Justin Kramon (16 page)

“Come in, come in,” Judith said, waving Finny in from the hall.

Finny came through the door, and Judith shut it, then gave Finny a long tight hug.

“I brought you a present,” Finny said, and handed Judith the package she’d been gripping in her sweaty hand.

“A present? You didn’t have to bring anything,” Judith said, smacking Finny with an open hand on the shoulder. Then she began untying the bag.

“Oh my
God!”
Judith screamed. “I don’t believe you. Shorty Finn!” She was hugging Finny again. “This shirt is
hilarious.
I’m going to change into it right now.” Then she padded off to a room directly in front of Finny and closed the door.

Finny took the opportunity to look around the apartment. The floors were parquet, and beside the door in front of Finny, there was another door to her right. The door to her right was also closed, and Finny heard voices and music behind it. To her left was an enormous living room, with a wraparound couch that could have seated twenty people. Though at the moment it held only eight. Everyone was holding drinks in real glasses with some silver cross-hatching and gold rims—not the plastic cups Finny was used to from college parties. Behind the couch was a large wooden dining table, and a grand piano that must have been as big as Mr. Henckel’s. There was a window that took up the whole far wall of the apartment, and since Judith had the shutters open, Finny got a sparkling view of the city at nighttime, like the stars outside her window when she was a kid. To the right of the city lights was a dark swatch that must have been Central Park.

“Hey there,” one of the boys on the big couch said to Finny, and held his glass up to her like a toast.

“Hey,” Finny said, and because she was still frazzled from the whole scene in the lobby, she gave a small bow.

The boy began to laugh hysterically, so hard that he spilled some of his brown drink onto the sofa. “Oh shit,” he said, and then got down on his hands and knees and put his mouth on the sofa cushion, trying to suck the stain off. The curly-haired girl next to him started to laugh. “You’re good at that,” she said.

Then Judith emerged from the room. “How do I look?” she said, hands on hips, modeling the shirt for Finny the way Finny had modeled hers at Thorndon.

“Beautiful,” Finny said, and it was true. The shirt was supposed to be a nightshirt, but it fit Judith as snugly as the black shirt she’d been wearing a minute before.

“Your coat,” Judith said, and began helping Finny out of her coat. When it was off, Judith placed it on the coat rack by the door. Finny tried to straighten herself—
Shoulders back, boobies up
, she’d once heard a model advise on television—but she found herself retreating into a comfortable slouch. The shirt she’d picked out—a blue sleeveless with brown polka dots, which a girl at Stradler had told her looked “hot”—felt clownish now.

“Let’s
meet
people,” Judith said, and took Finny by the arm into the living room. The music was softer here, a faint throbbing. Judith picked up a glass off an end table and pressed it into Finny’s hand, saying she was drinking it before but decided she didn’t want it.

“This is Carter,” Judith said now, holding a palm out to the boy who had a moment ago been sucking on her couch. He stood at attention, not even saying
Excuse me
to the curly-haired girl he’d been talking to, though she didn’t seem to mind. His dark hair was long for a guy’s, and tousled like Judith’s. He was frighteningly skinny, his eyes dark around the lids like he was wearing eyeliner, the veins in his arms plump as electrical cords. His clothes fit tightly—faded blue jeans and a bright yellow shirt that said
Ship Shape
across the front and showed a stick figure lifting a dumbbell on the deck of a boat.

“This is my very old and dear friend Finny,” Judith said to Carter.

“Pleasure, darling,” Carter said.

Finny held out her hand, but Carter leaned forward and smacked a kiss right on Finny’s lips. For a moment she could hardly believe he’d done it. She stood there, stunned, lips tingling. The curly-haired girl watched them impassively.
The nerve
, Finny thought.

But before she could say anything, Judith told Carter, “Finny got me this shirt. Tell me what you think of it.” Judith did a quick spin in front of Carter.

“Look at you,” Carter said. “Gorgeous.” He put a hand on one of Judith’s breasts and squeezed. “I could eat you alive.”

Finny was speechless, scandalized by Carter’s boldness. She took a long sip of the brown liquid in Judith’s glass, which burnt her throat and made her cough. Judith must have noticed Finny’s discomfort, because she quickly told her, “Don’t worry. Carter’s gay.”

“As your shirt is purple,” Carter said. He sat back down on the couch, falling almost immediately into conversation with the girl next to him, as if she’d been waiting for him to finish a point.

“He’s an actor,” Judith went on. “Very dramatic. He actually had a small part in
Cats.”

“The second-greatest play in the world,” Carter piped up from the couch.

“And what’s the first?” Judith asked.

“Phantom
, of course!” Carter said. He told something to the curly-haired girl that Finny didn’t catch, but the girl laughed and nodded vigorously.

“Then Carter was, um, replaced in the play,” Judith explained, “which was very sad.”

“Tragic!” Carter said, and then immediately began talking to the girl again.

“That’s too bad,” Finny was starting to say, but before the words were even out of her mouth, a very muscular set of arms wrapped themselves around Judith’s waist. The boy they belonged to must have been several inches over six feet. He was wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt, and the sleeves looked stuffed like potato sacks. It took Finny a few seconds to get around to his face, but when she did, she noticed he had a particularly wide jaw, as if to complement Judith’s. His face was all straight lines and hard angles, like some masculine appliance, a drill or a big-screen TV. His wide eyes didn’t just glance at, but took hold of, everything they saw. Finny knew these were qualities a lot of women would have found attractive—the intensity, the assurance, the muscles and chiseled jaw—though Finny couldn’t help feeling a little threatened by them.

“Oh, hey,” Judith said, warmed by the boy’s touch. She looked up at him, like a young girl at a favorite uncle. “This is my friend Finny. Remember I told you about Finny? We went to boarding school together. Only for a few months, but she was my best friend.”

The boy released Judith, and Judith took a step to the side—a routine they’d obviously practiced: they were as proficient as ice dancers.

“Finny, this is Prince,” Judith said.

“Huh?” Finny said, thinking she hadn’t caught the second half of his name.

“Prince,” Judith said.

“Oh,” Finny said. “I’m Prime Minister.” When the boy just stood there, staring, Finny went on, “Sorry. Bad joke. It’s nice to meet you.”

She shook Prince’s hand, which enveloped hers. He shook amiably, though he squeezed a bit harder than Finny thought a guy should squeeze a girl’s hand, as if to prove the strength he held in reserve. He was wearing cologne. A musky-sweet cloud drifted from his body. At college she’d realized she was allergic to cologne. She let go of Prince’s hand.

“Great to meet you,” Prince said, and Finny could almost feel the vibration of his deep voice.

Finny sniffed again, then sipped the brown liquid in her glass. When she was done, she rubbed her nose with her knuckle, trying to get it to stop itching.

“Are you all right?” Prince asked.

“Yeah,” Finny said, “I’m just—” And then she sneezed on him. It came so quickly she couldn’t even put her hand up to muffle it. She felt the spray of it, and she knew he must have, too. Her sneeze was accompanied by a sound—
yak
—like a cat throwing up a hair ball.

“Oh God. I’m sorry,” Finny said.

But Prince offered a friendly smile and said, “‘Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world but accepting that they pass away.’” He wiped his hand on his pants.

“Huh?” Finny said again.

“Prince is into Eastern philosophy,” Judith explained.

“Buddhism in particular,” Prince said. “I used to be a very angry person. But I’ve figured out how to renounce. I’ve found equilibrium.”

“He was recruited for football,” Judith continued, “but now he’s honors in English!”

“‘But, soft,’” Prince began to quote, “‘what light through yonder window breaks?’” He spoke the words competently, though there was something chantlike about them. “‘It is the east, and Judith is the sun.’” He concluded the quotation, smiling in a way that could have been either self-deprecating or prideful, Finny wasn’t sure. She felt a pang of sadness, thinking of her father, who quoted much more convincingly than Prince.

Then Carter began to sing his own quote, “‘Mid-niiight, not a sound from the paaaave-ment. Has the moon lost her memmm-ryyyy?’”

The curly-haired girl seemed transfixed.

“Webber,” Carter said to Prince, as if he’d asked.

“Okay, Carter,” Prince said. He smiled again in that practiced, good-humored way—it seemed to be his response to a fork in the road of any conversation—though Finny noticed a vein pulsing in his temple, almost to the beat of the bassy music in the background.

“Don’t get upset,” Judith said to Prince.

“I’m not,” Prince said. He leaned over and kissed Judith on the temple. As he did it, Finny saw one of his large hands gather into a fist, then relax, like he was trying to pump the last dregs out of a tube of toothpaste. Finny sipped her drink.

Then Prince said to Carter, “‘Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.’”

“Am I really your worst enemy?” Carter asked.

“Jesus, Carter,” Prince said. “Let’s give it a rest. Have you ever heard the saying ‘Do not speak unless it improves on silence’?”

“Oh, it always improves,” Carter said, and turned back to the curly-haired girl.

“Listen, though,” Prince said now to Judith, wrapping one of his substantial arms around her waist, “I have to head out.”

“Okay,” Judith said, leaning into him.

“Bye, babe,” Prince said, sliding his hand onto Judith’s hip, giving her a peck on the lips.

“Bye,” Judith said.

Prince walked out of the apartment, forgetting to say anything to Finny.

“By the way, your boyfriend is a douche,” Carter said to Judith now. “And that anger management program is
not
working.”

“He’s just kidding around with you,” Judith said.

“He seems nice,” Finny said to Judith, balancing that heavy tray.

“Just so you know, his real name is Milton,” Carter told Finny. “But now he’s Prince, the football player formerly known as Milton. He got into Columbia because he’s a Hollibrand, which is basically as good as a Kennedy around here. And incidentally, Mr. and Mrs. Hollibrand are very good friends with the Turngates. Did I miss anything, Judith?”

“I think that’s about it, Carter.”

“Oh, and one more thing,” Carter went on. “If you ask me, he’s a closet homo.”

Finny was laughing. She was starting to like Carter.

“Well, no one asked you,” Judith said, and took Finny by the arm, leading her back toward the entryway where Finny had come in.

“So, you ever talk to Sylvan anymore?” Finny asked. The question had just popped out. It was the first time she’d ever asked Judith about Sylvan.

“Um. A little,” Judith said. “I saw him one weekend. He came down. We hung out.”

“Oh,” Finny said. She tried to catch Judith’s eye, but Judith looked away.

“Let’s go see what they’re doing in there,” Judith said, and took Finny toward the closed door on the other side of the entryway. As they walked, Finny placed her glass on the end table from which Judith had plucked it earlier. The music was loud behind the door—some kind of electronic music, echoing chords and a persistent, rhythmic static. The voices were nearly shouting. Finny wasn’t sure if some kind of argument was going on.

Judith opened the door. It was a moment Finny would think about for many years to come, a moment when her life seemed to change course, like a car pulling off a highway.

At first there was nothing terribly surprising about the room. Four disheveled-looking boys in different variations of black-on-black wardrobes were seated in a circle next to a large canopy bed with a pink comforter, which Finny guessed was Judith’s. The boys were all drinking from coffee mugs, and talking heatedly about something intellectual. “It’s not an issue of
pragmatism,”
one of them said. The room smelled faintly of smoke.

Behind the bed there was a couple making out on a hard-backed chair. The girl had an ample backside, which was pretty much all Finny could see of her, because she was straddling the boy, who looked skinny and had a large tattoo of something like an anteater on his neck. The boy had his hands pushed up under the girl’s shirt, and she kept making exaggerated sounds of surprise. They didn’t even pause when Judith and Finny came in.

Then Finny looked into the back corner of the room. What she saw there made her stop in the doorway. She opened her mouth to speak, but her voice caught in her throat. Sitting by himself, his chin propped on his hand, nodding off in a cushioned chair, was Earl Henckel.

Chapter
17
The Party, After Finny’s Discovery

“I didn’t know it was
the
Earl,” Judith was saying a minute later when the three of them had congregated in the study next to Judith’s bedroom. It was a small room, with a desk that wrapped around three of the four walls, and a rolling desk chair behind Finny. There were some built-in bookshelves above the desk. A message in bubbly letters floated across a computer’s black screen:
Judith’s Computer, Don’t Touch.
The windows of the study were shuttered, the door closed, and in this quiet space Finny felt almost completely removed from the world, suspended above the music and conversation of the party, the horns blaring and trucks rumbling on the streets.