The Tutor (15 page)

“From the little I saw,” Julian said, “I would have thought you the better player.”

“That’s the funny thing,” Scott said, leaning forward. He stopped right there. He’d never spoken about this to anyone. How could he, without sounding like some whining loser?

“You beat all kinds of people who beat him,” Julian said. “And you were always ranked higher.”

“How did you know?”

Julian shrugged. “It’s not that unusual. I take it he’s older?”

“Two years and three months.”

“I would have guessed more.”

“Yeah?”

Julian drained his glass, poured some more, maybe only a half an inch this time. “Four or five years at least,” he said, and smiled to himself, as though he’d had a funny thought. “Would you like to beat him?”

“It’s not important anymore,” Scott said. “I don’t know. Sure.”

“I couldn’t help noticing a few things,” Julian said.

“Such as?”

“Just little things. I suppose you try to move him around a lot.”

“Yeah.”

“And use your power to overwhelm him.”

Scott nodded.

“Three suggestions,” Julian said, putting down his glass, empty again, and pouring a quarter of an inch. “First, don’t try to move him around.”

“Hit right at him?”

“He’s very good moving to the ball, not so good at getting out of his own way. Second, don’t try to overwhelm him. Just keep the ball deep. Use your power only when he starts trying to overpower you.”

“He never does.”

“He will,” Julian said, his glass empty. “More of this nice single malt?”

“Sure,” said Scott. “What’s the third suggestion?”

Julian poured more Highland Park, a big shot for Scott, not much more than a few drops for himself. “Let’s keep that in reserve,” he said. “Two should be enough.”

“Tell me,” said Scott. “I won’t use it.”

“But what if you did by mistake?” said Julian. “Funny things happen in the heat of battle. You wouldn’t want to beat him too badly.”

“No?”

“Think of his self-esteem.”

Scott laughed. He felt disloyal to Tom, but only a little. Had Tom ever thought of his self-esteem?

Julian raised his glass. “To victory.”

“To victory,” Scott said. He couldn’t wait.

15

“W
hose victory?” Linda said, going back into the dining room, feeling pretty good. Larry had big plans, plans her boss didn’t even know about, and he might need someone like Linda in the not-too-distant future.

Scott looked a little confused by the question; Linda glanced at the bottle of Scotch, much emptier than when she’d left the room. Julian said, “Just victory in general.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Linda said; feeling really good, in fact.
Not-too-distant future:
Larry’s exact words. She’d settled, settled for small instead of big, but maybe it wasn’t too late. Linda picked up her vodka and tonic and sat down, not in her usual place at the end of the table, but in Brandon’s chair—a wad of gum was stuck on the leg—making a more compact conversational group. She drank, not her usual cautious sip, but a generous mouthful. It tasted delicious, so sharp and . . . alive.

“What’s that expression they have for spirits?” she said.

“Spirits?” said Scott.

“
Eau-de-vie
is the French,” said Julian. “But most European languages have some variant. The Latin is
aqua vitae.
”

“Meaning?” said Scott.

“Water of life,” said Julian.

Vie, vitae,
life—sharp and alive: that was what she’d been after.

Scott shook his head. “How do you know all this stuff, Julian?”

Julian looked down, able but shy, as she’d thought. Yet he’d had the self-confidence to give a lecture at Oxford University. She wanted to ask him about that, but Margie had told her in confidence; Julian didn’t want it spread around, didn’t want to appear pretentious.

Scott picked up the bottle. Highland Park: the label showed a nice picture of a sunny but cold-looking vista. Linda had never had the slightest inclination to visit Scotland, until now.

Julian held up his hand in the stop position, but Scott poured some in his glass anyway, and then in his own. “Linda tells me you gave a talk at Oxford University in England,” he said.

Julian went still.

Goddamn it,
Linda thought. She’d told Scott not to mention it. He was so tactless sometimes; more than sometimes. She glanced at him with annoyance—couldn’t help herself. He gave her a puzzled look in return. It was absolutely hopeless sometimes; more than sometimes.

Julian picked up his glass, shook it slightly, starting a tiny whirlpool inside. “You’ve been discussing me with Margie,” he said.

“Not discussing, really,” Linda said. “Just following up on Brandon saying you didn’t go to college.”

He gazed at the whirlpool. “Did the agency ever claim the contrary?”

“No,” Linda said.

“And therefore your motive?”

“Motive?”

“Your reason for making the call.”

“As I said,” Linda began, “when Brandon—”

Scott interrupted. “It’s more that she was checking up on Brandon, not you.”

Did he have to put it like that? Linda was about to soften the statement in some way, when Julian said, “So it’s not a disqualification, then, my lack of education.”

“Oh, no,” Linda said, “nothing like that. It’s the exact opposite—you seemed so educated, we just couldn’t believe you’d only been to high school.”

Julian looked up. The whirlpool stopped spinning in his hand. “Perhaps I’d better leave now,” he said, the faintest smile turning up the corners of his lips. “I didn’t go to high school either.”

Scott laughed, spraying a tiny mist of Scotch. “Ever tried stand-up comedy? You’ve got that dry delivery down pat.”

“So it’s a joke?” Linda said. “You must have gone to high school.”

Julian sipped his drink, then tilted the glass and took a much bigger swallow. “I was the beneficiary of what used to be called a private education.”

“What’s that mean?” said Scott. “Prep school?”

“No school at all,” Julian said. “I was educated at home.”

“Home schooling, sure,” said Scott. “Like that couple—what’s their name, Linda?—who moved to Maine.”

“I don’t know if Julian’s talking about that kind of alternative thing,” Linda said. “Making collages with a mom in Birkenstocks.”

“My mother went barefoot much of the time,” Julian said. “But I was mostly taught by people who came into the house.”

“Tutors?” Scott said.

“Not professional tutors. More like people my father knew with special knowledge of this or that.”

“Sounds fascinating,” Linda said. She went to drink from her glass and found it empty, poured more vodka, almost unthinking. They had diet tonic in the fridge but Linda didn’t want to miss anything. She added a very small amount of the regular tonic, compensating for the extra calories. “What sort of special knowledge are you talking about?”

“Yeah,” said Scott. “Give us an example.”

“If it’s not prying,” Linda said.

“Top off your drink?” Scott said.

From the expression on his face, Linda thought Julian would refuse; instead he held out his glass. She felt herself starting to relax. “You’re too kind,” he said.

“No problem,” Scott said. “If we kill this off, there’re still plenty of Glens in reserve.”

The line struck them all as funny. Julian was the first to stop laughing. “Here’s an example,” he said. “There was a priest in the village who’d written a book on Verlaine and Rimbaud. I studied nineteenth-century French poetry with him.”

“You lived in France, then?” Linda said.

“Briefly,” said Julian. “But the village in question was in Cameroon.”

“Cameroon?” said Scott.

“Were your parents missionaries?” Linda said.

“Broadly speaking,” Julian said. “They were in the oil business.”

“Yeah?” said Scott. He got that interested look on his face, a look that made it seem thinner, more like Tom’s; a look she hadn’t seen in some time. “With one of the big companies, like Chevron or Shell?”

“No company. He was an independent.”

“A wildcatter?”

“He wasn’t fond of that term.”

“No?” said Scott. “I would have been.”

Julian smiled.

“You were exploring for oil in Cameroon?” Linda said.

“Among other places.”

“Like where?” Scott said.

“Tunisia, Kazakhstan, Fernando Po, Gabon, others.”

Linda wasn’t sure where all of them were.

“I don’t even know where half of those are, for Christ’s sake,” said Scott.

“No?” said Julian.

Linda found her glass empty again, refilled it once more, just a tiny bit of vodka this time, barely any at all, and even less tonic.

“You had tutors in all those places?” she said.

Julian was swirling another whirlpool into existence, didn’t seem to hear.

“What a life,” Scott said. “Total enrichment.”

“Exactly,” said Linda. Scott could be acute sometimes.

“And no tests at the end of the day,” Scott added.

“Oh, there were tests,” Julian said. The whirlpool spun very fast.

The three of them watched it go round. Linda sipped her drink, added a little more vodka, just a splash or two more of the water of life. Then she and Scott began talking at the same time.

Linda said: “If you don’t mind my asking—”

And Scott: “Let me get this straight—”

Julian looked up, smiled. “Ask away,” he said. “My life’s an open book.”

“Go ahead, Scott.”

“I’m just wondering,” he said, “about your plans.”

The same question she’d been about to ask, only not so bluntly.

“Plans?” said Julian.

“For your future,” Scott said. “Someone of your background, if you see what I’m getting at, slaving away as a mere—not mere, but—”

Linda interrupted. “I think Scott is trying to find out in his way if you’re sort of between things right now.”

Julian’s eyes went from her to Scott, seeming to grow more opaque. “That depends on what happens next, doesn’t it?” he said.

Linda laughed. Scott was right: Julian had a wonderfully dry wit. For a moment she’d worried that he’d been deeply offended.

“Couldn’t you always go back to the oil business?” Scott said.

“There is no more oil business.”

“Your parents retired?”

“They’re dead.”

“Oh,” said Scott.

“I’m sorry,” said Linda.

“Nothing to apologize about,” Julian said. “You didn’t do it.”

There was a silence. Then that little smile appeared at the corners of Julian’s lips, and Linda realized he’d made another joke, even drier than the others. Scott laughed, but she didn’t: not her kind of humor, even though she knew jokes like that were a coping mechanism, hiding the pain underneath. She was about to offer more cake as a way to change the topic when Scott said: “Has it been long since they passed on?”

“A number of years,” Julian said.

“Have you got any other family?” Linda said.

“Not in the usual sense of the term,” Julian said. “Would it be very rude to ask for another slice of Ruby’s cake?”

“Of course not,” Linda said, cutting him a piece, the knife halving the
y
in
Ruby
, and one for Scott too before he asked.

Scott ate the icing end first, in two forkfuls, washing it down with Scotch. His face was pink; Linda could feel that hers was too; Julian was pale but a tiny drop of sweat glittered in the hairs of that wispy thing under his lower lip. Linda took another drink, felt her muscles relaxing a little more. It took effort to keep her legs together.

“What’s the story of this Oxford lecture?” Scott said. “The snakes and everything.”

Julian swallowed the last of his drink, laid his knife and fork properly on his plate, rose. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “perhaps we can cover that another time.”

“We don’t have to cover it at all,” Linda said.

“It’s just that I’ve still got a few things to take care of.”

“We haven’t kept you?”

“Not at all. I assume I should return at the usual time?”

“For Brandon’s lesson?” said Linda. “Why not?”

“The job is still mine?”

“Hell, yeah,” said Scott.

“Although,” Linda said, “you might want to emphasize to Brandon the importance of a traditional college education.”

“There’s a thought,” Scott said.

They awaited Julian’s reply. “We’re all on the same page,” he said.

“Love that expression,” said Scott. “Why don’t I give you a lift? We can throw that crummy old—your bike in the Jeep and—”

“Thanks,” Julian said. “I prefer to ride.”

“Have you far to go?” Linda said.

“No,” Julian said. “And there’s a handy shortcut.”

“
T
here is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact,”
said Sherlock Holmes in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery.” Ruby started reading the story in bed on her birthday night, but her eyelids got very heavy all of a sudden and closed just as Holmes was taking out his lens—must be magnifying glass—and lying down to examine the ground where the murder took place. Through her eyelids came that dull reddish glow, vibrating slightly, that meant falling asleep with the light on. Ruby was much too tired to do anything about it. She felt the weight of
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
lying open on her stomach, comforting, and went down, down, so fast there was no time to summon up the cave.

Down, down: she was in a field of flowers, leaning forward to examine one with her magnifying glass. Then something real bad happened. Because it had happened once before, although not quite like this, she knew it was going to happen again just before it got started. That was what scared her the most, the certain knowledge that this was not going to be a one-time event. She peered through the magnifying glass and the squat diamond-shaped head with the knowing eyes, blown up big, peered back at her.

Ruby opened her eyes, sat up with a start.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
slid off the bed like something alive, fell on the floor with a thump. The light was on, thank God, her room a strange shade of yellow, brownish yellow, like paper about to go up in flames. She got out of bed, careful to put her feet nowhere near the book, and opened the door. Everything normal, the house same as always, serpent-free.

Ruby heard voices from down in the front hall. Mom, Dad, and another she didn’t know at first, then recognized: Julian. She couldn’t very well go down there and admit to nightmares, probably couldn’t have even had it been just Mom and Dad. She was eleven, after all. So what would be a good cover story—thirsty, too hot, too cold, sore throat, couldn’t get to sleep? Childish, one and all.

Ruby went the other way, to Adam’s room. It had worked before. An obvious fact, and therefore deceptive, according to Holmes. She got into the bed, pulled up the covers. It was working again—no matter what Holmes said—she felt that right away; but she threw in the cave for added safety.

W
hen was the last time she’d had three drinks in an evening? Linda couldn’t remember. Not even in college, where sometimes a single drink had given her a headache. Not tonight. She felt great, expansive; partly because of the drinks, but more because of some new excitement that was in the air, probably having to do with the good news from Skyway.

Maybe now.
She glanced at the bedside clock. Fifteen minutes to one: Brandon not yet overdue. Maybe now was the moment to get past Tom, Adam, the whirlpool. Her mind made a connection between her whirlpool and the one in Julian’s glass. She sensed some hope for her in that connection, some promise that she would be all right, that she and Scott would be all right. Perhaps the lesson was to gaze into the whirlpool, as Julian had done, rather than avert the eyes, as she had for so long.
The heat generated in the master bedroom warms the whole house:
she wondered what Julian would think of that idea, felt herself growing hot.

“Kind of a fun evening, huh?” said Scott, lying beside her.

“Yes.” He had a right to talk in bed without turning her off, a right to say anything he wanted.

“Remind me to call Tom first thing in the morning.”

But did it have to be that? Why not, if looking directly in the whirlpool was the only way? “Are you going into work?” she said.

“Nope. It’s about tennis.”

Perhaps he wasn’t in the mood. She put her hand on his thigh.