The Secret History - Donna Tartt [66]
“Oh, you can let him in, I suppose,” said Henry, and he turned and went back towards his part of the house.
I went to the front room and opened the door. Francis was looking back over his shoulder, wondering, I suppose, if he should leave. “Hi,” I said.
He turned around and saw me. “Hello!” he said. His face seemed to have got much thinner and sharper since I’d seen him last. “I thought nobody was home. How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“You look pretty bad to me.”
“You don’t look so good yourself,” I said, laughing.
“I drank too much last night and gave myself a stomach ache. I want to see this tremendous head wound of yours. Are you going to have a scar?”
I led him into the kitchen and shoved aside the ironing board so he could sit down. “Where’s Henry?” he said, pulling off his gloves.
“In the back.”
He began to unwind his scarf. “I’ll just run say hello to him and I’ll be right back,” he said briskly, and slid away.
He was gone a long time. I had got bored and had almost finished ironing my shirt when suddenly I heard Francis’s voice rise, with a hysterical edge. I got up and went into the bedroom so I could hear better what he was saying.
“—thinking about? My God, but he’s in a state. You can’t tell me you know what he might—”
There was a low murmur now, Henry’s voice, then Francis’s voice came back to me again.
“I don’t care,” he said hotly. “Jesus, but you’ve done it now. I’ve been in town two hours and already—I don’t care,” he said in reply to another murmur from Henry. “Besides, it’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?”
Silence. Then Henry began to talk, too indistinctly for me to hear.
“You don’t like it? You?” said Francis. “What about me?”
His voice dropped suddenly and then resumed, too quietly for me to hear.
I walked quietly back to the kitchen and put on water for tea. I was still thinking about what I’d heard when, several minutes later, there were footsteps and Francis emerged in the kitchen, edging his way around the ironing board to gather his gloves and scarf.
“Sorry to run,” he said. “I’ve got to unpack the car and start cleaning my apartment. That cousin of mine tore it all to pieces. I don’t believe he took out the garbage once the whole time he was there. Let me see your head wound.”
I pulled back the hair on my forehead and showed him the place. I’d had the stitches out long ago and it was nearly gone.
He leaned forward to peer at it though his pince-nez. “Goodness, I must be blind, I can’t see a thing. When do classes start? Wednesday?”
“Thursday, I think.”
“See you then,” he said, and he was gone.
I put my shirt on a hanger and then went into the bedroom and started to pack my things. Monmouth House opened that afternoon; maybe Henry would drive me to school with my suitcases later on.
I was just about finished when Henry called me from the back of the apartment. “Richard?”
“Yes?”
“Would you come here for a moment, please?”
I went back to his room. He was sitting on the side of the fold-out bed, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows and a game of solitaire spread out on the blanket at the foot. His hair had fallen to the wrong side and I could see the long scar at his hairline, all dented and puckered, with ridges of white flesh cutting across it to the browbone.
He looked up at me. “Will you do a favor for me?” he said.
“Sure.”
He took a deep breath through the nostrils and pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Will you call Bunny and ask him if he’d like to come over for a few minutes?” he said.
I was so surprised that I didn’t say anything for half a second. Then I said: “Sure. Fine. I’ll be glad to.”
He closed his eyes and rubbed his temple with his fingertips. Then he blinked at me. “Thank you,” he said.
“No, really.”
“If you want to take some