Donna Tartt - The Secret History

Then put it on your card.'

'I don't have a card.'

'Oh, come on.'

'I don't,' I said, growing more irritated by the second.

Bunny pushed back his chair and stood up and looked around the restaurant with a studied carelessness, like a detective cruising a hotel lobby, and for one wild moment I thought he was going to make a dash for it. Then he clapped me on the shoulder. 'Sit tight, old man,' he whispered. 'I'm going to make a phone call.'

And then he was off, his fists in his pockets, the white of his socks flashing in the dim.

He was gone a long time. I was wondering if he was going to come back at all, if he hadn't just crawled out a window and left me to foot the bill, when finally a door shut somewhere and he sauntered back across the room.

'Worry not, worry not,' he said as he slid into his chair. 'All's well.'

'What'd you do?'

'Called Henry.'

'He's coming?'

'In two shakes.'

'Is he mad?'

'Naw,' said Bunny, brushing off this thought with a slight flick of the hand. 'Happy to do it. Between you and me, I think he's damned glad to get out of the house.'

After maybe ten extremely uncomfortable minutes, during which we pretended to sip at the dregs of our ice-cold coffee, Henry walked in, a book beneath his arm.

'See?' whispered Bunny. 'Knew he'd come. Oh, hello,' he said, as Henry approached the table. 'Boy am I glad to see '

'Where's the check,' said Henry, in a toneless and deadly voice.

'Here you are, old pal,' said Bunny, fumbling among the cups and glasses. 'Thanks a million. I really owe you '

'Hello,' said Henry coldly, turning to me.

'Hello.'

'How are you?' He was like a robot.

'Fine.'

That's good.'

'Here you go, old top,' said Bunny, producing the check.

Henry looked hard at the total, his face motionless.

'Well,' said Bunny chummily, his voice booming in the tense silence, 'I'd apologize for dragging you away from your book if you hadn't brought it with you. What you got there? Any good?'

Without a word, Henry handed it to him. The lettering on the front was in some Oriental language. Bunny stared at it for a moment, then gave it back. 'That's nice,' he said faintly.

'Are you ready to go?' Henry said abruptly.

'Sure, sure,' said Bunny hastily, leaping up and nearly knocking over the table. 'Say the word. Undele, undele. Any time you want.'

Henry paid the check while Bunny hung behind him like a bad child. The ride home was excruciating. Bunny, in the back seat, kept up a sally of brilliant but doomed attempts at conversation, which one by one flared and sank, while Henry kept his eyes on the road and I sat in the front beside him, fidgeting with the built-in ashtray, snapping it in and out till finally I realized how irritating this was and forced myself, with difficulty, to stop.

He stopped at Bunny's first. Bellowing a chain of incoherent pleasantries, Bunny slapped me on the shoulder and leapt out of the car. 'Yes, well, Henry, Richard, here we are. Lovely. Fine.

Thank you so much – beautiful lunch – well, toodle-oo, yes, yes, goodbye -' The door slammed and he shot up the walk at a rapid clip.

Once he was inside, Henry turned to me. 'I'm very sorry,' he said.

'Oh, no, please,' I said, embarrassed. 'Just a mix-up. I'll pay you back.'

He ran a hand through his hair and I was surprised to see it was trembling. 'I wouldn't dream of such a thing,' he said curtly.

'It's his fault.'

'But '

'He told you he was taking you out. Didn't he?'

His voice had a slightly accusatory note. 'Well, yes,' I said.

'And just happened to leave his wallet at home.'

'It's all right.'

'It's not all right,' Henry snapped. 'It's a terrible trick. How were you to know? He takes it on faith that whoever he's with can produce tremendous sums at a moment's notice. He never thinks about these things, you know, how awkward it is for everyone. Besides, what if I hadn't been at home?'

'I'm sure he really just forgot.'

'You took a taxi there,' said Henry shortly. 'Who paid for that?'

Automatically I started to protest, and then stopped cold. Bunny had paid for the taxi. He'd even made sort of a big deal of it.

'You see,' said Henry. 'He's not even very clever about it, is he? It's bad enough he does it to anyone but I must say I never thought he'd have the nerve to try it on a perfect stranger.'

I didn't know what to say. We drove to the front of Monmouth in silence.

'Here you are,' he said. 'I'm sorry.'

'It's fine, really. Thank you, Henry.'

'Good night, then.'

I stood under the porch light and watched him drive away.

Then I went inside and up to my room, where I collapsed on my bed in a drunken stupor.

'We heard all about your lunch with Bunny,' said Charles.

I laughed. It was late the next afternoon, a Sunday, and I'd been at my desk nearly all day reading the Parmenides. The Greek was rough going but I had a hangover, too, and I'd been at it so long that the letters didn't even look like letters but something else, indecipherable, bird footprints on sand. I was staring out the window in a sort of trance, at the meadow cropped close like bright green velvet and billowing into carpeted hills at the horizon, when I saw the twins, far below, gliding like a pair of ghosts on the lawn.

I leaned out the window and called to them. They stopped and turned, hands shading brows, eyes screwed up against the evening glare. 'Hello,' they called, and their voices, faint and ragged, were almost one voice floating up to me. 'Come down.'

So now we were walking in the grove behind the college, down by the scrubby little pine forest at the base of the mountains, with one of them on either side of me.

They looked particularly angelic, their blond hair windblown, both in white tennis sweaters and tennis shoes. I wasn't sure why they'd asked me down. Though polite enough, they seemed wary and slightly puzzled, as if I were from some country with unfamiliar, eccentric customs, which made it necessary for them to take great caution in order not to startle or offend.

'How'd you hear about it?' I said. 'The lunch?'

'Bun called this morning. And Henry told us about it last night.'

'I think he was pretty mad.'

Charles shrugged. 'Mad at Bunny, maybe. Not at you.'

'They don't care for each other, do they?'

They seemed astonished to hear this.

'They're old friends,' said Camilla.

'Best friends, I would say,' said Charles. 'At one time you never saw them apart.'

'They seem to argue quite a bit.'

'Well, of course,' said Camilla, 'but that doesn't mean they're not fond of each other all the same. Henry's so serious and Bun's so sort of – well, not serious – that they really get along quite well.'

'Yes,' said Charles. 'L'Allegro and II Penseroso. A well-matched pair. I think Bunny's about the only person in the world who can make Henry laugh.' He stopped suddenly and pointed into the distance. 'Have you ever been down there?' he said. 'There's a graveyard on that hill.' j I could see it, just barely, through the pines – a flat, straggled line of tombstones, rickety and carious, skewed at such angles that they gave a hectic, uncanny effect of motion, as if some j hysterical force, a poltergeist perhaps, had scattered them only moments before.

'It's old,' said Camilla. 'From the i,'oos. There was a town there too, a church and a mill. Nothing left but foundations, but you can still see the gardens they planted. Pippin apples and wintersweet, moss roses growing where the houses were. God knows what happened up there. An epidemic, maybe. Or a fire.'

'Or the Mohawks,' said Charles. 'You'll have to go see it sometime. The cemetery especially.'

'It's pretty. Especially in the snow.'

The sun was low, burning gold through the trees, casting our shadows before us on the ground, long and distorted. We walked for a long time without saying anything. The air was musty with far-off bonfires, sharp with the edge of a twilight chill. There was no noise but the crunch of our shoes on the gravel path, the whistle of wind in the pines; I was sleepy and my head hurt and there was something not quite real about any of it, something like a dream. I felt that at any moment I might start, my head on a pile of books at my desk, and find myself in a darkening room, alone.