The Secret History - Donna Tartt [231]
“Leave me alone.”
“You can’t sleep here.”
“I can do whatever I want,” he said haughtily.
“Why don’t you come home with me? Have a drink.”
“I’m fine.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Well—just one.”
He bumped his head, hard, while crawling out. The little kids were certainly going to love that smell of Johnnie Walker when they came to school in a few hours.
He had to lean on me on the way up the hill to Monmouth House.
“Just one,” he reminded me.
I was not in terrific shape myself and had a hard time hauling him up the stairs. Finally I reached my room and deposited him on my bed. He offered little resistance and lay there, mumbling, while I went down to the kitchen.
My offer of a drink had been a ruse. Quickly I searched the refrigerator but all I could find was a screw-top bottle of some syrupy Kosher stuff, strawberry-flavored, which had been there since Hanukkah. I’d tasted it once, with the idea of stealing it, and hurriedly spit it out and put the bottle back on the shelf. That had been months ago. I slipped it under my shirt; but when I got upstairs, Charles’s head had rolled back against the wall where the headboard should have been and he was snoring.
Quietly, I put the botttle on my desk, got a book, and left. Then I went to Dr. Roland’s office, where I lay reading on the couch with my jacket thrown over me until the sun came up, and I turned off the lamp and went to sleep.
I woke around ten. It was Saturday, which surprised me a little; I’d lost track of the days. I went to the dining hall and had a late breakfast of tea and soft-boiled eggs, the first thing I’d eaten since Thursday. When I went to my room to change, around noon, Charles was still asleep in my bed. I shaved, put on a clean shirt, got my Greek books and went back to Dr. Roland’s.
I was ridiculously behind in my studies but not (as is often the case) so far behind as I’d thought. The hours went by without my noticing them. When I got hungry, around six, I went to the refrigerator in the Social Sciences office and found some leftover hors d’oeuvres and a piece of birthday cake, which I ate from my fingers off a paper plate at Dr. Roland’s desk.
Since I wanted a bath, I came home around eleven, but when I unlocked the door and turned on the light, I was startled to find Charles still in my bed. He was sleeping, but the bottle of Kosher wine on the desk was half-empty. His face was flushed and pink. When I shook him, he felt as though he had a good deal of fever.
“Bunny,” he said, waking with a start. “Where did he go?”
“You’re dreaming.”
“But he was here,” he said, looking wildly round. “For a long time. I saw him.”
“You’re dreaming, Charles.”
“But I saw him. He was here. He was sitting on the foot of the bed.”
I went next door to borrow a thermometer. His temperature was nearly a hundred and three. I gave him two Tylenol and a glass of water and left him, rubbing his eyes and talking nonsense, to go downstairs and call Francis.
Francis wasn’t home. I decided to try Henry. To my surprise it was Francis, not Henry, who answered the phone.
“Francis? What are you doing over there?” I said.
“Oh, hello, Richard,” said Francis. He said it in a stagy way, as if for Henry’s benefit.
“I guess you can’t really talk now.”
“No.”
“Look here. I need to ask you something.” I explained to him about Charles, playground and all. “He seems pretty sick. What do you think I should do?”
“The snail?” said Francis. “You found him inside that giant snail?”
“Yes. Listen, that doesn’t matter. What should I do? I’m kind of worried.”
Francis put his hand over the receiver. I could hear a muffled discussion. In a moment Henry came on the line. “Hello, Richard,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
I had to explain all over again.
“How high, did you say? A hundred and three?”
“Yes.”
“That’s rather a lot, isn’t it?”
I