The Chair (17 page)

“You’re a piece of work.”

“I sure hope so.” Corin waved to Tony, who waved back. “Hey, before we do this, look behind you.”

Behind them sat a wall of snow and trees so faultless it was like a painting. The sun lit up the snow so brilliantly it was blinding, and gray-black rocks poked out of the snow in a chaotic, beautiful pattern.

“That’s the background I want for this picture.”

“How long did it take you to find this spot?”

“Only three weekends.”

“I love you, bro,” Shasta said. “Even though you revel in making me dance on tightropes I don’t even want to put a toe on.”

Corin adjusted his sunglasses. “Ready?”

“Let’s do it.”

Side by side, four feet apart, they sliced through the snow carving almost identical turns. Fifty feet from the jump they glanced at each other and turned straight downhill. Four seconds to launch.

Corin glanced at Shasta as the jump surged toward them. Only seconds before they’d be captured on film for eternity. Three, two, one . . . then the snow disappeared and he and Shasta were eagles, soaring together forever.

Corin let out a whoop, arms and legs splayed out like he could stay in the air for ages. Seconds later his skis whapped onto the steep slope and he slid into a hockey stop, skidding to a halt twenty yards down the chute.

He let out a victory shout and spun to find Tony. “Did you get it?”

Tony didn’t answer. He stared over Corin’s shoulder, face pale, eyes wide.

Corin whipped around searching for Shasta.

His brother lay face to the snow, fifteen yards down the slope, skis still on his feet, one arm on top of his back, the other splayed out to his side.

“Shasta, you all right?” No answer. No movement. Corin tore off his skis and tried to run through the snow but kept falling as he struggled to keep his feet from sinking into the soft powder. “Shasta!”

The only answer was a soft wind that pushed up the sheet.

A minute later he reached his brother and fell to his knees next to him. “Talk to me, brohan.” Corin ripped off his gloves and placed two fingers on Shasta’s neck. He had a pulse. Weak, but it was steady.

He turned to Tony. “We need to get him out of here fast!”

“There’s no one out here and with no SAT phone—”

“Ski down; you’ll have to get the ski patrol!”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t move him.”

Corin nodded and turned back to Shasta. His breathing was shallow but rhythmic.

“I’m here, bro. Wake up. Please.” Corin sat back on his heels as heat washed over him. This couldn’t be happening.

Corin checked his pulse again, keeping the sun from his face, trying to keep the panic rising in his chest from boiling over.

What have I done?

“Hey,” Tori said. “Where’d you go?” She rubbed his shoulder and tilted her head.

“Sorry.” Corin shifted forward on the couch and scratched his face. “That photo brought it all back.”

“Brought all what back?”

Corin stood and stared at the front door. “I gotta go. I mean, I need to be alone with this.”

“You’re sure?”

He nodded, walked to the front door, and held it open. “Sorry, it’s not something I can talk about right now.”

Fifteen minutes later he lay in bed, willing sleep to take him, but when Z-land came, it was worse than the memory of Shasta’s accident.

C
orin stood on the edge of the bicycle raft trying to step away, but his legs and feet felt wrapped in saltwater taffy. “Move!” he screamed into the air, but no sound came out of his mouth and his mom and dad and Shasta just smiled at him.

“Let’s switch so I’ll be with Shasta and you can be with Mom . . .”

“No, Dad, it will tip!” Corin shouted as loud as he could, but the words dropped to the surface of the water and disappeared.

“Here, let me help you, Corin.” His dad cradled Corin’s elbow in his palm and pulled.

Corin yanked his elbow away.

“What’s wrong?” His dad frowned.

“It’s going to tip
and I’ll be caught underwater and I’ll drown. We need to stay where we are!”

An instant later Corin stood on the other pontoon with the rest of his family. No! His mom and Shasta started to step off onto the other pontoon, smiles on their faces.

“No! Don’t!” But it was too late. Corin tried to jump into the water, but his feet were superglued to the pontoon.

Time shifted into slow motion as the pontoon flipped. His stomach churned and he tried to suck in a breath before the water swallowed him, but his mouth was locked shut and a moment later he was under. The chill of the water threw its tentacles around him.

Sound vanished as he sank into the lake.

The dark water spun, like a whirlpool sucking him ten feet deeper in a blink. Then twenty, thirty. Corin forced his gaze upward. The light filtering down through the green water grew hazy, then vanished as the lake pulled him farther into the dark.

“No!” He tried to shout out but water surged into his mouth and lungs choking his cry. Then darkness. And nothingness. Always the nothingness. Thicker this time as if it had fingers pulling him down and pulling the life out of him.

Pulling his soul out of him.

C
orin pulled up to Professor Tesser Lange’s home at 5:55 a.m., excited to see his old friend and glad he’d made it a few minutes early. The professor didn’t like people to be late. Especially on the first day of the week. Or he didn’t use to. Had it really been ten years since he’d seen the old man?

He’d meant to come by more often, but there was always something urgent pounding at him, keeping him from dropping by. Growing the business. Taking care of the business. Trips overseas to find exotic treasures people would pay thousands for, which translated into bread on his table and a car in his driveway. Going through his divorce. The tyranny of the urgent subduing the important and memorable.

Corin trod the walkway leading to Tesser’s house and smiled. The home still needed painting. The dark brown paint was peeling in a thousand places. The lawn needed mowing. Strike that. The lawn needed a machete taken to it. His roof could probably be sold in Corin’s store for a hefty price it looked so ancient.

Professor Ted C. Lange. Tesser hated the name Ted and had told his students on the first day of class to call him Tesser or nothing. He and Corin had struck up a friendship that grew from frequent visits in the professor’s office at the university into dinners at his home that lasted late into the night into three trips together to Italy, Greece, and Spain.

Corin saluted as he climbed the cracked steps leading to Tesser’s front door. It was good to be back.

Corin pushed the doorbell right at the same moment he noticed a tiny sticky note in the middle of the door.

Come in, Corin; it’s always unlocked, you know that.

He did. They’d argued countless times about Tesser leaving his door unlocked even when he went on trips. Corin tried to convince him that with the valuable volumes on his shelves and priceless artifacts stored in glass cases throughout his home, it was like giving a standing invitation to people with no interest in respecting other people’s property.

But the professor said if people wanted the books and antiques that bad, they could have them.

The door squealed as Corin pushed it open, but not as loudly as he expected it to. Maybe Tesser had discovered WD-40 in his old age. “Professor?”

No answer.

He glanced around the large entryway to a dark wooden staircase curving up to the four bedrooms no one slept in to the hallway to the left leading to a vast kitchen that probably hadn’t seen a meal cooked in it for over five years.

And the hallway to the right, leading to Tesser’s massive library and study, where high odds said he’d find the old professor bent over an even older book.

Corin tiptoed—he wasn’t sure why—down the corridor and peeked in each room on his right and left as he passed. Nothing had changed. The smell of musty books floated through the air and he breathed in memories of pouring over hundreds of those tomes with Tesser during his college days.

“Tesser? Are you here?”

All was dark wood, and though a number of lights were on, the house still felt like it was lit with forty-watt bulbs when it should have one hundred watters in the sockets.

He was almost to the study and still no answer. “Professor?”

“Coming!”A voice finally called out from the study.

Tesser was at least ninety years old. He wore white slippers, yellowed with age, that were at least two sizes too big for his feet, which made him shuffle when he walked. The public never saw him without his tattered baseball hat with
Find It!
stenciled across the front, wispy white hair sticking out from underneath it in all directions.

Behind his back they called him eccentric.

To his face they called him brilliant.

Tesser was both.

No one meeting him for the first time would guess Googling his name would pull up 10,543 entries and an extensive Wikipedia entry.

When Tesser and he used to frequent coffee stands together, the old professor often brought a stack of newspapers to sell to tourists in town for a smile and a memory. He’d pepper the people with jokes, tell them he was famous and to look him up on the Internet.

Corin tried to imagine the looks on the faces of those who did do a Google search. What did they say when they discovered the person they thought was a homeless man peddling newspapers to survive was really a renowned professor revered in academic circles?

Gold wire-rimmed glasses—more silver than gold where the color had worn off—sat halfway down his miniature hawkish nose. As soon as Tesser spotted Corin he stopped and cocked his head. “You’re on time.”

“I’m trying to form a new habit.”

“Excellent. I’m working on a few right now myself.” He ran his palms down the sides of his cheeks. “You’ll notice I shaved today. That’s twice this week alone.”

“Congratulations.”

He shuffled over to Corin, reached up, and patted him on the shoulder. “You look sprightly.”

“That was going to be my line.”

Tesser laughed. “No, I look old.”

It wasn’t true. At least no older than when Corin had last seen him. It seemed some people hit a certain age, and as the ravages of time passed, it didn’t cause them to look older.

“Look, look, look.” Tesser pointed to a series of photos lining the wall to Corin’s left.

“What?”

“That one in the middle.”

Corin squinted. Tesser and he were toasting each other with glasses of red wine.

“Was that Italy?”

“Yes, good memory.” Tesser grabbed his elbow and led him back the way he’d come. “A fine trip that was, yes? Pompeii was a highlight. As was Capri. Although I didn’t get to the Blue Grotto with you. I should have gone.”

“It was the trip of a lifetime.” Corin glanced at the other photos on the wall. “What’s this one?” He pointed to a grainy picture on the far right.

“Munich 1972.”

Corin stared closer at the picture. “Is this from the hostage crisis?”

“Yes, yes, what a fiasco that turned out to be.”

“I’d describe it as more than a fiasco.”

“Horrible mess.” Tesser rubbed his forehead and looked at the ground.

After ten minutes of catching up, the professor clasped his hands. “We’ll do more chitchat later, but I think it’s time to talk serious.”

“About?”

Tesser rolled his eyes. “Your mystery!”

“Right.”

Corin pulled the photos of the chair he’d taken the day before out of his briefcase and handed them to his old friend.

Tesser stared at them for over a minute in silence. “Whew.” He squinted up at Corin from under his glasses for a moment, then turned back to the photos. “You’ve got something here all right.”

“What?”

“Amazing. When did you take these?”

“Just last night. With my cell phone.”

“These were taken with your cell phone?” Tesser stared at him with suspicion. The old professor poked at them with a vintage Waterman pen, then pulled a magnifying glass out of his oak desk and studied each picture again.