‘You don’t think he’s seeing too much of Denker, then?’
‘Honey, look at his grades! If they were falling off, I’d be the first one to say hey, enough is enough, already, don’t go overboard. His grades are the first place trouble would show up. And how have they been?’
‘As good as ever, after that first slip.’
‘So what are we talking about? Listen, I’ve got a conference at nine, babe. If I don’t get some sleep, I’m going to be sloppy.’
‘Sure, go to sleep,’ she said indulgently, and as he turned over, she kissed him lightly on one shoulderblade. ‘I love you.’
‘Love you too,’ he said comfortably, and closed his eyes. ‘Everything’s fine, Monica. You worry too much.’
‘I know I do. Goodnight.’
They slept.
‘Stop looking out the window,’ Dussander said. ‘There is nothing out there to interest you.’
Todd looked at him sullenly. His history text was open on the table, showing a colour plate of Teddy Roosevelt cresting San Juan Hill. Helpless Cubans were falling away from the hooves of Teddy’s horses. Teddy was grinning a wide American grin, the grin of a man who knew that God was in His heaven and everything was bully. Todd Bowden was not grinning.
‘You like being a slave-driver, don’t you?’ he asked.
‘I like being a free man,’ Dussander said. ‘Study.’
‘Suck my cock.’
‘As a boy,’ Dussander said, ‘I would have had my mouth washed out with lye soap for saying such a thing.’
Times change.’
‘Do they?’ Dussander sipped his bourbon. ‘Study.’
Todd stared at Dussander. ‘You’re nothing but a goddamned rummy. You know that?’
‘Study.’
‘Shut up!’ Todd slammed his book shut It made a riflecrack sound in Dussander’s kitchen. ‘I can never catch up, anyway. Not in time for the test There’s fifty pages of this shit left, all the way up to World War I. I’ll make a crib in Study Hall 2 tomorrow.’
Harshly, Dussander said: ‘You will do no such thing!’
‘Why not? Who’s going to stop me? You?’
‘Boy, you are still having a hard time comprehending the stakes we play for. Do you think I enjoy keeping your snivelling brat nose in your books?’ His voice rose, whipsawing, demanding, commanding. ‘Do you think I enjoy listening to your tantrums, your kindergarten swears? “Suck my cock”,’ Dussander mimicked savagely in a high, falsetto voice that made Todd flush darkly. ‘”Suck my cock, so what, who cares, I’ll do it tomorrow, suck my cock”!”
‘Well, you like it!’ Todd shouted back. ‘Yeah, you like it! The only time you don’t feel like a zombie is when you’re on my back! So give me a fucking break!’
‘If you are caught with one of these cribbing papers, what do you think will happen? Who will be told first?’
Todd looked at his hands with their ragged, bitten fingernails and said nothing.
‘Who?’
‘Jesus, you know. Rubber Ed. Then my folks, I guess.’
Dussander nodded. ‘Me, I guess that too. Study. Put your cribbing paper in your head, where it belongs.’
‘I hate you,’ Todd said dully. ‘I really do.’ But he opened his book again and Teddy Roosevelt grinned up at him, Teddy galloping into the twentieth century with his sabre in his hand, Cubans falling back in disarray before him -possibly before the force of his fierce American grin.
Dussander began to rock again. He held his teacup of bourbon in his hands. “That’s a good boy,’ he said, almost tenderly.
Todd had his first wet-dream on the last night of April, and awoke to the sound of rain whispering secretly through the leaves and branches of the tree outside his window.
In the dream, he had been in one of the Patin laboratories. He was standing at the end of a long, low table. A lush young girl of amazing beauty had been secured to this table with clamps. Dussander was assisting him. Dussander wore a white butcher’s apron and nothing else. When he pivoted to turn on the monitoring equipment, Todd could see Dussander’s scrawny buttocks grinding at each other like misshapen white stones.
He handed something to Todd, something he recognized immediately, although he had never actually seen one. It was a dildo. The tip of it was polished metal, winking in the light of the overhead fluorescents like heartless chrome. The dildo was hollow. Snaking out of it was a black electrical cord that ended in a red rubber bulb.