Danny Tobey - The Faculty Club

I hadn’t been to Nigel’s apartment since the night of his dinner party, and that felt like another lifetime. I walked up the steps to his brownstone. It was almost four in the morning, and the cold was so intense, so harsh, that my nose and throat burned every time I took a breath. The streets were perfectly still. I hadn’t seen a soul on my way over. And believe me, I was looking-for any shadowy figure that might be in the vicinity.

I was surprised to see a light already on in Nigel’s window. The doorbell echoed through his apartment. Lights flipped on from room to room, closer and closer, and then footsteps came my way. Nigel opened the door. He was fully dressed and didn’t seem at all surprised to see me. That, I think, was the moment I knew just how stupid I was. Why didn’t I just chain myself to the bell tower in the center of campus, with a sign that said hey secret evil club: come and get me! But this was the only way. We had to know. I told myself that and heard another voice, that class clown in the back row of my brain, calling out obnoxious comments. It was Arthur Peabody’s voice, and it said: Now or later… they’ll get me.

There you go. Now or later. Let it happen.

Wise words from the late, great Humpty Dumpty.

“Jeremy,” Nigel said pleasantly. “Come in.”

We passed the dining room to the last door in the hallway, the only one I hadn’t been in before. On one end of the room was Nigel’s bed, a canopy with four elegant spiral posts; at the other was an oak desk, next to a limestone fireplace with a roaring fire. Behind the desk were rows of books. I sat in the leather chair he indicated and started scanning the bookshelves. I found what I was looking for easily enough-it was part of a set-the antique he’d shown me on the first day of school, a leather-bound collection of political essays. The one he’d wanted to give Daphne in his crazy quest for her affection. The one I’d talked him out of giving her, back when I was giving love advice to Nigel even though I wanted Daphne. Back when altruism and friendship seemed like virtues to me. Well, the book was there, anyway. At least he listened. I also saw, perhaps too late, that the phone on his desk was off the hook. It was an old-fashioned phone with a rotary dial and a vertical shaft like a lamppost that cradled the receiver. But not now. Now the receiver was sitting facedown on his desk, and the first thing he did when he sat down was lift it up to his mouth.

“I need to go now,” he said into the phone, looking at me. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. Quite.” He smiled. “I will.”

He hung the phone up.

“Who was that?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“No one,” he said, smiling back at me.

The clock had started. Fine. Fuck the clock. Fuck whatever was waiting for me on the other end of that call. Right now, it was just me and Nigel. I couldn’t rush this. It was a dance. A magic trick, even. And I wasn’t going to get caught with a rabbit halfway out of my sleeve. Not tonight.

I was going to take my time, because that was the only way.

Nigel stared at me, waiting for me to say something. I stared back. His desk was covered with books, and he appeared to be writing a paper or even a book in longhand. There were stacks of handwritten pages, with cross-outs, marginal notes, insertions, all in the same urgent script. Not a computer in the room.

Stress is an amazing thing-an hour ago it was bringing out the worst in me, and now it was bringing out the best. When I spoke, my voice didn’t crack. It sounded deeper and stronger than it had in weeks.

“Is it everything you hoped it would be?” I asked him.

Nigel didn’t flinch.

“Is what everything I hoped it would be?” he asked with a straight face. “Law school, you mean?”

I reclined in my chair without taking my eyes off his. I aimed for just south of angry and repeated, very clearly: “Is it everything you hoped it would be?”

He gave me a dead-eyed stare, raising his eyebrows.

“Yes,” he said. “Everything and more.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“What do you want, Jeremy?”

“Nothing, Nigel. I don’t want a thing.”

Take it slow.

“So why are you here?”

“I think you know.”

Easy, I thought. Less anger, a little more hurt.

“We used to be friends…”

Nigel sighed. His guard went down just a hair. But not the coldness that was just behind his eyes. The people on the other end of that call were still coming, and he knew exactly what they’d do to me when they got here. And he didn’t care.

“I know,” he said. “We were.”

“I helped you. That’s the part that kills me. I helped you.”

He rubbed the dome of his head.

“What do you want me to say?”

Okay, swipe one:

“That night in the library, you were a mess. Didn’t even know how to read a case. I helped you. What a fool I was!”

Let it sit.

Reel him in.

“Did you come here to insult me?” Nigel said, pushing away from his desk. “Tell me I’m stupid? That I don’t deserve whatever it is you think I have?”

Good. Keep his eye off the ball.

Then the wagon jumped the tracks.

“I got you something,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I ordered it a while ago. It just came. I was going to give it to you at school. But since you’re here…”

He gave a little sarcastic shrug.

I needed to get him back on track. Time was running out. They were coming. And he was stalling me. But I couldn’t show fear. I couldn’t let him see what I was up to.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything. Just take it.”

He paused. He waited me out.

“Where is it?” I asked finally.

“Over there,” he said. “Under the bed. In a box. Go get it.”

A chill went up my spine. We weren’t in the dorms after all, we weren’t even on campus-but my mind was spinning like an out-of-control clock, and I couldn’t help but wonder: Was there a hatch under his bed? Another link to that maze that seemed to connect everything in this town? I imagined myself walking to the bed. Getting down on my hands and knees in the plush carpet. Peeking under the edge of the bed, seeing only black. Reaching my hand under, feeling around in the soft darkness. The strange fist with the knife gliding out, chopping my hand like a master chef working down a carrot. Another hand grabbing into my hair, yanking me under the bed, swallowing me down into the hole.

I was starting to sweat. I doubted Nigel could see it yet, but maybe he could smell it. Maybe he could smell the fear.

Now or later, I thought.

I stood up.

I went to his bed. He was watching from behind me. I could feel it. He didn’t say a word. I had a sudden image in my head. Not my life flashing before my eyes. Just a single memory. My mom, holding that envelope in hand, that letter of acceptance. Baby, she said. She dropped the mail all over the floor.

I knelt down. It was dark under the bed. The only light in the room was the fireplace, crackling over by Nigel. I lifted the comforter and tried to see under the bed. Where was the box? I couldn’t tell-it was pitch black in there. I reached in and felt for it. My fingers touched woolly carpet.

No hand with a knife slashed out at me.

My fingers felt the edges of a cardboard box. I sighed. The ground below me suddenly hardened and felt more solid, more comforting. I pulled the box out and carried it back to Nigel’s desk.

“Open it,” Nigel said.

I hated this. He was running out my clock. But the whole gambit depended on flow. He couldn’t see what was coming. I had to follow the rhythm.

Inside the box was my article. Nigel had paid some company to bind it in a nice leather cover. It was thin, but it looked grandiose, important. I felt a flash of pride. On the cover, my name and the title were embossed in gold letters.