Fabulous Creature (18 page)

Realizing that he was hot, seething, boiling hot, in fact, he drifted towards the nearest tree, the big sycamore with the circular picnic table around its trunk. He climbed up onto the table and sat down, with his back against the trunk and his legs stretched out in front of him. It was somewhat cooler under the huge tent of overhanging limbs, but it didn’t seem as if his internal temperature was dropping much.

Making an effort to get his mind off the things that were driving him up the wall, he started looking around for something to put it on instead. He watched a chubby kid in plaid shorts tearing around the soccer field on a red Motocross bicycle with knobby tires and rabbit-ear handlebars, and two typically well-groomed Camp matrons on their way to the tennis courts. Then a couple of cars approached on the road to the main gate, which crossed the bivouac area only a few yards from where he was sitting. The first car was a very slow moving station wagon with two women in the front seat and a swarm of little kids in the back—probably on their way to the New Moon Fair; and the next car, which was obviously being held to a crawl by the station wagon, was Lance Richardson’s Porsche with the top down. And sitting so close to Lance that she was practically in his lap was Diane.

The strange thing was that it didn’t make him angry, at least not right away. He wasn’t angry, and he wasn’t hot anymore, either. In fact what he felt right at first was cold and numb and a little like something had just hit him hard in the pit of the stomach. He got down off the picnic table very slowly and carefully, as if he were afraid a jolt of any kind might fracture something that had suddenly gone thin and brittle somewhere in his interior, and started walking slowly back toward the center.

He was passing the snack bar when he realized his throat felt strange, tight and dry, so he ordered a Dr. Pepper at the sidewalk window and sat down at one of the outdoor tables. He stayed there thinking for a long time. What he was thinking about was how it might have happened. How Diane might not really have been lying to him, even though at first glance it seemed as if she had been. There were several possibilities. Perhaps, for instance, Lance had just happened to drop by the Jarretts’ just as they were all getting ready to go to the fair, and Diane had suddenly decided to ride over with him, since she had to go anyway. That seemed the best explanation, and the one he kept coming back to over and over again.

He’d been sitting there long enough for the shade from the metal umbrella to have moved without his noticing, when somebody said, “Hey, you trying to get sunstroke or something?”

Mike Jarrett, in swimming trunks and a beach towel, was standing beside him drinking a Coke. Putting his Coke on the table, he pulled up a chair and sat down. James moved out of the sun.

Conversation wasn’t as difficult as he would have expected and actually was a kind of relief. They talked about the hot weather, the fact that Mike was on his way to the swimming pool, and then James brought up the subject of the fair in New Moon.

“I hear your father’s going to be given the keys to the city or something like that,” he heard himself saying coolly. “Aren’t you going to be there to watch?”

Mike grimaced. “I’ll be there all right, if I know what’s good for me. By special invitation of my old man. An offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“Well aren’t you going to be late?”

“Late? It doesn’t start until three-thirty this afternoon.”

“Oh? I got the impression it was going to be earlier. Diane said she had to be there for the presentation, and I just happened to notice her leaving a little while ago.”

Mike looked at him for quite a long time before he said anything. “You did, huh? You saw her leaving—with Lance?”

James nodded. He felt certain his face didn’t show anything, but he wasn’t sure what his voice would be like.

“Look, kid,” Mike said, which fortunately irked James enough to burn out whatever it was that was threatening his vocal chords. More than irked, actually. He happened to know that Mike was barely seventeen. “Look, kid. Don’t worry about that jerk and his Porsche. It won’t last. For one thing, Richardson goes through dames like a chain smoker through a pack of Kools. And he’s not really interested in Di. She’s been after him and his cars for years, and he’s always treated her like a little kid. Which really drives her crazy.” He grinned in a way that he probably meant to be sympathetic but which made James want to hit him in the mouth. Which was a feeling he couldn’t remember ever having had before, at least not since he was about ten years old. “It won’t last,” Mike said again. “I know what I’m talking about.”

Afterwards, thinking back about the whole scene, James could remember smiling coolly and reminding himself not to hit his head on the metal umbrella when he stood up, which he usually did and which, under the circumstances, would have been just about the last straw. But after that he couldn’t remember a thing about leaving The Camp and getting back to the Willowby cabin.

The period that followed was unlike any he had ever known. He went through all the routines—getting up, eating, going out into the woods at least far enough to get away from Charlotte’s worried gaze, coming back to sit holding an unread book—with a curiously detached feeling, as if some important part of him was missing.

For the first time in his life he found himself feeling nostalgic. He found himself, lying in bed, twenty-three days before his sixteenth birthday, looking back wistfully on the days of his youth. On a time when a wakeful period meant leading an army of elephants over the alps, or attacking the sheriff in Sherwood Forest, instead of providing a forum for an idiotic debate over whether Diane was a clever, sneaky cheat, or a beautiful, reckless, exciting person.

And then one morning, when his defenses had been weakened by a particularly sleepless night, Charlotte struck. She waited until William had gone down to the lake for his morning dip, and then she started making gentle sympathetic hints about what he was going through, and it worked. He broke down and told her all about it—all of it, right down to the Porsche and the things Mike had said at the snack bar, and how he didn’t need to be told he was being an imbecile because he knew it, and that knowing it didn’t help a bit.

She waited until he was all through before she said anything and then, instead of saying anything useful, all she did was start telling him a long story that had nothing to do with him at all. The story was about how, when she was in college, she’d fallen in love with the quarterback of the football team—a handsome, macho, charismatic guy with whom she had absolutely nothing in common, but whom she would probably have married if he hadn’t had the good sense to jilt her for another girl.

“We couldn’t have been more wrong for each other,” she said, “and in a way I knew it, and yet I was absolutely mindlessly in love with him.”

She stared out the window for a minute without saying anything, and then she sighed and went on. “Being in love!” she said. “It’s something that happens to almost everyone at one time or other, and the strange thing is, it often seems to have very little to do with any personal qualities the love object might have that would make them a good lover or companion or even friend. But James—there is one thing that I can tell you that is true and important.”

He dropped his eyes because he didn’t want her to see that he didn’t believe her. She couldn’t possibly know what was true for him because she couldn’t possibly understand how he felt about Diane and how he was feeling now.

“You won’t believe me,” Charlotte said, “because when you’re in love, particularly if it’s the first time and even more so if you’re quite young, you’re absolutely positive that nobody ever felt the way you do. But I’ll tell you anyway. The truth is—you’ll get over it. You don’t believe me, but you will. Everyone always does. It either turns into real love, which is something quite different, or it goes away. But in the meantime there are a couple of things you could do about it—and it doesn’t seem to me that you’re doing either one.”

“Like what?” he muttered without looking up.

“You could do something to get her back, or you could put your mind on other things and start getting over her.”

So in a way, what happened was Charlotte’s fault—at least to the extent that it happened because he decided to take her advice. He decided, at first, to get over Diane—to put her out of his mind once and for all. He really tried, but after he’d been trying all the rest of that day and halfway through the next night, he gave up. He couldn’t forget her, and he wasn’t even sure he wanted to, so there was nothing left except the other possibility, which was trying to do something—anything at all—that might help to get her back.

The first step had to be to simply get her to see him. To see him and really talk to him for more than just a few minutes. He had to do something to really get her attention…

He suddenly stopped tossing and turning, and for a long time lay very still. Then he turned on the light and went straight to his desk and opened the shoebox that held his da Vinci file. He found what he was looking for right where he had filed it several weeks before—under S for stag. It was a photograph that he had taken early in July.

A
FTER HE’D DECIDED
to show Diane the picture of the deer, he felt better than he had in a long time. His plan was to show her the picture and simply tell her that he’d taken it somewhere in the general area of New Moon Lake. And of course, he wouldn’t even do that until she’d promised not to tell anyone else.

He knew how fascinated she’d be. There wasn’t the slightest doubt about that. There was sure to be a long debate on whether he was going to tell her exactly where he took the picture—and why he really couldn’t. That part, as he saw it, would be especially important. Perhaps he would even be able to make her understand the deer’s unique importance. His importance not just as an extraordinarily beautiful specimen, but also as a symbol of the past when, under the rule of natural selection, other magnificent specimens such as he lived into their prime and passed on their superior size and strength and intelligence to many descendants.

And perhaps, if things were going well enough and she seemed to be understanding, he could try to make her see what the deer had meant to him personally—a creature triumphantly wild and free that had accepted and trusted him and by doing so had made him a part of something mysterious and indescribable, but somehow totally important. And if he could make her understand that, it would prove that Charlotte was wrong, and that her story really didn’t relate to his situation at all.

The phone conversation was very difficult, as he had feared it would be. Although he was careful to keep his voice very calm and unemotional, Diane immediately went on the offensive.

“Well, I thought you must have gone back to Berkeley or something, without even saying good-by.”

“No,” he said evenly. “We’re not going until Friday. I’ve just been very busy. And I heard you were, too.”

There was a pause. “Oh yeah?” she said at last. “Like, what did you hear, exactly?”

“What I heard isn’t important, at least not now. That’s not what I called about. What I called about is just that I’d like to come over to say good-by and—”

“Well,” she interrupted, “in just a few minutes I’ve got to—”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Just let me finish. There’s another reason why I want to see you. There’s something I have to show you.”

“Show me?”

“Yes. Something you’ve never seen anything like in your whole life, and probably never will again. Something you have a particular interest in—”

“Well, what is it? Why can’t you just tell me what it is?”

“No. I can’t do that. For one thing, before I show you, you have to promise not to tell anyone. Not anyone, not ever.”

There was another pause, a longer one. At last Diane said, “Well, I don’t have very much time, but maybe you could come up for just a few minutes. Would that be all right?”

“Yes, that would be all right. But it would be better if you could meet me somewhere.”

“No. I can’t do that. No one’s home right now except me and Jacky. I’m baby-sitting him until Mom gets back from her hair appointment. So I can’t go away.”

“Okay,” James said. “I’ll be there in just a few minutes.”

As he went up the driveway, she was leaning over the deck railing. She was wearing a tight black tee shirt and shorts made out of artificial tiger skin with yellow and black stripes. Her hair was different, more sophisticated looking, with two smooth wings sweeping back to an upturned fringe on each side of her head, and she’d done something new with makeup that made her eyelids look faintly blue. She looked older and sleeker and more sexy than ever. When he was halfway up the drive, she greeted him with a double fisted, “Ka-pow!” and when he got to the top of the stairs she took both his hands and kissed him. A brief kiss, but enough to make him think that so far everything was going better than he had dared to hope.

In the trophy room Jacky was curled up on one of the leather couches fast asleep; but when James started whispering, Diane told him not to bother.

“He just climbed up on the counter in the kitchen and ate half a cookie jar full of rum balls,” she said. “He won’t hear you.”

Not only Jacky’s eyes, but his whole face looked squeezed shut and he was breathing very deeply. One pudgy pink fist was clamped around the golf ball so hard that the knuckles looked white.

“Is he all right?” James asked uneasily.

“Oh sure. He does it all the time. Stuffs himself and conks out. Like a boa constrictor.”

She led the way to one of the other leather couches and sat down. “Okay. So what is it that you want to show me?” she said.

Of course, he made her promise first. Promise on her word of honor that she would never tell anyone. And then he took the picture out of his pocket and put it in her hands. She stared at it for a long time before she said anything. She turned it over, looked at the back, turned it back, stared at James for a moment and finally said, “Where did you get this?”