Crying Wolf

by Peter Abrahams

  Christmas Eve, five o’clock, party in the library. The Zorns’ library, on yet another floor, above the bedroom level, wasn’t dark-paneled and musty, like the library in an Agatha Christie mystery, but all glass and blond wood, with tall windows and northern views. By now Nat knew that the apartment had 360-degree views of the city, but its size and structure remained unclear to him. The party was not exactly a party, although a waiter was serving drinks and everyone but Nat and the girls was dressed up; it was just a gathering before people-there were about fifteen or twenty in the room, one of whom, a TV network newswoman, Nat recognized-went off for the evening.

  Mr. Zorn showed no interest in whatever heroic feat Nat had performed, but peered at the gift bottle, as though attempting to see through the wrapper, and said: “Interested in wine, Nat?”

  Wary of a minefield of wine questions, Nat said: “I’m underage.”

  Mr. Zorn looked up; a quick look, but careful. Then he smiled at him, not warm, not cold, not emotional at all, but an intelligent smile, if that made sense-Nat had never seen one quite like it. “But quick-witted,” said Mr. Zorn.

  “Very,” said Grace.

  “Very what?” said Mrs. Zorn, coming up. She wore something black and low-cut that exposed most of her breasts; a huge pear-shaped diamond-had to be a diamond, Nat thought-hung between them. The effort to keep his eyes off the spectacle almost made his head hurt, although no else seemed to be taking any notice.

  “Quick-witted,” said Izzie.

  “Who are we talking about?” said Mrs. Zorn.

  “Nat,” said Grace.

  Mrs. Zorn looked blank for a moment, then turned to him: “Really?” she said.

  Grace and Izzie both frowned in annoyance, their foreheads furrowing identically.

  “I guess not, since I don’t know what to say to that,” Nat said.

  Everyone laughed-Mr. Zorn the loudest-except Mrs. Zorn.

  Yes, this is fun. Creme de la creme and I’m having fun.

  Mr. Zorn raised the gift bottle. “Nat’s brought us a little something.”

  “How thoughtful,” said Mrs. Zorn.

  “In fact…,” said Mr. Zorn, glancing at a nearby door.

  “Not now,” said Grace.

  “Pay no attention to Grace,” Mr. Zorn said. “She likes to give me a hard time. That’s how I tell them apart.”

  Grace and Izzie exchanged a glance, beyond Nat’s interpretive power. Izzie looked away.

  “Not now what?” said Mrs. Zorn. “What is everyone talking about?”

  “Too late,” said Izzie.

  Mr. Zorn had already taken Nat’s hand, drawn him away. Nat followed him through the doorway, down a dark corridor, into a vaulted stone room. It had a heavy door, studded, creaking, the kind found in fairy-tale castles. Mr. Zorn closed it. Nat looked around.

  “Do you like oxymorons, Nat?” said Mr. Zorn.

  “Like a cellar on the seventieth floor?” said Nat.

  “Seventy-first.”

  A wine cellar. Wine in racks, wine in bins, wine in cases on the floor: thousands and thousands of bottles, receding into the shadows. Something of a hobby with Mr. Zorn.

  “Bordeaux and Burgundy, respectively, along that wall,” said Mr. Zorn. “Italian, Spanish, Portuguese-including port and Madeira-at the back, Australian in the corner, and finally domestic. Plus odds and ends, here and there. Someone’s coming in from Paris to reorganize the whole shebang. What would you like?”

  “What would I like?”

  “A little sample. It’s to drink. People forget that.”

  “Burgundy,” Nat said; the word was in the air and it was also the team color of Clear Creek High.

  “Perfect,” said Mr. Zorn. “Especially at Christmas.” He set Nat’s gift bottle on a dark table as heavy and ancient as the door, and moved down the row of bins. Nat realized he did like oxymorons, liked, too, wine cellars on the seventy-first floor. The thought arose-and he banished it at once, untrue-that he was living for the first time.

  Mr. Zorn returned, blowing dust off a bottle. “How about this?” he said, holding it so Nat could read the label.

  Romanee-Conti. The name meant nothing to Nat. “Looks good,” he said. Then he noticed the date: 1962.

  “Crack ’er open,” said Mr. Zorn.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Mr. Zorn handed him a corkscrew. “Do the honors,” he said. “We can try some of yours, too.”

  They both eyed the gift bottle. Suddenly the bright wrapping paper seemed a little too bright to Nat. “What the hell, right?” said Mr. Zorn. “It’s Christmas Eve.”

  Nat glanced at the corkscrew. The first problem was that he’d never used one. The second problem was harder to put into words, but had to do with the contrast between the two labels: the simple black on white of the Romanee-Conti, with no illustration, versus the red, orange, and yellow of Mr. Beaman’s wine, Blind River Blush, with its picture of a fish leaping high over a bunch of grapes. The third problem was that Blind River Blush had a screw top.

  Nat took the bottle of Romanee-Conti from Mr. Zorn. He noticed a tiny price sticker on the back: $2,500. For a moment his fingers went numb; he could see they were holding the bottle, but had no idea how. The problems all compounded. He actually thought of saying he had to go to the bathroom. But no: he was good at solving problems, wasn’t he? He tried to think of some light remark, failed, and went to work.

  First, the burgundy-colored foil around the top: he dug his thumbnail under it, stripped it off, exposing the cork. Second, the corkscrew. A strange corkscrew, nothing simple about it. It had at least two moving parts, one the screw itself, which probably wouldn’t function until he swung this other, flanged one open. He swung it open, moved the screw to a right angle with the… handle, yes, must be the handle, stuck the point of the screw into the cork.

  “Tried them all,” said Mr. Zorn. “This is the best.”

  “The wine, you mean?” said Nat, looking up; he felt sweat on his upper lip.

  Mr. Zorn laughed. “Some think so,” he said. “But I was talking about the corkscrew-these simple Parisian waiter’s corkscrews work better than any of the fancy gizmos out there, don’t you think?”

  A perfect chance to say, I’ve never actually used this kind before, and hand the whole affair over to Mr. Zorn. But Nat let it go by. He could do it. Twisting the screw deep into the cork, he said, “Really goes in there.” A light remark, perhaps, but idiotic. He felt his ears reddening, a new sensation. But at the same time, he realized what the flanged part was for-had grasped the underlying mechanics-got it in place, applied pressure, levering pressure. The cork began sliding out. Triumph.

  “How’s your father, by the way?” said Mr. Zorn.

  Nat’s arm jerked convulsively, as though he’d lost all control of it. The cork popped free but his arm continued its wild gesture, striking the gift bottle on the table, knocking it over; the bottle rolled, fell, crashed on the stone floor. A muffled crash, the broken glass held inside the thick wrapping paper. Only the wine leaked out, forming a pink pool at Mr. Zorn’s feet.

  “Looks interesting,” he said. “Too bad.”

  Or some other observation that Nat, staring at Mr. Zorn across the table, barely heard. “My father?” he said.

  “Is he still with those Silicon Valley people?”

  “I don’t have a father.”

  “You don’t?” Mr. Zorn stared back at him. “Weren’t you on Grace’s floor at Choate?”

  “No.”

  “Not the captain of the soccer team?”

  “No. I… I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.”

  Mr. Zorn’s gaze went to the spilled wine, then to the Romanee-Conti and the corkscrew with the impaled cork, still in Nat’s hands. He laughed. Nat laid the wine and the corkscrew on the table.

  Mr. Zorn picked up the corkscrew. “A happy misunderstanding, then,” he said, unscrewing the cork, “since we got to have this nice little visit. Shall we rejoin the others?”
He stuck the cork firmly back in the bottle of Romanee-Conti.

  The door opened and Grace came in. “Time to go, Nat,” she said. “Paolo’s here.”

  “Paolo?”

  “Izzie’s boyfriend.”

  “You don’t know Paolo?” said Mr. Zorn.

  Nat lost his concentration for a few moments and somehow managed to track pink zinfandel on the oriental rug in the library. No one noticed; the colors were similar.

  Paolo had a car with a driver and diplomatic plates. He sat in the back between the girls, his arm over Izzie’s shoulders; Nat sat in front.

  “Paolo’s a count,” Grace said.

  “That’s very silly,” said Paolo, opening a bottle of champagne. He had a slight accent that somehow made English sound better.

  “But true, isn’t it?” said Grace.

  “Grace,” said Izzie.

  A difference right there: some character difference, but everything was happening fast, and Nat couldn’t put his finger on it.

  “Come on, Paolo,” said Grace. “Show us some count ID.”

  “Count ID?” said Paolo, drinking from the bottle and passing it to Izzie. “Have you ever in life heard such a concept, Nate?”

  “It’s Nat,” said Nat.

  “Not Nate?” said Paolo. “I am familiar with Nate as a typical American name, but not Nat.”

  Izzie, glancing at Paolo, drank some champagne and passed the bottle to Grace.

  “And kings have scepters,” Nat said, “so maybe the concept of count ID isn’t so crazy after all.”

  Grace and Izzie both burst out laughing, spraying little jets of champagne.

  “Fuck,” said Paolo, even making that word sound almost pretty. He spoke to the driver in Italian; the driver passed him a handkerchief, and Paolo dabbed at his pant leg.

  Izzie kissed him on the cheek. In the rearview mirror, Nat saw Grace’s eyes narrow. “Sorry,” Izzie said.

  “It’s nothing,” Paolo said. He dabbed some more.

  Grace extended the bottle over the seat to Nat. Nat wasn’t much of a drinker, and had made a promise to his mom never to mix drinking and cars, so the reply no thanks formed automatically in his mind. But he hadn’t tasted champagne, and, what the hell, it was Christmas Eve. He drank. It was good, very, very good. He was alive and he knew it, like never before. The driver kept his eyes on the road.

  Paolo took them to parties. There was more champagne, at first very, very good, later simply cold and fizzy, after that just wet.

  Parties. A Brazilian party where Nat, wedged next to the conga drums, fell under the illusion that the drumskins were playing the drummer’s hands, and not the other way around.

  A party in a dance club where they were ushered in past a long line at the door, and where he danced first with Izzie, then with Grace, then with an older woman who had an intense face and cords sticking out on her neck; he shared a frozen rum drink with her and she wriggled her hip against him. He felt immensely strong, strong enough to pick her up and set her on the bar in one easy motion, which he did. She threw back her head and laughed and laughed, the cords in her neck sticking out even more, her stiletto-heeled foot sliding up his leg; Izzie, no, it was Grace, he could tell by her temperature even before he checked the hair, drew him away.

  A party in Greenwich Village where he found himself in a bathroom with seven or eight people, where a photograph of the party givers having sex hung over the bathtub, and where a Thai stick, something he’d heard of but never seen, went round and round, with him declining every time until Izzie spoke into his ear: “You’re pretty cute, you know that?” No: it was Grace. This time he had to look; their voices were identical, deeper than most girls’ and a little ragged at the edges, as though they’d been up all night, or had been singing at the top of their lungs, or were fighting some infection. Grace’s tongue tasted smoky.

  But how did he know that?

  Later, somewhere else, he and Paolo urinated side by side, a bottle of champagne perched on Paolo’s urinal. “Ah, Nat,” said Paolo, pronouncing the name with great care, almost adding a second syllable: Nat-te. “You know what is everyone asking me tonight, Nat-te?” Paolo said.

  “Where your scepter is?”

  Paolo regarded him from the corner of his eye. For a moment Nat thought Paolo was going to take a swing at him. But Paolo was in the middle of pissing-they both were-and it would have been messy, and Nat knew from the handkerchief episode that Paolo didn’t like messes. “What everyone is asking me, Nat-te, is which one dyes the hair. Because there is one way only to know for sure, if you are following.” Paolo winked at him.

  Nat had heard a lot about diversity, had answered test questions about it and written his SAT writing sample on the subject, but he hadn’t understood how different human beings could be, one from the other, until that moment. He thought of Christmas Eve at home: Mom always made an oyster stew, a few friends came over, Patti and her dad the last two years, everyone opened one present, they drank eggnog from little clear-glass cups that appeared only at Christmas, Mom sat at the piano and they sang a few carols. With the time difference, it might still be going on. He turned his wrist to check the time and found his watch was gone.

  “I am having a bad feeling you miss the import of the question,” said Paolo, shaking off. “Identical genes, therefore the hair must be identical, therefore one is an artificer. Do I say that right?”

  “They’re two different people,” Nat said. “There are other ways to tell them apart.”

  “Don’t be silly. Is there no biology studies in America? Even their father cannot tell-which is the reason why the hair color in the first place.” He zipped up. “So we have a big question, and everyone is asking the person in a position to know. To know beyond a shadow of the doubt. Useless to ask, of course, so don’t you bother, Nat-te. I am what used to be called a gentleman.”

  “What’s it called now?” said Nat.

  But too late: Paolo was gone. Nat went to the sink. It turned out that counts didn’t wash their hands. Maybe he said it aloud. “Counts don’t wash their hands.” He washed his, laughing to himself. Then he thought he heard someone crying, went still, heard nothing but the running water. In the mirror, he saw that now he did look different, a lot.

  Nat was still staring at his image, kind of stunned, when one of the stalls behind him opened and Izzie stepped out. She didn’t look at him, either in the mirror or in life, but went out, not speaking.

  “Izzie?” Nat hurried after her, but had trouble with the door, somehow locking it for a few seconds, or maybe a minute or two, and when he emerged into a hall swarming with people, she was gone.

  “Ever smoked one of these before?” said someone.

  “What is it?” said Nat.

  “ ‘What is it?’ Who are you, Inspector Gadget?”

  Nat didn’t remember anything after that.

  He awoke in the night with someone breathing against his ear.

  “You’re pretty cute.”

  “Izzie?”

  “Bzzzz.”

  “Grace?”

  “Boinggg.” She slipped her hand inside his shirt; no, he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

  He sat up; no, tried to. “Where are we?”

  “Home is the hunter.”

  Her hand moved lower. He might not have been wearing pants either. Her hand, so different from Patti’s hand; knew exactly what it was doing, for one thing. Nat thought that moment of the conga drummer’s hands, a mixed-up thought that went away. He put his hand on hers to stop her.

  “How did we get here?”

  “Public transportation, like good little citizens. You gave up your seat to a transvestite. Tres galant.”

  Surely she was making that up. “What time is it?”

  “Night.”

  “I think I lost my watch.”

  “You talk too much.” She put her mouth on his, got her hand free, down between his legs.

  Nat turned his head away. “I really can’t, Grace.”
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  “Different opinion down here.”

  Nat tried to see her in the dark, couldn’t. “It’s not that,” he said. “We don’t know each other.”

  “I know you.”

  “I meant we don’t know each other well enough.”

  “If everyone waited for well enough, we’d be extinct.”

  Nat laughed. “I know, but-”

  “But what?”

  “I have this-I have a girlfriend.”

  Grace stopped what she was doing. “At school?”

  “Inverness, you mean?”

  “What other school do you go to?”

  “No,” Nat said, “she’s not at Inverness.”

  Grace started up again. “Still on the prairie, then. What’s her name?”

  “Patti. And there’s no prairie.”

  “Let me guess-she spells it with an i. When do we meet her?”

  Nat pulled her hand away, sat up, succeeded in sitting up this time, felt dizzy and a little sick. “Yes,” he said, “she does spell it with an i.”

  His voice sounded strange to him: harsh and maybe even powerful. Powerful. Was this the immensely strong effect he’d experienced at the dance club, still with him from the champagne? He felt Grace moving away, heard her stand up.

  “What convenient morals you have, Grandma,” she said.

  “Convenient?”

  She snorted. “Playing dumb’s not you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  But was he really surprised when she said: “No? What would you be doing right now if it was Izzie in your bed?” He was not.

  He said nothing.

  Grace said: “Piss on that,” and left the room.

  Nat lay back down. Was it just that he saw Izzie as the underdog and had always been one of those rooters for underdogs? How could someone like Izzie possibly be called an underdog? Was it instead some crazy competitive thing, that Izzie wasn’t available and Grace was? Or simply that he was a little afraid of Grace?

  He closed his eyes, thought about returning to Inverness in the morning, even-but just for a moment-of going home. The steps outlined themselves in his mind: packing, paying Albert what he owed for the gift wine, finding the bus station. He slid down into sleep, and was almost there when it hit him that he’d forgotten all about his hundred foul shots, the first day he’d missed since he’d begun in fifth grade. His eyes opened wide. He remembered the basketball hoop on the deck down below, thought about getting up. Thought about it, but stayed where he was, eyes open.