Ordinary People Read Free Page B

he has infected his father, and the gray disease is dangerous to both of them. His grandmother was eager to inform him: “Conrad, if you knew the strain that man was under these past months, the money was nothing, compared with the strain, my heart went out to him, I can’t tell you.”
    Then, don’t! he felt like screaming, squirming to pass through the remark, untouched. He wants to belong to this house again, needs to be part of these tall windows set low to the ground, walls half-hidden behind thick waxy rhododendron leaves, the cedar hedge in front, all of it—all elegance and good taste. Good taste is absorbed through the skin, like rays from the sun, in this elegant, tasteful section of Lake Forest, Illinois, a direct quote from a newspaper article. They had laughed when they read it and he laughs now, out loud. See? Haven’t lost your sense of humor after all but your sense of identity is what seems to have been misplaced. No. Wrong. You don’t lose what you never had.
     
     
    Lazenby’s red Mustang hurls itself into the driveway, and he tosses his books in the back seat; climbs in after them to sit beside Van Buren.
    “We’re late,” Stillman says, “because Dickie’s mom had to pack his lunch.”
    “Two minutes! Christ, you guys were already late when you got to my house!” Van Buren moves over to make room. “Hey, listen, I damn near killed myself over this poly-sci exam.”
    “Yeah, the guy wants a goddamn personal analysis of it all, I was up until two o’clock, trying to make sense out of the crap—”
    “It helps,” Lazenby drawls, “if you read the crap when it’s assigned. Instead of inhaling it the night before the exam. Just a friendly hint.”
    “Tell me about it,” Van Buren says.
    Stillman sneers. “Get a sense of reality, will, you, Lazenby? We swim our asses off every friggin’ day. When are we supposed to study?”
    Lazenby shrugs. “I swim. I study.”
    “Yeah, you’re perfect.” Stillman twists around in the front seat. “What’re you reading, Jarrett? Is that Hardy? Junior English?”
    Conrad nods. They are all seniors this year, except him. He had taken no finals last year. Not January, or June.
    “You got all junior classes this year?” Stillman asks. “They didn’t pass you on anything?”
    Van Buren yawns. “They don’t pass you on breathing in that dump if you haven’t taken the final.”
    Lazenby says, “Kevin, will you quit screwing around with the dial, get something and leave it.”
    Stillman gives a mocking nod, turning up the volume on the radio. He continues to screw around with the dial. Conrad feels the slow, rolling pressure of panic building inside himself. The air in the back seat is being sucked out the windows by a huge and powerful vacuum. Relentless, it will soon crush the car like an eggshell. They cross the Chicago-Northwestern tracks and Stillman is immediately alert, on the lookout.
    “Hey, there’s Pratt,” he says. “Lemme out. I need a jump.”
    A small, neat-looking redhead in a blue skirt and tan jacket is hurrying along the street, her books in her arms.
    “Nice legs,” Lazenby says.
    “Nice ass.” Stillman is looking at him again; sees him glance out the window. “Huh, Jarrett? Hey, look. Jarrett’s interested in something.”
    Lazenby says over his shoulder, “She’s new. Just moved in last spring.”
    “She’s new, she’s blue, she needs a screw,” Stillman sings.
    Van Buren yawns again. “Christ, you’re a goddamn comedian today, aren’t you?”
    He remembers this now, about Stillman; that it is too easy for him. He is too good-looking; girls have been falling into his lap since junior high, and he has done nothing to earn it, in fact, does not deserve it, spending his time as he does, in tossing off crude remarks about them and then grinning, as if he will be President someday. A diver on the swim team. In general, he has observed that divers tend to be crappy human beings. One of life’s