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By Root 378 0

I remembered, and the light of a Sunday morning, coming in through the window behind him, discovered a faint golden aura around his thighs and his shins and at the backs of his hands. He held the typescript of The Love Parade balanced against the tops of his knees with one hand, and with the other he was stroking at his bedmate’s hair. This was the sole part of James Leer visible when I came into the bedroom: the rest of him could only be inferred amid the heap of blankets and twisted sheets at Crabtree’s side, from which the hair of his head emerged, in the vicinity of his pillow, exactly like the great black shock of Doctor Dee’s fur. Discarded shirts and trousers struck poses on the floor around the bed. There was a kind of autumnal stain in the air that reminded me of the smell of leather work gloves, a high-school locker room at homecoming, the inside of an ancient canvas tent. I swung halfway into the room, hanging on the doorknob. Crabtree looked up at me and smiled. It was a kindly smile, lacking in all irony. I hadn’t seen its like on his face in years. I was sorry to have to wipe it away.

“Is he awake?” I said, relieved not to have interrupted them in the act of exploring each other’s lunar surfaces, or engaging in some other Crabtreevian activity that would have obliged James to speak to Officer Pupcik whilst dangling by his ankles from the ceiling, dressed as an owl. “He has a visitor.”

Crabtree raised an eyebrow and studied my face, trying to read in it the identity of James’s visitor. After a fruitless few seconds he leaned across the bed and peeled back the walls of James’s cocoon, exposing the whole of his head, his downy neck, the pale smooth expanse of his back. James Leer lay curled up like a child, his face to the window, immobile. Crabtree pursed his lips, then looked up at me and shook his head. Sound asleep. The smile on his face was indulgent and almost sweet, and the thought crossed my mind that Crabtree might be in love. That was too disturbing a notion to entertain for very long, however, and I dismissed it from my mind. I’d always counted on and found comfort in Terry Crabtree’s unique ability to regard all romantic love with genuine and pitiless scorn.

“He’s pretty worn out, I imagine, poor kid,” he said, pulling the covers back over James’s head.

“Regardless,” I said. “He’s going to have to wake up.”

“Why?” said Crabtree. “Who is it? Old Fred?” He grinned and made a sweeping gesture with one hand to encompass all the odors and disorders of the room. “Send him on in.”

I said, “A policeman.”

Crabtree opened his mouth, then closed it. For an unprecedented instant he could think of nothing to say. Then he set the typescript of The Love Parade on the night table beside him, lowered his lips to James’s ear, and whispered, too low for me to hear what he was saying. After a moment James moaned, softly, then got his head up off the mattress. He craned it around toward me, squinting, newly hatched, his brilliantined hair sticking up at all angles from his head.

“Hey, Grady,” he said.

“Good morning, James.”

“A policeman.”

“Afraid so.”

After another moment he managed to roll himself all the way over, onto his back. He sat up on one elbow, blinking one eye and then the other, working his jaw in circles, as if experimenting with the functions of a brand-new body. The blankets slid from his shoulders, leaving him naked to the waist. The skin on his belly was mottled with sleep. On his shoulder he wore red traces of Crabtree’s lips and incisors.

“What does he want?”

“Well, I guess he wants to ask you about what happened at the Chancellor’s house on Friday night.”

James didn’t say anything. He lay there, without moving, his left temple resting companionably against the upper part of Crabtree’s right arm.

“You snore,” he told Crabtree.

“So I hear,” said Crabtree, nudging James lightly with his shoulder. “Go on, Jimmy,” he added. “Just tell them what I told you to tell them.”

James nodded, slowly, looking down with longing at the deep declivity growing cold in the center of his pillow. Then