Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [110]
“Looks like you’re going to have some monster fines, here, Mr. Leer,” said Crabtree.
“Oh,” said James. “Ha. I—uh, see, I never—”
“It’s cool,” said Crabtree. Abruptly he snapped shut one of the stolen books and handed it to me. “Here.” He stood up and took James by the arm. “Let’s blow.”
“Uh, there’s only one problem,” said James, unhooking himself from Crabtree. “The old lady’s been coming down here, like, every half hour, I swear, to check on me.” He glanced over at the face of Herman Bing. “She’ll probably be down in like five minutes.”
“‘The old lady,’” said Crabtree, winking at me. “Why’s she keep checking on you? What’s she think you’re going to do?”
“I don’t know,” said James, coloring. “Run away, I guess.”
I looked at James, remembering the sight of him in the Gaskells’ backyard, the trembling flash of silver in his hand. Then I looked down at the spine of the book Crabtree had handed me and saw, to my amazement, that it was a rebound copy of The Abominations of Plunkettsburg, by August Van Zorn, property of the Sewickley Public Library. According to the circulation label it had been checked out three times, most recently in September of 1974. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my head of this proof of the uselessness of Albert Vetch’s art, of all art and energy and human life in general. There was a sudden rumble of nausea in my belly and the familiar spray of white noise across the inside of my skull. I waved my hand in front of my face, as though shooing away a cloud of bees. I saw that I could write ten thousand more pages of shimmering prose and still be nothing but a blind minotaur stumbling along broken ground, an unsuccessful, overweight ex-wonder boy with a pot habit and a dead dog in the trunk of my car.
“We need a decoy,” said Crabtree, “is what we need. To be in your bed and look like you.”
“Yeah, like a couple of big hams,” said James. “They do that in Against All Flags.”
“No,” I said, opening my eyes. “Not a couple of hams.” They looked at me. “Have you got some kind of a tarp, down here, or something? An extra blanket? Something heavy?”
James thought about it for an instant, then jerked his head toward the doors at the back of his room. “Through there. The one on the left. In the closet, there’re some blankets. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to empty my trunk,” I said.
I walked back to the door next to the bathroom and came into a dark room that smelled less musty and riverine than James’s. I flipped on the lights and saw that it was a kind of informal recreation room, with unvarnished fir walls and Berber carpeting on the floor. There was a wet bar at one end, and a large old Philco television, and in the very center stood a billiards table. The bar top was bare and the television unplugged and there was not a cue stick in sight. The closet James had mentioned was just beside the door, and in it, on a lower shelf, I found a pile of tattered coverlets and blankets. None of them looked quite large enough for the purpose I had in mind, but there was a striped Hudson Bay, just like the one old Albert Vetch used to spread across his lap against the chill winds blowing in from the Void. I threw this one over my shoulder and went back into James’s room. James and Crabtree were sitting on the bed. Crabtree’s hand had vanished inside James’s shirt—my shirt—and he was moving it around in there with an air of calm and scientific rapture. James was looking down, watching through the window of his open collar as Crabtree felt him up. As I came into the room he looked at me and smiled, a sleepy, vulnerable expression on his face, like someone caught without his glasses on.
“I’m ready,” I said softly.
“Uh huh,” said Crabtree. “So are we.”
I RAISED THE LID of the trunk very slowly, to keep it from squeaking. Doctor Dee, Grossman, and the orphaned tuba lay there, in the moonlight, sleeping their various sleeps. I tossed the blanket around Doctor Dee, tucked its corners under his pelvis and withers,