Jane Smiley - Early Warning

Cat was nice, too. In the ongoing tensions about food, Cat was the only one who didn’t care if one of the boys drank her milk, as long as they didn’t drink directly from the carton, and she was the only one who brought popcorn into the living room when everyone was watching television and passed it around. The source of the food problem was really Louis, the mailman. He was always hungry. He bought a lot of food, but if he had eaten it all and it was late at night and there was leftover spaghetti Bolognese in the refrigerator, he would eat it. As for Janet herself, she got a free lunch at Lasagna Paradise, so she didn’t care about anything except dried apricots, and she kept them in her room. She was white, she was bland, she had no stories to tell. She was glad they let her stay and were nice to her.

—

ITHACA WAS farther north than Richie had lived before — already in May it was light into the evening. He looked at his watch, wondering what he was going to eat. He was half a block from the Haunt, and it was a Sunday night. He’d been studying most of the day, which he had to do in order to make up almost the whole semester’s work in his American Twentieth Century History course before his final exam in a week. He liked the Haunt — just the night before, he’d taken Alicia there for a Roscos set and she had gotten pretty wild. Back at his dorm, she had left while he was still sleeping. Since then he hadn’t heard from her. Balch Hall was a good walk from his dorm, and the weather had been cold.

But today was sunny. As Richie came around the curve on Willow, he saw the door open, and a couple come out of the Haunt, laughing. The couple was Alicia and himself. They turned left and headed toward the golf course. He slowed down, because they weren’t walking very fast, and followed them.

Even though he hadn’t seen Michael in a week, the two of them were wearing about the same clothes — jeans, leather jacket. Michael’s hair was longer than his, but only by half an inch or so. Alicia was wearing what he’d last seen her in — a long green skirt, brown boots, and a coat she made herself out of old jeans cut up and sewn together in a star pattern. She had her big canvas bag over her shoulder. Clothing design was her thing; she was a freshman, intending to major in art. Michael had his arm around Alicia’s waist. Richie thought, in a sort of brainless way, “How alike do we look? Does she think she’s with me?” He had never introduced her to Michael.

Michael and Alicia came to the T in the road, where Willow turned left along the inlet where the boat docks were, and Pier Road went right, around the golf course. Since it was May, the golf course was quite green. The sky was clear, too, which was a change. If Michael had decided to take Richie’s girlfriend out to the golf course and fuck her in a sand trap the day before, he would have been out of luck because of rain.

Richie and Alicia had been dating a couple of months. She was from Indianapolis — Alicia Tomassi. She talked a lot, so he knew a lot about her. Her dad worked for a big supermarket chain. Her brother had gone to work there, too, after graduating from Indiana University. Alicia had gone on a hunger strike to get her dad to let her go as far away as Cornell, but that was okay — she’d lost ten pounds and looked a lot better in her designs. She had dark hair to her waist, usually pinned up, and a wiry, serious body, evidently destined for professional success. She never minded a hunger strike, though at Cornell they were called “fasts.” Her hair was already going gray — she plucked a hair or two every day, but she had plenty to spare. She had a great ass, pretty good tits, and great lips. She had a temper, and she hated any kind of tardiness. He’d met her walking across campus: she slipped on some ice, and he caught her. He had not told her that he had a twin.

They passed the green and walked along between the boats and the fairway. He was still maybe twenty-five yards behind them. One foursome was on the green, and he could see another in the distance, getting ready to tee off, waiting for the first foursome to putt. Michael pinched Alicia on the ass. She jumped and yelped, then pushed him away. He laughed a laugh that Richie recognized with his whole body — good-natured on the surface, but vengeful underneath. If there was anything Michael was sure of, it was getting even. Richie’s steps were making sounds on the pavement; he was surprised that Michael hadn’t looked around, because Michael was as jumpy as a cat, a lot like their dad in that way. And if he did look around? Well, that would save Richie a little trouble.

Michael and Alicia paused to watch the foursome at the tee hit their balls. The fairway was long and narrow, but no balls went into the water, and one got most of the way to the green. Michael, Alicia, and of course Richie resumed walking. Ahead, beyond the golf course, was a little park, with plenty of trees. Richie sped up. The breeze was blowing in his direction, and he could just hear what they were saying to each other — Michael had a naturally resonant voice, and Alicia’s was high and piping. Michael was saying, “…should stay around here for the summer. You never know what might happen if you go home.”

“Anything might happen, right?”

“Right.”

They both laughed in a conspiratorial way, and then she said, “You could come to my Dairy Queen. I would serve you.”

“I bet you would.”

They laughed again. Now they came to the woods, and as they stepped from the road onto the path, Alicia took off her coat and handed it to Michael to carry. She was wearing a different shirt from last night — one she had tie-dyed to look like sunbursts were popping out of a blue sky. Last night she’d been wearing whitish lace, also homemade. Richie followed them into the woods, and when they were all three pretty deep in the shadows, he scraped his feet in the dirt and leaves, and the other two spun around. Really, he was no more than fifteen feet behind them at this point.

Michael grinned, and said, “Shit, man! What the hell?”

Alicia’s mouth opened in a little O, but then she smiled, too. She swayed her hips and let her eyelids drift half shut. She moved away from Michael just a centimeter, but he pulled her to him and made her keep walking. He said, “How’d you do that, man? You popped out of nowhere.”

Richie didn’t say anything, just went up on the other side of Alicia and put his arm around her, though her bag bounced between them. Three Musketeers. They kept walking.

Richie couldn’t have said that they were both going to have sex with her. He didn’t know if his mind proposed the idea or received the idea, and though he often received ideas from Michael, he also didn’t know if this idea was Michael’s or Alicia’s. Alicia seemed to like rough sex — she fought him off a little bit, and then laughed when he pushed her. She picked fights about other things, too, like whether a compliment he gave her was sincere or not, and then she made up quite enthusiastically, so he had come to realize that arguing was a bit of a game with her. He’d thought she was beyond him in some ways, but now Michael was looking down at her and laughing at her as if she were funny.

At a clearing, not grassy but soft with leaves and mulch, Michael said, “Lie down, bitch,” and Alicia said, “Fuck you, asshole.” Richie couldn’t tell if they were joking. He held back for half a second, and then stepped over the tree root. He said, “You two been seeing each other long?”

“Couple of weeks,” said Michael. “Long enough.”

Picking her bag up and setting it beside her, Alicia said, “How about you guys?”

Michael said, “Never saw this little fucker in my life before,” and laughed.

Alicia said, “Looks like two against one.”