“Still in there pitching?”
“I guess.”
“Grinding away?”
Nat was silent. Wags wore a trench coat with a price tag hanging from the sleeve; underneath he had on flannel pajamas and mismatched boots, one an expensive-looking hiking boot-Nat spotted the Timberland logo-the other paint-spattered rubber.
“I’m teaching myself Japanese,” Wags said. He showed Nat what he was reading: a comic book. Two Japanese men were about to torture a Japanese woman. The only word on the page was Eeeeee! “I may get a job in the Ginza district,” Wags said, “or possibly come back here and finish up.”
Nat looked around for luggage, books, any of Wags’s possessions, saw nothing but a hospital bracelet on the floor. He remembered Wags’s mom: Are you really saying you had no idea of the mental state he’s been in?
“Wags?”
“Present and accounted for.”
“You all right?”
“Never better, Nattie boy. Better never, if you want the obverse, reverse, perverse. Free verse.” Wags laughed, a little hee-hee-hee that petered out. “Sometimes when my mind gets going…,” he began. There was a long pause. “They tested my IQ,” he said at last. “Off the charts. What’s yours?”
“I don’t know.”
“You forgot?” Wags laughed his new hee-hee laugh again. “That would say it all, wouldn’t it? An answering nonanswer of the truest sort.”
Nat laughed too.
“Did you know I spotted a mistake in a PSAT math section my year?” Wags said.
“No.”
“That must have been your year too, it occurs to me. In retrospect. There’s also introspect, disrespect, and plain old R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me. Remember that question with the hexagon and the isosceles triangle?”
“You remember the question?”
“Nothing wrong with my memory, Nattie boy. Nattie boy-o.”
“Do you remember why you built the snowman?”
Pause, even longer this time. “Right there,” said Wags, “that’s why I don’t like you.”
Nat picked up the hospital bracelet. The name of the place was on it, and a phone number.
Wags watched him. “You’re pissed about Sidney,” he said.
“Sidney?”
“Sidney Greenstreet. The snowman, if that’s how you want to think of him. He was supposed to be a sumo wrestler, but he ended up like Sidney Greenstreet.”
“Who’s he?”
“Who’s Sidney Greenstreet? Is that what you’re asking? Who’s Sidney Greenstreet? I despair. I give up. I just give up, completely and utterly.” Tears welled up in Wags’s eyes, spilled over onto his cheeks, kept coming.
Nat glanced down at the hospital bracelet in his hand.
“I’m on leave,” Wags said; there were still tears but his voice sounded normal, a combination Nat had never witnessed before. “Paid leave, or maybe administrative leave. Semiauthorized. It’s the medication, Nat-they have all these studies, but they’re clueless about what it feels like inside your head.”
“They let you carry your own pills around?”
Wags gave him a long look. “Still in there pitching,” he said again, but without animosity this time. “No, they don’t let you carry your own pills around. Not officially. But I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll defenestrate Sidney.”
It took Nat a moment or two to figure that one out. “And then?” he said.
“And then we’ll be even.”
Wags got up. They went into the outer room, Wags moving stiffly, as though he’d just returned from football practice. They gazed at the snowman. Footsteps sounded in the hall.
“Gestapo,” Wags whispered. His fingers dug into Nat’s arm.
The door opened. Grace came in, then Izzie. Wags let go.
“We couldn’t sleep-we were so-” They saw Wags, broke off.
“Sight for sore eyes,” Wags said. “To the second power.”
“Back already?” Grace said.
“And raring to go. Remember all the defenestrating we used to do at Choate?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Or maybe it was the next year, when I was… wherever I was. Doesn’t matter. The point is we’re going to defenestrate old Sidney.” He extended his hand toward the snowman, as though presenting a friend.
“Sidney?” said Grace.
Wags’s eyes narrowed. For a moment he looked almost dangerous. “Greenstreet,” he said.
“Looks more like Burl Ives to me,” said Izzie.
“Burl Ives? You know about Burl Ives?” Wags’s eyes went to Izzie, to the snowman, back to Izzie. “You may be right,” he said.
Grace walked over to the snowman, removed one of its green teeth, examined it. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, sticking it back on the snowman, but in the middle of its forehead.
Wags bit his lip. “You are?”
“I want to pick your brain.”
Wags went to the snowman, replaced the green tooth where it belonged. He turned to Grace. “Pick away.”
“Still into movies?” she said.
“More than ever. They’ve got HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, plus a decent video library. Why do you ask?”
“I’m writing an essay.”
“On movies?” said Wags. “What course is that?”
“Independent study,” Grace said. “It’s on plot construction.”
Wags nodded.
“In kidnapping movies specifically,” Grace said.
“Right,” said Wags. “You’ve got to focus.”
“Seen any?” said Grace.
“Name one I haven’t.”
“Any ransom demand scenes that come to mind?”
“Ransom demand scenes? Like how they go about it?”
“That kind of thing.”
“Excellent subject.” Wags rubbed his hands together. “Can I read it when you’re done?”
“Why not?”
“This is so much fun,” Wags said. “What college should be all about.” He paused. “We’re just dealing with ransom-type kidnappings, now, not the sicko or political kinds? Or kidnapping by accident or kidnapping to make a nice little family group?”
“Ransom,” said Grace.
“ Ruthless People, of course. Pretty recent. Judge Reinhold demands five hundred thousand dollars, unmarked and sequentially numbered one-hundred-dollar bills. On the phone. No notifying the cops, of course, that’s pretty standard. There’s High and Low, also on the phone.” Wags smacked his forehead, much too hard. “And my God,” he said. “Kurosawa. Japanese. Patterns, patterns, patterns.” He turned to Izzie. “I may be taking a job in the Ginza district.”
“Lucky you,” Grace said. “What’s High and Low?”
“Haven’t seen High and Low? Where they kidnap the chauffeur’s kid by mistake?” A tiny spray of spittle flew from Wags’s mouth when he sounded the s in mistake. “Thirty million yen, as I recall-going to have to find out what that is in dollars-same nonsequential thing, same specifying the denomination. Speaking of chauffeurs, there’s After Dark My Sweet. Patterns and more patterns. Bruce Dern sends a ransom note. But the kid’s got diabetes and Jason Patric’s escaped from an… asylum.” He fell silent, looked down.
