The Hazards of Good Breeding (14 page)

Outside the window, the world is gray and abandoned-looking. It has been raining and the sky has a concave weight to it like the underbelly of some giant fish. In the Pforzheimers' backyard, the children have left a collection of stuffed animals, now soaked, on the patio table. Staring out at this, Rock feels gloom stiffen over him like a brittle lichen. And his stomach feels queasy—for all his watching the buffet line last night, he never actually got any dinner to wash down his Manhattans.

What he needs is a joint to settle his stomach and turn his brain off. He gets up and pats through the pockets of the shorts he had on yesterday and the drawer of his desk for the little cigar box he keeps his stash in. But it is nowhere. Which is irritating, because he just spent fifty bucks on some quality Humboldt County.

He pulls on his shorts and pads downstairs to the kitchen. All the gleaming new appliances Denise has put in make the place look like a hospital—coldly white, shiny, and sterilized. It reeks of Lysol. Rock searches through the refrigerator, the cupboards, the pantry, and the electric brisker. There is nothing but Weight Watchers cereal, no milk, SnackWell's, and a shelf of canned soups. He wants something greasy and satisfying: a plate of eggs and bacon, hot biscuits, and a big fat brown joint. It is enough to propel him out the door. He will swing by Don Hammond's for something to tide him over until the cigar box turns back up and then go to Denny's for the Hungry Man Platter, after which he can crawl back into bed. There was some reason he wanted to go see Don Hammond anyway, wasn't there? Unfortunately, his brain won't supply it to him.

Outside, the rain has not cooled the air off much and it smells earthy, as if the ground has released some cloud of sediment into the lighter matter above, like the bottom of a pond disturbed by footsteps. Rock winds his way through the streets of Brookline, across to 28, and into Roxbury, where he makes a right off of Blue Hill onto Center. He likes going to see Don here; Don moved out of Somerville last year when Starbucks set up shop on the corner. Rock appreciates the sentiment. And there is a certain gratifying clichéd quality to buying drugs on a street like this, which Davis Square certainly didn't offer.

Rock parks the car across from number 37 and climbs the stairs to its ramshackle, tarpaper-floored porch.

“Ya-oh,” Don's voice comes over the scratchy intercom. It sounds farther away than usual. Don is a chemistry Ph.D. student at Harvard and a legendary figure in the greater, preppier Boston area—famous for having tripped his way through high school AP classes and into Harvard, and for having operated the most successful side business ever run out of Emack and Bolio's. Which is how Rock knows him; even Quilton kids came into town on weekends to score from Don, who was about as intimidating as Greg Brady.

“It's Rock.”

There is a pause, and for a moment Rock regrets having come. He feels tired now anyway. He won't need to get stoned to fall asleep.

“Okay.” Don sounds disappointed.

Rock shifts his weight and shoves his hands deeper in his pockets. Despite their long-standing friendship, Rock can, at times like this, be convinced that secretly Don thinks he is a sheltered buffoon. The shy, nondescript teenager who sold dime bags to prep school kids was, after all, just a convenient mantle; Don is one of the most aggressively sharp, sarcastic people Rock knows. He has already made monumental breakthroughs in the study of polymer networks in his Ph.D. program and frequently turns down invitations to speak at conferences run by the American
and
Royal Societies of Chemistry.

When Don opens the door he is wearing a brown and orange terry cloth bathrobe, which his body sticks out of like a collection of uncooked chicken wings. “What's up?” he asks unencouragingly. The apartment smells sour, like ramen noodle broth and wet cardboard.

“I'm sorry to get here so early—I just—shit, I forgot how early it is.” Rock shifts his weight and the boards let out a resounding shriek.

Don stares at him for a moment, narrowing his eyes. Then, to Rock's relief, he breaks into a grin. “What can I do you for?” he says in a twangy, high-pitched voice. He and Rock have a joke about expressions like this. “What's the matter, pookie, cat got your tongue?” Don puts one hand on his hip and sticks out his thin lower lip.

“I'm out already,” Rock says, stepping over three days' worth of newspapers and sinking onto the brown velour sofa, which lets out a satisfying creak. “I don't know how—I haven't even been smoking much.”

“Right,” Don says, heading into the kitchen. “Just like I haven't been rogering the world's leading manifold theory geometer. Hang on.” Rock laughs. He is not sure if Don is kidding or if there is actually a woman in his bedroom.

The apartment is nicer than the outside would lead one to believe—spacious and light and not neat, but pleasantly empty. No fuss, no wicker, no carpeting. There is an upright piano in one corner with brownish keys like tobacco-stained teeth, a halogen lamp, and the sofa. The only decoration is a row of photos and postcards propped on the mantel: a woman with hippie hair and bell-bottoms, a
MARYLAND IS FOR CRABS
postcard, two pictures of Don with a blond Afro, wearing some sort of sackcloth getup, standing between two Tibetan monks. Rock gets up to have a closer look at this. Don was the one who brought him to hear the monks in Harvard Square last week. He lived at their monastery for—what was it? six months? a year?—before graduate school, and has been, for the last year, trying to get Rock to follow in his footsteps. He looks happy in the picture—a little rounder and more straightforward, devoid of his usual shrewdness. The monks themselves look sincere and pleased, entirely unironic. Behind them there are four crumbly pillars that look too perfect to be anything but the backdrop for some kind of mobile communications ad.

“Come to us—come to us, little one,” Don whispers from behind Rock.

“Jesus,” Rock says. “You scared me.”

“Buddha, my friend—always Buddha.” Don places the metal toolbox and scale he has brought in on top of the piano and begins sifting through its contents.

“Do you . . . ?” Rock begins, turning back to the pictures on the mantel. “You really weren't bored over there?”

“I had the best time of my life,” Don says, speaking in his own normal voice for the first time since Rock walked in.

“It wasn't creepy or cultish?”

“Well, it's the oldest fucking cult on the planet, so—”

“No, I mean, you know, like David Koresh or Baba whatever, that guy who ruined the Beatles.”

Don turns to look at Rock, head cocked to the side. “Not like Baba Whatever,” he says sharply. “You going?” he asks after a pause, his head still at an odd angle, staring at Rock.

“Nahhhh—I mean, it looks cool. It looks great. But I have shit I have to—”

“You should go,” Don says. “I'm telling you—I can feel it. You should get on the next plane and get out of here.” With this pronouncement, he whisks the buds off the scale and into a little zip-lock bag.

Rock tries to make out if he is being sarcastic, but he looks remarkably sincere.

Over Don's shoulder, there is a movement in the doorway to the bedroom and a naked Asian woman slips out wrapped in a dingy crocheted afghan. She has an astonished expression on her face and long fluffy, but straight bangs that make her look like a bassist in a heavy metal band. “Sakura,” Don says, turning and looking surprised himself, as if he has forgotten she is there. “This is Rock.”

“Nice to meet you,” Rock says. The astonished expression remains plastered to her face.

“Sakura doesn't speak English,” Don says cheerfully.

Sakura looks from Rock to Don questioningly and Don says something in a mock stern voice that sounds like “Hickie fish feet.” This elicits a hearty pound on his arm from Sakura, who then disappears into the bathroom in a fit of incredulous giggles, blanket collecting a fine cloud of dust bunnies as it trails over the floor.

“The world's leading manifold theory geometer,” Don says, rubbing his arm.

“Aha.” Rock is not sure whether to look amused or impressed and opts instead to stare distractedly after her. An ancient Cambridge Rindge and Latin basketball team poster rustles against the wall as she passes it. Which reminds Rock, in a flash, why he wanted to come see Don even before his pot was missing.

“Hey, did you know someone named Stephan Dartman in high school?”

“Stephan?” Don asks, handing Rock the bag and dropping into his armchair. “Mmm . . .” He shakes his head, but then stops and starts laughing. “Stephan,” he says once, and then repeats it in a schmaltzy, lowered voice raising one eyebrow.

“Yeah—him. He's—”

“Right,” Don cuts him off. “Filming a movie—he told me about it—Boston society, the last Yankees or whatever. He said there was”—here Don slips into his imitation of Stephan's fluid baritone—“‘some pretty interesting stuff brewing—a couple of good rumors to follow up on.'”

“Good rumors . . . ?” Rock begins.

“Stephan's not his real name.”

“What?”

“Wendel.”

Rock lets out a shout of laughter. “No way.”

“Wendel,” Don repeats.

“You friends with him?”

Don cocks his eyebrows. “He permed his hair and auditioned for Calvin Klein ads in high school.”

Rock begins laughing again.

“He called me up a few weeks ago, though,” Don says. “To see if I had any prep school contacts from around here from my Emack days that I could hook him up with. I could have offered you up,” Don says, eyeing Rock as if it is just occurring to him. “I forget you went to prep school.”

Rock crosses himself. Outside it has begun to rain again, there is a patter of drops against the glass.

“I don't know why
he
didn't have any—I guess he didn't make any friends at the prep school he went to—I mean, can't say I'm
surprised
.”

“What do you mean, prep school—I thought—”

“Oh, he just went to Rindge for a year because he got kicked out of some other school and then his folks shipped him off somewhere down South—I forget where—they have, you know . . .” He rubs his thumb and forefingers together and makes a kissing gesture. “Oil money.”

“
Real
ly,” Rock begins, “because I thought—”

“Listen,” Don interrupts, standing up abruptly and looking at Rock. “I don't really know shit about him, but you got to get out of Concord or Lexington or wherever the hell it is before you wind up in some crapped-out documentary about lifestyles of the rich and waspy or whatever. Are you still living at your dad's house?”

“Yeah,” Rock sighs, pulling a twenty out of his back pocket.

“Go to Tibet.”

There is a tuneless, high-pitched humming coming from the bathroom, over the sound of running tap water. “Singing don't a songbird make.” Don grins, snapping out of the intense stare he has been leveling at Rock.

The humming does have a tune, Rock realizes—or an off-tune anyway: “We Are the Champions” by Queen. Or is he imagining that? “Thanks,” he says, handing Don the cash and patting the bag into his pocket. “I'll think about it.”

Crossing the room ahead of Rock, Don's skinny brown-robed figure looks not altogether unmonklike itself. “Thinking is one thing, doing is another.” Don grins at Rock. “And meanwhile your Pop is probably stealing your shit.”

“Yeah, right,” Rock says, heading into the hallway. “So long.”

Outside, the warm rain feels good on Rock's bare arms and head. In the distance there is a siren wailing. It's almost too much, really, that the guy's name would be Wendel. And that he went to prep school, which he certainly did not offer up in conversation. It explains the handy tailored tuxedo. Wendel the oil money brat turned documentarian following up on a few good rumors, whatever that means.
Hello, Wendel
, he imagines saying in a voice lowered an octave. He will have to tell Caroline. Although she's so smitten by him she probably won't even care that of all the things the guy could have
chosen
to call himself he picked Ste-fhan.

J
ACK
'
S BASEMENT WORKROOM
is cool and bunkerlike, dark around the edges and bright in the middle—like an operating room. He has trained two powerful dish lights on the Formica drafting table at the center and covered the walls with black metal cabinets full of his diorama-making supplies. He likes the feeling of focus this affords him: no clutter, no distractions, just light and darkness. There is something primeval about it. Pressing an x-acto knife into plywood, mixing suitably drab New England colors, and painting tree limbs, stone walls, and wooden fences—these activities are for him like lapsing into a native tongue. Only this morning the language doesn't come.

The scene he is working on is different from his usual projects, which involve re-creating battles and skirmishes—it was not his idea to begin with. “Why does it always have to be battlefields?” Caroline had said of his dioramas last Christmas, “You have all those old pictures and stuff—why don't you make one of Ye Olde Dunlap family?” She said it facetiously, of course, but Jack took it as a sort of challenge. He put in hours researching Dunlap family stories, corroborating ancient journal entries, clarifying names and dates. The scene he settled on was one from a story his grandfather used to tell him, of Ruth Westly Dunlap, who at age eighty-four employed enough wily and seductive rhetoric to dissuade a whole squadron of British soldiers from searching the attic and uncovering the town's munitions store. There is a certain charm to the story. Rosita, who was helping him with piecework, liked the idea of a domestic setting. She fashioned a tiny rug and painted the kitchen, turned a thread spool into a convincing table for the tiny figures to eat at.