“How’d you like dinner tonight?” asked Richard.
They repeated their complaints.
“Yes, I’m afraid I didn’t think things through when I pulled the old plug this afternoon,” said Richard. “I should have realized that we’d all be paying the price in medical bills.”
“You’re the one who caused the power shortage?” Thomas said.
Richard explained that he had returned to the basement of Stringfellow Hall to search for Greg’s tunnel.
“I couldn’t find it anywhere,” he said. “I think the place is sealed off, if it ever existed in the first place. But I did find the breaker panels for the building. Just push a few buttons and instant blackout.”
“What for?” Thomas asked. Despite the dim light, he could see Richard’s eyes roll behind the ski mask.
“Inconvenience,” said Richard. “Variety. Self-amusement. All of the above. I didn’t realize you were running for councilman now.”
“It seems pretty stupid to be out here by yourself,” said Thomas.
“Oh, Dad, please let me stay out for just a few more minutes.”
Thomas said they had to get to play practice.
“Farnham’s not there,” said Richard. “I just saw him leave the building before you came along.”
“Farnham?” said Thomas. “Are you sure?”
Richard said it was either Farnham or O. J. Simpson sprinting to catch a plane.
“He’ll be back,” said Thomas. He was tired of Richard. Thomas and Greg walked on to Bradley Hall.
Inside the building it was quiet and bright. Thomas didn’t know whether to believe Richard or not about Mr. Farnham’s absence. Richard was getting strange these last few days; he seemed to be doing everything but growing up.
“Damn,” said Greg. “I left my book up in the dining hall.”
“We have time to go back,” said Thomas. “It’s still only five minutes to 7:00.”
“Don’t bother,” said Greg. “I can run.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Look at Richard. Nobody around here’s going to be messing with us.”
It was fine with Thomas to wait. Bradley Hall was warm, and furthermore, Mrs. Warden was around somewhere. He unzipped his jacket and removed his hat as he turned to the right to enter the auditorium. He wanted to see whether Mrs. Warden was still practicing her lines, and he thought he might get a chance to watch her for a minute before she noticed him.
The houselights were out when he entered the auditorium, but the stage lights were still up, as if there were an actual performance in progress. From the doorway he saw Mrs. Warden lying on the bed, and he jumped. He felt his heart pound and his insides lurch, and then he laughed. She was lying on the bed like a real corpse, her head lolling back over the front of the mattress so that her face was upside down from Thomas’s view in the audience. Her eyes were open and seemed to be staring directly at him, and the very tip of her tongue was poking out of the side of her mouth. Her arms were splayed out toward him, palms down. After Thomas recognized her, he realized that she must have turned down the houselights so that the effect on the stage would be more dramatic.
“You got me,” he called to her. He walked up toward the stage.
She made no reply.
“How do you keep your eyes open like that without blinking?” he said again.
She still did not answer.
Thomas arrived at the apron of the stage and stopped. He saw and understood and reacted all at once. She was only ten feet away. By now he could see the red bruises on her neck, could see that her body was lying on its stomach, could see that her head had been twisted around to a place it never belonged. He started to tremble and to shriek as he stared into her glazed eyes.
Desdemona was dead.
SCENE 12
She was dead, and she was never coming back. He had been ready for her death, but it was not supposed to come for at least twenty years.
Warden sat in his favorite wing chair in Horace and Kathleen Somerville’s living room in the Homestead. It was almost like reality. But it wasn’t real, because everyone kept telling him how sorry they were that Cynthia was dead, and he knew that could not be true. When Cynthia died, then chaos would come again; this was a perfectly ordinary gathering of people he knew: friends of his, and a few strangers, too, members of the police department, but that was all right, Kathleen Somerville was here serving coffee, and Horace was sitting nearby. And Dr. Lane the headmaster was here, as was that new biology teacher, Kemper Carella.
There was one of his advisees, too, Thomas Boatwright, sitting on the couch next to Felix Grayson, Felix the disciplinarian who wore his Paul Bunyan boots and his Ernest Hemingway sweater and listened as Thomas wept and talked to him quietly. Why was Thomas Boatwright crying? Oh, yes, now he remembered, it was because Cynthia was dead.
Every time he said it to himself, Warden felt it sink in like a cold blade. He was numb, but he knew enough to realize that he was numb, and he also knew that very soon the horribly poisonous news of his wife’s death, the news that had reached his brain some time ago but had not yet trickled down to his heart, was going to register with him fully. And then, he supposed, he would break down.
For now, though, it was a curious experience. He could carry on a perfectly rational conversation with Horace Somerville, and at the same time he could be completely oblivious to what either of them was saying. He could hear again and again that Cynthia was dead, that Cynthia had, in fact, been murdered right here on the campus, and yet he could look up each time the door opened and expect to see her walk in. It was like being in a play; he had a set of speeches to deliver, but they were not really his words, and he concentrated more on the
