Peter Abrahams - Crying Wolf

“All right.”

He made her sleep in his bed. She lay on her back, under the covers, curly hair spread on the pillow. “You can come in, if you want.”

“That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Why not?” Patti said. “What could happen now?”

She laughed. That was Patti. He laughed too. At that moment, and just for that moment, he came close to something like love: more craziness.

Patti took his hand. “Nat?”

“Yes.”

“What’s gone wrong?” She wasn’t crying anymore; her face was puffy but somehow peaceful too.

“How do you mean?”

“People used to get married at our age. Settle down, have… kids, and everything was all right.”

“Not in my family,” he said.

She let go.

Nat took his sleeping bag into Wags’s room, lay down on Wags’s bed. Wags hadn’t showered enough, especially toward the end, Nat realized now, but he’d compensated with spray-on deodorant, some brand that smelled like evergreens and coconut. Nat closed his eyes; the evergreen-and-coconut smell, rising off the mattress every time he moved, grew stronger and stronger,

You want me to flunk out, don’t you?

Right. And then all this will be mine.

Nat rose, went to the couch in the outer room, tried to sleep where Patti had been sleeping.

At dawn he stopped trying, got up, shaved, showered, put on fresh clothes, tried to look fresh. Patti was still asleep, her face still peaceful, her breathing almost unnoticeable. He left a note on the bedside crate, laying a granola bar on top of it: Gone to class. Back by noon. N.

Nat went to the bio lab, made up the work he’d missed. Problem three, from the old set of problems, taken care of; the precious pre-med option preserved. Problems one and two were now buried under the new ones.

English 104. Izzie wasn’t there. The professor, handing back the Young Goodman Brown essays, said, “I’m a little disappointed with these. Only two of you-” She glanced around the table. “-one of whom is absent, identified the pathos at its core.”

“Which is?” someone asked.

“Page ninety-five,” said the professor, opening her book: “Referring to Goodman Brown: ‘But he himself was the chief horror of the scene.’ ”. Nat stuffed the paper in his backpack without checking the grade and hurried back to Plessey, taking shortcuts through the snow.

Izzie was at his desk in the outer room, playing solitaire on the computer. She turned as Nat came in. He went into the bedroom. The note and granola bar were where he’d left them, but Patti was gone, the bed neatly made.

Izzie was watching him through the doorway. “They went out,” she said.

“They?”

“Grace and… Patti.”

“Where did they go?”

“For food. She hasn’t eaten in two days.”

Nat glanced back at the bedside crate; perhaps it was just the empty wrapper of the granola bar that he’d seen. But no. And also on the crate, the little box from Assad and Son. Was that where he’d left it? He didn’t think so, and he’d certainly not left it open, as it was now, the gold number 8 and chain nestled in the tissue paper: never worn, as would be clear to anyone who looked inside. He thought of putting the chain on now; his fingers almost touched it.

“Do you want me to leave?” Izzie said.

He would have if Izzie had said anything like She seems so nice. But Izzie didn’t. “No,” Nat said.

They waited in the outer room, Izzie at the desk, Nat on the couch. “You went to English?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Did she give the papers back?”

Nat nodded.

“What did you get?”

“I don’t know.” He handed her the paper. She flipped to the back. “A,” she said. “I guess you were right about that chief horror line.”

“You used it too?”

“Of course.”

“Why of course?”

“Don’t you remember? We discussed it on the beach.”

“But I might have been wrong.”

Izzie shook her head. “I trust you.”

“You do?”

“Completely. I didn’t even know what the word meant until you came along.”

“You haven’t known me very long.”

“So? Just look at you.”

“What do you mean?”

“That chipped tooth, for starters.”

“That’s why you trust me?”

“And a million other things.”

“What’s number two?”

Izzie thought. She flushed, very slightly. “I’m not telling.”

They looked at each other, Izzie at the desk, Nat on the couch, but within touching distance in the cramped dormitory room. Nat could feel some force pulling them together, knew that at almost any signal from him, a word or gesture, they could be in the bedroom the next minute. He said no word, made no gesture. They both looked away.

Snow started falling again. It changed to rain. “I hate that,” Izzie said. And back to snow.

Nat checked his watch. “I’m going to look for them.”

“I’m coming.”

They searched the student union, the freshman dining hall, the snack bars, the Rat. They tried Grace and Izzie’s room, the Lanark lounge, the gym. Then they went off campus to the nearby coffee shops and delis where students gathered. It got colder and colder. They stopped at the bottom of the Hill, in front of a boarded-up building with a faded sign: The Glass Onion.

“Where else?” Nat said.

“The cave?” said Izzie.

“Why would she take her down there?”

“Who knows?” Izzie said. “But I’ll look.”

Izzie went down to the basement of Plessey to enter the tunnels through the janitor’s closet. Nat returned to his room. He checked his voice mail, his E-mail: nothing. Grace walked in, alone.

“Where’s Patti?”

Grace glanced at her watch. “Still at the airport.”

“Airport?”

“I took her there.”

“What airport?”

“She asked me to. She wanted to go home.”

“What airport?”

There was something strange in his tone, strange and new. Grace heard it too. “Albany,” she said, backing up a step. “It’s the closest one with connections to Denver.”

Nat was on his feet. The airport was thirty miles away. He flung open his closet, snatched all the money remaining in his shoe-$32-all the money he had until his next paycheck from the Alumni Office job.

“It’s what she wants,” Grace said as he left the room. And: “Departure’s in twenty minutes. You’ll never make it.” Down the stairs, out the main gate, into a taxi. It was only after he was on his way that he realized Grace was still wearing his Clear Creek letter jacket.

At the airport, Nat checked the first screen he saw. No mention of Denver, but a flight to Chicago, delayed by weather, was now boarding, boarding, boarding at gate eleven. He ran toward the gate area, stopping sharply at security. He’d forgotten about security.

“I need to see someone at gate eleven.”

“Gotta have a gate pass.”

“Where do I get it?”

“Back at ticketing.”

“But there’s no time.”

Shrug.

He raced back to ticketing, got a gate pass, went through security.

“Place your pocket change in the tray and try again.”

He went through again, this time successfully, and ran as fast as he could to gate eleven. Patti, now wearing jeans instead of her blue dress, was handing her boarding pass to the attendant at the ramp.

“Patti.” Too loud: the handful of people still in line all turned to him.

Patti stepped out of the line, not very steadily. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“Of course I came.”

“How?”

“Doesn’t matter. In a taxi.”

“It’s so expensive. Or did she-did Grace pay for you too?”

“Of course not.”

Patti flinched. He saw how pale she was.