Donna Tartt - The Secret History

If she was surprised to see him, she didn't show it. 'Oh, hello,' she said to him, reaching down to dust off her knees.

'Hi.' He glanced away in a studied, offhanded manner. We all knew Cloke was sort of interested in her, but even if he hadn't been, Camilla was not exactly the sort of girl one expected to find making out with someone in a locked bathroom.

She brushed past us and headed downstairs. I started down, too, but Cloke coughed in a significant manner and I turned around.

He leaned back against the wall, looking at me as if he'd had me figured out from the day I was born. 'So,' he said. His shirt was unironed and his shirttails were out; and though his eyes were red, I didn't know if he was stoned or just tired. 'How's it going?'

I paused on the landing. Camilla was at the foot of the steps, out of earshot. 'All right,' I said.

'What's the story?'

'What?'

'Better not let Kathy catch you guys screwing around in her bathroom. She'll make you walk to the bus station.'

His tone was neutral. Still, I was reminded of the business with Mona's boyfriend the week before. Cloke, however, presented little or nothing in the way of physical threat and besides, he had problems enough of his own.

'Look,' I said, 'you've got it wrong.'

'I don't care. I'm just telling you.'

'Well, I'm telling you. Believe it or not, I don't care.'

Cloke fished lazily in his pocket, came out with a pack of Marlboros so crumpled and flat that it did not seem possible that a cigarette could be inside it. He said: 'I thought she was seeing somebody.'

'For God's sake.'

He shrugged. 'It's no business of mine,' he said, extracting one crooked cigarette and crushing the empty pack in his hand. 'People were bothering me at school, so I was staying on their couch before we came down here. I've heard her talking on the phone.'

'And saying what?'

'Oh, nothing, but like two or three in the morning, whispering, you've got to wonder.' He smiled bleakly. 'I guess she thinks I'm passed out but to tell you the truth I haven't been sleeping all that well… Right,' he said, when I didn't answer. 'You don't know a thing about it.'

'I don't.'

'Sure.'

'I really don't.'

'So what were you doing in there?'

I looked at him for a moment, and then I took out a handful of pills and held them out on my open palm.

He leaned forward, brows knit, and then, quite suddenly, his foggy eyes became intelligent and alert. He selected a capsule and held it up to the light in businesslike fashion. 'What is it?' he said. 'Do you know?'

'Sudafed,' I said. 'Don't bother. There's nothing in there.'

He chuckled. 'Know why?' he said, looking at me for the first time with real friendliness. 'That's because you were looking in the wrong place.'

'What?'

He glanced over his shoulder. 'Down the hall. Off the master bedroom. I would have told you if you'd asked.'

I was startled. 'How do you know?'

He pocketed the capsule and raised an eyebrow at me. 'I practically grew up in this house,' he said. 'Old Kathy is on about sixteen different types of dope.'

I looked back at the closed door of the master bedroom.

'No,' he said. 'Not now.'

'Why not?'

'Bunny's grandma. She has to lie down after she eats. We'll come up later.'

Things downstairs had cleared out some, but not much. Camilla was nowhere in sight. Charles, bored and drunk, his back in a corner, was holding a glass to his temple as a tearful Marion babbled away – her hair pulled back in one of those tremendous preppy bows from the Talbots catalogue. I hadn't had a chance to speak to him because she had shadowed him almost constantly since we arrived; why she had latched so firmly on to him I don't know, except that she wasn't talking to Cloke, and Bunny's brothers were either married or engaged, and of the remaining males in her age group – Bunny's cousins, Henry and me, Bram Guernsey and Rooney Wynne – Charles was by far the best looking.

He glanced at me over her shoulder. I didn't have the stomach to go over and rescue him, and I looked away; but just then a toddler – fleeing his grinning, jug-eared brother – slid into my legs and almost knocked me down.

They dodged round me in circles. The smaller one, terrified and shrieking, dove to the floor and grabbed my knees. 'Butthole,' he sobbed.

The other one stopped and took a step backwards, and there was something nasty and almost lascivious about the look on his face. 'Oh, Dad,' he sang, his voice like spilled syrup. 'Oh, Daayid.'

Across the room, Hugh Corcoran turned, glass in hand. 'Don't make me come over there, Brandon,' he said.

'But Corey called you a butthole, Daayid.'

'You're a butthole,' sobbed the little one. 'You you you.'

I pried him off my leg and went looking for Henry. He and Mr Corcoran were in the kitchen, surrounded by a semicircle of people: Mr Corcoran, who had his arm around Henry, looked as if he'd had a few too many.

'Now Kathy and I,' he said, in a loud, didactic voice, 'have always opened our home to young people. Always an extra place at the table. First thing you know, they'd be coming to Kathy and me with their problems, too. Like this guy,' he said, jostling Henry. Till never forget the time he came up to me one night 45i I after supper. He said, "Mack" – all the kids call me Mack – "I'd like to ask your advice about something, man to man."

"Well, before you start, son," I said, "I want to tell you just one thing.

I think I know boys pretty well. I raised five of ' em myself. And I had four brothers when I was coming up, so I guess you might call me a pretty good authority on boys in general He rambled on with this fraudulent recollection while Henry, pale and ill, endured his prods and backslaps as a well-trained dog will tolerate the pummeling of a rough child. The story itself was ludicrous. It had a dynamic and strangely hot-headed young Henry wanting to rush out and buy a used single-engine airplane against the advice of his parents.

'But this guy was determined,' said Mr Corcoran. 'He was going to get that plane or bust. After he'd told me all about it I sat there for a minute and then I took a deep breath and I said, m "Henry, son, she sounds like a beaut, but I'm still going to have to be a square and agree with your folks. Let me tell you why that is."'

'Hey, Dad,' said Patrick Corcoran, who had just come in to fix himself another drink. He was slighter than Bun, heavily freckled, but he had Bunny's sandy hair and his sharp little nose.

'Dad, you're all mixed up. That didn't happen to Henry. That was Hugh's old friend Walter Ballantine.'

'Bosh,' said Mr Corcoran.

'Sure it was. And he ended up buying the plane anyway.

Hugh?' he shouted into the next room. 'Hugh, do you remember Walter Ballantine?'

'Sure,' said Hugh, and appeared in the doorway. He had by the wrist the kid Brandon, who was twisting and trying furiously to get away. 'What about him?'

'Didn't Walter wind up buying that little Bonanza?'

'It wasn't a Bonanza,' said Hugh, ignoring with a glacial calm the thrashing and yelps of his son. 'It was a Beechcraft. No, I know what you're thinking,' he said, as both Patrick and his father started to object. 'I drove out to Danbury with Walter to look at a little converted Bonanza, but the guy wanted way too much. Those things cost a fortune to maintain, and there was plenty wrong with it, too. He was selling it because he couldn't afford to keep it.'

'What about this Beechcraft, then?' said Mr Corcoran. His hand had slipped from Henry's shoulder. 'I've heard that's an excellent little outfit.'

'Walter had some trouble with it. Got it through an ad in the Pennysaver, off some retired congressman from New Jersey. He'd used it to fly around in while he was campaigning and '