by M. E. Kerr
“I’m surprised … and delighted. Nina has a lot of trouble talking about her. She took her death very hard. We both did, of course. Nina’s so much like Barbara in every way, sometimes I walk into a room, see her, and have to stop and catch my breath. She’s Barbara to her bones: the daredevil, the romantic — all the qualities I lack. But Nina could use some of my dull, old common sense, too. She needs to come down to earth.”
I was timing the steak. “Mr. Deem? Do you two like your steak rare?”
“Yes, rare…. I’m glad you came on the scene, Fell. I know Nina will win you over, and you may feel disloyal if you have to report anything to me, but just remember this.”
He stopped and came around so he could face me.
“If you care anything at all about my daughter, you’ll be doing her a very great service keeping Dragon out of her life.”
Then his eyes got very wide and he said, “Oh, no!”
“What’s wrong, sir?” I thought of cholesterol and triglyceride, of high blood pressure and heart attacks.
He went over to the sink and ran the cold water.
“Are you all right, Mr. Deem?” My own father had died very suddenly of a heart attack.
He grabbed a towel and put a corner of it under the water, turned, and handed it to me. “Your sweater,” he said. “There’s oil or something on it.”
Where the lettuce had hit me.
I grinned with relief and dabbed at the stain.
“We should both have on aprons,” he said.
• • •
Nina was definitely out to get him at dinner. She was pretending to be reviewing for him what we’d gone over during the tutoring, but she talked far more about Elizabeth Barrett than she did about Browning, harping on her controlling father.
“Ummm hmmmm,” Mr. Deem would respond. “Well, Nina, they were very strict with young ladies in those days.”
Nina gave me a triumphant look. Then she said, “Dad, when she met Robert Browning she was practically forty! Her father was still telling her what to do!”
“She was ill, wasn’t she? Didn’t you just say she was ill?”
“He made her think she was! He wanted to keep her home with him!”
“It all turned out all right, didn’t it?”
“Yes, because she defied him! She eloped!”
“That’s a word we don’t use much anymore. Elope.”
“Oh, we still use it, Dad. Those who have a reason to use it still use it.”
She could have been talking about basket weaving in Madagascar for all the reaction she got out of him. He gave the same bland responses no matter how impassioned Nina became. He sneaked bits of steak to Meatloaf, who was stationed at his feet, under the table.
“The steak is done just right, Fell!” Mr. Deem decided to change the subject.
“Thanks, sir.”
“Nina, did you show Fell any of your old stories?”
“I’m throwing them all out,” she said. “They were from another time.”
“You’ll regret it if you do. You might want to remember that time someday, how you felt when you were younger.”
“I don’t want to remember feeling like this little Goody Two Shoes who raised her umbrella and heard the wind sough in the trees. I actually wrote that line, Fell. ‘She raised her umbrella and heard the wind sough in the trees.’“
“Sough is a perfectly legitimate word,” said her father.
“My future characters aren’t going to own umbrellas,” Nina said, “or slipcovers or coasters. I’m never going to write about careful people again!”
One thing I’d learned about her: If she was a jet crash, she had a certain brave facade about her. I couldn’t imagine her letting anyone feel sorry for her. I liked that about her, maybe because I was a little that way myself. We jet crashes had our pride.
• • •
I had to be back at The Hill by ten. At eight Mr. Deem walked out on the front porch with me, and we stood a moment in the cold night.
Then he grabbed my hand, and I felt his thumb push against my fingers. I had almost forgotten the Sevens handshake. I let my thumb touch his. It was an awkward gesture that made me feel silly, but he seemed satisfied.
“This is going to work out fine,” he told me. “I can tell.”
He went back inside and left the light on for me as I headed down the walk.
His Lincoln was there in the driveway.
The license plate read DDD-7.
The wind was soughing in the trees.
Chapter 11
I could have walked back to The Hill or caught the bus at the comer of Main and Hickory.
I thought of Dib and decided in favor of the bus. I wanted to tell him all that Rinaldo had told me.
But a block before Hickory I turned into Playwicky Road.
While I’d been at the Deems’, I’d forgotten Lasher and Creery. For all the luxury at Sevens, I’d missed cooking, and eating a meal in a quiet room where there was a female. I’d missed a living room and a four-legged creature padding around.
I remembered Jazzy dressed up as a question mark in a kindergarten play last Christmas. She’d had to recite some lines from Kipling:
I keep six honest serving men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
Temporarily, anyway, I’d parked the six serving men at the curb, and reveled in the idea of being in a real home again.
Playwicky Arms was a row of two-story houses, each with its own twin entrances onto the street. The houses on the winding street were alternately gray and white, with brass lanterns in front and cobblestone sidewalks meeting the city’s paved ones.
I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, “just looking,” as my mother was fond of saying in department stores.
Number 6 was white and in the middle.
Both the top and bottom floors were lighted. I figured Lauren must have gone from Sevens House to here, rather than catch the bus back to Miss Tyler’s. Midwinter, during the week, there wasn’t regular service to Princeton.
I was only slightly curious about this off-campus pad of Lasher’s. It figured that he’d had one, and that only card players knew about it. He wasn’t the first fellow from The Sevens to have one, probably just the first one to chance reprimand for poker or blackjack instead of girls.
What interested me more was the idea of surprising Lauren. I was trying to imagine that unflappable face reacting with surprise. It was a little like trying to picture the Mona Lisa throwing her head back to have a good belly laugh.
I enjoyed the idea of telling Dib I’d checked out Playwicky, too. He liked the image of Fell, Boy Detective, far more than he appreciated Fell, member of Sevens. It would go a long way in helping him to stop suspecting I was part of some Sevens cover-up.
I walked up and down the street while I invented these excuses for my own chronic curiosity, and while I practiced what I’d say to Lauren.
Lauren, I can’t stay but I finished assembling the memorial book, so can you pick it up tomorrow? I had my own selfish reasons, too. Sevens drew the line at free postage and delivery of packages. We had to get them to the post office ourselves, a chore I could easily postpone for weeks.
There were two bells at number 6, the top one with the name Lewis under it, the bottom one unmarked.
I pushed the bottom one, heard it ring, and waited.
My father used to say he could always feel it when he was being watched. It was a sixth sense. It had saved his life once when all he could see on a street where he was doing surveillance was an empty florist’s station wagon with a roof rack carrying a coffin-sized cardboard box, the sort used for wholesale flower deliveries. There was a man with a gun inside the box, aiming at him through a hole. Dad ducked just in time, getting away in a crouch.
I could feel eyes on me from inside. I could see the curtains move in the downstairs front window. I knew there
was no gun aimed at me, but some of the same feelings people who point guns have were probably overwhelming Lauren then. She’d say how did you find out about this place, Fell? I’d tell her I was in the neighborhood and number 6 just looked like her. Something about it.
I smiled at the thought and jabbed the bell again.
This time all the lights on the bottom floor went off. So did the one inside the brass lantern.
Plain enough. I walked away.
I went up the street in the opposite direction from where I’d entered it, and stood a moment beside a large oak tree, seeing if the lights would go on again.
I wondered if Lauren had seen that it was me, or if she feared that it was someone who could cause trouble. Maybe over at Miss Tyler’s the idea of her crashing in her brother’s off-campus card den wouldn’t sit so well. It probably wasn’t the first time either. A girl like Lauren couldn’t have been interested in cards. Boys, more likely … Rinaldo’d said to ask Kidder about number 6 Playwicky. What if Kidder, with his Colgate smile, his Polo wardrobe, and his Key West yacht, appealed to Lauren?
My thoughts were chasing in circles while I stood hugging myself to keep warm. I was ready to admit that my imagination was overtaking reality again. Kidder’d played poker there; whatever Lauren had been up to, I’d probably never know.
Staying was pointless, I decided. That was the second the lantern light went on again.
Just for a moment, a man stepped out and looked around.
I’d seen him before.
I’d never seen him barefoot, in an orange kimono, but I’d seen the thick white hair and the white mustache.
Only someone from Miami wouldn’t think to pack slippers.
Chapter 12
In Sevens house my mailbox was full. There was a large package from Mom, a letter from Keats, three messages from Dib. Where are YOU? was one. Then, Where ARE you? Finally, WHERE are you?
Mom never sent me stuff unless it was a special occasion. She said that since I’d made Sevens, sending me anything was like carrying coals to Newcastle.
I opened the package on the spot. Little plastic peanuts spilled from the box to the mailroom floor.
There were some bottles of Soho lemon spritzer, a jar of Sarabeth Rosy Cheek Preserves, and a box of David’s Cookies. Things I loved and couldn’t buy in Cottersville.
There were two white envelopes inside, too.
I opened one and gulped. It was a valentine. It was the thirteenth of February. I’d forgotten Valentine’s Day.
I knew the second envelope contained Jazzy’s valentine.
I checked my Timex. Nine thirty. If I hurried, I could get over to Deem Library and make some homemade cards before mail pick-up at ten o’clock. At least they’d be postmarked the fourteenth.
Dib could wait a day for my news.
I shoved the package back into my box and headed for The Tower. Under the campus lights along the path, I read what Keats had written across a red heart.
Thanks for your postcard. Why would you read “Fra Lippo Lippi” when you could read Brownings “Confessions”? How about this line, Fell?
“How sad and bad and mad it was —
But then, how it was sweet.”
Does that remind you of us? Does anything?
xxxxx.
She was a freshman at Sweet Briar, down in Virginia, where February nights were never as cold and windy as the one I was hurrying through.
I’d call her with Valentine wishes. I couldn’t do that with Mom and Jazzy. They liked getting theirs in the mail. Even late was better than none at all.
For a while I had the library to myself. I grabbed some cream-colored Sevens stationery and sat down at a table.
I folded one sheet and drew a heart across the front.
BE MY VALENTINE.
Inside I didn’t get any more original.
Two hearts across the second one. Jazzy’s name in one; mine in the other.
Only girlfriends inspired me, not my family. For Delia I’d have drawn the Taj Mahal, and written a verse in perfect iambic pentameter promising it to her.
The clock was striking ten when Rinaldo appeared. He wasn’t in his usual uniform. I could see why Lasher’s clothes hadn’t thrilled him. He had on very tight black pegged pants, a black leather vest, a black-and-white silk shirt, and a black leather belt with a silver buckle. Black suede ankle boots … Lasher’s style had alternated between classic preppy and baggy tramp.
“Closing time, Fell.” Rinaldo put down the mail sack he was carrying, unlocked the CORRESPONDENCE box, and reached in for the letters there.
“Can you wait one second? I forgot Valentine’s Day.”
“Wait how long?”
“One second.”
“One second’s up.” He walked toward me while I scratched the address across an envelope.
“You smell like a magazine, Rinaldo.”
“I’ve got on Giorgio V.I.P Special Reserve,” he said. “You know what the ads say: Maybe one man in a thousand will wear it.” He grinned. “That’s me.”
“Is it part of your inheritance?”
“No. Lasher — what did he wear? Something like Royal Copenhagen. This is sweeter! This gets the girls like honey draws bees…. I’ve got a date, Fell — crank it up.”
“I’m done,” I said. I handed the envelope to him. “Will it be postmarked the fourteenth?”
He nodded. “I’m dropping it off down there now.”
I got up and walked along with him. The Tower clock was hammering out ten. In half an hour the dorm doors would be locked. It wasn’t worth trying to get to Dib.
“I was on Playwicky Road tonight,” I said, “and I saw something odd.”
“Sniffing around?”
“I thought Lauren might be there. Instead, I saw Creery’s stepbrother come out of number 6.”
Rinaldo snapped off the lights in the library. “I heard he’s staying awhile.”
“In Lasher’s apartment?”
“That I didn’t hear.”
“You don’t think it’s odd?”
“Others used that place, Fell. It was for card playing, so why would Lasher’s sister be there? … You are naive sometimes, you know.” He picked up a black leather coat with a yellow quilted lining that was lying on the table outside the door. “Kidder went there. Other Sevens. You think it was a secret? Even you’d heard of the place.”
Not until Rinaldo’d told me himself, but I skipped by that saying, “So Sevens arranged it?”
“A Sevens did, probably. Why not? This stepbrother of Creery’s needs a place for a few weeks. Why wouldn’t it be offered to him? That’s what your Sevens is all about, isn’t it? Something for nothing.”
He snapped the hall lights off as we walked toward the front of The Tower. “Everything isn’t suspicious, Fell, the way you think. You’ve got something on the brain, Fell.” He flicked his fingers toward my head and laughed. Then he patted his heart with the same hand. “You need something here to occupy you. You should see what I’m going to occupy in about half an hour.”
We went through the front door. Rinaldo had the mail sack over his shoulder. “Now if that little Porsche of Lasher’s had been delivered early, maybe Rinaldo’d be heading off for the evening in style.”
I gave him a smile. “I wouldn’t worry.”
“Yes, you would, Fell. Because you worry about everything, I’m learning. What you need is to have a girl.”
“This is true,” I said.
He feigned a punch at my chin. “You want me to fix you up with a townie?”
“Later,” I said.
We waved and took off in opposite directions.
Then I called to him. “Wait, Rinaldo!”
He stopped.
I walked toward him. “Why is Creery’s stepbrother staying for a few weeks?”
“You don’t quit, Fell, do you?” He switched the mailbag to the other shoulder. “He’s staying until all this calms down.”
“Until all w
hat calms down?” I asked him.
“Maybe until you calm down, compadre … I don’t know why he’s staying. I just know Creery’s off the Sevens dinner list until the stepbrother leaves. Two weeks or so, he said.”
Rinaldo turned to go. “Hasta la vista, Fell!”
I could almost hear Lasher’s voice. Hasta la vista, Flaco!
“Buena suerte, Rinaldo!”
And the scream from just above us, I could hear. Still.
That night, as I was undressing, I found Jazzy’s unopened valentine in my shirt pocket.
There was a picture of a white dog holding a red heart in its paws.
Inside it said, DOGGONE I LOVE YOU!
Jazzy’d printed something at the bottom in her usual style: large, crooked letters.
• • •
Johnny? Why is 6 afraid of 7?
There was an arrow pointing to the back of the card.
Turning it over, I thought of number 6 Playwicky Arms, and of Mark Twain’s bare feet on the cold stone.
Because, Jazzy had continued, 7 8 9.
Chapter 13
One of the perks that went with keeping my eye on Nina Deem was getting to drive the second car. That’s what both Nina and her father called the BMW, as if it had never belonged to anyone in particular, though I knew it’d been her mother’s.
Deem had checked out my New York driver’s license — he was a careful man. He’d advised me to get a Pennsylvania one, and to ask Dr. Skinner’s permission. All done by the third week in February, when Nina talked me into taking her to New Hope for a poetry reading.
The roads were clear, and the sun was out, and even though “Fra Lippo Lippi” had spoiled poetry for me forever, I liked to be behind the wheel.
I needed to get away from The Hill, too.
Late February, at Gardner, you crammed for tests, wrote papers on every subject from the design of the Parthenon to Romanticism’s eighteenth-century beginnings, and took your S.A.T.’s over if you were trying to raise your score. I was trying to get mine out of the 500’s.
I was also spending too much time working on The Charles Dance for The Sevens.
In between, Dib and I met when we could. And when we did, we fought.