Crying Wolf

21

A problem, maybe not like any other; still, a problem, and he was good at solving problems, wasn’t he?

He was hungry. There was only the granola bar untouched by Patti, still lying on the bedside crate. He didn’t want it; a granola bar, yes, even three or four, with a tall glass of cold milk to wash them down, but not this particular granola bar.

Nat dressed in warm clothes, went for a walk. A long walk-temperature cold and dropping, the sky brilliant now, its blue almost glaring-through pockets of the campus he hadn’t yet seen. After some time, he wandered down the north, sunless side of College Hill, across some railroad tracks, and into what they called the flats. A dismal place, he saw, bringing to mind the town he’d come from, although his town couldn’t be called dismal, could it? He thought about the yellow legal pad in the kitchen at home, on which he and his mom had done the figures; he thought about the figures themselves, still clear in his memory. He thought about the home equity loan. He shifted numbers around in his head, began to feel the cold.

His mind kept returning to that home equity loan. He was forgetting something, but what? He walked back up to the campus, trod every path, the wind picking up now from the west, lifting some of the new snow, blowing it around; trod every path and fought the impulse to commit it all to memory. He walked until the western sky turned orange and the tree branches went black, but didn’t solve the home equity loan problem.

The answer didn’t come until he was back on the quad, almost at the main Plessey door. The problem wasn’t with the home equity loan itself, he finally realized, but the original mortgage on the house. How would they make the payments now? Specifically, how would they make the payments without him going back and finding a job? That meant that even coming up with money to pay the bills at Inverness wouldn’t be good enough. Thinking had only made the problem worse.

Back in his room, he took off his boots, warm boots but a little tight, which was why his feet were blue. He rested them on the radiator, gazed out the window as shadows fell over the campus, the golden dome on Goodrich Hall holding the last of the light. Later the moon rose. He ate the granola bar.

Nat was at the financial office the next morning, 8:00 A.M. He told the story of his mom’s job and the home equity loan.

“I’m so sorry,” the woman said.

Nat could tell she meant it. “That’s all right,” he said.

“I feel so bad,” she went on, “whenever something like this happens. The good news is that as a student in good standing, you’re welcome back at any time, any time, that is, after the resolution of these financial difficulties.”

And the bad news?

“I wish there was something we could do,” she said.

What about making up the difference, he thought, just till the end of the semester? I’ll work two jobs this summer, maybe three, and… But he didn’t say any of that, was already on his feet. They’d been generous with him; wouldn’t they do it if they could? He couldn’t make himself ask for more; and pointless, too, when the answer had already been given.

Nat picked up his check in the Alumni Office, cashed it at the Student Union, filled a tray: bacon and eggs, French toast, cornflakes, juice, milk, coffee; paid cash. He sat at a table by the window. Someone had left the campus newspaper, the Insider, behind. He started reading automatically: he’d eaten many meals alone growing up, liked to read at the same time. The lead story was about a survey of the current activities of last year’s graduates. They were impressive.

Creme de la creme.

Nat stopped reading. He heard talk all around him, student talk rising from other tables. There was only one other solitary eater, a middle-aged man in heavy olive-green work clothes, warming himself over a bowl of something steaming. Nat’s appetite vanished. He left the rest of his food untouched despite all his mom had taught him about waste, despite how hungry he thought he’d been.

Monday: bio, English, econ. He cut them all. Hadn’t paid for them was the fact of the matter.

Nat knocked on the door of Professor Uzig’s office in Goodrich Hall.

“Yes?”

He opened the door.

“Ah, Nat.” Blue blazer, blue fountain pen; white shirt, white paper. “How nice to see you. Do we have an appointment?”

“No.”

“Then?”

“Something’s come up.”

“You intend to drop the course.”

“Drop the course?”

“Your friend-Ferg, is it? — has preceded you.”

“He dropped the course?”

“Within the hour, but still, well before the deadline, and therefore no harm done.”

“I’m not dropping the course,” Nat said. “Not intentionally.”

Professor Uzig looked interested.

“I love the course.” He’d meant to say like. “Nietzsche…”

“Yes?”

“I’d barely heard of Nietzsche before I came here. Do you realize that?” That just came bursting out. And more: “Izzie’s right. He was a sweet man.” What was this? He was suddenly close to tears; hadn’t cried since he was a little boy.

Professor Uzig watched him. Nat could sense the power of his mind. He made his face a mask, watched him back.

“Sweet,” said the professor. “A remarkable observation. Izzie’s a remarkable young woman.”

Professor Uzig paused. Nat said nothing.

“Grace is remarkable too,” Professor Uzig went on. “Both remarkable, as one might expect, each in her own way, as one might not.” The professor smiled, as though just happening upon something witty. Nat didn’t: it was the plain truth.

“A sweet man-perhaps true, to some extent,” said Professor Uzig. “But of no use to him in the end. Sweetness is a self-defeating characteristic in combination with genius of that order.”

Nat understood perfectly: Because ambition should be made of sterner stuff. He kept that to himself.

“But you’re not here to bat around peripheral ideas. You came to deliver your unintentional rationale for dropping the course.”

Nat told him. Professor Uzig had a way of listening that Nat had felt before, as though some powerful device, like a radio telescope, was at work. He’d felt it at Aubrey’s Cay, in the classroom under the dome, in Professor Uzig’s dining room on College Hill. He didn’t feel it now.

“That’s the story, then?” said Professor Uzig.

Did he no longer look interested? Was he disappointed, as though the account lacked drama, originality, or something else he valued? A weird idea, even paranoid, Nat decided: his imagination was out of control.

“That’s the story.”

“Very considerate of you to tell me in person,” said Professor Uzig.

Nat didn’t quite get that, wondered where it was leading. When it led nowhere, he said: “I thought you might have some ideas.”

“Ideas? Of what sort?”

“Some way I could stay.”

“This seems to be a purely financial matter.”

He paused as though expecting a reply, so Nat said, “Yes.”

“Those I avoid,” said Professor Uzig.

There was nothing wrong with Nat’s imagination.

He went back to his room in Plessey Hall. Almost immediately he thought of a modification for his bio experiment, a new test run conducted at a higher temperature that might Forget it.

Nat began packing his stuff, first actually folding the odd thing, but soon packing only in his head, staring out the window. Snow lay deep on the quad. Some students were building a huge mound, or ramp, as he realized after a while, a ramp leading up to a tall window over one of the entry pediments of Lanark. He heard laughter and shouting; condensation clouds rose from their mouths; the sunshine was dazzling.

The tall window over the pediment opened and someone emerged; flew out, really, surfing down the ramp on a cafeteria tray. A girl: her hands outspread, body poised, balanced-actually in some control of the tray. It was Izzie. She hit the soft snow at the end of the ramp, went airborne, dove like a surfer bailing out. A male student, two male students hurried to help her, but she was up on her own, laughing and covered with snow, before they reached her.

Nat turned away.

He was good at solving problems. What about calling Mrs. Smith? What about calling Mr. Beaman? What about calling his mom again, to be sure he’d heard right? Could he put her through that? No.

That left winning the lottery. He didn’t have a ticket, had never bought one.

“I don’t get it,” Grace said.

They were down in the cave, the three of them, that night.

“It’s pretty simple,” Nat said.

“You have to go home?” Izzie said. “I don’t understand that part at all.”

“Tomorrow?” said Grace.

“Or the next day. I still have to change my ticket.” His return ticket, to have been used at the end of the semester.

“Home equity loan?” Izzie said. “What is that, exactly?”

Nat explained again.

“But what’s it got to do with Inverness?” Grace said. “It should be none of their business.”

He went over that too.

“And I thought you were on scholarship anyway,” Izzie said.

“Partial. This is about the rest of it.”

“The rest of what?” Izzie said.

“Tuition. Fees. Room and board.”

“Partial?” said Grace. “Can’t they make it complete?”

Nat shook his head. “But I can come back under the old terms whenever we get this straightened out.”

“Like next week?” Izzie said.

“It’s a technicality, then,” Grace said.

Nat smiled. “Next year at the earliest.”

“Next year?” said Izzie.

“You’re leaving Inverness,” Grace said, “just like that?”

“You talk like I’m doing something whimsical.”

“Aren’t you?” Grace said. “This is silly. How much money are we talking about?”

Izzie nodded, as though a shrewd point had been raised. “Good question,” she said. “How much?”

“Over seven thousand dollars.”

They turned to him, each doing that raised-eyebrow thing, Grace the left, Izzie the right.

“This is about seven thousand dollars?” Grace said.

“Closer to eight.”

Grace and Izzie laughed.

“What’s funny?”

“You,” they said together.

“I don’t get it,” Nat said.

“He doesn’t get it,” said Grace. “What’s in the account, Izzie?”

“What account?”

“Our bank account, here at school.”

“Do we have one? I’ve just been using the ATM in Baxter.”

“There must be a bank account,” Grace said. “What does it say on the checkbook?”

“Checkbook?” said Izzie.

Nat held up his hand. “It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t take anything from you.”

“You couldn’t?” Grace said, her glance going quickly to Izzie.

“No.”

“You don’t really want to be here,” Izzie said. “Is that it?”

Didn’t she know better than that? And how it would be without her? “That’s not it.”

“Then what?”

“What I said. I couldn’t take money.” They looked blank. His gaze went to the big oil painting: at that moment Grace and Izzie were almost as unreal to him as the nudes, the fauns, the centaur behind the tree.

“You wouldn’t be taking it,” Grace said.

“We’d be giving it,” said Izzie.

“That’s what can’t happen.”

Silence. They stared at him.

Izzie cocked her ear. “What was that?”

“What?” said Nat.

“That sound.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Grace said.

They listened, heard nothing.

“I have an idea,” Grace said. “What if it was in the form of a loan?”

“A loan!” said Izzie. “You could pay it back later, down the road, whenever.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s no different.”

“Sure it is,” said Izzie. “Completely different. This would be like the home equity thing.”

“A Nat equity loan,” said Grace.

That was why. “No,” Nat said. “And there are other complications.” He told them about the mortgage payments that had to be made, the utility bills, the food, the car expenses, all of it out of his mom’s pay, now cut off.

They made identical flapping motions with their hands, as though shooing flies.

“This is-” Izzie began.

“-ridiculous,” said Grace.

“What about talking to Leo?” Izzie said.

“Forget it,” said Grace.

“Why do you say that?” Nat asked.

“I talked to my-our father,” Grace said. “He knows all about Helen Uzig, Brooklyn, the whole thing. He checked Leo out when discussions about this faculty chair endowment started getting serious. Leo grew up in Brooklyn, family owned a dry-cleaning business-or was it a candy store? — went to City College of New York, Ph. D. Columbia, got a job at Inverness, where Helen, not Uzig at the time, was head of the phil department. Head of the phil department, and had some money, too. Made him shave off that ludicrous walrus mustache. It’s her house, of course.”

“Does this mean that Ferg guy’s right?” said Izzie. “He’s some kind of fake?”

“Fake?” Nat said. “He’s a brilliant teacher. Anyone can see that. Besides, he’s famous, in philosophical circles. I’ve looked him up.”

“Then go see him,” Grace said.

“I did.”

“And?”

Nat didn’t answer.

“See?” said Grace.

“See what? It has nothing to do with his qualities as a teacher.”

“Nietzsche would disagree,” Grace said.

Nat was thinking about that when Izzie said: “So what’s he going to do?”

Nat wasn’t sure who she meant.

“About the endowment?” Grace said. “Take his time deciding. Quote.”

Izzie nodded, as though that made sense to her. Nat doubted that either of them really knew what a home mortgage was, but they had no trouble understanding whatever manipulations were going on between Mr. Zorn and Professor Uzig, or Mr. Zorn and the phil department, or Mr. Zorn and Inverness, or whatever it was. Maybe it was a simple matter of Mr. Zorn delaying his decision until after the girls had graduated. Nat discounted that: a small-town, been-nowhere kind of notion; he remembered the gas station owner back home with a son in the Clear Creek football program, and the coach’s free fill-ups.

They were both watching him.

“You’re not trying to find a way,” Grace said.

“I am.” Nat’s voice rose, taking him, taking them all, by surprise.

“You can’t just go,” Izzie said. “You’re here. You’re right here.”

“This kind of thing happens. I’m not the first.”

“So what?” said Grace. She rose. “Let’s have a drink. We’ll think better.”

She poured from the oldest bottle yet, Domaine des Forges, 1893; Izzie wound up the record player, put on “Caro Nome.” Nat didn’t think any better, but probably because he hadn’t eaten, the drink’s effect was immediate.

“We’re lucky,” Izzie said.

“Because we have money?” said Grace. “They say that causes problems of its own.”

“But they’re problems of freedom,” Izzie said. “Other people don’t even get to those.”

They both turned to him, awaiting confirmation from the land of other people. He suspected it wasn’t that simple, but before he could organize his thoughts, Grace said:

“She’s right. Home equity, mortgages, all that step-by-step bullshit-by the time most people get past it, life is over. Piss on that. Working for decades just to get-just hoping to get-where Izzie and I are right now.”

“That makes me feel better,” Nat said.

Izzie laughed, then Grace. “Here’s to the problems of freedom,” Grace said.

They drank. Izzie restarted “Caro Nome.” “Unless,” she said, turning from the record player, “Nat gets lucky too.”

“In what way?” said Grace.

“I don’t know. Writes a best-seller or something.”

Nat was astonished: he’d never mentioned wanting to write to anyone.

Grace and Izzie looked at each other. Nat had the crazy idea that for a moment their brains had hooked up, doubling normal human power.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” said Grace.

“This isn’t about seven thousand dollars,” said Izzie.

“Or scholarships, home equity, watching our pennies,” said Grace. “It’s about getting all that out of the way.”

“In one stroke,” said Izzie.

“I thought of Powerball,” Nat said.

They glanced at him, said nothing. Grace got up, walked over to Izzie by the record player, refilled her glass, came to Nat on the couch, refilled his, started to refill her own-and dropped the bottle. A heavy, cut-glass bottle that just slipped from her hand, smashed at her feet.

She didn’t seem to notice. “I’m having a thought,” she said.

“Uh-oh,” said Izzie.

“Shut up,” said Grace. “It’s-it’s so good. And it’s all right here, even the sound track.”

Izzie’s eyes widened; maybe she saw it coming. Nat didn’t.

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“We’ll kidnap Izzie.”

“For God’s sake.”

“Or me, then. It doesn’t matter. We’ll kidnap me for ransom.”

“How much?” said Izzie.

“I don’t know,” Grace said. “Tuition, room and board, home equity, mortgage, miscellaneous-how about a million dollars?”

“Sure that’s enough?” said Izzie.

“In terms of the expenses?” Grace said. “Or do you mean-”

“-what a real kidnapper would ask. It has to look realistic, doesn’t it?”

“You’re way ahead of me, Izzie.”

Izzie looked pleased.

“This is a joke, right?” Nat said.

“A joke?” said Grace. “Is that still a negative word in your lexicon? Shouldn’t our supreme insights-”

“-sound like follies,” Izzie said. She giggled, a little giggle just like Grace’s, but that Nat heard now for the first time from her.

“Like follies,” said Grace, “or even crimes.”

She opened the leaded-glass cabinet doors, took out another bottle. “Hey,” she said. “Rouge.” She showed it to Nat.

Romanee-Conti, 1917.

“Is it a good one?” Izzie said.

“Who knows?” said Grace, looking around for the corkscrew, not spotting it immediately.

“Wait,” Nat said, because he knew. Mr. Zorn’s 1962 bottle of the same wine was worth $2,500. And therefore “Not to worry,” said Grace, striking the neck of the bottle sharply against the edge of a table. It snapped off; she found new glasses, poured.

And therefore that might have been tuition, room, and board right there. Was there more, even one bottle? Nat checked the cabinet, found none.

They drank. “My God,” said Grace.

“Like having a drink with the czar or something,” said Izzie.

The things she sometimes said: perfect, at least to his ear.

Grace raised her glass. “To crimes and follies.”

“You’re serious,” said Nat.

“Why not?” said Grace.

“Why not? Because it’s wrong.”

“Is it?” said Izzie; that surprised him a little; perhaps things would have been different had it been Grace, but it was Izzie. Or if he had eaten more than a granola bar in the past two days, or hadn’t been drinking nectar on an empty stomach, or hadn’t been drinking at all since he’d never been much of a drinker, or this or that. “First of all, it’s not much money,” Izzie said, “nothing at all to him. He wouldn’t even notice.”

“It would do him good,” Grace said.

Izzie glanced at her. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

After a pause, Izzie continued. “Take that horse farm-how much do you think that’s costing?”

“And we don’t even ride anymore,” said Grace.

“Second, there’s no victim, no real crime, no one gets hurt or even scared.”

“I just hide down here for a day or two,” said Grace, “there’s some sort of ransom demand, Izzie goes to pick up the money, I reappear, ka-boom. Nothing’s real.”

“And third,” said Izzie, “it’s just.”

“Just?”

“Like land reform in Latin America,” said Grace.

“Exactly,” said Izzie. “What fortune didn’t start with a little hanky-panky?”

“Hanky-panky?” said Grace, and started to laugh; then Izzie started too, and finally Nat. It seemed like the funniest combination of syllables ever uttered. They laughed till they cried.

Then they sat quietly for a few moments. Izzie looked at Nat, right into his eyes. “Fourth, you can stay.” Nat met her gaze, the candlelight catching those gold flecks in her irises, kept meeting it until he felt Grace watching.

“The best part, of course,” said Grace. “And all those worries-home equity, mortgage, your mother’s job-”

“Finis,” said Izzie.

“So,” said Grace, “how about it?”

Nat was silent. It wasn’t the money itself, but the freedom, just as Izzie had said. To be free of that yellow legal pad and future legal pads with their columns of figures adding up to worry, constriction, settling for second-best, or less. What was that cliche? Play the cards you’re dealt. He’d been dealt a new hand. He’d entered this world of Grace and Izzie where some words- money, for one-had a different meaning. Money perhaps the most different of all: a world where a cash machine was no more than a box where you pushed buttons and out came money, as demanded.

“Or maybe this place is a bit too much,” Grace said to Izzie. “Maybe he’s not that ambitious.”

Izzie turned to him.

That word: and the stern stuff that went with it. To be sweet and brilliant, a self-defeating combination. And if not sweet and brilliant, at least reasonably kind and fairly smart. He had a horrible vision of dying promise, promise dying, dying down the years, its first stage the long flight home. Come east but hadn’t cut it, for one reason or another. The candles, dozens of them, burned, the old wine glowed in the fine glasses, Galli-Curci sang her song from Rigoletto, romantic and alien at once: their sound track. If he went home? It would be the end of him and Izzie, he didn’t fool himself about that. And other changes: change would follow like falling dominoes. Maybe his mom would never find another job; things like that happened every day. Then he’d be working full time. Living at home. Night school. And then? What could he shoot for, what would he end up as, best-case scenario? A small-time lawyer like Mr. Beaman? A nauseating prospect. He suddenly knew one thing for sure: he wanted the big time. Perhaps the desire had been in him from the very beginning, but distrusted, denied, disowned, buried. He wanted it, more than Mrs. Smith, Miss Brown, the whole town put together. He remembered then a quotation from Nietzsche, one he’d highlighted a few days before, meaning to raise it with Professor Uzig: The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities. Ambition wasn’t necessarily an evil quality; still, he had no need for the professor’s explanation now.

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

“Think about it?” said Izzie, disappointed, even shocked, as though he’d just revealed some unsuspected and damning flaw. Again: if only that had been Grace’s line.

“What do you want me to say?”

Izzie said: “Say yes.”

He said yes.

They drank. The brief exposure to air had turned the Romanee-Conti 1917 into something thin, tasteless, not wine at all.

Peter Abrahams

Crying Wolf