Crying Wolf

by Peter Abrahams

  “Nietzsche would disagree,” Grace said.

  Nat was thinking about that when Izzie said: “So what’s he going to do?”

  Nat wasn’t sure who she meant.

  “About the endowment?” Grace said. “Take his time deciding. Quote.”

  Izzie nodded, as though that made sense to her. Nat doubted that either of them really knew what a home mortgage was, but they had no trouble understanding whatever manipulations were going on between Mr. Zorn and Professor Uzig, or Mr. Zorn and the phil department, or Mr. Zorn and Inverness, or whatever it was. Maybe it was a simple matter of Mr. Zorn delaying his decision until after the girls had graduated. Nat discounted that: a small-town, been-nowhere kind of notion; he remembered the gas station owner back home with a son in the Clear Creek football program, and the coach’s free fill-ups.

  They were both watching him.

  “You’re not trying to find a way,” Grace said.

  “I am.” Nat’s voice rose, taking him, taking them all, by surprise.

  “You can’t just go,” Izzie said. “You’re here. You’re right here.”

  “This kind of thing happens. I’m not the first.”

  “So what?” said Grace. She rose. “Let’s have a drink. We’ll think better.”

  She poured from the oldest bottle yet, Domaine des Forges, 1893; Izzie wound up the record player, put on “Caro Nome.” Nat didn’t think any better, but probably because he hadn’t eaten, the drink’s effect was immediate.

  “We’re lucky,” Izzie said.

  “Because we have money?” said Grace. “They say that causes problems of its own.”

  “But they’re problems of freedom,” Izzie said. “Other people don’t even get to those.”

  They both turned to him, awaiting confirmation from the land of other people. He suspected it wasn’t that simple, but before he could organize his thoughts, Grace said:

  “She’s right. Home equity, mortgages, all that step-by-step bullshit-by the time most people get past it, life is over. Piss on that. Working for decades just to get-just hoping to get-where Izzie and I are right now.”

  “That makes me feel better,” Nat said.

  Izzie laughed, then Grace. “Here’s to the problems of freedom,” Grace said.

  They drank. Izzie restarted “Caro Nome.” “Unless,” she said, turning from the record player, “Nat gets lucky too.”

  “In what way?” said Grace.

  “I don’t know. Writes a best-seller or something.”

  Nat was astonished: he’d never mentioned wanting to write to anyone.

  Grace and Izzie looked at each other. Nat had the crazy idea that for a moment their brains had hooked up, doubling normal human power.

  “That’s the point, isn’t it?” said Grace.

  “This isn’t about seven thousand dollars,” said Izzie.

  “Or scholarships, home equity, watching our pennies,” said Grace. “It’s about getting all that out of the way.”

  “In one stroke,” said Izzie.

  “I thought of Powerball,” Nat said.

  They glanced at him, said nothing. Grace got up, walked over to Izzie by the record player, refilled her glass, came to Nat on the couch, refilled his, started to refill her own-and dropped the bottle. A heavy, cut-glass bottle that just slipped from her hand, smashed at her feet.

  She didn’t seem to notice. “I’m having a thought,” she said.

  “Uh-oh,” said Izzie.

  “Shut up,” said Grace. “It’s-it’s so good. And it’s all right here, even the sound track.”

  Izzie’s eyes widened; maybe she saw it coming. Nat didn’t.

  “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “We’ll kidnap Izzie.”

  “For God’s sake.”

  “Or me, then. It doesn’t matter. We’ll kidnap me for ransom.”

  “How much?” said Izzie.

  “I don’t know,” Grace said. “Tuition, room and board, home equity, mortgage, miscellaneous-how about a million dollars?”

  “Sure that’s enough?” said Izzie.

  “In terms of the expenses?” Grace said. “Or do you mean-”

  “-what a real kidnapper would ask. It has to look realistic, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re way ahead of me, Izzie.”

  Izzie looked pleased.

  “This is a joke, right?” Nat said.

  “A joke?” said Grace. “Is that still a negative word in your lexicon? Shouldn’t our supreme insights-”

  “-sound like follies,” Izzie said. She giggled, a little giggle just like Grace’s, but that Nat heard now for the first time from her.

  “Like follies,” said Grace, “or even crimes.”

  She opened the leaded-glass cabinet doors, took out another bottle. “Hey,” she said. “Rouge.” She showed it to Nat.

  Romanee-Conti, 1917.

  “Is it a good one?” Izzie said.

  “Who knows?” said Grace, looking around for the corkscrew, not spotting it immediately.

  “Wait,” Nat said, because he knew. Mr. Zorn’s 1962 bottle of the same wine was worth $2,500. And therefore “Not to worry,” said Grace, striking the neck of the bottle sharply against the edge of a table. It snapped off; she found new glasses, poured.

  And therefore that might have been tuition, room, and board right there. Was there more, even one bottle? Nat checked the cabinet, found none.

  They drank. “My God,” said Grace.

  “Like having a drink with the czar or something,” said Izzie.

  The things she sometimes said: perfect, at least to his ear.

  Grace raised her glass. “To crimes and follies.”

  “You’re serious,” said Nat.

  “Why not?” said Grace.

  “Why not? Because it’s wrong.”

  “Is it?” said Izzie; that surprised him a little; perhaps things would have been different had it been Grace, but it was Izzie. Or if he had eaten more than a granola bar in the past two days, or hadn’t been drinking nectar on an empty stomach, or hadn’t been drinking at all since he’d never been much of a drinker, or this or that. “First of all, it’s not much money,” Izzie said, “nothing at all to him. He wouldn’t even notice.”

  “It would do him good,” Grace said.

  Izzie glanced at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. Forget it.”

  After a pause, Izzie continued. “Take that horse farm-how much do you think that’s costing?”

  “And we don’t even ride anymore,” said Grace.

  “Second, there’s no victim, no real crime, no one gets hurt or even scared.”

  “I just hide down here for a day or two,” said Grace, “there’s some sort of ransom demand, Izzie goes to pick up the money, I reappear, ka-boom. Nothing’s real.”

  “And third,” said Izzie, “it’s just.”

  “Just?”

  “Like land reform in Latin America,” said Grace.

  “Exactly,” said Izzie. “What fortune didn’t start with a little hanky-panky?”

  “Hanky-panky?” said Grace, and started to laugh; then Izzie started too, and finally Nat. It seemed like the funniest combination of syllables ever uttered. They laughed till they cried.

  Then they sat quietly for a few moments. Izzie looked at Nat, right into his eyes. “Fourth, you can stay.” Nat met her gaze, the candlelight catching those gold flecks in her irises, kept meeting it until he felt Grace watching.

  “The best part, of course,” said Grace. “And all those worries-home equity, mortgage, your mother’s job-”

  “Finis,” said Izzie.

  “So,” said Grace, “how about it?”

  Nat was silent. It wasn’t the money itself, but the freedom, just as Izzie had said. To be free of that yellow legal pad and future legal pads with their columns of figures adding up to worry, constriction, settling for second-best, or less. What was that cliche? Play the cards you’re dealt. He’d been dealt a new hand
. He’d entered this world of Grace and Izzie where some words- money, for one-had a different meaning. Money perhaps the most different of all: a world where a cash machine was no more than a box where you pushed buttons and out came money, as demanded.

  “Or maybe this place is a bit too much,” Grace said to Izzie. “Maybe he’s not that ambitious.”

  Izzie turned to him.

  That word: and the stern stuff that went with it. To be sweet and brilliant, a self-defeating combination. And if not sweet and brilliant, at least reasonably kind and fairly smart. He had a horrible vision of dying promise, promise dying, dying down the years, its first stage the long flight home. Come east but hadn’t cut it, for one reason or another. The candles, dozens of them, burned, the old wine glowed in the fine glasses, Galli-Curci sang her song from Rigoletto, romantic and alien at once: their sound track. If he went home? It would be the end of him and Izzie, he didn’t fool himself about that. And other changes: change would follow like falling dominoes. Maybe his mom would never find another job; things like that happened every day. Then he’d be working full time. Living at home. Night school. And then? What could he shoot for, what would he end up as, best-case scenario? A small-time lawyer like Mr. Beaman? A nauseating prospect. He suddenly knew one thing for sure: he wanted the big time. Perhaps the desire had been in him from the very beginning, but distrusted, denied, disowned, buried. He wanted it, more than Mrs. Smith, Miss Brown, the whole town put together. He remembered then a quotation from Nietzsche, one he’d highlighted a few days before, meaning to raise it with Professor Uzig: The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities. Ambition wasn’t necessarily an evil quality; still, he had no need for the professor’s explanation now.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  “Think about it?” said Izzie, disappointed, even shocked, as though he’d just revealed some unsuspected and damning flaw. Again: if only that had been Grace’s line.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  Izzie said: “Say yes.”

  He said yes.

  They drank. The brief exposure to air had turned the Romanee-Conti 1917 into something thin, tasteless, not wine at all.

  Peter Abrahams

  Crying Wolf

  22

  “God is refuted but the devil is not”-inevitable conclusion of Nietzschean philosophy?

  — Topic for class discussion, Philosophy 322

  What the fuck? Freedy almost said it out loud. Bad idea, of course, with him at the spyhole and big sister, little sister, and the college kid on the other side, like in a dollhouse. Freedy knew about dollhouses because there’d been one in his room, his room with the wall paintings and the “Little Boy” poem, when he was very young. Some theory of his mother’s about boys’ toys and girls’ toys, making boys into girls, world peace, more of her crazy shit. He’d smashed it to bits, of course, but only when he’d gotten a little older. Before that, he’d kind of played with it, reaching in, moving the tiny people around, maybe undressing that straw-haired one in the red-and-white checked skirt, and the boy one in the blue overalls, and then… His memory got hazy. But the point was he knew about dollhouses, knew about looking down on the world like a giant, hey! — like God. It was pretty cool.

  Like God. Amazing.

  Pretty cool, to stare through the spyhole, watch a whole kind of movie happening. Hey! — God the movie nut. Amazing. But there was a downside, he knew that already: not an easy job, what with all the information, coming so fast, so confusing, even for someone with his kind of brainpower. He felt a moment’s passing respect for God: who’d want to do this forever?

  Confusing things, like some situation involving the college kid, impossible to understand. Home equity loans, tuition, rooms, boards, seven grand, a lost checkbook. Didn’t add up.

  Unless that seven grand was lying around somewhere. Now that would be nice. Freedy was thinking how nice it would be-seven grand, three hundred per laptop, how many laptops was that? — when the college kid looked up, looked him right in the fucking eye. Or almost; his gaze slid up the wall a foot or two, fixed on something Freedy couldn’t see.

  But a close call.

  And then right away, another: he had to sneeze. What was going on? Did he have allergies all of a sudden, like those women whose pools he’d cleaned in California? He put his finger under his nose the way you were supposed to. That worked, or almost worked: the sneeze that came was tiny, made no sound at all.

  Except little sister got a funny look on her face. Smash. Ka-boom. He could be through that wall in a second.

  But the moment passed. Freedy’s muscles relaxed, just hung on his bones, heavy and still. Felt good.

  Felt good, but that didn’t help him deal with the confusing things. Confusing things, like big sister and little sister were swatting flies or something, and then: Leo. Leo Uzig. This name kept popping up. Professor. On his laptop. Taught a course his mother thought Ronnie was taking. Ronnie? How could that be? Had a wife. Helen Uzig. A wife with money. Wife made him… made him what? What was that? Shave… shave off that-some word he didn’t catch and then two words he did- walrus mustache.

  Something walrus mustache. The something word sounded a bit like ridiculous, but wasn’t. He tried to recall it exactly, gave up.

  But walrus mustache: he’d caught that.

  Walrus.

  Plus it turned out Leo Uzig was famous. And his wife had money.

  Confusing: but Freedy was an amazing person. Why? Because, despite all the confusion, with all this information whipping by, the moment he heard that Leo Uzig’s wife had money, what was the first thing he thought of? Yes. Money. Specifically, the envelope he’d steamed open, so wisely, it turned out, with the two C’s inside.

  It was all coming together. Everything had a meaning. He’d heard that. He’d also heard that nothing meant anything. So what? None of that mattered. What mattered was his future. Pool company. Florida. Stick, stick, stick. And as for getting his hands on big sister and little sister, showing them what a man was, a real man, a buff, diesel, andro-popping, meth-tweaking fuckin’ animal like him? That would be nice.

  Meanwhile, he was missing stuff. Action central, Freedy, action central. Action central, like the room with all the monitors, where you could watch everything coming together.

  Someone else’s name came up, a name even stranger than Uzig; sounded Chinese maybe, Ni Chi. One of them, Uzig or Ni Chi, was a fake, but before Freedy could sort that out, the dolls in the dollhouse were drinking and talking about money again.

  Fine with him, except that the music started up, with that horrible singing.

  Turned out that big sister and little sister had money, possibly from hitting the Powerball number. Seven grand meant nothing to them, chicken feed. Why would it, you hit the Powerball number? Maybe this was a celebration. That would explain the wild look on big sister’s face-she was something, drop-dead, fuck-you and wild. Was she a little drunk too? Or a lot. She dropped the bottle; it shattered on that thick purple rug with the blue flowers, but none of them seemed to notice.

  And then. Whoa. Kidnapping? A million dollars? They were afraid of kidnappers, because of the Powerball score? No, no no. They… they weren’t afraid of kidnappers-they were planning a kidnapping of their own! To get their hands on the Powerball money? And kidnapping who, exactly? That had to be important.

  What was this? They were planning to kidnap one of themselves? Which one? Little sister? Big sister? Before he could get a handle on that, they shifted to the home equity thing again. Out came another bottle. More breaking glass. Were they all stoked on drugs or something? What drugs? Freedy wanted to know.

  Something was going down. Big sister and little sister were hot. They were physical. Couldn’t keep still. Freedy could see that. The college kid, he was the still one. Dragging his feet about something or other. A wimp, of course, and so breakable in two. First Freedy would let him ha
ve a good one, right in the gut. Then A million dollars wasn’t much money?

  No victim? No crime?

  Big sister? They were going to kidnap big sister? Maybe yes, maybe no. A strange kind of kidnapping. Big sister was… going to hide out right here, down in the dollhouse? Did he get that right?

  And then what? Little sister picks up the money?

  Ka-boom? Big sister said ka-boom, the exact same word that had been on his mind at the exact same moment. Had to be an omen, an omen of the very best kind.

  Then: they were laughing their heads off. Why? A little hanky-panky. They were going to get naked and fuck each other’s brains out, after all, as he’d secretly hoped, all of them this time, and, for Christ sake, let it be right there in the big room, instead of sneaking off to the bedroom the way little sister and the college kid had last time, where Freedy couldn’t see, not even hear very well.

  Freedy waited for the hanky-panky to begin. They took their sweet time. A little bit of talk, mostly silence and waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for the college kid to stop dragging his feet. That was it. Freedy got it now: as soon as the college kid said yes to whatever they wanted him to say yes to, the sisters would come across.

  Say it, you asshole. To get those two to come across who wouldn’t say whatever it took? Yes was easy.

  The college kid said it. Finally. And guess what? They didn’t come across. Women. Did the college kid know how to handle that, did he get pissed, slap them around? No. Instead they all had another drink, like the best of friends, then started blowing out the candles, climbing that rope ladder, clearing out. Next minute, they were gone, leaving nothing but the blackness, the smell of melting wax, the horrible singing. Nothing had happened, nothing at all. Was it just some sort of game, more college shit? What the fuck?

  Maybe because of all these questions, all this confusion, Freedy got a little lost on his way out of the tunnels. He thought he was in F, headed for the subbasement of building 87, at the edge of the backside of the campus and therefore closest to home. Problem was, it took way too long. He finally flicked on his light to see where he was. Good thing: he was in Z, two steps-two goddamn steps-before the drop-off near building 13. He shone the light over the edge, illuminating the steel ladder bolted to the wall and the brick floor thirty feet below, at least, where some workie had broken his neck long ago.