Fell Back

by M. E. Kerr

  Her gloved hand held an umbrella over her head. On the other hand, long nails, unpainted but glossy. A ring with a red stone.

  “I’ll come back to pack Paul’s things next week, or the week after,” she said. “Does it matter?”

  “You know, I’m fairly new here,” I told her. “I’m not the one to ask.”

  “Then why do you act as though you’re in charge?”

  I hadn’t expected that, nor her sharp tone.

  “I don’t. Why do you think I do?”

  “You’re the one with all the opinions.”

  “You came to me and asked for them,” I reminded her.

  “I didn’t. I came with Daddy.”

  She was toying with the gold 7 around her neck, under her Burberry. She went right on. “We’re going to give Rinaldo my brother’s clothes. Apparently that’s who Paul wanted his things to go to … And he can keep everything Paul gave him.”

  “Why tell me?” I asked her.

  “So you don’t start any rumors about that, too.”

  “I didn’t start any rumors, Lauren. I made a comment to Dib.”

  “Which was overheard by a lot of people.”

  “I blurted it out. I wasn’t trying to spread it around.”

  “I wish you’d tell Cyr you were the one. He thinks it was Rinaldo.”

  “Why does he care? No one said he did it.” Not out loud, anyway.

  “We don’t want all these rumors and bad feelings between you guys. Just let Paul rest in peace.”

  “Gladly,” I said, “but why does Creery care?”

  “Because of that fight they had. How would you feel if someone jumped to his death immediately after you’d had a fight with him?”

  “They were always fighting, Lauren.”

  “Still.”

  “Don’t worry about Creery. He’ll roll a few joints and forget all about it.”

  “He claims there’s such a thing as The Sevens Revenge.”

  “That’s an old rumor … Besides, what did he do to deserve The Revenge?”

  I’d heard of it, of course. It was said that if you told The Sevens secrets, or if you were guilty of Conduct Unforgivable, you were taken to The Tower and a live rat was tied around your neck. Surviving that, you were given the silent treatment until you resigned and left Gardner. There were other versions, each with a rat in it … and though The Revenge supposedly had not been performed since 1963, rumors about it were part of Sevens lore. One death was attributed to The Revenge. An automobile accident an alumnus had, while a rat was tied to his ankle, was said to be The Revenge too.

  I tried a smile, to lighten things up. I smelled her perfume and thought I knew its name. Obsession. Keats always wore it. Lauren didn’t smile back at me. I was getting wet. She made no attempt to share the umbrella.

  She said, “Latet anguis in herba. Do you know your Latin?”

  “I know that Latin. Your brother taught it to me.”

  She decided to translate it anyway. “The snake hides in the grass.”

  “It was his motto,” I said.

  “Sometimes I can see why it was,” she said. “Fell, I don’t happen to believe in hormonal loss. What I believe is that people who don’t know how to care about other people get obsessed with things. Clubs, for example. The way my brother was about Sevens.”

  I didn’t know what she was leading up to, but I couldn’t have agreed more. I was always suspicious of guys who got too attached to their schools or their private clubs and fraternities. I figured they were probably getting their first taste of belonging anywhere, that maybe no one had ever made them feel important before.

  “I know,” I said. “Your brother felt about Sevens the way a Doberman feels about his backyard.”

  “I don’t think it did Paul any good. A club doesn’t love back. It can’t take the place of people. You get twisted putting all your energy into a club.”

  “I think so too,” I said. I was a little amazed that we could agree on something.

  Then she said, “A theory, theories, do the same thing when you begin to put all your energy into them.”

  She wasn’t talking about Lasher and Sevens anymore. She was after me.

  “People with too many theories about other people don’t have real feelings for other people,” she said.

  “I have both,” I told her. I was getting wetter. “If I was carrying that umbrella, you’d be under it, along with all my theories.”

  “Touché,” she said. “Get under for a sec.”

  While I did, she said, “What I’m going to ask you to do isn’t my idea — it’s Daddy’s. And you might as well know Dr. Skinner said you weren’t the ideal person to ask.”

  “Well? Ask.”

  “You have too much attitude, Fell.”

  “I was thinking that about you this morning.”

  “My brother did a lot of writing. Daddy wants to take his best pieces and put them in a memorial book. Would you read through everything and select them?”

  “Why does Daddy think I’m the one to do that, and Skinner think I’m not?”

  “Daddy likes you. Skinner thinks you’re better off not dwelling on Paul’s death.”

  I was too curious to play hard to get, and the wind was pushing the rain down my neck.

  Lauren said, “Daddy will pay you, of course.”

  “All right. I’ll give it a try. Where are the manuscripts?”

  “They’re with Mrs. Violet at Sevens House. Your name is on the package.”

  “You and Daddy aren’t short on confidence.”

  “Dr. Skinner said you were short on cash, so you’d have to get a hundred dollars, at least. Daddy thought that was cheap.”

  “I have to get a new business manager. Skinner’s not working out at all.”

  Down by the black Mercedes, Lauren’s father called out, “Come on, honey!”

  She said, “One other thing: Daddy wants a few pictures of Paul in the memorial book. I’m going through his album, and I’ll get some to you.”

  “Does your father know your brother wrote a lot about death and suicide?”

  “Paul used to keep a noose in his room. He’d tell mother it was just in case he felt like having a last swing … We were used to Paul.”

  Lauren’s father called her again.

  She said, “But now both my parents are into denial.”

  Inside the Mercedes her mother honked the horn impatiently, three times.

  Chapter 5

  The Sevens had turkey roast on Friday nights, steak on Wednesdays. Always fresh vegetables, fresh asparagus that night. Don’t ask me where they managed to find it the last week of January.

  While we ate, the committee for The Charles Dance was announced, and I was on it.

  Named for The Sevens’ founder, it was a major event at Gardner, held every March on our anniversary. Dorm boys and their dates were invited too. Females wore evening dresses, but all males came in costume as someone named Charles. The ill-omened rulers of England and France were favorites, from Charles II (the Fat) to Charles III (the Simple), but any Charles would do.

  In the dining room of The Tower the only art was a lighted portrait labeled Wife of Damon Charles. We knew that if Gardner ever went coed, as our trustees were threatening, female Sevens would be outraged that like Lot’s wife in the Bible, she had no name of her own. Did The Sevens even know what it was? I doubted it. She was a handsome and regal brunette in a white gown and pearls. Underneath Wife of Damon Charles was a quote from Wordsworth:

  Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;

  Like twilight’s, too, her dusky hair.

  Before the chocolate cake was served, while the uniformed waiters cleared the table under the candlelit chandelier, we all sang our song together.

  “When I was a beggar boy,

  And lived in a cellar damp,

  I had not a friend or a toy,

  But that was all changed by mere chance!

  Once I could not sleep in the cold,
<
br />   And patches they covered my pants,

  Now I have bags full of gold,

  For that was all changed by mere chance!

  Mere chance, mere chance. “

  Rinaldo made an entrance from the kitchen, carrying a tray filled with cake on the light-blue 7’s-crested plates.

  “Mere chance makes us gay,

  Mere chance makes night day,

  But whoever she’ll choose,

  She can also make lose.

  Mere chance has her way,

  Mere chance.”

  I leaned back in my chair to try and get his attention. I wanted to say I’d see him after dinner. If I didn’t move fast on that word processor, someone else would. Maybe now that he’d become heir to so many valuables, he’d let Dib and me pay in installments. Maybe not … and maybe he’d charge too much. But I ought to get it settled.

  He went right past me, looking straight ahead, ignoring my “Pssst!” There was a watch on his wrist, lots of gold and stainless steel. The good Gstaad?

  I decided to take a look at his shoes. My dad used to tell me a man’s shoes say a lot about him. That was back before everyone was into Reeboks, when shoeshine still meant eager/accountable/ready.

  And sure enough, Rinaldo had on black Reeboks.

  Suddenly I saw very clearly one white Reebok get between Rinaldo’s black ones.

  Next, Rinaldo was on the floor.

  So was the silver tray and the cake and the china.

  The white Reebok had disappeared under the table.

  I took a look at its owner. I never had liked that face. It used to remind me of my own back when I was running with fast-track kids in Brooklyn, rebelling against being a cop’s son, proving I could get as wrecked as anyone else.

  Out of the infirmary, Creery seemed fully recovered. A skinhead last semester, he was letting his hair grow in. He already had a thin tail in back, reaching down toward his neck. There were the same two skull earrings in his right ear, and a silver GUNS N’ ROSES pendant around his throat.

  At the sound of Rinaldo and the cake plates crashing to the floor, Creery’s mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. He did not look over his shoulder to see the damage he had caused.

  Since Lasher’s death it hadn’t been fear of seeing my old self in that face. It was more the feeling that if I did take a good look at it, I’d see Lasher in those eyes of Cyril Creery’s. I’d see Lasher

  f

  a

  l

  l

  i

  n

  g … the way a certain old girlfriend of mine — Delia — always used to write my name:

  F

  E

  L

  L

  Chapter 6

  Did anyone else see Creery trip him?” Dib asked.

  “I doubt it. I was the only one looking at Rinaldo’s feet.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Rinaldo picked himself up. He and the other waiters cleaned up the mess, and they brought out more cake. You know The Sevens: The good life always goes right on.”

  “I don’t know The Sevens,” said Dib. “I only know you.”

  “You know what I mean, though. If there’s a soul mourning for Lasher, I don’t know who that’d be.”

  Dib was tearing the wrapper from a Milky Way. “How does somebody get into Sevens when no one even likes him?”

  I let the question hang there.

  Dib said, “Got any instant coffee?”

  “Help yourself.”

  I didn’t live in a room — Dib was right when he said that earlier in the day. I lived in a suite. Dib got off the bed and went into the other room, where there was a small refrigerator, a hot plate, a leather couch, a coffee table, some chairs, and a view of The Tower from the window. Private bath on the right.

  I stretched out while I listened to an old Talking Heads song and thought about the reason Creery would be gunning for Rinaldo. Because of what Lauren had told me, I supposed. Because Creery thought Rinaldo’d spread the rumor Lasher’d been murdered.

  If someone had spread a rumor about me being a kleptomaniac, I wouldn’t react unless I’d had a habit of walking out of stores with things hidden in my pockets.

  Creery had always looked for a fight with Lasher. He was our resident cynic. He’d named his tree Up Yours. He’d slap his knee and laugh hysterically when Lasher’d speak about Sevens in the same way someone in a cult would drool over their guru. I remember how he cracked up once when Lasher had explained the habit old grads had of meeting for drinks only at hotels and restaurants with seven letters in the names. The Ritz, in Boston. Laurent, in New York. Creery’d almost wet his pants over that one.

  Lasher had hated him, too. Everyone in the Sevens House was familiar with the scent of incense wafting from Creery’s room, masking the marijuana smell inside. He was not the only pot smoker on The Hill, or in Sevens, but he was the only one who took advantage of the freedom we enjoyed in Sevens House, where there were no proctors or faculty, and Mrs. Violet, our housemother, rarely came above the first floor.

  He flouted our self-regulatory system flagrantly. There was always one. Some grumbled about it; most minded their own business.

  It was the kind of thing Lasher would lose sleep over.

  He’d dog Creery’s footsteps, whistling “Twilight Time” and promising to get Creery.

  Lasher’d been in Sevens since he was fourteen.

  Lasher used to get tears in his eyes when he’d hear the song The Sevens sing to let guys know they’re in. The one we sang at the memorial service. Creery’d ride him about it, put his knuckles to his eyelids and mimic him.

  I didn’t know much about Lasher’s life before he got to The Hill, but he’d named his tree Suicide.

  Even after he was in the club, he wrote all these plays about Death, and he kept a noose in his suite at Sevens, too. Creery always asked him why he was stalling, why didn’t he pee or get off the pot.

  Still, it didn’t seem like old cool-head Creery to care whether or not there were rumors Lasher’d been murdered. Unless he’d had something to do with the murder.

  Dib came back with some Taster’s Choice, turned down Talking Heads, and asked me point-blank if I thought Creery was capable of murder.

  “My dad used to say anyone’s capable of it, but not many are sufficiently provoked at the same time they have a weapon handy. That’s why he was against ordinary people having guns around.”

  “What about being sufficiently provoked by someone while you’re at the edge of a cliff … or standing on top of that tower?”

  “Same thing, I guess.”

  “What about defending yourself when someone’s about to murder you … and there you are at the top of that tower?”

  “It could have happened that way…. I remember the night I got in Sevens: Suddenly Lasher was right behind me at the top of that thing. He said, ‘Look down there at the ground and tell me if it makes you want to jump.’“

  “You never told me this.” There was always a slightly resentful tone when Dib would discover I wasn’t reporting back to him the way we used to tell each other everything, anything, before Sevens, when the two of us were new on The Hill.

  “He was holding me near the edge of the wall, and I thought, He’s crazy. I’m up here by myself with this maniac.”

  “What did you do, Fell?”

  “There’s an elevator in The Tower, you know.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Not many people outside of Sevens do. Creery came out of it at that point and told Lasher to knock it off…. Lasher was just trying to scare the hell out of me. All of Sevens knew I was up there with him, but I didn’t know they did.”

  “Fell,” Dib said, “Creery killed Lasher. I’m positive of it.”

  That was when a new voice was added to the conversation. Lionel Schwartz’s. You could have said he was the president of Sevens, except president had nine letters in it instead of seven. So Schwartz was our captain.

/>   “Sidney Dibble,” he said, “you’ve got a wild imagination.” He was chuckling like a lenient parent who’d just heard his three-year-old say the F word.

  We called him The Lion. He wanted to be an actor. He had on a tweed sport coat with leather elbow patches, a red bow tie against a blue-and-white-striped shirt. Dark-brown hair cut short and parted down the center. John Lennon spectacles. He always looked like a lot of planning went into how he looked.

  The Lion was the kind of guy you didn’t get next to easily. You saw him in all the school plays. You couldn’t miss him strutting around campus while everyone called out his name and hoped he’d remember theirs. He had SPECIAL written all over him.

  He was also the kind of guy Dib envied and resented. I would have too, if I hadn’t made Sevens. But propinquity changes your view of people. In Sevens we knew his mother was a madwoman, in and out of institutions. We’d hear him trying to reason with her on the house phone, reassuring her that the doctor wasn’t from the CIA, that the neighbors weren’t making bombs, and telling her no, he couldn’t come home, not in midterm.

  We knew certain Sevens’ deepest secrets, guarding them as if they were our own.

  But to Dib Lionel Schwartz was arrogant and vain. Worse, he was patronizing. I could feel Dib losing ground facing him down. “There’re a lot of unanswered questions,” Dib muttered.

  “There always are when someone kills himself.” Schwartz was still smirking, rocking on his heels with his hands stuck in the pockets of his trousers. He told Dib, “I’d like to talk with Fell, if it’s all right with you.”

  Dib jumped to his feet and said it was fine with him, he’d see me tomorrow.

  “How long is the talk going to take?” I asked Schwartz. I figured Dib could sit it out downstairs in our reception room.

  But Dib didn’t wait for The Lion’s answer.

  “I’ve got a paper to write tonight anyway,” he said.

  He was out of there.

  Chapter 7

  Schwartz sat down in the captain’s chair next to my bed.

  “Seven,” he said to me. So he was there on Sevens business, following the formalities. This ritual was to seal our conversation as confidential. Probably they did it at The Ritz and Laurent, too. Maybe someday years from then I’d be meeting someone, leaning on my cane, my hair white, starting off “Seven.”