Wichita (9781609458904) Page 16

  “Okay, I’m a squirrel, I admit that. But YOU’RE MY NUT AND YOU’RE IN MY POCKET AND WE’RE NOT RUNNING ANYMORE.”

  22

  In the summer of Alissa and the Goethe-Institut, Lewis saw a tomb effigy of a knight, the features of the face worn smooth, one shin shorn away, both feet missing, broken off. That’s how he’s felt, despite two Ambiens, lying on his back in bed under the lingering effects of the meth. If meth was all it was. Eyeballs dry, hinges of his jaw sore from teeth-gnashing. Upper arms bruised where Seth kept him pinned to the ground using his knees. If he’s slept at all, it was briefly, feverishly. He’s been tossing from side to side.

  “Demosthenes,” he whispers. One of the names on the entablature of the Butler library at Columbia. Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles. Behind the columns and high windows is the reading room. Plato, Aristotle, Vergil. Long tables of dark polished wood, glowing lamps. Students and faculty pass through the ornate open gate, some leaving, some entering. Hexagonal paving stones, chevroned bricks, linden trees and cherry blossoms. Where else in the world is there for Lewis other than the reading room?

  He sits up in bed and the blades of white sunlight threaten to behead him. He ducks and gropes for the cord and closes the venetian blinds. He finds his cell phone in the front pocket of his jeans, along with the tinted bottle. He holds it up: there’s a little left.

  He calls information and gets the number for Delta reservations and somehow dials it before he forgets. When he’s put on hold he takes the bottle to the bathroom and taps it into the sink. He turns on the faucet and watches the streak of powder get swept down the drain by the clear water then rinses out the bottle for good measure and tosses it into the plastic trash can, where it lands with an accusatory clunk that tightens the band of his headache.

  A Delta operator gets on the line and Lewis finds a notebook and pen in his book bag. There’s a flight operated by Atlantic Southeast that leaves Wichita Mid-Continent at 10:40 tomorrow morning and arrives in Atlanta at 1:51. The connection to LaGuardia departs at 2:40 and gets into New York at 5:09.

  As if psychically notified by Lewis’s turn back toward New York, Virgil calls. Lewis shunts it to voicemail. Would Lewis like to reserve a seat on this flight? Yes. He can always cancel it later. He jots down the reservation number as Virgil calls again or it’s the same call bouncing back. He gets off the line with the Delta operator and answers the Virgil call.

  “Lewis!” It’s like he’s charging through a door that’s been flung open at the last second. “I mean, how dare you?”

  “What?” Lewis says, considering hanging up and pretending the line dropped. “What’re you talking about?”

  “You didn’t even bother to cover your tracks,” Virgil cries and Lewis feels out of breath, guilty because accused. Could this be about helping Sylvie with the fertility injections?

  “You need to tell me what’s going on,” Lewis says.

  “Lewis,” Virgil says, sputtering slightly, “Dad’s email box has been flooded with your ‘thank-you’ notes. Don’t be coy about this.”

  Lewis tries to speak but Virgil talks over him. “I have to say I really see this as part of a larger pattern of ingratitude on your part. You never thanked me for the Horace Mann tuition, for instance, but you were on a partial scholarship because of the football. I had to pick up the rest of the tab! That wasn’t easy to come by, that private-school money. I’m a doctor of philosophy, not medicine.” He’s been saving that one, Lewis thinks to himself mid-stream. “And not one word of thanks from you.”

  “Why should I have to thank you for paying for my schooling?” Lewis asks him. “That’s what a parent does.”

  “And what does a child do,” Virgil replies, “just take and take and take with no acknowledgement?”

  “You pushed me to go to Horace Mann.”

  “I gave you the option of going.”

  “And for your information, I didn’t write any fucking emails to Cyrus.”

  There’s a pause. Lewis waits, puffed up and panting slightly with outrage.

  “Well, if you didn’t write them,” Virgil asks finally, “who did?”

  “I don’t know,” Lewis says. But he does. He’s looking around for his laptop. It was on the desk the last time he saw it.

  There’s another pause on Virgil’s end then: “Is Seth there, in Wichita?”

  “He is,” Lewis says. He’s down on his knees looking under the bed.

  “And does Seth know about—the Musil book and the rest?” It’s as if he’s a bit embarrassed by the idea of Seth’s view of it.

  “Yeah,” Lewis says. He’s pulling on a clean shirt.

  “Well, if it’s Seth, this is not a good sign.”

  “I just told you I didn’t do it,” Lewis snaps. “Who else could it be?”

  “There are over a hundred of these things, Lewis. I’ve never heard Mom so upset.” Lewis wonders about Gerty’s life, if this is the most upsetting thing in it so far.

  “I’ll call you later.” He hangs up and is leaving the room when something makes him stop at the bookshelf. He takes down the copy of When Things Fall Apart, which is sticking out a bit: the money is gone.

  He drops the book on the floor and stalks down the hall, pausing to listen at the closed door of Abby’s bedroom—quiet—then hunts through the rest of the painfully sun-flooded house. There’s no one in the TV room, the dining room, the kitchen, Seth’s room.

  He goes down the stairs into the basement to check there. Not in the laundry room or the storage area, stacked high and deep with Abby’s unsold multi-level marketing products. In the main room, where there used to be a Ping-Pong table, a pleather Barcalounger, a TV set, there’s now a chemistry lab—two long marble work tables arranged in an L. Beakers, funnels, flasks, graduated cylinders, coils of rubber tubing, a metal shelf with labeled bottles and boxes and canisters. A large mysterious machine, maybe a microscope, attached to devices that look like units for a stereo. The small windows up near the ceiling have been covered with foil.

  He bounds back up the stairs and heads to Abby’s room. Passing the den again, he spies his laptop on the couch. He was moving so fast he didn’t notice it the first time through. He sits down and opens it and hits a key to refresh the screen and the “Sent” page of his email account comes up, all the recipients cchopik@fas.harv . . . , the subject all variously “thanks!” and “merci!” and “you can guess,” the date sent all “Today,” with a minute or two at most separating each one, beginning at 3:47 A.M.

  Lewis opens the first few:

  From: lchopik@columbia.edu

  Subject: thanks!

  Date: June 26, 2007 2:47:14 AM CST

  To: cchopik@fas.harvard.edu

  Dear Gramps,

  Thanks for that book on Moosel, it rocks!

  Love,

  Lewis

  From: lchopik@columbia.edu

  Subject: thanks!

  Date: June 26, 2007 2:48:56 AM CST

  To: cchopik@fas.harvard.edu

  Dear Cramps,

  Your book on Muscle, it’s something I’ll always sort of want to keep nearby.

  Lovin’ ya,

  Lew

  From: lchopik@columbia.edu

  Subject: thanks!

  Date: June 26, 2007 3:47:14 AM CST

  To: cchopik@fas.harvard.edu

  Dear Gramps,

  I can’t get enuf

  of this thanking stuff!

  Truly,

  Lew-deKriss

  Folding the Mac shut, he picks it up and raps more loudly on Abby’s door than he meant to.

  “Come in!” he hears her call in a pleasant singsong. He opens the door and goes in, closing it behind him. The light is dim, the tones of the room greenish gold, a vaguely harem atmosphere: sleepy, sensual, subaquatic. Abby is lying on her side on the enormous “California King” Tempur-Pedic bed, which feels like the world’s largest slab of cream cheese. She has a book open in the light of a lamp, the covers pulled up above her breasts. �
��Have you seen Seth?” Lewis asks.

  She puts the open book face down on the bedspread. “What’s going on, honey?” she asks, scanning his face.

  Lewis has already turned to go. He stops and says, “Seth is in full flip-out.”

  “What?” she says, sitting up. “Lewis, what happened?”

  “He held me hostage in a cemetery last night, ranting about how he’s my teacher, he’s already dead. Again. He has a memorial tattoo in his own name.”

  “Wait, what?” Abby has sat up straighter in bed. “What’s a memorial tattoo?”

  “This huge new tattoo of his,” Lewis says, gesturing impatiently at his collarbone. “It says, ‘In Loving Memory of Seth Chopik.’ He needs to be locked up.”

  He watches her absorb this. “He needs to be locked up, Abby! He’s crazy.”

  “I don’t like this talk of locking people up,” she says. “And we aren’t locking him up for a weird tattoo. We couldn’t even we wanted to.”

  “I walked like four miles home from the cemetery,” Lewis says. “I wouldn’t get back in the car with him.”

  She’s looking at him as if anew. “Were you on something last night?”

  “Yeah,” Lewis admits. “He gave me some meth.”

  “Crystal meth?” She looks horrified.

  “It’s just speed.” Isn’t it?

  “OK, look, Lewis, you’re grieving about Victoria now. You’re drinking, you’re doing strong drugs. That’s fine, it’s to be expected. But you have take your own reactions to things with a grain of salt, no?”

  Lewis takes a breath. He needs to start over. “OK, remember how I owe Cyrus a thank-you note for the Musil study?”

  She nods, eyes big with suspense.

  “Well, I told Seth about it too, last night. And he sent a hundred emails to Cyrus, in my name, ‘thanking’ him for the Musil book!” He holds up the laptop like a murder weapon and Abby covers her mouth. “It’s not fucking funny!” Lewis shouts.

  “No, I know,” she says, and he sees she’s maybe not laughing after all. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m like a pariah now!”

  “Weren’t you already?” she asks coolly.

  Lewis scoffs. “And he stole the money you gave me.”

  At this, she frowns again with concern. “Then gave it to Tori,” Lewis says, “that’s how she could be at the Birthday Party.”

  “Do you know any of that for sure?” she asks.

  “No,” he admits.

  “What do you know for sure?”

  “That the money’s missing,” Lewis admits.

  “Then I think you need to take a breath,” she says.

  “And that Seth’s fucking insane!”

  The cell phone on the bedside table rings. “He held me hostage!”

  She glances at the screen and raises one finger and answers it.

  “What?” Holding the sheets to her breasts, she lifts a wood slat of the blinds covering the window and peers out into yard.

  “God,” she says into the phone, lifting the blinds with two fingers and continuing to peer through.

  Lewis goes to the window and lifts a slat higher up on the blinds. He sees Bishop in the side yard standing in profile with his hands on his hips at the flap of the tent. Making his way through the weeds is a cop, the nose of his black-and-white cruiser, parked along the street, just visible through the missing gate from Lewis’s vantage. Lewis watches Bishop mutter something, presumably into the tiny headset and Abby says, “Okay.”

  “Bishop says open the window a little bit so we can hear,” she whispers. Lewis stoops and raises it a few inches and the sounds of the yard wash into the bedroom. Lewis lifts a blade of the blinds and looks out through the gap again.

  “Hello there, officer!” Bishop hails the man, hands clasped before him as if in accordance with something he read about non-threatening body language.

  Heavyset, slow-moving, the sheriff—his arm patch says “sheriff” and “State of Kansas” and “Sedgwick County”—ignores the greeting. He’s quite close to the window now and it seems to Lewis that if the man simply turned his head slightly he’d spot them spying there. A horsefly lands in the light brown fur of his forearm and the sheriff shoos it away by giving his arm a rotating shake. “Got permission to have a tent out here?”

  “Yes, I do, officer,” Bishop says. “From the lady of the house.”

  The sheriff nods as if absorbing this then the horsefly returns, buzzing aggressively around his head and there ensues an undignified flurry of frantic ducking and swatting while Bishop looks frowningly on, one hand raised to his lips to hide a smile. When the horsefly is finally gone, the sheriff waits a moment, scanning the air above him warily, then says, “Had complaints from the neighbors about this camp.”

  “Neighbors?” Bishop says with a chuckle. He points to his left. “This house is empty, foreclosed.” He turns, waves vaguely behind himself. “That one back there is empty too—up for sale.” He shrugs. “And if you mean Bill Oren, he can’t even see me from over there.”

  The sheriff has been surveying the clothesline and Tibetan prayer flags behind his sunglasses. “Did Bill Oren complain?” Bishop asks.

  “Mind if I look inside the tent?” the sheriff asks.

  Bishop’s face falls and he shoots a glance at the window. “Yes, I do mind, officer! I mind very much!”

  “Stand to one side, sir.” The sheriff points to a spot in the weeds to the right.

  Crossing his arms, Bishop holds his ground. “I’ve been polite and forthcoming, sir,” Bishop says stiffly. “At this stage, you need to produce a search warrant.” The sheriff and Bishop stand staring at each other.

  “Shouldn’t we go out there?” Lewis whispers.

  “All right, sir,” the sheriff says. “Stand to one side or I’m placing you under arrest.”

  “I don’t want him coming in here to search!” Abby whispers back. “Have you seen the lab in the basement?”

  “I just did,” Lewis says. “Why are you withholding stuff like that? The tent, the lab?”

  “Keep your voice down!” Abby says. “I’m not withholding anything!”

  “Well, we should go out there,” Lewis whispers. “He can’t just come into the house and search it.”

  “He sure the hell can!” she hisses. “Wake up, Lewis! They do whatever they want—obviously. We live in a police state, or haven’t you noticed?”

  The sheriff and Bishop seem to have been engaged meanwhile in a stare-down. Shaking his head with a kind of fatalistic disgust, Bishop crabs reluctanctly away from the entrance flap. “Play the game, officer,” he says. He makes a sarcastic flourish of welcome with one arm. “Play the game.”

  “Over there,” the sherrif says, indicating a spot in the weeds to which Bishop moves while shaking his head.

  The sheriff trudges forward and plucks at the peak of the tent as if expecting the whole thing to fly away at a touch and reveal its contents.

  “You know,” Bishop says, “there’s a document you might want to read when you get a chance.”

  The sheriff tugs harder at the peak of the tent.

  “Little something called the Constitution of the United States of America?”

  “I’ve read the Constitution,” the sheriff says, drawing out his flashlight and turning it on. He crouches creakily and shines the flashlight into the tent.

  “I especially recommend the Fourth Amendment,” Bishop says. “Has to do with illegal searches?”

  Dissatisfied with his flashlit view of the interior, the sheriff gets down on all fours and crawls inside. Bishop, his mouth working in agitation inside the white beard, looks angry enough to kick the wide, uniformed ass. The sheriff has begun throwing things backwards out of the tent now—a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, magazines, computer diskettes in clear plastic covers, a paperback, two unopened cans of Starbucks espresso-and-cream. Lewis is expecting to see a baggie of pot or a bong or other “paraphernalia” at any second. Now a sex toy hits the grou
nd, the impact causing it to begin writhing obscenely.

  “Yo!” a voice calls—Seth’s, Lewis knows instantly. He’s to the left somewhere, in the haze of sunlight, as if he’s come around from behind the house. “I can explain everything!”

  Abby says, “Oh, my God.”

  The sheriff scurries backward out of the tent and clambers to his feet, his heavily equipped belt clanking.

  “Stop right there!” he tells Seth. His sunglasses are askew.

  “Welcome!” Seth says. “First of all.”

  “Sir, you need to go back inside the house,” the sheriff says, pointing straight at Lewis without taking his eyes off Seth.

  “OK, so the meaning of this moment,” Seth says, speaking slowly, “is you’re right on time.”

  “Go!” Abby hisses but Lewis is already going. He dashes out the room and through the den and out the sliding glass doors and into the mashed glare of the bright hot morning. The weeds lash his pants as he races through the yard and around the corner of the house. He hears a clacking sound then a loud crack.

  By the time he reaches the tent Seth is writhing on the ground like a snake. He has no shirt on and he’s pawing at his chest and moaning.

  When the sheriff sees Lewis he aims the pistol at him, holding it with both hands, hollers, “Stop right there!”

  Lewis halts in his tracks, raising both hands high, and the sheriff aims the gun back at Seth, who’s somehow hoisted himself onto one elbow and seems to be trying to sit up.

  “Stay down!” the sheriff bellows incredulously. “Down!”

  Panting, Lewis feels like he’s going to faint or burst into tears or have a coronary. Bishop, his face drained of blood, looks on with wide eyes.

  “Under arrest!” the sheriff growls at Seth, voice phlegmy with adrenaline and rage. “Arrest!” he barks.

  Still aiming at Seth, the sheriff releases the gun with one hand to fumble behind himself for something then walks toward Seth holding forth a pair of handcuffs like a symbol to be read.