Sociopath? (31 page)

*

Duke - Sounds like fun. Call me at the house
around the first of June. I’ll come to some practices and get back
in sync with you guys before August. Rafe

~ ~ ~

The summer roared past with the speed of the
cars he drove. He had a great year. Chester tried to keep him
abreast of where he was in points but but Rafe waved him off.

“Don’t bother me with the details, Chet. I
just want to drive. I’ll handle the cars. You take care of
everything else.”

The fan club continued to grow. He didn’t
know how many members it had now but there was always a different
woman available when he wanted one after the races and usually he
did want one.

*

He struck up a small dalliance with Carole,
the Channel 5 anchor, although he never did give her another
interview. He figured the dalliance was what she was angling for
anyway and the interview was just the excuse.

*

His parents spent two weeks in Aspen,
Colorado and rented a villa on the coast of Italy for two more so
he was able to keep Laney relatively contented.

August added rock and roll to his agenda.
Regretfully, Duke watched him on the stage and wished it wasn’t for
just a month. He’d never seen a musician who could exercize such
dominance over his audience. As far as the women were concerned,
the rest of the band might as well not even be there. Their eyes
stayed locked on the black hair and the flashing smile and the
rolling hips. When he turned his back to the stage, a murmur of
appreciation always went up from the females. A woman had told Duke
once, with a longing tone in her voice, that Rafe had the hottest
little ass she’d ever seen, whatever that meant. Frequently, they
ended up with bras and panties on the stage and that never happened
when Rafe wasn’t there! They mobbed him on breaks, asking him to
autograph shirts and menus and napkins and sometimes themselves,
meanwhile touching his hand and arm and back and butt. Duke swore
Rafe could ask one of them to drop to her knees and blow him right
there in front of God and everyone and she’d do it without even
hesitating. Duke was a good looking guy himself and he’d benefitted
plenty from being a gi-tar man but Rafe took it to a whole new
level.

*

Chas and Vic came to one of the races and he
had to grin at how elegantly out of place they looked in the dirt
track crowd. They took him out to dinner afterwards. He was
genuinely happy to see them.

He pulled the small gold good luck piece out
of his pocket and showed them.

“I always have it with me.” His smile
gleamed. “Maybe it’s why I’ve been winning.”

“We hope it helps you win, Rafe,” Chas told
him, “but even more, we want it to bring you back safe to us in the
fall.”

*

And it did. He headed off for New Jersey,
Hawk in the seat beside him, thinking - “down to the last year and
then I can put Princeton behind me.”

*

That nine months passed quickly too, if
uneventfully, at least uneventfully to Rafe, although it might not
have been to anyone else. It was pretty clear he’d graduate as
valedictorian, the first Vincennes to do so although all his
brothers had all been in the top five percent of their class. He
was Mathematics Student of the Year again. It was almost like they
decided, “what the hell, just give it to him and be rid of him”.
(This time, he RSVPed promptly, before Renny had a chance to order
him to do it). He was going to complete his college athletic career
with some records it would probably take a while for anyone else to
match - most homeruns ever hit in a single season, an unbelievable
100 percent free throw record in basketball (reporters started
calling him “CMV for Can’t Miss Vincennes”), most yards per carry
(by a mile) in football. Scouts from all three sports approached
him urging him to consider going pro but he blew them all off. He
was followed constantly by the sports media paparazzi, all
determined to be the one to get the coup of convincing him to give
them an interview before it was too late and he was gone for good.
But he eluded them (none of them had a vehicle that could keep up
with the Corvette) and once he made it home, he was protected by
the gay mafia that seemed to take it as their mission to be his
first line of defense. And if they somehow got past that obstacle,
they faced a huge, growling German Shepherd.

“Hold up, Hawk,” Rafe would tell him, smiling
at the offending reporter. “You’ve got two minutes to get off this
property. He’s trained to go for the groin.” A few of them might
have been dedicated enough to take a chance with an arm but a
threat to their privates was a pretty effective deterrent.

*

One memorable event that year was Annecy’s
wedding, not especially memorable for Rafe himself, of course, but
to the Vincennes as a collective body. The family held nothing back
when it came to celebrating itself and everyone was expected to
cooperate fully in paying tribute.

Annecy and Mark were married at Saint James
in front of the high altar in the original gothic church surrounded
by vaulted ceilings and soaring stained glass windows and elaborate
stations of the cross as well as what seemed to be at least a
million candles and equally as many banked pots of autumn-hued
Chrysanthemums - gold and yellow and rust and burgundy and plum.
Branches of copper leaves and flame-colored berries decorated
pillars and arched over the aisle where litters of colorful leaves
covered the floor.

The wedding party consisted of Annecy’s five
brothers and and Mark’s one brother and two best friends wearing
deep brown tuxedos. Eight Vincennes sisters and sisters-in-law
glowed in long satin dresses in the same jewel-tones as the
Chrysanthemums. Raquelle Vincennes the flower girl, adorable in her
long yellow dress, threw blossoms from her basket while Mark’s
pudgy four-year-old nephew, Christopher, served as the ring-bearer.
Annecy was radiant in her white Empire gown with a beaded bodice
and 12 foot train. Rafe was happy for Lane. All his sisters were
brightly beautiful but he thought she was the loveliest of them,
thrilled as she was to have been included in the wedding party.

Like most Catholic weddings, the ceremony
seemed to drag on forever until the priest finally declared Annecy
and Mark husband and wife. Rafe swore to himself that if he ever
got married, which he doubted he would ever do, he’d run off to a
justice of the peace and have it over and done in five minutes.

After the wedding itself, the family and
guests repaired to Heron Point where the seasonal theme had been
maintained. Huge autumn wreaths hung on the outside double doors.
Arrangements of corn shocks, pumpkins, squash, Indian corn and pots
of fall flowers were massed around wide verandah and bittersweet
vines wound through the railings of the balustrade. Inside, the
copper branches and flame berries decorated the banister of the
golden oak open stairway. The living room was like walking into a
fall woods with the flowers and leaves of autumn all around.
Branches of bittersweet covered the fireplace mantel while banks of
flowers filled the hearth.

One end of the room contained a silver
champagne fountain with elegant crystal champagne flutes engraved
with the names of the wedding couple and the date which guests
could keep as a memento.

More flowers covered the center of the dining
room table and surrounding them, a celebration of harvest,
containing every possible ingredient for making a salad including
heaping bowls of greens, hard-boiled egg slices, cherry tomatoes,
rings of pepper, a dozen kinds of grated cheese, broccoli florets,
cauliflower buds, carrot curls, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds,
raisins, onion slices, cucumber rounds, thin strips of filet
mignon, chunks of seasoned chicken, crumbled bacon, bite-sized
pieces of ham, fresh shrimp, slices of salmon, as well as fresh,
crusty loaves of French and Italian bread, various types of
crackers, chunked cheese, caviar and more. On the carved buffet was
the towering cake, decorated in fall blooms.

“I think my parents are absolutely stunned,”
Mark whispered to Jocelyn’s husband, Edgar, an African-American.
“I’d warned them that the Vincennes were rich but the reality is so
much more than they expected.”

Edgar laughed his deep, rich laugh. “Imagine
what it was like when Jocey and I got married. At least, you grew
up middle class. I was raised in Boston in the ghetto. Both my
folks worked hard and we never went hungry but they struggled to
pay the bills. Then suddenly, they go from their little house in
the ‘hood and old clunker car to here at Heron Point. You want to
talk about some culture shock. Bless their hearts, they were
intimidated as hell. Scared they’d embarrass me by speaking bad
English or using the wrong fork. Then Renny and Magdelene swept
them up and the next thing I knew, they were all laughing together
like they’d been friends forever. The Vincennes are filthy rich but
they aren’t snobs and they know how to make anyone feel at
home.”

* *

A month before graduation, he got another
summons for his presence. This time the e-mail told him to come to
the office of the President, Mr Murray. He couldn’t think of
anything he’d done wrong so he wasn’t too worried about it.

When he got there, the Pres spent about three
minutes just looking at him so Rafe just looked back. The office
was large and impressive but Mr Murray was, well, average looking
compared to what Rafe thought a college president would look like.
His suit was obviously expensive but it didn’t have that custom
tailored sharpness that his Dad’s suits had. His hair was sandy but
thinning on top. Nothing distinguishable about the rest of his
face, just a regular nose, blue eyes with pale blonde lashes. His
slight smile when Rafe came through the door seemed somewhat
distracted. (Rafe didn’t try to play his little game with Mr Murray
because he didn’t sense any threat from this meeting. He just let
the older man point him to the seat he was to take.)

Finally, Mr Murray said, “I’m retiring this
year so we’ll both be leaving Princeton for good.”

“And why do I care?” Rafe thought but didn’t
say.

“You probably don’t know this but your father
and I roomed together here when we were students. We’ve remained
close over the years and I’ve taken it as an obligation of our
friendship to look out for his sons.”

(Aha, the mystery of the mole was
solved).

“Your brothers were all perfect students.
Smart, athletic, sociable but, you know, keeping it all within the
parameters of normal student behavior. Do you remember the opening
sentence of A Tale of Two Cities, Rafe?”

“It was the best of times; it was the worst
of times”, Rafe quoted.

“Yes. That line reminds me of you. You have
been the best of students and you’ve been the worst of students. At
times, I’ve been awed by your genius and your outstanding
achievements but running counterpoint to that, you’ve caused me one
fucking headache after another.”

“I hope you know I didn’t set out to do that,
Mr Murray?”

“Oh, I know, Rafe, it just all flowed from
who are are, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve had to deal
with the mob of complaining professors and coaches you’ve left in
your wake - because you wouldn’t attend their banquets or you were
screwing all their students or you wouldn’t give the media an
interview to pump up their program or you wouldn’t join Honor
Society although you were at the top of your class or you
embarrassed your English professor by refusing to read your
prize-winning poem in front of the Poet’s Convention. You’re
becoming the stuff of legend, Rafe, with your dog and your Corvette
and your gay support group and your reputation for sexual prowess
that matches your record in other areas. Of course, everyone knows
the broad outlines of why Helene Barnes quit Women’s Studies and
they know it had something to do with you although they don’t know
exactly what, and the stories have gone around about the suicide of
the man who beat up one of your landlords and that is attributed to
you as well. To the students, you’ve become a kind of cult figure
although a distant one and maybe that aura of untouchability adds
to it. You’ve been here almost four years, Rafe, and no one knows
who you are.”

Gil sighed heavily. “I guess I just wanted to
meet you after all these years of your being such a thorn in my
side. Bureaucracies don’t appreciate legends, Rafe. They prefer
predictability and they believe they are the ones who deserve
hero-worship, not you.

Rafe didn’t say anything because what could
he say? Anyway, Mr Murray wasn’t really asking him any
questions.

“I’ll be curious to see what your future
holds, Rafe.” He smiled an unexpectedly humorous smile. “Somehow I
suspect I’d end up knowing whatever you do next even if I wasn’t
friends with your dad.”

He stood up and held out his hand. “At any
rate, good luck, Rafe. Having you here has been has been a
fascinating, if often unsettling experience. Tell Renny I said
hello when you go home.

They shook. “I will, Mr Murray.”

*

It was over and the only thing he’d miss was
the carriage house and Vic and Chas. They’d had a party for him the
night before he was to leave with the crowd in attendance for
barbeque. They all hated it that he was leaving. Who would have
thought in the beginning they’d all end up loving this straight boy
so much?

The next morning, Chas and Vic hugged him so
long, he didn’t think they were going to let go but he hugged them
back and didn’t try to rush them.

“Do you promise, Rafe, that you’ll come and
see us?” Chas asked.

“I promise, but you have to come and see me
too.”

“Oh, we will, we surely will.”

“And will you e-mail me and let us know how
you’re doing?”