Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [97]
“Be right back,” I said. “And happy birthday.”
“Thank you, Grady,” said Fred.
I found James not in bed but on the upstairs landing, in his long black coat, looking at me like I was the jailer come to lead him to the gallows tree.
“I don’t want to go with them,” he said.
“Look, James.” I kept my voice low. There was a bar of light shining at the bottom of every door. I didn’t want to draw an audience. I steered James into the bathroom and locked us in. “Now, James,” I said, “Listen, buddy, I think you really ought to get on home.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m having a good time.”
“You were having too good a time, I’d say. I’m clearly not a good person for you to hang around with right now. James?”
He wouldn’t look at me. I put a hand on his shoulder.
“James,” I said. I could feel myself breaking a critical promise I’d made to him at some point in the last twenty-four hours, and I wished that I could remember what it was. “Things, listen, things—things are really weird with me these days. I—I’m floundering. Just a little bit. I—see, I have enough blame to take already, okay, without having to take the blame if something bad happened to you. Come on. I’m serious. Go home.”
“That isn’t my home,” he said coldly.
“Oh no?” I said. “Where’s your home, then? Carvel?” I withdrew my hand from his shoulder. “Or would that be Sylvania?”
He looked down at his feet, in their scuffed-up black brogues. We could hear the low murmuring of the two old people downstairs.
“Why did you tell me all of that, James?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m sorry. Really. Please don’t make me go with them.”
“James, they’re your parents.”
“They’re not,” he said, looking up, his eyes wide. “They’re my grandparents. My parents are dead.”
“Your grandparents?” I closed the lid of the toilet and sat down. My ankle was throbbing from the exertion of digging a grave for Doctor Dee, and the plunge into the stale waters of the backyard had spoiled Irv’s dressing. “I don’t believe you.”
“I swear. My father had his own airplane. We used to fly up to Quebec in it. He was from there. Really. We had a house in the Laurentians. They were flying up there without me one day. And they crashed. I swear! It was in the newspaper!”
I looked at him. His eyes were filled with tears and his pale face was printed with the faint blue map of his bloodstream. His tone was utterly sincere.
“It was in the newspaper” I said, rubbing at my own eyes, trying to work a little keenness of judgment back into them.
“He was a senior vice president at Dravo. Seriously, he was a friend of Caliguiri and everything. My mother was, like, a big socialite, okay? Her maiden name was Guggenheim.”
“I remember that,” I said. It had been in the newspaper. “Five or six years ago.”
He nodded. “Their plane went down right outside of Scranton,” he said.
I couldn’t resist. “Near Carvel?” I said.
He shrugged and looked embarrassed. “I guess so,” he said. “Please don’t make me go with them, okay?” He could see that I was wavering. “Go down and tell them you just couldn’t wake me. Please? They’ll leave. They don’t really care.”
“James, they care a lot,” I said, although in truth they’d seemed far more concerned with my opinion of them, I thought, than with the welfare of their son. Or grandson, as the case might be.
“They treat me like a freak,” he said. “She makes me sleep in the basement of my own house! It’s my house, Professor Tripp. My parents left it to me.”
“But why would they say they were your parents if they aren’t, James? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Did they say that?” he said, looking surprised.
I screwed up my eyes and bit my lip, and tried to reconstruct the conversation in the living room.
“I think they did,” I said. “I’m not really sure, to tell you the truth.”
“That would be a new one. God, they’re so twisted. I don’t know why I even gave Mrs. Warshaw their phone number. I must have been drunk.” He shivered, although it was quite warm, even stuffy, in