The Secret History - Donna Tartt [258]
Francis opened his mouth, then shut it. He looked as if he’d been slapped.
“You underestimate Francis,” I said to Charles, in a calm, quiet voice. It was a mistake the others often made with him, to try to reason with him in a methodical, aggressive way, when all he wanted was to be reassured like a child. “Francis likes you very much. He’s your friend. So am I.”
“Are you?” he said.
“Of course.”
He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down, heavily. The cat slunk over and began to twine round his ankles. “I’m afraid,” he said hoarsely. “I’m afraid Henry’s going to kill me.”
Francis and I looked at each other.
“Why?” said Francis. “Why would he want to do that?”
“Because I’m in the way.” He looked up at us. “He’d do it, too, you know,” he said. “For two cents.” He nodded at a small, unlabeled medicine bottle on the counter. “You see that?” he said. “Henry gave it to me. Couple of days ago.”
I picked it up. With a chill I recognized the Nembutals I’d stolen for Henry at the Corcorans.
“I don’t know what they are,” said Charles, pushing the dirty hair from his eyes. “He told me they’d help me sleep. God knows I need something, but I’m afraid to take them.”
I handed the bottle to Francis. He looked at it, then up at me, horrified.
“Capsules, too,” said Charles. “No telling what he filled them with.”
But he wouldn’t even have to, that was the evil thing. I remembered, with a sick feeling, having tried to impress upon Henry how dangerous these were when mixed with liquor.
Charles passed a hand over his eyes. “I’ve seen him sneaking around here at night,” he said. “Out back. I don’t know what he’s doing.”
“Henry?”
“Yes. And if he tries anything with me,” he said, “it’ll be the worst mistake he ever made in his life.”
We had less trouble enticing him to the car than I’d expected. He was in a rambling, paranoid humor and was somewhat comforted by our solicitude. He asked repeatedly if Henry knew where we were going. “You haven’t talked to him, have you?”
“No,” we assured him, “no, of course not.”
He insisted on taking the cat with him. We had a terrible time catching it—Francis and I dodging round the dark kitchen, knocking dishes to the floor, trying to corner it behind the water heater while Charles stood anxiously by saying things like “Come on” and “Good kitty.” Finally, in desperation, I seized it by a scrawny black hindquarter—it thrashed around and sank its teeth into my arm—and, together, we managed to wrap it up in a dish towel so that only its head stuck out, eyes bulging and ears flattened back against the skull. We gave the mummified, hissing bundle to Charles. “Now, hold her tight,” Francis kept saying in the car, glancing anxiously back in the rear-view mirror, “watch out, don’t let it get away—”
But, of course, it did get away, catapulting into the front seat and nearly running Francis off the road. Then, after scrabbling around under the brake and gas pedal—Francis aghast, attempting simultaneously to avoid touching it and to kick it away from him—it settled on the floorboard by my feet, succumbing to an attack of diarrhea before falling into a glaring, prickle-haired trance.
I had not been out to Francis’s since the week before Bunny died. The trees in the drive were in full leaf and the yard was overgrown and dark. Bees droned in the lilacs. Mr. Hatch, mowing the lawn some thirty yards away, nodded and raised a hand at us.
The house was shadowy and cool. There were sheets on some of the furniture and dust balls on the hardwood floor. We locked the cat in an upstairs bathroom and Charles went down to the kitchen, to make himself something to eat, he said. He came back up with a jar of peanuts and a double martini in a water glass, which he carried into his room, and shut the door.
We didn’t see an awful lot of Charles for the next thirty-six hours or so. He stayed in his room eating peanuts, and drinking, and looking out the window like the old pirate in Treasure Island. Once he came down to the library while Francis and I were playing cards, but he refused our invitation