the bed before he spoke.
“Little Boy is home,” he said, reading the poem title right off the wall.
She jumped, actually got airborne, which was pretty cool, jerked around, said, “Oh my God,” holding on to her tits. “Why do you scare me like that?”
“I said hi. You just didn’t hear me, what with concentrating so hard on my laptop.”
Her gaze went to it. He moved closer to see what was on the screen, saw what had been there before:
To: Phil. 322
From: Prof. L. Uzig and all that.
Then her gaze was on him, that dark, stoned gaze, right into his eyes, like she was trying to see inside. “What’s going on, Freedy?”
“It’s for business purposes,” Freedy said. “I got it off Ronnie Medeiros for a song.”
“I didn’t know Ronnie took Phil three twenty-two,” she said.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Freedy said.
17
The consequences of our actions take us by the scruff of the neck, altogether indifferent to the fact that we have “improved” in the meantime.
After midnight, aboveground. Grace and Izzie left Plessey Hall to cross the quad, Nat continuing upstairs to his room, seventeen on the second floor. He stopped at the landing, looked out the window. Snow was falling, dark flakes blowing through cubes of light outside the dorm windows, through ovals of light under the Victorian lampposts on the quad. Grace and Izzie were about halfway across, both wearing ski hats with tassels, their gaits, their carriages identical, impossible to tell apart. One swept a handful of snow off Emerson’s bronze leg, flung it at the other. Then they were both running across the quad, chasing each other like little girls, and disappearing in the shadows; Nat thought he could hear their laughter, very faint. At that moment, with the laughter and all, he knew that everything was going to be okay.
It wasn’t that he was drunk-oh, maybe just a little from the cognac, much more from the fact of it being one hundred years old, and from the whole magical experience down there-but the realization that “everything” didn’t amount to much, so why wouldn’t it be okay? What was wrong? He made a short mental list. First came Izzie’s insistence on keeping their relationship secret from Grace. He would have to persuade her to change her mind. Her fear of Grace’s reaction was exaggerated, probably due to years and years of Grace’s dominance, now coming to an end. He reminded himself to learn the ending of the SAT story.
Second, there was Patti. She had to be told-no, he corrected himself-he had to tell her, and as soon as possible. First thing in the morning, even if it meant waking her: he would call Patti, tell her the truth. There was someone else.
Third, he had to catch up in biology. He hadn’t come all this way to miss classes. That was for tomorrow as well. In twenty-four hours he would be caught up.
There. He felt better, as he should have with only three problems in his whole life, the last one trivial; all solvable and solvable soon. Meanwhile, although he hadn’t really known what to expect at Inverness, any half- formed expectations had already been exceeded. He loved the place. Loved it, and knew he could do well. Not only that, but there were other kids from his town who could do well here too. He would make sure Mrs. Smith knew that when he went home for the summer. Mrs. Smith, and how she had brandished the Fourth of July special edition of the County Register at the sky: he understood her now.
Nat came to his door. A note was tucked under the brass 17. He opened it. A note written on economics department stationery, from his first-semester professor:
Nat-Your final exam grade last semester is being changed from a B minus to an A plus, a change that will be reflected in your course grade as well. I’ve reexamined your answer to the last question. I was looking for an analysis of capital and current account theory as it related to the hypothetical and since you didn’t give me that, I gave you zero. On reflection, and having conferred with several colleagues, I believe that your application of monetarist methodology is fresh, cogent, and quite defensible. Have you given much thought yet to your choice of major?
Nat loved Inverness. Had he ever been happier in his life? He was so lucky. He owed them-Mrs. Smith, Miss Brown, his mom; and all the others back home.
Nat opened the door. It was dark in the outer room, the only light coming from his screen saver, but not dark enough to hide the person sleeping under a blanket on Wags’s couch, still not picked up by the movers. Was it Wags himself, released or escaped? Nat found himself smiling at the prospect. But going closer, he saw it was a woman, her face turned away, her hair longer than Wags’s and curlier. He bent over. It was Patti.
Patti. Nat froze right there, and froze was the word, with that icy tingling in his fingertips. What’s she doing here? Answers came, none convincing: some vacation he didn’t know about, a school trip, an internship in an eastern city. To find out, all he had to do was wake her. He didn’t want to. He wanted to let her sleep, there under Wags’s afternoon nap blanket. To simply let her sleep, because nothing had gone wrong yet; to let her sleep before he told her the news. He noticed a small but bright red zit in that curved indentation on the side of the nose where zits liked to form.
“Patti?” he said quietly.
She didn’t wake up, didn’t stir.
“Patti?” A little louder, but only a little, not wanting to scare her, and no more effective. She was probably tired from her trip; had she taken the bus? The bus all the way from Denver? Nat remembered his last trip, a flight in a private jet with a black Z on the tail. He touched her shoulder.
Patti’s eyes opened. For an instant she didn’t know where she was. Then she saw it was him, and the look in her eyes changed completely. She smiled, a smile that could only be called sweet, as sweet, in fact, as he’d ever seen.
“Nat,” she said.
“Hi.”
She sat up. “Your hair’s longer. It looks nice.” Her hand moved, no more than an inch or so, as if she’d thought of touching his hair and reconsidered.
“I called you a couple times,” she said, “once from Chicago and once from… somewhere else. I can’t even remember, isn’t that weird? Especially since I was trying to take it all in.”
Like him, him until a little while ago, she’d never really been anywhere. Nat remembered the phone ringing while he’d been in the bedroom with Izzie. He had to tell Patti and tell her now. It would be too cruel to allow her another one of those sweet smiles. He forgot whatever it was he’d rehearsed, just opened his mouth and hoped something not too terrible would come out.
But Patti spoke first. “Oh, Nat,” she said, her voice suddenly unsteady. “I’m pregnant.”
Thoughts poured into Nat’s mind, first-whatever it said about him, good or bad-first came the knowledge of what Patti must have crossed out in her note: I missed my period. Then came more: it could only have been at Patti’s house, before Julie’s party, before the drinking. But they’d used a condom. That raised the possibility of some other guy. Man. Of some other man. Out of the question: he knew Patti, and she wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t him. It had to be true. Patti was pregnant and he was the… father. He squirmed from that idea, that word. But he knew there would be no getting away from it, he wouldn’t let himself get away from it, because he’d had a father, too; he’d had a father, briefly, a father who’d ignored his responsibility, who’d walked away.
“Nat?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t you going to say something?”
