Crying Wolf

5

— Pop quiz, Philosophy 322

In a city of towers, Nat was ready for elevators, but not this one. No buttons, for one thing; it simply began rising as the doors closed, rising from the underground garage with a speed unprecedented in his limited experience of elevators, so fast it actually scared him. He glanced at Grace and Izzie: they looked bored, the way people were supposed to look in elevators.

No buttons, but there was a Persian rug. And a Persian cat, asleep on a velvet couch that reminded Nat of pictures he’d seen of furniture at Versailles. In one corner, a tall crystal vase full of flowers; in another, a grinning marble faun missing one pointy ear; in front of the couch, a gilded table bearing a bowl of chocolates.

“Bonbon?” said Grace.

Bonbon? Despite his AP standing in French, the word mystified Nat for a second or two. “No, thanks,” he said. The speed, of both the elevator and the sensory data streaming in, was making him a little sick. Grace took one of the chocolates, bit off half, popped the rest into Izzie’s mouth.

“Yum,” said Izzie.

The doors slid open. They stepped out, Grace and Izzie first with the luggage, Nat following with Lorenzo in his tank, the Persian cat, stretching, last. “Hi, everybody,” Grace called. “We’re home.”

Home. The elevator opened not into a corridor but the apartment itself. That was what the girls had called it: they lived with their father in an apartment in Manhattan, they’d said. Nat knew little of apartments-there were only a few apartment buildings in his town, none occupied by his friends-but he didn’t associate the word with high ceilings, with a curving staircase leading up to other levels, with vastness. All of this apparent at a glance. And on the wall opposite the elevator, a painted nude, the style instantly recognizable, the signature-Renoir-somehow artistic all on its own. Probably a print-Patti had a Renoir print of two little girls combing their hair hanging in her bedroom-but Nat wasn’t sure. As he came to a decision that it was indeed a print, but much better than Patti’s and expertly lit, he was also dealing for the first time with the idea that Renoirs could be bought and sold, and that some people could afford them. On his way by, Nat took a close look, spotted individual brushstrokes, layers of paint on the petals of a rose, and in one corner, the texture of canvas showing through.

Grace and Izzie led Nat into a room that seemed big enough to contain his house. Set in one wall-not taking up the entire wall, but most of it-was a slab of thick glass. On the other side, a scuba diver was scrubbing the glass with a long-handled brush, bubbles rising up and out of sight. A little shark swam by in the background. Then another, not so little. Perhaps this was part of a public aquarium, Nat thought, the backstage part that paying customers never saw, some architectural anomaly, built with the cooperation of Grace and Izzie’s father. Or maybe… maybe what? He couldn’t think of anything else.

Izzie was watching him. “I know just what’s on your mind,” she said.

“What?”

“But you can forget about it. Not his kind of place. Lorenzo gets the opposite of claustrophobia.” She pointed to a tank Nat hadn’t noticed, mounted on a pedestal-no, part of the pedestal itself, the whole thing somehow full of water. “In there, Nat.”

“Please,” said Grace.

Izzie gave Grace a quick look. “Yes, of course, please.”

Nat hadn’t felt any lack of politeness-he’d heard please in Izzie’s tone. And she’d used his name for the first time; he didn’t know the significance of that, if any, but he’d noted it.

The pedestal tank contained a single fish, a fish of Lorenzo’s species, whatever that was. The two fish looked identical. Izzie found a net under the pedestal, scooped up Lorenzo, lowered him into the second tank. The fish eyed each other, defecating in unison.

“How do you know which one’s him?” Nat said.

“You can’t tell?” said Izzie.

“It’s easy,” Grace said. “The other one’s store-bought. She’s Lorenzo’s babe.”

“You’re hoping they’ll mate?” Nat said.

“If she’s female,” said Izzie.

“And if he’s male,” said Grace. “There’s some dispute about both points right now. Dr. Diveboy-” She nodded at the scuba diver behind the glass; he beamed through his mask, waved his brush. “-can’t seem to figure it out.”

In the tank, Lorenzo’s babe drifted behind a chunk of coral. Lorenzo fluttered his fins for a moment, then swam after her. They circled each other, changing places like cards in a close-up trick, before one swam away, which one, Nat didn’t know.

“You really can’t tell them apart?” Izzie said. “Just by-”

“-how they move, for one thing,” said Grace.

But he couldn’t.

Did Grace and Izzie, being twins, have some advantage when it came to distinguishing Lorenzo from his babe? Grace and Izzie, identical except for the hair. But there had to be differences: he knew, because he responded to them differently. That was scientific reasoning, and maybe because he’d been so recently in the bio lab, Nat began thinking in terms of an experiment. The observation part, in any case: he could make a mental list of perceived differences. For example, Izzie had a way of raising one eyebrow-the right-when asking a certain type of question, questions like You really can’t tell them apart? Did Grace do the same thing? He would watch for it.

They climbed a wide staircase to the floor above, walked along a broad hall lined with abstract bronzes. “How about this one?” Grace said, opening a door. “Oops,” she said. Nat glimpsed a man sleeping on a bed, dressed in a dinner jacket and one shiny black slipper-pump, was that the name? The other lay on the floor.

“Who’s that?” said Izzie as Grace closed the door.

“No idea,” said Grace. She tried another room. Empty. “How’s this?”

Nat went in. “Fine,” he said.

“Make yourself at home. We’ll catch you later.” And they went off down the hall.

Nat closed the door, laid his backpack on the bed, examined the room, the room where he’d be sleeping over Christmas, his first Christmas away from home. Fine. The room was fine, all right: the finest bedroom he’d ever seen. He pressed his hand on the bed, covered with some sort of quilted material-duvet? — and knew it would be the most comfortable bed he’d ever slept in. Then he turned to the window and saw how high he was. Everything taller in the direction he faced had a name and profile familiar to any movie-going American: the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center. Out in the water, beyond all the towers, lay an island with a foreshortened form rising from it. The Statue of Liberty. So small from where he stood, he almost didn’t recognize it. But then he did, and felt goose bumps, just the same.

Nat opened the sliding door, stepped onto the balcony. On the floor below, the first floor of Grace and Izzie’s apartment, a tiled deck ran the entire width of the building. He took in small potted trees, wrought-iron furniture, a bar, a telescope, a swimming pool; and a basketball hoop. Condensation rising in thick clouds hid the surface of the pool, but Nat heard the rhythmic splashing of a swimmer beneath. Then a gust of wind tore a hole through the gray and he saw a woman doing the crawl. For a second he thought she was naked-began to step back-then realized she wore a flesh-colored bathing suit. He saw her face as she turned to breathe-a young woman, perhaps an older sister of Grace and Izzie. The clouds reformed. Nat went inside, sat on the bed, reached for his backpack.

Someone knocked at the door.

“Yes?” Nat said.

A tall man-the kind usually called distinguished because his hair was turning silver at the sides-entered. He wore a white shirt, a dark suit, a bow tie.

Nat rose.

“Welcome to New York,” the man said. “I understand you’ll be vacationing with us.”

“Yes, uh-”

“Excellent. The city’s at its best this time of year. Is there anything you need right now?”

“Anything I need?”

“I assume you’ve found the bathroom? Through that second door. The television and a small fridge are in the armoire, and you can listen to whatever’s on the sound system by turning the volume dial over there.”

“Oh. Thanks. And thanks for having me. I hope it’s all right.”

“All right?”

“I mean on such short notice.” Or maybe none at all. Nat went forward, held out his hand, introduced himself as he’d been trained.

“Pleased to meet you, Nat.” They shook hands. “I’m Albert.”

Nat, unused to calling his friends’ parents by their first names, and unable to remember the last name, if the girls had told him at all, said: “Pleased to meet you, too, sir. It was very nice of your daughters to invite me.”

Albert’s eyebrows rose. “My-?” Then he smiled, a smile quickly erased, the mouth part, anyway. “Mr. Zorn is not due till Christmas Eve. I am Mrs. Zorn’s personal assistant.”

“Oh.”

“So if there’s anything you need, food, drink, laundry or dry cleaning service, goods from the outside world, just say.”

“Thanks.”

“Not at all. It’s always so exciting when the girls are around. Any special dietary requirements, by the way?”

“Pardon?”

“The kitchen is very flexible.”

“Good,” Nat said, the first word to pop out. He felt his face grow hot.

Albert backed out of the room. Nat had the feeling the man would burst out laughing the moment the door closed, and to stop that, more than anything, he said: “There is one thing, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“No trouble whatever,” said Albert, one heel still raised.

“I’d like to buy a bottle of wine.”

“Shouldn’t be necessary,” Albert said. “We have quite a varied selection on the premises, if it’s something specific you’re interested in.”

“As a gift.”

“Ah. How thoughtful. Wine is something of a hobby with Mr. Zorn.”

Nat wrote the name of Mr. Beaman’s wine on a sheet of paper, handed it to Albert with thirty dollars, not knowing much about the cost of good wine, but sure that would be more than enough. Albert took the note only. “Why don’t we settle accounts later?” he said.

Nat lay on the bed. He wasn’t at all tired, felt lively, even restless, wanted to walk the streets, see the city, do what people do in new places. At the same time, some part of him was a little afraid to leave the room. He had the opposite of claustrophobia, like Lorenzo. Expandrophobia? No, there was a real word; it would come to him.

Nat rose-made himself rise, really-went to the door, put his hand on the knob, paused. Mistaking a personal assistant-was that like a servant of some kind? — for their father. Dumb. And the conversation that followed, also dumb. But he wasn’t dumb. He was good at learning things. And what was the point of coming all this way for college if not for new experiences? Creme de la creme, Mrs. Smith had said. Imagine the people he’s going to meet. He was meeting them now. It suddenly occurred to him that Mrs. Smith and Miss Brown, the women most responsible for his presence at Inverness, were twins, like Grace and Izzie. Was there some meaning to this? None that he could come upon by analysis. Still, he couldn’t help but suspect that in some way this coincidence was a good thing, an indication that he was on the right course. Nat opened the door.

In the hall, Grace was passing by, trailed by another distinguished-looking man, somewhat younger than the first, deeply tanned, carrying a frothy blue drink in a tall glass. This time Nat made no assumptions.

“Anton, Nat,” said Grace. “Nat, Anton. Anton’s my stepmom’s personal trainer. Nat’s a friend from Inverness.”

“Cool,” said Anton.

Nat laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Grace said. She raised an eyebrow, just like Izzie, except it was the left one.

“I was just thinking about Lorenzo.”

Grace laughed too, touched his arm, said: “I know what you mean.” Her touch: it felt cold, meaning there was a temperature difference, one he hadn’t felt with Izzie. There were many possible variables, of course, but he noted it anyway.

He’d told Grace a little lie. It wasn’t the thought of Lorenzo that had made him laugh, but the word cool, and this guy saying it, and the name Anton, and the frothy blue drink, and personal trainers. Things began to come together in Nat’s mind: the drink, for example, was for the woman in the pool and she was not Grace and Izzie’s sister, but their stepmother, Mrs. Zorn, despite how young she was. He could keep up. He was going to enjoy himself.

At that moment, too, he remembered the opposite of claustrophobia: agoraphobia. He didn’t have it. Five minutes later he was down in the street by himself, taking in New York, his mind going like never before.

Peter Abrahams

Crying Wolf