Peter Abrahams - Bullet Point

“And?”

“And it’s fine,” he said.

“Fine?”

“You know, like okay.”

“Okay?”

“Not a deal breaker.”

Greer laughed, a little too loud. He put his finger over her lips. She bit him, not hard but not softly, either. Things started heating up. Wyatt almost missed the sound of footsteps in the hall, not the upstairs hall but the hall outside his door. He squeezed Greer’s arm, trying to get her to be still. She went still, a lucky break: he wasn’t sure how she’d react to anything.

Knock-knock at the door. Greer slipped under the covers. This was almost like a comedy he’d seen at the East Canton fourplex, like lots of comedies he’d seen there, except it wasn’t funny.

“Wyatt?” Aunt Hildy called through the door. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“Were you on your phone just now?”

“No.”

“I thought I heard you talking.”

“No. Maybe, uh, maybe I made some sound in my sleep. Sorry if I woke you.”

“You didn’t. Can’t sleep myself tonight for some reason.” Then came silence, but she didn’t go away.

“Try not thinking about anything,” Wyatt said.

Aunt Hildy laughed, actually more of a snort. “If only,” she said, and padded away.

Greer came up from under the covers and lay quiet, head on Wyatt’s chest. “Everything you do, everything y-”

“Shh.”

She started again, very soft. “Everything you do, everything you say…I like.”

“Shh.”

Time passed. Was it starting to get light outside? Wyatt wasn’t sure. “Greer?” he said. She was asleep. He slipped out from under her, went to the window. Still fully night. He took his cell phone off the desk, checked the time: four forty. How to handle this? She could stay till everyone left and then-

Greer sat up. “I better get going,” she whispered.

He sat beside her. “How did you get here?”

“Drove.”

“You have a car?”

“My dad’s. It’s not insured and the plates are gone, so I don’t like to drive it much, you know?”

Nothing funny about that, but Wyatt had a hard time not laughing.

She got out of bed, pulled on her clothes. Wyatt stood naked beside her. When she was all dressed, she put her arms around him. “I’d like a picture of us, just like this,” she said.

“Not a good idea,” Wyatt said. “Doesn’t everyone know that by now?”

“You’re no fun.” She kissed him, opened the window, stuck one foot out. “I meant to tell you something,” she said, “but it’s so hard with all this whispering.”

“What?” he said.

“I met him,” she said. “He’s really nice.”

“Who?”

“Your-Sonny, Sonny Racine. I went to see my dad today-yesterday-and he was there, in the visiting room. He gets a lot of respect.”

“What the hell?” Wyatt raised his hands, the kind of gesture that goes along with not knowing where to begin. Greer climbed out the window and disappeared in the darkness.

“Hey. Wake up, for Christ’s sake.”

Wyatt opened his eyes. Dub was in the room. He grabbed a pillow and tossed it at Wyatt’s head. Greer’s smell was on it; and everything, the whole night, came back to him. Dreamlike, but not a dream. Wyatt tossed the pillow aside. Dub gazed down at him.

“You look like shit.”

Wyatt rubbed crust from the corners of his eyes, saw no sign of last night’s unpleasant conversation on Dub’s face. “Not as bad as you,” he said.

“Ooo, that hurts, pretty boy,” Dub said. A big grin spread across his face, always a sign of some fun idea taking hold. Dub lifted the far side of the mattress off the springs and upended it like it was nothing, dumping Wyatt, bedding, mattress on the cold floor.

“What the hell?”

“Wakie-wakie.”

Dub left the room. Wyatt would have gotten the shit kicked out of him, no doubt about that at all.

Wyatt should have felt sleepy at school but did not, in fact found himself tremendously alive and engaged. In English class, he suddenly had his hand up in the air, very unusual for him to be volunteering a question, probably a first. The teacher, Ms. Grenville, wearing a brightly colored neckerchief-she had lots of them-glanced down at her seating chart and said, “Wyatt?”

“I, uh-” Too late, lowering his hand, this whole idea maybe not such a good one.

Ms. Grenville gave him an encouraging smile. “Go on.”

“What if he, um, Hamlet, would have just said forget it?”

Some guy at the back of the room guffawed, but Ms. Grenville leaned forward at her desk, looked interested. “Forget it in what way?” she said.

“Like figured it was all too complicated and left town.”

“And gone where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Remind us, someone, where the story takes place.”

“In a fort,” someone said.

“In Elsinore Castle in Denmark,” said Anna.

Ms. Grenville nodded. “Denmark,” she said. She turned to Wyatt, raising her eyebrows.

“I guess he’d have to leave Denmark,” he said.

“Because?”

“It probably wouldn’t be safe to just leave the castle, go to some other town in the same country. What with, um, Claudius being the new king, and all.”

“Very interesting,” Ms. Grenville said. “Your whole idea. Has anyone read ahead yet?”

Anna raised her hand.

“And does Hamlet ever consider Wyatt’s idea?”

“Not directly,” Anna said. “But he thinks about suicide-isn’t that what the whole to-be-or-not-to-be thing is all about?”

“Yes,” said Ms. Grenville. “And Hamlet rejects suicide. In the end, he figures out a very clever way to get at what Wyatt calls the complications-in other words, to find out if the ghost has told the truth-and then he faces up to what he has to do.”

“But what about when Claudius tries to send Hamlet to England?” Anna said. “He kind of does leave the country after all.”

Ms. Grenville gave Anna a frown. Anna was the smartest kid in the class by far, and Wyatt had always assumed teachers loved having kids like that around; now for the first time, he wondered. “That’s a secondary complication,” Ms. Grenville said, “that we’ll get to in due course.”

After school, Wyatt drove to the bowling alley: closed. He called Greer, got sent straight to voice mail. He drove down the main street, keeping an eye out for a car with no plates. He stopped at High Sierra Coffee, looked in, saw Anna there with a few kids from school. She saw him and waved. He backed out of the coffee shop and drove to Greer’s apartment building. Cars were parked on both sides of the street, all with plates.

Wyatt went to the front door, standing under that strange stone animal head, and checked the buzzer panel. All but one single buzzer had a plastic typestrip with a name beside it, none of the names being

Torrance, G. Torrance, Greer Torrance, or even simply Greer. He was gazing at that unlabeled buzzer when his phone rang. The screen read UNKNOWN CALLER.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Wyatt. It’s, uh, Sonny. Sonny Racine.”

Wyatt had already recognized the voice, regretted answering. “Yeah,” he said. “Hi.”

“Hope I’m not bothering you. Got a chance to make a quick call, thought I’d take advantage of it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wanted to see how you were making out-in a new town, and all.”

“Fine.”

“Good to hear.” A long pause. “School okay?”

“Yeah.”

Another pause, this one maybe longer. “Got a favorite subject?”

“Not really,” Wyatt said.

“I used to like math the best.”

Wyatt said nothing.

From the other end came the sound of throat-clearing. And then: “Funny thing, I happened to meet your girlfriend.”