Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [116]
“Okay,” he said. He gave his head a determined nod, then swung his legs around, stood up, and went bare-assed to the foot of the bed, where he found his BVDs. He dressed himself deliberately and quickly. As he pulled on his shirt he noticed the long archipelago of hickeys on his shoulder. He ran his fingers softly across them, and looked over at Crabtree with a smile that was crooked and half grateful. He didn’t seem particularly distressed or bewildered, I thought, on awakening to his first morning as a lover of men. While he worked his way up the buttons of my old flannel shirt, he kept glancing over at Crabtree, not in any mawkish way but with deliberateness and an air of wonder, as if studying Crabtree, memorizing the geometry of his knees and elbows.
“So,” I said. “What did you tell him to tell them?”
“Oh, that he’s very, very sorry for shooting the Chancellor’s dog, and that he’s willing to do anything to make it up.”
James nodded, and bent to pick up his socks.
“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” I said.
James stood up. “I left my shoes in the hall,” he said.
“I don’t really think you’re going to need shoes,” said Crabtree. “The guy’s not going to arrest you.”
A floorboard creaked, and there was a jingle of metal from down the hall. We all looked at one another.
“Mr. Tripp?” called Officer Pupcik. “Everything all right back there?”
“Yeah,” I said, “we’re coming.” I put my hand on James’s shoulder and steered him toward the door. “Come on, Jimmy.”
As he started out of the bedroom, James turned to Crabtree and nodded toward the manuscript on the bedside table.
“So,” he said. “How is it?”
Crabtree raised his chin, tipping his head back until the ends of his hair brushed his shoulders, and looked at James through narrowed eyelids. It occurred to me that an editor was a kind of artistic Oppenheimer, careful to view the terrible flash of an author’s ego only through a thick protective lens.
“It’s not bad” he said, not quite tonelessly. “Not bad at all.”
James grinned, and he ducked his head once in childish delight. Then he grabbed his shoes and brushed past me and went skipping down the hall toward the front door, where I’d left Officer Pupcik waiting for him out on the porch.
Crabtree sat up and opened his eyes wide again.
“I want to publish this,” he said, picking up the manuscript and thumping it once with the heel of his hand. “I hope they’ll let me. I’ve got to think they will. It’s brilliant.”
“Great,” I said, feeling a little twinge. “A little more help from you and Officer Pupcik, there, and he can be the next Jean Genet. It’s been a while since somebody wrote a good book in jail.”
He wrinkled up his nose. “I don’t think killing someone’s dog’s all that big a deal, Tripp. Isn’t it basically just a kind of vandalism?”
“Didn’t he tell you about the jacket, Crabtree?”
Crabtree shook his head, and his expression got a little vague; I had him worried now. And that was a disturbing notion, too.
“Look at it this way,” I told him. “You won’t have any trouble getting him off the book page.”
JAMES AND THE POLICEMAN stood on the porch, side by side, looking in through the front door like a couple of paperboys come to collect. I was relieved to see that the handcuffs were still dangling from Officer Pupcik’s utility belt.
“I’m real sorry, Mr. Tripp,” the policeman said, “but I have to run James here on over to the campus. Dr. Gaskell wants to talk to him.”
I nodded, and shrugged my shoulders at James, palms upraised, consigning him yet again to the custody and judgment of others. For once there was no concomitant look of reproach in his eyes. He only smiled, and followed his captor down the porch steps, going lightly.
“Just a minute, James,” I said, grabbing for the car keys on the deal table by the door. The two men stopped and turned back. I dangled the keys before me and jerked my head toward the side of the house. “There’s something you’d better take with you, don’t you think?”
“Oh, yeah,” said James, blushing a little—but only a little.