Peter Abrahams - Crying Wolf

“Then what are you thinking about?” Izzie said.

“Nothing.”

“That’s not true. I can tell.”

He was wondering whether to drag her through the whole thing, or to simply answer you, which was true-his mind was full of her-if not factually correct at that exact moment, and also might sound a little buttery, when he heard someone entering the outer room. Izzie went still.

“Nat,” called a voice. Grace. He saw fear, real fear in Izzie’s eyes.

“Just a sec,” he said, hurrying out of bed, pulling on sweatpants. He stepped into the outer room, closing the door, he hoped casually, behind him.

Grace looked up from reading something on his desk as he came in, her gaze going to his bare chest first, then to his face. “Morning, sleepyhead,” she said. “And hung over, too.”

“A bit.”

“Moi aussi,” she said, although she didn’t look it. “But isn’t it great?”

“What we found?”

“And the way we found it,” Grace said. “Defines serendipitous.” She glanced around as though someone might hear. “You haven’t mentioned it to anybody?”

“No.” He noticed she was wearing overalls, with a hammer, screwdriver, pliers sticking out of the pockets.

“I’ve already been down there today,” she said. “It really is like Alice-through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole.”

“What have you been doing?”

“Fixing up.”

“How?”

“You’ll see.” She pulled a book from her back pocket. “And look at this-plot summaries of all the major operas, so we’ll know what we’re listening to. For example…” She flipped through the pages. “Rigoletto: Gilda-she’s the one who sings that song, ‘Caro Nome,’ means ‘dear name,’ she sings it to her lover, but it isn’t even his real name… and then it looks like there’s some kind of kidnapping-her own father, that’s Rigoletto, helps without knowing it.”

“Helps who?”

“The kidnappers.”

“Why?”

“Doesn’t say,” Grace said, running her eyes over the page. “She dies at the end, by mistake.”

“What kind of mistake?”

Grace checked the text again. “It’s convoluted. And not very believable. But the music makes all that irrelevant, I guess.”

“Last night it did,” Nat said.

“Exactly,” said Grace, closing the book. Her eyes went to his chest again, then back to his face. “I guess it’s my fault,” she said.

“What is?”

“That we got off to maybe a bad start.”

“What do you mean?” he said, wishing she’d talk a little more quietly.

“You and me. That night in New York. At my da-at my father’s. Too much to drink and smoke, et cetera. And I was probably a little too forceful. For you, I mean. For other men, though…”

Her voice trailed off. Nat thought of Paolo, and the married man Izzie had told him about. He felt a little sorry for Grace. “Forget it,” he said.

“You mean that?” The way she asked that little question, the words, the intonation: pure Izzie; he revisited the most obvious fact about them, one he’d been leaving behind, the fact of how alike they were.

“Yes,” he said. “I mean it.”

“A clean slate, then?”

“Sure.” Who could say no to that?

Grace smiled a bright smile. “See you in class,” she said, and left the room; very light on her feet, almost skipping. He went over to the desk to see what she’d been looking at and found Patti’s letter.

Nat went into the bedroom. No Izzie. He opened the closet and, as though it were a children’s game, there she was, hiding behind his Clear Creek letter jacket, worn once at Inverness and never again.

“Has she gone?” said Izzie.

“Yes. What’s this all about?”

“I told you-I just don’t want her to know right now.”

“Know what?”

“That anything’s happening between us.”

“Why not?”

“Just give me time.”

“But why not?”

Izzie watched him over the letter jacket. “I never did better than Grace in anything, not a single race, a single essay, a single exam, not ever.”

“So what?”

“Until the SATs. I scored twenty points higher on the verbal.”

“Do we have to talk about the SATs?”

Izzie smiled. “I never met anyone like you.”

“That’s because you haven’t led a sheltered life.”

She laughed. “You see? Every time you open your mouth you prove it.” Her eyes went to the Clear Creek jacket. “Can I wear this?”

“You want to wear that?”

“It’s not something Wags left behind, is it?”

“No. It’s my old high-school jacket.”

“Then I want to wear it. Just for a while,” she added when he was silent.

“Okay.”

Izzie put it on. She wasn’t wearing anything else. “Now close the door.”

“We’re in the closet.”

“That’s right.”

Nat closed the door. In the darkness she leaned against him.

“But you’ve had boyfriends before,” he said.

Izzie knew what he meant. “Only ones she’d rejected or didn’t want in the first place, like Paolo,” she said.

“What makes you think she’s interested in me?”

“I know it.”

“How?”

“I just do.”

“But-”

But she grabbed the back of his head, pulled him close, kissed his mouth, deeper and deeper. He had sex in his closet with Nat, Clear Creek Basketball, number 8. He’d never had sex three times in a row before-except for Patti hadn’t had sex at all before Izzie-but for some reason this time was the best of all.

After Izzie left, Nat reread Patti’s letter. He held it up to the light, tried again to see what she’d crossed out, with no success until he thought of turning the page over. Then, reading backward, he was able to make out a bit more: what he’d thought might be kissed, pissed, or missed was definitely missed; and the next word was my. The rest remained obliterated. His gaze went to the PS: my present should be there by now.

He’d forgotten all about Patti’s present; last seen on his bed before Christmas. Nat searched the bedroom, found it under the bed. A small package with reindeer wrapping and a card with a reindeer, candy canes dangling from its antlers, on the front: Merry Christmas to the very best person I know. Love, Patti. He sat slowly on the bed, the present in the palm of his hand.

The phone rang in the outer room. He let it. Slowly, more slowly than he’d ever unwrapped a present, he unwrapped Patti’s, taking great care not to rip the paper, also not like him. Inside was a little cardboard box, and on it the words Assad and Son. Assad and Son was the jewelry store on the main street in his town. Nat opened the box, pulled aside some tissue paper, and exposed a small gold number 8 on a gold chain.

Eight, the number he’d worn at Clear Creek. And a gold chain. He’d never worn a gold chain or had any desire to. Nat closed the box without touching the pendant or the chain.

He went to the phone, called Patti at her mom’s. With the time difference, she might not have left for her classes at Arapaho State. I wish I didn’t have to say this on the phone, Patti, but: his mind rehearsed as it rang at the other end. The answering machine took his call. He listened to Patti’s mom’s taped message-she said “God bless” at the end-and at the sound of the beep, hung up.

You’ll meet all kinds of girls, prettier than me. Prettier and smarter. And richer. And richer: she’d said that too. He had a funny thought: what else does she know about my future?

In the small domed room at the top of Goodrich Hall, the smart girl from English 103 was saying, “There’s a lot here we’re going to have to filter out, isn’t there?”

“Such as?” said Professor Uzig, his face so composed and dignified it was hard for Nat to imagine it any other way, certainly not furious. But the memory, not twelve hours old, was strong, reinforced by a quick glance on his way up at the hot-air grate in the ground-floor lounge.