Hearts in Atlantis(96)

There was a moment of silence and then Skip said, 'You sure you didn't maybe go walking in your sleep and do it yourself, David?' A burst of laughter greeted this, and it was Dearie's turn to flush. The color started at his neck and worked its way up his cheeks and forehead to the roots of his flattop - no faggy Beatle haircut for Dearie, thank you very much.

'Pass the word that it better not happen again,' Dearie said. Doing his own little Bogie imitation without realizing it. 'I'm not going to have my authority mocked.'

'Oh blow it out,' Ronnie muttered. He had picked up the cards and was disconsolately shuffling them.

Dearie took three large steps into the room, grabbed Ronnie by the shoulders of his Ivy League shirt, and pulled him. Ronnie got up on his own so the shirt would not be torn. He didn't have a lot of good shirts; none of us did.

'What did you say to me, Malenfant?'

Ronnie looked around and saw what I imagine he'd been seeing for most of his life: no help, no sympathy. As usual, he was on his own. And he had no idea why.

'I didn't say anything. Don't be so f**kin paranoid, Dearborn.'

'Apologize.'

Ronnie wriggled in his grasp. 'I didn't say nothing, why should I apologize for nothing?'

'Apologize anyway. And I want to hear true regret.'

'Oh quit it,' Stoke Jones said. 'All of you. You should see yourselves. Stupidity to the nth power.'

Dearie looked at him, surprised. We were all surprised, I think. Maybe Stoke was surprised himself.

'David, you're just pissed off that someone creamed your door,' Skip said.

'You're right. I'm pissed off. And I want an apology from you, Malenfant.'

'Let it go,' Skip said. 'Ronnie just got a little hot under the collar because he lost a close one. He didn't shaving-cream your f**king door.'

I looked at Ronnie to see how he was taking the rare experience of having someone stand up for him and saw a telltale shift in his green eyes - almost a flinch. In that moment I was almost positive Ronnie had shaving-creamed Dearie's door. Who among my acquaintances was more likely?

If Dearie had noticed that guilty little blink, I believe he would have reached the same conclusion. But he was looking at Skip. Skip looked back at him calmly, and after a few more seconds to make it seem (to himself if not to the rest of us) like his own idea, Dearie let go of Ronnie's shirt. Ronnie shook himself, brushed at the wrinkles on his shoulders, then began digging in his pockets for small change to pay me with.

'I'm sorry,' Ronnie said. 'Whatever has got your panties in a bunch, I'm sorry. I'm sorry as hell, sorry as shit, I'm so sorry my ass hurts. Okay?'

Dearie took a step back. I had been able to feel the adrenaline; I suspected Dearie could feel the waves of dislike rolling in his direction just as clearly. Even Ashley Rice, who looked like a roly-poly bear in a kid's cartoon, was looking at Dearie in a flat-eyed, unfriendly way. It was a case of what the poet Gary Snyder might have called bad-karma baseball. Dearie was the proctor - strike one. He tried to run our floor as though it were an adjunct to his beloved ROTC program - strike two. And he was a jerkwad sophomore at a time when sophomores still believed that harassing freshmen was part of their bounden duty. Strike three, Dearie, you're out.

'Spread the word that I'm not going to put up with a lot of high-school crap on my floor,' Dearie said (his floor, if you could dig it). He stood ramrod-straight in his U of M sweatshirt and khaki pants - pressed khaki pants, although it was Saturday. 'This is not high school, gentlemen; this is Chamberlain Hall at the University of Maine. Your bra-snapping days are over. The time has come for you to behave like college men.'

CHAPTER 18

I guess there was a reason I was voted Class Clown in the '66 Gates Falls yearbook. I clicked my heels together and snapped off a pretty fair British-style salute, the kind with the palm turned mostly outward. 'Yes sirl' I cried. There was nervous laughter from the gallery, a dirty guffaw from Ronnie, a grin from Skip. Skip gave Dearie a shrug, eyebrows lifted, hands up to the sky. See what you get? it said. Act like an ass**le and that's how people treat you. Perfect eloquence is, I think, almost always mute.

Dearie looked at Skip, also mute. Then he looked at me. His face was expressionless, almost dead, but I wished I had for once forgone the smartass impulse. The trouble is, for the born smartass, the impulse has nine times out of ten been acted upon before the brain can even engage first gear. I bet that in days of old when knights were bold, more than one court jester was hung upside down by his balls. You don't read about it in the Morte D'Arthur, but I think it must be true - laugh this one off, ya motley motherf*cker. In any case, I knew I had just made an enemy.

Dearie spun in a nearly perfect about-face and went marching out of the lounge. Ronnie's mouth drew down in a grimace that made his ugly face even uglier; the leer of the villain in a stage melodrama. He made a jacking-off gesture at Dearie's stiff retreating back. Hugh Brennan giggled a little, but no one really laughed. Stoke Jones had disappeared, apparently disgusted with the lot of us.

Ronnie looked around, eyes bright. 'So,' he said. 'I'm still up for it. Nickel a point, who wants to play?'

'I will,' Skip said.

'I will, too,' I said, never once glancing in the direction of my geology book.

'Hearts?' Kirby McClendon asked. He was the tallest boy on the floor, maybe one of the tallest boys at school - six-seven at least, and possessed of a long, mournful bloodhound's face. 'Sure. Good choice.'