Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [74]
“I saw it in the library yesterday afternoon.” He shrugged. “I was thinking of you.” He clapped me on the knee, firmly, and I felt a sympathetic twinge in my ankle at the impact of his hand. “Stay put,” he said. “I’m just going to clean that up for you.”
He unbent and went over to his laboratory, and I stayed where I was, looking at a National Geographic map of Mars that Irv had fastened with push pins to the wall above his chair. I had to fight off an urge to burst into tears of thankfulness for his solicitude.
“So, James,” said Irv. He was banging around in his drawers and cabinets, pulling out bottles, reading the labels, tossing them back. “I take it you admired Frank Capra.”
I was amazed; I was sure I’d never said anything to him about James Leer and his cinemania. I looked over at James, who was standing beside the armchair, holding the copy of The Bottomlands in his right hand, with his left hand dangling at an odd angle behind the open book.
“He’s, uh, he’s one of my favorites,” said James. “I mean, he was. He died last fall.”
“I know he did.” Irv returned with some cotton wool, a bottle of LabChem brand isopropyl alcohol, a bundle of gauze, a roll of adhesive tape, and a crinkled, squeezed-out tube of antibiotic ointment. He lowered himself to the ground a little at a time, and then knelt on his mechanical knee.
“Ooh,” he said, as he winched himself down. “Wee wow.”
He uncapped the rubbing alcohol and started to work with the cotton wool, dabbing delicately at my ankle. I flinched.
“Stings?”
“A little.”
“You do that with a knife?” he said to James, over his shoulder.
James looked trapped. “With a needle,” he said.
“What are you guys talking about?”
“His hand,” said Irv. “He’s got ‘Frank Capra’ sort of carved into it. Show him.”
James hesitated, and slowly withdrew his left hand from behind the book. I saw them now, faint pink marks that might have been letters scratched into the back of his hand. I’d never noticed them before.
“Does it say ‘Frank Capra’ on your hand, James Leer?” I said.
He nodded. “I did it the day he died. September third.”
“Jesus Christ.” I shook my head. I looked down at Irv. “He’s crazy about the movies,” I said.
Irv squirted a dab of ointment onto the tip of his index finger.
“One would have to be,” he said. Delicately he worked the ointment into the puncture marks. Thinking it over I decided that those eventual scars on my ankle would not have been acquired in any more reasonable manner than those on James’s hand.
“So,” I said to Irv, after a minute. “How were you liking it?”
“What’s that?”
“The book. The Bottomlands.”
“I’ve read it before.”
“And this time?”
“It’s a young man’s book,” he said, not unkindly. “It got me remembering how it felt to be young.”
“Maybe I should read it again.”
“You? I’d say you’re in no danger of aging prematurely.” This didn’t sound like a compliment. “So whose dog was it that bit you?”
“Oh, the Chancellor’s,” I said, looking back at the map of Mars. “There was a party at her place last night.”
“And aren’t they going to miss you at your Wordsfest?” said Irv, drawing back to squint at my wounds. “All your students?”
“I’ll be there tomorrow,” I said. “Anyway, I brought one of my students with me.”
“Clever of you,” said Irv. “I remember the Chancellor. Nice lady.”
“Uh huh,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the towering cracked crater of Nix Olympica.
There was a knock at the door.
“Who’s that?” said Irv.
“Hey, Dad. Hey, Grady.” It was Philly, or rather his head and upper torso, stuck into the door of the springhouse, fingers wrapped around the doorjamb as if to prevent himself from accidentally falling into the room. Although in the past I had seen a few exchanges of genuine affection between them, the Warshaw men were awkward and ill at ease with each other. Irv had his springhouse, and Philly’s domain, when he came home, was the basement, and in general they kept out of each other