Peter Abrahams - Crying Wolf

Confusing things, like some situation involving the college kid, impossible to understand. Home equity loans, tuition, rooms, boards, seven grand, a lost checkbook. Didn’t add up.

Unless that seven grand was lying around somewhere. Now that would be nice. Freedy was thinking how nice it would be-seven grand, three hundred per laptop, how many laptops was that? — when the college kid looked up, looked him right in the fucking eye. Or almost; his gaze slid up the wall a foot or two, fixed on something Freedy couldn’t see.

But a close call.

And then right away, another: he had to sneeze. What was going on? Did he have allergies all of a sudden, like those women whose pools he’d cleaned in California? He put his finger under his nose the way you were supposed to. That worked, or almost worked: the sneeze that came was tiny, made no sound at all.

Except little sister got a funny look on her face. Smash. Ka-boom. He could be through that wall in a second.

But the moment passed. Freedy’s muscles relaxed, just hung on his bones, heavy and still. Felt good.

Felt good, but that didn’t help him deal with the confusing things. Confusing things, like big sister and little sister were swatting flies or something, and then: Leo. Leo Uzig. This name kept popping up. Professor. On his laptop. Taught a course his mother thought Ronnie was taking. Ronnie? How could that be? Had a wife. Helen Uzig. A wife with money. Wife made him… made him what? What was that? Shave… shave off that-some word he didn’t catch and then two words he did- walrus mustache.

Something walrus mustache. The something word sounded a bit like ridiculous, but wasn’t. He tried to recall it exactly, gave up.

But walrus mustache: he’d caught that.

Walrus.

Plus it turned out Leo Uzig was famous. And his wife had money.

Confusing: but Freedy was an amazing person. Why? Because, despite all the confusion, with all this information whipping by, the moment he heard that Leo Uzig’s wife had money, what was the first thing he thought of? Yes. Money. Specifically, the envelope he’d steamed open, so wisely, it turned out, with the two C’s inside.

It was all coming together. Everything had a meaning. He’d heard that. He’d also heard that nothing meant anything. So what? None of that mattered. What mattered was his future. Pool company. Florida. Stick, stick, stick. And as for getting his hands on big sister and little sister, showing them what a man was, a real man, a buff, diesel, andro-popping, meth-tweaking fuckin’ animal like him? That would be nice.

Meanwhile, he was missing stuff. Action central, Freedy, action central. Action central, like the room with all the monitors, where you could watch everything coming together.

Someone else’s name came up, a name even stranger than Uzig; sounded Chinese maybe, Ni Chi. One of them, Uzig or Ni Chi, was a fake, but before Freedy could sort that out, the dolls in the dollhouse were drinking and talking about money again.

Fine with him, except that the music started up, with that horrible singing.

Turned out that big sister and little sister had money, possibly from hitting the Powerball number. Seven grand meant nothing to them, chicken feed. Why would it, you hit the Powerball number? Maybe this was a celebration. That would explain the wild look on big sister’s face-she was something, drop-dead, fuck-you and wild. Was she a little drunk too? Or a lot. She dropped the bottle; it shattered on that thick purple rug with the blue flowers, but none of them seemed to notice.

And then. Whoa. Kidnapping? A million dollars? They were afraid of kidnappers, because of the Powerball score? No, no no. They… they weren’t afraid of kidnappers-they were planning a kidnapping of their own! To get their hands on the Powerball money? And kidnapping who, exactly? That had to be important.

What was this? They were planning to kidnap one of themselves? Which one? Little sister? Big sister? Before he could get a handle on that, they shifted to the home equity thing again. Out came another bottle. More breaking glass. Were they all stoked on drugs or something? What drugs? Freedy wanted to know.

Something was going down. Big sister and little sister were hot. They were physical. Couldn’t keep still. Freedy could see that. The college kid, he was the still one. Dragging his feet about something or other. A wimp, of course, and so breakable in two. First Freedy would let him have a good one, right in the gut. Then A million dollars wasn’t much money?

No victim? No crime?

Big sister? They were going to kidnap big sister? Maybe yes, maybe no. A strange kind of kidnapping. Big sister was… going to hide out right here, down in the dollhouse? Did he get that right?

And then what? Little sister picks up the money?

Ka-boom? Big sister said ka-boom, the exact same word that had been on his mind at the exact same moment. Had to be an omen, an omen of the very best kind.

Then: they were laughing their heads off. Why? A little hanky-panky. They were going to get naked and fuck each other’s brains out, after all, as he’d secretly hoped, all of them this time, and, for Christ sake, let it be right there in the big room, instead of sneaking off to the bedroom the way little sister and the college kid had last time, where Freedy couldn’t see, not even hear very well.

Freedy waited for the hanky-panky to begin. They took their sweet time. A little bit of talk, mostly silence and waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for the college kid to stop dragging his feet. That was it. Freedy got it now: as soon as the college kid said yes to whatever they wanted him to say yes to, the sisters would come across.

Say it, you asshole. To get those two to come across who wouldn’t say whatever it took? Yes was easy.

The college kid said it. Finally. And guess what? They didn’t come across. Women. Did the college kid know how to handle that, did he get pissed, slap them around? No. Instead they all had another drink, like the best of friends, then started blowing out the candles, climbing that rope ladder, clearing out. Next minute, they were gone, leaving nothing but the blackness, the smell of melting wax, the horrible singing. Nothing had happened, nothing at all. Was it just some sort of game, more college shit? What the fuck?

Maybe because of all these questions, all this confusion, Freedy got a little lost on his way out of the tunnels. He thought he was in F, headed for the subbasement of building 87, at the edge of the backside of the campus and therefore closest to home. Problem was, it took way too long. He finally flicked on his light to see where he was. Good thing: he was in Z, two steps-two goddamn steps-before the drop-off near building 13. He shone the light over the edge, illuminating the steel ladder bolted to the wall and the brick floor thirty feet below, at least, where some workie had broken his neck long ago.

Don’t think he was scared or anything like that. First, his instincts-he was a fuckin’ animal-had protected him, always would. Second, even if he fell, so what? Think he wouldn’t land on his feet, bounce right up? ’Course he would. He shut the light off immediately, just to show the kind of… started with p — predator! Yes! The kind of predator he was, like the wolf or the tiger.

Freedy climbed out of a ventilation hood behind the hockey rink. The snow had stopped falling but lay all over the place, on every roof and tree branch, and piled high on the ground. He hated snow. He hated the cold. A cold wind was blowing from the west, right in his face as he left the campus, started down the Hill. The west, where California was: explain why California was warm while the wind that came from it was cold. There was a lot of shit they didn’t know.

A million. A cool million. Freedy understood the expression now. A million made you cool, inside and out, simple as that. He pictured his corporate HQ, a blue tower, blue being the color of water, eight or nine stories high, with a gym on the roof, overlooking the ocean. And the name: he needed a name. Freedy’s Fine Pool Business. Freedy’s First-Rate Pools and Maintenance. What was that expression she used? First water. Freedy’s First Water Corporation. Nah. Then it hit him. Aqua — or was it agua? — meant water, didn’t it? The Aqua Group. The classiness of that Group part! Or maybe the Agua Group. Which sounded better? He tried them out loud, several times, as he passed the Glass Onion, crossed the tracks, entered the flats, turned onto the old street. Someone was having septic problems, often happened down by the river; he could smell their shit through all that snow.