The Secret History - Donna Tartt [257]
She was extremely upset. Francis was ashen-faced.
“What does Henry say?” I asked her.
“He says he doesn’t care about the car,” she said. “He doesn’t care about anything. ‘Let him go to jail,’ he says.”
“You saw this judge?” Francis said to me.
“Yes.”
“What was he like?”
“To tell you the truth, he looked like a pretty tough customer,” I said.
Francis lit a cigarette. “What would happen,” he said, “if Charles didn’t show up?”
“I’m not sure. I’m almost certain they’d come looking for him.”
“But if they couldn’t find him?”
“What are you suggesting?” I said.
“I think we ought to get Charles out of town for a while,” said Francis. He looked tense and worried. “School’s almost over. It’s not as if anything’s keeping him here. I think we ought to pack him off to my mother and Chris in New York for a couple of weeks.”
“The way he’s acting now?”
“Drunk, you mean? You think my mother minds drunks? He’d be safe as a baby.”
“I don’t think,” said Camilla, “you’d be able to get him to go.”
“I could take him myself,” said Francis.
“But what if he got away?” I pointed out. “Vermont is one thing but he could get into a hell of a lot of trouble in New York.”
“All right,” said Francis irritably, “all right, it was just an idea.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You know what we could do? We could take him out to the country.”
“To your place, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“What would that accomplish?”
“Easy to get him there, for one thing. And once he’s out there, what’s he going to do? He won’t have a car. It’s miles from the road. You can’t get a Hampden taxi driver to pick you up for love nor money.”
Camilla was looking at him thoughtfully.
“Charles loves to go to the country,” she said.
“I know,” said Francis, pleased. “What could be simpler? And we won’t have to keep him there long. Richard and I can stay with him. I’ll buy a case of champagne. We’ll make it look like a party.”
It was not easy to get Charles to come to the door. We knocked for what seemed like half an hour. Camilla had given us a key, which we didn’t want to use unless we had to, but just as we were contemplating it the bolt snapped and Charles squinted at us through the crack.
He looked disordered, terrible. “What do you want?” he said.
“Nothing,” said Francis, quite easily, despite a slight, stunned pause of maybe a second. “Can we come in?”
Charles looked back and forth at the two of us. “Is anybody with you?”
“No,” Francis said.
He opened the door and let us in. The shades were pulled and the place had the sour smell of garbage. As my eyes adjusted to the dim I saw dirty dishes, apple cores and soup cans littering almost every conceivable surface. Beside the refrigerator, arranged with perverse neatness, stood a row of empty Scotch bottles.
A lithe shadow darted across the kitchen counter, twisting through the dirty pans and empty milk cartons: Jesus, I thought, is that a rat? But then it jumped to the floor, tail switching, and I saw it was a cat. Its eyes glowed at us in the dark.
“Found her in an empty lot,” said Charles. His breath, I noticed, did not have an alcoholic odor but a suspiciously minty one. “She’s not too tame.” He pushed up the sleeve of his bathrobe and showed us a discolored, contaminated-looking crisscross of scratches on his forearm.
“Charles,” said Francis, jingling his car keys nervously, “we stopped by because we’re driving out to the country. Thought it might be nice to get away for a while. Do you want to come?”
Charles’s eyes narrowed. He pushed down his sleeve. “Did Henry send you?” he said,
“God, no,” said Francis, surprised.
“Are you sure?”
“I haven’t seen him in days.”
Charles still didn’t look convinced.
“We’re not even speaking to him,” I said.
Charles turned to look at me. His gaze was watery and a little unfocused. “Richard,” he said. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“You know,” he said, “I’ve always liked you a lot.”
“I like you, too.”
“You wouldn’t go behind my back, would you?”
“Of course not.”
“Because,” he said, nodding at Francis, “because