by John Farrow
THREE
Vernon Colchester is soaked to the skin. The peak of his ball cap keeps the rain out of his eyes, and that’s all. His hair is wet. The permeable fabric merely filters the cascade. No point hurrying, no point worrying about it anymore, he has hit the magic moment when he cannot possibly be wetter. No different than taking a bath. The leisurely pace to his lope is admirable given the ferocity of the onslaught as he strolls across the soggy green of Dowbiggin. Headed for the library.
Given summer’s quiet season and the violence of the storm he will not be sharing the building with many others. Inside, his wet shoes squeak as he passes posters of musicians who have played on the Dartmouth campus, although Dowbiggin undergrads were always welcomed. Joan Baez and Ray Charles, Bruce Springsteen and Jerry Garcia, Duke Ellington, Sly and the Family Stone, others, all before his time. When he first visited the Dowbiggin School for a summer orientation the posters impressed him. He felt he was enrolling in a four-year rock concert. Let the good times roll. Now that he’s graduating he can attest that it was never like that. He didn’t get to any memorable concerts himself. Regardless, he’s enjoyed the place.
Of his time here, the only thing he’d change would be his love life.
He’s so wet, his clothes are saturated. He leaks as he walks.
Vernon Colchester has a friend who frequents the Washington Room, small and dim save for the table lamps. The friend once experienced a vivid dream where he met the love of his life at a table there, and so became a dedicated habitué, reading and studying in the space whenever time permitted, often from dawn to dusk. The initial dream-lover was an enchanting young woman; in the time since the dream the friend discovered that he was gay. He’s been kidded that the love of his life might have shown up, but, male or female, he had his eyes on the wrong gender at the time. In any case, no soul mate has arrived for him yet, and today the weather may have kept his friend away from his morning reading, as the room is vacant.
Using a hand dryer and paper towels, he attempts to dry his head and face in the men’s room. That helps, but he doesn’t notice much improvement when he dabs his shirt and pants. Vernon goes up a spiral staircase to the second level. Table lamps with green glass shades and chairs covered in green leather denote the Oxford/Cambridge influence. Not to mention the blatant rip-off of Dartmouth. The Dowbiggin School was initially formed by a breakaway contingent from the more renowned institution. A question of policy. The junior school floundered, then miraculously revived with substantial funding, most of it covert and therefore believed to be governmental. What level or branch of government has always been a matter of conjecture; in any case funds were spent to emulate, on a smaller scale, the architecture, if not the prestige, of their formidable neighbor down the road.
A large round table in the center of the library’s wood-paneled room is divided into study sections where Vernon Colchester takes a seat. He checks his phone, discreetly. He’s expecting to meet someone, a stranger, a prospective employer. He’ll have to protest that he doesn’t always look like a drowned cat. The timing for the meeting has been set as approximate, the plan being that he is to arrive early, then wait.
He’s arrived early. Now he waits.
He’s soon bored, and peruses the books. Wherever he goes he creates puddles. Nothing he finds on the shelves today strikes his fancy. He enjoys browsing, though, reads a line or a paragraph, examines a lithograph or an illustration from volumes as diverse as scientific field journals from the nineteenth century and recent children’s stories. He senses a subliminal ache, for this is different, now that he’s graduating, now that he’s on the cusp of his chosen career. Riffling through books, he grasps how elusive knowledge can be, that the best that anyone can hope to learn is the tiniest fraction of what is known, and with the best of luck discover something fresh to add to a field. To wit, he’s probably not read a single book in this particular library, reading many from others, and has learned a great deal, all of which adds up to a smidgen.
Enough to know that he knows very little.
His cell phone vibrates in his pants front pocket.
A text.
Something wrong. Change of plan. Meet you in the caf.
Why would anything be wrong? What constitutes wrong? He was to meet a man in a library, the library is empty, how does that hold potential for something to be wrong?
He’s feeling alert now, tense, thinking that perhaps this is a test. Vernon Colchester goes downstairs. He’s a tall and lanky youth who will fill out someday and be substantial, physically imposing. For now, he comes across as skinny. Despite a giraffelike quality augmented by red hair and freckles, he’s remarkably coordinated in his movements, coming down the stairs at a clip. Any observer might think that his feet merely shuffle, that his hips, torso, and dangling arms soon will ease into a tap dance worthy of Fred Astaire.
The Lincoln Library’s cafeteria that lies below the main level has distinguished itself from rudimentary campus eateries by accumulating statues and busts of twentieth-century figures, placing them amid a forest of sculptures from the era. Vernon Colchester moves from the West Wing, which chronicles the Gay Nineties through the Roaring Twenties, with little more than a nod to the First World War, and into the East Wing, where the struggles of the Dirty Thirties and the Second World War are memorialized. Familiar with the room, Vernon feels anxious in it today. He assumes that the meeting, its portent and its mysteriousness, is to blame. In the dark surrounds of factory workers in ruins and soldiers in both agony and triumph, his introductory meeting is taking on an increased measure of foreboding.
The wait lasts nearly an hour.
The phone bumps in his pocket again.
Police to seventh floor Lincoln. Death @ Dowbiggin. Check it out.
This time, he hurries. He is being tested, he deduces that now. Back on the ground floor he sees cops asking for directions. Knowing where to go he beats them to the elevators. He disembarks on the sixth floor as the seventh is restricted: the elevator doors won’t open for him there. The police will have to come this way and already campus security is preparing for their arrival. They seem stressed. Vernon sneaks back among the book stacks and waits, to eavesdrop and to see whatever he can, to check it out, as instructed. He’s not been hired yet and he wants to impress his unknown boss. He’s a spy-in-training, potentially anyway. He waits to see and hear whatever can be gleaned.
FOUR
Seated for a late breakfast, Sandra and Émile Cinq-Mars are noticeably subdued. Their time in New Hampshire has been hectic, not without troubles and emotional pitfalls, and shortly a pleasant bedlam will consume them: Sandra’s niece and her niece’s girlfriends are to arrive. In the interim they’re content to sip coffee, await croissants and jam, and enjoy precious downtime with their own thoughts.
For Sandra, recent days have been a hardship. Her eighty-nine-year-old mom is in palliative care and family members have been preparing for the demise of their matriarch. Adding to the sadness of failing physical health marked by an almost daily diminishment of organ function, the matriarch’s mental state has dwindled from formidable to frail in the blink of an eye. In coming down to New Hampshire, Sandra expected to share old memories with her mom, final thoughts and her deepest expressions of love. All that has been taken away. As natural as an impending death for an aged and frail person may be, she’s finding herself affected far more than she expected, in large measure because this sudden decline in her mom’s faculties has made the last days wretched. Being on the cusp of her passing has released a welter of emotions. No one can prepare for the loss of a parent. Having spoken such words to others on occasion, she now needs to repeat them to herself.
They’ve arrived ahead of time. Sandra remains within herself, while Émile looks through the morning paper, subdued as well, although they both intend to be chipper once the girls show up. The next two weeks lead to the commencement ceremony at the Dowbiggin School of International Studies, which Émile and Sandra are attendin
g to honor their niece Caroline’s graduation. As the young woman and her chums will be harnessed to their own madcap social agenda as the big day draws near, uncle and aunt are treating them to a breakfast gathering early on. Unsaid, yet understood by all, the couple may be more involved with a funeral and with grieving by the time commencement day arrives. For that added reason they’ve elected to celebrate in advance.
While the couple showed up before the appointed hour, expecting to be on their own for a bit, their guests are now officially late. Sandra stretches. She feels a need to rouse herself from a sluggish disposition, and inquires if anything is interesting. She means in the news.
Her husband—Émile Cinq-Mars, the famous and now retired detective—stately at sixty-six even at this fresh hour of the morning, is more than willing to be attentive. He’s glad to be sharing a meal with her while she’s not reduced to weeping.
“Remarkably, no. I suppose that’s a good thing. Today’s main topic is the weather.”
“No wonder. Is it ever coming down. It’s teeming!”
“Hmm,” Émile says.
She interprets his tone. Her detective-husband’s noncommittal expression to denote his disagreement with prevailing opinion is, if not legendary, all too familiar.
“You don’t agree?” she probes. “That it’s raining? Or is your semigrunt an indication that you don’t think it’s raining particularly hard?”
“It wasn’t a semigrunt,” he objects.
“All right.” Sandra has always enjoyed being feisty in debate. Utilizing a hockey metaphor, Émile has told her that she’s tough along the boards, that she gets her elbows up in the corners. His intellectual and intuitive strengths may actually be legendary, although she knows his buttons and how to press them. As a consequence, their verbal jousts usually turn out to be fair fights. He doesn’t get that from many people, and now that he’s a little older, and she remains nineteen years his junior and probably sharper, she prevails more often than once she did. “A full-fledged grunt then.”
He recognizes that she’s being as playful as possible under the circumstances. Folding the paper, he welcomes another sip of joe before responding. “I agree that it’s raining. I also agree that it’s raining hard. Where I disagree—”
“You see? I knew it. Here it comes.”
“Where I disagree is with your comment ‘no wonder.’”
She’s puzzled. “You don’t think a newspaper should write about the weather?”
“I didn’t say that. I simply find it remarkable, and a wonder, that they are writing about the weather before the weather actually happens. It’s here now. The paper was printed overnight. They’re not reporting on the news, they’re predicting the news, the weather, before it gets here. See? All of which tells me that they had a very slow news day. No murders—”
“Why should there be murders? Because you showed up? Why do you check newspapers for murders, Émile?”
“No murders,” he repeats. “Nor am I looking for any. I’m just pointing out. No traffic accidents. No local political scandals. All they could find to write about is the prediction of violent weather and make that the news. Which, in the greater scheme of things, is probably welcome.”
She’s amused, and that’s welcome, too. Lately it’s been difficult to lighten up. The change in their mood has come at an opportune moment, for Caroline and two of her friends are bursting into the restaurant with much laughter and shrieking from being out in the torrent. It’s a dramatic entrance, which garners the attention and amusement of other patrons. People notice their flattened hair and wet tangles, their plight, and grin.
One soaked girl is feeling exposed.
“What’ll I do?” she cries in a half-whisper, her arms desperately crisscrossed over her chest.
“My uncle Émile won’t look.”
“He’s not the only person in here exactly.”
“Kali, I’ll spoon-feed you. Keep your arms crossed until you dry out.”
More laughter, these girls don’t let one another off the hook easily. “Slut, don’t play innocent. When you left the house you knew this would happen. Anyway, you’re wearing a bra, what’s the big deal?”
“I’m poking through!” She peeks down at her chest, and patrons are looking too, despite her whispering. “The rain’s made me cold! I’m shivering.”
“Oh no,” the lone blonde among the three remarks.
“What?”
“Addie’s not here yet.”
“Drear. Where is that girl?”
They bounce on over to Émile and Sandra’s table.
In the flurry of greetings, Caroline takes a moment to place a hand on her aunt Sandra’s shoulder, look her in the eyes, and convey an ongoing sympathy for their circumstances. She’s about to lose a grandmother she’s been close to from birth. The two women acknowledge the cloud they are under even as they break off and enter the festivity of the morning.
“My God, this rain!” Kali exclaims. She accepts Caroline’s light jacket to maintain her modesty, and there’s more laughter about that as Émile stares at the ceiling while she puts it on. She can finally uncross her arms and Caroline makes a comment that it’s too bad she won’t uncross her legs which has everyone groaning and Émile adopting an artificially censorious expression. Anastasia, then, needs to be introduced, as she is the one friend the older couple hasn’t met since arriving back in New Hampshire. Émile is immediately drawn to her bubbly personality and innate cheerfulness. She’s a tad short and happily plump, a marginal chubbiness that bequeaths to her the bright cheeks of a cherub. Her eyes have a way of jumping around that expresses a buoyant spirit. She’s smart and in love with life, he can tell. He thinks that if he was ever blessed with a daughter and allowed to choose, if that’s how procreation worked, he’d want her to turn out like this one. Or be this one.
“Where’s Addie?” Sandra inquires.
“That’s the question of the hour,” Caroline reveals. Émile and Sandra’s niece, she’s the tall one, slender, and carries herself with the posture of a girl who’s been on horseback since birth. Like her aunt, she has a highly competitive streak, and she’s ridden a few mounts in the hunting class that did well in New England meets. She’s also a swimmer who lacked the upper-body strength—and the desire to acquire it—to bring home ribbons. The boys love her, although she’s strict with them. She tends to gain the upper hand early in any relationship. Once a boyfriend understands the lay of the land, he either moves on or is moved along, at least that’s the pattern she’s confided to her aunt Sandra. She expects to be a CEO one day and is off to law school in the fall, this time at Boston University. “We haven’t heard from Addie since yesterday. She’s gone. Poof! Vanished.”
“Is that typical behavior?” Émile asks, his tone reverting to his days as a detective before retirement.
“Not typical. Not without precedent.” Aware that she’s talking to a professional sleuth, she catches the tenor of his interest. “Addie tends to turn into a ditz whenever she meets a new guy she likes. It’s just that we haven’t heard that that’s happened.”
“Unlike Kali, Addie doesn’t waste time,” Anastasia adds. She manages to be tongue-in-cheek while also deferring to the seriousness of the retired cop’s query.
“She also has that other thing,” Kali brings up.
Anastasia promptly squelches the subject. “Not happening,” she says, a bit stridently, a bit too forcefully, and Émile has the impression that sharp kicks on Kali’s shins have occurred under the table.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Sandra says, then looks down, as though to acknowledge that it’s illogical that her desire for all to be well should trump their legitimate worries. Yet the girls don’t seem overly concerned, either.
“Call Vernon yet?” Kali asks. She keeps tugging the jacket more tightly around herself, unnecessarily, as though still feeling half-naked.
“Putting it off,” Caroline admits, then explains to her aunt and uncle, “Vernon’s her
ex. One of. The one who’d rather not be an ex. See why I don’t want to involve him? She was supposed to show up at a party last night but never did. We were hoping she’d be here, she knows where to come. She may still show up. She’s just way late. We’re way late. Sorry about that. The rain.”
“Text Vernon,” Kali suggests. “You’ll worry otherwise. She’s probably hungover. Or maybe she had a relapse and they’re back together.”
“She’d keep that to herself, wouldn’t she?” Anastasia tacks on, agreeing, again being serious with a humorous undercurrent. Émile loves her already.
Caroline concedes, mutters, “Okay,” and taps out a message on her phone as the waitress comes by with menus and to confirm, as it turns out, that everyone wants to start with orange juice and coffee.
“This morning,” Émile warns, “each of you is on a splurge diet.”
They’re fine with that, and Anastasia, his new favorite, scrunches up her face and pumps both fists while mouthing the word yes! These three are young women of privilege, possessed of intellect, talent, and refinement. They’ve also applied themselves to their studies as elite students and are exulting now in a cloudburst of freedom and adventure pending the rest of their lives.
As coffee for the girls and juice is brought to the table, the senior couple is informed of summer plans and career choices. Anastasia will be backpacking through Europe. Her parents are on their way in from Oregon, “to find out if they got their money’s worth,” then after commencement she flies to Amsterdam, “boyfriend in tow. I’ll see if I can’t do a student exchange along the way.”
“You want to return to school in Europe?” Émile asks, unaware that he’s being slow. He looks up into that bright laughing smile.
“No, sir, I mean, I’ll see if I can’t find a new and improved boyfriend along the way. I was thinking Italian. Maybe French. I’m open to anything, really.”