Harrow: Three Novels (Nightmare House, Mischief, The Infinite)

by Douglas Clegg

  She pulled back, and sat up.

  The misty blue night had descended, and with it a gentle chill. They’d spent the evening at the movies, then what they had both quickly termed the Great Pup Caper, then had gone to the all-night coffee shop at Frigg and Burnside, and if it was after midnight, he didn’t care, she didn’t care, it was fun just hanging out with each other.

  She straightened her sweater and looked down at him. She was pretty to him even though she wasn’t in the cheerleader mold that the other boys tended to fall all over—she looked smart and kind, and perhaps even devious in a good way, which charmed him completely. Her eyes were cinnamon coffee. Her breath was minty fresh, which he had joked about with her on their first kiss, and she had replied, “Better than that sour milk of your breath,” and he immediately had wanted to run off to brush his teeth because he’d felt so bad, but she had just laughed and told him not to worry because she had some spearmint gum for him.

  He had known then that she actually liked him.

  He was still surprised that she liked him at all, but it felt right.

  “It’s getting late. I need to get back sometime before dawn.” She yawned and shivered slightly. Her face was half in shadow and half beneath the streetlamp, which seemed to pour its shine across her features.

  He liked just looking at her. He liked the way he felt when he looked at her, when she was smiling. When she seemed to keep some secret from him. “It must be nearly one. Too late to stay out. If my R. A. discovers this, I’m gonna be in trouble for the next six weeks. Alice Carver lost weekends last year because she got caught. She had to spend the whole time at Mrs. Farrell’s house, and I can tell you, that in itself would be worth committing suicide over.” “Just another minute. Or ten,” he said. He crossed his arms behind his head and gazed up at her. Man, she was cute. Lark Trotter. The strangest name—it conjured up images of someone taking a small bird out for a run. But on her, the name was perfect, it sounded like . . . like . . . music, he thought.

  And she was sweet—kind, generous, helpful. Could he think enough good about her? Half the reason they were out so late was because of that damn dog. The Great Pup Caper, to be precise.

  Someone had nearly run down a yellow Labrador retriever puppy at the corner of Jackson and Rhone, and Lark immediately called the local vet, and wouldn’t even leave the animal hospital until she was sure the dog was well cared for.

  The puppy was stunned, although only its front left paw seemed to actually have any damage. The animal was squealing and bleeding, and Lark had tugged off the wool scarf that hung around her neck and swathed the damaged paw up in it. She even hated parting with the puppy when the vet’s assistant took it into one of the operating rooms.

  Jim had been with her the whole time—and even if it was annoying to have spent three hours of their Sunday together sitting in a vet’s waiting room hanging in there for the prognosis of a little ball of yellow fur that hadn’t even seemed particularly grateful, it made him like her all the more.

  Then, they’d both lost track of time, and had wandered the streets of Watch Point, knowing they were breaking curfew, but not caring, not worrying, not noticing anything but how much fun it was to be together.

  Lark was smart, too, and she could even be cruel sometimes when she wanted to be—it was what he liked about her. She never let him off the hook. He could imagine her younger, telling the kids on a playground that what they were doing was bad. He could imagine her giving that look to him, the look that meant he was being “such a boy.”

  She didn’t like being taken for granted. She was completely cool.

  Dark hair, sparkling eyes, and all the good stuff girls had going for them—all of it was right there in Lark, Lark, Lark, and it was just great to hang with her, let alone make out.

  “Jenny would laugh at me right now, you know.”

  “No she wouldn’t.”

  “Yes she would. I’m a junior, you’re a sophomore,” Lark said in a mock-imperious voice. “You can’t imagine how wrong that is. The boy is meant to be older.”

  “That’s seems so…”

  “1953,” Lark finished it for him.

  “Yeah!”

  “The year my mother was born.” Lark leaned back on one elbow. “She went to St. Cat’s, too. She met Dad here when she was seventeen.”

  “Ah,” Jim quieted. He closed his eyes for a moment and thought of what it would be like to feel Lark’s body against his without the barrier of clothes. He was nearly embarrassed that he was thinking of her breasts so much; he saw her as more innocent than those lustful thoughts, but she’d given him more than a clue while they’d been making out that the relationship could go further at some point soon.

  He wanted her body. All right, he could admit it to himself. He liked her, and lusted after her. He lusted after a lot of girls—he had since he was eleven and had begun to feel stirrings beyond the mental kind. There were plenty of girls at St. Cat’s and Valley Catholic School and The Hope School who were hot and cute and fun, and fueled brief fantasies, but Lark was all of it. It was all there at once. He wasn’t going to mention this to her, and he felt too awkward to be aggressive. It was enough just to have the movie in his brain. He imagined them both naked, and his hands on her breasts, and their lips together.

  Then, he opened his eyes to watch her again. She was everything: pure and sexual and sweet and dark and smart and inviting and . . . what else? He couldn’t think of all the things she was. He was falling fast. He wanted her badly; but he was too awkward to go beyond a sweet kiss. He didn’t think nice boys or nice girls did much beyond that anyway, although half the boys at school talked as if everyone did all the time and in every which way.

  Lark was different. And fun. And wild. And sweet. She even had her down side, and that got to him all the more. She could be moody. She got pissed off sometimes over things that seemed inconsequential to him. Once, she was angry for an entire day because he had forgotten to call her when he’d said he would. He still didn’t understand it, but he knew that she was worth apologizing to if he had an inkling that he might’ve screwed up somehow.

  And now—here. With him. “A great day,” he sighed, not realizing he was expressing it aloud. “I’ll bet you never had a bad day in your life,” she said.

  “What?” he chuckled. “You just seem happy.”

  “No, I’m dark and mysterious,” he asserted, lowering his voice; his laugh gave him away.

  “You don’t have a dark side,” she insisted. “You’re sunny and confident.”

  “My dark side is ... is ...” he thought a second. “My dark side has got to be that I don’t have a dark side.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she sighed. “I think we need to develop some sorrow and pain in you.”

  “Ah,” he said, trying not to let his tone change. He didn’t want her to see any other side to him than the fun-loving one, the kind that girls wanted to see in guys.

  “I have a deep dark secret,” she volunteered.

  “And that is?”

  She held her breath a moment and then burst out laughing. “I suck at math.”

  “Well,” he said, “that’s mine too. And I suck at Latin. Although my pig Latin is ite-quay errific-tay.”

  “You are such a geek, Jim. Why am I dating a guy who actually will say words in pig Latin?” She slapped him playfully on the shoulder. “Look at the river,” she said, leaning forward. “It’s best here in fall. I hate the winters and springs, but the falls here are worth it.”

  “Fall. Fell. Fallen,” he whispered.

  “Jim?”

  “Just how I’m feeling right now.”

  “Oh you.”

  “Oh me oh my.”

  “Stop mocking me, James,” she said. She picked a couple of crumbling leaves up and tossed them on his face.

  He spat out leaf bits. “What is it about all this?”

  “Huh?”

  “Being here. Out so late we can see all the lights across t
he Hudson. They’re like diamonds or something. And coffee in my blood. And we rescued a puppy. And the moon. God, look at that moon! And . . . with you. Knowing I have to get back to Harrow. Knowing you have to get back to St. Cat’s. Wouldn’t it be great if we could go to our own place?”

  “Yeah, in about a decade. Please.”

  “I meant it in a nice way.”

  “I know,” she said. “I meant it in a nice way, too. I dated a boy once who wouldn’t have meant it in a nice way.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not Charlie Cornwall.”

  “I’m not saying you are. Do you see him much?” she asked.

  The question irked him. “Sometimes. In phys ed. He’s not a bad guy.”

  “Boys love boys like that. It’s girls who have to watch out.”

  “Let’s not talk about him, okay?” Jim said testily.

  “Okay. I didn’t mean to bring him up. I’m just glad I don’t have to run into him anymore.”

  “No, you don’t. I’m here.”

  “I know,” she said, sounding embarrassed. “I just wish you’d kick him in the balls sometime.”

  “Ha,” Jim said.

  “I should never date you boys at Harrow.” “Come here, you,” he said. “No, you.”

  He sat up and leaned into her, kissing her gently. Then it began to rain, and they had to leap up and run through the downpour. Something within him told him that he didn’t want this moment to end.

  Watch Point was a town of a few thousand residents, most of them scattered around the gently sloping hills, its streets running in rivulets between village homes that were severe, austere, and nearly like peasant cottages from some medieval hour; others, more modern, just around the periphery of town, were built by summer people who rarely visited once Labor Day had passed.

  The character of Watch Point had not changed in nearly a century—it was the same sleepy little hamlet it had always been, far enough off the beaten track from the more popular towns of the Hudson Valley, and what wasn’t hamlet was woods, and rising from among the thickest of the woods, the School, as it was known to the locals.

  Some townies called it “that damn preppie hotel.”

  In the rain, Watch Point seemed like a runny watercolor of a place, with mismatched shops and brackish storefronts with antique crap and the fire department with its stable and the old barn behind the glass factory—and Jim ran with his arm around Lark until they’d reached the train station down on Corday Street, by the KrumCo parking lot.

  Brief memories of their first few dates in town were always there for him, and passing the firehouse, he remembered his first kiss with Lark back in April, and how sex flashed in his mind briefly, and then turned to a kind of warmth as their lips unlocked, and then turned to nervousness when he knew he wanted to kiss her again; the railroad tracks were their first long walk together, holding hands; and one Sunday Lark had come up to visit and they’d actually gone to church at Grace, the Episcopal Church over at Lantern Square; in the rain, the memories bled together.

  They stood beneath the eaves of the depot, waiting for the one a.m. train—the last that would take her back to Cold Spring and St. Catherine’s School for Girls (“School for Wayward Girls,” he would tease her sometimes); she leaned against his shoulder, shivering, which only made him hug her a little tighter to try to warm her; and he thought, as they waited, that something was so sweet about rushing to not get caught, about waiting for trains, about staying warm together.

  Then he remembered his exam.

  The following day. Third period.

  Western Civ.

  “You’ll do fine,” Lark said, before grasping his hand for a last quick squeeze before boarding the train.

  “I hope so.”

  “Aw, Jimmy, it’s not like you haven’t been studying since the beginning of term for this,” she said, and then she was on the train. “Now get back to the Trenches before you get reamed by Harkness. Don’t forget about the puppy. We need to make sure we find its home. I’ll pay the vet bill.”

  “No, I will,” he insisted.

  “No, I will,” she ignored his words. “My mother cries when a rat gets killed in a trap.

  She’ll shell out the money and probably end up with her third dog through this. Don’t worry. Just make sure you check on the pup this week, and we’ll figure it out from there.”

  “Yeah,” he nodded, and then she was on the train before he could get a last kiss in.

  He waved goodbye and laughed at himself for worrying about a midterm, even though the course was Western Civ and he didn’t understand the Crusades at all, and he really hadn’t been doing enough studying in that one subject since the beginning of the term.

  He knew he was screwed.

  Chapter Four

  Lark Trotter settled into her seat on the train and glanced out into the darkness.

  She practically tore her heavy wool sweater off and dumped it near her feet; she slipped out of her shoes, wiggling her toes, which were cold and wet from rain. It felt good to stretch out a bit. If she could have, she would have just stretched out and probably fallen asleep right on the train and missed her stop and ended up in Manhattan.

  She was that exhausted. All she could think about was her eight o’clock class, and the fact that she hadn’t read all of the assignment for French, even though she figured she could fake it if it were absolutely necessary. And getting by the House Mother and the Resident Adviser back at St. Cat’s—that would be a near impossibility, but if she got Beth Mobley to just open her window a little so she could crawl in and then sneak back down to her room, she might just get away with it. The various thoughts spun around in her head, conjuring images of doom, tests, and sleep.

  Don’t conk out. Not yet. You can put in at least a half hour once you ‘re back looking over the textbook. Then you can sleep for—what—four and a half hours?

  Yikes.

  I should’ve had some tea, damn it. Maybe Jenny has some coffee. I could just pull an all-nighter, what the heck.

  Someone had left a folded-up New York Times in the seatback pouch. She drew it out and flipped through it, hoping the crossword puzzle would be intact, but someone had sadistically taken a pen to it. It was a half hour back to St. Catherine’s, and she was trying to figure out just how she was going to bribe her roommate, Marti, to not get her in trouble with Mrs. Starnes, when she noticed the man.

  He wore a fairly unfashionable gray hat, and a rain slicker.

  He sat directly across from her. He kept leaning forward and staring at her.

  She didn’t look at him directly, but instead caught a glimpse of him from the corner of her

  eye. At first she ignored his strange attention, but within a few minutes, she grew tired of the slight annoyance.

  Finally, Lark turned to the stranger, figuring a good glare would let him know how rude he was to ogle her, but the seat was empty.

  Chapter Five

  Her fingers reaching for him; violently, she tossed her head back as she sat down against his hips; the lights flashed on and off and he saw her breasts…

  Jay Trimalchio, just shy of forty-six but feeling all of eighteen from a very erotic dream, thought he heard someone call his name. He roiled like a storm cloud in some kind of flashing blue light—in his dream—with a woman as beautiful and endless as the sea, her hair wild like a horse’s mane, her breasts as large and round as honeydews but soft as sponges, and her hips riding his at a reckless gallop. He bucked against her; she felt moist as the sea on a summer day, surrounding all of him; and her legs were all over him, all around his back, and she was nothing but legs and breasts, and her hair swept down his face—

  But someone called his name again.

  He yawned himself out of the dream slowly, still feeling the magic fingers of the imaginary woman with the silken hair that grazed his chest—at two in the morning no less, as he noticed the green glow of the digital alarm clock by his bedside—to see what seemed to be a fire outside the window of hi
s town house that overlooked the Big Clock of Watch Point.

  He was, of course, alone, in his bunched-up boxers, and the thought of a fire made his throat go dry.

  No one had called his name. He'd imagined it, that voice, pulled from memory:

  Jacky, that wiseass. His voice full of spit and vinegar, and some scheme to break into the dining hall, way back when, back in the days when Trimalchio broke into things and got in trouble for it.

  Fire. He practically heard someone say the word.

  Trimalchio’s heart raced. He sat up in bed, only to find that there was no fire at all— it was merely an optical illusion of the flashing yellow of the streetlight against the window of the building directly across, -- and his overactive imagination. He glanced around the shadowy room, and then out into the night. Rain droplets remained on his window; the yellow light still wavering.

  Well, you’re awake now. . . . He rolled more than rose from his rumpled bed, and wobbled on unsteady feet to the stairs—made less steady by a couple of pints down at the Coach & Four—to make his way to the kitchen, scratching his butt with each step down.

  Flicked the light up. It came on brilliant, strong, and brought with it a powerful headache.

  In the kitchen, he opened the fridge, thinking some of the leftover Kung Pao chicken might just hit the spot. After devouring a bit of this, he went to take a leak, and that’s when he found the dead mouse floating in the toilet.

  It was a bit sad.

  Jay had known that the mouse lived somewhere in his house. He had even put out breadcrumbs and cheese for it, but for some suicidal reason, the mouse had chosen that evening to end it all by drowning in the scummy bowl. To flush or not to flush? Christ, I can’t pee on it. Not while it’s floating there. Looking pathetic. Poor mouse.

  After scooping the waterlogged mouse up and tossing it in the plastic trash bag by the door, and then finally taking his longed-for leak, Trimalchio went to his desk at the front window and switched on his computer. His mug of the previous morning’s coffee—some of it still curdled within—sat beside the ashtray filled with the gray remains of his pipe. He reached for the pouch of chocolate tobacco, unrolled it; then took a bit out and stuffed it down into his pipe. Lighting it, he pressed it between his lips and closed his eyes for a moment. At least something was good. At least he had his pipe.