Not even me, the reputedly smart one.
*
I ran through the transcripts of our most recent bedtime conversation as we drove back to my house, away from the enemy lines, not to mention any ex-hippies who might see or hear their son and his close friend re-interpreting a Commandment or two.
"I think you're super-special, too."
"What?"
"Last night. You said I was super-special. Well, so are you."
Brennan eyes glazed over. "You're not alone. Not anymore."
The grip between our hands became so tight our arms shook.
* * *
X I X
For many men who stumble at the threshold
Are well foretold that danger lurks within.
Henry VI
I was surprised to make it to school alive.
It began snowing the instant I walked out of our house. The old reliable commuter line struggled to stay on schedule, even though its new aluminum double-deckers had this irritating habit of flying off of the tracks in snowy weather. And it kept snowing, very hard.
If it weren't for the maniacal zealotry of the old man, our beloved Principal, classes would have been canceled, and we all could have spent the rest of the day horsing around in the snow by the lake, or prowling around the University, or playing chase in the nearby museum, or even risking life and limb in the dilapidated remains of the Loop's movie theaters. But, no, unless you could measure the snow in terms of feet, we were going to get educated, by God, and the weather would just have to wait.
Well, I thought, let it snow. If the trains break down, I could stay over at Nicolasha's.
On my way to Literature class, I saw the old man talking, or, rather, issuing directives, to Mister Granger, who then gestured for Zane to come with the Principal.
Over a flavorless cafeteria lunch, Zane once told me his father had named him after the famous cowboy novelist, which I thought was funny, since there was very, very little of anything cowboy about Zane and his asymmetrical blond crew cut, glasses, nasal voice, and dimpled smile. He was a shy, wooden preppie who couldn't walk down the hall without careening into something, he was such a klutz. Zane was one of those poor chumps brought up not so much as a son, but as a colony, of a domineering architect father who always picked him up from Pilot School every afternoon, "to make sure he got home safely."
We exchanged puzzled glances as we passed each other, and I went in to be regaled by a few unimportant sonnets by Marlowe.
Felix made a very active effort to ignore me, even though we sat next to each other in every class, right near the door for quick getaways.
Zane didn't return to the group until we had moved on to Asian History. Felix was then summoned by the old man. The lecture on the pre-Nationalist warlords of China was stultifying. I tried making eye contact with Zane, but he sat on the other side of the room, and didn't look up from his notebook until the bell rang.
Felix wasn't back yet.
I followed Zane heading up the dark staircase to Italian class, and stopped him near the base of the steps with a hand on his briefcase. Other students filed past us with irritation. "Hey, Zane, wait up."
"We have to get to class." He didn't look at me.
"There's still time. What did the old man want?"
"I'm not supposed to talk about it." Zane began to walk away, but I held on to his arm. He glanced at me for a very defensive moment before shaking his head and almost running away from me into our classroom.
Felix gave me a blank look as I approached him and the old man, who sent my friend into Signore Abbado's care. I was taken into the old man's Interrogation Room downstairs.
*
"I'm very sorry to hear about your parents." I nodded, looking for something beyond the affected pleasantries on the cool but witty ex-History professor's face. "Do you think you'd like to take some time off?"
"No, sir. I'm just glad Christmas is over."
"You're sure? All of your teachers would understand." He looked at his lap. "They're all very proud of you. You're an excellent student, one of our best."
I was mortified, and it showed.
Principal Connelly, in his appalling orange-and-navy blue tartan blazer, waved his hand dismissively. "I personally think you could show more collegiality and leadership. Join one of the clubs, for Heaven's sake." Join? Join? "You'd take over in a month. The newspaper, for instance." Please. If there were a bigger bunch of geeks in the Western Hemisphere than the paper people, someone would have to show me. "You're too introspective for your own good. Be young while you still are." I nodded in polite agreement, not feeling like debating him or anyone else about who I was, or what I was supposed to be. "At any rate, you're a fine poet for somebody so young. The works you handed in for the mid-term were very, very good, even though I'm not much for poetry." No, I thought, anything less than a thousand-page ordeal on some drab historical figure wouldn't appeal to you, sir.
"I've asked you down here to discuss a very delicate matter." He looked away from me again. I wondered, what was on his legal pad that was so damned interesting? "I'm no good at this sort of thing. I don't like questioning people as if I were a policeman." A secret policeman, you mean. I imagined what Principal Connelly would look like in the grey-green uniform of the East German Stasi. "Subtlety isn't one of my strong suits."
"Can I ask what's up, sir?"
He smiled without showing any teeth, looking me over for a few moments, before turning in his chair and watching the snow continue to fall in the manicured hedgerows outside of his window. "We should all go home," he said under his breath, "forget the day ever happened."
"I beg your pardon, sir?" My voice was aggressively firm and pronounced. I'll bet his chagrin at thinking aloud was in hyper-drive right then, hee hee.
"Tell me about Mister Rozhdestvensky."
Click. So much for my voice being firm and pronounced. "What would you like to know, sir?" The radiator was louder than I was.
"Your impressions." Did you ever wish you were in a train wreck? "Anything at all."
I cleared my throat nervously and shifted in the old man's uncomfortable wooden "guest" chair. "He's a great teacher. One of the best I've ever had."
"Why?"
"Because he knows his subject. To death, I mean."
"He's paid to. All of them are." Connelly's voice was clipped and emotionless. I hated staring at the high back of his leather executive chair.
"He cares about us."
"He's paid to."
"I mean, really cares. Like we were friends."
Principal Connelly turned his chair around and met my furtive eyes directly. "Are the two of you friends?"
I blushed, but didn't mean to. I looked away first, but didn't want to. "Yeah."
"Yes," my Principal suggested.
"Yes, sir." I couldn't look up from the edge of his desk.
"What kind of friends?"
"Good ones." Hah! I knew I could look up at him again! "He's been like the older brother I've never had. Through... through...all kinds of bullshit."
The old man folded his hands on his desk, returning his eyes to the legal pad. I felt his disappointment in the air. Our parents paid a lot of money to purge such vulgarity from our souls, I could hear him thinking.
"Has Mister Rozhdestvensky ever invited you to his apartment?"
"Yes, sir." My voice began to regain its composure. "He loaned me some of his records, one evening."
"Records," the old man mused. "Which ones?"
"Symphonies by Prokofiev and Shostakovich," I lied. "Number Five of Prokofiev. Numbers Eleven, and Twelve of Shosta - "
"Did you visit him during the Christmas break?"
"Yes, sir. On Christmas morning, to give Nicolasha his gift." I felt good about finally using the term of endearment that probably grated on the old man.
"You didn't bring one for him on the last day of classes, like everyone else?" He peered curiously over the rims of his large black glasses at m
e.
"I did. But I only found this record after school was out, and I thought I'd surprise him."
"Nicolas means a lot to you, then."
"Yes, sir, he does," I replied in my newly firmed up and pronounced voice. "He's a great teacher, and a great friend. I wish I had met him before I did."
"Why?"
"I could have used some of his hugs a long time ago," I admitted, then furiously regretted. But at least I wasn’t stupid enough to make a joke about bubble baths.
"Does Mister Rozhdestvensky hug all of his students?"
"Yes, sir, as far as I can tell, Nicolasha hugs all of his students, and everyone else's students, too. That's the way he is. That's why everyone loves him." I blushed again, knowing I had used the wrong word. "He's beloved."
I girded myself for being asked if I loved Nicolasha, and, intending to say yes while looking the old man right in the eyes, thought about what I would say when the big "Why?" was launched in my direction. But the question didn't come. We had gone as far as we would. Principal Connelly brought back his jets back from my airspace.
"Do you think teachers should hug their students?"
I was sure of it. The old man had an unknown twin who was a high-ranking officer in the Stasi.
"Yes, I do. We used to get hugs from the nuns and the priests when I was in grammar school, more so when we were younger. We used to get slapped, too, if we got out of line, but most of us didn't. Where does it say older kids don't want or need hugs anymore?" The old man held open his hands in agreement. "Aren't you allowed to get hugs once you're in high school?" I hoped the radiator would explode, like I suddenly felt like doing, in that small, peeling room. "Especially when you don't get them at home, anymore."
"I hug my children every day," Principal Connelly said.
"I will every hour, if I ever have any."
The hallway bell rang sharply. It was lunch time. "You will." He smiled at me and stood up, offering his heavily veined and strong, dry hand. I took it, managing not to show the looming sadness I felt, doubting the old man was right about that last bit.
He escorted me to the door and opened it. Students hurried up and down the corridor outside his office, careful not to run in front of the Principal. "Tell me. What special record did you buy for Nicolas?"
"An opera by Satie."
In dismissal, he touched the side of my arm like a jeweler would touch a fragile diamond, and I headed for the my locker. Snowstorm or not, I wasn't going to stay in the building. I needed some air.
I turned into a rest room before exiting the building. I was in the middle of washing the "conference" off of my hands and face, when I looked up at my reflection in the mirror with water dripping down my cheeks and dread in my bloodshot eyes.
I couldn't remember if Satie ever wrote an opera.
*
I walked to the middle of the huge, empty plain that lies to the immediate south of the Pilot School and the rest of Hyde Park. The locals called it the midway. The dense falling snow peppered my face and clothing and the rest of the city, creating an eerie silence in us both.
The sky, the air, and the ground blended together into one tremendous, snow-white painting.
If I smoked, I would have been smoking. I wished I had some vice like that. Chewing gum, cigarettes, booze, hell, even pills, something to occupy me, rather than always having my thoughts to bounce off of the sides of my mind until I was half-nuts from it.
I supposed I could call all my crying some kind of vice. I did it enough for it to be a bad habit.
It wasn't very cold, perhaps a few degrees below freezing, which would make the night's travel across the slushy city that much more difficult.
My pants were soaked halfway to the knees from the snow.
My lunch period was almost over, but it felt like I had just gotten outside. I didn't want to go back. How much trouble would I get into if I skipped the rest of the afternoon? What would I miss? What would it matter?
Who would school report me to, anyhow?
I filled my mind with this idle nonsense, desperate to ignore the trembling worry I was gripped with.
*
I could see Felix looking at the snow that was still caked on my hiking shoes and the bottom of my pants. The classroom was silent as Doctor Clive bantered on about the finer points of adjustment disorders. I suppose I should have been listening, since a lot of what our Psychology teacher was talking about sounded more than a little relevant to what I felt was going on inside of me, but I couldn't.
Nicolasha and me, the two of us. That's all I could see or hear. I re-animated every moment of our making...having sex...in the Christmas twilight, while thousands of pounds of metal and rubber were smashing into each other, somewhere in the far southern suburbs of Chicago, with my Mom and Dad being reduced to dead massacres of broken bone and torn flesh.
Yep, I was being strangled by barbed wire made out of Christmas lights.
Most of the class had already left when Doctor Clive and Mister Granger, who shared the classroom, both called my name. They looked at me with a mixture of kindness and sympathy that only made me angry. Granger said, "You can go home now, partner."
"Home?"
"If we don't leave now,” Clive added, “we might get stuck here."
"Oh." I gathered my belongings and tried to smile back at my Literature teacher as he left the room.
Doctor Clive approached me with his customarily gentle face warming up the room. At least the pity wasn't in his eyes, anymore. "I just learned about your parents this afternoon." I hope it didn't put you off your soup, doc. "We're all sorry, quite sorry."
"Yeah. So am I."
"Any death is difficult. This? Beyond tragic, I'd say. No consolation in anything one can say, but we all feel deeply for you."
"Thanks."
Clive sat down on the edge of a desk. I was content to lean against the side chalk board, facing him and Granger. Clive was by far the most stylish out of our teachers, a salt-and-pepper rake who wore expensive Scottish tweeds and wry good looks with the aplomb of an expatriate Brit. Granger looked like a CPD detective who got into a lot of trouble for conduct unbecoming. Like the rest of our teachers, both could easily be teaching at the university next door, but chose not to, for some private reason.
"Carried yourself pretty well last week, considering what's happened, you know. If the old man hadn't let on, wouldn't have suspected a thing, the lot of us."
"You mean Nico - Mister Rozhdestvensky, he didn't tell you?"
Granger shook his head. "Haven't seen him all day. Don't think he made it in, tell you the truth."
My face fell as those Christmas lights drew tighter around my throat. "I should go," I murmured.
"Yes, well, so do I." Clive took out a small cigarette from his jacket and lit it. "You live in the bush, don't you? Out south?" I nodded impatiently. "Let me give you a lift. I've got one of those Jeep contraptions, so we won't get stalled in that muck outside."
"But you live near Lincoln Park, don't you?" On the North Side. Yuk.
"Certainly do, but I've got a dinner appointment with a lady that's worth a drive in a snowstorm for. Radio woman. Lives near you, I'm pretty certain."
The German in me sensed a trap. "You don't have to, sir. I'll be fine on the train."
“Until it takes flight? Come on, kid!” Granger almost slapped me into the wall as he patted my shoulder before plodding away.
"Bad company or not, I insist."
"I have to pick up a book from Margo, first." I was getting too good at this lying-on-the-fly bit. "She lives just around the block."
Doctor Clive eyed me carefully before sending me off with his cigarette. "I'll meet you in the parking lot. Fifteen minutes, then?"
I ran out the door and out of the building, straight to Nicolasha's apartment.
*
There was no sign of his Volvo. Nobody answered his doorbell. There were no lights on in his apartment. His mail hadn't been removed from the box.<
br />
I punched the side of the building as I left.
*
Clive was an excellent driver. We were in my driveway in less than an hour.
We had listened to an obscure alternative rock station on the far left of the FM dial. I could tell he wanted to sing along with the screaming, peroxided punkers. The DJ, who sounded as young as I was, took a moment to intone that a traveler’s advisory had been issued, and for drivers to use caution, due to the snow. He paused, and then screamed "Duh!"
We both laughed, but that was it for any conversation, until I climbed out of the Jeep.
"I suppose you've heard a brigade's worth of people saying things like 'If there's anything I can do'."
"Yep."
"Won't add m'self to the list, then. Call if you need to. Student rates apply."
"Thanks, I will." I glanced toward my empty house. I didn't want to go inside. "Can I ask you a question, Doctor 'C'?"
The Brit switched off his Jeep and put on his game face. "Of course, you can."
"Is there something the matter if you...” I had to sift through a number of subjects before crying rose to the top of the list “...if you keep breaking down?”
(All the time? In the shower? Making love? In your sleep? In the dark, at the movies? When nobody’s looking? In the same bed with someone?)
"You mean cry?" My look lowered Clive’s arching eyebrows. "No. Not unless you're British." I nodded curtly. He winked at me and left.
*
I called Nicolasha every fifteen minutes until I went to bed, but there was no answer.
I even dug out that Basilio's business card and called him at his studio. I couldn't tell if he was surprised to hear from me, with his strange, squeaky voice. He hadn't heard from "Nicky", either, but promised to tell my music teacher I needed to talk to him, "if they ran into each other."
How the hell do you run into someone in a snowstorm?
Miles Page 18