The Secret History - Donna Tartt [131]
“Come on,” I said.
She raised up on tiptoe and gave me a cool, soft kiss that tasted of Popsicles. Oh, you, I thought, my heart beating fast and shallow.
Suddenly, she broke away. “I’ve got to go,” she said.
“No. Please don’t.”
“I’ve got to. They’ll wonder where I am.”
She gave me a quick kiss, then turned and started down the street. I watched her until she reached the corner, then dug my hands in my pockets and started back home.
I woke the next day with a start, to chill sunlight and the thump of a stereo down the hall. It was late, noon, or maybe even afternoon; I reached for my watch on the night table and started again, more violently this time. It was a quarter of three. I jumped out of bed and began to dress, in great haste, without bothering to shave or even comb my hair.
Pulling on my jacket in the hall, I saw Judy Poovey walking briskly toward me. She was all dressed up, for Judy, and she had her head to the side attempting to fasten an earring.
“You coming?” she said when she saw me.
“Coming where?” I said, puzzled, my hand still on the doorknob.
“What is it with you? Do you live on Mars or what?”
I stared at her.
“The party,” she said impatiently. “Swing into Spring. Up behind Jennings. It started an hour ago.”
The edges of her nostrils were inflamed and rabbity, and she reached up to wipe her nose with a red-taloned hand.
“Let me guess what you’ve been doing,” I said.
She laughed. “I have lots more. Jack Teitelbaum drove to New York last weekend and came back with a ton. And Laura Stora has Ecstasy, and that creepy guy in Durbinstall basement—you know, the chemistry major—just cooked up a big batch of meth. You’re trying to tell me you didn’t know about this?”
“No.”
“Swing into Spring is a big deal. Everybody’s been getting ready for months. Too bad they didn’t have it yesterday, though, the weather was so great. Did you go to lunch?”
She meant had I been outside yet that day. “No,” I said.
“Well, I mean, the weather’s okay, but it’s a little cold. I walked outside and went, like, oh shit. Anyway. You coming?”
I looked at her blankly. I’d run out of my room without the slightest idea where I was going. “I need to get something to eat,” I said at last.
“That’s a good idea. Last year I went and I didn’t eat anything before and I smoked pot and drank, like, thirty martinis. I was all right and everything but then I went to Fun O’Rama. Remember? That carnival they had—well, I guess you weren’t here then. Anyway. Big mistake. I’d been drinking all day and I had a sunburn and I was with Jack Teitelbaum and all those guys. I wasn’t going to go, you know, on a ride and then I thought, okay. The Ferris wheel. I can go on the Ferris wheel no problem.…”
I listened politely to the rest of her story which ended, as I knew it would, with Judy being pyrotechnically ill behind a hotdog stand.
“So this year, I was like, no way. Stick with coke. Pause that refreshes. By the way, you ought to get that friend of yours—you know, what’s his name—Bunny, and make him come with you. He’s in the library.”
“What?” I said, suddenly all ears.
“Yeah. Drag him out. Make him do some bong hits or something.”
“He’s in the library?”
“Yeah. I saw him through the window of the reading room a little while ago. Doesn’t he have a car?”
“No.”
“Well, I was thinking, maybe he could drive us. Long walk to Jennings. Or I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. I swear, I’m so out of shape, I have to start doing Jane Fonda again.”
By now it was three. I locked the door and walked to the library, nervously jangling my key in my pocket.
It was a strange, still, oppressive day. The campus seemed deserted—everyone was at the party, I supposed—and the green lawn, the gaudy tulips, were hushed and expectant beneath the overcast sky. Somewhere a shutter creaked. Above my head, in the wicked black claws of an elm, a marooned kite rattled convulsively, then was still. This is Kansas, I thought. This is Kansas before the cyclone hits.
The library was like a tomb, illumined from within by a chill