Lost Between Houses (23 page)

“There’s nothing final about this. All right? It’s just for now.”

“Will you get an apartment when you get back?”

“I don’t know, Simon. I really don’t. God’s teeth!”

“That would be cool though, you know. I could come and stay with you. Better, I could come and
live
with you. Get out of boarding. God, that would be fabulous.”

“Well, we’ll just have to see, Simon.”

And after awhile we started talking about other stuff, all sorts of things, Scarlet, Psycho, that time she went out with Errol Flynn.

“Did you know,” she said, “they almost named me Mabel? The nun said to my mother, ‘you’ve got five seconds to think of a name or we’re going to name her Mabel.’ And my mother said, ‘uh, uh, Virginia.’ It just
popped
out. Virginia Wolfe, that was my name. Imagine that. Ever since that play, people have been coming up to me at parties and saying, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It’s so
irritating.”

“So what do you say?”

“Oh, I just bare my fangs and smile and pretend I’ve never heard it before. I wrote a story for
The New Yorker
once, you know. It was published. It was quite good. But then I got married and…”

“To the race car driver?”

“Yes. Tommy. So handsome. But a drinker. He hid his bottles in our fireplace, under the ashes, and one day I found them and I just walked out of our apartment. And the next thing I knew, I was at a party over on St George Street and your father was there. Fresh back from the war. He was such a gent. That’s the one thing about your father. He’s a
gent.
There aren’t many of those out there in the world. I know.”

And when I looked at her, I felt something sink in my stomach. She still loves him, I thought. She’s going to go away and she’s going to miss him. She going to look around Palm Beach and she won’t find any gents, not like him, and she’ll come back. She’ll come back to him and nothing’s going to change.
Nothing is euer going to change.

It started snowing early in the morning. The air all soft, these big snowflakes drifting by the window of Latin class, like somebody had had a huge pillow fight and all the feathers were slowly settling to earth. I lay with my head on my arms, old Willie Orr
grinding on about the Gauls seizing and carrying off the Etruscan women and everybody kind of giggling until old Willie had finally had enough and he went over and cuffed some kid on the back of his dandruffy head and the whole class jumped like a herd of gazelles. And then everybody settled down again, the snow falling, Willie droning, the heating pipes going clank, clank every so often like some little man, way on the other side of the school, was smacking them with a crowbar. The wall clock went click, click and the arm jumped forward. One more minute gone. Sometimes, looking up at the clock, I’d get a wave of panic, like I was trapped in a car and we were going to keep driving back and forth across the same parking lot for eternity.

Anyway, finally enough Etruscan women had gotten seized and carried off for one day and we hustled out of Latin with that blast of energy you get at the end of something fatally boring. If you’re not careful you can mistake it for having liked the class. But it’s just relief.

By noon the back playing fields were covered in snow. A couple of Bishop Strachan girls walked by the main gates, their heads down, snowflakes covering their capes. You could see their bare legs underneath. And the long grey socks they wore up to their knees. Their legs always looked red and splotchy in this weather. Raw. Can’t imagine how their teachers let them out of the school in such silly clothes. It’d be like my parents letting me wander around in shorts in the middle of the winter. Just before dark, there was this weird blue light that fell over the fields and schoolyard, downright biblical. From the second-floor window, I could see some little kid pulling his toboggan across the field, all done up in his snowsuit, scarf wrapped around his neck. A delivery truck made its way up the main drive into the school, sliding sideways and coming to a complete halt.

It just went on and on, the snow. It blew sideways; snow heaped up on the windowsills, on the stairs leading to the dining room, even on your eyebrows when you walked across the quad. It was like divine intervention. Going to fuck up everything tomorrow, the whole city was going to come to a standstill, half the dayboys wouldn’t turn up, the teachers, seeing there was just half a class, would throw us a spare, let us talk. Always great, those days, a feeling like something different was happening.

Near nine that night I was back in my dorm, scraping a picture in the frost on the window with my fingernail; a balloon with two eyes and a smile and a long, wiggly string. If you didn’t know better, you’d think I could really draw. But it was the only one I could do. This little genius guy with a brushcut, John Fraser, showed me how to do it years ago and I’d been perfecting it ever since.

Harper phoned.

“Listen,” he said, “you gotta do me a favour. The old man called. I think he’s freaking out a bit up at the cottage. The place is pretty fucking barren and he’s been all by himself up there for like three weeks now. He asked me to go up and see him this weekend. I mean he didn’t come out and say it, he just made some bullshit excuse that he needed me to help him with the storm windows. But I think he’s lonely, and I can’t go. I’ve got this chick I’ve got to see. Can you go? Just for the weekend. I feel kind of bad about him being up there.”

“No,” I said, “I can’t. That’s a whole weekend leave. That means I’d have to give up Saturday night next weekend. I can’t do that. Not to go up there.”

“Jesus, Simon, he really sounds fucked.”

“Well, you go. I can’t. Last thing I want to do with my spare time is spend it with that asshole.”

“Great, Simon. Just great. Like you’re so fucking selfish sometimes I can’t believe it.”

“
I’m
selfish? Look who the fuck is talking. Here I am in San Quentin and you won’t leave town because you want to get your wad sucked. And I am getting sick and tired of hearing that word,
selfish.”

“Well think about it anyway, will you? Just think about it?”

“Sure, I’ll think about it. I promise.”

And then I put the phone down and never gave it another thought.

For three days it snowed and it snowed and it snowed. And then one night, right after announcements, it stopped. Just like that, like flicking off a light switch. I opened the window and a pile of snow fell onto the floor. It was soft as grass though, soft and glittery. The moon hung in the sky and I could see my own breath. Suddenly my ears started ringing.
Somebody must be thinking about you,
that’s what my mother would say.

A little bit later, that bow-legged fuckweed was standing in my doorway, telling me there was a phone call for me.

“Some weather eh?” Scarlet said. “Doesn’t it just make you want to go outside and
do
something? Roll in the snow. Steal something. Throw a rock through a window. Kiss somebody. It’s so exciting. You know that sound, the sound cars make when they hit each other, that sort of
crunch.
God, I love that. That’s a real winter sound.”

At the top of the stairs I could see a pair of cowboy boots; the hall prefect was still there, listening.

“I think I got a bit of an audience here,” I said.

The boots didn’t move.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll talk. You just say yes or no. Do you have a roommate?”

“Yep.”

“Is he a snitch?”

“Nope.”

“Like if you snuck out, would he tell on you?”

I scraped out a groove in the wood with my thumbnail and then blew away the guck.

“Nope.”

After awhile she said, “Because I’ve got an idea.”

After midnight I slid open the window and dropped out into the fresh snow. E.K., having jerked off under the covers the usual six times, had fallen into his nightly coma. I didn’t move. I stood there for a second, looking this way and that. A gust of cold wind blew, the snow all sparkly and exciting under the moon. I ran across the quad and stopped just before the entrance. I didn’t want to run into Psycho coming back from walking his dog, this really ugly-looking boxer. It’s true what they say, by the way: eventually dogs and their masters begin to look like each other. But there was nobody there. I hurried across the upper cricket pitch, the snow coming in over the tops of my shoes. I was a perfect target out there, under a full moon, running knee-deep in the snow. I felt like I was in a movie, running away from prison. Steve McQueen, one of those guys. Over my shoulder I could see the big yellow school clock, same one I remember looking at way up on the ferris wheel, the night Scarlet dumped me. Wow. Who’d have figured on this one?

Finally I got to the fence, these tall wooden pickets, just right for keeping out the barbarians. I followed them down till I got to the gate. It was frozen shut. I had to bang it a few times until it snapped open. I stepped out under the streetlights, then nipped across Forest Hill Road, past that house where that black-haired
girl let me feel her up, and ran along Frybrook. At the far end of the street, maybe a hundred yards away, were the lower playing fields of Bishop Strachan. I headed toward them. I didn’t even mind the cold on my feet. I turned up Warren Road and ran uphill alongside the playing fields and then turned in that little circular driveway where the little squirts get dropped off by the parents. I went over and gave the window a little push. I had to lean over the railing just a bit and when I did I caught a reflection of the moon. The window opened. I pushed it wide, checked over my shoulder and slid in head first, landing like a big bundle of laundry on the floor. You could tell, even in the dark, it was a classroom, the way it smelt, the dust, the chalk, the wood they make those desks from. And something else, too. Something different. I went to the door and peeked out. Sure enough, down the end of a dark hall was a big red exit sign. A fool couldn’t miss it. So I went back into the classroom, took off my shoes, emptied out the snow and put them back on. Then I started down the hall, keeping very close to the wall. I heard a click, then another click; they must have had the same fucking clocks as the ones we had at Upper Canada. I looked up. Sure enough, there it was. Sometime past twelve-thirty. I got to the end of the hall and I started up the stairs. Very carefully, I climbed a few steps, then listened, another few steps, then listened, heart banging away. I could feel the air change, it smelt different there, like the bodies of sleeping girls. Like the way Scarlet’s bedroom smelt, only a hundred times stronger.

I got to the third floor and I started along the hallway. A floorboard creaked, I mean it was like a shriek so I stepped over to the side, as far as I could get, my shoulder brushing the brick, and standing on my tiptoes I made my way down the hall till I got to the room with the red card. I opened the door. I heard a sheet rustle inside. I shut the door behind me.

“Is that you?” she whispered. “I never thought you’d come. I thought you’d chicken out.”

I felt my way across the room and sat down on the side of the bed. For a moment everything was absolutely silent. The hall clock clicked again.

“Strange, eh?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Being here.”

“Very.”

“It smells nice.”

“Yeah?”

“I like the way girls’ rooms smell.”

“You must have a sensitive nose. I can’t tell the difference.”

She didn’t say anything else and I looked out the window. You could see a yellow light at the far end of the playing field.

“Who lives there?” I asked.

“Where?”

I took her hand and pointed out the window.

“That little house there.”

“Oh there. That’s the groundskeeper. He drinks. We stay away from there after dark.”

She lowered her hand; it was under mine but she didn’t move it.

“So are you still mad at me?” she said.

“I was never mad at you.”

“You should have been.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Honest?”

“Honest.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Things got quiet again.

“I can hardly see you,” she said. “Can you see me?”

“Sort of.”

“I let my hair grow.”

“Yes, I see that.”

“Does it look French?”

“Yes.”

“Not that it makes any difference in boarding school. You never see anyone. By the end of the term all the girls are wearing sweat pants anyway. It’s the potatoes they feed you. Just like jail.”

Just then, down the hall, a door opened and a pair of naked feet, you could tell by the sound, started down the hall in the other direction. The board shrieked again.

“See what I mean?” she whispered, “It’s like a chicken coop in here.”

“But why do they all go the bathroom?”

“Wash their hands, probably. They don’t like the smell of it.”

“Of what?”

“You know.”

“Oh that.”

“Some guys get up right after and go wash their hands. You know, like they’ve been working with battery acid or something.”

“Sometimes you talk like a guy, Scarlet.”

“That’s because I’m part lesbo.”

“Are you part lesbo?”

“Everybody’s part something.”

“I’m not part homo.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I am not.”

“You mean you never played doctor when you were a little kid? Or jacked off with another guy?”

“Jesus, Scarlet, your mouth.”

“But you did, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t. Never. Not once. Matter of fact, I had a friend once who took me down to his basement and asked me if I wanted to play doctor and I thought he was like mentally ill. I never liked him again. Jesus, what an idea.”

“Well, that’s very unusual.”

“I don’t think so.”

The hall clock clicked again.

“Your pants are wet. I can feel them through the sheets.”

“I should take them off.”

She didn’t say anything and a minute later, I got into bed beside her.

“Don’t do anything, okay? This is weird enough,” she said.

“I hope no one comes in.”