Kem Nunn - Chance

“You’d be surprised how often I hear that one,” she said.

“Not original, you’re telling me.”

Holly smiled. “We’re concerned about Nicole,” she said.

“Yes, it’s been a rough day. Thank you for being here.”

“It has been rough. I’m so sorry. How is she?”

“Shaken. I think she’ll be fine.”

“Who wouldn’t be shaken? My God.”

They stood for a moment in silence, during which time Chance noted a number of what appeared to be exercise books piled along one wall, those and a rather sleek gym bag, half open. The fucker’s taken my study, Chance thought. He nearly said it aloud.

“There is another matter we need to discuss,” Holly said. “I’m sorry it has to be now, but maybe now is as good a time as any.”

Chance was only half listening. He was still thinking about the dyslexic personal trainer prowling about the premises. The word marijuana caught his attention.

“It was only a stem. In her art box…”

“Someone was going through her things?” The question was more or less reflexive.

The principal of Havenwood stiffened noticeably. “She left it in her last-period classroom,” she told him. “Under the circumstances…”

Chance nodded. He’d taken to chewing on the inside of his lip.

“As you know, the school’s policy is zero tolerance when it comes to drugs of any kind.”

“I am aware of it,” Chance said.

Holly nodded. A moment passed.

“I guess I’m not quite sure what you’re saying,” Chance said. “Are you telling me this because you wanted me to know? Or are you telling me she’s being kicked out of school?”

“Zero tolerance is just that,” Holly said. “We’re still talking about it, but yes, expulsion is a very real possibility.”

They stood with that, the very real possibility of things.

“And of course I wanted you to know. Whatever happens with the school… you need to know what’s what.”

Chance nodded. He was thinking about what was what.

She affected a look of deep concern. “All of this that’s going on…” she added, treading lightly but treading nonetheless, “…it can be very hard on a child…”

“The divorce.”

“Yes. And I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. But we may see things from our end not so obvious at home, especially when there are two homes. You may not be aware that Nicole’s grades have dropped. Classes she was getting A’s and B’s in last year… If things continue apace, she’s on track for C’s and in one case something less.”

“I’m sorry. I was not aware of that.”

She allowed herself a deep breath. “What I’m seeing is that there may be a pattern developing—falling grades, signs of drug use…”

“I would hardly call a stem in her art box ‘signs of drug use.’ ”

She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “There hasn’t been time for us to talk to her yet about where the marijuana came from… but we’re thinking this today…”

Chance just looked at her.

“The marijuana had to come from somewhere. Did she get it from someone on campus, and if not, then where? Might that have been where she was today, after school? Could there have been more in her purse? Might someone have known about it? Might that have been what the thief was after?” She paused once more. “I don’t know the answers to these questions and I’m not accusing her of anything save what we already know. I also know this has been a rough day… and I am so glad she is okay. But I felt that you needed to hear this. And I wanted to say it to you . Not them.” She looked to the closed door of his office, allowing him to guess that the “them” in question was the uniformed officer now at his dining room table. Who would have thought?

He questioned Nicky himself, later that night. The report had been filed. The police were gone. They were seated on the front step of the porch, a place where they had often sat together when she was very young, in another age of the world.

“What difference does it make if my grades are shitty?” Her starting position. “I’m not going to be there anyway.”

“I’m guessing you’re not serious.”

Nicky looked to the darkness at the foot of the hill.

“You just got smacked and your purse stolen. So let me be blunt. Was there marijuana in your purse? Was there money to buy it? Is that what you were up to?”

She looked at him as if he’d been the one to strike her. “I was on my way to get yogurt. This guy just came at me, out of nowhere.”

“I’m sorry, Nicky, but I had to ask that.”

“Is that was she thinks, Ms. Fatass?”

“Be happy she said it to me and not the cops. That’s called cutting you a break. Where did you get it?”

“At school. Everybody has it.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hands. “This is such bullshit.”

“To a point, yes, but it’s the bullshit we all have to live with. Better to learn how than to rail against it.”

She said nothing and they sat for some time in the soft light of the porch. The night had taken on the salt smell of the ocean. “You know what I remember, sitting here?” Chance asked. He was tired and looking for some happier note on which to end. “I remember the day… you must’ve been about three, and we were sitting here and you said the words outer space out of the blue. Do you remember that?”

Nicky nodded. “Yeah, sort of. I said it was down there.” She pointed toward the end of the street.

Chance laughed. “Yes. I thought it was so strange and funny that you would just come up with a phrase like that, something I’d never heard you say, and when I asked you where outer space was, you pointed down the hill and you said it was down there.” A moment passed. “I remember that like it was yesterday.”

“I guess that’s where I thought it was,” she told him.

He’d pushed her no further on the subject of the stem in her art box. Her final position was the one she’d begun with, that she’d gotten it from someone at school, but would not say whom. “Now or ever.” He was inclined to believe her. Which left the guy coming out of nowhere to slap her and take her purse, either as a random act of violence or because someone had put him up to it, someone who never got his own hands dirty but who got things done. Talk about a fucked-up twenty-four. On the sleepless night that lay before him there could be no consolation in the axiom of choice. The very idea that Raymond Blackstone had reached into his life and touched what was most precious ruled that out, that and pretty much all other consolations as well.

One more letter from the IRS was waiting when he returned to his apartment. And why not? It had been that kind of day. He tossed it unopened upon a small pile of other unopened mail he knew to contain bills from attorneys. There had been times of late, and this was one, when he felt himself to be in the midst of some profound disintegration, as if the mental construct that had been Eldon Chance, cheap trick to begin with, was about to disappear altogether, nothing in its wake but the faint odor of a spoiled egg. He felt the need to confide in someone, to lay bare his fears, to talk about what, if anything at all, could possibly be next, but he had no idea who would want to hear it. Nor could he imagine anyone he knew having anything worthwhile to say on the subject. As far as that went, he had no real idea about who would even take his call at such an hour without thinking him delusional; a pathetic enough admission but there it was. Dwell too long on that, there might well be brains on the ceiling by first light, a brief notice in the Chronicle . Fearing the worst, he broke from his room near midnight and set out by car in the general direction of Allan’s Antiques.