Crying Wolf

15

Nat slept through a dream in which he stood at the foul line, shooting one and one, with no time on the clock and his team down by a single point. He had actually lived such a moment in his senior high-school year against their big rival, Western Tech. But in the dream, he wore the red and white of Western Tech, instead of Clear Creek High’s burgundy and gold. He stood at the foul line bouncing the ball, bouncing and bouncing it, but never taking the shot. An uneasy dream made more so by the hardwood floor that looked like any other court but made cracking and splitting sounds with every bounce; still he remained inside it, sleeping through the ringing phone in the outer room-dimly aware of it, sleeping on. Sleeping on through biology class, the first class he’d missed, unaware of missing it, although as class time came and went the anxiety of his dream might have increased. Then someone’s lips touched his, and he woke up.

Izzie.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” she said.

“What time is it?” He tried to sit up; she rolled on top of him; was already in his bed.

Izzie gazed down on him. “Going somewhere?”

“Biol-” Nat started to say, but from the intensity of the light coming through the window, he knew it was too late.

“Biology-the science of living things, correct?” Izzie said; raising an eyebrow the way she did, her right eyebrow, questioning, mocking.

“Correct.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Why is that?”

“This counts for extra credit.”

“A — plus,” said Izzie, after.

After sex, but still under its spell. They lay in Nat’s narrow bed, the room quiet except for their breathing. Nat noticed that the period of their breaths seemed similar. He held his until her next inhalation, and inhaled at the same time. After that, they breathed in unison, a coincidence, of course, and maybe a bit sappy, but there it was.

“What’s that word,” Izzie said, the vibrations from her voice buzzing against his ear, “when bad beginnings have a good result?”

“Serendipity.”

“Then what happened to Wags was serendipitous for us.”

“Because he’s not around?”

“What else?”

Nat couldn’t agree; on the other hand, his scruples were dwarfed by the power of that us. It seemed to toll in the room, like a steeple bell at the beginning of a story.

“Or am I being too pushy?” Izzie said, sensing but misinterpreting his resistance. “Maybe you don’t want me to come here.”

“I do.”

“Then give me a kiss.”

He did.

From beyond came all the normal sounds of Inverness: voices raised across the quad, maniacal laughter in the hall, music from everywhere, someone’s barking dog. “Grace thinks this is like living in the projects,” Izzie said after some time.

“Do you?”

She thought. “I don’t know. Maybe not. Grace doesn’t really think so either. She’s got a big personality, that’s all.”

“It must be interesting,” he said.

“What?”

“Living two lives at once.”

She looked at him, didn’t speak. He leaned forward-he was on top now-his gaze on her whole face, then her eyes, then only one of them, then on those gold flecks in the iris, as though a really close examination of them would reveal everything about her. Her eyelid closed just as his lips touched her. The softest thing. He stayed right there. Had time ever slowed down like this for him before? He got the feeling that he and Izzie had entered a powerful circle of some kind, impermeable. Was this what all that poetry he’d had to study was about, all those novels? Maybe not, because something permeated the circle right away, at least his part of it: the image of Mrs. Smith’s and Miss Brown’s happy faces on the Fourth of July, an unwelcome image that let in unwelcome thoughts: the effort it had taken to get him here, the missed biology class. And Patti.

“What’s wrong?” Izzie said.

“Nothing.”

She opened her eyes-he felt the eyelid’s tiny struggle against his lips-and turned her head so she could see him. “You’re thinking about something.”

“No.”

“Is it Grace?”

“Of course not. Why would I be thinking about Grace?”

Izzie didn’t speak.

And Patti. Now messy memories from the Thanksgiving party threatened to spill out in his mind, but the most important, more important than how drunk Patti had got, or the way she’d vomited in bed that night, all over both of them, was the way he’d seen everyone back home, his old friends, changed. He was the changed one, of course. The cliche at the heart of so many coming-of-age stories, but that didn’t make them false. He would call Patti today. He’d changed. It was normal. Out of the corner of his eye, he was suddenly aware of her picture on the upside-down crate at his bedside. Something writhed inside him.

“Then what are you thinking about?” Izzie said.

“Nothing.”

“That’s not true. I can tell.”

He was wondering whether to drag her through the whole thing, or to simply answer you, which was true-his mind was full of her-if not factually correct at that exact moment, and also might sound a little buttery, when he heard someone entering the outer room. Izzie went still.

“Nat,” called a voice. Grace. He saw fear, real fear in Izzie’s eyes.

“Just a sec,” he said, hurrying out of bed, pulling on sweatpants. He stepped into the outer room, closing the door, he hoped casually, behind him.

Grace looked up from reading something on his desk as he came in, her gaze going to his bare chest first, then to his face. “Morning, sleepyhead,” she said. “And hung over, too.”

“A bit.”

“Moi aussi,” she said, although she didn’t look it. “But isn’t it great?”

“What we found?”

“And the way we found it,” Grace said. “Defines serendipitous.” She glanced around as though someone might hear. “You haven’t mentioned it to anybody?”

“No.” He noticed she was wearing overalls, with a hammer, screwdriver, pliers sticking out of the pockets.

“I’ve already been down there today,” she said. “It really is like Alice-through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole.”

“What have you been doing?”

“Fixing up.”

“How?”

“You’ll see.” She pulled a book from her back pocket. “And look at this-plot summaries of all the major operas, so we’ll know what we’re listening to. For example…” She flipped through the pages. “Rigoletto: Gilda-she’s the one who sings that song, ‘Caro Nome,’ means ‘dear name,’ she sings it to her lover, but it isn’t even his real name… and then it looks like there’s some kind of kidnapping-her own father, that’s Rigoletto, helps without knowing it.”

“Helps who?”

“The kidnappers.”

“Why?”

“Doesn’t say,” Grace said, running her eyes over the page. “She dies at the end, by mistake.”

“What kind of mistake?”

Grace checked the text again. “It’s convoluted. And not very believable. But the music makes all that irrelevant, I guess.”

“Last night it did,” Nat said.

“Exactly,” said Grace, closing the book. Her eyes went to his chest again, then back to his face. “I guess it’s my fault,” she said.

“What is?”

“That we got off to maybe a bad start.”

“What do you mean?” he said, wishing she’d talk a little more quietly.

“You and me. That night in New York. At my da-at my father’s. Too much to drink and smoke, et cetera. And I was probably a little too forceful. For you, I mean. For other men, though…”

Her voice trailed off. Nat thought of Paolo, and the married man Izzie had told him about. He felt a little sorry for Grace. “Forget it,” he said.

“You mean that?” The way she asked that little question, the words, the intonation: pure Izzie; he revisited the most obvious fact about them, one he’d been leaving behind, the fact of how alike they were.

“Yes,” he said. “I mean it.”

“A clean slate, then?”

“Sure.” Who could say no to that?

Grace smiled a bright smile. “See you in class,” she said, and left the room; very light on her feet, almost skipping. He went over to the desk to see what she’d been looking at and found Patti’s letter.

Nat went into the bedroom. No Izzie. He opened the closet and, as though it were a children’s game, there she was, hiding behind his Clear Creek letter jacket, worn once at Inverness and never again.

“Has she gone?” said Izzie.

“Yes. What’s this all about?”

“I told you-I just don’t want her to know right now.”

“Know what?”

“That anything’s happening between us.”

“Why not?”

“Just give me time.”

“But why not?”

Izzie watched him over the letter jacket. “I never did better than Grace in anything, not a single race, a single essay, a single exam, not ever.”

“So what?”

“Until the SATs. I scored twenty points higher on the verbal.”

“Do we have to talk about the SATs?”

Izzie smiled. “I never met anyone like you.”

“That’s because you haven’t led a sheltered life.”

She laughed. “You see? Every time you open your mouth you prove it.” Her eyes went to the Clear Creek jacket. “Can I wear this?”

“You want to wear that?”

“It’s not something Wags left behind, is it?”

“No. It’s my old high-school jacket.”

“Then I want to wear it. Just for a while,” she added when he was silent.

“Okay.”

Izzie put it on. She wasn’t wearing anything else. “Now close the door.”

“We’re in the closet.”

“That’s right.”

Nat closed the door. In the darkness she leaned against him.

“But you’ve had boyfriends before,” he said.

Izzie knew what he meant. “Only ones she’d rejected or didn’t want in the first place, like Paolo,” she said.

“What makes you think she’s interested in me?”

“I know it.”

“How?”

“I just do.”

“But-”

But she grabbed the back of his head, pulled him close, kissed his mouth, deeper and deeper. He had sex in his closet with Nat, Clear Creek Basketball, number 8. He’d never had sex three times in a row before-except for Patti hadn’t had sex at all before Izzie-but for some reason this time was the best of all.

After Izzie left, Nat reread Patti’s letter. He held it up to the light, tried again to see what she’d crossed out, with no success until he thought of turning the page over. Then, reading backward, he was able to make out a bit more: what he’d thought might be kissed, pissed, or missed was definitely missed; and the next word was my. The rest remained obliterated. His gaze went to the PS: my present should be there by now.

He’d forgotten all about Patti’s present; last seen on his bed before Christmas. Nat searched the bedroom, found it under the bed. A small package with reindeer wrapping and a card with a reindeer, candy canes dangling from its antlers, on the front: Merry Christmas to the very best person I know. Love, Patti. He sat slowly on the bed, the present in the palm of his hand.

The phone rang in the outer room. He let it. Slowly, more slowly than he’d ever unwrapped a present, he unwrapped Patti’s, taking great care not to rip the paper, also not like him. Inside was a little cardboard box, and on it the words Assad and Son. Assad and Son was the jewelry store on the main street in his town. Nat opened the box, pulled aside some tissue paper, and exposed a small gold number 8 on a gold chain.

Eight, the number he’d worn at Clear Creek. And a gold chain. He’d never worn a gold chain or had any desire to. Nat closed the box without touching the pendant or the chain.

He went to the phone, called Patti at her mom’s. With the time difference, she might not have left for her classes at Arapaho State. I wish I didn’t have to say this on the phone, Patti, but: his mind rehearsed as it rang at the other end. The answering machine took his call. He listened to Patti’s mom’s taped message-she said “God bless” at the end-and at the sound of the beep, hung up.

You’ll meet all kinds of girls, prettier than me. Prettier and smarter. And richer. And richer: she’d said that too. He had a funny thought: what else does she know about my future?

In the small domed room at the top of Goodrich Hall, the smart girl from English 103 was saying, “There’s a lot here we’re going to have to filter out, isn’t there?”

“Such as?” said Professor Uzig, his face so composed and dignified it was hard for Nat to imagine it any other way, certainly not furious. But the memory, not twelve hours old, was strong, reinforced by a quick glance on his way up at the hot-air grate in the ground-floor lounge.

“Like on page one-oh-one,” said the girl from English 103. “ ‘In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.’ And he’s got sexist opinions like that all over the place.”

“Is it possible to mount a defense in this particular case?” asked Professor Uzig. An odd thing had happened: although the professor’s voice remained unchanged, calm, cultured, confident, he’d gone pale. Did he dislike being challenged? Nat had already seen some of the others challenge him, seen how he turned them back with ease. Then what was it?

“You’re asking us to defend that statement?” Grace said.

“For the sake of argument, Grace, as a lawyer would.”

“That’s what’s wrong with-” She broke off at that moment: Izzie had just entered, a few minutes late, and she was wearing Nat’s letter jacket. Grace’s eyes were on her as she sat down; everyone’s were. Nat had two sudden revelations; the first, what a juvenile garment a high-school letter jacket was, certainly his, burgundy with gold sleeves, the big gold C, Nat in burgundy on one sleeve, 8 on the other; the second, he now understood the meaning of a word that had always been doubly foreign to him: chic.

Izzie, aware of everyone watching, said, “Sorry I’m late.” She might have been addressing Professor Uzig, but she was looking at Grace.

“Carry on, Grace,” said the professor.

Grace faced him, opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Nat, sitting beside her, realized she’d forgotten what she’d been saying. “Lawyers,” he said, softly, so only Grace could hear.

“Lawyers,” said Grace, her tone more passionate than it had been before, almost angry. “That’s what’s wrong with lawyers.”

Professor Uzig, his color back to normal, said, “As your punishment for tardiness, Isobel, it’s up to you to defend Nietzsche’s one hundred and thirty-ninth maxim from Beyond Good and Evil. Page one-oh-one.”

Izzie riffed through her copy, read the sentence, looked up. “Women are more barbaric than men?”

“Barbarous,” said Professor Uzig. “The words are not synonyms, barbarous invariably implying moral condemnation, as barbaric does not. Barbarous, then, and in only these two areas, love and revenge.”

“Barbarous love?” said Izzie. “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

“Is it?” said Professor Uzig.

“And what about domestic violence?” said a girl who’d never spoken before; she had an up-from-under way of holding her head that reminded Nat a little of his mother.

“What indeed?” said the professor.

“Well, it’s indefensible, isn’t it?”

“Anyone else?” said Professor Uzig.

Silence. Nat expected Grace might speak, but she was doodling on her pad, a flower with something dripping from it. Professor Uzig’s gaze found him. He had yet another thought about that jacket: wasn’t it the descendant of knightly finery, what a princess-rescuing fairy-tale character might wear? He never wanted to see the goddamn thing again.

“Nat?” said the professor.

“Yes?”

“Have you done the reading?”

“I have.”

“And your response to this question?”

“A question of my own,” Nat said. To his surprise he said that aloud, the kind of remark that until very recently, maybe until that moment, would have remained inside. Then he asked the question: “Did Nietzsche believe it?”

“Referring to this passage that seems to shock everyone so much?”

“Yes.”

“Go on.”

“That’s it. How do we know he believed it?”

“And if he didn’t believe it?”

“Maybe he was just trying to be provocative.”

“In order to provoke what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

“Thought. To provoke thought.”

“What kind of thought?”

“Fresh,” Nat said. “And maybe that’s the connection to Kurt Cobain,” he added, the words popping out on their own, “the provocative part.”

“Oh, dear,” said the professor, “and you were doing so well.”

The bearded student who liked Kurt Cobain leaned forward and said, “Wait a minute. He’s on to something.”

“Something that you can discuss outside class,” said Professor Uzig. “We will begin to separate Nietzsche the provocateur from Nietzsche the philosopher, now that Nat has shown the way.”

“But what about the whole Incesticide CD?” said the bearded student. “The one with ‘Hairspray Queen’ and ‘Mexican Seafood.’ It fits perfectly.”

Grace had been working. She’d repaired the hatch cover, or trap door, in the tunnel, replacing the hinges and adding a pull ring and a rope ladder that unfurled all the way from the frame to the floor below. She’d swept, dusted, cleaned; and that night, by the glow of dozens of candles-in wall sconces, candelabras, and the great chandelier-they saw how magnificent the two rooms really were. They lounged on plush furniture with elaborately carved legs, while the paneled walls gleamed all around, but through pockets of candlelight and shadow, more like an artist’s rendering of Victorian splendor than the real thing, and while Amelita Galli-Curci sang “Caro Nome,” her voice, perhaps because of the recording quality, like some rediscovered instrument from a dead culture.

“We need a name for this place,” Grace said.

“How about the frat?” Nat said.

They both gave him a look.

“The club?” said Izzie, still wearing the letter jacket.

“Yuck,” said Grace.

“The Rigoletto Room?” said Nat.

“That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said.”

“Then what?”

“Something underground, like…”

“The burrow?” said Izzie.

“I’ve got it,” Grace said.

“What?”

“The cave.”

“Oh, I like that,” said Izzie. “Didn’t Plato have a cave? This can be Nietzsche’s.”

“I wouldn’t push it that far,” said Grace. “Just ‘the cave’ will do. Nat?”

“The cave,” he said, raising his glass. He gazed through it and saw into the long-ago, or thought he did, and while he was doing that Grace opened another bottle. She poured more cognac in their glasses, heavy crystal glasses she’d found in one of the cupboards, poured cognac from 1899, its color the same as the atmosphere in the room. “Here’s to the cave,” she said, tilting back her head, exposing her perfect throat, draining the glass. Her face reddened at once, and when she spoke her voice was thicker and deeper. “And to Nat’s letter jacket, if that’s what the thing is called.”

Nat sat up straight. Silence, except for Galli-Curci singing her song to the wrong lover, or whatever it was, the details of Rigoletto, never clear in Nat’s mind, now less so.

“It’s sort of funny, isn’t it?” said Izzie, her voice going the other way from Grace’s, thinner and higher; anyone could have told them apart at that moment.

“What is?” said Grace.

“This silly jacket,” Izzie said. “As a fashion statement, I mean. That’s why I borrowed it.”

Enough, Nat thought, and was about to bring everything into the open when he thought he heard a muffled sneeze, not far away. “Shh,” he said. “Did you hear that?”

“What?” they both asked.

They all listened, heard nothing but water dripping, very faint.

Grace turned to him. “You a little wired or something?”

“No.”

“Spooked, down here in the cave?”

“Not at all. I like it.”

“Me too. The best thing about this dump.” She got up from the divan she’d been lying on, filled everyone’s glass again. “A fashion statement,” she said, pausing before Izzie. “What a weird concept.” She continued to pour, candlelight-colored liquid rising to the top of Izzie’s glass and spilling over.

“Grace!”

“Oops. You forgot to say when.” Grace paused-Izzie’s eyes glued to her-plucked at the fabric of the jacket, rubbed it between finger and thumb. “Nice,” she said.

“Want to try it on?” said Izzie, very quiet.

“That’s up to Nat, isn’t it?”

“Of course not,” Nat said.

“I wouldn’t want to violate any high-school code.”

“What are you talking about?” said Izzie; every note false in Nat’s ear. “It’s just a jacket.” She shrugged it off.

Grace put on Nat’s high-school letter jacket, saying, “At least we know it’s going to fit.”

And it did. At that moment Nat realized that Patti had never worn it. Wearing your boyfriend’s jacket had been uncool at Clear Creek High, at least while he was there.

“How do I look?” Grace said.