by M. E. Kerr
When I got up to my room, I saw that Dib had left a red 7 hanging on my doorknob. All Sevens were issued one, which we could hang there when we didn’t want to be disturbed. No one in Sevens House went through a door with one on it.
I pocketed it as I went inside.
The living room was dark, but I could see through to the bedroom, where there were green letters lit up on the face of the word processor.
I switched on a light and got out of my coat. I grabbed a Soho lemon spritzer from the refrigerator.
I supposed Dib had left me a message For My Eyes Only, probably something against Sevens … me and Sevens.
I wanted to relish the corned beef sandwich before I read it. I wanted to think a minute about Nina. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, someone wrote. Not the same one who wrote Duty before pleasure.
There was just enough Dijon on the bread. I was too hungry to care that the bread was white and fell into the empty-carbohydrate category, too ravenous to regret it wasn’t rye or pumpernickel. Too starved to miss a fat dill-and-garlic pickle.
I began demolishing it, still standing, which is the only honest position for rationalizing. All I’d agreed to do was report back to David Deem if Nina tried to see Dragon. Technically, she hadn’t tried to see him, only Dragonland … Chances were that what she’d found there would be enough to discourage her from ever wanting to see him again.
I played it back a few times and it didn’t have a discordant note.
My dad would have said it was too pat.
But my dad hadn’t arrived at his judgments when he was seventeen, horny, and far from Brooklyn.
I finished the sandwich and carried my bottle of lemon spritzer in toward the green letters.
Dear Lionel,
The enclosed copy of a letter from Cyril Creery to his stepbrother is self-explanatory.
I think you will agree that this is more serious than anything that has ever been handled in Twilight Truth, although ideally it should be done in that manner. However, it is unlikely, as you’ll see in the fifth paragraph, that Creery would ever on his own allow it to be used in that ceremony.
The letter came into my hands because a concerned outside party knew the information in it was vital to Sevens. I make no apologies for passing it on to you, since the honor of Sevens has, for me, always had priority over any other principle.
I’ve held on to this since Christmas, weighing what course to take. Surely this calls for The Sevens Revenge … and for the immediate ouster of Cyril Creery from our organization.
Sincerely,
Paul Lasher
Lasher’s letter had been written three days before his death.
I reached up and switched on my desk light.
Dib had left a note on my blotter.
It wasn’t a tutorial inside — it was a regular microwafer I came upon when I pushed Microwafer Directory and found LETTERS.
There are others there: complaints to stores, and one to his father about the delivery of the Porsche, but nothing pertinent.
They are all permanently stored, so just pull the microwafer out, turn the two switches off, and CALL ME.
Dib
I called him.
“What do you think Creery’s letter could have said, Fell?”
“How would I know?”
“And what about The Sevens Revenge? You said it was a myth.”
“I thought it was. It’s news to me, too.”
“Sure. Surprise, surprise.”
I couldn’t convince him that I was as much in the dark as he was, but we made a date to meet in the morning.
I fell asleep reading about the Crusades and dreamed that Nina was handing me Creery’s letter. Then her face turned into Delia’s, and she said, “Surprise, surprise, Fell.”
Chapter 17
Saturday morning.
Nobody’d ever warned me about winters in Pennsylvania. The cold sky hung heavy above me, like some enormous net over a ballroom loaded with balloons waiting to be freed with the jerk of a rope, only snow would pour down. Everyone walking along the streets had little white clouds puffing out of them, their postures bent and huddled into benumbed bones. I had the heater going full blast; ditto the radio: warming up with INXS, Big Pig, and John Cougar Mellencamp.
I cruised up and down Playwicky Road. It was narrow and twisting, with few trees save for the oak I’d stood behind the night I’d seen Lowell Hunter come out of number 6.
Anyone on foot would be seen immediately in the daytime.
Most of the apartment houses had parking lots behind them. There were few cars. Those that parked out front were also too conspicuous for any serious surveillance.
I headed for the nearest supermarket, where you were most likely to find boxes of all shapes and sizes.
Dib was standing in front of the dorm when I pulled up at eight. He hadn’t expected me to arrive in a car. I had to beep the horn. He ran toward me layered in a turtleneck, a shirt, a crew-neck sweater, a parka. Levi’s, boots, his old navy-striped Moriarty hat pulled down over his ears.
“Where’d you get the wheels?”
While I told him, and he interrupted to say he had to have something cold to drink, I got the first blast of a breath that could probably have killed little flying things as easily as anything Black Flag made.
“There’s a store down on Main near the bus stop. You can get a Coke there.”
“And aspirin,” said Dib.
“How did you tie one on in the dorm?”
“I went out for an hour after your call.”
“With your gang?”
“Just Little Jack. You don’t mind if I have a little fun too, do you? … Where are we headed?”
“The only thing I can think to do is follow the one lead we have, while I have a car.”
“Lasher’s letter is the one lead we have.”
“I’m talking about Playwicky Road now.”
“Let’s talk about why Lionel Schwartz didn’t mention that letter to the police.”
“Dib, we went over that last night. He might have mentioned it, and they might have their reason for keeping it quiet.”
“I think Sevens is keeping it quiet.”
“You told me what you think. Now let me take a look at number six Playwicky and see who’s meeting Creery there.”
“I’m not in any shape to sit around watching an apartment when we don’t know what we’re looking for.”
“You don’t have to watch it. You have to help set me up. Then you can go back to the dorm and sack out.”
“I might even have to puke,” he said.
He wasn’t kidding. He looked pale. He was rubbing his stomach the way you’d soothe some frightened animal.
“What’s the big box in back?” he asked.
“I’ll explain that later…. Dib, you look and stink like something died in you.”
“Cork it, Fell! I’m just hung over.”
“What’s going on with you? Do you drink a lot, or was last night a first?”
“We go out.”
“Where do you go when you go out?”
“Around, Fell. What difference does it make to you? I have to have other friends.”
“You can get yourself expelled — that’s the difference it makes to me.”
“Unlike you, hmmm?”
“Maybe I can’t get expelled, but I can’t get away with drinking either. We’re self-regulatory, but the bottom line’s the same.”
“‘Just a song at twilight.” Dib sang off-key.
“Well, it’s better than getting the boot. You’re asking for it, Dib.”
“You’ve swallowed Sevens hook, line, and sinker, Fell.”
“I don’t even hang out with them! I’m so busy tutoring a townie, it took you to bring that letter out of the machine.”
“What about the gold 7 you got your mom?”
“I got it for her, not for me.”
“My mom wouldn’t wear one of those things, even if I was in Sevens. She do
esn’t buy designer clothes, either, and not because she can’t afford to. She says she’s not a walking advertisement for Calvin Klein or Gucci.”
“Yours has been around more than mine. Mine’s easily impressed, maybe.”
“You’re easily impressed, Fell.”
“I’m not easily asphyxiated, or your breath would have killed me two blocks back.”
We both began to laugh.
The tension that had started crowding us was broken. At Main Pharmacy he bought some Binaca for his breath and a couple of cans of cold Sprite.
• • •
A block before Playwicky Road, I pulled over to the curb.
“I learned this from my father,” I said. “He’d do this when he was staking out some place they were dealing drugs. We’re going to put that big box back there up where you’re sitting, and I’m going to get inside it. See where I cut the holes?”
He gave a look. “What am I going to do?”
“After I get inside the box, you’re going to drive up in front of the house. You’re going to leave me under the box. You can catch a bus back near the pharmacy.”
“So it’ll just look like a car with a box in it.”
“Right…. When my father’d be watching a crack house, sometimes he’d be stuck inside for a whole afternoon. He’d take along a wide-neck water bottle to piss into.”
“Neat, Fell! And you’ll be all right by yourself?”
“Why not? I’m just going to watch the place. Maybe I won’t see anything important. But I want to try and find out who’s there besides Creery and Lowell Hunter.”
“It’ll be a Sevens, for sure, and what’ll that tell you?”
“I’ll know when I know.”
“And you’re going to tell me when you know?”
“Yes. I’m going to tell you.”
“Is that a promise?”
“It’s a promise.”
“Because it’d be easy for you to lie.”
“I’m not going to. We’re in this together.”
Dib chugalugged a Sprite.
He said, “What happens when you’ve seen what you came down here to see?”
“I slip out from under and drive off. I don’t care so much about being seen after I find out who the third party is, I don’t think…. But this way I can choose my time to exit the scene.”
We got out of the BMW and began putting the plan into action.
Before I got up under the box, I said, “Anything you’ve got to say to me, say now. When you pull up and park, you get out fast and walk away.”
“I’ll meet you back at the dorm. What time?”
“Hard to say. I have to return the car.”
“I’m going to sack out anyway, so I’ll be in my room all afternoon.”
“I’ll call you when I’m back on The Hill.”
It was twenty minutes to nine.
“You’re going to freeze your ass,” said Dib.
Chapter 18
My father used to call that kind of surveillance B.S. He meant Box Surveillance, but he meant B.S., too, because that’s what it was, a real crappy detail. You couldn’t eat, glance at a newspaper, listen to tapes, or do anything but ache to scratch all the parts of you suddenly itching in violent protest at what you were doing. Your body also gave you two-minute spots of coming attractions if you kept it up: arthritis, headache, muscular aches and pains, constipation, urinary incontinence: the gamut.
Sometimes he’d come home from B.S. filled with ideas of how our lives were going to change. Mom wasn’t going to work for a caterer anymore, she was going to become one. Since I loved cooking so much, I was going to apprentice myself to some famous chef in a fancy New York restaurant. Jazzy would go to day care. Dad would turn down any future assignments that might involve crack houses. We were going to shape up as a family…. Sure, because that’s what you do under a box. You promise yourself you’ll never be under another one. You begin making grandiose plans for yourself, and for everyone in your life.
By ten o’clock I’d enrolled in the hotel management program at Cornell University, where I’d work my way through in some kitchen. I’d canceled all Mom’s credit cards, begun a savings plan for Jazzy’s college, and gone through the 7s directory to see what alumni had connections with restaurants, inns, or resorts…. I’d talked Dib into going in on the venture with me (even though God knew he’d eat us into the poorhouse), and finally I’d found out Delia’s address. For once and for all I’d see her again, one last time, the final period, as Nina’d put it, at the end of the sentence.
At ten-thirty I was cold enough to go into rigor mortis, and my normally reliable bladder was blaming me for the coffee I’d brewed back in my room at Sevens and swallowed down on the run.
At twenty minutes to eleven a red taxi from Cottersville Cab stopped in front of the BMW.
I watched while Creery got out. The same long gabardine coat, the Sevens scarf, Timberland boots, and the blue wraparound Gargoyle shades.
He said something to the driver, gave him money, and loped up to number 6. Mark Twain let him in. I saw him smile and clap his arm around Creery’s shoulders as he shut the door.
The taxi driver cut the motor and lighted a cigarette.
I counted three more cigarettes smoked and tossed out the window before the driver turned his motor back on, still sitting there, waiting. It was not only freezing cold; there was a wind rising ominously, and I had no doubt that he was tuning in to local radio for the forecast. Snow and gales, followed by blinking digital clocks.
In minutes the snow began dropping in large wet, white flakes. Something dime sized on my back dared me not to itch it. My neck was threatening to lock itself in one position forever. I was starting to sweat, the kind that turns cold and clammy, when I saw the front door at number 6 open.
Creery first … then Lauren Lasher appeared.
She was hanging on to him, not because she needed to, not that way. Because she wanted to. It was all over her eyes.
He was carrying her Le Sac, a big beige thing he had over one arm. Her gloved hand was on the other arm.
She had on a short khaki storm coat with a fur collar, and wide-wale khaki corduroys tucked into boots with thick navy-blue socks tucked over the boot tops. Her long, black hair touched the red scarf tied around her neck.
She was looking up at him. He was looking straight ahead. He didn’t look happy. She had the kind of look you have when you’re worried about someone you’re with. She was talking to him, her lips pursed as though she was saying soothing things.
Then they were telling each other good-bye. Not in words. She had her arms around him. Finally his went around her, too. I couldn’t see his face at that moment. Only hers. Her chin nestled in his neck.
He opened the cab door and she got in. He passed the Le Sac to her and gave her a little two-fingered salute, unsmiling, then finally smiling as though she’d said, “Can’t you at least smile?” as my mother’d asked me to, at Christmas, when I’d posed for pictures she was taking.
I waited for the cab to take off, and for Creery to go back inside number 6. Then I got out from under and over into the driver’s seat.
On Saturdays the buses to Miss Tyler’s, in Princeton, left from the Cottersville Inn every three or four hours.
I caught up with the red cab, heading down that way.
Out in front of the inn I caught up with Lauren, honking at her as I pulled over.
She came walking toward the car with a raised eyebrow, shaking her head as though she’d found me out.
I’d been trying to think how I was going to start the conversation, but she started it for me.
“So that was your car. Where were you, Fell?”
No way was I going to say under the box. I said I was “around.” I asked her if we could talk.
She said inside, it was too cold, and she had to make a phone call first. She’d meet me in the lobby.
I parked the BMW behind the inn, took care of my bladder in the m
en’s, and waited for her in the lounge.
• • •
The Cottersville Inn was where Miss Tyler’s girls stayed weekends they attended dances or dated on The Hill. They were always put on the fourth floor, off-limits to any males but uniformed waiters carrying trays.
In the lounge on the first floor the usual Saturday morning fare was being offered on TV. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
A few Miss Tylerites were vaguely involved while they waited for their dates or the school bus back.
Lauren got her coat off and sat down. She had on a red sweater and the gold 7.
“I’m going back on the noon bus,” she said, “so there isn’t time for you to lie about how you happened to be up on Playwicky Road this morning.”
“In time to see that tender farewell between you and Creery,” I said. “You’re full of surprises, Lauren.”
“So are you, Fell. Everyone will know at The Charles Dance anyway. We’ve been seeing each other. Is that all right with you?”
“If it’s all right with you, it’s all right with me.”
“I hope so. I just talked with Cyr. He thinks Sevens is spying on him. On us. I told him that was your BMW outside. He wants to know what you’re after.”
“I’m not part of any Sevens team, Lauren.”
“Are you the one who found out about us and told Paul?”
“Your brother knew? I didn’t realize it was going on that long.”
“Cyr and I sneaked around like thieves,” she said. “No one over here knew, so we thought. We wrote each other more than we saw each other. Even Daddy didn’t know, still doesn’t. We met last October. Cyr was someone else’s blind date. I took one look at him and that was it.”
I tried to imagine what she could have seen in that one look that would make her fall for Creery. His skinhead? The two earrings in one ear? The stoned look in his eyes, like a chicken’s staring back at you? Yet she was sitting there admitting it, and wearing his gold, I was sure. Fondling the 7.
