The Secret History - Donna Tartt [138]
Minutes ticked by. Whatever anesthesia had carried me through the event was starting to wear off and with each passing second the thought of sitting around all night, alone, was seeming more and more unbearable. I turned on the radio, switched it off, tried to read. When I found I couldn’t hold my attention on one book I tried another. Scarcely ten minutes had passed. I picked up the first book and put it down again. Then, against my better judgment, I went downstairs to the pay phone and dialed Francis’s number.
He answered on the first ring. “Hi,” he said, when I told him it was me. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
I heard Henry murmuring in the background. Francis, his mouth away from the receiver, said something that I couldn’t catch.
“What are you guys doing?” I said.
“Not much. Having a drink. Hold on a second, would you?” he said, in response to another murmur.
There was a pause, an indistinct exchange, and then Henry’s brisk voice came on the line. “What’s the matter? Where are you?” he said.
“At home.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I just wondered if maybe I could come over for a drink or something.”
“That’s not a good idea. I was just leaving when you called.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, if you want to know the truth, I’m going to take a bath and go to bed.”
The line was silent for a moment.
“Are you still there?” Henry said.
“Henry, I’m going crazy. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Well, do anything you like,” Henry said amiably. “As long as you stick pretty close to home.”
“I don’t see what difference it would make if I—”
“When you’re worried about something,” said Henry abruptly, “have you ever tried thinking in a different language?”
“What?”
“It slows you down. Keeps your thoughts from running wild. A good discipline in any circumstance. Or you might try doing what the Buddhists do.”
“What?”
“In the practice of Zen there is an exercise called zazen—similar, I think, to the Theravadic practice of vipassana. One sits facing a blank wall. No matter the emotion one feels, no matter how strong or violent, one remains motionless. Facing the wall. The discipline, of course, is in continuing to sit.”
There was a silence, during which I struggled for language to adequately express what I thought of this goofball advice.
“Now, listen,” he continued, before I could say anything. “I’m exhausted. I’ll see you in class tomorrow, all right?”
“Henry,” I said, but he’d hung up.
In a sort of trance, I walked upstairs. I wanted a drink badly but I had nothing to drink. I sat down on my bed and looked out the window.
My sleeping pills were all gone. I knew they were gone but I went to my bureau and checked the bottle just in case. It was empty except for some vitamin C tablets I’d got from the infirmary. Little white pills. I poured them on my desk, arranged them in patterns and then I took one, hoping that the reflex of swallowing would make me feel better, but it didn’t.
I sat very still, trying not to think. It seemed as if I was waiting for something, I wasn’t sure what, something that would lift the tension and make me feel better, though I could imagine no possible event, in past, present, or future, that would have either effect. It seemed as if an eternity had passed. Suddenly, I was struck by a horrible thought: is this what it’s like? Is this the way it’s going to be from now on?
I looked at the clock. Scarcely a minute had gone by. I got up, not bothering to lock the door behind me, and went down the hall to Judy’s room.
By some miracle, she was in—drunk, putting on lipstick. “Hi,” she said, without glancing away from the mirror. “Want to go to a party?”
I don’t know what I said to her, something about not feeling well.
“Have a bagel,” she said, turning her head from side to side and examining her profile.
“I’d rather a sleeping pill, if you’ve got one.”
She screwed the lipstick down, snapped on the top, then opened the drawer of her dressing table. It was not actually a dressing table but a desk, college-issue, just like the one