The Secret History - Donna Tartt [141]
It was like waking from a nightmare to a worse nightmare. I sat up, heart pounding, slapping at the blank wall for the light switch until the terrible realization dawned on me that I was not in my own room. Strange shapes, unfamiliar shadows, crowded horribly around me; nothing offered any clue to my whereabouts, and for a few delirious moments I wondered if I was dead. Then I felt the sleeping body next to mine. Instinctively I recoiled, and then I prodded it gently with my elbow. It didn’t move. I lay in bed for a minute or two, trying to collect my thoughts; then I got up, found my clothes, dressed as best as I could in the dark, and left.
Stepping outside, I slipped on an icy step and pitched, face-forward, into more than a foot of snow. I lay still for a moment, then raised myself to my knees and looked about in disbelief. A few snowflakes were one thing, but I had not thought it possible for weather to change as suddenly and violently as this. The flowers were buried, and the lawn; everything had disappeared. An expanse of clean, unbroken snow stretched blue and twinkling as far as I could see.
My hands were raw and my elbow felt bruised. With some effort, I got to my feet. When I turned to see where I’d come from, I was horrified to realize I’d just walked out of Bunny’s own dorm. His window, on the ground floor, stared back at me black and silent. I thought of his spare glasses lying on the desk; the empty bed; the family photographs smiling in the dark.
When I got back to my room—by a confused, circular route—I fell on my bed without taking off my coat or shoes. The lights were on, and I felt weirdly exposed and vulnerable but I didn’t want to turn them off. The bed was rocking a little, like a raft, and I kept a foot on the floor to steady it.
Then I fell asleep, and slept very soundly for a couple of hours until I was awakened by a knock at the door. Seized by fresh panic, I fought to sit up in the tangle of my coat, which had somehow got twisted around my knees and seemed to be attacking me with the force of a living creature.
The door creaked open. Then no sound at all. “What the hell is wrong with you?” said a sharp voice.
Francis was in the doorway. He stood with one black-gloved hand on the knob, looking at me like I was a lunatic.
I stopped struggling and fell back on my pillow. I was so glad to see him I felt like laughing, and I was so doped up I probably did. “François,” I said idiotically.
He shut the door and came over to my bed, where he stood looking down at me. It was really him—snow in his hair, snow on the shoulders of his long black overcoat. “Are you okay?” he said, after a long, derisive pause.
I rubbed my eyes and tried again. “Hi,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m fine. Really.”
He stood looking at me with no expression and did not answer. Then he took off his coat and laid it over the back of a chair. “Do you want some tea?” he said.
“No.”
“Well, I’m going to go make some, if you don’t mind.”
By the time he was back I was more or less myself. He put the kettle on the radiator and helped himself to some tea bags from my bureau drawer. “Here,” he said. “You can have the good teacup. There wasn’t any milk in the kitchen.”
It was a relief to have him there. I sat up and drank my tea and watched him take off his shoes and socks. Then he put them by the radiator to dry. His feet were long and thin, too long for his slim, bony ankles; he flexed his toes, looked up at me. “It’s an awful night,” he said. “Have you been outside?”
I told him a little about my night, omitting the part about the girl.
“Gosh,” he said, reaching up to loosen his collar. “I’ve just been sitting in my apartment. Giving myself the creeps.”
“Heard from anyone?”
“No. My mother called around nine; I couldn’t talk to her. Told her I was writing a paper.”
For some reason my eyes