The Secret History - Donna Tartt [98]
“You mustn’t let on you know,” said Henry. “Ever. Unless you want to make things worse.”
For a moment no one spoke. The apartment was blue with smoke, through which the broad expanse of white linoleum was arctic, surreal. Music from a neighbor’s stereo was filtering through the walls. The Grateful Dead. Good Lord.
“It’s a terrible thing, what we did,” said Francis abruptly. “I mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It’s a shame. I feel bad about it.”
“Well, of course, I do too,” said Henry matter-of-factly. “But not bad enough to want to go to jail for it.”
Francis snorted and poured himself another shot of whiskey and drank it straight off. “No,” he said. “Not that bad.”
No one said anything for a moment. I felt sleepy, ill, as if this were some lingering and dyspeptic dream. I had said it before, but I said it again, mildly surprised at the sound of my own voice in the quiet room. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Henry, as calmly as if I’d asked him his plans for the afternoon.
“Well, I know what I’m going to do,” said Francis. He stood up unsteadily and pulled with his forefinger at his collar. Startled, I looked at him, and he laughed at my surprise.
“I want to sleep,” he said, with a melodramatic roll of his eye, “ ‘dormir plutôt que vivre’!”
“ ‘Dans un sommeil aussi doux que la mort …’ ” said Henry with a smile.
“Jesus, Henry, you know everything,” said Francis, “you make me sick.” He turned unsteadily, loosening his tie as he did it, and swayed out of the room.
“I believe he is rather drunk,” said Henry, as a door slammed somewhere and we heard taps running furiously in the bathroom. “It’s early still. Do you want to play a hand or two of cards?”
I blinked at him.
He reached over and got a deck of cards from a box on the end table—Tiffany cards, with sky-blue backs and Francis’s monogram on them in gold—and began to shuffle through them expertly. “We could play bezique, or euchre if you’d rather,” he said, the blue and gold dissolving from his hands in a blur. “I like poker myself—of course, it’s rather a vulgar game, and no fun at all with two—but still, there’s a certain random element in it which appeals to me.”
I looked at him, at his steady hands, the whirring cards, and suddenly an odd memory leapt to mind: Tojo, at the height of the war, forcing his top aides to sit up and play cards with him all night long.
He pushed the deck over to me. “Do you want to cut?” he said, and lit a cigarette.
I looked at the cards, and then at the flame of the match burning with an unwavering clarity between his fingers.
“You’re not too worried about this, are you?” I said.
Henry drew deeply on the cigarette, exhaled, shook out the match. “No,” he said, looking thoughtfully at the thread of smoke that curled from the burnt end. “I can get us out of it, I think. But that depends on the exact opportunity presenting itself and for that we’ll have to wait. I suppose it also depends to a certain extent on how much, in the end, we are willing to do. Shall I deal?” he said, and he reached for the cards again.
I awoke from a heavy, dreamless sleep to find myself lying on Francis’s couch in an uncomfortable position, and the morning sun streaming through the bank of windows at the rear. For a while I lay motionless, trying to remember where I was and how I had come to be there; it was a pleasant sensation which was abruptly soured when I recalled what had happened the previous night. I sat up and rubbed the waffled pattern the sofa cushion had left on my cheek. The movement made my head ache. I stared at the overflowing ashtray, the three-quarters-empty bottle of Famous Grouse, the game of poker solitaire laid out upon the table. So it had all been real; it wasn’t a dream.
I was thirsty. I went to the kitchen, my footsteps echoing in the silence, and drank a glass of water standing at the sink. It was seven a.m. by the kitchen clock.
I filled my glass again and took it to the living room with me and sat on the couch. As I drank, more slowly