The Night In Question (18 page)

Marcel’s death was on the morning news. Every half hour they ran the story, with pictures of both him and Barnes. Barnes was shown being hustled into a cruiser, Marcel standing before his exhibit at the All-County Science Fair. He had been an honors student at Morris Fields High, a volunteer in the school’s Big Brother program, and a past president of the Christian Youth Association. There was no known motive for the attack.

Camera crews from the TV stations followed students from their buses to the school doors, asking about Marcel and getting close-ups of the most distraught. At the beginning of second period, the principal came on the p.a. system and said that crisis counselors were available for those who wished to speak to them. Any students who felt unable to continue with their classes that day were to be excused.

Garvey Banks looked over at his girlfriend, Tiffany. Neither of them had known Marcel, but it was nice out and there wasn’t anything happening at school except people crying and carrying on. When he nodded toward the door, she smiled in that special way of hers and gathered her books and collected a pass from the teacher. Garvey waited a few minutes, then followed her outside.

They walked up to Bickel Park and sat on a bench overlooking the pond. Two old white ladies were throwing bread to the ducks. The wet grass steamed in the sun. Tiffany put her head on Garvey’s shoulder and hummed to herself. Garvey wanted to feel sad over that boy getting killed, but it was good being warm like this and close to Tiffany.

They sat on the bench in the sun. They didn’t talk. They hardly ever talked. Tiffany liked to look at things and be quiet in herself. Pretty soon they’d rent a movie and go over to Garvey’s. They’d kiss. They wouldn’t take any chances, but they’d make each other happy. All of that was going to happen, and Garvey was glad to wait for it.

After a while Tiffany stopped humming. “Ready, Gar?”

“Ready.”

They stopped in at Gold’s Video and Garvey took
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
off the shelf. They’d rented it the first time because of the title, then it became their favorite movie. Someday, they were going to live in New York City and know all kinds of people—that was for sure.

Mr. Gold was slow writing up the receipt. He looked sick. He counted out Garvey’s change and said, “Why aren’t you kids in school?”

Garvey felt cornered, and decided to blow a little smoke at the man. “Friend of mine got killed,” he said.

“You knew him? You knew Marcel Foley?”

“Yes sir. From way back.”

“What was he like?”

“Marcel? Hey, Marcel was the best. You got a problem, you took it to Marcel. You know, trouble with your girlfriend or whatever. Trouble at home. Trouble with a friend. Marcel had this thing, right, Tiff?—he could bring people together. He just had this easy way and he talked to you like you were important, like everybody’s important. He
could get people to come together, know what I’m saying? Come together and get on with it.
Peacemaker
. Marcel was a peacemaker. And that’s the best thing you can be.”

“Yes,” Mr. Gold said. “It is.” He put his hands on the counter and lowered his head.

Then Garvey saw that he was grieving, and it came to him how unfair a thing it was that Marcel Foley had been struck down with his life still before him, all his sunny days stolen away. It was wrong, and Garvey knew that it would not end there. He touched Mr. Gold’s shoulder. “That man’ll get his,” he said. “He’ll get what’s coming to him. Count on it.”

A
prep school in March is like a ship in the doldrums.” Our history master said this, as if to himself, while we were waiting for the bell to ring after class. He stood by the window and tapped the glass with his ring in a dreamy, abstracted way meant to make us think he’d forgotten we were there. We were supposed to get the impression that when we weren’t around he turned into someone interesting, someone witty and profound, who uttered impromptu bon mots and had a poetic vision of life.

The bell rang.

I went to lunch. The dining hall was almost empty, because it was a free weekend and most of the boys had gone to New York, or home, or to their friends’ homes, as soon as their last class let out. About the only ones left were foreigners and scholarship students like me and a few other untouchables of various stripes. The school had laid on a nice lunch for us, cheese soufflé, but the portions were small and I went back to my room still hungry. I was always hungry.

Sleety rain fell past my window. The snow on the quad
looked grimy; it had melted above the underground heating pipes, exposing long brown lines of mud.

I couldn’t get to work. On the next floor down someone kept playing “Mack the Knife.” That one song incessantly repeating itself made the dorm seem not just empty but abandoned, as if those who had left were never coming back. I cleaned my room, then tried to read. I looked out the window. I sat down at my desk and studied the new picture my girlfriend had sent me, unable to imagine her from it; I had to close my eyes to do that, and then I could see her, her solemn eyes and the heavy white breasts she would gravely let me hold sometimes, but not kiss. Not yet, anyway. But I had a promise. That summer, as soon as I got home, we were going to become lovers. “Become lovers.” That was what she’d said, very deliberately, listening to the words as she spoke them. All year I had repeated them to myself to take the edge off my loneliness and the fits of lust that made me want to scream and drive my fists through walls. We were going to become lovers that summer, and we were going to be lovers all through college, true to each other even if we ended up thousands of miles apart again, and after college we were going to marry and join the Peace Corps and do something together that would help people. This was our plan. Back in September, the night before I left for school, we wrote it all down along with a lot of other specifics concerning our future: number of children (6), their names, the kinds of dogs we would own, a sketch of our perfect house. We sealed the paper in a bottle and buried it in her backyard. On our golden anniversary we’d dig it up and show it to our children and grandchildren to prove that dreams can come true.

I was writing her a letter when Crosley came to my room. Crosley was a science whiz. He won the science
prize every year and spent his summers working as an intern in different laboratories. He was also a fanatical weight lifter. His arms were so knotty he had to hold them out from his sides as he walked, as if he was carrying buckets. Even his features seemed muscular. His face had a permanent flush. Crosley lived down the hall by himself in one of the only singles in the school. He was said to be a thief; that supposedly was the reason he’d ended up without a roommate. I didn’t know if it was true, and I tried to avoid forming an opinion on the matter, but whenever we passed each other I felt embarrassed and looked away.

Crosley leaned in the door and asked me how things were.

I said okay.

He stepped inside and gazed around the room, tilting his head to read my roommate’s pennants and the titles of our books. I was uneasy. I said, “So what can I do for you?” not meaning to sound as cold as I did but not exactly regretting it either.

He caught my tone and smiled. It was the kind of smile you put on when you pass a group of people you suspect are talking about you. It was his usual expression.

He said, “You know García, right?”

“García? Sure. I think so.”

“You know him,” Crosley said. “He runs around with Hidalgo and those guys. He’s the tall one.”

“Sure,” I said. “I know who García is.”

“Well, his stepmother is in New York for a fashion show or something, and she’s going to drive up and take him out to dinner tonight. She told him to bring along some friends. You want to come?”

“What about Hidalgo and the rest of them?”

“They’re at some kind of polo deal in Maryland. Buying horses. Or ponies, I guess it would be.”

The notion of someone my age buying ponies to play a game with was so unexpected that I couldn’t quite take it in. “Jesus,” I said.

Crosley said, “How about it. You want to come?”

I’d never even spoken to García. He was the nephew of a famous dictator, and all his friends were nephews and cousins of other dictators. They lived as they pleased here. Most of them kept cars a few blocks from the campus, though that was completely against the rules. They were cocky and prankish and charming. They moved everywhere in a body, sunglasses pushed up on their heads and jackets slung over their shoulders, twittering all at once like birds,
chinga
this and
chinga
that. The headmaster was completely buffaloed. After Christmas vacation a bunch of them came down with gonorrhea, and all he did was call them in and advise them that they should not be in too great a hurry to lose their innocence. It became a school joke. All you had to do was say the word “innocence” and everyone would crack up.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Come on,” Crosley said.

“But I don’t even know the guy.”

“So what? I don’t either.”

“Then why did he ask you?”

“I was sitting next to him at lunch.”

“Terrific,” I said. “That explains you. What about me? How come he asked me?”

“He didn’t. He told me to bring someone else.”

“What, just anybody? Just whoever happened to present himself to your attention?”

Crosley shrugged.

“Sounds great,” I said. “Sounds like a recipe for a really memorable evening.”

“You got something better to do?” Crosley asked.

“No,” I said.

The limousine picked us up under the awning of the headmaster’s house. The driver, an old man, got out slowly and then slowly adjusted his cap before opening the door for us. García slid in beside the woman in back. Crosley and I sat across from them on seats that pulled down. I caught her scent immediately. For some years afterward I bought perfume for women, and I was never able to find that one.

García erupted into Spanish as soon as the driver closed the door behind me. He sounded angry, spitting words at the woman and gesticulating violently. She rocked back a little, then let loose a burst of her own. I stared openly at her. Her skin was very white. She wore a black cape over a black dress cut just low enough to show her pale throat, and the bones at the base of her throat. Her mouth was red. There was a spot of rouge high on each cheek, not rubbed in to look like real color but left there carelessly, or carefully, to make you think again how white her skin was. Her teeth were small and sharp-looking, and she bared them in concert with certain gestures and inflections. As she talked her pointed little tongue flicked in and out.

She wasn’t a lot older than we were.

She said something definitive and cut her hand through the air. García began to answer her but she said “No!” and chopped the air again. Then she turned and smiled at Crosley and me. It was a completely false smile. She said, “Where would you fellows like to eat?” Her voice sounded lower in English, even a little harsh. She called us “fallows.”

“Anywhere is fine with me,” I said.

“Anywhere,” she repeated. She narrowed her big black eyes and pushed her lips together. I could see that my answer disappointed her. She looked at Crosley.

“There’s supposed to be a good French restaurant in
Newbury,” Crosley said. “Also an Italian place. It depends on what you want.”

“No,” she said. “It depends on what you want. I am not so hungry.”

If García had a preference, he kept it to himself. He sulked in the corner, his round shoulders slumped and his hands between his knees. He seemed to be trying to make a point of some kind.

“There’s also a smorgasbord,” Crosley said. “If you like smorgasbords.”

“Smorgasbord,” she said. Obviously the word was new to her. She repeated it to García. He frowned, then answered her in a sullen monotone.

I couldn’t believe Crosley had suggested the smorgasbord. It was an egregiously uncouth suggestion. The smorgasbord was where the local fatties went to binge. Football coaches brought whole teams there to bulk up. The food was good enough, and God knows there was plenty of it, all you could eat, actually, but the atmosphere was brutally matter-of-fact. The food was good, though. Big platters of shrimp on crushed ice. Barons of beef. Smoked turkey. No end of food, really.

“You—do you like smorgasbords?” she asked Crosley.

“Yes,” he said.

“And you?” she said to me.

I nodded. Then, not to seem wishy-washy, I said, “You bet.”

“Smorgasbord,” she said. She laughed and clapped her hands. “Smorgasbord!”

Crosley gave directions to the driver and we drove slowly away from the school. She said something to García. He nodded at both of us and gave our names, then looked away again, out the window, where the snowy fields were turning dark. His face was long, his eyes sorrowful as a hound’s. He had barely talked to us while we were waiting
for the limousine. I didn’t know why he was mad at his stepmother, or why he wouldn’t talk to us, or why he’d even asked us along, but by now I didn’t really care.

She studied us and repeated our names skeptically. “No,” she said. She pointed at Crosley and said, “El Blanco.” She pointed at me and said, “El Negro.” Then she pointed at herself and said, “I am Linda.”

“Leen-da,” Crosley said. He really overdid it, but she showed her sharp little teeth and said,
“Exactamente.”

Then she settled back against the seat and pulled her cape close around her shoulders. It soon fell open again. She was restless. She sat forward and leaned back, crossed and recrossed her legs, swung her feet impatiently. She had on black high heels fastened by a thin strap; I could see almost her entire foot. I heard the silky rub of her stockings against each other, and breathed in a fresh breath of her perfume every time she moved. That perfume had a certain effect on me. It didn’t reach me as just a smell. It was personal, it seemed to issue from her very privacy. It made the hair bristle on my arms, and sent faint chills across my shoulders and the backs of my knees. Every time she moved I felt a little tug and followed her motion with some slight motion of my own.