Crying Wolf

by Peter Abrahams

  “You told Grace about Patti?”

  More than that, and worse, if his memory of that drunken and stoned night in New York was accurate: he’d used Patti as a shield. “I did,” Nat said. “The thing is-”

  Izzie held up her hand. “You don’t have to explain anything,” she said.

  “There’s nothing to explain. It was over. I just didn’t do it right.” Couldn’t have done it worse.

  “And us?” Izzie said. “Are we over too?”

  A door, not to the great room, but another one, opened and Grace came in, carrying a framed photograph. “Hey, Izzie,” she said, then saw Nat. “Oh. Nat.”

  “Hi.”

  “Still speaking to us?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You’re not returning calls.”

  He was silent.

  “Maybe you misinterpreted what went on,” Grace said.

  “Which was?”

  Grace paused. Her gaze went to Izzie, back to Nat. “Didn’t Patti explain at the airport?”

  That raised several questions in Nat’s mind. He voiced the simplest. “How do you know I saw her at the airport?”

  “She called me the next morning.”

  “She did?”

  Grace nodded. “Didn’t have to. No thanks were necessary. But she’s so… sweet. Worried about the money and everything.”

  Let me guess-she spells it with an i. “I’m paying,” Nat said. Why hadn’t he thought of that earlier?

  “Don’t be silly,” Grace said.

  “I’m not being silly.”

  “No need to get angry. The amount’s inconsequential.”

  “That’s not the point. I’m paying.”

  Grace laughed.

  “What’s funny? I can pay.” But not right away-it would probably have to be in installments drawn from coming Alumni Office checks; should he also start looking for a second job, down in the town? How he wished he could just whip out his wallet and hand over whatever the amount was on the spot.

  “It’s not that,” Grace said. “Don’t be so touchy.”

  “Then what’s funny?”

  “I just don’t want this to degenerate into farce, that’s all.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Farce. The maid under the bed, someone else in the closet, British accents, you getting stuck with the bill.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do I have to spell it out?”

  Izzie shook her head at Grace, almost imperceptibly, but Nat caught it from the corner of his eye.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Grace said. “Look what I found.” She set the photograph down on the table. Nat took it in at a glance: Professor Uzig when he was young, not much older than they were. Took in that, and the resemblance to the bust of Nietzsche-not the features, Uzig’s being much sharper-but the similar thinking poses, and the fact that the professor when young had worn a mustache much like Nietzsche’s. He stood in front of that place at the bottom of the hill, the Glass Onion, its sign unfaded.

  Nat waved his hand in the air, waving away distraction. He clipped the edge of the frame by accident, knocking the photograph over. “Spell it out, whatever it is.”

  “No, Grace,” said Izzie.

  “Why not?” said Grace. “He’ll feel better in the end.”

  “Say it,” said Nat.

  Grace said it: “You may not be-you may not have been-the father.”

  Nat felt sick, didn’t want to hear another word.

  “Something about too much to drink, homecoming weekend at Pismo State or whatever it is, a football player. She wasn’t really too clear. But the kind of thing that goes on here every weekend. A moment of weakness, in this case followed by another-coming here. Her words, not mine. Call her if you don’t believe me.”

  “You think I’d do that?”

  “I apologize,” Grace said, laying her hand briefly on his. Her fingers were icy; it was cold in Professor Uzig’s library, snow blowing by the leaded windows. Nat sat down, resisted the impulse to put his hands over his face.

  “What did that accomplish?” Izzie said.

  Grace turned to her, eyes narrowing. Before she could reply, Professor Uzig stuck his head in the room and said, “Dinner, young people.”

  “Ah, dessert,” said Professor Uzig when the cake appeared. “The course America likes best.”

  “Where are you from, anyway?” said Ferg; he’d built a little palisade of empty beer bottles around his place setting. Everyone else, except for the domestic-violence girl and Nat, was drinking wine.

  “Brooklyn,” said Professor Uzig. “Your native soil as well, if I recall.”

  Ferg’s mouth opened but no words came.

  A startling revelation: Nat had expected some answer like Prague, Munich, Trieste. Startling and with a lesson that applied to him, cut through his misery about Patti, not making it go away, but showing why it must: he was in the right place, doing the right thing. And therefore while he might return to his hometown, would for sure, he would never live there again. As for Patti, who wasn’t in this place: as for Patti-but he hadn’t completed that thought before Izzie, sitting across the table, caught his eye. She smiled, a hesitant smile, as though asking if he was okay; at least, that was his interpretation. He smiled back and started pouring himself a glass of wine. Why not, after all? Then he remembered: He’ll feel better in the end. Feeling better so soon? He stopped pouring, the glass half full.

  “With the question of origins out of the way,” said Professor Uzig, rubbing his hands together-white hands, long and hairless, the fingernails gleaming as though coated with some colorless polish-“who wants to play the future game?”

  No one said they didn’t. Professor Uzig passed out three-by-five file cards. “Simply write in a sentence or less what you imagine you’ll be doing in twenty years.”

  Everyone wrote. Professor Uzig collected the cards, read them silently to himself, his face expressionless. “First card,” he said: “Inner-city doctor.”

  That was easy-the domestic-violence girl.

  “Record producer.”

  Ferg.

  “Dead.”

  “Not funny, Grace,” said Izzie.

  “A writer.”

  A writer. Everyone guessed the smart girl from English 103, promoted by the English department beyond Nat and Izzie’s 104 to some sophomore-level course.

  “I confess,” said the smart girl.

  The funny thing, known only to Nat, was that writer had been his thought too, but, not wanting to jinx it, he’d written teacher instead.

  “Teacher,” said Professor Uzig, looking around the table. His expression changed abruptly; he went still. Everyone followed his gaze. A woman had appeared between the open French doors to the dining room, an old woman with a ring of white hair. She wore a quilted white housecoat, a white tissue sticking out of one sleeve, and white slippers.

  “I thought the department meeting was next week, Leo,” she said; an old person’s voice, all the bottom sounds missing.

  The note cards slipped from Professor’s Uzig’s hand. “Correct,” he said. “This is Phil three twenty-two.”

  “Phil three twenty-two?” she said. “That’s still going on?” She scanned the faces around the table. “What a bushy-tailed bunch, Leo. I’d forgotten how bushy-tailed these bunches can be. What’s the craze this year? Aboriginal rights? Prescription drugs? Ritual baths?”

  Ferg laughed; a loud laugh, choked off almost at once.

  The old woman advanced into the room. “What are we drinking?” she said.

  “I understood you weren’t feeling too well,” said Professor Uzig.

  “You understood right, Leo, as always. I feel like Marie Antoinette after the guillotine, like Cleopatra after the asp, like…” She couldn’t think what else. One of her eyes was tearing; she dabbed at it with the tissue, had trouble sticking it back in her sleeve.

  A nurse entered, st
raightening her cap. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I went to relieve my-I went to the rest room, and the next thing I knew Mrs. Uzig had…” She took the old woman’s elbow.

  “Like Anne Boleyn after the… after…”

  “Then why not go back to bed?” said Professor Uzig, his voice much gentler than Nat had ever heard it. He hadn’t imagined certain things about Professor Uzig, that he could have been born in Brooklyn, that he’d be caring for an aged mother.

  “Come, dear,” said the nurse.

  “Come, dear,” mimicked the old woman. “Why should I, when all the fun’s down here?” She picked up Nat’s glass. “How’s the wine?”

  “I haven’t actually tried it yet,” said Nat.

  “Proving youth is wasted on the young. Are you familiar with that expression?”

  “I’ve heard it,” Nat said.

  “A careful reply.” She took a sip. “Can’t taste a thing, of course. But I’m sure it’s good-I taught him everything he knows about wine, paying for it in the bargain.”

  The nurse tugged a little harder at her elbow.

  “You don’t mind sharing your wine, do you, young man?”

  “No,” said Nat.

  “What’s your name?”

  Nat told her.

  “Enchantee,” she said, extending her hand as though she expected him to kiss it. “I am Helen Uzig.” Nat shook her hand: skin like paper, green veins almost on the surface, pulsing light and fast against his fingers. “Enchantee,” she repeated, “accent aigu on the second e.”

  “Please, dear,” said the nurse, pulling now.

  “Keep your panties on,” said Helen Uzig. She looked right at Professor Uzig and repeated the remark. The nurse pulled again, a little harder, and this time the old woman gave way, half walking, half in tow, toward the doorway. “Good night, my bushy-tailed friends,” she said, as the nurse got her out of the room. “And never forget that Nietzsche is something one must grow out of,” she added from down the hall.

  There was a silence. Ferg, on his sixth or seventh beer, broke it. “Your mother’s pretty cool.”

  “My mother is dead,” said Professor Uzig.

  “Huh?” said Ferg.

  But Nat got it.

  The prize in the cake was a well-preserved piece of eight, found by Professor Uzig himself off Jost van Dyke, pierced to make it wearable as a pendant. It turned up in Grace’s portion.

  Once, in Boulder after a high-school student government conference, Nat had found himself in a pickup basketball game that included a few CU players. It was the only basketball he’d ever played where everything had happened too fast. Now, leaving Professor Uzig’s house, snow falling but the moon somehow shining at the same time, an effect-black snow streaks over the disk of the moon-that he’d never seen before, he had that feeling again. He needed to slow things down, to go back to his room, to do nothing. The three of them went down to the cave instead. They were college freshmen. It was Saturday night.

  19

  Does the superman make you uneasy?

  — Professor Uzig in class, Philosophy 322

  Saturday night. Freedy’s favorite night of the week, by far. What else was there, if you thought about it? Sunday, Monday, Tuesday nights all sucked, everyone knew that. Wednesday was a little better, Thursday better yet-he’d even been known to cut loose on a Thursday night, like one time down in Tijuana after those fires or earthquakes canceled the Friday schedule. Friday night was famous coast to coast, of course; but at jobs he’d held, A-1 Pool Design, Engineering, and Maintenance, and others not worth remembering, Saturday was a working day-not a normal working day, because no one expected normal work when everyone was a little wasted, although he would expect it, by God, when he got set up down in Florida, whose money was it, anyway? — but still, a working day, taking some of the fun out of Friday night. That left Saturday night, just one goddamn night to be totally… totally whatever. Freedy came alive on Saturday night. He was in the habit.

  Totally whatever. That put it perfectly. Saturday morning Freedy lifted over at Ronnie’s, feeling real strong, stronger than he had for a long time, since California, in fact. Then he and Ronnie had a few beers, watched an infomercial about real estate or maybe getting into retail, Freedy wasn’t sure. Didn’t matter: they were always the same, as he told Ronnie. Idea, plan, stick.

  “Fuckin’ A,” said Ronnie. “I never thought of that.”

  “Works for everything,” Freedy said.

  “What do you mean, everything?”

  “Give you a for instance, Ronnie. What do you want to do tonight?”

  “Huh?”

  “Just answer. I’ll show you how it works.”

  “What I want to do tonight?” said Ronnie. “Get laid, I guess.”

  “Okay. That’s the idea part. Now for the plan. How are you going to make it real?”

  Ronnie thought. “Head over to Fitchville?”

  “Fitchville? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Thing is,” said Ronnie, “there’s sort of a girl.”

  “You’ve got some piece in Fitchville?”

  “Nothing what you’d call serious.”

  What the hell was going on? Ronnie had a girlfriend? How did that compute? “What’s the story?”

  “No story. She’s pretty nice.”

  “Pretty nice?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “I still do a little reffin’.”

  “Reffin’?”

  “You know. Reffin’ basketball. Pays twenty-five bucks a game. I got my certificate way back.”

  “So?”

  “So she plays on the team. Point guard.”

  “Fuck are you talking about? What team?”

  “Fitchville South.”

  Fitchville South? “You’re fucking some high-school girl?”

  “I wouldn’t say fucking, exactly,” said Ronnie. “She’s not ready yet.”

  “She’s not ready yet?”

  “She’s just a sophomore,” said Ronnie. “But I get hand jobs.”

  Fuckin’ pathetic. But that night-sitting in a bar near the state line, a stripper bar, but because of the snow only one stripper had shown up and she was on a break-Freedy’s mind gravitated to the subject of hand jobs. Nothing wrong with hand jobs-American as apple pie. Once Estrella had given him a hand job in the Burger King drive-through in West Covina. Home of the Whopper. He kind of missed Estrella. But what good would that do? She’d fucked it all up with that brother scam or whatever it was. He ordered another beer, and a shot of V.O.; he was starting to like V.O.

  He liked hand jobs, too: but a sophomore? Some pimple-faced kid with baby fat? Not cool. The cool thing would be a hand job from some classy girl, the drop-dead fuck-you kind. Not Estrella: take away all her good points and what was left? Just another wetback among millions. Did he know any classy girls of the drop-dead fuck-you kind? No. Had he even actually seen one in real life? The surprising answer to that question came as he was knocking back the last of the V.O. He’d seen two!

  Two. Double your pleasure, double your fun. Two, as drop-dead fuck-you as they came. As drop-dead, fuck-you as those TV miniskirt lawyers of Ronnie’s, except these two were real, real flesh and blood, down there in that underground palace where F tunnel hooked beneath building 68. The underground palace-what was that all about? Some mystery, some college shit from the past, buried down there. Who cared? What mattered was that those two classy girls had discovered it too. Probably thought of it as their little secret. An amazing, what was the word? Insight. That was it. An amazing insight. They thought of it as their little secret. But he knew! Amazing. And he was amazing too, because just like that he’d figured out where ideas-the first step on the infomercial road to success-came from. Get an idea, they said, step one, they said, but they never told you where ideas came from. And now he knew. He’d figured it out, all by himself. Was he some unit in the common herd? Oh, no. He was an original, like, thinker. On
e day he’d be making infomercials of his own. He knew that with absolute certainty. Why? Because he’d figured out where ideas came from. They came “I said c’n I get you another?”

  Freedy looked up, up into the face of some waitress, not a classy, drop-dead fuck-you face, more like the opposite. Just the basics-face, tits, cunt. “Saturday night, why not?” he said. So cool.

  “Phew,” said waitress, “thought you were on one of those toxic-shock trips there for a sec. Bud and a shot of V.O.?”

  “Make it a Bud Light.” Had to keep his head clear.

  She went away. Ass. He’d left out ass. Face, tits, cunt, ass. Easy to make a joke of it by saying forget about the face part. That would be crude. There were crude guys around, but not him. He sipped Bud Light like a gentleman, tried the V.O., went back to the beer, back and forth, but like a gentleman, taking his time, cool and moderate. Had to keep his head clear. Why? Because things were happening, were going to happen. He didn’t know what things, but the… elements, yes, the elements were in place. Take Einstein. Had Einstein known what those theories of his were leading to? ’Course not-he just knew things were going to happen. Ka-boom.

  But-as Freedy went to the can to piss away several beers and V.O.’s-one thing Einstein must have known about, just like him, was where ideas came from. He went into a cubicle, snorted the tiniest possible snort of meth. Ideas: they came-this was incredible! — from the crashing together, the collision, of two… two things. Two… forces! Yes. Such as: those two drop-dead fuck-you girls thought the underground palace was their little secret. That was force one. But he knew. That was the second force. Ka-boom. And out of that ka-boom-Freedy stepped from the cubicle, saw himself in the mirror, more diesel than ever, smile whiter than ever, like Superman with bigger muscles and a ponytail-out of that ka-boom came an idea, new and fresh: he would go back down to the palace, down where F tunnel hooked under building 68. When? Why not now? It was Saturday night.

  He popped an andro, and as he did saw another cubicle open behind him. A guy came out zipping up, a guy in a state trooper’s uniform. A fuckin’ statie, wearing the Smokey hat. You wear it in the crapper? Freedy came close to saying that aloud, probably would have if it hadn’t been for the way the statie was eyeing him in the mirror. What the fuck was that all about? Then he remembered the meth. What cubicle had he been tweaking in? Couldn’t have been the one next to the statie, could it? Hard to tell. Freedy turned on the tap, washed his hands. The statie broke off eye contact-his image stopped staring at Freedy’s was what really happened, as nice a bit of meth thinking as you could ask for, but the main point was that Freedy could stare anybody down, what with those eyes of his that resembled some British actor’s-and went out. “Ever heard of hygiene?” Freedy said; but not loud. He wasn’t afraid of some statie with bad personal habits, wasn’t afraid of any cop, for that matter, but this was no time for distractions. Idea, plan, stick, stick, stick.