Perhaps it was the heat of the fire and the cooling temperature of the room that made Marshall shiver. Perhaps, he thought, but not likely: more likely he had realized McCallum was someone he was going to have to take seriously. Talk to longer. “Do you have classes tomorrow?” Marshall heard himself asking.
McCallum hiccupped a dry laugh. “Don’t think I’d be my bright-eyed bushy-tailed best up there at the old lectern?” He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t have classes on Wednesday,” he said.
“I’m glad,” Marshall said.
“Tell the truth,” McCallum said. “You came into the house and I was the last person in the world you wanted to see, right? In all the world, I was probably the most unwelcome. Your life was going along fine until you got involved in this. You went over there, and what? You thought you could race in like a bunch of soldiers at the end of a Shakespearean play, restore order. So where does this leave us? If you’d asked me I could have told you Livan was trouble and that the only thing I had to feel guilty about was the impurity of my thoughts, the irrationality of my desires. But Marshalclass="underline" I didn’t have anything else. We’re talking about a day, part of a day, taking a walk in a city. We’re talking about enjoying walking down the street when for once I was with someone who’d talk to me, not just complain about what the kid did wrong that day, someone who’d ask my opinion, who liked me. We’re talking about a grown man who suddenly perceives of a bag lady as his guardian angel because he needed a guardian angel so goddamn much: exiled from my house because there was nowhere to goddamn sit, nothing but ladder-back chairs we inherited when my mother died, the sofa carted off, taken to the junkyard because the kid had broken the frame jumping on it, a man without a sofa, and then this random person who was assigned to me through financial aid, suddenly there the two of us were in Boston, and I was listening sympathetically, as is our goddamn job, correct me if I’m wrong there. I’m listening to her tales of woe, noticing she doesn’t have a winter coat, just a windbreaker, a flimsy nylon thing, and I’m thinking that at the very least I can take her to Filene’s Basement and buy her a coat, and then the two of us can get on with things, such as research at the library. At the moment, it seemed like an epiphany: coffee; sympathy; a seventy-buck coat; a hat picked up later in the day from a street vendor. This was not done with a stiff prick, Marshall. It was done with simple good intentions. And as I say this, I don’t want you to think that I haven’t registered what you said. I heard you loud and clear when you said you weren’t looking for friends. But try to see the awkwardness of my position: how can I apologize for driving over here, bending your wife’s ear, for not going home when I should, accepting your hospitality, me sitting here like a stalled snowplow that can’t roll through another foot of muck. I’m stuck, and you two act the way friends act, even though you’re not my friends and you don’t want to be. You nevertheless extend yourselves, and the pathetic truth is, I want your goodwill. I want you to believe me when I say that what Livan says happened in Boston did not happen.”
“Let me ask you,” Marshall said. “Where do you suggest we go from here? I’m not your audience, I’m your colleague.”
“Elavil,” McCallum said, taking a bottle out of his pants pocket and turning it around in his hand like someone holding a facetted stone, turning it to catch the light. “Connotes ‘elevator,’ as if you’re ascending through space.” He plunged the bottle back in his pocket, got up abruptly, and started to walk out of the living room, the afghan he’d pulled over his shoulders slipping to the floor, his unbelted pants so loose they were almost sliding off, his shirt crushed from his having sat slumped deeply in the chair. He was just an overgrown child, Marshall thought: somebody who’d gotten in too deep, who had too many responsibilities, a person who had one too many problems.
“Right here,” McCallum said, suddenly reversing direction, holding out a folded envelope. Inside was the note from Livan Baker: a young person’s handwriting, a little red-ink drawing of heart-shaped balloons floating away above the words:
I don’t ever want to have any secrets from you. I want you to see my secrets as clearly as the things you see looking in a mirror. My secrets surround us. I have a secret for you. It’s that there’s a way we can be so close, you can be me and I can be you. I’m going to be your secret.
Love, Livan
“That’s only the most recent,” McCallum said.
“She’s written you other things along these lines? You don’t know what she’s talking about? Can’t you take this to a shrink at student health, or to the police?”
“How is that going to help me?”
“If nothing else, you could go on record that she’s, you know, unbalanced. It’s unwanted attentions, or something. To tell you the truth, I already called a friend of Sonja’s at student health a few days ago. We’ll go there tomorrow and get her advice, get this put down on the record somewhere.”
“ ‘The record’?” McCallum said. “What is ‘the record’? Is it like ‘the Force’?”
“Maybe you should take a shower and go to bed. You look awful. You can borrow a clean shirt tomorrow. Try to …”
“Look the part,” McCallum finished. “Look like somebody who isn’t a rapist and a sadist. What do you think we’re going to do? Have somebody in some position of authority write down what — a complaint, or a — maybe it’s a misgiving. Maybe you and I are experiencing misgivings about the mental state of a student at the college. And we’re going off to have the grown-ups tell us what to do.”
“I sure as hell don’t know what to do.”
“No, I don’t either,” McCallum said. He sat in a kitchen chair, ducking his head into his hands, looking up again. “You don’t think our going to student health would fan the fire? If they get in touch with her, she’s going to tell the same lies to them she’s told everybody else.”
“She’s already been there. She’s already talked to somebody, but then she freaked out and didn’t go back.” As he spoke, he began to wonder whether Livan hadn’t gone back because her story hadn’t been believed. How could Cheryl be sure, and why had he been sure, that the counsellor’s words were what had been reported? Maybe she had picked up on Livan’s deceit; maybe that was the reason Livan hadn’t returned to press her point. Maybe someone had seen through her, called her bluff. This thought made him slightly optimistic, but it wasn’t anything to tell McCallum. It was best — wasn’t it best? — to speak to student health, let them contact the dean, get this thing out in the open. Since McCallum had done nothing but kiss her, what could be the harm? At worst, he’d be reprimanded, but if Livan spread the rumor and she was believed …
“You know that scene when Redford and Newman are high up on the cliff, and Newman wants them to jump? And Redford has to say he doesn’t know how to swim? Butch Cassidy. I loved that movie: an all-time great buddy film. So tomorrow we’re going off like two characters in a buddy film. Come spring, everything will be fine again, we’ll be splashing in the old swimming hole, right? Safe. Doesn’t sound right, does it? I don’t know if that’s really going to happen. Listen to me: I must think this is a movie, not my life. I must think we’re both just a couple of characters.”