Crushed Page 10

  Table 9 lay between him and the kitchen. He tucked the crumber into his apron, poured the coffee—one caffeinated, one decaf, though, to be truthful, he wasn’t sure now which was which—and then arranged his face into the mask of a person who sees no one he knows. But he had to come back to their table. He had to bring water and bread.

  In the kitchen, he looked at his distorted reflection on the rounded side of the steel pitcher. Hi, I’m Patrick, he thought. Or, as the case may be, Patricia. He made himself pick up the pitcher and a basket of bread. Then he walked stiffly back to table 9.

  “. . . is what he said to me, anyhow,” Audrey was saying. She and Wickham fell silent as Clyde poured. He felt Audrey looking at his face. Then she said, “Clyde, right? From Patrice’s class?”

  Clyde was nodding stiffly. He actually said, “Yup,” but in a voice so low that, thankfully, it couldn’t be heard. Then, as a finishing touch, he said, in a croaky blurt, “I work here.”

  Clyde felt sweat glazing his neck, and there followed an awkward silence that made him want to disappear. The new boy stared at him for a moment; then, by smiling and leaning back in his chair, he conveyed a sense of gracious superiority. But Audrey looked slightly pained. “Have you two met at school?” the new boy said.

  Clyde nodded.

  Audrey fingered her glass and seemed to find her footing. “Wickham,” she said, “this is Clyde. Clyde, this is Wickham Hill.” Clyde noticed that she knew Wickham’s last name, but not his. No one spoke, so Audrey said, “Clyde’s in World Cultures with me.”

  Wickham gave Clyde a reserved smile, and another awkward silence developed.

  Suddenly Audrey, with false brightness, said, “Clyde’s a smart guy. Maybe he knows Cary Grant’s real name.”

  Clyde’s mother loved Cary Grant movies because they always came with a happy ending, and she’d recently read a Cary Grant biography. Clyde hadn’t listened very carefully when she read various parts to him. He remembered his real name was a funny one, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He shook his head no.

  “Yeah, neither do I,” Audrey said. Then, gesturing to Wickham, she added, “But he does, only he won’t say except for too high a price.”

  Clyde noticed how smoothly handsome Wickham Hill was, and how adoringly Audrey looked at him. Casually Wickham said, “My price is reasonable and”—he smiled at Audrey—“not negotiable.”

  “Leach,” Clyde blurted.

  Audrey turned, a little surprised. “What?”

  “Leach,” Clyde said in his gravelly voice. “Cary Grant’s real name. It’s something Leach.” It seemed strange that while looking into Audrey’s eyes he could think at all, but in fact his faculties seemed suddenly decongested. “Archie,” he said. “Archie Leach.”

  Audrey looked at Wickham, who gave a confirming nod, but not very happily. The truth was, both Audrey and Wickham seemed a little sorry he’d come up with the answer, and Clyde realized suddenly that they were both looking forward to Audrey paying the reasonable, non-negotiable price, whatever it was.

  “I told you he was a smart guy,” Audrey said. Then, after the barest glance toward Clyde: “Maybe I should pay him the price you were asking.”

  Wickham drawled, “Not on my watch, Miss Audrey.”

  Clyde understood he’d become a prop for their flirtation. “I should go,” he said, glancing toward the kitchen. Audrey, smiling, nodding, and holding Wickham Hill’s hand, said it had been good to see him again. As he walked away, Clyde realized it was not just his neck that was moist with sweat. His forehead was damp, too, and his scalp, and even his hair.

  Table 9 was one of Manda’s tables, so he should have been the one to deliver their beverages (two ginger ales), but he couldn’t bear the thought and got someone else to do it.

  “How come?” Manda asked.

  “No reason,” Clyde said.

  Manda glanced back at Audrey Reed and Wickham Hill, who were leaning across the table toward each other while they talked, and said, “Oh, there’s a reason, all right.”

  For the rest of the night, Clyde felt divided in two. Clyde One poured water and coffee and bused tables while Clyde Two kept tabs on Audrey Reed and Wickham Hill, who ate (slowly, and with much quiet laughter); danced (with surprising ease, receiving approving smiles from the other, older dancers); went into the lounge (where they sat alone and close together on a huge, pillowy sofa); and then left early (hand in hand, with glowing expressions).

  It was customary at the end of the night, when all but a few of the club members had gone and the band was still playing, for employees to go out on the dance floor, and some of them did. The members seemed to like it, and though Clyde never danced, he liked watching the cooks and the waitresses and the waiters become dancers. But tonight he wandered out to the terrace, where he stood for a few minutes, alone in the cold, before he heard footsteps behind him.

  “Hey,” Manda said.

  “Hey.”

  “What’re you doing?”

  He shrugged, and she produced a small stub of one of her reefers. “Good to the last inch,” she said, lighting it carefully. Its acrid odor bloomed in the cold air. After exhaling a lungful of smoke, she said, “I looked him up for you.”

  Clyde gave her a look that said Who?

  “The tall number and her baby-faced boy. I talked nice to the kiosk guard, and he said they came in a taxi and that the member’s name is Yates.”

  “Yates?”

  She inhaled, fished her order tickets out, found a neatly printed note, and finally exhaled. “Dr. James Edward Yates, Cypress, South Carolina. Gold Member.” She shrugged and handed him the note. “That makes him a lifer. We’re talking big loot.”

  Clyde said, “But the kid’s last name is Hill.”

  Manda shrugged. “Maybe he’s a stepson.” She stubbed out the last fraction of her joint, flicked off its black ashy edge, then laid it on her tongue and swallowed it. “Fuh-reezing out here,” she said. Slipping her arm through his, she began to guide him back inside. “Wanna dance?” she said.

  “I don’t dance.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Manda gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “It’s not that hard. Want me to teach you?”

  Clyde wanted to, but he also didn’t want to. “Maybe next time.”

  Manda grinned her gap-toothed grin. “How ’bout right now,” she said, and, taking his hand, led him past the empty tables and out onto the dance floor. Clyde would have enjoyed the dancing more if he had not been aware, as his feet went step-step-turn, step-step-turn, that he now knew Wickham’s father’s full name. And if he did a little more sifting, he’d learn a lot more. He shouldn’t do it, but he knew he would.

  Chapter 32

  What Wickham and Audrey Did

  Audrey received her third kiss in the taxi on the way home. Also her fourth, fifth, and sixth. At some point Wickham said, in a whisper, “My mother’s working nights now at the hospital.” Then he said, in the same whisper, “Should I tell him to take us to my house?” Audrey, eyes closed, saw the warning flare that meant she had only been seeing Wickham Hill for one week. If Oggy had been home waiting for her, she probably would have said no. But Oggy wasn’t at home. Audrey indicated, with the subtlest nod, that yes, the answer was yes.

  Chapter 33

  A Door to the Past

  Sunday night. The radio announcer said it was twenty-eight degrees. Clyde’s mother was asleep, and his father had gone out for groceries. Clyde was working on an English assignment, but was stumped for a way to compare William Carlos Williams to Robert Frost. He thought about Wickham and Audrey, about how smoothly Wickham had said, “My price is reasonable and not negotiable.” Was that what made Clyde suspicious of the guy—that he was just a little too smooth?

  Clyde touched the icon that connected him to the Internet; then, after closing his eyes for a few seconds, he took a deep breath and opened the various virtual gates that led him to the legal records of South Carolina. He took Manda’s note
out of his pocket. Dr. James Edward Yates. Clyde stared at the screen and typed in Wickham James Hill, hoping that Wickham would have received one of his father’s names as a middle name. Nothing. Wickham J. Hill. Nothing. Then, glancing at his watch to see how long his father had been gone, he quickly tried Wickham Edward Hill, and text began to appear on the screen:

  Cypress County Superior Court, State of South Carolina People vs. Wickham Edward Hill

  Vehicular manslaughter. Guilty. Sentenced: 5 years parole. Driver’s license revoked.

  Clyde read the words twice, with a tingly feeling. He supposed this was why people became cops and FBI agents: the sensation of opening the right door. Clyde printed the page and carefully folded it in two. He slipped the paper into the literature anthology, between William Carlos Williams and Robert Frost. What next? he wondered. Maybe there were newspaper stories about the trial. Clyde stood up to look out the window and saw the headlights of the Corolla swing up, then down, as his father steered gently over a dip in the road. Clyde sat down quickly and logged off. Then he went back to poems about ovenbirds and red wheelbarrows glazed with rain.

  Chapter 34

  Within the Snow Globe

  For Audrey, the daylight hours of the next week passed in slow, agonizing expectation of evenings with Wickham, which themselves passed so quickly they seemed sliced out of time. She worried what her father would say about a relationship that had progressed so far in just two weeks, and when she wrote her weekly letter to Oggy, she talked about tea-dancing and studying, and wished she had not told Oggy in a breathless letter about receiving her first kiss.

  “A girl’s Keuschheit is the one investment that never, never fails,” Oggy had told her when the subject of virtue and innocence came up, and Audrey had believed her. She could still call herself a virgin even after time spent on the brocaded sofa downstairs at Wickham’s house, but meeting Wickham had made her waver. Feeling good about herself had always been hard for her. Wickham made it simple. He brought a lightness and ease to everything they did—he seemed to float above the conventional rules, and in his company she seemed to float above them, too.

  One week to the day after Jemison had enjoyed the warmest November 8 on record, it began to snow. The snow fell lightly in the afternoon and thickened toward twilight, with broad, dry white flakes falling densely from a slate-gray sky. Audrey had spent the morning with Lea and C.C.—first at Bing’s, then at the mall, where she kept her purchases to some underwear and a pair of earrings—and had spent the afternoon cleaning the house (carefully), doing her homework (quickly), making a beef stew (nervously), and thinking of Wickham Hill (mostly).

  By the time the snow was falling hard, the beef stew filled the house with its mouthwatering aroma and Audrey had gotten a steady fire going in the dining room fireplace. It was like playing house, only more so. For Audrey, this wasn’t just make-believe; it felt wonderfully like the real thing.

  Wickham appeared at her door carrying a book bag and wearing a beautiful camel-colored coat and a black scarf, which Audrey took hold of in order to gently pull him toward her for a kiss.

  “Yum,” she said. Then: “What’s in the bag?”

  Wickham had brought five Cary Grant videos from the library. “But we can only watch one,” he drawled, smiling.

  Audrey stood, drinking him in. “You’re my own personal Cary Grant.”

  He grinned. “I am?”

  “You are,” she said, then turned the movies to see their titles. “Which shall we watch?”

  He’d unwound his scarf and was unbuttoning his coat. “You choose.”

  Audrey narrowed her choices down to An Affair to Remember, because it was so crushingly romantic, and Suspicion, because she’d never seen it. “I’m torn between these two,” she said.

  He closed his eyes, dramatically extended his hand, and picked Suspicion.

  As she carried his camel-colored coat to the closet, she felt something hard-edged in the pocket. She put her hand into it and pulled out a cardboard sheet of foil-covered pills. His Imitrex. “Migraine?” she asked him.

  “Did have.” He smiled. “Now don’t.”

  When Audrey put the pills back in Wickham’s pocket, she felt a smooth cylinder that turned out to be lip balm. PEPPERMINT, it read. So that’s why he smelled like Christmas.

  They ate beef stew with baguette slices while the fire crackled and the black-and-white credits for the movie began to roll. But before the movie had really begun, Audrey realized Wickham wasn’t looking at the screen; he was looking at her.

  “What?” she said.

  “You,” he said; then, nodding at the food in front of him and gesturing at the room around him, “This.” He was quiet for a moment. “It’s all so . . .” His voice trailed off. Finally he was looking again into her eyes. “I wonder if anybody anywhere is this happy.”

  We are, she thought. But she merely stared at Wickham Hill’s beautiful face until the actors in Suspicion began to speak, and then they turned and watched and ate.

  The movie was pretty interesting. Cary Grant played a charmer who might or might not have murdered his friend and business partner, and Joan Fontaine played a wealthy woman who was in love with Cary Grant but didn’t know what to do with her suspicions.

  “It’s kind of creepy,” Audrey said, “not knowing whether to trust Cary Grant or not.”

  Wickham said, “I’d trust him. I mean, he is Cary Grant.”

  “Yeah,” Audrey said, “but this particular Cary Grant might be a wife-murdering Cary Grant.”

  They had by this time moved to the sofa, and Wickham leaned close to say, “Know what you are?”

  “What?”

  “Funny,” he said. “Funny and smart and extremely smoochable.”

  They fell easily into kissing, and didn’t stop until they heard the heavy kuh-lup of the front door closing. In a stiff whisper, Audrey said, “My dad.”

  The clicking footsteps passed on the tiled corridor and grew faint. Audrey tiptoed across the room and eased open the door in time to see her father slipping into his office. Small traces of snow marked his trail along the hallway.

  “What’s going on?” Wickham said.

  Audrey turned. “Nothing,” she said. “He went into his office.”

  “Want to introduce me?”

  “I do,” Audrey said, “but he looked really tired.”

  Wickham shrugged. “Later, then,” he said, and they went back to their movie until it became clear that this particular Cary Grant was not a wife-murdering Cary Grant. Then Wickham whispered, “Let’s go for a ride in the snow.”

  Driving the Lincoln in the snow wasn’t dangerous unless it turned icy, which it wasn’t. “Let me tell my dad,” she said, though exactly what she would tell him, she wasn’t sure. It turned out that it didn’t matter.

  When she looked in on her father, he didn’t see her. He stood slump-shouldered, staring out the window with his hands in his pocket. He’d turned on the yard lights so he could watch the heavy snow falling. Audrey backed quietly away. On the kitchen tablet they used for messages, she wrote:

  Dad,

  Went by C.C.’s. Home by 9:00.

  Love, A.

  P.S. I actually managed to cook stew in crockpot!

  It was eerily, beautifully quiet, driving through the snowmuffled streets of Jemison. They drove by C.C.’s house (“Hi, C.C.; hi, Brian,” Audrey said in passing so that she could say, technically, that she’d driven by and said hello). They kept meandering through the neighborhoods, watching the snow float through the yellow beams of the headlights. It was warm in the car, and when they came to a cul-de-sac with a vacant lot and paved driveway, Wickham said, “There.”

  Parked, with the engine off, it was even quieter. For a long time they didn’t talk. They just sat in the warmth of the car, looking out. Then Wickham turned to her and said, “You know, I had a girlfriend in South Carolina.” He made a low, mild laugh. “Actually, a couple of girlfriends.” His voice turned serious. �
��But I can tell you right now, I’ve never felt this way before.” When he looked into her eyes and said this, it wasn’t just a series of words, it was a door opening into a sealed world where nothing could be wrong and nothing could go wrong.

  Outside, the snow floated close to the windows of the Lincoln, then melted on the glass. Wickham had begun kissing her, and he smelled like Christmas. This is like being inside the most wonderful snow globe, Audrey thought before closing her eyes.

  Part Two

  He’ll fly to the barn,

  And keep himself warm,

  And tuck his head under his wing.

  Chapter 35

  Alternating Currents

  November 23. The Sunday before Thanksgiving. Dirty snow covered the lawns, and icicles reached toward and away from the McNair house like gnarled fingers. It was dusk. Mrs. Leacock had assigned the class to write a three-to-five-page biography of a physicist, and it was due the next day. Audrey still needed to finish her paper, on Nikola Tesla, and she’d offered to help Wickham finish up his.

  Wickham, smelling of peppermint and cold air, took off his pea coat and scarf, and rummaged around in his backpack until he found a single piece of paper, folded vertically down the middle. He hadn’t shaved, which to Audrey only added to his handsomeness, but he had the subtly stiff face she’d learned to associate with his headaches.

  “You okay?” she said.

  “I’m good,” he said. “Gooder than good.” But the smile he gave her was a stiff one.

  “Anything a kiss could cure?” she said, and sat on his lap and kissed his earlobe.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Very possibly, in fact.”

  He let his hand wander, and she gently pushed him away— not that she wanted to. “Work before pleasure,” she said, and unfolded his paper.