Wichita (9781609458904) (17 page)

At this, Lewis bucks but Seth leans his weight harder on Lewis's arms.

“You should see your face! I wish I had a mirror, I really do! Just DIE WITH ME. GET IT OVER WITH!”

“I got an idea. Let's stay here until sunrise. That will be a GIFT. You talked about about a gift given but never mentioned me. AND THAT'S SO FUCKING TYPICAL. SEE, I AM THE ONLY GIFT YOU SHOULD BE THANKFUL FOR. AND IF IT TAKES LEADING YOU BY THE DICK WITH ONE OF MY SACRED WHORES TO GET YOU TO RECOGNIZE WHO I AM THEN SO BE IT. I'LL STOOP TO THAT BECAUSE I LOVE YOU AND I FEEL NOTHING BUT COMPASSION FOR YOU IN MY HEART. BUT YOU COULD AT LEAST THANK ME! BUT YOU'RE ALL WORRIED ABOUT THANKING SOME OLD FOOL FOR A DEAD BOOK ABOUT A DEAD MAN WHEN HERE I AM GIVING YOU A SACRED LIVING WHORE! I MEAN WHAT THE FUCK, RIGHT? YOU COULD AT LEAST ACKNOWLEDGE THE BLESSING OF YOUR TEACHER'S SACRED WHORE AND GIVE OF YOUR MONEY AND TIME, NOT HAVE IT BE TAKEN FROM YOU LIKE A BITCH.

“So let's wait until dawn, the NEW DAY. What does the DAY SAY? The day says: HERE I AM AGAIN, YOU PATHETIC SCARED SQUIRREL. And no matter HOW MANY TIMES you claw your way around the BIG OLD OAK TREE, I'm gonna GET YOUR ASS! RIGHT? ISN'T THAT WHAT THE DAY SAYS? YOU KNOW I'M RIGHT.”

“Okay, I'm a squirrel, I admit that. But YOU'RE MY NUT AND YOU'RE IN MY POCKET AND WE'RE NOT RUNNING ANYMORE.”

 

 

I
n the summer of Alissa and the Goethe-Institut, Lewis saw a tomb effigy of a knight, the features of the face worn smooth, one shin shorn away, both feet missing, broken off. That's how he's felt, despite two Ambiens, lying on his back in bed under the lingering effects of the meth. If meth was all it was. Eyeballs dry, hinges of his jaw sore from teeth-gnashing. Upper arms bruised where Seth kept him pinned to the ground using his knees. If he's slept at all, it was briefly, feverishly. He's been tossing from side to side.

“Demosthenes,” he whispers. One of the names on the entablature of the Butler library at Columbia. Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles. Behind the columns and high windows is the reading room. Plato, Aristotle, Vergil. Long tables of dark polished wood, glowing lamps. Students and faculty pass through the ornate open gate, some leaving, some entering. Hexagonal paving stones, chevroned bricks, linden trees and cherry blossoms. Where else in the world is there for Lewis other than the reading room?

He sits up in bed and the blades of white sunlight threaten to behead him. He ducks and gropes for the cord and closes the venetian blinds. He finds his cell phone in the front pocket of his jeans, along with the tinted bottle. He holds it up: there's a little left.

He calls information and gets the number for Delta reservations and somehow dials it before he forgets. When he's put on hold he takes the bottle to the bathroom and taps it into the sink. He turns on the faucet and watches the streak of powder get swept down the drain by the clear water then rinses out the bottle for good measure and tosses it into the plastic trash can, where it lands with an accusatory clunk that tightens the band of his headache.

A Delta operator gets on the line and Lewis finds a notebook and pen in his book bag. There's a flight operated by Atlantic Southeast that leaves Wichita Mid-Continent at 10:40 tomorrow morning and arrives in Atlanta at 1:51. The connection to LaGuardia departs at 2:40 and gets into New York at 5:09.

As if psychically notified by Lewis's turn back toward New York, Virgil calls. Lewis shunts it to voicemail. Would Lewis like to reserve a seat on this flight? Yes. He can always cancel it later. He jots down the reservation number as Virgil calls again or it's the same call bouncing back. He gets off the line with the Delta operator and answers the Virgil call.

“Lewis!” It's like he's charging through a door that's been flung open at the last second. “I mean, how dare you?”

“What?” Lewis says, considering hanging up and pretending the line dropped. “What're you talking about?”

“You didn't even bother to cover your tracks,” Virgil cries and Lewis feels out of breath, guilty because accused. Could this be about helping Sylvie with the fertility injections?

“You need to tell me what's going on,” Lewis says.

“Lewis,” Virgil says, sputtering slightly, “Dad's email box has been
flooded
with your ‘thank-you' notes. Don't be coy about this.”

Lewis tries to speak but Virgil talks over him. “I have to say I really see this as part of a larger pattern of ingratitude on your part. You never thanked me for the Horace Mann tuition, for instance, but you were on a
partial
scholarship because of the football.
I
had to pick up the rest of the tab! That wasn't easy to come by, that private-school money. I'm a doctor of
philosophy
, not medicine.” He's been saving that one, Lewis thinks to himself mid-stream. “And not one word of thanks from you.”

“Why should I have to
thank you
for paying for my schooling?” Lewis asks him. “That's what a parent
does
.”

“And what does a child do,” Virgil replies, “just take and take and take with no acknowledgement?”

“You pushed
me
to go to Horace Mann.”

“I gave you the
option
of going.”

“And for your information, I didn't write any fucking
emails to Cyrus
.”

There's a pause. Lewis waits, puffed up and panting slightly with outrage.

“Well, if you didn't write them,” Virgil asks finally, “who did?”

“I don't know,” Lewis says. But he does. He's looking around for his laptop. It was on the desk the last time he saw it.

There's another pause on Virgil's end then: “Is Seth there, in Wichita?”

“He is,” Lewis says. He's down on his knees looking under the bed.

“And does Seth know about—the Musil book and the rest?” It's as if he's a bit embarrassed by the idea of Seth's view of it.

“Yeah,” Lewis says. He's pulling on a clean shirt.

“Well, if it's Seth, this is not a good sign.”

“I just told you I didn't do it,” Lewis snaps. “Who else could it be?”

“There are over a
hundred
of these things, Lewis. I've never
heard
Mom so upset.” Lewis wonders about Gerty's life, if this is the most upsetting thing in it so far.

“I'll call you later.” He hangs up and is leaving the room when something makes him stop at the bookshelf. He takes down the copy of
When Things Fall Apart,
which is sticking out a bit: the money is gone.

He drops the book on the floor and stalks down the hall, pausing to listen at the closed door of Abby's bedroom—quiet—then hunts through the rest of the painfully sun-flooded house. There's no one in the TV room, the dining room, the kitchen, Seth's room.

He goes down the stairs into the basement to check there. Not in the laundry room or the storage area, stacked high and deep with Abby's unsold multi-level marketing products. In the main room, where there used to be a Ping-Pong table, a pleather Barcalounger, a TV set, there's now a chemistry lab—two long marble work tables arranged in an L. Beakers, funnels, flasks, graduated cylinders, coils of rubber tubing, a metal shelf with labeled bottles and boxes and canisters. A large mysterious machine, maybe a microscope, attached to devices that look like units for a stereo. The small windows up near the ceiling have been covered with foil.

He bounds back up the stairs and heads to Abby's room. Passing the den again, he spies his laptop on the couch. He was moving so fast he didn't notice it the first time through. He sits down and opens it and hits a key to refresh the screen and the “Sent” page of his email account comes up, all the recipients [email protected] . . . , the subject all variously “thanks!” and “merci!” and “you can guess,” the date sent all “Today,” with a minute or two at most separating each one, beginning at 3:47
A.M.

Lewis opens the first few:

 

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
thanks!

Date:
June 26, 2007 2:47:14 AM CST

To:
[email protected]

 

Dear Gramps,

 

Thanks for that book on Moosel, it rocks!

 

Love,

 

Lewis

 

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
thanks!

Date:
June 26, 2007 2:48:56 AM CST

To:
[email protected]

 

Dear Cramps,

 

Your book on Muscle, it's something I'll always sort of want to keep nearby.

 

Lovin' ya,

 

Lew

 

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
thanks!

Date:
June 26, 2007 3:47:14 AM CST

To:
[email protected]

 

Dear Gramps,

 

I can't get enuf

of this thanking stuff!

 

Truly,

 

Lew-deKriss

 

Folding the Mac shut, he picks it up and raps more loudly on Abby's door than he meant to.

“Come in!” he hears her call in a pleasant singsong. He opens the door and goes in, closing it behind him. The light is dim, the tones of the room greenish gold, a vaguely harem atmosphere: sleepy, sensual, subaquatic. Abby is lying on her side on the enormous “California King” Tempur-Pedic bed, which feels like the world's largest slab of cream cheese. She has a book open in the light of a lamp, the covers pulled up above her breasts. “Have you seen Seth?” Lewis asks.

She puts the open book face down on the bedspread. “What's going on, honey?” she asks, scanning his face.

Lewis has already turned to go. He stops and says, “Seth is in full flip-out.”

“What?” she says, sitting up. “Lewis, what happened?”

“He held me hostage in a cemetery last night, ranting about how he's my teacher, he's already dead. Again. He has a memorial tattoo
in his own name
.”

“Wait, what?” Abby has sat up straighter in bed. “What's a memorial tattoo?”

“This huge new
tattoo
of his,” Lewis says, gesturing impatiently at his collarbone. “It says, ‘In Loving Memory of Seth Chopik.' He needs to be locked up.”

He watches her absorb this. “He needs to be locked up, Abby! He's crazy.”

“I don't like this talk of locking people up,” she says. “And we aren't locking him up for a weird
tattoo
. We couldn't even we wanted to.”

“I walked like four miles home from the cemetery,” Lewis says. “I wouldn't get back in the car with him.”

She's looking at him as if anew. “Were you on something last night?”

“Yeah,” Lewis admits. “He gave me some meth.”

“Crystal
meth
?” She looks horrified.

“It's just speed.” Isn't it?

“OK, look, Lewis, you're grieving about Victoria now. You're drinking, you're doing strong drugs. That's fine, it's to be expected. But you have take your own reactions to things with a grain of salt, no?”

Lewis takes a breath. He needs to start over. “OK, remember how I owe Cyrus a thank-you note for the Musil study?”

She nods, eyes big with suspense.

“Well, I told Seth about it too, last night. And he sent
a hundred emails
to Cyrus,
in my name
, ‘thanking' him for the Musil book!” He holds up the laptop like a murder weapon and Abby covers her mouth. “It's not fucking funny!” Lewis shouts.

“No, I know,” she says, and he sees she's maybe not laughing after all. “I'm sorry.”

“I'm like a
pariah
now!”

“Weren't you already?” she asks coolly.

Lewis scoffs. “And he stole the money you gave me.”

At this, she frowns again with concern. “Then gave it to Tori,” Lewis says, “that's how she could be at the Birthday Party.”

“Do you know any of that
for sure
?” she asks.

“No,” he admits.

“What do you know for sure?”

“That the money's missing,” Lewis admits.

“Then I think you need to take a breath,” she says.

“And that Seth's fucking insane!”

The cell phone on the bedside table rings. “He held me hostage!”

She glances at the screen and raises one finger and answers it.

“
What
?” Holding the sheets to her breasts, she lifts a wood slat of the blinds covering the window and peers out into yard.

“God,” she says into the phone, lifting the blinds with two fingers and continuing to peer through.

Lewis goes to the window and lifts a slat higher up on the blinds. He sees Bishop in the side yard standing in profile with his hands on his hips at the flap of the tent. Making his way through the weeds is a cop, the nose of his black-and-white cruiser, parked along the street, just visible through the missing gate from Lewis's vantage. Lewis watches Bishop mutter something, presumably into the tiny headset and Abby says, “Okay.”

“Bishop says open the window a little bit so we can hear,” she whispers. Lewis stoops and raises it a few inches and the sounds of the yard wash into the bedroom. Lewis lifts a blade of the blinds and looks out through the gap again.

“Hello there, officer!” Bishop hails the man, hands clasped before him as if in accordance with something he read about non-threatening body language.

Heavyset, slow-moving, the sheriff—his arm patch says “sheriff” and “State of Kansas” and “Sedgwick County”—ignores the greeting. He's quite close to the window now and it seems to Lewis that if the man simply turned his head slightly he'd spot them spying there. A horsefly lands in the light brown fur of his forearm and the sheriff shoos it away by giving his arm a rotating shake. “Got permission to have a tent out here?”

“Yes, I do, officer,” Bishop says. “From the lady of the house.”

The sheriff nods as if absorbing this then the horsefly returns, buzzing aggressively around his head and there ensues an undignified flurry of frantic ducking and swatting while Bishop looks frowningly on, one hand raised to his lips to hide a smile. When the horsefly is finally gone, the sheriff waits a moment, scanning the air above him warily, then says, “Had complaints from the neighbors about this camp.”

“Neighbors?” Bishop says with a chuckle. He points to his left. “This house is empty, foreclosed.” He turns, waves vaguely behind himself. “That one back there is empty too—up for sale.” He shrugs. “And if you mean Bill Oren, he can't even see me from over there.”

The sheriff has been surveying the clothesline and Tibetan prayer flags behind his sunglasses. “Did Bill Oren complain?” Bishop asks.

“Mind if I look inside the tent?” the sheriff asks.

Bishop's face falls and he shoots a glance at the window. “Yes, I
do
mind, officer! I mind very
much
!”