Slowly, Rinehart's barriers relaxed. Yes, he was a writer; he had come to College Park to enjoy good bookstores and congenial companionship; if he wished for anything more, it was access to the Albertus Library, of course superior to its civic counterparts. Erwin Leake, a young English instructor among the earliest to establish a beachhead of acquaintanceship, soon found a mechanism, an only slightly dubious mechanism, granting Rinehart entry to the college library. Thereafter, Rinehart could often be discovered laboring over his art at one of the desks beneath the rotunda of the Reading Room. He was perhaps thirty-five, perhaps slightly older; his physical attractiveness was magnified, though it needed no magnification, by a kind of lawlessness. The Rinehart era had begun.
He became the intellectual and social focus of a select cadre of students, available for consultation at all hours. At the end of Buxton Place, an obscure cul-de-sac otherwise owned by the college, Rinehart had purchased two adjacent cottages as studio and living quarters. The elect, the chosen, the most passionate and promising of the Albertus population, congregated within his residence—the studio, being sacred, was off-limits. In Rinehart's house, someone was always talking, generally Rinehart. A perpetual sound track, usually jazz, drifted from the speakers. An unending supply of wine, beer, and other beverages magically replenished itself. Rinehart provided marijuana, uppers, and downers, the drugs of the period. His parties went on for two or three days in which the favorites wandered in and out, talked and drank until they could talk and drink no more, listened to readings, mostly by the host, and had frequent sex, mostly with the host.
Suki, Star, Rachel Newborn, and the other young women had fallen under Rinehart's spell. He was a charismatic, unpredictable man who encouraged their aspirations while seeming to embody them: unlike the boys who claimed to be writers, Rinehart had actually published a book, one they had no difficulty accepting as too fine and daring for the blockheads in charge of the publishing world.Of course the book was dangerous—Rinehart exuded danger. He had secrets past and present, and there were days when without explanation the house on Buxton Place stood locked and empty. At times, one or another of his harem glimpsed Rinehart getting into or out of a Cadillac parked at a Hatchtown curb. An overexcitable dual major in fine arts and philosophy named Polly Heffer discovered a loaded revolver in a bedside drawer and screeched loudly enough to bring Suki in from the living room at the moment a naked Rinehart entered disgusted from the bathroom. Rinehart silenced Polly with a growl, said that he kept the revolver for self-protection, and invited Suki to make up a threesome.
• Did she join in?
"You think I turned himdown?"
• Now and then, Rinehart's devotees would come upon him in conference with men clearly unconnected to Albertus. These men drew him whispering into a corner, Rinehart sometimes laying an arm across a burly shoulder. The younger, more presentable of these outsiders surfaced during the whirlpools of long parties, and the students included them in their circle. One of these men was Donald Messmer, who lived in the Hotel Paris on Word Street and did whatever came to hand.
• "Don Messmer wasn't a criminal," Suki said. "Basically, Don was this very easygoing guy who just sort of hung out. To us, he was like Dean Moriarty inOn the Road, but more laid-back. And he was crazy about your mother. The guy probably never read a book in his life, and all of a sudden he's walking around with novels sticking out of his back pocket because he wants to impress Star Dunstan. I used to hear her talking to him about, you know, Cezanne and Kerouac and Jackson Pollock and Charlie Parker—Don Messmer!—but he didn't have a chance, she was in love with Edward Rinehart, along with the rest of us."
"How did his name wind up on her marriage license?" "Hold on," Suki said, "let me tell you what I know."
•At the end of the semester, Suki transferred to Wheeler College in Wheeler, Ohio, ostensibly to continue training under a lithographer who had spent the previous year at Albertus. She had lost faith in Edward Rinehart and wanted to escape his sphere of influence. Erwin Leake, once a worthwhile English teacher, had become a drunken phantom; some of the boys Rinehart had declared artists of great promise were turning into drug addicts interested only in another handful of pills; her female friends thought of nothing but Rinehart and his satisfactions. Suki wanted out.
Late in the winter of the following year, Star Dunstan appeared in Wheeler, pregnant, exhausted, and in need of a safe place to stay. Suki relinquished half of her bed. For the next few days, Star said only that she had tohide, toconceal herself. Suki let her sleep and smuggled in food from her waitressing job. Star told her that she had married a man, but that the marriage had been a mistake. She trembled at the ringing of the telephone. When someone knocked at the door, she disappeared into the bedroom. After two weeks, Star recovered sufficiently to get a job at Suki's restaurant. After another month, she began auditing arts courses at Wheeler. Eventually, she told Suki that her husband had abandoned her when a doctor told her that she might be carrying twins. At the next appointment, the doctor informed her that she might be carrying only one child after all, but this news could not bring back the vanished husband.
An obstetrician in Wheeler pronounced Star fit and healthy and predicted that she would deliver twins, although the evidence was not as conclusive as he would like. She packed her things and left for Cherry Street.
At the end of the school term, Suki drove to Edgerton, found a new apartment, and moved in hours before the descent of a powerful storm. She called Nettie, without response. Perhaps the Cherry
Street telephone lines were out. She called Toby Kraft and got through. Toby told her that Star had been admitted to St. Ann's Community Hospital and was about to give birth. He was beside himself with worry. The river had overflowed its banks, and cables had blown down everywhere. Suki belted herself into her rain slicker, snatched up her umbrella, and went outside. Instantly, the umbrella flipped inside out and tore out of her hands.
•52
•Floodwater sluicing around the low wall of sandbags rose over her ankles. Under the slicker, her clothing was soaked. Suki climbed over the barricade and waded toward the hospital's entrance. The lobby looked like Calcutta. In the confusion, she managed to buttonhole a nurse, who focused on her long enough to tell her that only two expectant mothers, a Mrs. Landon and a Mrs. Dunstan, were up on the fourth floor in obstetrics. She advised Suki to take the stairs instead of the elevator.
Suki ran up to the cacophony of the obstetrics department. Babies shrieked from bassinets in the nursery. A nurse frowned at her muddy boots and said that her friend was in delivery room B, attended by Midwife Hazel Jansky. Suki grabbed her arm and demanded details.
Mrs. Dunstan had been in labor five hours. There were no complications. Since this was a first delivery, the process was expected to go on for hours more. Midwife Jansky was assisting at both of the night's deliveries. The nurse peeled Suki's hand from her arm and moved on.
Suki retreated into the waiting room. Behind the blurred reflection of her pale face suspended above a bright yellow slicker, the long windows revealed only a vertical black wall pierced by the lamp posts in the parking lot. Suki put her face against the glass, shielded her eyes, and looked out upon another black wall, this one stretched over the landscape and streaked with incandescent ripples. A dark, linear form she hoped was a tree trunk bobbed along in the wake of an automobile.