by Rona Jaffe
She got up and led him into the shadows by the jukebox, and they danced slowly and closely together, her head on his chest, their arms wrapped around each other, both of them being very gentle. They looked at each other then and kissed.
“I love you,” Robbie said.
They left Fat City and drove back to the dorm, and went up to her room. She drew him inside and locked the door. Since he had last been in her room she had painted rainbows on her walls. She turned on the music, very softly, and they stood there in that rainbow room and began to touch each other with wonder, as if this had never happened before for either of them. He was so filled with love for her he thought he would die of happiness. She led him to her narrow bed, and they made love perfectly and easily. For one moment, only one, she seemed to be frightened and drew back, and her body stiffened; but then she smiled at him and relaxed again. He felt as if he were dreaming, because he had dreamed of this moment so often in the past weeks that now it seemed as if the fantasy and the reality blended into something that he was only wishing would be.
“I love you too,” she said.
Afterward, lying in the darkness, holding her, he was unexpectedly plunged into the deepest depression he had ever known. He felt that he had betrayed her, had lied already, and betrayed Hall, because it was Hall’s story that had touched her enough to make her love him. A small part of him had been glad when Hall left—some evil, deeply hidden part—and he had always felt guilty for it. But, Robbie tried to tell himself rationally, Kate had already decided she wanted him when she came back. His story hadn’t won her; it had only been a further way of sharing, to become closer to her. He tried to fight off the depression, holding her tightly, trying to synchronize his breathing with hers.
He remembered that April night with such clarity it seemed to be happening all over again … the party guests making noise downstairs, music playing, moonlight shining through the branches of the big tree outside his bedroom window and making patterns on the floor. He had gone upstairs to be alone for a while. He was thirteen, and the people downstairs were older, none of them his friends, and he was bored. He was lying on his bed in the dark, still dressed because he might want to go back downstairs to the party, and wondering if everyone would be so glad to see him if he had run away. His parents were pretending that nothing bad had happened, and they were celebrating, trying to make it all up to Hall for whatever had made him miserable enough to leave.
Then the door opened and his brother came in. “Robbie?”
“Hi.”
Hall junior, tall, handsome, blond, the older brother Robbie had always worshiped and been jealous of, sat down on the edge of his bed and put his hand on Robbie’s shoulder. “Do you have any money?”
“Money?”
“Yeah. I know you hoard it.”
“What do you want money for?”
His brother’s voice was hoarse, strained. “I need it.”
“Okay. I’ll lend you some. How much do you need?”
“It’s not a loan,” Hall said.
Robbie stared at him then in the moonlight, the perfect, classic features, the dark shadows underneath his eyes like those of a sick person, and he felt his throat close. He understood. “Don’t …” he said helplessly.
“I have to. This time I’m never coming back.”
“Why?”
Hall’s fingers closed tightly on his wrist. “You won’t tell? You promise me you won’t tell? They’ll kill you if they find out you helped me.”
“Don’t go.…” And he was getting up, taking the money he had saved from its hiding place in his desk drawer: one hundred and sixty-two dollars, allowance and money he had earned doing odd jobs, and he was handing it to Hall.
“Thank you.” His brother looked at him and smiled a thin little smile, and then the money disappeared into his jeans. “I’ll keep in touch.”
But Hall never had. He did in Robbie’s dreams, walking into the room just as vividly as if it had been real, and he said he had been unhappy but it would be all right now. Then Robbie would wake up and remember it was not all right at all.
He didn’t tell his parents about the money, nor that he had even spoken to his brother before the second and last disappearance. Hall was gone before anyone realized he had left. Robbie remembered his mother screaming, that long, shrill scream of the bereaved, as if she had just been informed of her son’s death. He knew he wouldn’t forget that sound as long as he lived. Then she started drunkenly smashing all his father’s expensive watches, as if to tell him that all the things he’d worked so hard to get were meaningless and vain.
Robbie was doubly guilty. Guilty for helping Hall to run away, and for being a little bit glad. Later, when Hall didn’t write or call and Robbie realized what “never coming back” really meant, he began to feel the sorrow and the pain. What had seemed, at the time, to be part of an exciting adventure, now had turned into the most terrible thing that had ever happened to him in his life.
CHAPTER 8
Daniel was seeing twins, on different nights of course. Their names were Cindy and Lyndy, and they were so spectacularly beautiful that one of them would have been enough; two seemed like wretched excess. And they were bright. He had met Cindy in his math class. She wanted to be a doctor. When he had seen Lyndy in his American History class, naturally he’d thought she was Cindy, and he’d sat down next to her and started talking to her, until he realized she was laughing.
“Oh, no,” she groaned. “I’m the other one.”
“There are two of you?”
“There aren’t two of you, are there?” she asked hopefully.
Since there was one of him, they shared. Lyndy wanted to be a lawyer. They were both interested in their future careers, planned to stay single until they were well established in their professions, and then get married and have one child each. Or twins. They saw other men besides Daniel, and while Jay Jay seemed jealous and Robbie admiring, Daniel sometimes had the disquieting feeling that his sex life was only comedy relief for most of the people in the dorm. If only they hadn’t been identical twins.… It was like a joke. Still, it was unusual, and he had to admit he liked the idea. Kate teased him about it, good-naturedly, and asked him whether he planned to take the two of them out together on their birthday.
“They have the same birthday, you know,” she said.
“Then they can go out with someone else.”
“What a rat! You can’t screw them and then not take them out on their birthday. And you have to buy them a present.” She giggled. “Give them the same thing in different colors.”
Robbie had practically moved into Kate’s room now, and they were inseparable. Daniel decided to wait and see if their romance survived the term, and if it did, then he would suggest they all use Robbie’s room to play the game. He didn’t like having to use his own room for everything: studying, sleeping, entertaining the twins—who roomed together in a different dorm—and playing the game too. What he liked least about college life was the lack of privacy. At night everyone played their stereos, all full-blast, and people thundered up and down the halls and talked in loud voices. If you wanted to study you needed to almost hypnotize yourself, or buy earplugs, or go to the library, which was a nuisance. The library was just a ten-minute run from the dorms, but it closed at eleven, and now that the weather had turned sharply colder and it rained often, a chill, unpleasant rain, people liked to stay put.
Daniel had always been a loner. That was why he liked to run. For his mandatory gym class he chose track, although he disliked having to compete in something he only wanted to do for pleasure. Robbie was still on the swimming team, Jay Jay was taking fencing—mainly because he liked the paraphernalia, particularly the mask—and Kate was continuing her karate. None of them planned to go home for the brief Thanksgiving holiday. Kate said it would be too expensive to fly to California and she didn’t want to spend her whole vacation driving to get there and back. Jay Jay and Robbie didn’t want to go home to
see their families. And Daniel thought it would be nice for the four of them to stay in the nearly empty dorm and play the game every day. The others agreed happily.
They all told their parents they were going camping, so as not to hurt their feelings.
On Thanksgiving day they ate turkey sandwiches washed down with beer, played the game for nine straight hours, and then went out to take a walk in the cold night air to clear their heads. They walked past the huge, dark dorms, where only a few lights showed in windows, past the empty class buildings of the Grant campus, and along the narrow sidewalks that led into the town. Small houses were set side by side on the outskirts of Pequod, each with its car in the driveway, and inside these houses families were finishing their Thanksgiving dinners. Daniel could see them through some of the windows: sitting around dining tables or watching television. In one house he saw a father and son playing cards under the light of a lamp in front of a picture window, and he suddenly felt very lonely. He was sorry he hadn’t gone home for the holiday. There wouldn’t be many more family times—then he’d be an adult and out in the world alone. In the eyes of the world he was an adult already.
Ahead of him Kate and Robbie were walking with their arms around each other. Daniel wondered how long it would last. He liked Robbie, you couldn’t not like Robbie—but he just wasn’t enough for Kate; she was special. This was just fun and games. Not that there was anything wrong with that.… And there was Jay Jay, all alone, in his fat down coat and Mickey Mouse Club hat, looking like a kid; Jay Jay who had never been a kid. Daniel felt a wave of sad affection for Jay Jay. Really, when you thought about it, Jay Jay had nobody to love but his mynah bird.
And what about me? Daniel thought. When he’d been very young he had been a devotee of the TV show Star Trek, and he’d always identified with Mr. Spock, the logical, objective, half-alien with no human feelings. Now, at nineteen, he wondered if he was turning into that sort of creature. He’d never been in love, never felt really insecure, never been hurt. Whenever he was disappointed he could always reason it out with common sense. Maybe it was better to be someone like Kate, willing to care enough about someone that she could take the risk of having her world come smashing down. Better to be Robbie, walking around with that goony look on his face, carried away with his dream of romance even if he knew it wouldn’t last. Maybe even better to be Jay Jay, always living on the edge, looking for excitement, never satisfied. It was better than being Mr. Spock.
But Daniel had never found anyone who seemed the right one to fall in love with. There was always something wrong with her—she was too silly, too demanding, too unfeeling, always too something. Sex was easy for him, but love seemed impossible.
On special occasions his mother always said: “Next time …” and made a wish. “Next time we’ll celebrate for you.” She would pick out one person whose turn it seemed to be to have something nice happen and she would say her little charm to him.
Next time … Daniel said to himself, and wondered.
CHAPTER 9
The weather turned just after Thanksgiving, as if winter could not hold off any longer. Chill winds blew, and it snowed. All dressed alike, in their down coats or jackets, jeans, boots, scarves wrapped around their faces, the students trudging from class to class seemed like the inhabitants of some totalitarian country; asexual, dogged, unfrivolous. Underneath their colorless uniforms, however, they seethed with life. People fell in love and out of love, they had food fights in the cafeteria, they gave impromptu parties where they drank and smoked whatever they could get their hands on and shared without reservation, they surrounded themselves with the music that spoke to them of their own inarticulate dreams—and they always studied, in a constant state of terror. It was important to get good marks, because after you graduated you would have to make a living. Most of them tried to make plans. The world seemed both open to them and closed. Open because anything was possible, but closed because it was so hard to get a job. They wanted success, fame, riches; and if that was not to be then at least they wanted security. The world was so insecure, there was little to believe in, but they would have money. People didn’t protest very much this year at Grant, although there was one student who stood outside the library every morning, her face raw with cold, and shouted: “Save the whales!” At Grant there was room for everyone.
Jay Jay felt he was losing his mooring. Everyone he cared about had someone to hold on to, but he was alone. He sat in his warm room and talked to Merlin, his best friend. “Poor Jay Jay,” Jay Jay said. “Poor Jay Jay.”
“Poor Jay Jay,” Merlin said, finally.
“Speak to me,” Jay Jay said.
“Birds can’t talk,” Merlin said sternly.
“Where’s Jay Jay?”
“Poor Jay Jay.”
“Good,” Jay Jay said, and filled Merlin’s little bowl.
He was so sad. No one had time for him anymore. Kate was always off somewhere with Robbie, and Daniel had his merry sex life. Only poor Jay Jay, doomed to be a mascot, a child …
And he was so bored. He put on his old record of Steely Dan doing “Deacon Blues,” a song he played more and more often lately. Drink Scotch whiskey all night long, and die behind the wheel. … He could get on his motorbike and ram it into a wall. No, that was too ordinary. If he died, he wanted attention, he wanted to become a legend. Then they would all be sorry they had neglected him. He would be remembered forever, like those two students who had disappeared into the caverns long before he was born. If they had lived, they probably wouldn’t be anything at all.
He wasn’t really certain he wanted to kill himself; maybe he just wanted to play a trick and scare his friends. Still, the thought of doing away with himself gave him a little shiver of anticipation. Nobody had ever committed suicide at Grant.
He wrote a note to Kate. Please feed Merlin every day, and remember me. He put on his down coat and leather aviator’s helmet, took his flashlight, looked sadly at Merlin for what might be the last time, and went down the hall. He slipped the key to his room and the note under Kate’s door, and went out into the cold.
He knew where the forbidden caverns were; he had ridden past them the first week he arrived at school, just to see. The snow the night before had been light and the ground was frosty, but still he left tire tracks. Good … it wouldn’t do for them to be unable to find him. The caverns looked the same as they had before. The same green sign with its warning, the same chain across the entrance. The hills looked rocky and dismal under their light dusting of snow, and the afternoon sky was the color of iron. He shivered with the cold and anticipation. Parking his motorbike in the shelter of some rocks, Jay Jay slipped under the chain and entered the caverns.
He swung his flashlight around to see what was there. He was in a smallish room, like a kind of entrance hall, and on either side there were tunnels high enough to walk in, leading off into the depths. He surmised the underground chambers were laid out somewhat like the branches of a tree … or a maze. His eyes widened with wonder. This was a maze—it was just like the game! The walls were made of some kind of damp stone, and far away, softly, there was the sound of dripping water. Great pale stalactites and stalagmites gave the caverns an eerie look, showing how ancient this place was. It was almost beautiful.
Carefully, slowly, Jay Jay stepped forward, moving the beam of his light. His quick mind memorized where he had been. There, in the right-hand chamber, was a large black pool, with water dripping into it from the vault above. Oh, it was so wonderful, so glorious, so Tolkien! Gollum could live there in that cold, black, bottomless pool. Jay Jay could almost see him now, rising, hissing, turning his serpentine head this way and that in search of the delicate little morsel in the down coat. Suddenly the most exciting plan he had ever had in his life began to form in Jay Jay’s mind.
These caverns were the game. If a clever Maze Controller, himself of course, were to chart them, and then use real props … A cloak, for instance, with a bottle in the pocket containing a p
otion that could be either magic giving all knowledge or poison … real lanterns, real swords, real costumes, and a real treasure … They could all chip in for the treasure. That would give them more of an incentive to find it. The little charms, amulets, statues, writing on the wall, hidden scrolls, he would purchase himself and hide all around. The monsters, of course, would have to be imaginary, but there would always be the real danger of getting lost, or slipping and getting hurt, or even drowning. He shivered, partly with fear, partly with delight. He was a genius!
The caverns weren’t so cold and terrible. They were actually rather cool and pleasant, and he imagined they retained the same temperature all year round. They would be perfect to play in on warm days, and not too bad if they began the new game in winter. Of course, he’d have to wait until they finished playing Daniel’s game. Daniel had worked so hard on it they couldn’t just abandon it, even though now it seemed very dull and colorless to Jay Jay compared to what he had just concocted. First, he would have to talk the others into his plan. He was sure he could do it. Nothing scared Kate, Robbie was a follower, and Daniel liked difficult problems to solve. After he had convinced them, Jay Jay planned to let his character get killed in Daniel’s game. That would make the game much less interesting for the others. It would be a kind of sacrificial suicide. He laughed aloud, very pleased with himself. The sound rang off the walls, echoing in a pleasantly diabolical way. How funny that he had come here planning to kill himself and had ended up with a greater desire to live than he’d ever had before.
He picked his way carefully out of the caverns into the mundane world. The early winter dusk had fallen. He got back on his motorbike and rode into town, where he bought some sandwiches and sodas, and a dozen boxes of Pepperidge Farm croutons to drop as bread crumbs so he wouldn’t get lost. He also bought extra batteries for his flashlight. Tomorrow, when the hardware store was open, he would buy a real lantern. This would do for now.
