The Tutor (13 page)

Then someone slapped him on the back. “Scotty, my man. Drinking alone?”

Scott turned. Mickey Gudukas. He had a flower in his buttonhole and a bottle of champagne—Veuve Clicquot, Scott recognized that orange label—in his hand.

“How’re you hittin’ them?” Gudukas said.

“Hitting them?”

“A glass here for my friend,” Gudukas said, “champagne glass.”

“Not for me,” Scott said.

“Tennis,” said Gudukas. “How’re you hittin’ ‘em?”

Scott shrugged.

“We’ll have to finish that match one day soon,” Gudukas said. “That brother of yours is some quick.”

Gudukas was drunk, of course, but wired too. The bartender laid a glass on the bar. Gudukas filled it to overflowing.

“Maybe I could keep the bottle for you, Mr. Gudukas,” said the bartender.

Gudukas laid a bill on the bar, put his finger over his lips, said, “Shh.” A hundred-dollar bill. He handed the brimful glass to Scott.

“A toast,” he said. “To Symptomatica.”

“Why Symptomatica?”

Gudukas looked surprised. “You haven’t heard, Scotty?”

“Heard what?” He hated that nickname.

“The enzyme thing failed. They killed two hundred and sixty fuckin’ chimps, Scotty! The stock’s at—” Gudukas whipped out his Palm, punched a few keys. “Seventy-three cents. And the SEC’s stepping in. That’s my Boxster, right out the window. I’m rich.”

13

T
he observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after.
Ruby awoke on Saturday morning with that remark in her mind, a remark she’d read late the night before in “The Five Orange Pips,” just before falling asleep. She looked it up again, page seventy-five of
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
, read it over three or four times. Was it true? If it was, how amazing! You’d appear just like a magician to other people, which was the way Holmes did appear, of course, although “The Five Orange Pips” wasn’t her favorite: it seemed kind of strange having Sherlock Holmes and the Ku Klux Klan in the same story.

One link in a series of incidents. It would be nice if she had an example to go on, something simple. Ruby tried to think of some simple series of incidents. There was the F Brandon got on that stupid makeup test. An earlier link was blowing off studying for that New York trip with Dewey. A later link was Mom and Dad going ballistic. She understood how those three fit together pretty well, even thought she might have been able to leap from one to another. But what was going to happen next, what was the next link in the chain? Ruby didn’t know.

Then, despite the fact that she needed to pee pretty bad, she thought of another example, this one not understood at all. And more like something out of Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Varsity Jacket. She tried to reconstruct the whole thing in her mind. It was the day she lost the
Westie
editor election to Amanda. Kyla had given her a pink wristband on the way home from tennis. She’d gone in the house, turned on the lights, seen that Brandon’s jacket wasn’t on the peg. Call that link one.

Then came inspiration from God-knows-where to burn “The Speckled Band.” That had led to the smoke extravaganza and Julian arriving to save the day. After that came the tour of the house, but just before they got started, she’d spotted Brandon’s jacket, now hanging on the peg. She’d called his name up the stairs, got no answer, noticed that his backpack and boots weren’t in the mudroom. Link two.

After that, there was the tour, which was fun, and the stuff about Adam, which wasn’t. Then Mom arrived, got mad that Brandon wasn’t home, smelled smoke. The next thing was Brandon walking in wearing his Unka Death T-shirt—the one with Unka Death looking so mean, and that scary Problem guy standing behind him, wearing his gold AK-47 medallion—and telling Mom he’d left the jacket at school. Mom didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, the jacket hanging right there beside him, and when he saw it he’d looked kind of like Adam Sandler when something the least bit complicated was happening. He’d even touched the jacket, like a village idiot. Anything else? Not that she could think of. Call that part link three.

And the answer was? She had no idea. Was she a Watson, not a Holmes? Maybe the jacket had been hanging on the hook the whole time and she’d not seen it somehow. But even if that was true, how did it explain Brandon’s confusion? He was confused because he hadn’t expected it to be there. Did he leave it at school, as he’d said? Hey! Were there two jackets? Her excitement over that idea cooled fast. If there were two jackets, why would Bran be surprised? He’d be running into his jackets all the time. So she was no further ahead. Holmes would probably have figured the whole thing out already. A Watson, not a Holmes. Was she going to spend her life saying
jolly good
and
well done, old chap
to some preening asshole?

Ruby started to get out of bed and only then remembered what day it was. Had she turned stupid overnight? That crayoned cake with the burning candles had been right in front of her face all month. And what was the last thing Mom had said to her the night before, for God’s sake? She ran into the bathroom and had her very first pee as an eleven-year-old, a real long one, mature. What was that word for “very first”?
Inaugural.
She’d had her inaugural pee.

Aruba Nicole Marx Gardner: practically a teenager. Aruba, for God’s sake—named after the island where she’d been conceived. She hadn’t known what
conceived
meant when she was little, and had fallen like a sap for her parents’ smooth explanation about celebrating the place where they first thought of having her. Later, after checking the various definitions of
conceived
in the dictionary, she’d decided to change her name officially to Ruby the second she was old enough. Her name was for her, right? She could name her own self Bora Bora the first time she had sex there, which was going to be never. There or anyplace else.

Ruby went downstairs. Dad and Mom were up, Dad making coffee, Mom at the toaster. And on the butcher block lay a huge present wrapped in yellow and tied with blue ribbon. They both gave her a big hug at the same time.

“Birthday girl!”

“The big one one,” Ruby said. Maybe it was time to start drinking coffee.

T
his was going to be a great day. After archery, Mom was taking her and Kyla and a few other friends to see a movie at the mall—either
Practically Dead
or
That Thang Thing
, they’d take a vote—and then have pizza at Signor Capone’s, best pizza in town. Later came cake at home, just with the family, which was the way they always did it because that was how they’d done it in Mom’s family going back to the Middle goddamn Ages.
Whoa there, girl.

But there were surprises, like Julian, for example. Not that he appeared for Brandon’s lesson; that was expected. Also not that Brandon was asleep. But while Mom was upstairs waking Brandon and Dad was changing into his tennis things, Julian took a package out of his coat pocket and handed it to her.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

A small package with shiny black paper and thick red ribbon, very classy, like in one of those movies that took place in Italian villas.

“Thanks, Julian. How did you know?”

“A little bird told me,” he said.

Ruby laughed, remembering at the same time the tour of the house and Julian looking in her room from the doorway. He might have seen the calendar from there, with the birthday cake in that all-important square, if his eyesight was very sharp. Hey! Maybe this was one of those links-in-a-chain things. On the other hand, maybe Mom or Dad just told him. But why? It would be like begging for a present and they were too cool for that. Not cool, just too cool for that.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Julian said.

Ruby opened it. First the card, that was only polite. On the front stood a big brown bear with a present behind his back. He was saying,
I can bearly contain myself
. Inside it said,
Happy Birthday,
and Julian had added,
And many more—Julian
.

Then the present. She removed the wrapping carefully the way you were supposed to, either because it could be used again or because you didn’t want to look greedy, the reason forgotten. Inside was a thin box, about the size of a twin CD set. She opened the box, felt through tissue paper, pulled out a magnifying glass, a really nice one with a wooden handle.

Ruby held it over her thumbnail. It magnified that half-moon thing like crazy.

“What a great present,” she said.

“Don’t mention it, my dear Holmes,” said Julian.

She laughed some more and, caught up in the fun of it all, held the magnifying glass to Julian’s face. His eyes went a little funny and she realized it wasn’t polite. He was on her side, no doubt about that, the way he’d covered for her, but there were limits.

E
leven years old. Hard to believe. Time sped up as you got older, just as everyone said. Scott tossed his racquets into the trunk of the Triumph, got in, hit the garage door remote on the visor. He remembered the night she was born with the clarity of something that had just happened. An East European nurse said, “Vunce more, honey,” and then out came Ruby’s head, eyes open from the get-go. He’d started crying, an uncontrollable flood, and had to leave the birthing room. Everyone—not Linda, but everyone else—had probably thought he was just another New Age dad getting in touch with the miracle of birth. They were accustomed to tears of joy, and maybe his tears, of grief and rage, looked the same. Adam had been dead for less than a year, and here was a new one. It was so brutal. He’d composed himself quickly and gone back inside, where Linda, dry-eyed, had the baby on her breast, and the nurse was saying, “Nice verk.”

Scott stuck the key in the ignition, turned it, nothing. He tried a few more times, same result. He got out, opened the hood, saw nothing wrong with the battery connections, tried once more. Zip: battery completely dead. He checked the gauges—nothing left on overnight. Completely dead, no reason.

“Goddamn it.” He shouted that, out loud, not like him. And just like that, he stopped loving the old TR6. It wasn’t just the dead battery, he wasn’t completely stupid about himself. Probably wasn’t the battery at all: it was that fucking Boxster, a blue one, parked outside the window at Briny’s.

Scott took his racquets out of the trunk, went into the kitchen. Linda was on the phone. “There were meadows at one time,” she was saying. “I’ve been doing some research, and—”

She listened to someone on the other end. Scott raised a finger for her attention. She shook her head, waved him away.

He checked his watch. Ten minutes to court time, fifteen minutes away. He went to the dining room, looked in. Brandon, hair all rumpled, was bent over a test booklet. Julian stood at the window, gazing at the woods out back. Scott hesitated, but only for a moment. Who was paying the goddamn shot?

“Julian,” he said.

Julian turned.

“Got a valid driver’s license?” An insurance man’s question.

“It’s temporary,” Julian said.

“Good enough.”

S
cott drove Linda’s Jeep, Julian beside him.

“How’s Brandon doing?” Scott said.

“We’re making progress.”

“What’s his biggest weakness?”

“Confidence.”

Scott glanced across at Julian. That pissed him off. First of all, Julian was wrong, wasn’t he? Brandon had as much confidence as the next teenager. Second, it was none of Julian’s business. Julian stared straight ahead.

“I meant in terms of the SAT,” Scott said.

“So did I,” Julian said.

“Oh.”

A cop blew by, lights flashing.

“Know much about options?” Scott said.

“In what sense?”

“The stock market.”

“A leveraging instrument?”

“Yeah,” Scott said. “You can leverage a Boxster out of spare change if you know what you’re doing.”

“Boxster?”

He didn’t know the Boxster? “A Porsche,” Scott said. “Runs about fifty grand.”

“Is that what you want, a Boxster?”

“Why not?”

“You don’t like the Triumph anymore?”

He glanced at Julian: a pretty amazing guess, as if Julian had been following his train of thought. Julian was watching the cop car, now flying up the hill toward the Old Mill line.

“Can’t really compare them,” Scott said. “Like apples and oranges.” But he did want that Boxster, not just the Boxster but the whole big life that went with it. The clock was ticking.

“You’re active in the stock market?” Julian said.

“Not as active as I’d like.”

“No?”

Scott hadn’t told the Symptomatica story to anyone, hadn’t planned to, but Julian seemed like a good listener, and he was on the verge of getting into it when they turned into the tennis club parking lot.

“Mind coming inside?” Scott said. “I’ll wave through the window if I’ve got a ride home.”

They went in, Scott hurrying through the lobby and onto the court, Julian moving to the viewing window. Tom, Erich, and that dentist with the wicked topspin lob were already warming up on the near court.

“Get a ride home from you, Tom?”

“Sure.”

Scott waved at Julian. “All set, guys,” he said, skipping his own warm-up, which you did if you were late.

Erich served. Scott hit a monster backhand down the line for a clean winner, knew he was going to play great even if he didn’t feel great inside. He and Tom won the first set 6–2. On the changeover, Scott glanced at the window, saw Julian still there, watching. Was he going to get billed for this?

Scott served to start the second set, winning at love, and when he looked again, Julian was gone. His game slipped a bit after that and they ended up losing the second set just as the bell rang.

“Had it going there for a while,” Tom said as they were walking off.

Scott didn’t like that
for a while
, not with the memory of their singles match so fresh. “Heard about Symptomatica?” he said. It all came spilling out, and with a weird kind of relish he couldn’t have explained—Gudukas, the Boxster, the money they could have made. Tom didn’t say anything. His face hardened, like Dad’s used to, but he couldn’t look Scott in the eye, which wasn’t like Dad at all.

S
kyway had suddenly soured on Olde Mill Estates, not just that
e
but the whole name, and Linda’s boss wasn’t happy about it.

“Why couldn’t you have left well enough alone?”

Ruby came into the kitchen with her bow, pointed to the clock. “What’s the problem?” Linda said. “We’ll just have to come up with a better name, that’s all.”

“The problem is they’re losing confidence, Linda. I think they’re already looking.”

“Looking?”

“For someone else. I happen to know Larry made a quick trip to New York Friday morning.”

“Mom,” said Ruby.

“New York?” Linda said.

“That’s all I know. The best thing you could do right now is—”

“Mom?” said Ruby.

Linda waved her away. “Sorry, I missed that.”

Her boss made one of those tsking sounds, so annoying. “The best thing you could do is come up with a name they’re crazy about, like today.”

“Today?”

“If it’s not too late already. Don’t you get it? The Skyway account’s in jeopardy.”

Linda hung up. Was her job in jeopardy too?

“I’m going to be late,” Ruby said.

“For God’s sake, Ruby.” Linda smacked her hand on the table, immediately thought,
Christ, don’t do that on her birthday.