My first girlfriend drove a water-damaged VW, I tell her. You would lie down on the backseat, and this smell would come up, like sushi. You couldn't do anything back there.
She turns to me. Your first girlfriend could drive?
I fumble, realizing what I've given away.
I was nine, I say, clearing my throat. She was seventeen.
Katie laughs, and a silence follows. Finally, the moment seems to have come.
I told Paul, I say to her.
She looks up.
I'm not working on the book anymore.
For a while she doesn't respond. Her hands rise to her shoulders, rubbing them for warmth. I realize, after so many hints, so much contact, that she hasn't gotten over the temperature of the room.
Do you want my jacket? I ask.
She nods. I'm getting goose bumps.
It's impossible not to look. Her arms are covered with tiny beads. The curves of her breasts are pale, the skin of a porcelain dancer.
Here, I say, taking off the jacket and placing it across her back.
My right arm passes her far shoulder just for a second, but she reaches up, holding it in limbo. With me half crooked around her, waiting, she leans in. The smell of her perfume returns, carried in the bell of her hair. This, at last, is her answer,
Katie cocks her head, and I reach inside the jacket, into the dark space where it hangs off her shoulders, placing a hand on the far side of her waist. My fingers stick to the rough fabric of her gown, caught by an unexpected friction, and I find that my hold on her is tight and effortless at the same time. A strand of hair falls in front of her face, but she doesn't brush it back. There is a smudge of lipstick just below her lip, so small that it can only be seen from a tiny distance I'm surprised to find I have reached. Then she is too close to focus on anything at all, and there is warmth over my mouth, lips closing in.
Chapter 27
Just as the kiss deepens, I hear the door swing open. I'm about to snap at the intruder, when I see it's Paul standing before us.
What's going on? I say, lurching back.
Paul looks around the room, startled. Vincent was taken back in for questioning, he manages to say. His shock at finding Katie in his room is mirrored by her shock at seeing him here at all.
I hope they're putting it to Taft. When?
An hour ago, two hours. I just spoke to Tim Stone at the Institute.
An uncomfortable hitch follows.
Did you find Curry? I ask, wiping the lipstick off my mouth.
But in the pause before he answers, we are silently rehashing our argument about the Hypnerotomachia; about the priorities I've set for myself.
I came here to talk to Gil, he says, cutting the conversation short.
Katie and I watch him edge along the wall toward the desk, gather up some of his old drawings, the ones of the crypt he's been sketching for months, then disappear through the door as quickly as he came. Papers swirl on the floor in the vortex he leaves behind, shifting in a tiny current by the door.
As Katie pushes herself off the table, I think I can read her mind. This book is inescapable. Not all the decisions in the world will make it possible for me to leave it behind. Even here at Ivy, where she thought we could shake it off, the Hypnerotomachia is everywhere: on the walls, in the air, breaking in on us when we least expect.
But to my surprise, she's only focused on the facts Paul relayed. Come on, she says with a burst of energy. I need to find Sam. If they arrest Taft, she'll have to change the headline.
Upstairs, in the main hall, we find Paul and Gil speaking in a corner. The room seems to have gone quiet at the spectacle of the club recluse making an appearance at such a public event.
Where is she? Katie asks, speaking to Sam's date. I'm too distracted to hear the answer. For two years I've imagined Paul as the butt of every Ivy joke, the curiosity chained up in the cellar. But now seniors stand at attention as if one of the old portraits has come to life. The expression on Paul's face is needful, almost desperate; if he's aware that the whole club is watching him, he gives no sign. I move closer to them, trying to hear, as Paul hands Gil a familiar paper, folded over. The map of
Colonna's crypt.
When they both turn to leave, the membership watches as Gil exits the main hall. The seniors understand it first. One by one, on tables and railings and old oak walls, the club officers begin to rap their knuckles. Brooks, the vice president, is first, then Carter Simmons, the club treasurer; and finally, from all sides, comes this knocking, tapping, rumbling of good-bye. Parker, still on the dance floor, begins rapping louder than all the rest, hoping one last time to stand out. But it's too late. Gil's exit, like his entrance when we arrived, takes place in precise time, the science of a dance step to be performed only once. As the noise of the crowd finally dies, I follow them up.
We're taking Paul to Taft's house, Gil says when I find them in the Officers' Room. What?
There's something he needs to get. A blueprint.
You're going now}
Taft's at the police station, he says, parroting what Paul explained. Paul needs us to take him.
I can see the cogs turning. He wants to help, the same way Charlie did; he wants to disprove what I said in the hospital parking lot.
Paul says nothing. I can tell from his expression that this was meant to be a trip he and Gil would make alone.
I'm about to explain to Gil that I can't, that he and Paul will have to go without me, when everything becomes more complicated. Katie appears in the doorway.
What's going on? she says.
Nothing, I say. Let's go back down.
I couldn't get Sam on the phone, she says, misunderstanding. She needs to know about Taft. Is it okay if I go to the Prince office?
Gil senses his opportunity. That's fine. Tom's coming with us to the Institute. We can meet back up at the service.
Katie is about to agree, when the look on my face gives us away.
Why? she asks.
Gil simply says, It's important. For one of the few times in our friendship, his tone suggests the importance he's referring to is much larger than himself.
Okay, she says warily, reaching out to take my hand in hers. I'll see you at the chapel.
She's about to add something else, when a huge thud comes from below, followed by an explosion of glass.
Gil hurries for the stairs; we rush down behind him to find a wide puddle of debris. Blood-colored liquid is seeping in all directions, bringing snags of glass with it. Standing at the center of it all, in a perimeter of space everyone else has evacuated, is Parker Hassett, flushed and fuming. He has just thrown the entire wet bar to the ground, shelves, bottles, and all.
What the hell's going on? Gil demands of a sophomore watching nearby.
He just went off. Someone called him a dipso and he went crazy.
Veronica Terry is holding up the ruffled skirts of her white dress, now fringed in pink and spattered with wine. They've been teasing him all night, she cries.
For God's sake, Gil demands, how'd you let him get that drunk?
She looks at him blankly, expecting pity, getting fury. Partygoers nearby whisper to each other, holding back satisfied smiles.
Brooks is telling an attendant to raise the bar and restock the shelves from the wine cellar, while Donald Morgan, looking newly presidential, tries to calm Parker amidst the hecklers. From the crowd come coos of Lush! and Drunk! and worse. Laughter at the edges of insult. Parker is across the room from me, cut in half a dozen places by the shrapnel of upturned bottles, standing in a great puddle of mixed drinks like a child, mashing out the lees. When he finally turns on Donald, he is full of rage.
Katie covers her mouth as it unfolds. Parker lunges at Donald, and the two topple over onto the floor, wrestling at first, then hammering each other with fists. Here is the show everyone has been waiting to see, Parker's comeuppance for a million petty offenses, justice for what he did on the third floor, violence to end two years of mounting hatred. A server comes out with a flat-faced mop, creating the spectacle at the fight's edge of a man shoveling liquid. On the hardwood floor the currents of wine and liquor careen past each other, reflecting off the oak walls, and not a drop is absorbed by anything, not mop nor carpet nor even tuxedo, as the two men continue to fight, a great throb of black arms and legs, an insect trying to right itself before drowning.