Mary said.
“I didn’t quite catch that,” I said.
“My weekly visit to Dockie-poo,” Twink explained. “You forgot about that, didn’t you, Markie?”
“I guess I spaced it out,” I admitted. “How did it go?”
“Nothing new or unusual,” Twink replied. “Fallon asked all those tedious questions and scribbled down my answers in that stupid notebook of his. I told him enough lies to make him happy, and then Mary and I dropped by the house and had supper with Les and Inga.”
“Doesn’t all that scampering around crowd you?” I asked Mary.
She shrugged. “Not really,” she said. “Ren and I took off from here about three, so we missed the five o’clock rush.”
“If it gets to be too much, I could run Twink on up there on Fridays. That’s a light day for me most of the time.”
“We can pass it back and forth, if we have to. I don’t think it’ll give me any problems, though.”
“Did Fallon make any suggestions?” I asked Twink.
“Nothing I haven’t heard from him before,” she replied. “I’m supposed to avoid stress. Isn’t that an astonishing suggestion? I mean, wow!”
“Be nice,” I told her.
She made an indelicate sound and changed the subject.
About nine o’clock, I went back to the motel and fell into bed. Moving really takes a lot out of you.
By noon on Sunday, I had my bed and desk set up and most of my clothes hung in the closet. Then I started putting books on the shelves. After an hour or so of unloading boxes and randomly shelving, I stopped and stood in the center of the room, glowering at my bookshelves. They were an absolute masterpiece of confusion. Hemingway and Faulkner were jammed in cheek by jowl with Chaucer and Spenser, and Shakespeare was surrounded by Mark Twain, Longfellow, and Walt Whitman. “Bummer,” I muttered. I knew that if I didn’t organize the silly thing right from the start, it’d probably stay confused in perpetuity. Owning a book is very nice, but you have to be able to put your hands on it.
I sighed and started stacking books on the floor, separating English literature from American and throwing the miscellaneous stuff on the bed. I came across books I’d forgotten I owned.
By evening, I’d finally put things into some kind of coherent order, and that gave me a sense of accomplishment. Fortress Austin was now complete and ready to hold off the forces of ignorance, absurd clothing, and bad music. With my help, God could defend the right—or the left, depending on His current political position.
After dinner that evening—my first Erdlund Epicurean Delight—I called Twink to make sure she was still on the upside. She was all bubbly, so things seemed to be pretty much OK.
“You might want to start thinking about going to class, Twink,” I told her. “The quarter starts two weeks from tomorrow. The class I’ll be teaching starts at one-thirty in the afternoon, so you won’t have to do that cracky-dawn stuff. I can stop by and pick you up, if you’d like.”
“That’s why they invented buses, Markie. I’m a big girl now, remember?”
“We’ve still got a while to kick it around, Twink. I’ll be a little busy for the next two weeks, though. I’ve got a lot of things to take care of on campus.”
“Quit worrying so much, Markie. It’ll give you wrinkles. Sleep good.”
The next morning, I drove to the campus to check in with Dr. Conrad.
“And how did you spend your summer vacation, Mr. Austin?” he asked me with a faint smile.
“Did you want that in five hundred words, Doc?”
“I think a summary should be enough—I probably won’t be grading you on it.”
“Actually, I spent quite a bit of time conferring with a headshrinker.”
“Has our load been shifting?”
“I don’t think so, but I’d probably be the last to know. Actually, the daughter of a family friend just graduated from a private mental hospital, and she’ll be taking some classes here. First, I had to get her moved in with her aunt up in Wallingford, and then I had to relocate myself as well: I got a place not far from her aunt’s. It’s a boardinghouse with a few grad students from departments scattered all across campus—but don’t worry, I’ll try to hold up our reputation.”
“I’m sure that if I’m patient, you will start to make some sense here.”
“I wouldn’t count on it, Doc. It’s been a pretty scrambled summer. I think I’ll go hide in the library for a couple of weeks to get my head on straight again.”
“That sounds like a plan,” he said sarcastically.
I spent the rest of the day in the library, and I didn’t get home until about eight that evening. Trish got on my case for missing supper, but after some extensive apologies, she relented and fed me anyway. The mother instinct seemed to run strong and deep in our Trish.
After I’d eaten, I went into the living room to use the community telephone. I dialed Mary’s number, but it was Twink who answered. I heard some weird noises in the background, and at first I thought we might have a bad connection.
“No, Markie,” Renata said. “It’s not the telephone. I’m listening to some music, that’s all.”
“It doesn’t sound all that musical to me, Twink. What’s it called?”
“I haven’t got a clue. Somebody—maybe even me—taped something and forgot to label it.”
“It sounds like a bunch of hound dogs that just treed a possum,” I told her.
“I think they’re wolves, Markie—at least on this part of the tape. Later on, the wolf howls gradually change over and become a woman’s voice.”
“You’ve got a strange taste in music, Twink.”
“Would you prefer some golden oldies by the Bee-doles? Or maybe ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a Clown-dawg’ by Olvis Ghastly?”
“Try the Brandenburg Concertos, Twink,” I suggested. “Avoid teenie-bopper music whenever you can. It’s hazardous to your hearing, if not your health. Did your aunt go to work already?”
“She’s taking a bath. I’ve got an awful headache for some reason.”
“Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.”
“Fun-nee, Markie. Funny, funny, funny. Go away now. My wolves want to sing to me.” Her voice sounded sort of vague, but there was a peculiar throaty vibrance to it that I’d never heard before.
Then she abruptly hung up on me, and I sat there staring at the phone and wondering just what was going on.
