Peter Abrahams - Crying Wolf

“The rest of what?” Izzie said.

“Tuition. Fees. Room and board.”

“Partial?” said Grace. “Can’t they make it complete?”

Nat shook his head. “But I can come back under the old terms whenever we get this straightened out.”

“Like next week?” Izzie said.

“It’s a technicality, then,” Grace said.

Nat smiled. “Next year at the earliest.”

“Next year?” said Izzie.

“You’re leaving Inverness,” Grace said, “just like that?”

“You talk like I’m doing something whimsical.”

“Aren’t you?” Grace said. “This is silly. How much money are we talking about?”

Izzie nodded, as though a shrewd point had been raised. “Good question,” she said. “How much?”

“Over seven thousand dollars.”

They turned to him, each doing that raised-eyebrow thing, Grace the left, Izzie the right.

“This is about seven thousand dollars?” Grace said.

“Closer to eight.”

Grace and Izzie laughed.

“What’s funny?”

“You,” they said together.

“I don’t get it,” Nat said.

“He doesn’t get it,” said Grace. “What’s in the account, Izzie?”

“What account?”

“Our bank account, here at school.”

“Do we have one? I’ve just been using the ATM in Baxter.”

“There must be a bank account,” Grace said. “What does it say on the checkbook?”

“Checkbook?” said Izzie.

Nat held up his hand. “It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t take anything from you.”

“You couldn’t?” Grace said, her glance going quickly to Izzie.

“No.”

“You don’t really want to be here,” Izzie said. “Is that it?”

Didn’t she know better than that? And how it would be without her? “That’s not it.”

“Then what?”

“What I said. I couldn’t take money.” They looked blank. His gaze went to the big oil painting: at that moment Grace and Izzie were almost as unreal to him as the nudes, the fauns, the centaur behind the tree.

“You wouldn’t be taking it,” Grace said.

“We’d be giving it,” said Izzie.

“That’s what can’t happen.”

Silence. They stared at him.

Izzie cocked her ear. “What was that?”

“What?” said Nat.

“That sound.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Grace said.

They listened, heard nothing.

“I have an idea,” Grace said. “What if it was in the form of a loan?”

“A loan!” said Izzie. “You could pay it back later, down the road, whenever.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s no different.”

“Sure it is,” said Izzie. “Completely different. This would be like the home equity thing.”

“A Nat equity loan,” said Grace.

That was why. “No,” Nat said. “And there are other complications.” He told them about the mortgage payments that had to be made, the utility bills, the food, the car expenses, all of it out of his mom’s pay, now cut off.

They made identical flapping motions with their hands, as though shooing flies.

“This is-” Izzie began.

“-ridiculous,” said Grace.

“What about talking to Leo?” Izzie said.

“Forget it,” said Grace.

“Why do you say that?” Nat asked.

“I talked to my-our father,” Grace said. “He knows all about Helen Uzig, Brooklyn, the whole thing. He checked Leo out when discussions about this faculty chair endowment started getting serious. Leo grew up in Brooklyn, family owned a dry-cleaning business-or was it a candy store? — went to City College of New York, Ph. D. Columbia, got a job at Inverness, where Helen, not Uzig at the time, was head of the phil department. Head of the phil department, and had some money, too. Made him shave off that ludicrous walrus mustache. It’s her house, of course.”

“Does this mean that Ferg guy’s right?” said Izzie. “He’s some kind of fake?”

“Fake?” Nat said. “He’s a brilliant teacher. Anyone can see that. Besides, he’s famous, in philosophical circles. I’ve looked him up.”

“Then go see him,” Grace said.

“I did.”

“And?”

Nat didn’t answer.

“See?” said Grace.

“See what? It has nothing to do with his qualities as a teacher.”

“Nietzsche would disagree,” Grace said.

Nat was thinking about that when Izzie said: “So what’s he going to do?”

Nat wasn’t sure who she meant.

“About the endowment?” Grace said. “Take his time deciding. Quote.”

Izzie nodded, as though that made sense to her. Nat doubted that either of them really knew what a home mortgage was, but they had no trouble understanding whatever manipulations were going on between Mr. Zorn and Professor Uzig, or Mr. Zorn and the phil department, or Mr. Zorn and Inverness, or whatever it was. Maybe it was a simple matter of Mr. Zorn delaying his decision until after the girls had graduated. Nat discounted that: a small-town, been-nowhere kind of notion; he remembered the gas station owner back home with a son in the Clear Creek football program, and the coach’s free fill-ups.

They were both watching him.

“You’re not trying to find a way,” Grace said.

“I am.” Nat’s voice rose, taking him, taking them all, by surprise.

“You can’t just go,” Izzie said. “You’re here. You’re right here.”

“This kind of thing happens. I’m not the first.”

“So what?” said Grace. She rose. “Let’s have a drink. We’ll think better.”

She poured from the oldest bottle yet, Domaine des Forges, 1893; Izzie wound up the record player, put on “Caro Nome.” Nat didn’t think any better, but probably because he hadn’t eaten, the drink’s effect was immediate.

“We’re lucky,” Izzie said.

“Because we have money?” said Grace. “They say that causes problems of its own.”

“But they’re problems of freedom,” Izzie said. “Other people don’t even get to those.”

They both turned to him, awaiting confirmation from the land of other people. He suspected it wasn’t that simple, but before he could organize his thoughts, Grace said:

“She’s right. Home equity, mortgages, all that step-by-step bullshit-by the time most people get past it, life is over. Piss on that. Working for decades just to get-just hoping to get-where Izzie and I are right now.”

“That makes me feel better,” Nat said.

Izzie laughed, then Grace. “Here’s to the problems of freedom,” Grace said.

They drank. Izzie restarted “Caro Nome.” “Unless,” she said, turning from the record player, “Nat gets lucky too.”

“In what way?” said Grace.

“I don’t know. Writes a best-seller or something.”

Nat was astonished: he’d never mentioned wanting to write to anyone.

Grace and Izzie looked at each other. Nat had the crazy idea that for a moment their brains had hooked up, doubling normal human power.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” said Grace.

“This isn’t about seven thousand dollars,” said Izzie.

“Or scholarships, home equity, watching our pennies,” said Grace. “It’s about getting all that out of the way.”

“In one stroke,” said Izzie.

“I thought of Powerball,” Nat said.

They glanced at him, said nothing. Grace got up, walked over to Izzie by the record player, refilled her glass, came to Nat on the couch, refilled his, started to refill her own-and dropped the bottle. A heavy, cut-glass bottle that just slipped from her hand, smashed at her feet.

She didn’t seem to notice. “I’m having a thought,” she said.

“Uh-oh,” said Izzie.

“Shut up,” said Grace. “It’s-it’s so good. And it’s all right here, even the sound track.”