The Secret History - Donna Tartt [163]
After a moment or so, Francis shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Does it ever strike you, in a horrible sort of way, how funny this is?”
“Well, it’s not all that funny really.”
“I guess not,” he said, lighting a cigarette with shaky hands. “And Mr. Corcoran said the National Guard is coming up today, too. What a mess.”
For some time I had been staring at the jar of cherries without realizing fully what they were. “Why are you eating those?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said, staring down at the jar. “They taste really bad.”
“Throw them away.”
He struggled with the window sash. It sailed up with a grinding noise.
A blast of icy air hit me in the face. “Hey,” I said.
He threw the jar out the window and then leaned on the sash with all his weight. I went over to help him. Finally, it crashed down, and the draperies floated down to rest placidly by the windows. The cherry juice had left a spattered red trajectory on the snow.
“Kind of a Jean Cocteau touch, isn’t it?” Francis said. “I’m exhausted. If you don’t mind, I’m going to have a bath now.”
He was running the water and I was on my way out when the phone rang.
It was Henry. “Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry. I thought I dialed Francis.”
“You did. Hold on a second.” I put down the phone and called for him.
He came in in his trousers and undershirt, his face half-lathered, a razor in his hand. “Who is it?”
“Henry.”
“Tell him I’m in the bath.”
“He’s in the bath,” I said.
“He is not in the bath,” said Henry. “He is standing in the room with you. I can hear him.”
I gave Francis the telephone. He held it away from his face so he wouldn’t get any soap on the receiver.
I could hear Henry talking indistinctly. After a moment, Francis’s sleepy eyes widened.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Not me.”
Henry’s voice again, curt and businesslike.
“No. I mean it, Henry. I’m tired and I’m going to sleep and there’s no way—”
Suddenly, his face changed. To my great surprise he cursed loudly and slammed down the receiver so hard that it jangled.
“What is it?”
He was staring at the phone. “God damn him,” he said. “He hung up on me.”
“What’s the matter?”
“He wants us to go out with that damn search party again. Now. I’m not like he is. I can’t just stay up for five or six days at a—”
“Now? But it’s so early.”
“It started an hour ago, so he says. Damn him. Doesn’t he ever sleep?”
We had not spoken about the incident in my room several nights before and, in the drowsy silence of the car, I felt the need to make things plain.
“You know, Francis,” I said.
“What?”
It seemed the best thing was just to come right out and say it. “You know,” I said, “I’m really not attracted to you. I mean, not that—”
“Isn’t that interesting,” he said coolly. “I’m really not attracted to you, either.”
“But—”
“You were there.”
We drove the rest of the way to school in a not very comfortable silence.
Unbelievably, things had escalated even more during the night. There now were hundreds of people: people in uniforms, people with dogs and bullhorns and cameras, people buying sweet rolls from the concessions truck and trying to peek into the dark windows of the news vans—three of them, one from the station in Boston—parked on Commons lawn, along with the overflow of vehicles from the parking lot.
We found Henry on the front porch of Commons. He was reading, with absorbed interest, a tiny, vellum-bound book written in some Near Eastern language. The twins—sleepy, red-nosed, rumpled—were sprawled on a bench like a couple of teenagers, passing a cup of coffee back and forth.
Francis half nudged, half kicked the toe of Henry’s shoe.
Henry started. “Oh,” he said. “Good morning.”
“How can you even say that. I haven’t had a wink of sleep. I haven’t eaten anything in about three days.”
Henry marked his place with a ribbon and slipped the book in his breast pocket. “Well,” he said amiably, “go get a doughnut, then.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“I’ll give you the money, then.”
“I don’t want a goddamn doughnut.”
I went over and