The Secret History - Donna Tartt [75]
I put down my book and went over and sat in a chair by the window, and didn’t work for the rest of the night.
The weekend passed, as they will do, and for me it went by in Greek, solitary meals in the dining hall, and more of the same old puzzlement back in my room. My feelings were hurt, and I missed them more than I would have admitted. Bunny was behaving oddly besides. I saw him around a couple of times that weekend, with Marion and her friends, talking importantly as they stared in goony admiration (they were Elementary Education majors, for the most part, who I suppose thought him terribly erudite because he studied Greek and wore some little wire-rimmed glasses). Once I saw him with his old friend Cloke Rayburn. But I didn’t know Cloke well, and I was hesitant to stop and say hello.
I awaited Greek class, on Monday, with acute curiosity. I woke that morning at six. Not wanting to arrive insanely early, I sat around my room fully dressed for quite some time, and it was with something of a thrill that I looked at my watch and realized that if I didn’t hurry, I’d be late. I grabbed my books and dashed out; halfway to the Lyceum, I realized I was running, and forced myself to slow to a walk.
I had caught my breath by the time I opened the back door. Slowly, I climbed the stairs, feet moving, mind oddly blank—the way I’d felt as a kid on Christmas morning when, after a night of almost insane excitement, I would walk down the hall to the closed door behind which my presents lay as if the day were nothing special, suddenly drained of all desire.
They were all there, all of them: the twins, poised and alert in the windowsill; Francis, with his back to me; Henry beside him; and Bunny across the table, reared back in his chair. Telling a story of some sort. “So get this,” he said to Henry and Francis, turning his face sideways to glimpse the twins. Everyone’s eyes were riveted on him; no one had seen me come in. “The warden says, ‘Son, your pardon hasn’t come through from the governor and it’s already five after. Any last words?’ So the guy thinks for a minute, and as they’re leading him into the chamber—” he brought his pencil up close to his eyes and studied it for a moment—“he looks over his shoulder and says, ‘Well, Governor So-and-So has certainly lost my vote in the next election!’ ” Laughing, he tipped back even further in his chair; then he looked up and saw me standing like an idiot in the doorway. “Oh, come in, come in,” he said, bringing the front legs of the wooden chair down with a thump.
The twins glanced up, startled as a pair of deer. Except for a certain tightness around the jaw, Henry was as serene as the Buddha, but Francis was so white he was almost green.
“We’re just chucking around a couple jokes before class,” said Bunny genially, leaning back in his chair. He tossed the hair out of his eyes. “Okay. Smith and Jones commit an armed robbery and they both get death row. Of course, they go through all the usual channels of appeal but Smith’s runs out first and he’s slotted for the chair.” He made a resigned, philosophical gesture and then, unexpectedly, winked at me. “So,” he continued, “they let Jones out to see the execution and he’s watching them strap his buddy in”—I saw Charles, his eyes blank, biting down hard into his lower lip—“when the warden comes up. ‘Heard anything on your appeal, Jones?’ he says. “Not much, Warden,” says Jones. ‘Well, then,’ says the warden, looking at his watch, ‘hardly worth going back to your cell then, is it?’ ” He threw back his head and laughed, pleased as all get-out,