The Secret History - Donna Tartt [198]
I was puzzled and a bit offended by this last. I started to say something about it, but instead I set down the glass and said, “Who do you talk to on the telephone at three in the morning?”
“What?”
Her surprise seemed perfectly natural. The problem was that she was such an expert actress it was impossible to know if it was genuine.
I held her gaze. She met it unblinking, brows knit, and just when I thought she’d been silent a beat too long, she shook her head and laughed again. “What’s wrong with you?” she said. “What are you talking about?”
I laughed too. It was impossible to outfox her at this game.
“I’m not trying to put you on the spot,” I said. “But you need to be careful what you say on the telephone when Cloke’s in your house.”
She looked blank. “I am careful.”
“I hope you are, because he’s been listening.”
“He couldn’t have heard anything.”
“Well, that’s not for want of trying.”
We stood looking at each other. There was a heart-stopping, ruby-red pinprick of a beauty mark just beneath her eye. On an irresistible impulse I leaned down and gave her a kiss.
She laughed. “What was that for?” she said.
My heart—which, thrilled at my daring, had held its breath for a moment or two—began suddenly to beat quite wildly. I turned and busied myself with the glasses. “Nothing,” I said, “you just looked pretty,” and I might have said something else had Charles—dripping wet—not burst through the kitchen door, Francis hard at his heels.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” said Francis in an angry whisper. He was flushed and trembling. “Never mind that the seats are soaked, and will probably mildew and rot, and that I’ve got to drive back to Hampden tomorrow. But never mind about that. I don’t care. What I can’t believe is that you went up, you deliberately went looking for my coat, you took the keys and—”
“I’ve seen you leave the top down in the rain before,” said Charles curtly. He was at the counter, his back to Francis, pouring himself a drink. His hair was plastered to his head and a small puddle was forming round him on the linoleum.
“What,” said Francis, through his teeth. “I never.”
“Yes you have,” said Charles, without turning around.
“Name one time.”
“Okay. What about that afternoon you and I were in Manchester, and it was about two weeks before school started, and we decided to go to the Equinox House for—”
“That was a summer afternoon. It was sprinkling.”
“It was not. It was raining hard. You just don’t want to talk about that now because that was the afternoon you tried to get me to—”
“You’re crazy,” said Francis. “That doesn’t have anything to do with this. It’s dark as hell and pouring rain and you’re drunk out of your skull. It’s a miracle you didn’t kill somebody. Where the hell did you go for those cigarettes, anyway? There’s not a store around here for—”
“I’m not drunk.”
“Ha, ha. Tell me. Where’d you get those cigarettes? I’d like to know. I bet—”
“I said I’m not drunk.”
“Yeah, sure. I bet you didn’t even buy any cigarettes. If you did, they must be soaking wet. Where are they, anyway?”
“Leave me alone.”
“No. Really. Show them to me. I’d like to see these famous—”
Charles slammed down his glass and spun around. “Leave me alone,” he hissed.
It was not the tone of his voice, exactly, as much as the look on his face which was so terrible. Francis stared, his mouth fallen slightly open. For about ten long seconds there was no sound but the rhythmic tick tick tick of the water dripping from Charles’s sodden clothes.
I took Henry’s Scotch and soda, lots of ice, and his water, no ice, and walked past Francis, out the swinging door and down to the basement.
It rained hard all night. My nose tickled from the dust in the sleeping bag, and the basement floor—which was poured concrete beneath a thin, comfortless layer of indoor-outdoor carpeting—made my bones ache whichever way I turned. The rain drummed on the high windows, and the floodlights, shining through the glass, cast