The Game of Love and Death(42)

Ethan looked at his feet and scratched the back of his head, as if he wanted to buy time before answering. “You know I’ve always enjoyed music. Maybe I don’t play it like you, but I listen to the wireless constantly.” He smoothed his hair. “And I have been talking about it with James a bit, you know, as part of working on that article. He said he’d like to hear some, so I invited him along. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t.” Henry paused. He couldn’t fathom why Ethan seemed to be so embarrassed about bringing a friend. Maybe because James Booth lived in Hooverville. A thought struck. “Do we have a suit to lend?”

“Oh, that.” Ethan looked out the window again. “James said he had proper clothes. But let’s don’t tell Helen, all right?”

The floorboards outside Henry’s room creaked.

“Let’s don’t tell me what?” Helen leaned against the doorframe, working an emery board around her index fingernail. “I thought I heard you two plotting something. You’ve both been as dull as a cemetery for weeks. If I have to polish another candlestick with your mother, Ethan, I’m going to kill someone.” She held out her finger as if to appraise her work.

Ethan shot Henry a look. “We want to make sure it’s the kind of place you’d enjoy before dragging you along.”

If Henry didn’t know better, he’d have believed Ethan. There was something happening, something that exposed a vulnerability. Henry picked up the ball of paper. He opened it and started to smooth the wrinkles. It would have been gallant for him to extend an invitation, but he chose friendship and the illusion of chivalry over the thing itself. He continued to work on the paper, even as he knew it was a lost cause.

Helen rolled her eyes. “I’m not afraid of anything. You should know that about me by now.” She turned her attention to another nail, and for a moment, there was no sound other than the slow rasp of the file.

Ethan brushed his hands together, as if to wipe them clean. “Then it’s settled. We’ll go together. Sound about right, Henry?”

Henry nodded. It surprised him that Ethan had flinched, but Ethan always was a gentleman.

“Oh, goody.” Helen turned to leave, looking at the boys over her shoulder. “This will be fun.”

When he was alone, Henry laid the wrinkled paper back on his desk, understanding it was beyond saving, but unable to throw it away. He placed it between the pages of his book, knowing it wouldn’t help. But at least he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.





LATER that evening, after he had wrestled down his last calculus proof and finished a paper comparing Athens and Sparta to the North and South during the Civil War, Henry shaved for the first time in three days. He took his time mixing the soap, brushing it along his jaw, and scraping it with the straight razor. His jugular throbbed in the mirror. So little flesh between that and the blade. The right cut would be lethal. And yet there wasn’t a chance he’d do it. It was one thing to be sad enough to want to die, but an entirely other thing to be mad enough to kill one’s self. The thought, dark as it was, made him feel better — and the prospect of hearing music again was proof that he very much wanted to be among the living, that in this regard, he was not his father’s son.

He finished shaving, rinsed bits of soap from his earlobes and neck, and splashed aftershave against his cheeks. Then he dressed, straightened the books and papers on his desk, and glanced out the window. It had been a cloudy afternoon, and as a result, sunset was a slow fade to black. The quarter moon was little more than a pale dimple behind a curtain of clouds. Rain was on the way, but that was common in Seattle. The sky could hang heavy with moisture for days.

Ethan paced at the base of the stairs, fussing with his cuff links.

“Need a hand?” Henry said.

“What? No.” Ethan looked up. “Just burning off energy.”

“Don’t burn it all off.” Helen appeared in a white dress that hit her in the best of places. She wore a pair of black satin elbow gloves and a mink stole around her shoulders, the sort where they left the animal’s head on. A hidden clasp fed its tail into its mouth, and its eyes sparkled cruelly. Henry was glad he’d cleaned himself. He offered his arm. As they walked down the stairs together, he caught a whiff of her perfume, and he remembered why he despised that scent. Lilies made up the sole arrangement of flowers at his father’s sparsely attended funeral. Henry never knew whether it was the sudden poverty or the suicide that had driven away all of his fami-ly’s former friends. Ever since, lilies had reminded him of despair.

It would simplify so much if he wanted Helen. But while her skin was pale and creamy, and her elegant collarbones were visible over the neckline of her dress, the sight only reminded him that she had a skeleton beneath her flesh. He wanted love, and when he looked at her, he could only think of death.

“The Majestic isn’t far,” Ethan said. “We could walk, even. But there’s someone we have to pick up first.”

“A girl?” Helen said. “Does Ethan have a steady?”

Ethan shook his head and smirked. “Don’t you wish I could give you something to gossip about with my mother? But no. This is business. Something related to the newspaper. You couldn’t possibly understand. It’s an assignment from my father. You can ask him about it, if you’d like.”