Fall (30 page)

I didn’t want to return to school. We went to the Earl of Sussex and hoped we would be served. Ant took out his new knife near the end of our first beer.

“What do you think about all this Fall shit?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I had to talk to that cop, too, you know. I never really thought it was serious before.” He put his knife away. “He asked me where I was that night and I have no memory.”

“We’re living in a boarding school,” I said. “It’s not like we need an alibi. We were in our rooms, in class . . .”

“I’ve got nothing to hide,” he said. “Obviously. Chuck says we’re not taking it seriously enough. He thinks she’s dead.”

“No way,” I said. “She ran away.”

“Or she was taken. She’s in a basement somewhere and half a suburb’s fucking her ass.”

We really had very little in common.

“Could be suicide, too,” he said. “I guess Jules is taking it hard. That’s why Chuck’s all serious. What would you do if you found out Chuck was gay?”

“I don’t know. Nothing.”

“Really?”

We took a bus back to school.

“It’d be easy though, wouldn’t it?” he said. “I could have taken one of my other knives, gone into her room, told her to shut the fuck up.”

What are you reading?

Hobbes.

Interesting?

He worries about rhetoric. About words. People get tricky with their words and it undermines society. He says the ability to argue both sides of a case can lead to harm. Damage the truth.

That is interesting.

That’s what you do, isn’t it?

What?

You’re tricky with words for a living. You claim to want to see both sides.

Yes.

But there’s only one real side for you. You work with right on one side and wrong on the other, and it’s all about making right. You ask tricky questions.

Don’t you think there is a right and a wrong?

There’s a building called the truth. People live in it. The people are all right and wrong.

I’m going to destroy it.

I’m dreaming.

At an assembly for the entire school it was announced that security was going to be increased. Anyone who propped open a fire escape would be punished. Day students had to be off school property by 6:00 p.m. unless they had special permission.

Boarders were called to a separate assembly. New locks were installed on all outside doors, which would now be closed from 6:00 p.m. We were given a key to the one main door, which would be monitored, they said. We had to sign out whenever we left school grounds during the week, not only if we were going away on weekends. It was all for our own protection.

Somehow Julius managed to get out for a smoke some nights. I heard him sneaking out of bed, fishing for his cigarettes, coming back an hour later. Ant said Chuck did the same thing.

“I can’t believe you, of all people, wanted all this security,” I said to Julius.

He shrugged. “I think it’ll get to the truth,” he said. I didn’t know what he meant.

I thought about trying to follow him and Chuck but I couldn’t see how it was possible. The school was so quiet now at night. Footsteps were easily heard. I knew that building, every hiding place, better than anyone. I couldn’t imagine where, under this new regime, they would be able to smoke undetected.

I was told that you broke your nose last term. What happened?

I was playing basketball.

That’s not what I heard. That was the official story, I know that. But it’s not what I heard.

No?

I heard you were in a fight. Why didn’t you tell me that?

I don’t know. I’m not comfortable telling a policeman that I was in a fight, I suppose.

What do I care?

I don’t know.

I’ve been in lots of fights. What happened to the other guy?

I don’t know. I ran away. I had to.

Were you scared?

Of course. I didn’t want to fight.

Is that when your eye was damaged?

My eye’s not damaged. It’s a lazy eye that I’ve had since birth.

You don’t look like the kind of guy who would get into fights. I mean, you look like you could handle yourself. But you don’t seem like a fighter. I’ve seen lots of fighters.

Yeah.

So the way I heard the story was, you were out in Hull with your friend Antony. You got into this fight and he looked after you.

Is that what he said?

I’ve been talking to several different people.

I stayed at his aunt’s house that night and went to the hospital the next day.

And Antony wasn’t involved in the fight? See, he looks to me like a fighter. You don’t, but he does.

I don’t know.

I could imagine him starting a fight and you stepping in to break it up. Do you know him well?

Ant? Reasonably well.

I’m trying to get a sense of relationships here, I guess. Would you say that Ant is your closest friend at school?

No. I don’t think so.

Who is your closest friend?

. . .

Someone you would confide in?

. . .

Your roommate?

Yes.

I have no illusions about being alone. I have known people who want to have children solely for the purpose of being cared for by
them in their old age. For company. I suppose it is as good a reason as any. But I have no illusions.

I think about our hunger for oil. The planet warms, the seas grow. We worry that the planet will drown. We take our ships to melting seas. We fight for the oil underneath the ice. We drown.

I had a memory of being in the downstairs common room after dinner. Fall and Julius had their arms around each other. The three of us were talking. I was eating wine gums. The three of us were happy. Julius was still gated, which is why they were hanging around the common room instead of sneaking off somewhere.

Fall liked wine gums but Julius didn’t. I held the bag while she fished out her favourite colour (orange) and if I moved my fingers slightly I could feel hers through the bag. But I didn’t.

Julius had a pimple on his forehead. Fall was making fun of it and I joined in. She laughed with me. Julius was good-natured.

When Lights Out approached I gave her the wine gums, excused myself, and left them alone. I went upstairs to my room while the fluorescent lights went out above them, the colours under the ice.

What were people saying about me? Had Ant misrepresented my fight for some reason? Who else was talking about me?

“What did you say to Sergeant D’Arcy?”

“I don’t know,” said Ant. “Not much.”

“Did you talk about my fight in Hull?”

“No fuckin’ way. He just asked me about Fall. What I knew about her. I don’t know anything about her. He asked me who would want to hurt her?”

“He asked that?”

“Something like that.”

“Did he ask about me?”

“No.”

“You didn’t say anything about me?”

“Nothing. We talked for like ten minutes. He’s pretty ugly.”

“I haven’t noticed.”

I’ve seen a lot, Noel.

Yes.

On my better days I like this job. I stand back from it and I think: This is life. How could I get a better view of life than from this job? And by better I mean
—
what do I mean? Complete? Not even that. I think on the days that I think about things, it’s the days when I’m surprised. Something’s happened that I never could have imagined. So it’s not complete, exactly, because it’s when I realize I haven’t seen it all that I get this feeling. There are patterns, sure. Predictable things. I like to think sometimes that I can see them better than the next guy.

Yes.

Do you?

What?

See things better than the next guy?

I don’t know.

Depends on who the next guy is, eh? I think you do. I get a good feeling from you, Noel. Intelligent. I don’t mean to sound patronizing. But I do feel surprised by some of the things some of the other students are saying about you. Destroying rooms . . . Intimidating . . . Like I said, you don’t look like a fighter to me.

I can fight.

So you like fighting?

I don’t know what exactly you are hearing, but I do nothing, I have done nothing that nobody else does. I . . . I haven’t done anything out of the norm, is what I mean.

Upstairs.

Yes, upstairs. Anywhere. It’s all . . . it’s the norm. Occasional roughhousing. Foolishness. I assure you that over the years people have done far worse, more hurtful things than I’ve done. I’ve barely got started.

What do you mean?

I mean, I would look like an amateur . . . I do nothing that hasn’t been done by others, often worse. You should hear stories.

From the past. I understand the dynamic. You can’t house so many young guys together and not have fighting and weird things. I understand that. And
you grow up and get appointed to the Senate. I understand the general pattern. I’m just talking about you, Noel.

But why? Why is everyone talking about me? I thought we were looking for Fall.

We are. We are. I think you think I’m about to discipline you or something. Like you don’t even want to be noticed. I’m not going to punish you for fooling around upstairs. That’s for your Counsellor here or whoever. If you’ll pardon me, I don’t actually give two shits what a bunch of boys are doing to each other in their bedrooms, whether they’re future senators or not. I’m investigating the disappearance of a young woman, who seems to have had no reason to disappear. You can put it together, I think, Noel.

Do you suspect me?

I, personally, don’t. No. I don’t. Tell me why you began sleeping in your closet after Fallon disappeared.

Who told you that? Julius?

Why the closet?

He’s the only one who would know. I slept in the closet because I was tired. It’s a quiet place. You have no idea how hard it is to get away in this, in this life. You don’t know what it’s like. Doing
everything
in the same space. The closet’s peaceful.

But why immediately after Fall went missing?

I don’t . . . I don’t think you have received accurate information. I’ve slept in closets for years. Julius has only been my roommate this year.

You slept for hours each day after December ten in your closet.

I missed her. I thought about her.

Yes, you said. You were close friends. You missed her right away, before people knew she was missing?

I can’t believe where these questions are heading.

Calm down, Noel. I’ve told you. I just want the whole picture.

Never question the quiet ones. That should be the truth to spread, as much as the warning not to trust us. Never question a quiet person’s sense of his own perfection. Distance has allowed me that wisdom.

We’re quiet because we suspect we are imperfect. Grotesquely imperfect. But that suspicion must never be acknowledged; that suspicion is the quietest part of our soft-spoken souls.

Perfection is what we want. We will
never
admit that we can’t find it. He should never have questioned my livid heart.

“Let’s go downtown,” I said.

“I’ll get my coat,” Ant said.

“Don’t wear your uniform,” I said.

I’ve been thinking about things, Sergeant D’Arcy.

Yeah?

Some moments last term. All this new security around the school has been making me think. About Julius especially. I don’t know whether you’ve asked him, but he used to go on excursions. With Fall. He would go in his father’s limousine. Has he told you?

I don’t believe he has.

I don’t know everywhere he went. He just used to tell me what he would do to Fall in the car. But I don’t know where he went. Maybe he could give you some leads. I know he was somehow in cahoots with his father’s chauffeur. If he hasn’t told you about it, it might be nothing. Maybe there were places they went.

Thank you, Noel.

It was dark but I didn’t want to hide.

“Let’s go to the mall,” I said.

Most nights he went out. I don’t really know where he went.

He never told you?

Not often. He usually smoked drugs with his friend Chuck. Sometimes they were near school. They still do it. Sometimes they went far away.

And you weren’t invited?

That’s not why I’m telling you.

“Shouldn’t we get drunk first?” said Ant.

“No. I want to remember.”

Scaring a young fella named Edward. He seemed harmless to me.

You don’t know the whole story. He had a way of looking at me. A way of looking at the world. There’s a weakness in some people. It’s just as destructive, as poisonous to a community, as aggression. You haven’t asked him the right questions.

Would you like me to interview him here with you now?

I just didn’t always . . . I wasn’t comfortable with the way Julius talked about Fall.

What do you mean?

As though she were expendable somehow. As though she were just another girl.

He said that?

Yes. All the time.

I guess he is only eighteen. I suspect there will be more girls in his life. Are there girls in your life, Noel?

Of course.

And the mall was America.

I saw every one of your failures; your puffy absurdities; your swollen ignorance and hunger for things you knew would never be enough.

Huge.

Vain.

Chatty.

Shuffling.

Dreaming.

You troupes of baboons my age.

You sniffling middle-aged complainers pouring colas and distraction into your cramped despicable bellies.

And I wanted to tell you to stop telling me what I should want.

I found a couple of guys in their twenties. Taller than I was, unlikely to be brought down. They both had coats slung over their arms and coffees in their hands.