Tell Me If the Lovers Are Losers (25 page)

Ann returned to the room. She studied the family picture (all of them, strung out in a long line, six strong) for a few minutes before she sat at her desk and opened her history textbook.

At eleven she went back to bed and slept. When she awoke to the alarm the next morning, Hildy's bed was rumpled and empty. Niki's had not been disturbed.

Ann shrugged, half-glad to be alone. They had a practice that afternoon, but she would not worry about that. Hildy's
glasses were still on the bureau. Ann considered taking them down to breakfast, but decided not to.

She had also decided, she dicovered as she sat down beside Hildy in the bare morning light, that she was not going to be drawn into the quarrel any further.

“Morning,” she said, her voice expressionless.

Hildy turned her face to Ann's voice. “You were sleeping so well. I did not think you would wake.”

“I set the alarm. You abandoned the glasses?”

“Yes, I think so. Don't you?”

“I would,” Ann agreed. But she wouldn't, she admitted that to herelf, even though she understood that it was what should be done. Even though she admired Hildy for the uncompromising decision. “No, I wouldn't,” she said, to be truthful; but even if Hildy asked her what she meant, she wasn't going to explain. Her self-consciousness made her awkward. She hit her egg too hard with the knife, and yolk oozed down over her fingers. “Where's Niki?”

Hildy shook her head. “I don't know.”

Ann broke a piece of toast into the egg cup. “Do you care?” (One did not raise such questions over breakfast, she knew that. The hell with it, she thought.)

Hildy did not take offense. “Yes,” she said.

“I know,” Ann apologized. “I needed reassurance. We have a practice today, so she'll be there. That's what I figure.”

“I too am hoping that,” Hildy said. “It wasn't your fault, Ann.”

“I figured that out for myself,” Ann said. “Still—”

Ann ate hastily. She gulped the last of her coffee. “See you.”

Hildy gazed at her. Not uneasy, curious.

“Oh,” Ann said. “By the way, I'm going to Philadelphia this weelend, home. I thought I ought to tell you.”

“We play Wednesday and then not until after Thanksgiving. There is no worry.”

“I wasn't worried. I just thought I should tell you.”

“I thank you,” Hildy continued to stare. “You have slept very deeply, yes?”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Ann demanded, but her defenses crumbled and she sat down again. “Hildy? When you see me, what do you see? Without glasses, I mean.”

“I cannot explain.” Hildy looked away.

Ann wanted to protest, but found she couldn't. She was embarrassed. “I'm sorry,” she said. Then, “No, I'm not, not really. Thank you. See you at practice, OK?”

♦   ♦   ♦

Niki was not at practice. Nobody had seen her all day. Ann, walking back from the gym with Hildy, walking close so as to be able to support one another on the unexpected icy patches, allowed her worry to surface. Hildy shared it.

“What she would think,” Hildy said, “I cannot guess at it. What she would do.”

“She could have left school,” Ann said. “She has a charge card.”

“When she fears and what she fears and how she acts. She cannot be predicted.”

“Or gone to another dorm?”

“You, you go home, that is so, isn't it? You go to something you know can be trusted. But Niki has no such place, inside herself or outside.”

“She can't just disappear,” Ann said. “Can she? Did she take her clothes? Her typewriter's gone.”

“This is my fault,” Hildy said. “I should not have seen. Or seeing, I should not have spoken.”

“No more than mine,” Ann said.

“That is not true. Don't think that. I can see further into Niki than you can. I am more responsible.”

Ann started to argue then remembered what she had seen in the Munchkin's eyes and through Hildy's glasses. “I really thought she would be at practice.”

“I also. Should we do something?” Hildy asked.

“Not me,” Ann said quickly. “I'm finished
doing something.
I've retired.”

Hildy looked hard at her Ann hid her eyes, studying the sidewalk before them.

After supper, instead of accompanying Hildy to the lab, Ann made a systematic search for Niki. The signout book revealed nothing. Niki's clothes were still in her drawers and the photograph of her father stood on the dresser top. Ann went downstairs, to the living room. “Where's Niki? Do any of you know?”

One of the bridge players looked up. “Wasn't she in the smoker? That's where she was this afternoon.”

Relief melted Ann's bones. She hurried down the hallway to the smoker She didn't want to talk to Niki, just see her, see that she was all right.

The smoker was empty, an empty ugly room, like the diner of a bus terminal.

Ann went back upstairs, slowly, making a list of people Niki might be visiting. If Niki had been in the smoker this afternoon she hadn't disappeared and she hadn't moved out.

Ann found Niki in the room. She sat at her typewriter, turned around to face Ann, her face gray with fatigue but her eyes alight. “Annie. I was wondering where you were.”

“You
were wondering.” Ann said. “Where have you been?”

“In the smoker.”

“All this time? Since yesterday?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Ann didn't answer She stood in the doorway, a little angry. Everything was all right again, the world was in order Ann realized, reluctantly, that she cared as much about Niki as about Hildy.

“Can you help me?” Niki asked. “Come in here. I wanted to ask you—” She looked guilty and then, with a deep breath and jabbing forefinger announced, “Don't gloat. I wrote another paper OK? I need a letter for the professor, to explain as little as possible. But I don't know how to say it. So, I told her to call the Munchkin if she doubts its propriety. Do you think that's all right?”

“It's terrific,” Ann said.

“Of course, the lady might not accept this paper at all. But that's not my problem.”

“Is that what you were doing? Writing another paper?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? I mean I'm glad—you don't know how glad—but I thought—”

“You want the truth?”

“That would be nice,” Ann said.

“For Hildy. That's the only reason. For her sake.”

“Because . . . why?”

“Because of yesterday. I didn't need to lay all that stuff on her yesterday.”

“This paper will more than make up for that,” Ann said.

“You think so? I'm not so sure. You don't know Hildy as well as you think you do, Annie. I don't think this paper will make any difference to her at all. But I wanted to do it, so I did.”

She won't give an inch, Ann thought, then she grinned. “Uh-uh. You're not going to get through to me that way. Is it good, the paper?”

“Better than my usual, more thoughtful. Maybe a B-plus. So, I've made some progress. I'll admit that to you, Annie. I'm pretty pleased with it. Want to read it?”

Ann declined the offer. They waited for the slow hours to pass before Hildy's return. Ann held in her excitement. Just when you least expected it, she thought, something wonderful happened, to make everything different. Better She tried to concentrate. Niki interrupted her. “How come you didn't go to the lab?”

“I was looking for you.”

“You were worried about me? That's sweet, real sweet. You really were, weren't you. What did you think?”

“I don't know. That you'd bolted or something. Hildy was worried too,” she excused herself.

“Can't you get it through your head that I don't care what happens here?” Niki said, her voice gentled by an unuttered laugh. “This place, and its rules and standards and systems—it doesn't mean anything to me. You should have known better than to worry. I keep a good perspective on things.”

“Except winning,” Ann quarreled.

“You've got to let steam out somewhere. Basic psychology, Annie.”

At nine-fifteen (Ann had just glanced at her watch, which showed a slow progress of ten minutes since she had last looked) an unaccountable silence seeped in through the walls. Niki, at the window, said, “There's a cop car outside, but no lights flashing. What's going on?” Ann joined her, to look down at the darkened road. They watched Miss Dennis step cautiously from the car and walk heavily up to the porch. The car drove away.

“I don't know,” Ann said. “Something's happened.”

“Do tell.” Niki grinned. “I'll go you one better: it's something nasty. Is the real world going to come and get somebody, even here in the East, do you think? Even here in our ivory tower?”

“This is the real world too,” Ann said. “As real as any other.”

“Annie, I wish it were.”

“I wonder, I really do wonder. I mean, you have your experience and I have mine, but you don't admit mine.” Ann thought. “And I don't admit yours. But I can see yours and you can't see mine.”

“Incoherent,” Niki chided, “imprecise; but I am following you.”

“And Hildy on the other hand—but how am I supposed to know, or choose?”

“Why bother? It all comes to the same thing at the end. We all die.”

Ann turned on Niki, searching. “So what? No, I'm serious and I don't care if it sounds simple-minded. You say,
We all die,
as if that explained everything. I don't see that it explains anything. For that matter, we all live, which is the same thing backwards. And that's the important thing, isn't it? To live well?”

“That's just semantics, Annie. Look, if we could live forever, or if we could make any difference, then it might matter how we live. But to glorify life just for its mindless self—holy crap, Annie, toads live, and slugs, and think of those Romans who watched lions eat human beings and cheered. Toads, slugs, adders, cows—they all do a better job of it than people do.”

“Why is that supposed to define me to myself?” Ann demanded.

“Because it's what you are, beneath the good manners and circle pins and topsiders and do-unto-others morality. Ruthless. Self-seeking. If you want to know yourself, you have to know that. When you try to ignore it—you are lying or deceiving yourself, however you want to name it. What you are, and I am, and even our precious Hildy is—vile.”

“But even if I am, do I have to wallow in it?” Ann snapped.

Niki grinned again.

“Moreover, I'm not sure I am,” Ann continued. “I'm pretty
sure Hildy isn't. And”—she matched the gaiety in Niki's eyes—“I'm willing to leave open the option that you aren't.”

“So Hildy wins.”

“This has nothing to do with winning!” Ann cried. “Can't you see anything except winning and losing?”

“Nope. There's nothing more to be seen. Little imbecile victories and the game is rigged against us, from the inside and the out.”

Ann turned back to her desk, angry and dismayed.

“But it's nice to see you angry.” Niki patted Ann on the head and returned to the window. “Good and angry. It gives me hope for you.”

“And you're contradicting yourself,” Ann said.

From the window Niki reported, “Now the Munchkin's leaving. The path must be icy as hell: she's practically crawling. None of the usual Munchkin bounciness.”

“Hear how quiet it is?” Ann said.

“Is that a hint?”

There was a quick knock at the door and Niki called “Come in.” The housemother stepped in, pulling the door closed behind her, turning to be sure the latch caught, and holding her pose there unaccountably, her back to them.

Ann stood up, one hand on the back of her chair “Mrs. Smythe,” she said, as something, the silence that had been mounting, choked in her throat.

“Girls,” the housemother said, turning to face them. “I'm afraid I have some very bad news for you. Very bad news indeed, shocking—I can't believe it myself.”

Ann felt her eyes ballooning as the other parts of her body receded. She looked at Niki, because she could not find her own voice to speak.

“I don't know how to tell you—”

“Just do it,” Niki urged.

“Sit down, please, first. Please sit down.”

“Something's happened to Hildy,” Niki said, without moving. She explained to Ann, “Otherwise she'd ask one of us to leave. So tell. Tell, goddammit.”

“There has been an accident,” Mrs. Smythe said. “Miss Dennis came to tell me—and I think she is the one who should speak with you but she said she had others to speak to and would be by later—so I—”

“What about Hildy?” Niki demanded. “I don't care about the accident, what about Hildy?”

Mrs. Smythe backed away. “I don't want to be the one—”

“Is she hurt?” Niki moved forward. “Is she dead? Is she all right?”

“She's dead.”

Niki nodded. A sharp, brief chop of the head, and the event recognized, accepted.

Ann did not move, but she drew away from the dialogue, except for her eyes. There was nothing of her in the room. From deep within her, from some atom at the storm center of her being, a voice called out firm denial of this event.

“It happened as she was going up to the observatory,” Mrs. Smythe reported. “She was riding her bike. I don't understand, because there's shoulder on both sides—but a car somehow hit her There was a woman driving and she had been drinking, Miss Dennis told me that. But still, I don't know how except that the road is so icy. Miss Dennis said the car ran her down. Sometimes people have heart attacks. Maybe it skidded—and hit her.”

“The car,” Niki said.

“Yes. She was killed instantly, of course.”

“Of course.”