The Books of Fell (17 page)

“Food, I hope.”

“Not food…. He’s got a shop somewhere right near here,” she said. “His sister runs it. He won’t be there, so don’t worry.”

She waited for it to sink in.

It hit my stomach first, then traveled around in my gut for a while and settled in my windpipe.

When my voice returned, it said, “You planned this all along, didn’t you, Nina?”

“And don’t say my name in there,” she said. “I promised him I’d never come here.” She touched my leg with her hand. “Oh, Fell, this won’t hurt anything. I’m just curious. Aren’t you ever curious?”

I was staring straight ahead, mad as hell, when I saw it come into view.

A gigantic black dragon with gold wings and green eyes, breathing out fake fire.

Dragonland was an old, gray, cold, musty-smelling barn at the bottom of a hill. It was one of those hodgepodge places that sold everything from Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs to leather coats with fringe on the sleeves. They specialized in twenty-four-hour film service, “Award-Winning Wedding and Graduation Photography,” “Furniture: Bought and Sold,” and rental tools.

The giant dragon perched on the roof wasn’t the only one. Dragons were everywhere, in every color, made of rubber, iron, tin, wood, and papier-mâché. There were dragonflies, too. If Eddie Dragon didn’t run the place himself, his spirit certainly dominated the decor.

At one end of the barn there was a mural of a waterfall, an old mill, and a willow tree, an iron bench in front of it. A sign to the left saying:

I’d seen the scenery before, in the photograph of Eddie Dragon that Schwartz had given me.

To the right there was a rack with assorted clothes, feather boas and hats with veils, canes, top hats, derbies, old furs, and mustaches and wigs.

There was a woman behind the counter with the kind of great, warm smile that could make you forget anything, including the fact you shouldn’t have stopped the car to go inside that place with Nina.

She didn’t look like someone who belonged in a Pennsylvania winter. I could see her out under the sun in some Kansas field with a piece of straw stuck playfully between her teeth and the wind blowing back her thick, curly, brown hair. She had magnificent white teeth; big everything: hands, feet, bosoms, the gypsy type loaded with beads and bracelets jangling on her wrists. She had on a long, red dress with a full skirt and some kind of Mexican-looking red-and-white shawl over her shoulders. You’d imagine her stirring pots of fabulous-tasting stews, or tending a garden, or mending something. She might as well have had one of those cartoon balloons over her head with “I’ll take care of you” inside.

It was hard for me to guess women’s ages. All the while I was with Delia, I thought she was maybe nineteen — she’d never tell me. She was really twenty-five. This woman looked older. I figured she was Dragon’s big sister.

“You lost?” she said. “You look lost.” She was laughing, picking up a Siamese cat who’d run to her with his ruff up the moment the bell jingled to announce our arrival.

I’d seen the cat before, too. I let Nina do the talking.

“We were really looking for someplace to get a hamburger.”

“Not around here, I’m afraid. Try New Hope down the road. Or Doylestown up the road.”

“You have a lot of interesting things.”

“We try…. Are you visiting?”

“We came from New Jersey,” Nina said. She wasn’t one to worry that there was a Pennsylvania license plate on the BMW.

The cat was hanging on to the woman like we were going to bag it and toss it in the river. She got its claws out of her shawl and put it down on the floor. “Go find your mousie,” she said to it, as though the thing would answer Okay! Good idea! and the dark-brown tail disappeared into a room behind her. No door, just a curtain of beads.

“Would you like me to show you anything?”

“I just
love
this place!” Nina sounded naive and girlish, instead of dark-hearted and possessed.

The woman gave us that great big white smile again and said, “I’m Ann.”

Nina jumped right in. “I’m Lauren,” she said, “and that’s John Fell.”

“Lauren, John,” Ann said. “If you want to know the price of anything, there’s a tag on the bottom.”

“Fell, let’s have our picture taken!” Nina said.

Ann said,
“Just
pick out your costumes. Anything over on the rack.”

Nina headed that way, babbling about how we’d have a souvenir of the day, and soon she’d found herself a little green hat with an orange feather on it, a black velvet cape, and a white silk parasol.

“Ready!” she said.

I walked over, put on the top hat and a long black coat with a fur collar, grabbed a black cane to complete the costume.

Ann was standing there with her hand on her hip, laughing and o
h
ing and a
h
ing. As soon as we moved toward the iron bench in front of the mural with the mill, and the waterfall and the willow tree, she picked up a camera.

“I’m doing all the hard work now,” she said, “while the boss is on assignment.”

“Who’s the dragon collector?” Nina asked.

“My husband. Eddie,” Ann said. “That’s our last name. Dragon.”

I gave Nina a long, long look she refused to return, so I figured she was handling it Nina style: no show of the punch that must have just landed hard to her insides.

She was busy acting as though this was one of the best times she’d ever had, twirling her parasol, and affecting a haughty expression. “Let’s try and look très, très superior,” she said to me, something I would have expected from Lauren Lasher, never Nina.

I tried my best: tilting my top hat over my eye, resting my weight on the cane, my arm around Nina.

“That’s jaunty, not superior,” said Nina.

Ann just kept laughing.

Nina fixed the top hat so it sat squarely on my head, and she told me to stare straight ahead and hook the cane over my free arm.

“Good, Lauren!” Ann said. “That’s fun!”

“Now don’t smile and don’t put your arm around me. I’ll hook mine in yours,” Nina directed me.

“Perfect!” Ann said. “It’ll be ready in no time.”

The cross-eyed Siamese was watching us behind the beads in the doorway.

Nina walked around looking at things I didn’t want to look at, like rugs made out of animal skin and carvings made from elephant tusks.

I said, “You’ve really got a lot of variety.”

“My husband’s a pack rat. I never know what he’ll walk in with, but it’s always different.” She laughed again. She was a hard laugher, tossing back her head, showing her love of life … and of Eddie Dragon, too, I thought.

I asked her what we owed her, and as soon as she’d given me five dollars change from a twenty, the picture was ready. It came in a small metal frame, with
REMEMBER POINT PLEASANT
written in gold at the top.

It wasn’t good of me. I looked the way I’d begun to feel: like someone getting used to a bad smell.

Nina was a better actress. She came off looking haughty, superficial, insane.

“This has been
fun!”
Nina said, but the air was seeping out of the balloon: I could see it in her tired little smile, the kind that began to hurt the corners of your mouth because of all the effort that was going into it.

While Ann walked us to the door, she said, “Good-bye, Lauren, John. Thanks for stopping by. It gets lonely here this time of year.”

We were driving along the river’s edge. I put the fog lights on.

“He told me not to go there,” she said softly.

“I can see why.”

“Fell? I never,
ever
want to see him again!”

It was easy to ignore that one.

I snapped, “What’s this crap about him being on assignment? She made him sound like a foreign correspondent or something.”

“He takes pictures. Weddings and stuff.”

“How come you knew he wouldn’t be there today?” She didn’t answer for a minute. Then she said, “I called there yesterday. I pretended I wanted him to take some baby pictures, and she said he was on assignment until next Monday.”

“You’ve been calling him all along, then?”

“No. I never dared call him there. I wouldn’t have known about that place, except when he got framed the address was in the newspaper.”

“When he got framed. Sure.”

“He got framed, Fell.”

“And his
sister
runs the place. Sure.”

“How do you think
I
feel, Fell? Believe me, I am
finished
with Edward Gilbert Dragon!”

“Believe
you,” I laughed.

“Don’t you have any feelings for me?”

“Yeah. I have the feeling you’ve just forced me to become an informer.”

“You’re not going to tell Dad?”

“I’m not? Why aren’t I? Dad’s paying me.”

“I didn’t try to
see
Eddie, Fell. I didn’t even want to see him. I just wanted to see Dragonland … He’d never take me there.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Fell,
please
don’t tell Dad! I can promise you I’ll never have anything to do with Eddie Dragon again!” She turned to face me, pulling her knees up under her, slinging an arm across the seat. “Listen to me, Fell! I feel
horrible!
She’s so … earnest.”

“She’s a lot more than earnest!”

“Do you think she’s pretty?”

“Yes, I think she’s pretty, and if the next question is do I think she’s prettier than you, yes! And smarter, too!”

She touched my shoulder with her hand. “Oh, Fell, don’t be mad. I’m trying to handle this thing, and I can’t deal with it when you’re mad at me.”

“Tough!” I said. “Damn! Everything was going so well, I thought, and all the while you’ve got these snakes in your head!”

“That’s a good name for them, snakes. Dr. Inge calls them compulsions, but they’re snakes all right. They
were,
anyway.”

She touched the bare skin at my neck with her finger. “Fell? Please? I’m sorry.”

“And don’t try stuff like that!” I said.

“I’m just touching you, friend to friend.”

“Don’t!” I said. I leaned over and pushed on the radio. “I don’t want to talk, okay?”

• • •

When we got to Cottersville, the black Lincoln was in the drive. The porch light was on. The downstairs lights, and a light where David Deem had his study.

I locked the BMW and handed the key to Nina. She gave me the souvenir photograph. “I don’t want this thing — do you?”

I stuffed it inside my jacket.

We were standing in the driveway. Meatloaf was barking. She pulled off her stocking cap and shook her hair loose so the moon caught its shine.

“It was really good that we went there, Fell. Now I know the truth … Can’t you at least think about not telling Dad? Sleep on it or something? I’m in little pieces right now.”

“I’m not going to tell him tonight,” I said. “I’m too hungry.’“

“You’re always hungry.” She was starting to cry.

“Nina,” I began, not knowing where it would end, not having to worry because the front door opened and her father stepped out on the porch. “Come in, Fell! Mrs. Whipple made you both corned beef sandwiches.”

“Please don’t tell him, Fell,” Nina said.

• • •

I said I couldn’t stay, I’d take my sandwich with me, and David Deem picked up Meatloaf and told me what he had to say wouldn’t take long.

“You go into the kitchen and wrap Fell’s sandwich, honey,” he told Nina. “Fell? Come in and sit down for a minute.”

Then he said, “Do those boots come off?”

• • •

I was in my smelly stockinged feet again, my jacket over my lap, sitting forward on the couch.

“You’ve never told me how you like being a Sevens,” said Mr. Deem, straightening his tie, leaning back in an armchair he was sharing with Meatloaf.

“Who wouldn’t like it?” I said.

“Take me. I was this raw-eared kid from Pennsylvania Dutch country, father a farmer. I went to The Hill on a scholarship. I’d always made my own bed, didn’t know what a soup spoon was, never, never had anyone wait on me … and suddenly …” He spread his arms out.

“That was all changed by mere chance,” I said.

He laughed hard at that. “Yes … yes … it changed my life, Fell. It gave me my first taste of being somebody.”

I let him talk. I didn’t think it was the right time to tell him “somebody’s” daughter was still sneaking around after a pusher who suddenly had a wife in the bargain.

“I feel badly about what happened at The Tower.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “The suicide. I haven’t told Nina. It just so happens that was her psychiatrist’s son.”

“Nina knows, Mr. Deem. Dr. Lasher told her.”

He thought that one over. He said, “Nina’s so interior. She calls
me
secretive because I lock my study. But look at her. You think she’d have told me she knew.”

I resisted saying No, I wouldn’t think that. I would think Nina wouldn’t tell anything … and here’s why, Mr. Deem.

“Her doctor overdoes the confidentiality rule, if you ask me. Here I’ve been so careful about keeping all that business to myself. Is Nina taking it all right?”

“Your daughter seems to handle things,” I said.

“Yes. That’s her mother’s independent streak … Well, then, this clears the way for what I’m about to suggest. I’d like Nina to meet some nice young men now that the dragon’s been slain.” A pleased little haw-haw for punctuation.

I bit my lip. I’d hear him out first. I was thinking of the corned beef sandwich, too. I was hoping Mrs. Whipple knew enough to smear the bread with lots of Dijon mustard.

“The best young men are on The Hill, no doubt of that. And from what I see of you, Fell, Sevens is still instilling in its members the idea that you live up to privilege, and become more because of it.”

How was I going to tell him I’d become less the second I saw Dragonland? I’d become Silly Putty in Nina’s hands.

“One of the most amusing and memorable traditions of Sevens, of course, is The Charles Dance. What fun I had at those things!” He was stretching his legs out, letting Meatloaf wiggle onto his lap. “Do you know that at the first Charles Dance there were twelve boys dressed the same as me? Never go as Charlie Chaplin, Fell. You’ll see yourself all over the place!”

“I was thinking of going as Damon Charles.”

“Uh-oh, the founder himself, hmmm? That takes nerve…. I like that, Fell. I wonder if anyone’s ever done that?”

“In his pictures he has a big handlebar mustache and a monocle … so it’ll be easy.”

Nina was back in the room, arms folded across her chest, an uncertain look in her eyes, directed at me.

“Mustard, Fell?” she said.

“Yes. Dijon?”

“Dijon. It’s already on both sandwiches. I’d have had to make you another if you didn’t like it … Well?” She shrugged. “Is this a private conversation?” She couldn’t seem to look at her father.

“Not really, Nina, honey,” he answered her, and his tone of voice told her I hadn’t squealed … yet.

Then he said, “I checked with Sevens today and learned that Fell’s signed up for a blind date for The Charles Dance.”

He glanced across at me. “You don’t have to take a
blind
date, Fell, if you’d prefer to take Nina. I’m ready for her to see how Sevens do things.”

“Oh, Dad! Can I go?”

“Well, Fell?” said Mr. Deem.

Both of them were looking at me expectantly.

“Sure,” I said. What was I supposed to say? “Would you go with me, Nina?”

“I’d like that, Fell.”

“It’ll be her very first time on The Hill,” said Mr. Deem. “I wanted it to be for something Sevens was doing. This is perfect.”

“Perfect!” Nina agreed. “Oh, I hope and pray nothing comes up to spoil this!”

Her father chuckled. “Such histrionics, Nina! You
hope
and pray? Nothing’s going to spoil this. What could spoil it?”

Then he said, “I know you’re hurrying, Fell, and Nina’s occupied a lot of your time today, so take the BMW. It’s cold, too.”

“I can hike it,” I told him.

“Anyone can hike it, but what’s being a Sevens all about? … Take advantage of your advantages, Fell. You can bring the car back tomorrow afternoon.” Then, meticulous as always, he added, “I told you before, didn’t I, that there’s a spare key in the back ashtray?”

Nina walked me to the door. “I feel like a spare female. You don’t have to take me to the dance if you don’t want to,” she said. “I know Dad sprang that on you in a way you almost couldn’t refuse.”

“He sprang it on you, too,” I said. I was getting into my boots and thinking about buying myself some Odor-Eaters for the insides, if I kept visiting the Deems.

“He didn’t spring it on me, exactly. I’ve been begging him to ask you to invite me.”

I was glad, too glad, the kind of glad that leaps up the way Wordsworth’s heart did when he beheld a rainbow in the sky.

“If today hadn’t happened,” I started to say, and she didn’t let me finish. She put two fingers against my lips. “Today was the tag end of something. The Fates arranged for today to happen.”

“You arranged for today to happen, Nina.”

“It was like the final period at the end of the sentence ‘I don’t care about him anymore.’”

“Just say the period. Never mind the final period.”

“My tutor.” She smiled at me, coming closer.

I moved back a step, remembering the dragonfly with the blue wings crawling out of her bra.

I said, “Why do I still have the feeling I can’t trust you?”

“I’ll make that go away. You’ll see.”

She was looking all over my face, and I could feel something shivering down my arms.

Her hands reached up, starting to rest on my shoulders, but I shrugged them away, trying to act the way someone would when he was still angry.

It wasn’t easy.

Maybe my problem was I liked tricky females. I didn’t have a history of elevated heartbeat except when I was confronted by the beautiful/sweet-talking/kinky ones who made chopped liver out of your heart.

She handed me the keys to the BMW, and I went outside where winter was waiting to cool me off.