by M. E. Kerr
“Is that a promise?”
“It’s a promise.”
“Because it’d be easy for you to lie.”
“I’m not going to. We’re in this together.”
Dib chugalugged a Sprite.
He said, “What happens when you’ve seen what you came down here to see?”
“I slip out from under and drive off. I don’t care so much about being seen after I find out who the third party is, I don’t think…. But this way I can choose my time to exit the scene.”
We got out of the BMW and began putting the plan into action.
Before I got up under the box, I said, “Anything you’ve got to say to me, say now. When you pull up and park, you get out fast and walk away.”
“I’ll meet you back at the dorm. What time?”
“Hard to say. I have to return the car.”
“I’m going to sack out anyway, so I’ll be in my room all afternoon.”
“I’ll call you when I’m back on The Hill.”
It was twenty minutes to nine.
“You’re going to freeze your ass,” said Dib.
Chapter 18
My father used to call that kind of surveillance B.S. He meant Box Surveillance, but he meant B.S., too, because that’s what it was, a real crappy detail. You couldn’t eat, glance at a newspaper, listen to tapes, or do anything but ache to scratch all the parts of you suddenly itching in violent protest at what you were doing. Your body also gave you two-minute spots of coming attractions if you kept it up: arthritis, headache, muscular aches and pains, constipation, urinary incontinence: the gamut.
Sometimes he’d come home from B.S. filled with ideas of how our lives were going to change. Mom wasn’t going to work for a caterer anymore, she was going to become one. Since I loved cooking so much, I was going to apprentice myself to some famous chef in a fancy New York restaurant. Jazzy would go to day care. Dad would turn down any future assignments that might involve crack houses. We were going to shape up as a family…. Sure, because that’s what you do under a box. You promise yourself you’ll never be under another one. You begin making grandiose plans for yourself, and for everyone in your life.
By ten o’clock I’d enrolled in the hotel management program at Cornell University, where I’d work my way through in some kitchen. I’d canceled all Mom’s credit cards, begun a savings plan for Jazzy’s college, and gone through the 7s directory to see what alumni had connections with restaurants, inns, or resorts…. I’d talked Dib into going in on the venture with me (even though God knew he’d eat us into the poorhouse), and finally I’d found out Delia’s address. For once and for all I’d see her again, one last time, the final period, as Nina’d put it, at the end of the sentence.
At ten-thirty I was cold enough to go into rigor mortis, and my normally reliable bladder was blaming me for the coffee I’d brewed back in my room at Sevens and swallowed down on the run.
At twenty minutes to eleven a red taxi from Cottersville Cab stopped in front of the BMW.
I watched while Creery got out. The same long gabardine coat, the Sevens scarf, Timberland boots, and the blue wraparound Gargoyle shades.
He said something to the driver, gave him money, and loped up to number 6. Mark Twain let him in. I saw him smile and clap his arm around Creery’s shoulders as he shut the door.
The taxi driver cut the motor and lighted a cigarette.
I counted three more cigarettes smoked and tossed out the window before the driver turned his motor back on, still sitting there, waiting. It was not only freezing cold; there was a wind rising ominously, and I had no doubt that he was tuning in to local radio for the forecast. Snow and gales, followed by blinking digital clocks.
In minutes the snow began dropping in large wet, white flakes. Something dime sized on my back dared me not to itch it. My neck was threatening to lock itself in one position forever. I was starting to sweat, the kind that turns cold and clammy, when I saw the front door at number 6 open.
Creery first … then Lauren Lasher appeared.
She was hanging on to him, not because she needed to, not that way. Because she wanted to. It was all over her eyes.
He was carrying her Le Sac, a big beige thing he had over one arm. Her gloved hand was on the other arm.
She had on a short khaki storm coat with a fur collar, and wide-wale khaki corduroys tucked into boots with thick navy-blue socks tucked over the boot tops. Her long, black hair touched the red scarf tied around her neck.
She was looking up at him. He was looking straight ahead. He didn’t look happy. She had the kind of look you have when you’re worried about someone you’re with. She was talking to him, her lips pursed as though she was saying soothing things.
Then they were telling each other good-bye. Not in words. She had her arms around him. Finally his went around her, too. I couldn’t see his face at that moment. Only hers. Her chin nestled in his neck.
He opened the cab door and she got in. He passed the Le Sac to her and gave her a little two-fingered salute, unsmiling, then finally smiling as though she’d said, “Can’t you at least smile?” as my mother’d asked me to, at Christmas, when I’d posed for pictures she was taking.
I waited for the cab to take off, and for Creery to go back inside number 6. Then I got out from under and over into the driver’s seat.
On Saturdays the buses to Miss Tyler’s, in Princeton, left from the Cottersville Inn every three or four hours.
I caught up with the red cab, heading down that way.
Out in front of the inn I caught up with Lauren, honking at her as I pulled over.
She came walking toward the car with a raised eyebrow, shaking her head as though she’d found me out.
I’d been trying to think how I was going to start the conversation, but she started it for me.
“So that was your car. Where were you, Fell?”
No way was I going to say under the box. I said I was “around.” I asked her if we could talk.
She said inside, it was too cold, and she had to make a phone call first. She’d meet me in the lobby.
I parked the BMW behind the inn, took care of my bladder in the men’s, and waited for her in the lounge.
• • •
The Cottersville Inn was where Miss Tyler’s girls stayed weekends they attended dances or dated on The Hill. They were always put on the fourth floor, off-limits to any males but uniformed waiters carrying trays.
In the lounge on the first floor the usual Saturday morning fare was being offered on TV. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
A few Miss Tylerites were vaguely involved while they waited for their dates or the school bus back.
Lauren got her coat off and sat down. She had on a red sweater and the gold 7.
“I’m going back on the noon bus,” she said, “so there isn’t time for you to lie about how you happened to be up on Playwicky Road this morning.”
“In time to see that tender farewell between you and Creery,” I said. “You’re full of surprises, Lauren.”
“So are you, Fell. Everyone will know at The Charles Dance anyway. We’ve been seeing each other. Is that all right with you?”
“If it’s all right with you, it’s all right with me.”
“I hope so. I just talked with Cyr. He thinks Sevens is spying on him. On us. I told him that was your BMW outside. He wants to know what you’re after.”
“I’m not part of any Sevens team, Lauren.”
“Are you the one who found out about us and told Paul?”
“Your brother knew? I didn’t realize it was going on that long.”
“Cyr and I sneaked around like thieves,” she said. “No one over here knew, so we thought. We wrote each other more than we saw each other. Even Daddy didn’t know, still doesn’t. We met last October. Cyr was someone else’s blind date. I took one look at him and that was it.”
I tried to imagine what she could have seen in that one look that would make her fall for Creery. His sk
inhead? The two earrings in one ear? The stoned look in his eyes, like a chicken’s staring back at you? Yet she was sitting there admitting it, and wearing his gold, I was sure. Fondling the 7.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, “but Paul talked against Cyr so hatefully, I was expecting this slick con artist, not this shy — ” “Shy?”
“He is, Fell! He’s shy and he’s sweet. I know he looks goofy, but he’s not. He reads Camus and Vonnegut.”
“We all read Camus and Vonnegut. They’re assigned.”
She let that go by.
She said, “Paul and I were very close. Too close. Twins are. We told each other everything. All I used to hear about was Cyr, Paul’s great hate. Hearing about someone’s great hate is like hearing about someone’s great love. You get involved yourself. And curious. When I heard he was coming to our Halloween Dance, I couldn’t wait to see him.”
Across the room Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock were visiting San Francisco. Behind them the snow was falling so thickly, it was all you could see from the windows.
She seemed to sense my concern about the weather. I was beginning to wonder if I could get the BMW back that afternoon.
“To make a long story short,” she said, “at the end of Christmas vacation, Paul told me he knew about us. He said he’d been waiting to see if I’d tell him about it. He said there wasn’t a meal he ate all the while we were home that he didn’t throw up after. He waited right up until we both had to go back to school, and you know what he said?”
It was one of those questions you weren’t expected to answer.
Her face was breaking like a baby’s before it starts to cry. “He said … Paul said … Why didn’t you just put a knife in me?”
I waited for her to get a hold of herself.
“So in a way you feel responsible,” I murmured.
“Not in a way. I do. Of course I do…. We haven’t even dared show up on The Hill together. Everyone will think, or know, we were the reason for his suicide … or they’ll wonder how I can date Paul’s worst enemy so soon…. Cyr’s stepbrother says to just face it head-on. Go to The Charles Dance. Deal with it … He’s the only one we’ve confided in until now … Fell? Why were you up on Playwicky today? Is Sevens up to something?”
“No, not Sevens.”
I told her about Lasher’s letter to Lionel, which had been stored in the word processor. I left out the part about The Sevens Revenge. I explained how Dib had come upon it … and how I’d simply gone to Playwicky out of curiosity, after I’d overheard Creery’s phone conversation last night.
“I know about Cyr’s letter to Lowell,” she said. “He wants to get off drugs, Fell. That’s all. He wrote Lowell to tell him that, and to tell him about me. I’m helping him straighten out his life. Lowell is too…. Why wouldn’t The Sevens be glad of that?”
“Maybe Schwartz expected him to do Twilight Truth.”
“He might have. But Paul was trying to force it on him!”
“I think there was more in Creery’s letter,” I said.
“No. Cyr would have told me if there was…. And what does it all have to do with you, Fell?”
“I’m just nosy, I guess.”
“Cyr doesn’t believe that. Fell? Why? He’s almost flunking out, he’s so terrified. Last night he even forgot I was coming on the eight-twenty bus. He can’t think straight anymore! And now he’s really convinced there’s this Sevens Revenge brewing … and you could be part of it.”
“Tell him I’m not part of anything.”
“We don’t even know how Paul found out about us. Now you say Paul really did have a copy of Cyr’s letter. How did he get it?”
I didn’t have any answers for her.
Lauren took out a handkerchief and blew her nose.
She said, “Both Cyr and I are going down the tubes over this thing, Fell. I have to go back to school now and try to study for midsemesters. Cyr’s thinking of quitting altogether, and he would, too, if Lowell wasn’t there to stop him. You don’t know how depressed he is! … Paul did this!”
“Creery did his share of baiting your brother, too.”
“No one is a match for Paul. You don’t know him!”
She realized she’d slipped into present tense.
She said, “I mean you didn’t know him … did you?”
“Not really.”
“What he was capable of?”
“I guess not.”
Lauren pressed her fingers on my wrist. “I’m going to tell you something that I’ve only told Cyr and Lowell,” she said. “I think Paul picked that fight with Cyr deliberately right before he jumped. He wanted everyone to think Cyr’d pushed him.”
There was nothing to say to that.
Lauren looked at her watch. “I have to go, Fell.”
I hadn’t taken my coat off, only unbuttoned it. I gave another glance out the window and started buttoning it. Someone wrote something that said when it snows hard, the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only. That’s what it looked like outside.
“There’s something I don’t understand, though, Lauren,” I said. “Why does Creery think Sevens would want revenge?”
“Do you really want to know what I think? You’re not to repeat this to anyone, Fell.”
“Okay.”
“I think trying to come off all the drugs has made Cyr paranoid. Lowell thinks so, too…. Things are bad enough, but they’re not as bad as he’s making them.” She tapped her forehead. “Up here … he needs supervision while he’s getting clean.”
“Can’t this Lowell get him in someplace?”
“Lowell’s afraid that if he leaves school now, he’ll never go back. His father’s dying, too. If he can just hold out four more months!”
I helped her into her coat, and took her Le Sac.
“The lease on the Playwicky apartment is up the first of the month,” Lauren said as we walked down the lobby. “Lowell’s not going to move into a motel and live here until June.”
“Was it just Paul’s apartment?”
“Yes. I’d stay there sometimes.”
“Because Rinaldo said some of the Sevens used it.”
“Only to play cards in…. Rinaldo’s such a know-it-all, isn’t he? I hear he’s selling everything we gave him.”
“Well …” I shrugged.
“I don’t care, really. I don’t want anything of Paul’s! I know right now his ghost is somewhere howling at what he’s done to Cyr!”
“I have the material for the memorial book, by the way.”
“I finally found a smiling picture of him, too. I’ll get it to you, and then I wish you’d send it all to Daddy … I don’t want to see his sick stories right now.”
“Are you going to tell your father about Cyr?”
“I have to … and my mother.”
Her fingers were back touching the gold 7.
“I’ll get the blame for Paul’s suicide. From him, not from her.” Lauren stopped by the small bus line at the end of the lobby. “My mother would only blame me if it was one of her patients. She only cares about them. She’s never even known our shoe sizes.”
I handed her the Le Sac.
“I feel a little disloyal to Cyr right now, Fell,” she said, “telling you he exaggerates his problems, and I don’t believe they’re that bad. It doesn’t mean that I don’t trust him…. I want to trust him.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know how that works.”
I looked through the glass doors at the thickening snow. It wasn’t just the car I wanted to return — I wanted to return to Nina, too.
“Cyr’s changing now. I think it’s because of me. But you can’t become someone new overnight.”
“No, you can’t,” I agreed.
“He doesn’t want to be punk anymore … or any of it.”
“Yes,” I said. “There’s a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.”
“What an interesting thing to say, Fell.”
“It’s from Camino Real,” I said. “Tennessee Williams wrote it. We had it in English last term.”
“But you remembered it,” she said. “That’s nice.”
Chapter 19
Amazing!” Nina said when she opened the door. “Dad’s stuck at his office, says he’s going across the street to the matinee until the snow stops … and Mrs. Whipple’s son called to say the roads aren’t negotiable.”
“They aren’t,” I said. “What kept me going was the thought of your jar of Fox’s U-Bet.”
“I thought you were going to say me.”
“Don’t make me choose between you and an egg cream,” I said.
• • •
While I took my boots off, Nina took my wet coat and put it on a hanger. Then she hung it on the back of the closet door and put a newspaper under it on the floor.
“If it was anything besides an egg cream, would I have a chance?” she asked me.
I looked up at her while I struggled with my left boot. She had on a black mock-turtle top, black pants, yellow socks, and black lace-up running shoes. Her yellow hair seemed just washed and still damp, no makeup. She was looking better and better to me.
“I’m still mad at you, Nina,” I lied.
“Don’t be, Fell. I’m a new person.”
I made us some egg creams, and we sat in the living room talking. The snow clung to the tree branches winter-wonderland style, while she told me about the new person.
First, the new person was never going to say or think the name Eddie Dragon ever again.
Second, the new person was going to end her analysis.
Third, the new person was going to start shopping for a whole new wardrobe.
“Go back to two,” I said. “What does your dad think about that?”
“He’s been telling me I ought to take a rest from her. It costs him one hundred and twenty dollars a week. Just imagine all the Easter clothes I can buy! I want to start thinking about outside me for a change. I’m tired of inside me.”
“Doesn’t Dr. Lasher have a say in that?”
“She’ll probably be glad, too. She used to complain that I used up her answering machine tapes with all my messages. I’d call and talk as long as I could to her machine, and then I’d just call again and talk, call again and talk … She’d say, Nina, vy can’t you vait until de session for all dat?”
