Peter Abrahams - Crying Wolf

“This is kind of unexpected, Freedy.”

“My bad.”

Their eyes met. Ronnie licked his lips. “She’s older than she looks.”

“Do I care?” said Freedy. “It’s your constitutional right. But this isn’t just a social visit.” He hit the on button. “I could use some tech support.”

No answer. Normally, you say something normal like that and the other guy says something back. Freedy looked up from the screen-nothing had happened yet; wasn’t there supposed to be a warm-up routine? — and caught an expression he didn’t like on Ronnie’s face.

“Something on your mind, Ronnie?”

“Thought there was no laptop,” Ronnie said.

He’d forgotten all about that. Made him look stupid, stupid in Ronnie’s eyes. Pissed him off. This whole computer business pissed him off. All he wanted was to find out what it knew about Leo Uzig: how hard could that be? He glanced down at the screen to see how it was getting along with the warm-up, saw a message:

Total system failure. Computer will shut off in ten seconds. All files will be

The screen went black. The green light stopped flashing.

That swelling-up thing, like he was going to burst? He felt it again.

“You want it, Ronnie?”

Ronnie was fingering that hairy thing. “Depends on the terms,” he said.

Ronnie, even Ronnie the pervert, was trying to cut a piece out of him. “These terms,” said Freedy, and flung it across the table. An awkward object for throwing, but Ronnie, so slow, managed not to get out of the way, managed not even to block it, managed to get hit in the head. He lay on the floor.

That was when Freedy remembered something important. “Meant to ask you Ronnie-ever take Phil three twenty-two?”

No answer.

That Ronnie.

Freedy found a phone book, looked through the Y ’s and then the U ’s. Uzig. Not one of the spellings he’d tried on the laptop, but there it was, a single listing. More than one way to skin a cat. Not that he’d ever actually skinned a cat. Had skinned a squirrel once, one he’d snared in the woods back of But no time for that now. A single listing, the address up on the Hill, high on the Hill, over on the sunny side.

Dawn was just breaking as Freedy arrived. All that meant was the sky switching from black to dark gray. Still, there was enough light for Freedy to see what a big, solid house it was-nice brickwork, a tall black door with shiny brass fittings, expensive-looking extras all over the place. For a moment he felt a little funny, realized that the swelled-up feeling, like he was going to burst, hadn’t quite gone away. He went around to the back.

Nat woke suddenly in the night. He checked the time, saw that he’d been asleep for less than three hours, rolled over, closed his eyes. Sleep had always come easily to Nat and, if interrupted, returned just as easily. But now he couldn’t get back. Couldn’t get back, although he was tired, and the night was still; even more than that, he could almost feel snow blanketing the roofs and window sills and pediments and cornices, sticking to the friezes and architraves and pilasters and capitals-and all those other architectural features of Inverness for which he now knew the names-surely a sleep-inducing image; but sleep wouldn’t come. Did it have to do with the Romanee-Conti 1917? There was a strange taste in his mouth, strange and unpleasant. Was this the taste of Romanee-Conti, too long bottled up? Nat got out of bed to brush his teeth.

Brushing his teeth meant going through the outer room and into the hall bathroom. He opened the bedroom door, and in the darkness of the outer room saw someone crouching by his desk.

Nat flicked on the overhead light. Not someone, not crouching, but a snowman, normal size for a snowman, a robust snowman with green buttonlike things for a smile. Right away, he felt a chill.

He touched the snowman, making sure the snow was real. It was. A snowman in his room, with a red ballpoint for a nose, a baseball cap on backward for a hat, those green buttonlike things for a smile. First he thought: snow days, Izzie’s snow days, keep on snowing, snow days from now until forever. What sense did that make? Something wrong there. Too much to drink, too little sleep, too mixed up. Therefore, second thought: a prank, a college prank. No frats at Inverness. So who would do this? And why? A lot of work in the middle of the night, just for a prank. On the other hand, there had been frats, or something like them, long ago, and he could easily imagine Grace and Izzie putting in that kind of work, Grace especially. Or Izzie especially, given her snow days; snow days, when the forces relented and indoor snowmen became possible. So he was right back to thought one.

Nat stood in his room, gazing at the snowman. Inverness was silent, a rare thing. No banging of the pipes behind Plessey’s walls, no scraps of talk from above, below, beside, no music drifting by from somewhere, no one quietly typing away, not even traffic sounds from beyond the campus. Nothing was happening, nothing but the snowman silently melting, leaving a growing puddle on Nat’s floor. He plucked one of those green buttonlike things from the snowman’s smile, read the single tiny word stamped on it: Pfizer.

Nat turned to the other bedroom, Wags’s old bedroom. The door was closed. Wasn’t it always open these days? He opened it now.

Wags lay on the bare mattress, reading by flashlight.

“Nattie boy,” he said, sitting up, holding out his hand. “A sight for sore eyes, whatever that might mean.”

Nat shook his hand; hot and moist.

“Keeping busy?” Wags said.

“Yeah.”

“Still in there pitching?”

“I guess.”

“Grinding away?”

Nat was silent. Wags wore a trench coat with a price tag hanging from the sleeve; underneath he had on flannel pajamas and mismatched boots, one an expensive-looking hiking boot-Nat spotted the Timberland logo-the other paint-spattered rubber.

“I’m teaching myself Japanese,” Wags said. He showed Nat what he was reading: a comic book. Two Japanese men were about to torture a Japanese woman. The only word on the page was Eeeeee! “I may get a job in the Ginza district,” Wags said, “or possibly come back here and finish up.”

Nat looked around for luggage, books, any of Wags’s possessions, saw nothing but a hospital bracelet on the floor. He remembered Wags’s mom: Are you really saying you had no idea of the mental state he’s been in?

“Wags?”

“Present and accounted for.”

“You all right?”

“Never better, Nattie boy. Better never, if you want the obverse, reverse, perverse. Free verse.” Wags laughed, a little hee-hee-hee that petered out. “Sometimes when my mind gets going…,” he began. There was a long pause. “They tested my IQ,” he said at last. “Off the charts. What’s yours?”

“I don’t know.”

“You forgot?” Wags laughed his new hee-hee laugh again. “That would say it all, wouldn’t it? An answering nonanswer of the truest sort.”

Nat laughed too.

“Did you know I spotted a mistake in a PSAT math section my year?” Wags said.

“No.”

“That must have been your year too, it occurs to me. In retrospect. There’s also introspect, disrespect, and plain old R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me. Remember that question with the hexagon and the isosceles triangle?”

“You remember the question?”

“Nothing wrong with my memory, Nattie boy. Nattie boy-o.”

“Do you remember why you built the snowman?”