by M. E. Kerr
One came early that morning, after breakfast. He was a grief counselor from Philadelphia, there to meet with any students still reacting to Lasher’s suicide. He parked his car in the faculty lot and went to the student lounge, where he would be available all day.
His car was a red bi-turbo 425 Maserati, with HEADOC on the license plates.
“Where did they find him?” Dib asked me as we walked to lunch.
“He’s a Sevens,” I said. “Class of ‘74.”
“That figures,” Dib said.
• • •
The only meal The Sevens ate in the Gardner dining room was lunch. The other stranger was there, at Dr. Skinner’s table. He was tanned from the Miami sun, so Miami in his appearance that he stood out like a cop at a bikers’ rally. His face was too young for the mop of white hair, thick and silky, a lock falling across his forehead. He had a white mustache curved down around the corners of his mouth, where there was a cheerful smile with even white teeth, and dimples.
He must have come directly from the airport. White suit, brown silk shirt, red-and-tan-patterned silk tie. He looked like Florida’s version of Mark Twain.
Dib passed me the word going around our table.
“He’s Creery’s stepbrother. Lowell something.”
Creery was beside him, wearing his wraparound blue Gargoyle shades, shoveling down tuna melt while Skinner and Lowell something talked.
“They say Creery wants to go back to Florida with him,” Dib said.
“Good!”
“Why is it good? Then the whole thing will be forgotten.”
“We’re not getting anywhere anyway.”
“Because your heart isn’t in it, Fell! Now you’re going to tutor some townie, and that’ll end it.”
I couldn’t tell Dib everything about the Sevens assignment, or even that it was an assignment. I’d told him Skinner’d put me on to the job, and Dib decided it was part of the school cover-up.
Dib said, “Even if somebody tells his suspicions to that grief counselor, you don’t think a guy with HEADOC on his license plate is going to take it seriously?”
“Here’s a joke for you, Dib,” I said. “A guy comes into a therapist’s office and he says, Doc, I’m a wigwam. No, I’m a teepee…. No, I’m a wigwam. No, I’m a teepee…. The therapist says to the guy, Relax, you’re two tents.”
“Very funny, Fell,” Dib said. “About as funny as this tuna fish is fresh.”
“The point is,” I said, “you have to relax. You are too tense. We’ll just keep our eyes and ears open. We can’t do any more than that.”
“You haven’t even questioned Rinaldo to find out why Lasher’d choose him to give his stuff to.”
“He’s bringing the word processor to my room after lunch. I’ll do it then.”
“Make sure the tutorial’s in it so we know how to work it.”
“I keep it until April, right? Then it’s yours.”
“But I can practice on it in your room, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
Dib said, “They say Creery is afraid of The Sevens Revenge, Fell. Did you hear anything about that?”
“Of course not. I’d tell you if I had.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Dib. “Anyway … why would he be afraid if he didn’t have anything to do with Lasher’s death?”
“Good question, Dib. But The Sevens Revenge is a myth.”
“Sure, Fell, just a myth.”
While we were all eating lunch, Lauren Lasher had come by Sevens House and packed up her brother’s things.
She’d left a note on my desk.
Rinaldo will pick up Paul’s clothes. How are you coming with the memorial book? Here are two photos, but still looking for a smiling one.
LL
In one snapshot she’d left on my blotter, Lasher looked more like Lauren than he looked like himself. It was a head shot of him in a parka. Without his glasses he was almost beautiful, with thick, coal-black hair and dark, solemn eyes.
In the other photo there was a girl posed beside him in a long evening gown. He was dressed up in aviator’s clothes, goggles covering his eyes, “Lindy” stitched over his pocket. He must have been impersonating Charles Lindbergh at the last Charles Dance.
It had taken me a week to get through his manuscripts.
He reminded me of Jazzy during “the terrible twos.” My father was working nights then on a warehouse theft case on the Brooklyn docks. He was sleeping in the daytime, or trying to. Jazzy was literally screaming for attention: throwing her food at the walls when we’d put it in front of her, dumping in her pants the minute we’d take her off the potty, anything to keep our attention focused on her. She missed playtime with Daddy.
Lasher was doing a number with Death. He had titles like “The Graveyard Calls My Name” and “Death Be My Lover.” His writing had all the organization and lyricism of some little tone-deaf child seated at a piano. He banged and pounded, hit-and-miss.
The only one I liked was one he’d worked and reworked for English. I remembered it from Mr. Wakoski’s class last term. It was a play about a heaven where you were ranked according to the age you died: the younger, the better for you. In Lasher’s paradise the ones who’d lived to grand old ages were called “The Feebles” and denied wings. The top angels were small babies who’d survived only a day or two.
He’d called it “Only the Young Fly Good.”
That one I’d pulled out for the memorial book — grim and ironic as it was, it had humor.
I fastened the photos to it with a paper clip and shoved them in the top drawer.
I had a free study period before I was due down at the Deems’. There was a Latin test coming up, and I got out Cicero and began working my way through one of his senate speeches.
At two o’clock Rinaldo came staggering into my room with the top half of the word processor.
“The typewriter’s out in the hall, Fell.”
I brought it in while Rinaldo set everything up for me.
“You’re getting a bargain,” he said. “If I had time to learn it, I’d keep it for myself.”
“Have you tried it out?”
“How would I try it out when I don’t know how it works? I just know how it’s put together, from taking it apart when Lasher gave it to me.”
I checked to be sure the tutorial was in it; then I asked Rinaldo, “When did you two become such good friends?”
He gave me an exasperated look. Under his duffel coat he had on his work clothes: the black pants, white shirt, black plastic bow tie.
“We weren’t good friends, Fell, and everyone knows it. We weren’t friends at all. Are you fishing, is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Walk down the hall with me,” he said. “I want to show you some things in Lasher’s room.”
I walked with him while he told me the arrangement he’d made with Dib to pay him for the Smith-Corona.
“If it was disc instead of tape, you’d have paid a lot more,” he said. “That model’s out-of-date now. Lasher had a new computer ordered.”
“A Porsche, a new computer. Why would he — ”
Rinaldo didn’t let me finish. “I know what you’re going to say. Lauren Lasher filled me in on all your theories. They’re right up there with her mother’s mierda about hormones causing suicide.”
“Lack of hormones,” I said.
“Either way.”
We were in Lasher’s room then.
“Look around this place,” Rinaldo said.
There was one lone poster left on the wall: Uncle Sam pointing his finger as he did on recruitment billboards. Under him: Join the Army. Visit strange and exotic places. Meet fascinating people. And kill them.
There were dozens of cartons packed with books marked for the Gardner Library. The closets were open and empty. In one corner there was a leather massager recliner, which Rinaldo kicked gently with one foot. “This has a built-in AM/FM/cassette stereo player,” he said. “It cost
about two thousand dollars.”
He pointed to a walnut pants presser by the window. “That’s a Corby Pants Press,” he said. “Around two hundred and fifty dollars…. Want to look in the bedroom a minute?”
“What’s there?”
“A Lifecycle,” he said. “It has a matrix of sixty-four light displays changing terrain as you ride. It gives you pedaling speed, elapsed time, and calories you’re burning. Costs about one thousand five.”
“What’s your point, Rinaldo?”
“There’s no mystery here, Fell,” he said. “You wonder why he gave stuff to me. He felt like it. Who would he give it to? No one liked him. Compared to what he had, he gave me a few little peanuts. He did it on impulse, the same way he bought all this like he could buy his happiness. He pissed money away, Fell. His family’s, his own.”
I nodded. “I can see he did.”
“Money didn’t mean anything. He made a pile of it every weekend down on Playwicky Road, playing cards. You know he had an apartment there? Number six Playwicky. That’s where he went weekends he didn’t go home. Ask Kidder.”
The apartment was news to me. I said, “I believe you.”
“Finally they’re believing Rinaldo.” He moved over to the couch and began sorting through jackets and pants piled there. “I told Creery’s stepbrother: Listen! Rinaldo does not know zilch about any letter. Nada! … Look at these clothes, Fell. Where am I going to wear stuff of this kind? Am I going to strut around at a dance looking like some blanco preppy? You want to buy anything here?”
“I have to pay you for the word processor, remember?” I said. “Is that what’s bothering Creery? He thinks you have the copy of the letter he wrote?”
“He thinks. His stepbrother thinks. But not anymore. I set them straight this morning. Hola, look at this suit, Fell! All this good cashmere and it’s cut like a tent!”
“Rinaldo, why do they think you’ve got the copy of the letter?”
“They thought. They don’t think it now…. Because he gave me his things, they thought he gave me his confidences. You ask me, nobody got those.”
“Did you hear the fight between Creery and Lasher?”
“All the way in the kitchen! Sure! Lasher said he had the letter and Creery said, Were you going through my things? Sweat it, Lasher shouts, and he tries to whistle ‘Twilight Time.’ Then POW! I heard the smack Creery gave him, too. But they were always at it!”
“Who was in The Tower that afternoon?”
“You think I know? I said I was in the kitchen. Most of The Sevens had classes, gym … You sure you don’t want to buy something here, Fell? I’ll give you credit.”
“I don’t want to wear his clothes,” I said. “You wear somebody’s clothes, you get their luck, too.”
“I never heard that,” Rinaldo said. I wasn’t surprised, since I’d just made it up. “Only thing I heard is you give someone shoes, they walk away from you.”
He laughed and gave my shoulder a punch. “I gave a girl some of those stilt-heel pumps with no toes? She danced out of my life like a tornado leaving a Kansas barn on the ground in little pieces.”
I said, “One danced out of my life the same way, and I hadn’t given her anything.”
“Maybe that’s why,” said Rinaldo.
We shut the door behind us, and I went back to put Cicero away and get into my boots and coat.
I checked a Cottersville map to see where Jericho Road was and to figure out my bus route to the Deems’.
I noticed that Playwicky was two streets down from where I was going.
Chapter 9
The Deems lived on Jericho Road in a red brick house that Nina Deem told me she wouldn’t mind dying and coming back as.
“Nothing around here gets so much attention,” she said, “except Meatloaf.”
Maybe she told me this by way of apology for making me take off my boots before I followed her down the hall. Meatloaf, a fat red dachshund, licked my face and hands as I began praying my socks weren’t going to smell.
I didn’t get a really good look at her until I straightened up and let her lead me along polished wooden floors into the living room.
She was blond, like me, her hair falling to her shoulders, straight and shiny-soft. Green eyes to match the scoop-necked heavy green sweatshirt she wore. She had on jeans and some yellow Nike aqua socks, those shoe-sock things you can even wear into the water. Keats would wear them when we’d go clamming at the bay back on Long Island.
Meatloaf was waddling along behind us and Nina was saying, “Christmas? Dad didn’t even let the tree in the house this year. It was out there on the sunporch” — waving her hand toward the long doors — ”so we could see it, but the needles wouldn’t drop to the floor. I mean, is that obsessive-compulsive or is that obsessive-compulsive? Really.”
“We didn’t have one,” I said.
“One what?” She turned around and looked at me, waiting.
“A Christmas tree.”
“Oh,” she said, as though she’d forgotten she’d brought up the subject.
“We just had a lot of wreaths,” I finished, feeling foolish for going on about it.
“We can sit here on the couch,” she said, and Meatloaf took her up on the invitation, so I sat down beside him. We were a dachshund sandwich.
It was a large, comfortable room, lots of armchairs, and tables with flowers in vases, built-in bookcases all around, the same floors you could see your face in, but covered with old Oriental rugs. Big, orange-and-brown pillows to go against all the beige-and-white slipcovers. In front of us a long, low table with a marble top, filled with the latest magazines. A single framed photograph of a blond woman in shorts, carrying a tennis racket. Nina, fifteen years from then.
There was a notebook there, too, with a Flair pen stuck in its center.
“Do I call you John?” she asked.
“Everyone calls me Fell.”
“As in fell down, fell apart, fell to pieces?”
“Or fell back on or fell on one’s feet — it doesn’t all have to be negative.”
“Fell in love,” she said. “Yeah, I guess there are good ways to fall, too … or you wouldn’t be here.”
“I don’t follow you.” I looked into her eyes for the first time. She wasn’t shy about meeting someone’s glance. Just the opposite. She was one of those we’ll see-who’s-going-to-look-away-first types. So I looked away and added, “I don’t get the part about I wouldn’t be here if …” and I let my voice trail off. I was beginning badly, mainly because I didn’t know what we were really talking about.
She let me know. She said, “If I hadn’t fallen in love with Eddie, Dad wouldn’t have called you to the rescue.”
What was I supposed to say? Eddie? Who’s Eddie? I don’t know any Eddie?
I didn’t say anything.
She said, “It’s all right. I need tutoring, too, but Dad’s an earhole sometimes. Really.”
I had to laugh at the earhole bit. You couldn’t say Nina Deem wasn’t a lady.
“Everything you heard about Eddie Dragon is a lie!” she said.
“Fine. Let’s get to work.”
“We will, but remember that. He would never sell cocaine! He wouldn’t even smoke pot with me when I asked him to!”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m not arguing the point.”
“Don’t! He was the best thing that ever happened to me. He could no more sell dope than I could. He said it was a sure way to wreck your head.”
“He was right about that.”
She didn’t press the point, I’ll give her that. She leaned forward and got the notebook, opened it, and took out the Flair. “What I’m trying to do,” she said, “what I want your help with, is this biographical essay I’m writing on Browning. I don’t understand him.”
“Robert Browning?”
“Is there a Walter Browning, a William Browning? Really. I thought you were supposed to be this dynamite writer.”
“I’m not a dynamite w
riter,” I said, while my greedy and materialistic mind raced ahead of me whispering gold 7, word processor, six dollars an hour, don’t mess it up, don’t be an earhole. “I mean, I’m a good enough writer, and I certainly know Robert Browning. I just thought I’d never have to read ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’ again, ever!”
She laughed. “You won’t have to. I’m more interested in his life, and his romance with Elizabeth Barrett.”
We were off and running. The air was clear, despite the odor that was now compelling Meatloaf to get all the way down on the floor and investigate my argyles.
• • •
When she finished reading aloud what she’d written, she said, “Rate it on a scale of one to ten.”
“Eight.”
“Why only eight?”
“It’s very good, but you can’t have sentences like ‘Against all odds, these young lovers eloped in 1846’.”
“Why can’t I?” Nina said, waving her arms in the air, and it was then that I saw it.
A tiny insect, a few inches above her left breast, coming out of her bra.
“You can’t,” I said, “because they weren’t young. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was thirty-nine. He was thirty-four.”
It wasn’t alive.
“They couldn’t have been that old, Fell!”
“They were,” I said.
It was a tattoo of a pole-thin black what? With a long tail and deep-blue wings. A beetle.
“I don’t believe you!” Nina said. Then she saw where my eyes were rooted.
“All right,” she said, “we’re not going to get anywhere until you take a good look!”
She grabbed the collar of her sweatshirt and yanked it down. “There! See it?”
“A dragonfly?”
“Good, Fell! A lot of slow wits think it’s a mosquito or a beetle.”
“Is it a permanent tattoo?”
“Yes. I found out where Eddie got his and I got one just like it. A fellow down in Lambertville does them. Like it?”
“It’s an attention-getter, all right.”
“Only if you’re with guys who look down your blouse,” she said. “Let’s get back to the Brownings.”
She wasn’t one to waste her father’s money.
• • •
At five thirty, the grandfather clock in the hall gave a bong.