Part 9 (2/2)
I hit the b.u.t.ton just as the rear wheels. .h.i.t a patch of ice and the tail end of the truck lurched across the yellow line that was barely visible in the road ahead.
Jack twisted the wheel calmly in the opposite direction and we were straight again.
”Maybe you should slow down.” The words felt stupid coming out of my mouth.
”First I'm too slow, now I'm too fast. Make up your mind. What do you want?”
”To get there alive,” I said, and then the truck seemed suddenly to lift and was sliding above the pavement in a soft frictionless glide that for the briefest of instants was actually gentle and easy. Jack swore and wrenched the wheel to one side. There was nothing calm about him this time, and all at once the road in front of us was gone and we were looking at the pale dizzying forest and then more road and more embankment and the terrifying black drop behind the thin white trees, spinning around and around us like some kind of nightmare kaleidoscope. The force of the spin was pus.h.i.+ng me against the door and I was clutching at anything I could. Jack was still swearing and fighting with the wheel. His voice and his motions were desperate and then the wheels were spinning in the gravel of a sudden rare shoulder on the embankment side.
We'd stopped.
In the abrupt silence I could hear the truck's motor purring like a contented cat, and Jack breathing hard, and myself breathing harder. He was staring straight ahead of us, out into the swirl of ice crystals in the headlights.
Centripetal force, I thought, bizarrely. Not the spin pus.h.i.+ng against the truck, but the truck pus.h.i.+ng against the spin. One by one, I unclenched my fingers from the door. I'd been bracing myself against the floor of the truck so hard that my knees ached.
”Slick patch,” Jack said. When I didn't respond he said, ”I wouldn't have let anything happen. I'd never let you get hurt.”
”Just get us there,” I said.
”Your wish is my et cetera.” He drove slowly the rest of the way.
We went straight to the address Raeburn had given us for the motel, which turned out to be one of those places that rented rooms for thirty dollars a night or fifteen dollars an hour. Our room was squalid. When we turned on the light, the walls were crawling. Brus.h.i.+ng my teeth in the bathroom, I took one look at the shower stall and decided that I was clean enough. n.o.body had ever intentionally made a bathroom fixture that color.
Jack was whistling as he dressed. For tonight, at least, the impenetrable melancholy that had been on him since his disappearance seemed to have spun itself away on that mountain road. ”You know what would be funny?” he said as he put on his tie in front of the spotted mirror. ”If Raeburn came by tomorrow and neither of us was here. Say, for instance, you were to catch the eye of our favorite up-and-coming physics professor and he were to invite you back to his charming little apartment for a quiet evening of gravity-testing.”
”What about you?”
”I hide in the closet and film it.”
I gave him a hard look. ”I think you're getting sicker.”
He grinned at me and stepped away from the mirror so that I could use it. ”Speaking of getting sick, if either of us tries to sleep in this room, ten to one we end up with dysentery.” He kicked the bed. The iron feet made a ghastly squealing noise against the dingy linoleum and I heard-or imagined-the skittering of a thousand tiny c.o.c.kroach legs. I shuddered and turned to the mirror to put on Crazy Mary's pearl earrings.
Jack grabbed me from behind.
”Your mission,” he whispered into my ear, his breath hot, his hands on my waist, ”should you choose to accept it: use those deadly feminine wiles to seduce one Professor Benjamin Searles, soon to be tenured, and thereby secure a halfway decent place to sleep tonight while your lowly brother hovers outside the window with only the soulless mechanical hum of a video camera for company.” As he spoke, his hands slid up my sides to my bare shoulders.
I brushed him away. ”No, thanks.”
Jack dropped his hands and stepped back from me. ”Failing that, we can always drive home after the party if neither of us is too plowed.”
”I'm not sure I trust you to drive,” I said as he turned me around and looked me up and down.
”Very nice,” he said. ”Beautiful.”
My dress was forest green velvet, with a low neckline and a lower back. The color did nice things for my eyes, and the thick, clingy fabric did nice things for my body. It made me look older than sixteen. Jack had brought it home for me the week before.
”Thanks,” I said. ”Not so bad yourself.”
And it was true. The tux suited him; it made the burning spark in his eyes and the angry tension in the set of his jaw das.h.i.+ng. He appraised himself in the mirror, pushed a lock of his gelled hair into place, and nodded. ”Yeah. Not bad.” He held out an arm to me. I laced mine through it. I felt grand, female, beautiful. For once I didn't mind that people would be looking at us.
We didn't leave anything in the motel room and we didn't bother to lock the door behind us.
The party was being held in the president's mansion, which was the sort of place that our house on the Hill might have been, if anyone still cared about it. The walls of the library, where the bar was set up, were lined with books on handsome wooden shelves. Some of them were in languages and alphabets that I couldn't read. Our house was full of books, too-some of them beautiful first editions that had come down to Raeburn from his father. Most of them, though, were college textbooks, and except for Jack's science-fiction paperbacks and spy novels there was very little in the way of entertainment. But on one shelf of the president's library, I found Dostoyevsky, Das.h.i.+ell Hammett, and volume six of the 1933 Oxford English Dictionary. It made me want to steal away and find a corner.
The rest of the house was full of carefully placed furniture, expensive rugs, and simple arrangements of fresh flowers. There was a huge heated tent over the lawn and garden, lit inside and out with strings of golden lights. Dozens of small candles floated on the reflecting pool. The year before, they'd had a string quartet; but even without live music it was a pretty good party.
We found Raeburn under the tent, talking to a stout man with wild hair and thick gla.s.ses. He taught physics, too, which I would have guessed even if I hadn't recognized him. None of them, Raeburn included, could ever remember to comb their hair. I think they all liked to imagine themselves as Einstein, too preoccupied with matters of the universe to think about trivialities like combs.
We were an hour late. Raeburn's eyes flickered dangerously when he saw us, but his smile was broad as he said, ”The return of the prodigals,” and kissed me on the cheek. ”Eugene,” he said to the fat man, ”you remember my children, John and Josephine.”
”Of course,” Eugene said, shaking my brother's hand. His eyes were fixed on me. ”Lovely. I hadn't remembered that you had such adult children, Joseph.” Raeburn a.s.sumed a modest expression, and Eugene continued: ”You're both very lucky. Not many fathers would take the time with their children's education that your father has with yours. I certainly didn't. You, John-”
”Jack.”
”Really?” Eugene blinked. ”Jack for John. I thought that was outdated. Were you a Kennedy fan, Joseph?”
”Their mother's brother was John,” Raeburn said shortly. ”Called Jack.”
”Hmm, well,” Eugene said. From the uncomfortable look on his face, I guessed that he'd heard about Crazy Mary. ”Jack, you're what? Nineteen?”
”Eighteen.”
”And you, my dear?” Eugene's small, watery eyes gazed at me from behind his gla.s.ses.
”I'm sixteen,” I said.
”Really?” Eugene did the blink again, pus.h.i.+ng his gla.s.ses up for good measure. ”Really? I'd have guessed much-but you really must meet my son Martin,” he said hastily, glancing at Raeburn. ”He's around somewhere. I suspect you two would get along famously.” He scanned the crowd.
”Actually, what I'd really like right now is a drink. I mean, I'd like something to drink,” I added quickly and pulled a grinning Jack away as Raeburn glared at me.
”One look and he could tell that you and Martin would get along famously,” Jack said. ”You two must have a lot in common.”
”Maybe Martin has b.r.e.a.s.t.s, too.” I concentrated on following Jack as he forced his way through the crowd.
”I wouldn't be surprised, after meeting the old man.”
At the bar, a stylishly dressed woman, her hair dyed the same artificial shade of ash blond as most of the other older women at the party, looked at us closely and said, ”Why, you're Joseph's family, aren't you?”
”Have we met?” Jack said.
She laughed. Old or not, she was still beautiful. She had amazing skin: clear and smooth and tanned, in a healthy time-in-the-garden sort of way. ”Not that you'd remember. I'm Claire. My office is down the hall from your father's. Chemistry. I saw your picture on his desk,” she said. ”It was taken quite a while ago-but of course I recognized two such handsome kids. Your mother must have been quite a looker.”
What kind of person uses the word ”looker”? I thought, but Jack's expression warmed considerably. ”She was. She was beautiful.”
”I didn't even know her,” I said, surprising myself.
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