"Gla.s.s of wine? A little QT?" he'd asked.

She told him about the fish, and that she'd ordered Halloween costumes for the boys that she wanted to show him. She put two gla.s.ses of wine on the coffee table, and when he came into the living room-face still flushed, hair damp-Mira held up the cow costumes, and said, "Can you even believe how cute these are?"

Clark looked at them as if he didn't recognize them as children's costumes at first, and then he blinked, and he said with so little emotion that he might as easily have been expressing hatred or contempt as complete apathy, "Are those for the boys?"

"Yeah," Mira said, and couldn't help adding, although as soon as she did she wished she hadn't, "Who else?"

"I'm just asking," Clark said, "because cows aren't boys."

It took Mira a few seconds to compose any kind of response at all, and then she said, "I'm aware of that, Clark," and let the costumes drop to her lap.

"Well, the twins are. Boys, that is. Males."

"Thanks for that penetrating insight," Mira said, and began to put the costumes back in the box.

"Well, it seems to me like, I don't know, Mira-bulls, Superman, something like that might be more appropriate for two little boys for Halloween? I mean, I'm sorry if this offends you, or it's too burdensome to come up with something gender-appropriate. It's not like I suggested that you sew a thousand sequins onto a handmade serpent costume or something."

Oh, yes.

The handmade serpent costume with the thousand sequins was something Clark's mother had made for him when he was a kid. It was something he'd told Mira about his mother when they'd first started dating, to give her a sense of the woman who'd raised him-her fanatical dedication to her son, how seriously she'd taken her role as Homemaker. ("I wore the thing once," he'd said. "The woman would have been perfectly happy to go blind making my Halloween costume.") They'd been driving in the dark together, Clark at the wheel. Mira couldn't see his face, but there was no mistaking the grief, maybe even the shame, in his voice. She'd reached across to him, taken his hand, and her own eyes had filled with tears. She'd wanted, then, completely, to love Clark with that kind of devotion herself. She wanted to be, someday, the kind of mother to his child who would sew a thousand green sequins to a felt suit simply because the child had a pa.s.sing fancy for sea serpents. She would be that kind of mother, she vowed to herself then, even if, someday, it pained her children to consider those pointless sacrifices. She wanted those she loved to be that certain of her love.

Now, looking up at Clark, Mira said, "Well, I wish I had time to stay home and sew the boys' costumes myself, but I have to pay the f.u.c.king rent. Somebody around here has to work to pay the f.u.c.king rent."

Mira hadn't even noticed that Clark had the newspaper in his hand until he'd thrown it at her, and it had fallen in a wrinkled rasping disorder around her, and she was grabbing it up by the fistfuls and ripping it to pieces, throwing it back at him as he headed for the door.

43.

"h.e.l.l Week? Is this, like, hazing? You've got to be kidding. I mean, why would you join a 'club' that tortured you for a week?"

"It helps you bond," Nicole said, and Craig choked a little on his milkshake. The way she said it was so sweet, so utterly naive. "It makes it so you're really sisters," she went on.

"Nicole, I thought you already did this during 'Challenge' Month. I mean, if having to wear the same pair of panties for four weeks didn't cement your bond, what good will h.e.l.l Week do?"

"Come on, Craig. You promised not to joke about that."

He nodded. He had. He'd promised up and down as a way of getting her to tell him what she was so self-conscious about in November. He'd a.s.sumed she was planning on dumping him, since every time he kissed her she found some reason to squirm away, and even in the cafeteria she sat as far from him as you could get and still be technically eating a meal with someone. He'd showed up outside the Omega Theta Tau house after one of her "secret meetings" on a Tuesday night, holding a bouquet of red roses, and she'd burst into tears and started to run away from him. By the time he finally caught up with her, half a block away, he was crying, too. He grabbed her arm, but she yanked it away and she started to beg, "Please, please, just stay away from me for a few more days."

"Why? Nicole, I love you. What's wrong?"

She ran a little farther, but weakly, seeming to be losing her will to run from him, until he managed to pull her into an alleyway between a liquor store and a sushi place. By this time, he'd already tossed the roses onto a park bench. He grabbed her arms in both of his and pulled her to him, and she sobbed, but she also went limp when he wouldn't let go, and he muttered into her hair, "Please. Nicole. I'm dying here. I love you. Just tell me."

"You'll hate me," she said. She sobbed. "You'll think I'm so stupid. You'll think I'm so, so-gross. You'll laugh at me, or you'll tell people. You'll-"

"Don't tell me what I'll do, Nicole! There's nothing that would make me hate you. And I'd never betray you. You're the most precious, the most-"

"Okay! Okay! My underpants!" she shouted. Some guy walking by the alley did a double-take then, and Nicole cringed, buried her head in her hands, and said it again in a ragged whisper. "My underpants." And again. "My underpants."

"What?" A slideshow of brief, crazy images flashed through his mind. He saw a football team throwing Nicole's panties around on a field, panties flown from a flagpole, panties for sale on eBay, photographs of panties tacked to bulletin boards, and then she said, "They're dirty. You'll just tell me how stupid I am."

It took a long time in the alley, and a lot of tears soaked into his corduroy jacket, to get the story out. She had three more days to wear them. On Sat.u.r.day she had to hand over the filthy things to the Omega Theta Tau president in some sort of ritual celebration of sisterhood. Then she could wear new ones.

Nicole sobbed, "I can smell them."

It was hard not to laugh, but even harder not to lecture: "This is absurd, Nicole. You're not joining the armed forces here. You shouldn't have to do this kind of s.h.i.t just to live in a big house with a bunch of prom queens."

"I knew you'd-!"

"Okay, okay," Craig said, and closed his mouth by pressing his lips to her forehead.

That was back in November. Now, the first week of March, she was informing him that for h.e.l.l Week she wasn't going to be able to leave the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Omega Theta Tau house except to attend cla.s.ses.

"What the h.e.l.l-no pun intended-are you going to be doing down there?"

"They don't tell you. But the girls from last year said it was mostly different projects. Stuff for events. And tests on Pan-h.e.l.lenic things, facts. The Founders." She shrugged.

"That's total, unadulterated bulls.h.i.t," Craig said. "Why would you need to be in the bas.e.m.e.nt?"

"It's a trial." Nicole lifted her chin, and he could see that it was quivering. "It's a tradition." She lifted a shoulder, let it fall. "I actually think it sounds fun."

"Fun?"

"You're not in a fraternity, Craig. I don't think you can relate to . . . to . . ."

"You got that right," Craig said. The waitress came over to their table then and started to take Nicole's plate away even though she'd never touched her grilled cheese. Craig put his hand out and waved the waitress away. "She's still eating that," he said.

"I'm so sorry," the waitress said without a shred of sarcasm, and held her hands up as if he'd tried to slap her. She was one of those infuriating middle-aged Midwestern women who used her friendliness like a weapon. Already she'd complimented everything about the two of them before she'd bothered to take their orders-I love your coat, I love your sweater, I love your hair thing, I love your ring, I love your boots. Craig had stared at the menu, imagining his mother shooing this woman away: Thanks, we love you, too . . .

But Nicole engaged the waitress exuberantly, told her that the sweater was from the Gap, that Craig's coat was from the Salvation Army (!), that the hair thing was just a scrunchie of her sister's, that the boots were Uggs, and the ring-Craig had given her the ring.

Here, at least, Craig quit grimacing at his menu and looked up at the waitress looking at the ring on Nicole's right hand. Nicole held it up to her like a queen waiting for it to be kissed.

"Wow," the waitress said, taking Nicole's little fingertips in her own, twisting her hand so she could see the ring in better light. "Wow. It's sap, isn't it? There's . . . something in it." She bent down to look at it closely.

"A little fruit fly," Nicole said proudly. "It could be forty million years old."

Craig had told her this.

His science teacher in sixth grade at Fredonia Middle had kept a little collection of things stuck in amber-a spider, a frog, some mosquitoes. He'd even had a piece of amber with what looked like a long black hair floating in it, and another with two sad little ants scrambling over each other to get out before they were trapped in the stuff forever. Craig had been horrified and thrilled by the idea that, as Mr. Barfield had explained it, they'd probably stumbled in there in the first place because they were attracted to the whole sticky mess. Imagine, he'd thought, having the evidence of your f.u.c.k-up preserved for millions of years in amber.

"It's not sap," Craig told the waitress. "It's resin."

The waitress nodded then as if that were the most interesting thing she'd ever heard in her life, left their table finally, tossed the piece of paper with their order at the cook, and then disappeared, later leaving their sandwiches under the red lamps on the counter between the kitchen and the restaurant for a good ten minutes. When she finally brought them over to the table, they were stone-cold.

"Why do you have to be so negative?" Nicole asked after the waitress was gone. "What difference does it make? If you were a Greek, you'd be doing something like this, and I'd understand."

"Look, Nicole. h.e.l.l Week, whatever. Do what you have to do-but, like, don't expect me not to be unhappy that I'm not going to see you for a week. I mean, if you were going to Spain or something, I'd get it, but sewing doilies in a bas.e.m.e.nt?"

The tears that had been p.r.i.c.king at the inner corners of Nicole's eyes ever since he'd waved the waitress away turned into the real thing. When they started to run pathetically down the side of her nose, one of them even spilling over her upper lip, Craig jumped up from his seat and came around to her side of the booth, and put his arms around her, and kissed it away.

"Never mind, never mind. I'm an a.s.shole, I'm sorry," he said, kissing and kissing. "Do your d.a.m.n doilies. Just come back to me. I can't survive without you." He took her face in his hands and looked at it.

Nicole inhaled a wavering, aborted laugh before she put her head on his shoulder and started to cry even harder: "But you're never going to understand. It'll always be this thing between us. You'll always be laughing at me. I just-"

"Are you saying you want to break up?" Craig asked, stiffening, trying not to shout it. He was painfully aware of the waitress hovering around behind him now, and knew she wasn't going to go anywhere until she'd caught enough of this conversation to figure out what the problem was. He lowered his voice, and said, "So, you want to dump me for some frat a.s.shole? Is that what this is about?" He started to pull away, and then Nicole reached out and grabbed the lapel of his corduroy jacket, bunched it up in her fist, the way a baby would, and it made him want to start sobbing, too, looking at her small soft hand clutching at his Salvation Army jacket. (She'd bought it for him. She and her sorority sisters had gone to the thrift shop to buy costumes for some carnival they were planning, and she'd seen it there. "I knew you'd look so cute in it! And it was your size!") "No, Craig. No. I want you, but I just wish-"

"I told you, Nicole, I'll think about it. I can't join this year anyway. Next year, okay? I'll think about next year, okay?" She didn't nod or say anything, just continued to clutch the jacket with her face against his shoulder. "Okay?"

She whimpered a little, and then she said, "No. You won't. You'd hate it."

Craig was about to try to deny it, but then she looked up at him and she had a little smile on her face-a wistful, regretful little smile like nothing he'd ever seen on her face before, maybe never before seen on anyone's face.

She said it again, "You'd hate it," and started to laugh. "I can just see you." She was laughing really hard now, and he started to laugh, too, looking at her, looking at him, regarding him, and he realized what it was, that expression-that she was recognizing him, that she knew him for exactly what he was, and it amused her: Despite herself, she liked what she saw.

She maybe loved what she saw.

He could see it in her eyes.

Had anyone ever looked at him that way?

Craig felt as if he were made of gla.s.s, that a note played now on a violin or a flute could shatter him into a thousand pieces. He was trembling, he realized, and he had her hair in his hands, and he was trying to keep himself from sobbing out loud, and he vowed in that moment, not for the first time, that whatever she wanted, whatever it took to keep her, for the rest of his life, for the rest of her life, he would do it.

A bitterly cold wind blew through their booth at that moment, and he instinctively turned to look at the door of the diner. Someone had come in-a silhouetted figure in the doorway, blurred in Craig's teary eyes-and the figure stood in the threshold for a second or two before Craig, blinking, looking more closely, recognized him just as he turned quickly and walked back out the door.

Craig pulled away from Nicole, and nodded toward the door. "That was him," he said.

"Who?"

"That guy. The EMT guy, Nicole. The f.u.c.king ambulance driver. He saw us, and he left."

"What EMT guy?" Nicole asked, bringing her napkin to her eyes to wipe them. "What are you talking about?"

"I've seen him, that guy, like five times at your sorority. I told you already. Remember? I told you that I keep seeing him around there. Who is he?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Craig. I don't even know what EMT stands for."

Craig didn't bother to argue with her, or to tell her what EMT stood for. He watched the plate gla.s.s window to see if the guy would walk past it, but he must have gone the other way: To avoid the window? To avoid being seen by Craig?

Craig stood up, as if to follow, although he had no idea what he'd do if he caught up with the guy-and, anyway, Nicole took the sleeve of his jacket in her hand and tugged him back down to her, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him so sweetly, and for so long, that even the waitress, who'd been watching them, must have felt embarra.s.sed, and went away.

44.

"Let me get the mail," Perry said, trying to grab Craig's elbow as he turned from the window to the door, but Craig was already gone before Perry could stop him.

They'd been watching from the window together, waiting. Below, the mailman was finally crossing the street, his face down against what must have been a pretty stiff wind (a bright end-of-October day, not a cloud in the sky, but the bare branches of the trees were being whipped around mercilessly, and the wind blowing through the gaps between the window frames and the gla.s.s panes felt frigid to Perry). The mailman disappeared from view for a few minutes, presumably standing in the foyer of their apartment house, sorting and distributing. Then they saw him emerge and start to walk across the gra.s.s to the apartment house next door, a bright red leaf stuck to his blue cap, scores of other leaves catching to his black boots as he trampled through them.

Perry stayed behind in the apartment and listened to the stairs make their familiar groaning and rattling sounds as Craig slammed down them in his sneakers on his way to the mailbox. He could even hear the missed beat of Craig skipping over the seventh step.

A week earlier, someone's foot had punched through that one, and there was a hole in it now that you had to avoid if you didn't want to end up knee-deep in the stairwell on your way up or down. No one in the building seemed to know who it was who'd gone through it first, but since then, one of the girls next door had twisted her ankle, and she was on crutches, so Perry had left the landlord a message about the problem. When there was no response to that, he left a note at the top and bottom of the stairs himself ("CAUTION, HOLE IN SEVENTH STEP"), and when the girl on crutches found out that Perry was the one who'd put up the sign, she hobbled over with some cookies she'd baked, to thank him for his concern.

The cookies had tasted like cardboard, but she was a pretty girl-bright red cheeks and dyed black hair cut in a kind of bowl shape around her head. If she'd told him her name, Perry had forgotten it. A couple days after Perry taped up the warning, someone had written on the bottom of it, "Signed, Rumpelstiltskin."

Craig must have fished the mail out of their little metal box by now. Perry could hear him coming back up, taking the stairs two at a time. Maybe three at a time. He could hear what sounded like panting, and then Craig shoved the door open and stood there in the threshold holding another fluttering white postcard out to Perry in one hand, a handful of glossy pizza and sub sandwich flyers in the other.

"It's her. It's really her," Craig said. "It's another postcard from her."

Perry took a step carefully toward him and took the postcard from Craig's hand. It looked the same as the last one-one of those prestamped post office cards made of thin, pulpy paper. Perry looked at the address, reading Craig's name there, and then he flipped it over.

He had to rub his eyes, and look again, and then rub his eyes again: The handwriting.

Perry had been seeing that handwriting for years. Soft fat pencil on lined paper. Crayon signatures at the bottom of art projects. Invitations, exclamations pinned to lockers, notes he'd had to borrow, to copy, in Global Studies, in AP English, for cla.s.ses he'd missed, and poems written out in this handwriting in a poetry workshop he'd taken with her in eleventh grade.

He rubbed his eyes again, but Perry would have recognized those loopy lowercase consonants anywhere, even if he didn't know exactly the kind of poem she would have written to Craig on a postcard. Mr. Brenner had taught them about slant rhyme. He'd been especially harsh with Nicole (whose poems always rhymed: "What's the point otherwise?!" she'd said) regarding her "moon/June predilections."

She'd been a good student. She'd absorbed the lesson completely by the end of the quarter, and gone on to critique her cla.s.smates' poems for exactly the same thing Mr. Brenner had said about hers.

I cannot tell you who I am now I cannot say how sorry You did not kill me, Craig, please know My soul they cannot bury "Jesus Christ," Perry said, "Jesus Christ," as he sank onto the couch, the postcard still in his hand. His heart was slamming against his ribs. He hadn't been sure before, despite what he himself believed about Nicole and despite all Craig's insistence. The last postcard had only said, I miss you. N. It could have been from anyone. It could have been a sick prank. Perry had said this to Craig, who'd seemed to take it in, but for the past two days, the way he'd been waiting for the mail, it was obvious he'd only been humoring Perry while waiting for another postcard from Nicole.

"f.u.c.k," Perry said, and he handed it back to Craig, and then he turned around, heart still slamming, and hands shaking. "f.u.c.k. f.u.c.k. f.u.c.k."

Until now, he hadn't believed anything, had he? He'd been unable to believe anything. He'd been on a search for something, but he hadn't expected to find it.

Now, Perry's hands were trembling, and he felt his throat all but close in a kind of panicked voicelessness when Craig said, as soberly as Craig had ever said anything, "She's not dead, Perry. Or. She's-she's something."

Perry looked up at him, and found himself both shocked and not even surprised to see what he saw: Craig was happy.

Craig didn't even seem confused.

Craig had a bright look on his face that Perry hadn't seen there since before the accident. He looked, Perry thought, like the girls at Confirmation Camp right after the Final Acceptance of Christ into Our Hearts ceremony: shiny-eyed, full of faith, seeing beyond this world and its flimsy trappings. Ecstasy. That look was ecstasy.

He had to tell him. He had to show him the photograph. He had to tell Craig about Lucas, and Patrick Wright, and Professor Polson. Until this, it had seemed too crazy, too cruel. But now-now Craig had to know.

But first, Perry had to call Professor Polson. He had to ask her advice. He had to tell her about this.