Tell Me If the Lovers Are Losers (15 page)

Eloise muttered Latin declensions to herself, dried her hands on the seat of her shorts, and played with unwavering steadiness. Niki perspired abundantly. Hildy, like a beam of light, moved among them.

They took the first game seventeen to fifteen. The teams changed courts without speaking. Ann muttered to Eloise, “You might move on to conjugations.” Eloise nodded her head, but could not answer.

It was halfway through the second game that the opposing team creaked, cracked, and crumbled. Ann felt it. The freshmen did not relax their efforts, but all sensed the collapse. More and more, individuals tried to take shots, crowding the net to spike, or calling for returns that were not properly theirs.

After the freshman victory, the sophomores congratulated them. “Good game,” they said. “We'll try again.”

Niki shook her head. Sweat flew off her face. “You won't have a chance,” she said.

“Eat it,” a sophomore muttered.

“Watch your language,” Niki snapped, and Ann suddenly understood how Niki was keeping faith with Hildy.

“What are you, a bunch of effing saints?”

“You're that ashamed of losing,” Niki observed. “Is it humiliating?”

The sophomore glared. “We'll catch you on the way down.”

“Hold your breath. Apoplexy becomes you.”

The girl turned angrily away. “Gracious me,” Niki said.

Ann answered her: “I thought it was more of a meeting of the minds.”

“Annie. You, vicious? I never would have thought it.”

The Munchkin approached their team. The girls fell silent. “You have done well,” she said. “I shall make a point of seeing more of your matches.” She left abruptly.

Eloise still sat where she had collapsed at the end of the last point. “That was terrible,” she said. She took off her glasses and polished them. “Look, I'm trembling.”

Hildy gave her a hand up. “You were fine.”

They showered and agreed to eat out. Hildy said she would join them. She had never had pizza, so they walked to the local pizzeria.

Ruth wolfed down two succulent slices before she asked. “Could you feel it? Everybody. I want to know, could you feel them giving up?”

“Yeah,” Ann said. “I've never felt that happening before, even when I was winning a tennis match. Which wasn't often,” she hastened to add.

“People will always give up,” Niki said. “If you go at them hard enough, long enough. That's right, isn't it, Annie?”

“I guess so,” she said. “I do.”

“We know,” Niki said.

“Lay off,” Bess directed mildly. “This is a celebration, remember?”

Niki continued. “The secret is to hate the opposition. There's only so much hatred people can withstand.”

“You're kidding,” Ruth said.

“No. I always do. Don't you, Hildy?”

“Why should I?”

“Because you have to break them in order to win,” Niki said.

“They will lose when we outplay them. To break them? I don't want that. Then I have not won, but destroyed.”

“And it's only a game,” Ruth contributed. “It matters not if you win or lose,” she sing-songed at them, “but how you play the game.”

“Hah,” Niki said.

“Anyway, I could feel them giving up, or seeing it slip away from them.” Ann continued her own thoughts. “What happens in professional sports?”

“The same thing,” Niki said.

“How can it, when everybody has that drive? When everyone feels the way you do?”

“One team or even one player has it more. The killer instinct.”

That evening, Sarah called long distance and asked for Ann. “What happened? How did we do? We've only got a minute or two.”

“We won.”

“How was Eloise?”

“OK, she was OK. Poor kid, it gave her the fidgets. She was a brick.”

“How many games?”

“In two, like before.”

“Then we still haven't lost a game.”

The operator interrupted.

“Having a wonderful time?” Ann asked.

“Now I will,” Sarah answered. “Tell Hildy I'm glad.”

Ann gave Hildy Sarah's message later that evening. Niki sat up in bed to greet the third girl and remarked: “Have you ever thought, Hildy, that if there is something wrong with your eyes and you had glasses, you might spend less time studying?”

“I enjoy studying,” Hildy said. “The library is quiet, as a church.”

“You ought to think about it, at least,” Niki said.

Hildy shook her head, patiently.

Niki threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. She pulled on jeans and a shirt. “You know how to give orders but not take them,” she said. She slammed out of the room.

Ann watched Hildy's smile. “You don't mind her being angry?”

“That is not anger. That is acting.”

Ann found Niki downstairs, dealing a hand of bridge, entirely cheerful.

♦   ♦   ♦

The next morning, Sunday, Niki woke Ann. Hildy had already left for church. “Ann? Wake up. How can you sleep through those bells?”

The music of the bells reverberated among the hills. Ann listened.

“Seriously. Tell me. Don't they drive you crazy?”

Ann fixed Niki with a beady glance.
“They
don't wake me up.
They
don't drive me crazy.”

“I'm gonna get those bells before I leave,” Niki said.

Ann closed her eyes, then opened them to remark, “The sun's out.”

“Yeah. It feels like a warm day. I always thought once fall began the weather here just gave up the ghost.” Niki paced the room. “Don't go back to sleep. Are you going back to sleep? Let's play tennis.”

Ann sat up. “The courts will still be damp from dew.”

“Even after breakfast?” Niki pulled down the top section of window and stood looking out, her arms resting along the window top, her chin resting on her arms. “Is this Indian summer?”

Indian summer it was, a sun to bake crisp the fallen leaves. Indian summer is internal weather Slow, mellow, golden hours, daylong. Ann lifted her head and smelled the air. “I've got some reading to do,” she said, “and we're having practice this afternoon.”

“That's this afternoon,” Niki protested. “Why not one quick set?”

“The courts will be wet, I said that. Clay absorbs water And think of the leaves all over them. Besides, it's the wrong kind of morning to hate the opposition. Take a bike ride.”

Niki had purchased a racing bike, with ten speeds. She took long rides on it, although she never used it for short trips. “Maybe I will.”

“We could eat breakfast,” Ann said. “I think I'll read outside.”

“Reading is not doing anything,” Niki said.

“Says you,” Ann answered placidly. “Besides, we'll have a day off soon. Bell Day.”

“You said the magic word!” Niki shrieked. “Where is that duck?” She hunched her body over, waggling her eyebrows in imitation of Groucho Marx. With one hand she groped at the ceiling to pull down the duck, with the other she mimed the tapping of a fat cigar.

“No,” Ann giggled, “it's a tradition.”

“Oh goody.”

“They ring the bells at breakfast. All classes are canceled for the day. The student center packs free lunches and you can take off, for anywhere you want.”

Niki stared at Ann. “Are you telling me that there is another day besides Sunday when these damned bells will rouse me from my honest slumber?”

“Yep. Always during Indian summer.”

“Is there always an Indian summer?” Ann nodded. “It could be tomorrow? It could be that the bells will ring two days in a row?” Ann nodded. “Out in civilized country we don't do that, you know. We don't ring bells. Nobody would dare even suggest it—he'd be lynched.”

♦   ♦   ♦

Niki was engaged in glaring back at two fried eggs the next morning when the bells rang outside the closed windows. Somebody rose to open a window and let the sound in. The housemother entered, in a long sateen robe, to make the formal announcement.

“We will miss our classes today,” Hildy protested.

“I'm ready for that,” Niki said. “I've been a model student too long.”

“But I go to the observatory tonight.”

“I know the classrooms are closed. I don't know about something like the observatory,” Ann said. “Anyway, what do you want to do with the day?”

“I shall go to the library,” Hildy said.

Niki groaned.

“Closed,” Ann said.

Niki grinned. “Tradition.”

“I shall study in the room then.”

“We're supposed to do something outdoors,” Ann said.

“Why?” Hildy asked.

“Yes, why?” Niki turned on Ann.

“I don't know. It's traditional, my aunt said. The dining room is closed for lunch and the box lunches are ready at the student center We're supposed to go on picnics and hikes. Maybe as a last blast before winter settles in. I don't really know why, and I don't much care. I'd like to do something, wouldn't you?” Ann noticed that they were all three assuming that they would do something together.

“We could ride up to Falls Park,” Niki suggested. “Hildy, you could borrow a bike, couldn't you? I've been there once. It's only five miles and there's a good waterfall.”

“Five miles uphill,” Ann said. “Why not? Even for a bad waterfall. Anyway, it'll all be downhill returning.”

Hildy considered this. “If we could leave later in the morning, I would like that. There is work I must do.”

“There
are
a few short downhills going up,” Niki said to Ann. “It's worth the trip. We'll walk most of the way, how's that? You can walk five miles.”

Ann looked out the window. It was a honey-colored day, the shadows lying cool on the ground. “OK with me. Hildy?”

“Could we leave at noon?”

Niki jumped up. “I'll get the bike if you'll get the lunches for all of us, Ann.”

♦   ♦   ♦

The narrow road wound up from the College. They coasted downhill and, after a few muscle-straining attempts, walked their bikes up the long grades. There was almost no traffic, an occasional car, one or two trucks making deliveries to towns further up in the hills. The observatory was half an hour away from the College, Ann noted. She saw the telltale dome among pine trees. A small wooden sign announced its presence, where the gravel driveway entered the road.

The park had no guard house, just a wooden gate and a map etched into a slate stand. They left their bikes and followed a short path toward the sound of water.

Niki led them to a clearing at the top of the falls where a broad creek tumbled down over a cliff into pools below. “Here it is,” she said.

Hildy squinted.

“I thought waterfalls were supposed to be deafeningly loud,” Ann said. “Roaring thunder, and all that.”

“It isn't Zambesi,” Niki allowed. “But it does spray up rainbows; isn't that good for something?”

“Maybe I'm too hungry to appreciate it,” Ann answered.

They ate sandwiches, fruit, cookies. They scooped out handfuls of icy creek water to drink. Hildy took off her shoes and waded away. Niki crouched in uncompanionable silence, tossing stones into the water. Ann followed Hildy, going along the damp mossy bank. She stopped to bend down and watch water beetles busy at something incomprehensible in the eddies that preceded the rapids at the top of the falls.

If she watched long enough, Ann thought, she might figure out what the water-skaters were doing. The gliding circuits they performed couldn't really be as random as they seemed. She looked back to where Niki sat, tossing stone after stone. Ahead, Hildy stood in calf-high water that foamed at her knees and burst gladly up around her legs. At that part of the rapids around Hildy some larger rock had been caught and lay partly exposed, partly covered with moss. Hildy bent to touch the rocks. Behind her, Ann saw the distinct line of the falls. Hildy moved forward.

It seemed to Ann that she stood up from the bank in slow motion, but her mind worked rapidly, checking her eyes' perception of how close Hildy was to the edge of the falls. Where the rapidly moving water swept over, and down.

“Hildy!” she called. Hildy hesitated. “Hildy, don't move!”

Hildy's puzzled face waited for Ann, where she clambered through the icy water. Ann's sneakers slipped on the bigger stones beneath her feet. The water pulled at her legs, to take her off-balance.

“What is it?” Hildy asked, as Ann approached, but not yet to arm's reach.

“You're too close to the edge,” Ann panted, holding out a hand.

Hildy smiled and shook her head. Turning away, in a motion as smooth as daffodils bending under the wind, she lost her footing and fell forward.

Ann grabbed at the arm Hildy flung out for balance. She caught Hildy's forearm in both of her hands and pulled the girl back.

“Wait,” Hildy said. “My leg is over—” She put one hand down into the water and brought her leg back under her. She stood up beside Ann.

Ann legs were shaking, whether with cold or fear, she did not know. She could see the height of the drop now, down six feet into restless black pools of water. It wasn't Zambesi, but it was dangerous enough.

“I thank you,” Hildy said.

“You couldn't see it, could you?” Ann demanded. The worst damage to a falling body would be done by the boulders it hit, tumbling down among the waters. “You couldn't see it and you were going to just ignore me. Goddammit, Hildy, tell the truth.”

“I always tell the truth,” Hildy said.

“And you refuse to have your eyes examined,” Ann cried. She held tight onto Hildy's arm as they waded back to the bank. Hildy tried to pull away, but Ann wouldn't let go. “Well, I won't have it. Do you hear me? Damn you, answer me.”

Hildy's face was dimmed, meek. “You are right, of course. I will make the appointment.”