Frederick Busch - Girls

Her face was crimson. She looked like a child in a terrible moment who was making it go away by closing her eyes.

“Here I go,” I said.

“You don’t have to.”

I said, “Then open your eyes.”

She stood in her kitchen, slight and red. She opened her eyes, she looked at me, and she put her hands to her face and then covered her eyes with them. She laughed a grown-up’s laugh. She said, “I can’t, Jack. Can I — why don’t I — why don’t we call each other up or something?”

I did walk back across her little kitchen and kiss her lightly on the mouth and then the nose before I left. I did have to do that. I was making it a morning of doing all I could to be wrong.

When I saw Archie Halpern on campus late that afternoon, I asked him about people who might want to talk to one Roger Gambrelle about his rap music, his racism or his reverse racism or his racism inside out. Archie wore a Russian fur cap about two feet tall. His old-fashioned plaid mackinaw was the blue of a bathrobe I had worn as a child in 1950 something. His round face was red from the cold and his five o’clock shadow had set in. He looked like leftovers.

His little eyes were full of pleasure when he said, “I just might pay cash money to eavesdrop on you, telling this boy to lay off the famous Niva.”

“She’s famous?”

“Half the males in the senior class report to the infirmary with knotted testes on account of her. She’s the Catch. She’s smart, capable, tough, exotic as hell around here, in white-bread country, and the daughter of the president of the Denver Chamber of Commerce. Somebody said she sends for her underwear to Victoria’s Secret, and guys started camping near the mailroom. No, don’t go after Gambrelle. God, I can see it. The kid limps into class with a sling on his ass and two black eyes—”

“Hey, Archie, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a joke, Jack. What’d you think it’s supposed to mean? You’re a little sensitive.”

“You’re right. I apologize.”

“You don’t need to apologize to me. I was just pointing something out to you.”

“You always point something out to me. You’re usually right.”

“So how come, if I’m so smart, we don’t declare the campus a neurosis-free zone? You shithead. Relax. I’ll whisper a word to Gambrelle in the laid-back, subtle way I’m famous for. You know: Gambrelle, stay the fuck away from Niva.”

I loved it when he laughed. His laughter reminded me of feeling only good. Archie moved on, and I walked back to the truck, checked in on the radio, and continued to circle the campus slowly, top to bottom, side to side, selecting buildings randomly just to walk through. Students didn’t see me because I was a support service. They were accustomed to acknowledging one another and their teachers, not the vomit-moppers or thermostat repairmen, and surely not the campus cops. Janice Tanner’s face flapped in the wind outside, stirred in the hallways whenever a door was opened, and stared out of car windows over and over in the parking lots.

It was time to get to the library. I’d been summoned for three, and I showed up a few minutes early. There were two FBI agents and the Secret Service men, and Anthony Berberich had showed up as instructed by me. Our job was to keep people assembled in the big anteroom near the circulation desk while the president and the dean, who looked like men who didn’t have a choice, went through the reference section toward Irene Horstmuller’s office, a few feet behind the four federal agents. It looked as though they were trying to get ahead of the agents, but the agents closed up tight and edged the administrators back. Some faculty and students and library staff were behind me as I watched.

I said, turning, “We’re required to stay back here, folks.”

“Fuckin’ fascists,” a student said. He was about five feet tall and maybe Korean, with a sweet, open face. As I looked him over, he checked me out. “Cop motherfucker,” he said.

I said, “What’s your name?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Chang,” he said.

I stuck my hand out. “Hi, Chang. I’m Jack.”

He let me shake his hand. He stared at me a few seconds more, and then his mouth collapsed into a smile.

One of the women at the checkout desk said, “You think they’ll put her in handcuffs?”

“I think they have to,” I said. “They’ll serve the subpoena.”

“She’ll tell ’em to stick it in the great anal darkness,” Chang said.

“Then they can arrest her,” I said. “And take the files.”

The woman at the desk, who had a round, impressively hairy face, smiled larger than Chang. “We don’t have any,” she said.

I said, “You shredded them?”

“No,” the woman said, “they were in the mainframe. Irene accessed them yesterday.”

“And had an accident,” I said.

She said, “Whoops.”

“Darn,” Chang said.

The Secret Service men came first, the crease of their dark gray trousers cutting the air. They were followed by Irene Horstmuller, in coat and hat and gloves, looking a little tense at the mouth. Then came the FBI. When she saw us, Horstmuller’s face began to collapse. She fought the tears. She raised her hands and, as the sleeves of the coat slid down, the handcuffs were exposed.

“Fascist cocksucker motherfuckers,” Chang said.

As they passed and the little patter of applause died, I said to Chang, “I bet you there’s a backup.”

“I bet you she found it.”

“That’d be good,” I said. “Unless, of course, the Vice President gets damaged.”

Chang said, “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, baby.”

I asked him, “Is that one of those Harry Truman sayings?”

“Truman? You kidding me?”

“I’m only guessing,” I said, gesturing to Berberich that he could leave, “but Truman’s a running dog of fascism, right?”

When I got home, it was snowing hard again. I didn’t want to be inside alone, so while the dog had his little freedom romp, I sat in the kitchen and put on the greasy old cross-country boots and used cold wax on the skis instead of heating it. I made sure the flashlight was bright, I stuck a light scarf of Fanny’s in the pocket of my parka, and I fed the dog. He smelled the boots, I guess, or he read my intentions, the way he so often does. Twice when he went to the door, I had to send him back to his food. When he was done, we went outside. On the steps of the porch, I clamped myself into the skis. He checked me out, tore off in the wrong direction, came back, jumped, somehow, sideways in the air, went in a different wrong direction, then came back and waited, panting hard, for me to lean forward on my poles, imitating a man who stretches before skiing.

I headed for the field that lay to the north of the house and the west of the woods below us. It was a little sticky at first, and I was a little creaky, but I needed to work away the soreness of my arms, real or imagined, that I’d felt since beating on William Franklin. After a while, I caught something that reminded me of the old push-and-release rhythm, and though I probably panted more loudly than the dog, I went through the thick snow, and into the snow that was falling, with the mixed purpose you feel when you’re skiing well crosscountry. You have the effort that makes you think you’re pursuing something, and you have no real destination, so you aren’t worried about progress. You just row away with your arms and you step into the slide and you let it go, and everything’s focused for you in your knees and, of course, breathing, which wasn’t all that easy that night, what with the cold and the years and the defiantly bad conditioning.