The Books of Fell (16 page)

I could have walked back to The Hill or caught the bus at the comer of Main and Hickory.

I thought of Dib and decided in favor of the bus. I wanted to tell him all that Rinaldo had told me.

But a block before Hickory I turned into Playwicky Road.

While I’d been at the Deems’, I’d forgotten Lasher and Creery. For all the luxury at Sevens, I’d missed cooking, and eating a meal in a quiet room where there was a female. I’d missed a living room and a four-legged creature padding around.

I remembered Jazzy dressed up as a question mark in a kindergarten play last Christmas. She’d had to recite some lines from Kipling:

Temporarily, anyway, I’d parked the six serving men at the curb, and reveled in the idea of being in a real home again.

Playwicky Arms was a row of two-story houses, each with its own twin entrances onto the street. The houses on the winding street were alternately gray and white, with brass lanterns in front and cobblestone sidewalks meeting the city’s paved ones.

I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, “just looking,” as my mother was fond of saying in department stores.

Number 6 was white and in the middle.

Both the top and bottom floors were lighted. I figured Lauren must have gone from Sevens House to here, rather than catch the bus back to Miss Tyler’s. Midwinter, during the week, there wasn’t regular service to Princeton.

I was only slightly curious about this off-campus pad of Lasher’s. It figured that he’d had one, and that only card players knew about it. He wasn’t the first fellow from The Sevens to have one, probably just the first one to chance reprimand for poker or blackjack instead of girls.

What interested me more was the idea of surprising Lauren. I was trying to imagine that unflappable face reacting with surprise. It was a little like trying to picture the Mona Lisa throwing her head back to have a good belly laugh.

I enjoyed the idea of telling Dib I’d checked out Playwicky, too. He liked the image of Fell, Boy Detective, far more than he appreciated Fell, member of Sevens. It would go a long way in helping him to stop suspecting I was part of some Sevens cover-up.

I walked up and down the street while I invented these excuses for my own chronic curiosity, and while I practiced what I’d say to Lauren.

Lauren, I can’t stay but I finished assembling the memorial book, so can you pick it up tomorrow? I had my own selfish reasons, too. Sevens drew the line at free postage and delivery of packages. We had to get them to the post office ourselves, a chore I could easily postpone for weeks.

There were two bells at number 6, the top one with the name Lewis under it, the bottom one unmarked.

I pushed the bottom one, heard it ring, and waited.

My father used to say he could always feel it when he was being watched. It was a sixth sense. It had saved his life once when all he could see on a street where he was doing surveillance was an empty florist’s station wagon with a roof rack carrying a coffin-sized cardboard box, the sort used for wholesale flower deliveries. There was a man with a gun inside the box, aiming at him through a hole. Dad ducked just in time, getting away in a crouch.

I could feel eyes on me from inside. I could see the curtains move in the downstairs front window. I knew there was no gun aimed at me, but some of the same feelings people who point guns have were probably overwhelming Lauren then. She’d say how did you find out about this place, Fell? I’d tell her I was in the neighborhood and number 6 just looked like her. Something about it.

I smiled at the thought and jabbed the bell again.

This time all the lights on the bottom floor went off. So did the one inside the brass lantern.

Plain enough. I walked away.

I went up the street in the opposite direction from where I’d entered it, and stood a moment beside a large oak tree, seeing if the lights would go on again.

I wondered if Lauren had seen that it was me, or if she feared that it was someone who could cause trouble. Maybe over at Miss Tyler’s the idea of her crashing in her brother’s off-campus card den wouldn’t sit so well. It probably wasn’t the first time either. A girl like Lauren couldn’t have been interested in cards. Boys, more likely … Rinaldo’d said to ask Kidder about number 6 Playwicky. What if Kidder, with his Colgate smile, his Polo wardrobe, and his Key West yacht, appealed to Lauren?

My thoughts were chasing in circles while I stood hugging myself to keep warm. I was ready to admit that my imagination was overtaking reality again. Kidder’d played poker there; whatever Lauren had been up to, I’d probably never know.

Staying was pointless, I decided. That was the second the lantern light went on again.

Just for a moment, a man stepped out and looked around.

I’d seen him before.

I’d never seen him barefoot, in an orange kimono, but I’d seen the thick white hair and the white mustache.

Only someone from Miami wouldn’t think to pack slippers.

In Sevens house my mailbox was full. There was a large package from Mom, a letter from Keats, three messages from Dib.
Where are YOU?
was one. Then,
Where ARE you?
Finally,
WHERE are you?

Mom never sent me stuff unless it was a special occasion. She said that since I’d made Sevens, sending me anything was like carrying coals to Newcastle.

I opened the package on the spot. Little plastic peanuts spilled from the box to the mailroom floor.

There were some bottles of Soho lemon spritzer, a jar of Sarabeth Rosy Cheek Preserves, and a box of David’s Cookies. Things I loved and couldn’t buy in Cottersville.

There were two white envelopes inside, too.

I opened one and gulped. It was a valentine. It was the thirteenth of February. I’d forgotten Valentine’s Day.

I knew the second envelope contained Jazzy’s valentine.

I checked my Timex. Nine thirty. If I hurried, I could get over to Deem Library and make some homemade cards before mail pick-up at ten o’clock. At least they’d be postmarked the fourteenth.

Dib could wait a day for my news.

I shoved the package back into my box and headed for The Tower. Under the campus lights along the path, I read what Keats had written across a red heart.

She was a freshman at Sweet Briar, down in Virginia, where February nights were never as cold and windy as the one I was hurrying through.

I’d call her with Valentine wishes. I couldn’t do that with Mom and Jazzy. They liked getting theirs in the mail. Even late was better than none at all.

For a while I had the library to myself. I grabbed some cream-colored Sevens stationery and sat down at a table.

I folded one sheet and drew a heart across the front.

Inside I didn’t get any more original.

Two hearts across the second one. Jazzy’s name in one; mine in the other.

Only girlfriends inspired me, not my family. For Delia I’d have drawn the Taj Mahal, and written a verse in perfect iambic pentameter promising it to her.

The clock was striking ten when Rinaldo appeared. He wasn’t in his usual uniform. I could see why Lasher’s clothes hadn’t thrilled him. He had on very tight black pegged pants, a black leather vest, a black-and-white silk shirt, and a black leather belt with a silver buckle. Black suede ankle boots … Lasher’s style had alternated between classic preppy and baggy tramp.

“Closing time, Fell.” Rinaldo put down the mail sack he was carrying, unlocked the
CORRESPONDENCE
box, and reached in for the letters there.

“Can you wait one second? I forgot Valentine’s Day.”

“Wait how long?”

“One second.”

“One second’s up.” He walked toward me while I scratched the address across an envelope.

“You smell like a magazine, Rinaldo.”

“I’ve got on Giorgio V.I.P Special Reserve,” he said. “You know what the ads say: Maybe one man in a thousand will wear it.” He grinned. “That’s me.”

“Is it part of your inheritance?”

“No. Lasher — what did he wear? Something like Royal Copenhagen. This is sweeter! This gets the girls like honey draws bees…. I’ve got a date, Fell — crank it up.”

“I’m done,” I said. I handed the envelope to him. “Will it be postmarked the fourteenth?”

He nodded. “I’m dropping it off down there now.”

I got up and walked along with him. The Tower clock was hammering out ten. In half an hour the dorm doors would be locked. It wasn’t worth trying to get to Dib.

“I was on Playwicky Road tonight,” I said, “and I saw something odd.”

“Sniffing around?”

“I thought Lauren might be there. Instead, I saw Creery’s stepbrother come out of number 6.”

Rinaldo snapped off the lights in the library. “I heard he’s staying awhile.”

“In Lasher’s apartment?”

“That I didn’t hear.”

“You don’t think it’s odd?”

“Others used that place, Fell. It was for card playing, so why would Lasher’s sister be there? … You are naive sometimes, you know.” He picked up a black leather coat with a yellow quilted lining that was lying on the table outside the door. “Kidder went there. Other Sevens. You think it was a secret? Even you’d heard of the place.”

Not until Rinaldo’d told me himself, but I skipped by that saying, “So Sevens arranged it?”

“A Sevens did, probably. Why not? This stepbrother of Creery’s needs a place for a few weeks. Why wouldn’t it be offered to him? That’s what your Sevens is all about, isn’t it? Something for nothing.”

He snapped the hall lights off as we walked toward the front of The Tower. “Everything isn’t suspicious, Fell, the way you think. You’ve got something on the brain, Fell.” He flicked his fingers toward my head and laughed. Then he patted his heart with the same hand. “You need something here to occupy you. You should see what I’m going to occupy in about half an hour.”

We went through the front door. Rinaldo had the mail sack over his shoulder. “Now if that little Porsche of Lasher’s had been delivered early, maybe Rinaldo’d be heading off for the evening in style.”

I gave him a smile. “I wouldn’t worry.”

“Yes, you would, Fell. Because you worry about everything, I’m learning. What you need is to have a girl.”

“This is true,” I said.

He feigned a punch at my chin. “You want me to fix you up with a townie?”

“Later,” I said.

We waved and took off in opposite directions.

Then I called to him. “Wait, Rinaldo!”

He stopped.

I walked toward him. “Why is Creery’s stepbrother staying for a few weeks?”

“You don’t quit, Fell, do you?” He switched the mailbag to the other shoulder. “He’s staying until all this calms down.”

“Until all
what
calms down?” I asked him.

“Maybe until
you
calm down,
compadre
… I don’t know why he’s staying. I just know Creery’s off the Sevens dinner list until the stepbrother leaves. Two weeks or so, he said.”

Rinaldo turned to go.
“Hasta la vista,
Fell!”

I could almost hear Lasher’s voice.
Hasta la vista, Flaco!

“Buena suerte,
Rinaldo!”

And the scream from just above us, I could hear. Still.

That night, as I was undressing, I found Jazzy’s unopened valentine in my shirt pocket.

There was a picture of a white dog holding a red heart in its paws.

Inside it said,
DOGGONE I LOVE YOU!

Jazzy’d printed something at the bottom in her usual style: large, crooked letters.

• • •

Johnny? Why is 6 afraid of 7?

There was an arrow pointing to the back of the card.

Turning it over, I thought of number 6 Playwicky Arms, and of Mark Twain’s bare feet on the cold stone.

Because, Jazzy
had continued, 7 8 9.

One of the perks that went with keeping my eye on Nina Deem was getting to drive the second car. That’s what both Nina and her father called the BMW, as if it had never belonged to anyone in particular, though I knew it’d been her mother’s.

Deem had checked out my New York driver’s license — he was a careful man. He’d advised me to get a Pennsylvania one, and to ask Dr. Skinner’s permission. All done by the third week in February, when Nina talked me into taking her to New Hope for a poetry reading.

The roads were clear, and the sun was out, and even though “Fra Lippo Lippi” had spoiled poetry for me forever, I liked to be behind the wheel.

I needed to get away from The Hill, too.

Late February, at Gardner, you crammed for tests, wrote papers on every subject from the design of the Parthenon to Romanticism’s eighteenth-century beginnings, and took your S.A.T.’s over if you were trying to raise your score. I was trying to get mine out of the 500’s.

I was also spending too much time working on The Charles Dance for The Sevens.

In between, Dib and I met when we could. And when we did, we fought.

He’d become convinced there was no way we’d ever figure out the true story of Lasher’s death, that Sevens had too much power … He’d also teamed up with a scruffy group of townies, led by John Horner, a day student known as Little Jack. They drove around Cottersville in an old Mustang, no muffler, black, furry dice hanging from the mirror, six-packs iced in the backseat….

“You’ve got your gang, I’ve got mine,” he told me.

Neither of us had done anything about learning how to work the Smith-Corona PWP.

Creery’s stepbrother was still with us, and Dib bought Rinaldo’s explanation that it had been arranged through Sevens for him to stay in Lasher’s apartment. He bought it, or he settled for it. He wasn’t interested any longer in pursuing it, he said; he wasn’t going to wait around in the dorm until I found time to discuss it with him.

The only change in Creery I noticed was his absence most nights at dinner. He ate with Lowell Hunter — that was Mark Twain’s last name, Hunter.

• • •

“Fell?” Nina said. “Thanks for this. I need to be around creative people.” She liked to wear gear. She had on an old camouflage jacket several sizes too large for her, a sailor’s blue knit cap pulled down around her long blond hair, and old corduroys that had been pegged so the cuffs slid into her lace-up leather boots.

“What’s New Hope like? I hear it’s a tourist trap.”

Nina said, “Some people’d say it’s a little artsy-fartsy, but in winter it’s just another small town.” She giggled. “With a lot of artsy-fartsy antique shops and restaurants. It’s pretty, though.”

“It’s a reward for the A+ you got on your Browning paper.”

“Thanks to you. You really improved it, Fell.”

“I like your new stories” — most of them were fantasies about future worlds — ”but I’d like to read your old ones, too.”

She shook her head. “You never will. I burned them. They aren’t me now. I’m not the same since Mom’s death.”

“You might want to remember what you were like, though.”

“I
am
working on a story about my mother and father. Their last fight. You know what it was over? A croquet game.”

“One was winning and one wasn’t?”

“They weren’t even playing,” said Nina. “My father had this unpainted sample from DOT, our mail-order division. He was supposed to approve it. It was in his study when my mother found it. She was like a kid sometimes. She loved games! She wanted to put it out on the lawn immediately. Dad said she couldn’t do it. He actually wrestled it away from her. It was weird, Fell: these two grown people tugging at a croquet set. He was shouting at her for unpacking it, and she was laughing at first. My aunt Peggy was visiting, and Mom was teasing him: Don’t be a party pooper, Dave! Wait until you see my sister swing a croquet mallet! … But Dad was dead serious. No way were they going to set up that game! … I figured out why he didn’t want her to set it up.”

“Why?”

“It’d ruin the lawn. You know how he is. He didn’t want the lawn spoiled … It was a terrible fight, too. They’d never fought physically before. They used to make these conversational digs at each other, but this time he actually slapped her. Then she kicked him. Hard. My aunt Peggy tried to break it up, and she almost got hit, too … It’s awful when parents fight, isn’t it? I hated it!”

“My parents usually fought about my father’s hours. He’d come through the door after a night’s work, and Mom would say, ‘Who are you? What are you doing in this house?’“

Nina said, “And right after the fight over the croquet set, she broke her neck doing a swan dive. Hit the shallow end of our pool because she’d overreached. If it wasn’t so sad, I’d say it was how she’d have wanted to go. Doing something beautiful and wild.”

“I’m sorry, Nina.”

“Me too…. My aunt never forgave him. She thinks my mother was in shock from his slapping her … and over what? The fact my mother wanted to play a game on the lawn.”

“It must be rough on him, too. Still.”

“I know. I think of that a lot, because he truly did love her. She was such a passionate woman. He was always trying to curb her, not maliciously. He’s not mean. But he just wants to be in control…. She loved romantic stories. She was always talking about famous lovers, reading us love poems at the dinner table. I think she was rubbing it in.”

“What would he do?”

“Oh, Dad tolerated it. I think that was her way of getting back at him. He’d forget birthdays, anniversaries, and when he did remember them, he’d come home with something like a new microwave oven … Emotion embarrasses him. She’d read us Keats, Shelley, some Frenchwoman named Duras … My shrink says Vell, dot is a form of hostile displacement ven you do dot.” She looked across at me and laughed, but I didn’t. I suddenly remembered the lady in the long black mink coat at Lasher’s funeral.

“What’s your shrink’s name?”

“Inge Lasher. You knew her son, didn’t you? He was a Sevens before he took a dive off The Tower. Or am I not supposed to mention that?”

“I didn’t know you knew about it.”

“Dad didn’t tell me. It wasn’t in the newspaper, either. They always hush up bad stuff that happens on The Hill.”

“Then how did you find out?”

“She told me. She said it vas not a disgrace so she vould not hide it. According to her, he secreted less growth hormone. Only she pronounces it groat hormone. Gawd, Fell!”

“What?”

“If your own shrink’s son does himself in, how are you supposed to be helped by her?”

“You’ve probably got enough groat hormone.”

“She hated having to tell me. She told all her patients. Clients, she calls us. She told everyone. It must have killed her! She tries to keep her personal life so secret. They all do. You’re not supposed to focus on them. But I’d see her daughter sometimes. Right after Mom died, her daughter was living in their town house. During my session I’d see her out the window coming up the walk with her schoolbooks.”

“Lauren,” I said.

“Is that her name? I didn’t even know her son was on The Hill until he died. What’s Lauren like?”

“Sort of sophisticated.”

“More than me?”

“You’re not the same type.”

“How is she different. Is she prettier?”

“No. You can’t compare you two.”

“Why not?”

“Why do you care?” I said.

“She’s my shrink’s daughter, Fell. You’ve never been shrunk, have you?”

“No.”

“Well, we basket cases care about things like that.”

“You should concentrate on yourself.”

“I bet you’re sorry you said that. That’s all I do.” Nina laughed. “I know Lauren’s got inky-black hair. I remember that.”

“And she wears Obsession, like an old girlfriend of mine.” Sometimes I’d say things like that thinking Nina’d ask me questions about myself, but she didn’t. She’d go right past the remark.

She said, “I like White Shoulders better. Would you date her, Fell?”

“She’s too opaque for me.”

“Opaque. Oh, I like that word.” I’d just tossed out whatever’d come into my head, but Nina looked like I’d told her the combination for a safe full of gold. “Then she’s exactly like her mother! I think Dr. Inge is the most mysterious person I’ve ever known! … And she’s sophisticated, too. European. On the elegant side. But Fell, she’s married to this little potbellied shrimp with a bald head.
You
should see
him
! He’s nothing!”

“I have seen them. They were both at the memorial service.”

“Of course! Then you know! Was it a sad memorial service?”

“There’re not a lot of happy ones. But it was short.” I decided not to mention that her shrink had addressed the gathering. It would save me having to go into all that. “No one from Sevens spoke — that was a little strange. Rinaldo, one of our houseboys, read a poem he’d written.”

“I know Rinaldo! Rinaldo Velez?”

“Yes.”

“He was a senior when I was a sophomore. I didn’t know he wrote. I thought he only worried about things like not carrying stuff in his back pocket so he wouldn’t ruin his bun line.”

“I never noticed his bun line.”

“When he dances? He looks just like Patrick Swayze in that old movie
Dirty Dancing!
Someday I’ll show you his write-up in my yearbook.”

“I’d like to see it.”

She hurried back to her own priorities. “Well? Can you imagine those two shrinks married to one another?”

“Love is mysterious, Nina.”

“I don’t think marriage has anything to do with love, Fell. I think people settle.”

“My parents were in love.”

She did her usual bypass on the subject of me. “I’ll never settle!” she said. “I’ll never do what my mother did! I’ll never let the man I marry control me. In fact, Fell, I may never
get
married! That story I wrote about a future world where marriage is for inferiors with low I.Q.’s? I believe that! You don’t have to get married to have children! Who says so? The law? Who cares about the law? You make your own laws, I believe!”

“Fine!” I said. “Now can we please talk about something I’m interested in?”

She looked surprised. “Okay…. Like what?”

“Like Spinoza’s determinism,” I said. “Or Descartes’ dualism.”

She gave my arm a hard punch. “Oh, Fell! You’re good for me!”

I hoped so. There were times when we’d be talking about the future, about writing and Kenyon College over someplace like the University of Missouri’s journalism school, and suddenly Nina would be out to lunch. Her eyes wouldn’t move and her face lost its expression. I’d have to snap my fingers and say, “Hey, come back.”

But she was behaving less and less that way, and I liked to agree with her father, who’d always get me aside when he could do it tactfully and tell me I was helping her; he could see she was improving, forgetting Eddie Dragon.

Once she even said that herself, actually implying that I was better for her than Eddie. “It’s good to get to know someone, isn’t it, Fell?” She’d spoken up one afternoon. “I never really got to know a male except Dad, not really. I was always too nervous and self-conscious. God! After Eddie and I were together, I’d go over and over what we said, how I looked, play by play, like my whole life depended on some dumb little interlude with him. But this is just us: easy, relaxed. It’s good like this. It’s better.”

She’d even stopped saying “really” in every sentence.

We rode in silence for a while, following the Delaware River, which had chunks of ice floating in it, and Nina leaned over and snapped on the radio. She pushed the button to find music that suited her. She was sort of jumping around in the seat, taking her cap off to shake her hair free, putting it back on. She seemed to be acting out everything I was feeling: It was a great day, good to be away from Cottersville, pretty out there with the sun inching over to sink down in the sky, neat that the radio was playing old Elvis stuff.

When we got to the coffee shop where the Friday-afternoon poetry readings were held, there was a sign on the door:

“Didn’t you
call,
Nina?”

“Would we be here if I had? Don’t get mad at me. How do you think
I
feel?”

“Sorry,” I said. “What’ll we do now? Is anything open?”

We stood there hugging ourselves and stamping our feet in the cold, and Nina said unless I wanted to look at sleigh beds or weather vanes circa 1800, we were out of luck.

“I’m not hungry, either,” she added.

“I guess we’ll just drive back. No movies?”

“No movies.” She was heading toward the car. “It’s too cold to walk around.”

“Didn’t you know they closed in winter?”

“Fell, quit nagging me. Let’s try to look at the doughnut and not at the hole.”

I opened the car door for her and said I wouldn’t mind looking at a doughnut, either — I hadn’t eaten since lunch.

When I got back behind the wheel, she said to drive up near Point Pleasant. She thought there was a hamburger place that way.

She directed me while I tried to get myself back in a good mood. I knew the reason I was sounding cranky was that I was disappointed. I rated poetry readings about the same as guided tours through flower gardens, but at least it would have been special to Nina, something she’d remember us doing together … It’d been a long time since I’d cared about pleasing a girl. I wasn’t sure how much of it had to do with my wanting her to get her bearings again, or how much it had to do with me being ready to crank up my own broken motor. Something was in the wind … and it was a relief from thoughts of a body falling, a voice shrieking, and unanswered questions that had caused a rift between Dib and me.

We listened to the radio for a while: golden oldies — The Beatles and Steppenwolf, Jimi Hendrix and Buffalo Springfield.

Finally she glanced my way and said she had an idea.

“What?”

“You’re still mad, aren’t you, Fell?”

“I’m over that. I wasn’t really mad…. What’s your idea?”

“I want to see something.”

“What?”

“Something up ahead here.”