The Tutor

by Peter Abrahams

  A vein was throbbing in Jeanette’s neck. Her eyes darted around: the terrarium, the hole in the ceiling, the sawdust on the bed, back to him.

  “Nothing, really,” Julian said, “merely—”

  Her voice rose. “No one’s home at the Strombolis’. The woman next door says they left for Florida yesterday.”

  “I’m just baffled,” Julian said. She must have circled the block. He thought furiously, seeking some explanation, innocent yet convincing, of what had happened to Zippy, and now of what she’d seen in the two bedrooms. “Have you met Ruby’s little pal yet?”

  “Ruby hates snakes,” Jeanette said. “This is a matter for the police.” She drew a cell phone from the pocket of her ski pants and walked out of the room. Julian needed time to think and she wasn’t giving him any. He hurried after her.

  Jeanette was halfway down the stairs, cell phone in one hand, index finger of the other poised over the keypad. “Police?” said Julian, starting down after her. “Don’t you think that’s a little extreme? After all—”

  Over her shoulder, Julian saw her index finger hit the 9. He continued with whatever reasonable clause came next, but at the same time leaped ahead, reached around her—a kind of punch, to be accurate—and struck the cell phone from her hand. It clattered down into the front hall. Nine-one-one was out of the question—he knew its dangers now.

  Jeanette whirled around, balanced there, four or five steps from the bottom. “You’re going to regret that,” she said.

  “I hope not,” Julian told her. In fact, he was quite sure: he had the higher ground, another tenet of the military arts. “We really should talk, Jeanette. I think you’re being somewhat unreasonable.”

  She gave him a look loaded with negative emotions—anger, suspicion, even contempt, that last closing so many doors in his mind—and turned without a word, headed down the stairs toward the phone. Julian grabbed her shoulder, not violently or even roughly.

  Jeanette must have missed that consideration. She batted his hand away with a movement that was rough, was violent, a movement that ended with her elbow jabbing him right below the sternum, leaving him suddenly breathless. The next thing he knew she was down in the hall, scooping up the phone, her fingers at the keypad once more.

  Julian dove from where he was, about halfway up. His shoulder caught her in the ribs. He heard a quick and gratifying rip of human tissue—his hearing was acute. They fell together onto the floor, his hands around her neck as they rolled, a roll that ended with him on top. But not quite ending: she gave a little twist, some subtle movement of Asian origin, and the roll kept going. At the same time, Zippy came racing in, barking wildly. Now Jeanette was on top, straddling him, and before he could move a knife appeared in her hand, a wood-handled folding knife, the blade not especially imposing, but pressed against his neck. An outdoorsy woman: why had he assumed she’d cut the jump rope with something from a kitchen drawer?

  “Don’t move,” she said. Zippy circled them, barking his head off. Julian didn’t move, although of course he would have to, and soon. Instead he relaxed his body, hoping hers would relax too in unconscious imitation. It did not. Without taking her eyes off him, Jeanette felt around with her free hand, found the cell phone. She brought it into his field of vision, hit the 9 once more.

  At that moment, Zippy lunged forward and sank his teeth deep into Julian’s right shoulder. Julian cried out in pain, genuine pain, genuinely felt. Jeanette’s gaze shifted to the dog, and as it did, some clumsy movement of his hindquarters knocked the phone from her hand. For an instant, Julian no longer felt the blade against his neck. The instant to move: and he moved. An instant after that, the knife was in his hand, his left hand but good enough. Another instant—or several more, because more than one thrust was necessary—and Jeanette was no longer in the story. She had no business being in it in the first place.

  And Zippy, who still hadn’t let go, who had those teeth sunk into him so deep, who growled so hatefully? There: he was out of the story too.

  Julian didn’t like mess. Here was mess indeed, both physical and organizational. But first he must listen. He listened and heard nothing, the outside and inside worlds quiet. Then he had to attend to himself. He pried Zippy’s jaws apart, an awkward and painful process that almost made him cry out again. After that, he checked the tag on Zippy’s collar. His shots were up to date, as Julian had assumed they would be.

  In the downstairs bathroom, he took off his shirt, washed his wound in soap and warm water, bathed it in hydrogen peroxide he found in the cabinet, applied Bacitracin he found there too, taped on a gauze bandage. In the mirror he looked rather calm, and in a way handsomer and more full of life than he’d ever seen himself, especially once he’d washed the blood—mammalian, he couldn’t be more specific than that—off his face. Julian went down to the entertainment center and helped himself to a modest portion of Highland Park, pouring with a hand that was almost steady.

  Back upstairs, he turned off all the lights, presenting a proper late-night facade to the neighborhood. Then he checked outside. The Strombolis’ house was also dark, of course—how careless not to keep an eye on them, but understandable, why be too hard on himself?—and the two or three other houses visible from 37 Robin Road were dark too. Julian went to the driveway and brought Jeanette’s skis, boots and poles into the house, laying all the gear down in the front hall with everything else. Then he locked up and drove her pickup to Killington.

  The last few carloads of après-ski traffic were still on the highway, even at the late hour Julian reached Killington, but the road to Bear Mountain was deserted. He followed it up to the base lodge. Except for a few cars here and there, the vast parking lot was empty. No one sat in any of the cars, no lights shone anywhere, other than the snow cats grooming the trails, so high above they might have been flying. Julian parked near the lodge, borrowed ski gloves, hardly tight at all, and a ski mask he found on the passenger seat—the night being so cold—and left the pickup there, locking it and pocketing the keys.

  Julian walked down the Bear Mountain road to the highway, turned toward town, saw a bus sign. He followed it to the Killington Peak access road, found the little open bus shelter, sat on the bench. A cold night and a colder dawn: Julian wasn’t the only boarding passenger wearing a ski mask when the first southbound bus came along. Organizational mess in hand, physical to come. What a creative person he was! That was Julian’s last thought before he fell asleep in the back, lulled by the motion and the warmth.

  26

  Practice watching the smallest thing you can see on any object. Why not? Soaking up some bonus rays on a terrace at the airport—the flight home delayed a few hours, even more if they were lucky—Ruby sipped a tall cold Coral Splash, mostly Sprite but blue in color, with a bright red maraschino cherry at the bottom, the coral, of course, and looked here and there for smallest things. She’d learned so much on this trip already. One, she could hold her breath and dive to fifteen feet and sometimes find lobsters at the bottom, their antennas poking out from under rocks, very alert. Two, Bahamians spoke a different kind of English, hard to understand at first, then all of a sudden easy, and finally you couldn’t stop yourself from talking the same way. Three, she had to get very rich so she could have a house down here one day. Four, European men wore tiny bathing suits but pranced around like nothing was wrong. Five, what was the big deal about caviar?

  Mom came through the automatic doors, sat in the shade of the umbrella. She looked great, those Mediterranean skin tones glowing.

  “They still don’t know, mon,” she told Dad.

  Dad laughed, sipped a cold one, wriggled his bare toes, still a little prunelike from the last ocean swim. He looked great too. So did Brandon, but he was inside the terminal somewhere, probably having a beer or maybe a Goombay smash, no problem down here, out of Mom and Dad’s sight. No problem about Brandon paying for it, either. He’d won a five-hundred-dollar jackpot on the slots, and given Ruby a hundred of his own free w
ill. And Dad was up almost fifteen hundred dollars in blackjack. The rich got richer, just like they said. Ruby reached into her Coral Splash, fished out the cherry, popped it in her mouth.

  “Another cherry or two, miss?” said a passing waiter.

  “Why thank you,” said miss.

  “Maybe I should call Julian,” Mom said, “tell him not to bother picking us up.”

  “Sure,” said Dad. “We’ll take a cab.”

  “But it’s expensive,” Mom said.

  Dad shrugged. Ruby had never seen him so relaxed: he was practically brain-dead. Mom took out her cell, left some message on the machine. Ruby wasn’t really listening; she was eyeing the smallest thing she could see on one of those geckos. The geckos were great, but bringing one home, her initial idea, was out of the question, Zippy being the only-child type. This one was doing push-ups on the railing, a few feet away. His smallest thing was a tiny red dot over one eye, like one of those Indian caste marks, but misplaced. The smallest thing on the Rastafarian guy chopping at weeds with his machete on the other side of the railing was also red, a drop of blood, maybe from an insect bite, inside the first O of One Love on his T-shirt. And the girl of about her own age, but dressed to kill, at the next table? Her sunglasses, for sure: the tiniest, coolest sunglasses Ruby had ever seen.

  The girl gave her a little smile. Oops: Ruby knew she must have been staring.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” said the girl, only she said it a little funny. Maybe she was from LA or somewhere. That would explain the shades.

  “Not a bad island, huh?” said Ruby.

  “Fantastico,” said the girl.

  That would be the latest slang, no doubt, moving east like the weather.

  “You from LA?” said Ruby.

  “No,” said the girl. “You are?”

  “Connecticut,” said Ruby.

  The girl found something funny in that, giggled for a moment or two. “Me I am coming from Roma,” she said.

  “In Italy?”

  “Sì. But you are saying Rome, am I not correct?”

  “I’m saying Rome, yeah,” said Ruby. She checked out those sunglasses, those clothes. She knew nothing about Rome. Ms. Freleng hadn’t gotten to it yet, probably never would, bogged down as they were with Cortès and Pizarro. Was it possible Rome was even cooler than LA? Maybe just the women, since the men would be running around in those tiny bathing suits all summer. There was nothing cool about that and never could be. “Your English is pretty good,” Ruby said.

  “I am studying of it in school,” said the girl.

  “Me too,” said Ruby. The girl laughed again. She had a jumble of teeth, just like Ruby. Ruby laughed too. “I know some Italian,” she said.

  “Yes?” said the girl.

  “I know how to say, ‘Where is the bargain shopping?’ ”

  “Oh,” said the girl, laughing again. “That is very, very critical.”

  Could she remember the whole thing? Fine was “shopping,” questo was “where is,” and what was the rest of it? Boom, it came, just like that: “Questo è l’inizo della fine.”

  The girl wrinkled up her forehead.

  “Excuse the accent,” said Ruby.

  “This is not a question of the accent. But what it is you are saying is not of the subject of bargain shopping.”

  “No?”

  “For where is the bargain shopping, we say ’Dove si può trovare i prezzi buoni?’ ”

  “That sounds a lot different,” said Ruby.

  “Sì.”

  “So what did I say?” said Ruby.

  “Questo è l’inizo della fine?” said the girl.

  It sounded so much better when she said it. Italian had to be the most beautiful language on God’s green earth. She would start learning it as soon as she got home. “Yeah,” said Ruby. “Does it mean anything?”

  The girl nodded, pursing her lips a little. “It is meaning this is the initiation—scusi—perhaps you would be saying beginning, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thus, beginning,” said the girl. “This is the beginning of the end.”

  “That’s what it means?”

  “Sì.”

  “This is the beginning of the end?”

  “Sì.”

  “It isn’t like some kind of code for shopping, maybe in Venice or somewhere?”

  “Venice?” said the girl. “Code?”

  “Veneshia,” said Ruby, remembering they had their own word for Venice. “Coda.”

  The girl blinked. “Would it be a phrase, this beginning of the end, you perhaps heard at the cinema?” she said.

  “Sure sounds like it,” said Ruby.

  “I am loving the cinema,” said the girl. “I have been meeting Brad Pitt.”

  “You have?”

  “Oh, certainly,” said the girl. “My father is doing many face liftings for the stars.”

  Ruby glanced over at the girl’s parents. They looked like movie stars themselves. Wrapped in silk and holding those tall skinny champagne glasses, they stared out at the palm trees, waving in the tropical breeze.

  “I don’t have to go to school, tomorrow, do I?” said Brandon.

  “It is tomorrow,” said Ruby.

  The taxi—one of those town cars, lots of room in the back—rolled through West Mill, the whole town fast asleep. Ruby’s skin had lost that tingly feeling from the ocean. It looked cold out there, plus something else she couldn’t put her finger on, something about Sunday night and no one in all those dark houses eager for Monday morning. What did they call it? The rat race. All the rats were resting up to race each other again, starting at seven, eight, or nine. And the races were all organized, even for kids: Brandon had the SAT, she had the Mad Minute and the other little contests with Ms. Freleng’s funny names, air quotes around funny. As they turned onto Poplar Drive, the headlights of the town car swept past a lost-dog notice, taped to a telephone pole. Ruby’s souvenir coconut rolled against her bare ankle, the milk sloshing around in there, very faint.

  “Next house on the right,” Dad said.

  They parked in the driveway. Lights glowed in all the windows. The mudroom door opened as they got out of the car and Julian came to help with the bags.

  “How was the trip?” he said.

  “Great,” said Dad, paying the driver. “How’s everything here?”

  “Good,” said Julian. They took everything into the house, Ruby suddenly too tired to carry anything but the coconut. Was it her imagination or did it feel warm in her hands? “Except for one thing,” Julian added as they plunked everything down on the mudroom floor.

  Ruby went into the kitchen, glanced around. “Zippy,” she called.

  “It’s all my fault,” said Julian.

  “What is?” said Mom.

  They all turned to him, Mom, Dad, and Brandon still in the mudroom, Ruby in the kitchen. Julian bit his lip.

  “Did something happen to Zippy?” Ruby said.

  Julian squatted down to her level, faced her. “He ran away, Ruby. I’m so sorry. We were out shoveling the walk and a car went by with a dog poking its head out the side window, the dog barked at him—” Julian voice cracked “—and Zippy just took off.” Julian rose, looked at the others. “I ran after him, of course, calling and calling, but he just kept going and finally I lost sight of him on Indian Ridge. I just know he’s going to come back, but he hasn’t yet. I’ve been to the pound every day, I’ve put up signs, I’ve canvassed the neighbors.” He raised his hands helplessly.

  “What if he got run over?” Brandon said.

  Julian looked pained. “The pound keeps track,” he said. “No reports of anything like that.”

  “Could someone have taken him?” Mom said.

  “Would Zippy let that happen?” Julian said. “I for one don’t believe it.” He swallowed.

  Ruby started crying, hot tears, a flood. She ran outside: “Zippy! Zippy! Zippy!” Dad pulled her gently back in the house.

  Juli
an was showing Mom and Brandon the flyers he’d made. Lost Dog, it said at the top. Generous Reward. In the middle was a picture of Zippy, the Halloween one where he was sitting by the pumpkin. At the bottom it said Have you seen Zippy? Please, please call, and then the number.

  “Maybe the kids could hand these out at school tomorrow,” Julian said.

  “Good idea,” said Dad.

  “But what if—” Ruby felt the tears coming again, somehow got a grip. “What if he comes back and there’s no one home?”

  “He’d wait out on the lawn, wouldn’t he?” said Dad.

  Ruby lost hold of that grip, heard her voice rising to a note that shamed her, kind of hysterical. “But what if he doesn’t?”

  Mom and Dad looked at each other. Julian said, “Why don’t I return in the morning? I can watch for him during the day.”

  “That’s very nice of you, Julian,” Mom said.

  “It’s the least I can do,” said Julian. “I feel so bad.”

  “In that case,” said Dad, “you might as well stay the night.”

  “If that’s all right,” said Mom.

  “Oh, certainly,” said Julian. “It’s my duty, under the circumstances.”

  Ruby took a deep breath. “Don’t feel bad, Julian,” she said. Through her teary eyes she could see his dampening too, a double blurriness. “It’s not your fault.”

  “We’ll just have to keep looking and looking,” Julian said.

  “Call the school the moment he shows up,” Ruby said.

  “Count on it.”

  They all went to bed. Ruby’s teddy bear’s name was Beamish, a word she’d loved the moment she first heard it, listening to Mom reading Through the Looking-Glass. She could remember the beamish part, word for word:

  “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

  O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”