The Secret History - Donna Tartt [65]
“I’ll have some more, thanks, if you don’t mind,” Bunny said. “Good to be back in the good old U.S. of A. Hamburgers sizzling on an open grill and all that. Land of Opportunity. Long may she wave.”
“How long have you been here.”
“Flew into New York late last night.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived.”
“Where were you?” said Bunny suspiciously.
“At the market.” This was a lie. I didn’t know where he’d been but certainly he hadn’t been grocery shopping for four hours.
“Where are the groceries?” said Bunny. “I’ll help you bring them in.”
“I’m having them delivered.”
“The Food King has delivery?” said Bunny, startled.
“I didn’t go to the Food King,” said Henry.
Uneasily, I got up and headed back to the bedroom.
“No, no, don’t go,” said Henry, taking a long gulp of his coffee and putting the cup in the sink. “Bunny, I wish I’d known you were coming. But Richard and I have got to leave in a few minutes.”
“Why?”
“I have an appointment in town.”
“With a lawyer?” Bunny laughed loudly at his own joke.
“No. With the optometrist. That’s why I came by,” he said to me. “I hope you don’t mind. They’re going to put drops in my eyes and I can’t see to drive.”
“No, sure,” I said.
“I won’t be long. You don’t have to wait, just drop me off and come back to get me.”
Bunny walked us out to the car, our footsteps crunching in the snow. “Ah, Vermont,” he said, breathing deep and slapping his chest, like Oliver Douglas in the opening sequence of “Green Acres.” “Air does me good. So when d’ya think you’ll be back, Henry?”
“I don’t know,” said Henry, handing me the keys and walking over to the passenger’s side.
“Well, I’d like to have a little chat with you.”
“Well, that’s fine, but really, I’m a little late now, Bun.”
“Tonight, then?”
“If you like,” said Henry, getting in the car and slamming the door.
Once in the car, Henry lit a cigarette and didn’t say a word. He’d been smoking a lot since he got back from Italy, almost a pack a day, which was rare for him. We started into town, and it wasn’t until I pulled in at the eye doctor’s office that he shook himself and looked at me blankly. “What is it?”
“What time should I come back to get you?”
Henry looked out, at the low gray building, at the sign in front that said OPTOMETRY GROUP OF HAMPDEN.
“Good God,” he said, with a snort and a surprised, bitter little laugh. “Keep driving.”
I went to bed early that night, around eleven; at twelve I was awakened by a loud persistent banging at the front door. I lay in bed and listened for a minute, then got up to see who it was.
In the dark hallway I met Henry, in his bathrobe, fumbling with his glasses; he was holding one of his kerosene lanterns and it cast long, weird shadows on the narrow walls. When he saw me, he put a finger to his lips. We stood in the hall, listening. The lamplight was eerie, and, standing there motionless in our bathrobes, sleepy, with shadows flickering all around, I felt as though I had woken from one dream into an even more remote one, some bizarre wartime bomb shelter of the unconscious.
We stood there for a long time, it seemed, long after the banging stopped and we heard footsteps crunching away. Henry looked over at me, and we were quiet for a bit longer. “It’s all right now,” he said at last, and he turned away abruptly, the lamplight bobbing crazily about him as he went back to his room. I waited a moment or two longer in the dark, and then went back to my own room and to bed.
The next day, around three in the afternoon, I was ironing a shirt in the kitchen when there was another knock at the door. I went into the hall and found Henry standing there.
“Does that sound like Bunny to you?” he said quietly.
“No,” I said. This knock was fairly light; Bunny always beat on the door as if to bash it in.
“Go around to the side window and see if you can see who it is.”
I went to the front room and advanced cautiously to the side; there were no