Quinn Read online

  “I’m sorry. No.”

  “Oh, come on,” Chris pleaded. His mouth smiled, but he had taken hold of Will’s arm again.

  “Sorry,” Will repeated, prying himself loose. He started off down the hall and heard Chris’s voice following him.

  “Oh, come on, Ingraham. It’s only a game …”

  Chapter 5

  Will gazed out the window of the bus as it rattled up North Main. Once past the center of town the street became pitted, the trees sparse and stunted. Battered garbage cans vomited their frozen contents over the sidewalks like grotesque cornucopias. The city, once one of western New England’s prospering textile centers, had begun its decline when the mills moved to South Carolina. Then Springfield, its flourishing neighbor, dealt the fatal blow by siphoning off most of its remaining industries.

  Will rubbed his gloved hands together. Even the temperature inside the bus seemed to drop five degrees as they hit the North End ghetto. He glanced at the other passengers and noted that, as always by Myrtle Avenue, he was the only white person aboard. He stood, joints stiff with cold, and rang the bell. The bus shuddered up against the curb and expelled him through the back doors onto the littered sidewalk.

  Harvey’s school was only a block away, but Will stood at the bus stop trying to conjure up a tantalizing—and inexpensive—afternoon for the boy. He stamped his frozen feet—what a lousy day to experiment with spontaneity. Besides, for the first time in three years of weekly visits with this special little brother, he was late.

  Harvey Jackson had been searched out and assigned to Will by the college in what now seemed an ill-fated investment in culture clash. Take a black kid to lunch, pitch him a softball across the lush campus athletic fields, buy him a mug handsomely embossed with the school seal, and send him home to the rats and filth. Soon the novelty of playing social worker wore off, and one by one the volunteers opted for an afternoon working out at the track or guzzling beer at the student union rather than shattering their spinal columns on a North End bus. The program was officially canceled in letters citing academic pressures, signed personally by the president of the college and sent to each ghetto participant. Some of the notices reached their destination, some were stolen from broken mailboxes along with the welfare checks, and one was delivered, read, and incinerated over the gas stove of a weary woman with four young boys and no husband.

  But Will had made it to Harvey’s shabby apartment house before the letter did. Sometime during the first months of the Big Brother program, the seven-year-old child had taken up residence in an area of Will’s brain that was reserved for permanent tenants. The inhabitants there were few: Will’s grandfather; his brother, Sam; Marianne, his childhood friend and the sister of his soul until her car had crashed more than a year ago; the inspiring Edward French of the Red Falls Central High School English department; and now Harvey Jackson. Once one gained admittance to this guarded sector, eviction was impossible, so far even by reason of death. Certainly not by edict of a college administrator’s pronouncement that Will could quit chasing off to the North Side Elementary School every Thursday afternoon.

  Clusters of children began to spill around the corner, their noisy chatter jolting Will from his preoccupation. He headed toward the school, a curious sight—lanky young man with the western stride and sunstreaked hair loping upstream against the surge of laughing black faces.

  Harvey, ten years old now, but small for his age, was leaning against the building. The dark eyes registered recognition at the sight of Will, but nothing else.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Will said, touching the boy’s thin shoulder briefly.

  “That’s okay,” Harvey said.

  Will peered into the expressionless face. “You pissed off at me?”

  Harvey looked up at him, surprised. “No, man. What for?”

  Will saw that it was true. The boy wasn’t angry at his tardiness, only resigned. Disappointment was to be expected, along with crushed dreams, brutality, and betrayal. Will drew the wiry figure close to him, suddenly understanding today’s reluctance to meet the boy at all. Only six months until graduation, and Will had yet to broach the issue of their upcoming separation.

  Will gazed down at the soft mound of frizzy hair trotting beside him about heart-high. “Give me a lesson in tough, Harve,” he said.

  “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, man?” Half a dozen boys sprinted past them, a few turning to wave at Harvey and shoot him a look of envy. “Hey, Joe, Tony,” he said with a stiff nod, but Will saw the pride in his face and felt the narrow back straighten a fraction.

  With an effort Will cut short his speculation about Harvey’s Thursday next year this time. “What’s new?” he asked.

  “Nothin’. Where we goin’?”

  “Downtown. The mall, where it’s warm. School?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Got your grades this week, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on, Harve.”

  The small face tilted up to show a hint of mischief and defiance. “Two B’s. Two C’s.”

  “Not bad, but haven’t you got five courses?”

  “Yeah, well …”

  “Well?”

  “And one D.”

  “In what?”

  “Music.”

  “That’s hard to figure.”

  “Aw, that old faggot don’t know nothin’. He’s into all that fancy junk you can’t even move to. We gotta do a report on one of those old dudes he’s so crazy about. Moe-zart or one of them …”

  “Mote-zart,” Will said.

  But Harvey went on, his voice cracking with preadolescent outrage. “That Mr. Ballister don’t even know who The Kickers is. Shit.”

  “Yeah?” Will tried in vain to remember who The Kickers might be.

  It was cold waiting for the bus. They swung their arms and stomped their feet to keep the circulation going. Mercifully the downtown bus appeared before too long, and as Will boosted Harvey up the steps he said, “Hey, Harve, you ever hear of Prokofiev?”

  Harvey flopped down into a seat that perched atop the bus’s only operative heater. “That a disease?”

  “A composer. Died about ten years ago.”

  “Yeah, I guess maybe I heard of him.”

  “We’re going to the library first. They’ve got a record we can listen to.”

  “What kind?” Harvey asked suspiciously.

  “It’s about this wolf and a kid named Peter. The wolf swallows a duck, and Peter goes after him …”

  Harvey’s body was motionless. Will glanced sideways at the solemn face and kept talking, inclining his head toward the boy until he felt the soft brush of Harvey’s hair against his cheek.

  After dinner Will returned Harvey to the North End on the same drafty bus he’d ridden from campus. As always, Harvey refused Will’s company up the four flights to his dismal apartment. Instead, they stood in the space just inside the doorway, out of the icy wind. A naked light bulb illuminated six decades of obscenities carved into the peeling walls, and Will supposed that, as usual, the rough scribbles would remain in his mind all evening. Perhaps archeologists in centuries to come would preserve those crumbling surfaces and exhibit them in museums along with the caveman’s primitive sketches on his dank clay walls. Scratching their heads, future generations could ponder the significance of off the pigs and Wilma eats white cock.

  Harvey’s eyes peered up at Will through a veil of black, curly lashes, and Will knew that what might appear to be furtiveness was actually hooded misery. Will struggled with the dilemma that always tormented him when Thursdays came to an end: to let the boy erect his walls against the world, Will included, or reach out and touch him, hold on to him for another moment, allowing Will some last image other than graffiti to warm him on the long bus ride home. One evening Will had weakened, cupped Harvey’s chin with his palm, and said, “I’ll miss you.” The boy’s eyes filled, the lower lip quivered, and he fl
ung himself through the door and up the stairs. Will had heard him stumble on the first landing, probably blinded by his tears.

  So tonight he gave the boy a grin and a rough jab to the shoulder. Let him be, let him construct his defenses against the angry, exhausted voices that awaited him four flights up.

  “See you next week,” Will said, then gave Harvey a shove into the narrow hallway.

  “Yeah,” Harvey murmured. Then both of them moved quickly away from the point of separation.

  Will was restless sitting on the bus’s molded plastic seat that was so cold in winter and so sticky hot in the summer. If this was what being a parent was all about, screw it, he thought. Even the most minute decisions seemed momentous. Tonight, for instance, when Harvey had pleaded for pizza. Will had wanted to feed him something nutritious that he wasn’t likely to get at home. But Harvey had persevered, and Will tried to assuage his guilt by ordering extra mushrooms and green peppers for whatever vitamins might have survived the freeze-dry process. Occasionally Will had stood firm at dinnertime, and watched his silent charge munch resentfully on broiled chicken while hiding his peas under the mashed potatoes. At those times Will chastised himself for withholding the pleasures of junk food from a life so devoid of indulgences. Pizza or poultry, malnutrition or malcontent—for Will every alternative promised inevitable guilt. Screw it, screw it.

  Will gazed at the flashing colors of the downtown department stores. He longed for the undisturbed darkness that sped past the window of his father’s pickup truck on the way home from, say, a Friday night basketball game at the high school. Perhaps the memory of that black sky masked many unexamined complexities. He used to enjoy thinking of his childhood as a series of gentle contours. Over the years, however, out of a natural introspective impulse, he gradually acknowledged the jagged peaks and depths that growing up had required. Tonight’s anguish over Harvey’s dinner menu troubled him. It heralded a future full of rough edges, no less treacherous and painful than those of the past. Up until now there had always been the unchallenged assumptions: Will the teacher, Will the father. Maybe the time had come to apply the relentless probings of self-examination to the concept of himself as an instructor and champion of the young. A guilt-free career in computer programming might suit. He would be riding the crest of progress. And bachelorhood, of course, or, at the very least, vasectomy.

  The bus began to wheeze and whine, signaling the ascent up College Hill Road. Will stood, grateful to be moving, making a familiar resolution to quit thinking so much. He shook his head to clear it. A beer would help.

  The late-night emptiness of the student union made the place seem strange. Will realized that in almost four years he had never noticed that the windows were framed with carved columns and that the walls were wainscoted in oak. Hardly the sort of place to withstand the incessant tumult of ravenous undergraduates. It might have been the drawing room of a nineteenth-century country estate. Will decided to make a point of coming here at this hour more often. The ambience pleased him.

  He sat down with his beer and a bag of peanuts at one of the heavy round tables near the door. He had just stretched his legs out on an extra chair when something shiny caught his attention. The hallway outside was dark, so that the lighted phone booth opposite the entrance drew his eyes like a beacon. Inside sat a young woman. Her face was hidden by a curtain of red-gold hair. Will watched until she turned her face toward the glass doors. It was Quinn Mallory. As if illuminated by spotlight, every feature was dramatized, framed by the soft black of the deserted corridor. Her eyes glistened so brightly that Will wondered if she was crying. He looked down at the foam in his glass, reluctant to intrude on her private grief. But almost immediately he found himself watching her again. She spoke briefly into the receiver and gazed back at Will unresponsively. After a moment she spoke again, forced a smile as if to reassure the invisible listener, and hung up. She sat for a moment with her hands lying limp in her lap. Her chin quivered slightly, but then she stood up and opened the door. Her glance met Will’s. Unsure whether to smile at her, or even to acknowledge her, he just stared back silently. She turned away, and he was left wondering if she’d seen him at all.

  “Hey, Ingraham, gimme a break, willya? I’ve got a French exam tomorrow.”

  Will looked up at the student bartender. “Sorry. Jesus, it’s ten thirty.” He drained his glass, slipped the unopened bag of peanuts into his jacket pocket, and walked out into the cold. The girl’s image seemed to be burned into the air in front of his face. He blinked to make it go away.

  Will found Jerry Landring lying in bed leafing through an antique issue of Playboy magazine.

  “Did you ever get your decision?” he asked from the doorway.

  “What?” Jerry mumbled, irritated at the interruption.

  “Quinn Mallory.”

  “Oh, that,” he said. “She axed us both.”

  Will stood quietly for a moment. Finally he murmured, “Appropriate imagery,” and strode down the corridor to his own room.

  Chapter 6

  As the bell rang, Dr. Buxby’s oration faded into the clamor of notebooks slamming shut, pens dropping, coats zipping. Van, felled by a virus, languished at the infirmary with Stanley in attendance, and Quinn hurried out of the classroom alone. Preoccupied with obligations, she wove her way quickly through the throng of slower students. There was her last-minute commitment to fix a motorbike for Gus. Then there was cafeteria duty and another class, with just enough time, if she really hustled, to deliver fresh orange juice to Van. Quinn thought it was a miracle that they managed to cure anybody in the infirmary with the kind of vitamin-deficient slop they spooned into their helpless patients. Poor Van had looked so peaked and miserable last night. Quinn flew down the corridor, organizing her immediate future, when suddenly a hand closed around her arm and brought her to a halt. Will Ingraham pulled her toward the wall, out of the stampede. His face was weary. Quinn looked up at him curiously.

  “I hope I’m not too late to apply,” he said. He held out a plain white envelope.

  For a moment Quinn looked baffled, but then she reddened. “Oh … that. Well …” she stammered, feeling the color climb all the way to her forehead. She took the envelope automatically, but when Will released it, it dropped to the floor with a plop and slid away from their feet. Quinn said, “Oh,” and stared at it dazedly. When she raised her eyes again, Will was halfway down the hall. He turned, gave her a friendly wave, and disappeared out the door at the far end.

  That evening Quinn moved restlessly about her room, shedding clothes. Every few moments, she glanced at the white rectangle on her desk. Then she averted her eyes and took off something else, tossing the discarded items onto her bed in a heap. Finally, down to a pair of cotton bikini underpants, she pulled a T-shirt inscribed with “Property of Alpha Delta Phi” over her head and snatched the envelope angrily off the desk. Then she settled cross-legged on her bed and stared at her name printed on the front with a black felt-tip pen. The letters were square, neat, but not fastidiously formed. The dot above the i was sloppy. It looked like the accent for a French word. Quinn wondered if the contents were printed in the same strong, relaxed letters. Maybe it was script. She held the envelope up to the light, but the paper was too opaque.

  She tried to remember Will’s face in the hallway this morning. He’d smiled at her, but there had been something odd about his expression. Challenge, perhaps? No, nothing that strong. Something almost tender, like apology.

  She should have let the damn thing lie there. But what if someone had picked it up and read it? God only knew what was inside. She could always destroy it. Or give it back. She pictured herself meeting with Will on Monday morning and returning the envelope to him unopened. That was the thing to do. After all, he hadn’t been invited to participate in this thing.

  She stared at it again, and turned it over to confirm what she already knew. It wasn’t sealed.

  Suddenly she was almost rippin
g the enclosed page in her haste to unfold it. A surprise—it was typewritten. She ran her eyes rapidly over the page, then began at the top and read again, slowly. After that she let the paper slide to the floor, stared blankly at her knees, and muttered, “Oh, shit.”

  Quinn opened Van’s door softly, crept in, and sat on the edge of the bed. Van was asleep, breathing noisily through the debris left over from her bout with the flu.

  “Van …” she whispered. There was no answer. “Van, are you up?” Van stirred in her sleep. Quinn grabbed a foot and began to shake it gently.

  After a moment Van opened her eyes a slit. “Pardon?” she mumbled.

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it.”

  “Anything the matter?” Van sat up halfway. Her stuffy nose made the words sound like adythig the badder. She fingered the neck of her long-sleeved flannel nightgown.

  “Don’t worry, you’re respectable,” Quinn said. “I’ve got something to show you. I tried not to. I mean, you’ve got this awful plague and everything, but I couldn’t stand it.”

  “Go turn on the light. No, not that one, you’ll blind me. The desk.”

  Quinn switched on the desk lamp, twisting the shade away from Van’s puffy, reddened eyes. “You look awful,” she said, perching at the foot of the bed again.

  “I’ll look worse in the morning. I heard you came to see me at the infirmary.”

  “Yeah, I broke the world sprinting record bringing you orange juice and Janice Friedman was in your bed.”

  “Thanks for the thought, but am I ever glad to be out. What’re they?”

  “Applications,” Quinn answered.

  “I thought they were all in.”

  “Yeah, well, one was unsolicited. This is Jerry’s.” She held up a page by one corner and then released it deliberately so that it fell on the bed. “Your basic list of references, all his happy customers, who, by the way, include thirty percent of the women’s dormitory. Did you know he screwed Barbara Tyson?”