bit ahead of Larissa on this. What he wanted to do now was get out of there, go somewhere quiet and 212

  really study the poem. Be smart. “Uh, maybe we shouldn’t”—

  what was the expression?—“read too much into it.”

  Larissa nodded. “Let what’s between the four corners of the page speak for itself?” she said.

  “Something like that,” Cody said.

  “Two schools of thought,” Larissa said, then raised her voice and called, “Right, Simon?”

  He looked up from his dista
nt spot. “What’s that?”

  “It’s rude to shout from room to room,” Larissa shouted, almost a bellow.

  “We’re in the same room,” Simon called back, but he unfolded himself and came over, book under his arm. “As contiguous as it gets,” he added. “Hi, Cody.” He flopped in the vacant chair. “How’s life on planet Earth?”

  “I took a job,” Cody said. “Working in the barn.”

  “The barn?” Simon said. “You don’t mean the barn inhabited by Ike?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would you do a thing like that?” Simon said, reaching into his pocket. “Chocolat, anyone?” He passed around small gilt-wrapped bars with foreign writing on the wrappers.

  “I needed a job,” Cody said.

  “Ah,” said Simon. “May I ask you something? Why don’t you go to school?”

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  “I was wasting my time,” Cody said, and felt the truth of the answer—with the exception of the football part—as he spoke. In fact, that little sentence tolled like a bell in his mind, sending some message about a whole different way for him to look at things, even to live.

  “Touché,” said Larissa.

  Simon clutched his shoulder, as though wounded. Larissa laughed. Then they sat in silence for a few moments, eating Simon’s chocolate. Cody had never tasted anything like it. Great chocolate, no question. He kept himself from asking the cost. Focus. “What do you know about Ike?” he said.

  “He creeps me out,” Larissa said.

  “Townes likes him,” said Simon.

  “He does?” said Larissa.

  “Thinks he’s funny,” Simon said.

  “Yeah?” said Cody. “How?”

  Simon shrugged. “The humorous resists construing like nothing else, as we well know here at Dover. It either is or is not.”

  “How about an example?” Cody said, only partly sure of Simon’s point. “Of Ike being funny.”

  “Yes,” said Larissa. “Because he looks like an ax murderer to me.”

  Silence fell again, but not like the chocolate-eating silence. 214