Swimmer (13 page)

He went through the large double doors at the end of the corridor and stood outside on the steps for a moment, breathing deeply to steady himself. After a few minutes Dr Friendly came out too. ‘James – Jim – this is terrible! What are we going to say to Dottie's parents?'

‘It's all right, I'll take care of Mr and Mrs Osias. I need to say a few words to my class first.'

‘Jesus, this is going to give us such bad publicity! Who's going to send their children to West Grove if they can never be sure that they're going to come home alive?'

‘Dr Friendly … I'll talk to you about our public image later, okay? Right now I have some very distraught young people to deal with.'

‘I'm not talking about public image, Jim. I'm talking about
you
. You're a jinx on this place, if you ask me. Trouble seems to follow you around like a junkyard dog.'

‘Well, you're officially rid of me as of today, so don't worry about it.'

‘I wish I could be one hundred per cent confident of that.'

Jim said, ‘Pardon me, won't you?' and opened his classroom door. The room was completely deserted. Chairs and desks had been left askew, crumpled sheets of notepaper were strewn all over the floor. Stacks of books had been left on his desk – dog-eared copies of
Twentieth-Century American Poets
,
Hamlet
and
Look Homeward, Angel
. On the chalkboard somebody had scrawled,
Happy New Life, Mr Rook
, and he wouldn't have been surprised if it was meant ironically.

He sat down at his desk and opened one drawer after another, taking out his pens, his dictionaries and a take-away chow mein that he had forgotten about for almost three weeks. He prodded it with a pencil but apart from one hairy-looking prawn it looked pretty much inert.

He was still sitting there when there was a cautious knock at the door. It was Nestor Fawkes, wearing a washed-out gray T-shirt and a baggy pair of combat pants with holes in the knees.

‘Nestor,' he said. ‘What did you do, forget something?'

Nestor approached his desk. He was a scrawny, undernourished boy who often turned up on Monday mornings with black eyes or bruises. His father didn't believe in poetry or drama or classical music or any entertainment that didn't involve beer, gambling and car crashes. Jim had always admired Nestor's persistence in staying at college in spite of constant derision and countless beatings. But Nestor knew that education was the only thing that was going to save him from ending up like his father – stupid and narrow-minded and almost ludicrously violent.

Nestor cleared his throat. ‘There was going to be kind of a surprise. We were going to have you called away, and deck out the classroom with balloons and stuff. We even had a cake and a bottle of champagne.'

‘Well, under the circumstances …' said Jim.

Nestor nodded. ‘Everybody's totally blown away, what with Dennis drowning and now this. So we're all going home now, but we didn't want you to think that we didn't care about everything you did for us.'

‘That's all right, Nestor. It's my job.'

‘You never made it seem that way. You always treated us special. Not “special” like in “backward”, neither. But
special
.'

‘I didn't treat you special. You
are
special. You arrived here reading Pokémon comics. Now you read Oscar Wilde. I couldn't have taught you to do that unless you already had the intelligence. Fixing literacy problems isn't like fixing automobiles. Fixing literacy problems is finding out what a person needs to say, and showing that person how to say it.'

‘Well, whatever,' said Nestor. ‘But we didn't want you to think that we'd left without saying goodbye, and thanks.'

Jim stood up and took hold of Nestor's hand. ‘Tell them goodbye back. Tell them I wish them all the happiness their hearts can find.'

Nestor said, ‘Yes, sir,' in a husky voice, turned around and left the classroom. Jim stood there for a while, staring at the open door. Then he gathered up the rest of his belongings and stowed them into a cardboard cat-food box.

He looked around one last time, and then he walked out of the classroom and along the corridor toward the main doors. The corridor was deserted now, and his footsteps echoed. He almost believed that Dr Friendly was right, and that trouble dogged his footsteps wherever he went.

He met Clarence, who was sweeping up outside Dr Ehrlichman's office.

‘Guess this is where you and me reach the end of the trail, Clarence,' said Jim.

‘Sad way to go,' said Clarence. ‘That poor Dottie … she was one of the nicest kids we ever had here.'

Jim left the building without saying goodbye to anybody else. He climbed into his car and drove down the avenue of rustling maples that led to the main gate, and out into the world, the same way his students now had to go.

Back home he called the hospital to see if they had any news of Dottie, but a nurse told him that it was far too early to say how serious her burns might be.

Depressed and guilty, he finished packing up the last of his books. Then he went out on to the balcony, where Tibbles Two was lying asleep in the sun. She opened one eye when he sat down beside her, as if she were irritated at being disturbed.

‘Well, TT, that's it,' said Jim. ‘As Scarlett O'Hara said, tomorrow is another day. You wouldn't like to try telling my fortune again, would you?'

TT stretched herself and yawned.

‘I know,' said Jim. ‘Too darned lazy.'

He poured himself a beer and took a long, icy mouthful. It was then that his mobile phone warbled. He dragged it out of his pants pocket and burped straight into it.

‘What was that?' asked Karen.

‘Interference. We get a lot of it in Venice. Something to do with the power-lines.'

‘I heard what happened to Dottie Osias. It's just awful.'

‘I know. What a great way to finish up the year. I called the hospital but they can't tell me anything yet. I'm praying. That's all I can do.'

‘I'm really sorry, Jim. Dottie was one of your favorites, wasn't she?'

‘I'll tell you, Karen, I'm glad to be going. I never seemed to bring those kids anything but grief.'

‘You can't blame yourself, Jim. It was an accident. From what I heard, you saved her life.'

What could he say? That Dottie would never have been at risk if she hadn't been one of his favorites? That everybody he liked and loved was in serious jeopardy, simply because they meant something to him? He had done his best to warn them, but who was going to believe that they were going to be drowned or suffocated or scalded by a figure made out of nothing but water? It sounded completely insane.

‘Jim … I don't want you to go to Washington without seeing you one more time.'

‘It's only Washington. It's not Mongo. I can get back to LA for weekends.'

‘All the same … you're going to be pretty busy, aren't you, and so am I.'

‘Meaning what? That it's all over between us?'

‘Meaning nothing except that I want to see you before you leave, that's all. How about you come round to my place this evening and I'll cook your absolute favorite for you.
Rigatoni alla napolitana
. With a bottle of Barolo. And tiramisu to follow.'

‘I don't know, Karen. This has really shaken me up. I don't think I'd have much of an appetite.'

‘Then come round anyhow and have a glass of wine. I need to talk to you. I want us to work out where we're going to go from here. I don't want to lose you, Jim, stray socks or not.'

‘Okay, it's a deal. I'll see you at eight.'

‘I'm looking forward to it.'

He had just managed to push his phone back into his pants pocket when it rang again.

It was Michael. ‘Susan's managed to get in touch with David DuQuesne. He didn't want to talk to her at first. He's, like, famously reclusive. But she told him all about the water spirit and what it had been doing, and in the end he agreed to see her. Well, us.'

‘That sounds promising. When and where?'

‘If you can come to Franklin Avenue around seven thirty to pick us up, that would be great.'

‘Seven thirty? I have a dinner engagement at eight.'

‘I'm sorry, Jim, that's the only time he could make it.'

‘What about tomorrow? I could always postpone my flight to Washington.'

‘I don't think so. Susan said something about him flying off to Europe tomorrow.'

‘All right, then, if there's absolutely no alternative. I'll see you at seven thirty.'

He stared at the phone for a long time, with his index finger poised. TT roused herself and looked at him, and he could have sworn that she was smiling. ‘Do you find this funny?' he demanded. TT turned away.

He punched out Karen's number and waited.

‘Yes?' said Karen, at last. She was out of breath, as if she were jogging.

‘Karen, it's Jim. Listen, Karen, it's about tonight.'

He was wearing a crumpled black jacket, a black short-sleeved shirt and off-white chinos that he had rescued from the laundry basket. He had pasted his hair flat with water because it kept sticking up at the back, so he looked rather like a 1920s silent-movie star, Rudolf Valentino in glasses. He came out of his apartment building and walked around the corner to the parking-lot. The first thing he saw was that there were two people sitting in his car, a black man and a woman in a headscarf.

He approached them cautiously. As he came up to them, however, he recognized them: Washington Freeman III and Laura Killmeyer.

‘Hi, you two,' he said. ‘Something I can help you with?'

‘Hi, Mr Rook. Yeah, there is. We couldn't stand sitting on our duffs no more, so we came to see if there was anything we could do.'

‘Well, that's very thoughtful of you. I'm on my way to Topanga Canyon to see a guy right now – somebody who may be able to help us.'

Washington said, ‘I told Laura what I saw in the shower, Mr Rook. That water-thingy. I didn't tell nobody else, not even the cops, but I had to tell Laura. Dottie's her best friend, right?, she's entitled to know. And not only that, she believes in this shit, man, whereas almost nobody else does.'

‘We have to find this water spirit, Mr Rook, don't we?' said Laura. ‘I mean, like,
urgent
.'

Jim nodded. ‘Yes, Laura, we do. I don't want any more of you hurt. I don't know whether this guy I'm going to see tonight will be able to tell us anything more about the water spirit, but he's supposed to be the world's expert on urban manifestations.'

‘Mind if we tag along?' asked Washington.

‘No reason why you shouldn't. The more heads we put to this problem, the better.'

‘By the way,' said Laura. ‘I just heard from Dottie's mother. She's still critical. But they think she's going to make it.'

Jim climbed into the driver's seat and started the engine. ‘I can promise you one thing. If anything happens to Dottie, I'm going to find that water spirit and I'm going to empty it down the nearest sewer.'

S
usan Silverstone came out wearing a tight black turtleneck, tight black satin pants and high-heeled boots. ‘Who are these people?' she wanted to know. ‘David DuQuesne is a very private man. We can't walk in with an
army
.'

‘Washington and Laura were Dottie's closest friends. They were friends of Dennis Pease, too. If anybody deserves to come along, they do. And – besides that – they could be really helpful. Laura's very well versed in witchcraft and natural magic, and she's something of a sensitive too.'

‘And
him
?' she said, nodding at Washington.

‘He's a very useful young man to have around in times of trouble, believe me.'

Michael appeared, dressed in a shiny scarlet shirt and black flappy pants. He looked as if he were about to burst into a flamenco dance at any moment. ‘We'd better get moving, Susan. David DuQuesne said eight sharp, remember?'

‘All right,' said Susan. ‘But tell these two students of yours to keep a low profile, okay? David DuQuesne is the master. I don't want to show him any disrespect.'

‘Don't worry. Laura's a very well-mannered young lady, and Washington is a global authority on every conceivable form of disrespect.'

They left the house and climbed into the car, Susan sitting in the front passenger seat and Michael sharing the back seat with Washington and Laura. Jim turned around on groaning suspension and headed toward Sunset.

Washington turned to Michael and gave him a 150-watt grin. ‘Mr Rook tells me you was in Special Class II one time.'

‘Yes – yes, I was,' Michael replied, uncomfortably.

‘What kind of problem was you having? Dis-lecksher? Or just plain stupid?'

Michael opened and closed his mouth; but Washington put his arm around him, gave him a friendly squeeze and said, ‘I'm only ribbing you, man, because whatever it was you ain't got it now. That's Mr Rook for you. He works the miracle. He says, “Pick up your book and read.”'

They sped up Coldwater Canyon with bald tires squealing on every curve. Susan directed Jim almost to the top, to Hidden Valley, where they turned off left and drove around a twisting private track between the trees. It was cool and breezy up here, and the sky was the color of tarnished brass. Birds fluttered and whistled all around them, and as they rounded the very last bend they startled a young deer, which went springing into the undergrowth as if its legs were pogo-sticks. Eventually they reached a pair of black iron gates, with an intercom positioned on the verge.

Jim pressed the buzzer and said, ‘Susan Silverstone and friends for Mr DuQuesne.'

There was no reply, but after a short pause the gates began to shudder open. Jim looked at Susan and said, ‘This reminds me of a movie I saw. Nobody came out alive.'