The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [203]
The office door creaked open, waking Schwartz, who’d been dozing at Affenlight’s desk. Morning light leaked through the blinds. Schwartz jumped up, not wanting to get caught by Mrs. McCallister, who preferred both him and the dog to sleep upstairs. But it was Pella, freshly showered and dressed for work. She hadn’t so much as poked her head in here all summer. “Hi,” she said, and plunked down on the love seat, and told him what she wanted to do.
Schwartz said nothing for a while; just leaned back in the president’s chair. She’s been reading too much, he thought—had drifted across that line that separated what you might find in a book from what you might do. “I think we should think about this,” he finally said.
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
Maybe it was the morning light, or the heat of the shower still flushing her cheeks, but she looked sharpened and repaired. “We have to,” she said. “We have to.”
“You can’t just dig up a body.”
“Why not? It’s my dad. It’s my plot. It’s my coffin.” She swept a hand over the room. “You’ve been through all this stuff. So show me where it says, ‘Put me in a box. With fake gold trim. And then stick it in the ground.’ Show me where it says that.”
Schwartz went to the love seat and sat down beside her. He zipped her hoodie up to her chin and gently knotted the strings. This gesture used to bug her—it bugged her right now—but at least she’d figured out what he meant by it: you are mine.
“It just makes sense,” she said. “My dad loved this lake. He spent three years on a ship. He spent half my childhood rowing on the Charles. It’s what he would have wanted.”
Schwartz, having passed the summer among all this Affenlight-annotated Melvilleania, the memoirs of whaling ships, merchant ships, naval ships, couldn’t disagree. “I understand why you want to do it this way—”
“We should have done it this way to begin with. If I’d had time to think it through, we would have. If I hadn’t been so upset.”
“I see what you’re saying. But it’s just not possible. It’s a felony, for one thing”—Schwartz was bluffing, but he figured it could easily be a felony—“and you’ve got to remember how deep that hole is. And how much that box weighs. It would take forever. One person walks by and we’re sitting in jail.”
“Fine by me.” Pella smiled, and Schwartz knew that he had lost the argument, had lost it before it began. He ran his hand over his deepening widow’s peak, scratched his softening belly. He hadn’t worked out once since May.
He half hoped that Owen would veto the scheme, but Owen just nodded and said, “Call Henry.”
80
Henry,” Owen said warmly, wrapping his slender fingers around what remained of his roommate’s biceps. “Is that you? You’re skinnier than I am.”
Schwartz held out his fist and Henry bumped it with his own, and Pella could tell from their somber, ceremonious expressions that their feud, or whatever you’d call it, had ended. Men were such odd creatures. They didn’t duel anymore, even fistfights had come to seem barbaric, the old casual violence all channeled through institutions now, but still they loved to uphold their ancient codes. And what they loved even more was to forgive each other. Pella felt like she knew a lot about men, but she couldn’t imagine what it