Crying Wolf

23

Nat woke suddenly in the night. He checked the time, saw that he’d been asleep for less than three hours, rolled over, closed his eyes. Sleep had always come easily to Nat and, if interrupted, returned just as easily. But now he couldn’t get back. Couldn’t get back, although he was tired, and the night was still; even more than that, he could almost feel snow blanketing the roofs and window sills and pediments and cornices, sticking to the friezes and architraves and pilasters and capitals-and all those other architectural features of Inverness for which he now knew the names-surely a sleep-inducing image; but sleep wouldn’t come. Did it have to do with the Romanee-Conti 1917? There was a strange taste in his mouth, strange and unpleasant. Was this the taste of Romanee-Conti, too long bottled up? Nat got out of bed to brush his teeth.

Brushing his teeth meant going through the outer room and into the hall bathroom. He opened the bedroom door, and in the darkness of the outer room saw someone crouching by his desk.

Nat flicked on the overhead light. Not someone, not crouching, but a snowman, normal size for a snowman, a robust snowman with green buttonlike things for a smile. Right away, he felt a chill.

He touched the snowman, making sure the snow was real. It was. A snowman in his room, with a red ballpoint for a nose, a baseball cap on backward for a hat, those green buttonlike things for a smile. First he thought: snow days, Izzie’s snow days, keep on snowing, snow days from now until forever. What sense did that make? Something wrong there. Too much to drink, too little sleep, too mixed up. Therefore, second thought: a prank, a college prank. No frats at Inverness. So who would do this? And why? A lot of work in the middle of the night, just for a prank. On the other hand, there had been frats, or something like them, long ago, and he could easily imagine Grace and Izzie putting in that kind of work, Grace especially. Or Izzie especially, given her snow days; snow days, when the forces relented and indoor snowmen became possible. So he was right back to thought one.

Nat stood in his room, gazing at the snowman. Inverness was silent, a rare thing. No banging of the pipes behind Plessey’s walls, no scraps of talk from above, below, beside, no music drifting by from somewhere, no one quietly typing away, not even traffic sounds from beyond the campus. Nothing was happening, nothing but the snowman silently melting, leaving a growing puddle on Nat’s floor. He plucked one of those green buttonlike things from the snowman’s smile, read the single tiny word stamped on it: Pfizer.

Nat turned to the other bedroom, Wags’s old bedroom. The door was closed. Wasn’t it always open these days? He opened it now.

Wags lay on the bare mattress, reading by flashlight.

“Nattie boy,” he said, sitting up, holding out his hand. “A sight for sore eyes, whatever that might mean.”

Nat shook his hand; hot and moist.

“Keeping busy?” Wags said.

“Yeah.”

“Still in there pitching?”

“I guess.”

“Grinding away?”

Nat was silent. Wags wore a trench coat with a price tag hanging from the sleeve; underneath he had on flannel pajamas and mismatched boots, one an expensive-looking hiking boot-Nat spotted the Timberland logo-the other paint-spattered rubber.

“I’m teaching myself Japanese,” Wags said. He showed Nat what he was reading: a comic book. Two Japanese men were about to torture a Japanese woman. The only word on the page was Eeeeee! “I may get a job in the Ginza district,” Wags said, “or possibly come back here and finish up.”

Nat looked around for luggage, books, any of Wags’s possessions, saw nothing but a hospital bracelet on the floor. He remembered Wags’s mom: Are you really saying you had no idea of the mental state he’s been in?

“Wags?”

“Present and accounted for.”

“You all right?”

“Never better, Nattie boy. Better never, if you want the obverse, reverse, perverse. Free verse.” Wags laughed, a little hee-hee-hee that petered out. “Sometimes when my mind gets going…,” he began. There was a long pause. “They tested my IQ,” he said at last. “Off the charts. What’s yours?”

“I don’t know.”

“You forgot?” Wags laughed his new hee-hee laugh again. “That would say it all, wouldn’t it? An answering nonanswer of the truest sort.”

Nat laughed too.

“Did you know I spotted a mistake in a PSAT math section my year?” Wags said.

“No.”

“That must have been your year too, it occurs to me. In retrospect. There’s also introspect, disrespect, and plain old R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me. Remember that question with the hexagon and the isosceles triangle?”

“You remember the question?”

“Nothing wrong with my memory, Nattie boy. Nattie boy-o.”

“Do you remember why you built the snowman?”

Pause, even longer this time. “Right there,” said Wags, “that’s why I don’t like you.”

Nat picked up the hospital bracelet. The name of the place was on it, and a phone number.

Wags watched him. “You’re pissed about Sidney,” he said.

“Sidney?”

“Sidney Greenstreet. The snowman, if that’s how you want to think of him. He was supposed to be a sumo wrestler, but he ended up like Sidney Greenstreet.”

“Who’s he?”

“Who’s Sidney Greenstreet? Is that what you’re asking? Who’s Sidney Greenstreet? I despair. I give up. I just give up, completely and utterly.” Tears welled up in Wags’s eyes, spilled over onto his cheeks, kept coming.

Nat glanced down at the hospital bracelet in his hand.

“I’m on leave,” Wags said; there were still tears but his voice sounded normal, a combination Nat had never witnessed before. “Paid leave, or maybe administrative leave. Semiauthorized. It’s the medication, Nat-they have all these studies, but they’re clueless about what it feels like inside your head.”

“They let you carry your own pills around?”

Wags gave him a long look. “Still in there pitching,” he said again, but without animosity this time. “No, they don’t let you carry your own pills around. Not officially. But I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll defenestrate Sidney.”

It took Nat a moment or two to figure that one out. “And then?” he said.

“And then we’ll be even.”

Wags got up. They went into the outer room, Wags moving stiffly, as though he’d just returned from football practice. They gazed at the snowman. Footsteps sounded in the hall.

“Gestapo,” Wags whispered. His fingers dug into Nat’s arm.

The door opened. Grace came in, then Izzie. Wags let go.

“We couldn’t sleep-we were so-” They saw Wags, broke off.

“Sight for sore eyes,” Wags said. “To the second power.”

“Back already?” Grace said.

“And raring to go. Remember all the defenestrating we used to do at Choate?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Or maybe it was the next year, when I was… wherever I was. Doesn’t matter. The point is we’re going to defenestrate old Sidney.” He extended his hand toward the snowman, as though presenting a friend.

“Sidney?” said Grace.

Wags’s eyes narrowed. For a moment he looked almost dangerous. “Greenstreet,” he said.

“Looks more like Burl Ives to me,” said Izzie.

“Burl Ives? You know about Burl Ives?” Wags’s eyes went to Izzie, to the snowman, back to Izzie. “You may be right,” he said.

Grace walked over to the snowman, removed one of its green teeth, examined it. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, sticking it back on the snowman, but in the middle of its forehead.

Wags bit his lip. “You are?”

“I want to pick your brain.”

Wags went to the snowman, replaced the green tooth where it belonged. He turned to Grace. “Pick away.”

“Still into movies?” she said.

“More than ever. They’ve got HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, plus a decent video library. Why do you ask?”

“I’m writing an essay.”

“On movies?” said Wags. “What course is that?”

“Independent study,” Grace said. “It’s on plot construction.”

Wags nodded.

“In kidnapping movies specifically,” Grace said.

“Right,” said Wags. “You’ve got to focus.”

“Seen any?” said Grace.

“Name one I haven’t.”

“Any ransom demand scenes that come to mind?”

“Ransom demand scenes? Like how they go about it?”

“That kind of thing.”

“Excellent subject.” Wags rubbed his hands together. “Can I read it when you’re done?”

“Why not?”

“This is so much fun,” Wags said. “What college should be all about.” He paused. “We’re just dealing with ransom-type kidnappings, now, not the sicko or political kinds? Or kidnapping by accident or kidnapping to make a nice little family group?”

“Ransom,” said Grace.

“ Ruthless People, of course. Pretty recent. Judge Reinhold demands five hundred thousand dollars, unmarked and sequentially numbered one-hundred-dollar bills. On the phone. No notifying the cops, of course, that’s pretty standard. There’s High and Low, also on the phone.” Wags smacked his forehead, much too hard. “And my God,” he said. “Kurosawa. Japanese. Patterns, patterns, patterns.” He turned to Izzie. “I may be taking a job in the Ginza district.”

“Lucky you,” Grace said. “What’s High and Low?”

“Haven’t seen High and Low? Where they kidnap the chauffeur’s kid by mistake?” A tiny spray of spittle flew from Wags’s mouth when he sounded the s in mistake. “Thirty million yen, as I recall-going to have to find out what that is in dollars-same nonsequential thing, same specifying the denomination. Speaking of chauffeurs, there’s After Dark My Sweet. Patterns and more patterns. Bruce Dern sends a ransom note. But the kid’s got diabetes and Jason Patric’s escaped from an… asylum.” He fell silent, looked down.

“What does it say in the ransom note?” Grace asked.

No answer. Wags kept looking down, hanging his head, bent like one of those old people who can’t straighten. His eyes got silvery. Nat waved Grace and Izzie away. They backed out of the room, Izzie first, then Grace.

“Maybe you should lie down,” Nat said.

Wags looked up, didn’t seem to notice that the girls had gone, maybe because his eyes were overflowing again. “Don’t you want to hear about Night of the Following Day?”

“Later.” But Nat didn’t want to hear it at all. At that moment, looking at Wags in his misery, Nat knew that the kidnapping thing was out. He didn’t understand the connection, but he knew. “First you’re going to lie down,” he said.

Wags stared at him. “Good idea,” he said at last. “Your very best.” Wags started moving in that stiff way, but not toward his old bedroom. Instead, he went to the snowman, gouged all the pills out of his face in one swipe, threw the window open wide, flung them out. The cold wind blew his hair straight back, as though he were going very fast. Then he had his head out in the night and one foot up on the sill.

Nat grabbed him, pulled him back into the room. Who would have imagined that a skinny kid like Wags would be so strong?

“Jason Patric dies at the end, you asshole,” Wags said, wriggling free. Nat went to grab him again. Wags threw a punch. No one had ever thrown a punch at Nat before. He saw it coming, had time to block it or duck, or at least turn his head and not get hit flush on the nose. But no one had thrown a punch at him before, and this one did hit him flush on the nose. His eyes stung, he saw stars and, stepping back to recover, slipped in the snowman’s puddle and went down.

Wags stood over him in fury. “You’re just like all the others,” Wags said, “only worse.” Then Wags’s foot swung into view and Nat started to roll; the foot with the rubber boot, not the Timberland, thank God — Nat’s last thought for a while.

When he opened his eyes, dawn was breaking on a dark day, hardly lighter than night, and his room was cold. The window was open. His head hurt.

He got up, went to the window, looked out. No sign of Wags, no sign that he’d jumped and been carried off or jumped and walked away. Nothing down there but the baseball cap. Nat turned back to the room. The snowman was gone, the floor where he’d stood almost dry. He closed the window.

What next? His head hurt; he felt slow and stupid. Next would be the hospital bracelet, the phone number, a call. Where had he last seen it? Couldn’t remember. He searched the outer room, searched Wags’s old bedroom, didn’t find the bracelet. Wouldn’t need the bracelet if he could remember the name of the place. But he couldn’t. Or he could call Wags’s mom and get the name of the place from her. Rather than that, he went down on his hands and knees to try again. The door opened.

Grace; no, Izzie, he saw, as she came in from the dark hall and the light hit her hair. Izzie. She looked as though she’d just had eight hours’ sleep followed by one of those runner’s-high workouts; her hair still wet and gleaming from the shower. He rose.

“Nat! What happened to you?”

“Me?”

“Your nose.”

He resisted the urge to touch it. “I’m fine.”

She glanced around. “Wags cleared out?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She closed the door, lowered her voice. “It’s done.”

“What’s done?”

“The plan, of course. Sure you’re okay?”

But the plan was out. “Done?” he said. “Done in what way?”

“Don’t worry. Everything went smoothly. Grace called, as me, and said she’d been-” She lowered her voice still more. “-you know, kidnapped. We toyed with the idea of asking for yen, the kind of interesting twist that makes things authentic, but then we-”

“Called who?”

“Our father. You’re acting funny, Nat, like you’re hearing this for the first time. Sure you’re-”

“She called as you?”

“Why not? No one can tell us apart on the phone. ‘This is Izzie, something terrible’s happened, I’m so scared,’ blah blah blah, million dollars, sequential, nondenominational, whatever it was, blah blah.” Izzie laughed; she had that untamed look of Grace’s in her eye.

“We have to stop this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We just do.”

“Nat. I told you. It’s done. Grace is hiding down in the cave and the money’s on its way.”

“The money’s on its way?”

“It’s nothing to him-didn’t we mention that? He’s sending someone. Someone gives it to me, I give it to no one, Grace reappears. We get back to normal life. Voila.”

He shook his head. That hurt, and had no other effect.

“You and Wags had a little disagreement, didn’t you?” She came closer, brushed her lips against the tip of his nose, barely touching it. “Give me a kiss.”

He kissed her. They’d kissed maybe dozens of times by now, but never like this.