extremely rapid progression of events.'
My palms were sweating. In spite of the open window, the room seemed close and stuffy. I could hear everybody breathing; quiet, measured breaths that came and went with awful regularity, four sets of lungs, eating at the thin oxygen.
Henry folded his fingers and flexed them, at arm's length, until they cracked. 'You can go now, if you like,' he said to me.
'Do you want me to?' I said rather sharply.
'You can stay or not,' he said. 'But there's no reason why you must. I wanted to give you a rough idea, but in a certain sense the fewer details you know, the better.' He yawned. 'There were some things you had to know, 1 suppose, but I feel I've done you a disservice by involving you this far.'
I stood up and looked around the table.
'Well,' I said. 'Well well well.'
Francis raised an eyebrow at me.
'Wish us luck,' said Henry.
I clapped him awkwardly on the shoulder. 'Good luck,' I said.
Charles – out of Henry's line of vision – caught my eye. He smiled and mouthed the words: I'll call you tomorrow, okay?
Suddenly, and without warning, I was overcome by a rush of emotion. Afraid I would say or do something childish, something I'd regret, I got into my coat and drank the rest of my coffee in a long gulp and left, without even the most perfunctory of goodbyes.
On my way home through the dark woods, my head down and my hands in my pockets, I ran virtually headlong into Camilla.
She was very drunk and in an exhilarated mood.
'Hello,' she said, linking her arm through mine and leading me back in the direction from which I'd just come. 'Guess what.
I had a date.'
'So I heard.'
She laughed, a low, sweet chortle that warmed me to my heart. 'Isn't that funny?' she said. 'I feel like such a spy. Bunny just went home. Now the problem is, I think Cloke kind of likes me.'
It was so dark I could hardly see her. The weight of her arm was wonderfully comfortable, and her gin-sweet breath was warm on my cheek.
'Did Cloke behave himself?' I said.
'Yes, he was very nice. He bought me dinner and some red drinks that tasted like Popsicles.'
We emerged from the woods into the deserted, blue-lit streets of North Hampden. Everything was silent and strange in the moonlight. A faint breeze tinkled in the wind chimes on someone's porch.
When I stopped walking, she tugged at my arm. 'Aren't you coming?' she said.
'No.'
'Why not?'
Her hair was tousled, and her lovely mouth was stained dark by the Popsicle drink, and just by looking at her I could tell she didn't have the faintest idea what was going on at Henry's.
She would go with them tomorrow. Somebody would probably tell her that she didn't have to go, but she would end up going with them anyway.
I coughed. 'Look,' I said.
'What?'
'Come home with me.'
She lowered her eyebrows. 'Now?'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
The wind chimes tinkled again; silvery, insidious.
'Because I want you to.'
She gazed at me with vacant, drunken composure, standing coltlike on the outer edge of her black-stockinged foot so the ankle was twisted inward in a startling, effortless L.
Her hand was in mine. I squeezed it hard. Clouds were racing across the moon.
'Come on,' I said.
She raised up on tiptoe and gave me a cool, soft kiss that tasted of Popsicles. Oh, you, I thought, my heart beating fast and shallow.
Suddenly, she broke away. 'I've got to go,' she said.
'No. Please don't.'
'I've got to. They'll wonder where I am.'
She gave me a quick kiss, then turned and started down the street. I watched her until she reached the corner, then dug my hands in my pockets and started back home.
I woke the next day with a start, to chill sunlight and the thump of a stereo down the hall. It was late, noon, afternoon maybe; I reached for my watch on the night table and started again, more violently this time. It was a quarter of three. I jumped out of bed and began to dress, in great haste, without bothering to shave or even comb my hair.
Pulling on my jacket in the hall, I saw Judy Poovey walking briskly towards me. She was all dressed up, for Judy, and she had her head to the side attempting to fasten an earring.
'You coming?' she said when she saw me.
'Coming where?' I said, puzzled, my hand still on the doorknob.
'What is it with you? Do you live on Mars or what?'
I stared at her.
'The party,' she said impatiently. 'Swing into Spring. Up behind Jennings. It started an hour ago.'
The edges of her nostrils were inflamed and rabbity, and she reached up to wipe her nose with a red-taloned hand.
'Let me guess what you've been doing,' I said.
She laughed. 'I have lots more. Jack Teitelbaum drove to New York last weekend and came back with a ton. And Laura Stora has Ecstasy, and that creepy guy in Durbinstall basement – you know, the chemistry major -just cooked up a big batch of meth.
You're trying to tell me you didn't know about this?'
'No.'
'Swing into Spring is a big deal. Everybody's been getting ready for months. Too bad they didn't have it yesterday, though, the weather was so great. Did you go to lunch?'
She meant had I been outside yet that day. 'No,' I said.
'Well, I mean, the weather's okay, but it's a little cold. I walked outside and went, like, oh shit. Anyway. You coming?'
I looked at her blankly. I'd run out of my room without the slightest idea where I was going. 'I need to get something to eat,'
I said at last.
'That's a good idea. Last year I went and I didn't eat anything before and I smoked pot and drank, like, thirty martinis. I was all right and everything but then I went to Fun O'Rama. Remember?
That carnival they had – well, I guess you weren't here then.
Anyway. Big mistake. I'd been drinking all day and I had a sunburn and I was with Jack Teitelbaum and all those guys.
I wasn't going to go, you know, on a ride and then I thought, okay. The Ferris wheel. I can go on the Ferris wheel no problem I listened politely to the rest of her story which ended, as I knew it would, with Judy being pyrotechnically ill behind a hot-dog stand.
'So this year, I was like, no way. Stick with coke. Pause that refreshes. By the way, you ought to get that friend of yours you know, what's his name – Bunny, and make him come with you. He's in the library.'
'What?' I said, suddenly all ears.
