Ariel

Eight

The announcer on ORU, the Belgian overseas station, was commenting at length on the outcome of a recent OPEC meeting in Brussels. Erskine switched off the radio and yawned theatrically. “Boring,” he said, giving the word a singsong inflection. “Bow. Ring.”

“Maybe I should go home.”

“Maybe you should take off all your clothes, Jardell.”

She looked at him, shook her head. “You just have to be gross every once in a while to prove you’re alive, don’t you?”

“It’s not grossness, Ariel. It’s the heat of passion.”

“If I did take my clothes off you wouldn’t know what to do.”

“I’d think of something.”

“Your little old rheumatic heart would conk out and I’d have to explain it to your mother.”

“I told you I was willing to risk it. You could just tell my mother I ran up the stairs again.”

“She’d say, ‘I just knew it was a mistake to let him live in the attic.’ ”

“That’s what she’d say. Want to give it a try?”

She sighed. “You don’t even want to.”

“Then why do I keep asking you?”

“Habit, probably. You started off trying to gross me out and now you’re stuck in a rut. You don’t really want to, do you? With me, I mean.”

He started to reply, then took a moment to think. She watched his eyes through the thick lenses. “I guess not,” he said at length.

“Because we’re friends?”

“Right. We’re friends, and we sort of know each other, and all that. I know who I’d like to screw.”

“Who? Wait, let me guess. Carol Bahnsen.”

“Ugh.”

“Oh, I know. Veronica, right?”

“How’d you know?”

“Veronica Doughty. I just knew it.”

“How?”

“Woman’s intuition. Suppose you got to be friends with her first?”

“I wouldn’t get to be friends with her. (A) she doesn’t like me and (B) she’s stupid. But you’re right, I’d like to do it to her.”

“I knew she was the one.”

“And afterward I’d have to kill her.”

“Why?”

“Oh, because she’s so stupid, Ariel. And because she’s stuck up and a snot.”

She’s a snot, all right.”

“And to keep her from telling anybody. I’m just talking. I wouldn’t really kill her.”

“But you’d like to.”

“Sure.”

“Does it bother you?”

“What?”

“Thinking about killing people.”

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t really kill anybody. But there are a lot that I’d like to kill. Sometimes it’s fun to think about it.”

“Who would you like to kill?”

“Well, Veronica.”

“Who else?”

“Maybe Mrs. Tashman.”

“Tashman? Why her?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes she’s like my mother. The way she talks. You know, so sincere that you know she’s not really sincere.”

“I think she’s nice. She came to Caleb’s funeral.”

“Okay, then we’ll let her live. I’ll tell you who I’d like to kill. Graham Littlefield.”

“Why Graham?”

“Because he’s tall and strong and athletic and popular and stupid. He’s really stupid.”

“He’s not that stupid.”

“I think he’s stupid.”

“You’re jealous.”

“I don’t get jealous of stupid people, Jardell.”

“Veronica likes him.”

“So I’ll kill both of them. This is a stupid conversation, speaking of stupidity. Who do you want to kill?”

“Oh, nobody,” she said airily. “I love the whole world.”

“Come on, play the game.”

“Roberta.”

“Your mother? Why?”

“Because she’s not my mother. Because she hates me. Because she thinks—”

“Thinks what?”

“Nothing.”

“What were you going to say, Ariel?”

She shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “This is a stupid conversation, anyway. I’m sick of it.”

“Well, let’s talk about something else, then. Sex and killing are out. How about the OPEC conference in Brussels? There’s a thrilling topic.”

“Do you ever have dreams?”

“Dreams? Why?”

“I was just wondering.”

“I sometimes dream that I’m naked and people are looking at me. It’s not the same dream each time. The people’ll be different from one dream to the next, and the scenes, but I don’t have any clothes on and they’re staring at me. It’s stupid.”

“Do you ever have dreams that you’re afraid of?”

“It’s not much fun, dreaming you’re naked and people are staring and pointing. I don’t have the dream too often.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

He took off his glasses and squinted at her. “Something’s bothering you,” he said.

“No.”

“You had a bad dream, right?”

She shrugged.

“Last night?”

“A few nights ago.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I don’t remember it,” she said. “It was just frightening, that’s all. I don’t remember any of what happened in it.”

“Maybe you’ll dream it again.”

She gave him a sharp look, then shrugged again. “Maybe,” she said. “Anyway, it’s no big deal. It’s just a dream.”

There was a strong wind blowing when she left Erskine’s house. She zipped her jacket all the way up and turned up the collar, then walked along briskly with her hands plunged into her jacket pockets. She thought of how she and Erskine had killed people in their conversation. And about her dream.

She wasn’t sure how much she could tell him, how much she wanted to tell him. He was weird, and had crazy thoughts of his own, and maybe this would make him capable of accepting the kind of thoughts she found herself having. And they were friends, and that certainly made a difference.

But at the same time she wasn’t a hundred percent sure of him. They were friends, true, but sometimes she had the feeling that all the people in the world, herself included, were interesting specimens as far as Erskine was concerned. He was a scientist, cool and detached, watching them all through a microscope.

Maybe it was the thick glasses that did it, she thought. They kept him remote and a ways apart. When he took them off he looked vulnerable.

She turned the corner, felt the full force of the wind, drew her shoulders together in defense. Maybe there was nothing to tell him to begin with. Maybe what she’d said at the end was true enough, maybe dreams really didn’t mean anything.

And what could the dream mean, anyway?

That she had wanted to kill Caleb? That was crazy, because she loved Caleb. Of course it was possible that a part of her mind had hated him or been jealous of him or something like that. It was common for kids to resent younger brothers and sisters out of jealousy. She knew that. And it was possible to have that kind of thought buried inside you and not even know it was there. She knew that, too.

So? If nothing had happened to Caleb, the thought wouldn’t have been worth rooting out and thinking about. But Caleb was dead, and that made her worry about the thought, and feel guilty about it, as if the thought had killed him. But thoughts didn’t have magic powers. Thinking never killed anybody. If she had wanted Caleb to die, in some hidden secret chamber of her mind, the desire hadn’t had anything to do with his actual death.

She thought of the game she and Erskine had played. He could talk about killing Veronica, or Graham Littlefield, and it didn’t mean anything. It was just talk. If one of them died tomorrow, hit by a car or struck by lightning or perishing mysteriously of that rare ailment, Bed Death, it still didn’t mean it was Erskine’s fault or that he should blame himself for what he’d said.

And as far as Caleb was concerned, she hadn’t said anything, or even had a conscious thought on the subject. All she’d had was a dream, and nobody really knew what dreams meant in the first place.

So why was she upset?

Because she was afraid of what the dream meant. Because maybe it didn’t just have to do with secret thoughts. Because maybe, just maybe, it had to do with secret acts — oh, stop it.

She shivered, and blamed the chill that went through her on the wind.

She was just turning the corner onto her own street when she saw a car pull up in front of her house. The door on the passenger side opened and Roberta got out. Instinctively, Ariel drew back into the cover of a clump of barberry bushes. She watched as Roberta turned to say something to the driver, straightened up, swung the car door shut. The car remained stationary until Roberta had gone up the steps and opened the front door of the house. Then it continued down the block toward where Ariel was waiting.

It was a Buick with a maroon body and a black vinyl landau roof. The driver was a man, and there was something familiar about him but the car was past her and out of sight before she could fix his features firmly in her mind. Who was he and where had she seen him before? She couldn’t remember.

DWE-628. That was the license number. South Carolina license, and the number was DWE-628.

DWE-628. She didn’t have Erskine’s memory for numbers. He seemed to remember them effortlessly — telephone numbers, license plates, the frequencies of radio stations. She was good at math but remembering numbers was something else again.

DWE-628. She repeated it to herself, concentrating firmly on it, and when she got to her house she went directly to her room, not pausing for a word with Roberta, not wanting to chance forgetting the number. DWE-628. She got to her room, opened her diary, uncapped her pen, and wrote it down.

DWE-628.