Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [103]
“Hey,” I said, coming into the room, closing the door behind me. I looked over at my desk. It was only then I realized that I’d left the house that morning with Wonder Boys lying out in the open where anyone—where Crabtree—could get at it.
“Oh!” said Hannah, slapping back onto the stack the page she’d been about to set to one side, covering it with both hands, as though it were something she herself had written and didn’t want me to see. “Grady! Oh, God, I’m so embarrassed. I hope you don’t mind. It was just sort of lying out.” She wrinkled up her nose at the thought of her own misbehavior. “I suck.”
“You suck not,” I said. “I don’t mind at all.”
She reassembled the scattered slices of the Grady’s Wheel of Cheese, upended it, carefully tapped it against the sofa cushion, and set the thing down on an arm of the sofa. Then she got up and came over to get her arms around me.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “We tried to find you everywhere. We were worried.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just had to deal with a little outbreak of Cetusian fever.”
“How’s that?”
“Nothing.” I nodded toward the manuscript balanced on the edge of the sofa. “Did, uh, did Crabtree happen to see any of that, do you know?”
“No, I don’t know,” said Hannah. “I mean, I wouldn’t think so. We were gone all day, over at WordFest. We didn’t get back until late.” She grinned. “And he was pretty busy after that.”
“I’ll bet he was,” I said, reluctantly disentangling myself from her. “So, listen, where is the old Crab, anyway?”
“Who knows? I’ve been in here for a couple of hours. I don’t even know if he’s here or—oh, no, don’t go!” She redoubled her hold on me. “Stay, where are you going?”
“I really need to talk to him,” I said, though all of a sudden the prospect of getting back into my car, and driving all the way out to Sewickley Heights on my unreasonable errand, struck me as less than appealing. I could just stay here with Hannah, and forget all about Deborah and Emily, and Sara and the pale smiling tadpole in her belly, and above all that poor lost liar Jimmy Leer. She was holding me and I closed my eyes and in my mind I followed her downstairs to her apartment, and lay beside her on her sateen comforter, under the Stieglitz portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe, and plunged my hand down into the mouth of her cowgirl boots, and ran my fingers along the damp slender arches of her feet. “I really need—”
“The Horse” came on, out in the living room, and Hannah grabbed hold of my hand.
“Come on,” she said. “You need to dance.”
“I can’t. My ankles.”
“Your ankles? Come on.”
“I can’t.” She got me to the door and pulled it open, letting in a bright blast of horn charts. She rocked her skinny cowgirl hips a couple of times around. “Look, Hannah, James got himself—he got himself into a little bit of trouble tonight. I need Crabtree to help me go get him out.”
“What kind of trouble? Let me come.”
“No, I can’t say, it’s nothing. Look, he and I’ll go get James, okay, it won’t take long, we’ll bring him back, and then I’ll dance with you. All right? I promise?”
“He shot the Chancellor’s dog, didn’t he?”
“He did?” I said, pushing the door closed again. “Shot what?”
“Somebody shot their dog last night. The blind one. That’s what the police think, anyway. The dog’s missing, and they found some spots of blood on the carpet. And then I heard Dr. Gaskell dug a bullet out of the floor.”
“Jesus,” I said. “That’s terrible.”
“Crabtree thought that it sounded like something James would do.”
“He doesn’t even know James,” I said.
“Who does?” said Hannah.
You don’t, I thought. I gave her hand a squeeze.
“I’ll be right back,” I told her.
“Can’t I come with you?”
“I don’t think you should.”
“I know savate.”
“Hannah.”
“Oh, all right,” she said. Back home in Provo, Hannah had nine older brothers, and she was accustomed to the abandonment of boys. “Can I at least keep reading Wonder