Crying Wolf

by Peter Abrahams

  “I do.”

  “Hard to say,” said Freedy, “since I’m kind of en route at the moment.”

  “From where?”

  “Wherever the schedule says. I’m always on schedule, you know that.”

  “It says the Goldmans, on Piuma.”

  “Then it was the Goldmans.”

  Pause. “There’s been a slight schedule change, Freedy.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “So the best thing would be to return to the office.”

  “The office?”

  “Something’s come up. A big job. Bonuses all around if we’re done by nightfall.”

  “So why don’t I go right wherever it is and get started?” But Freedy was just playing now. He knew it was bullshit; bonuses never happened.

  “Because I want you to take the compressor.”

  “Right,” said Freedy.

  “Pardon?”

  “I said right. I’m on my way.” Freedy hung up.

  He got back in the van, took two more hits, had a little think, as his mother used to say. He was thinking very clearly, as he always did on meth: different from his mother, the clearly part. Right away he thought about Las Vegas, where he’d never been and always wanted to go. What better time? First he’d stop by his apartment, where he had three hundred dollars in the freezer and a bag of meth. Then drive as far as Bakersfield, say, before abandoning the van and hopping on a bus to Vegas. There: a plan, simple, like all good plans.

  Nothing went wrong with the plan until he turned onto Lincoln, about a block from his place. Freedy had a room over a furniture store on the east side. Parked in front of the furniture store was a cruiser. Two more across the street, and a Paki, that would be the furniture store owner, his landlord, was talking to a cop on the sidewalk. Talking with his fucking hands. That’s when it occurred to Freedy that this was a funny kind of speed. Usually he went fast and the world slowed down around him, making it easy to control. This time the world was cranking too.

  Freedy spun the wheel, threw the van into a shrieking U-turn, just like the stunt driver whose pool he cleaned on Fridays. In the rearview, he caught a cop glancing up as he floored it. Or maybe not.

  But the van-painted the color of the sea, with waves breaking over the fenders-had to go. His own car, his own fucking heap, was in the lot at the office, so that was out. Which left Estrella. She had a Kia, or some shitbox, that she washed and polished twice a week-one of the irritating things about her. Freedy hadn’t been seeing Estrella as much lately, had been getting interested in another waitress in the same place, actually, who worked days like he did instead of nights like Estrella. But it was daytime now, and Estrella would be home.

  She had a one-bedroom in Reseda, a garden apartment, meaning the entrance was off the alley. The pain was coming back, or at least Freedy thought it might, so he took two more snorts, moderate ones, and popped an andro before getting out of the van. Couldn’t hurt. He crossed the alley, heart going pitty-pat, real fast, went through the space where a gate must have been at one time, into the dusty yard.

  Across the yard, Estrella stood in her doorway. She rose on her tiptoes to kiss the cheek of a big guy who had his arm around her. A big guy with black hair like Estrella’s and copper skin like Estrella’s. He wore a white shirt and a black tie, and carried a suitcase. A jolt went through Freedy, as though he’d downshifted at ninety miles an hour. The cause was a combination of things-amazingly, he had that insight into himself even as he took off, but he was an amazing person-and her sleeping with spics was part of it, for sure. He had the grace to admit it.

  They looked up. Did Estrella start to smile at the sight of him? He’d got her a good one before he knew. Then the big guy shouted something, “Hey,” maybe, and tried to push him away, or hit him or something. Mistake. The top blew off at that point, like one of those oil well gushers, except it was red. Not long after, maybe seconds, the big guy was on the ground and Estrella was kneeling over him, tears, the whole bit.

  “Don’t expect any sympathy from me, you whore,” said Freedy.

  She gave him a strange look, although it was hard to tell since her face was already swelling up. “Mi hermano,” she cried. “Mi hermano.” Or some gibberish like that.

  Freedy walked away, silent as Clint Eastwood after a town square gunfight. Overhead the sky was coppery, much the same as Estrella’s skin. The blue sky was on the rich side of town. Freedy had another insight: California sucked.

  That night, on a bus to Vegas, Freedy had time to reflect. He felt pretty good, considering. His leg hurt, but nothing he couldn’t control. He wore new jeans and a new western-style shirt, bought with Vegas in mind. That wad of money on Bliss Sherman’s front seat? Turned out to be $650. Win some, lose some. Not a completely bad day. Call it mixed.

  His most important accomplishment had been spiritual, if that was the word. He’d realized that California was not for him. That meant it was time to regroup, to center himself. Spiritual, centering: his mother’s lingo. She’d been popping into his mind all day. Was there a reason for that? He thought for the first time of going home. He’d told himself he never would, but how could a week or two hurt? Home cooking, lying up for a while, sleep: what was wrong with that?

  In Vegas he picked up a schedule. He’d flown out to California on a coast-to-coast one-way ticket from his mother-high-school graduation present, although a few lost credits kept him from walking with his class. The bus route back wasn’t as simple: Vegas to Denver. Denver to Omaha. Omaha to Chicago. Chicago to Cleveland. Cleveland to Buffalo. Buffalo to Albany. Albany to Pittsfield. Pittsfield to Inverness.

  Freedy caught the midnight bus to Chicago and soon fell asleep. He awoke to the sound of low voices, speaking Spanish across the aisle.

  “Hey,” said Freedy.

  “Yes?”

  “Is there some word, sounds like hermano?”

  “Si. Hermano.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “Brother.”

  Had Estrella ever mentioned a brother? Now that he thought about it, maybe she had; an accountant, or something surprising like that, in Tijuana. In case there’d been a misunderstanding, Freedy decided not to dime her out to the INS, which had been his plan. That was his sensitive side coming into play again.

  Peter Abrahams

  Crying Wolf

  3

  Nietzsche says of the New Testament: “a species of rococo taste in every respect.” Using the Christmas story as text, attack or defend in an essay of no more than two double-spaced pages.

  — Assignment one, Philosophy 322

  The shortest day of the year and therefore the latest dawn, but still it came too soon for Nat. Hunched over his desk in room seventeen on the second floor of Plessey Hall, head almost touching the gooseneck lamp whose similar posture had been mocking him all night, he tried to read faster. The problem was that chapter nine of Introduction to Macroeconomic Theory: A Post-Keynesian Approach for a Global Polity, like all the chapters that had gone before it, resisted fast reading. Three times, each slower than the last, he tried and failed to take in “with or without ignoring the realization that a deficit or surplus in the current account cannot be explained or evaluated without simultaneous explanation of an equal surplus or deficit in the capital account.” What kind of sentence contained two withouts? The words quivered on the page, threatened to change into something else, mere shapes, although interesting ones: he found himself gazing at a z. An unreliable letter, threatening in some obscure way, even unforgiving, or was all that merely the result of its comparative rarity, or association with Zorro?

  Association with Zorro? Nat sat back in his chair. What was going on in his mind? What was wrong with him? He’d never studied this hard, at the same time never had a shakier grip on the material, never felt his mind wandering so much. If at all, he began, then stopped himself, aware that he was about to wander some more. He rose, rubbing his eyes, and gazed out his window. Dawn, all over the place. He could alm
ost feel the earth spinning him toward that economics exam.

  “They’re shooting again,” he said.

  No answer.

  Turning, he saw that his roommate had fallen asleep on the couch, chem lab notes stacked high on his stomach. “Wags, wake up.”

  Wags was silent. Nat went over to him. Wags looked terrible, face unshaven and blotchy, hair wild and oily, eyelids and the pockets under his eyes uniformly dark, as though he’d been using some sort of deathly makeup. But Wags’s instructions had been not to let him fall asleep under any circumstances. How long had he been sleeping? Nat didn’t know. He touched Wags’s shoulder. “Wags.”

  Nothing. Nat shook his shoulder gently-Wags felt hot-and when gently didn’t work, harder.

  Wags smiled, a silvery thread of drool escaping from the corner of his mouth. His eyes remain closed, but he spoke. “I was having the sweetest dream.”

  “What about?”

  “Can’t remember. Helicopters? It’s collapsing in little pieces down the sides of my brain.” Wags’s concentration on whatever was happening inside his head was so intense that Nat felt his own mind focusing too, without result. Suddenly Wags’s eyes snapped open and he sat up abruptly-Nat could smell him-scattering lab notes all over the floor. “My God. What time is it?”

  “After seven.”

  “After seven? In the morning? Then I’m totally fucked.” He plunged to the floor, snatching up lab notes by the handful, pausing once to glare at Nat. “You want me to flunk out, don’t you?”

  “Right,” said Nat. “And then all this will be mine.”

  All this: the cramped outer room with their desks, computers, the couch, the cigarette-scorched hardwood floor, and off it the two bedrooms barely big enough for the beds. Wags laughed, a single bark, brief and unhappy.

  “They’re shooting again,” Nat told him.

  Wags got up, went to the window. “Just getting some establishing shots,” he said. It was the fourth or fifth film crew on the quad since September-filmmakers in need of an ideal college campus came to Inverness-and Wags had become an expert on their movements, mixing with the crews when he could and even landing a role as an extra in a made-for-TV movie about a fraternity brother in need of a bone marrow transplant, scheduled for broadcast in the spring. “Wait a minute,” he said, leaning closer to the window, leaving another oily nose print on the glass. His voice rose. “Is that Marlo Thomas?”

  Nat closed the economics book, shut off the gooseneck lamp, went down the hall to the shower. Wags stayed watching at the window, crumpled lab notes in both hands.

  After the exam-it had gone better than he’d expected-Nat went to the gym and took his hundred free throws, hitting ninety-one, despite how drained he was. The best he’d done since coming to the school: no explaining it. As he sank the last one, swish, barely disturbing the net, he realized that his answer to the last question had been completely wrong. Monetarism had nothing to do with it, completely irrelevant; they’d wanted all that current and capital account stuff, the two withouts. An essay question, worth one-third of the total grade. The mark of Zorro: he’d done not better than he’d expected, but worse, much worse. He hadn’t pushed himself, not hard enough, not nearly.

  Nat stood at the foul line, bouncing the ball. The workload, the speed, how smart everyone was. He thought of Arapaho State, where Patti was getting straight A’s, and where he could be playing on the team instead of entering data in the fund-raising office every afternoon for $5.45 an hour. He thought of the Inverness varsity, whose home games he had watched-they were now one and three-knowing he was good enough to play for them; not start, maybe, but get in for more than garbage time. He thought of his street, his house, the kitchen, his mom.

  The sudden feeling that someone was watching him made him turn. Not only no one watching him, but the gym was empty. He’d never seen it like that before. No one on the court, jogging on the track above, lifting behind the glass walls of the weight room. He went into the lobby, also deserted, looked through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the Olympic-sized pool. Empty too, the water still.

  Outside the same thing: not a person on the quad except him, not a sound from the surrounding dorms-no hip-hop, no techno or industrial, no Lilith Fair. For a moment he felt light-headed. Was he coming down with something? Then it hit him. This morning was the last period on the exam schedule. The departure of the students, the teachers, even the film crew, all vanishing at once like characters in a fairy tale, probably happened just this way every Christmas.

  The church bell-the top of the chapel tower visible over the gold-domed roof of Goodrich Hall, weathervane pointing north-tolled the hour. At the same time, a cold wind began to blow; from the west, Nat noticed, despite the weathervane. No snow had fallen yet, but everyone said the Inverness Valley was one of the snowiest places in the east. Nat looked up, saw a line of clouds closing over the sky.

  He wasn’t going anywhere for Christmas. There’d been money for only one trip home that semester, and he’d chosen Thanksgiving, although it was shorter, because Patti’s birthday had been the day after. He crossed the quad and went into Baxter to check his mail. Standing before the rows of brass letter boxes, he realized he was still holding the basketball.

  Nat put it down, turned the dial to J3, took out a letter.

  Dear Nat I’m so sorry about that little insident at Julie’s party. I don’t know what came over me. I’ll never drink like that again. For sure. You were so great about it. At least that’s what Julie said the next day. Joke. Everythings ok but I miss you so much and not looking forward to Xmas at all. One other thing I think I missed my period-but don’t worry, I maybe just got mixed up. I love you soooo much. Patti ps-my present should be there by now.

  Nat reached back into the box, found a small package. He took it back to the dorm. Wags’s lab notes still lay all over the floor of the outer room. Nat heard voices in Wags’s bedroom, glanced in the open door. No Wags. Clothes trailing over everything, and the TV on. One of those movie channels Wags liked to watch. An actor from the thirties or forties whose name Wags would know at once but Nat didn’t stared thoughtfully into his glass while an offscreen actress asked what they were doing that night. Nat smelled coffee, noticed a steaming cup on the windowsill, half full. He left the TV on, went to his own bedroom, put Patti’s gift on the bed.

  Tacked on the wall was a list of what he wanted to accomplish during the holiday: clean room laundry write home work out get to know town and surroundings

  ›on next semester

  That last one being the most important: Nat had registered for an American novel course that required reading a book a week, and he’d never keep up, would fall behind in everything, without a head start. Book one, Young Goodman Brown and Other Stories, already borrowed from the library, was waiting on the orange crate that served as his bedside table.

  Nat sat on the bed, picked up the book, but first reread Patti’s letter. He tried to see what she’d crossed out, partially distinguishing only one word- kissed, pissed, or missed- but nothing else. He swung his feet up on the bed, overcame the urge to take off his sneakers. No time for sleep: two hundred pages of Young Goodman Brown and Other Stories before dinner was the goal. He read the letter one more time. There, in the center of all those unusual silences-his room, the dorm, the whole campus-he could almost hear Patti’s voice. What had happened at Julie’s party didn’t bother him at all; what bothered him was the spelling. That, and the way she dotted the i in her name with a heart. Had she always? If so, it hadn’t mattered before. Why should it matter now?

  Nat opened Young Goodman Brown. The title page showed a woodcut of a young man striding down a country road. Someone had drawn a bottle of beer in his hand and a fat joint in his mouth. Nat turned the page.

  Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem village…

  Nat opened his eyes. It was dark. His gaze went to the window, but there was no window, at least not where he was looking. He’d f
orgotten he wasn’t in his bedroom at home. Rolling over, he checked the clock, read the numbers-11:37-but before he could make sense of them he heard footsteps in the outer room.

  “Wags?” he called, but his throat was thick with sleep; he cleared it and tried again. “Wags?” At that moment he remembered that he’d been leaning out of a helicopter in his dream.

  Silence from the other room. Then the door to the hall closed. 11:37 P.M. Wouldn’t Wags be home in Pittsburgh by now? Not Pittsburgh exactly, but someplace nearby called Sewickley, as Wags’s parents had mentioned a couple of times on the Parents’ Day visit in October, the significance lost on Nat at the time. Since then he’d learned that the country hid a network of Sewickleys with names like Greenwich, Chagrin Falls, Dover, Lake Forest, Grosse Pointe; that many students at Inverness came from those places; that Wags knew people they knew, and they knew people he knew.

  He sat up. Had the door to the hall simply closed, or had it been something else, more of a slam? Nat rose, switched on the lights, peered into the outer room, saw everything as it had been earlier, Wags’s lab notes still strewn on the floor, the screen savers of both computers in motion. He opened the door.

  A man was walking away toward the stairs at the far end of the hall, a big man carrying something heavy. Nat took in a ponytail swinging behind his head and an electrical cord trailing between his legs, two dangling things that his half-sleeping mind, still following the logic of dreams, tried to relate. By the time he realized there was no relationship other than the visual one he’d seen at first glance, the man had disappeared down the stairs. Nat went back into Wags’s bedroom. Wags’s TV was gone.

  Nat ran into the hall, yelled, “Hey!” He kept running, fully awake now, down the stairs to the first floor. No one there, but he picked up the sound of descending footsteps. Nat followed, heard the clicking of hard shoes on the old brick floor of the basement corridor. He yelled “Hey” again, took the last flight in one leap, swung around the banister post into the basement corridor. No one there.