“No,” Kevin said softly. “I’m not. Which makes me a bona fide drug dealer to children. But there are reasons to do something other than altruism, or profit. Do you know what Blackburne kicked me out for, Matthias? I was caught having sex with a girl from Chatham Hall. We were on the golf course, and Mr. Downing comes around the hedges with a flashlight and sees us just fucking away on the ninth hole. I didn’t lie or get drunk on campus or get in a fight. I was getting laid. It was consensual, we were both eighteen, but her parents had a shit fit. Nothing they could do, legally. But Blackburne kicked me out. Said I’d ‘crossed the line’ one too many times. I was going premed to Richmond, but when I was expelled, they rescinded my acceptance. I had to repeat senior year at another school, apply to college all over again.” Kevin’s voice grew even quieter. “I begged them. Begged them to let me stay at Blackburne. And they told me to fuck off with six weeks left to graduation.” His eyes gleamed with cold fury. “I was wronged, Matthias. And you should understand that. We were both wronged. Blackburne laid down a black mark on each of us.”
I stared at him, unable to speak. He leaned forward. “You know what I mean, don’t you,” he said. “You ever feel that if things were just a little different, you’d be set? If just one thing were different, your problems would be gone?” He smiled grimly. “Course you do. Your life has never been the same since your roomie disappeared. That’s your one thing. Well, Blackburne is that one thing for me. ‘Prep school.’ Prepping for what? Go to college, get a degree, become successful? How many Blackburne grads went to college and now sleep on their parents’ sofa? All that crap about honor, work ethic, achievement? Horseshit. So fuck ’em.”
As I sat in that kitchen and continued to stare at Kevin Kelly, I realized, with a sickening drop of the soul, that this infuriated, bespectacled drug dealer across the table was not so different from me, that with a few twists and turns in my own life, or perhaps only one—like being kicked out of Blackburne—I could easily have turned into what he was: self-indulgent, cruel, and vindictive, a damaged man who took out his fear and pain on others. What was even worse was the realization that perhaps I had been that man, could still be.
Then Kevin leaned closer, so that I could see the pores on his cheeks, his eyes behind his specs wide and intense. He raised the knife in his hand, blowing away every other thought in my head except for a bright yellow fear. “Now tell me,” he said, “why you are here.”
“Fritz,” I said.
He seemed taken aback. “Fritz?” Then he suddenly laughed. “The clown,” he said. “Ah, fuck. You talked to Greer, didn’t you?”
“What . . . clown?”
He shook his head dismissively. “He told you how to get up here? Greer?”
“I made him drive me up here. He said—”
“Hold on,” he said. “Hold the fuck on. You had Greer drive you up here?”
Maybe I could shove the table at him, give myself an extra second or two to get out the baton. “He brought me in his van,” I said. “I made him stop and let me out a little ways down the road so I could walk up here. He drove off and left me, I don’t know—”
“Why would Greer drive you up here?” he asked.
“Do you know where Fritz is?”
“Why the fuck would Greer—”
“Do you know—”
“Shut up!”
“—where Fritz is?”
“Did you bring the cops? Did you call the fucking police?”
“No! I didn’t—”
He was so fast, I didn’t have a chance. One second he was shouting at me from across the table, and the next he was on his feet and right next to me, the knife pointing down at my face. My fingers twitched for the baton, but he put the point of his knife right up to my nose and with his other hand batted my fingers away from my pocket. As he reached into my pocket with his left hand and fished around, all I could see was the knife a couple of centimeters from my eyes. Bizarrely, I thought of teaching Oedipus Rex last fall, and how my students had been gruesomely fascinated by how the proud Greek king had stabbed out his own eyes. Jesus God, don’t blind me, I thought. Then Kevin pulled the baton out from my pocket, glanced at it, and threw it onto the floor behind him, where it fell with a loud clatter and rolled underneath the refrigerator.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” he asked. “Because I will cut you up and bury you alive where animals will find you and snack on your balls.”
“No, listen,” I said, desperation in my voice. “They fucked me, Kevin. Greer fucked me. He set me up, and the school believed him. They didn’t even try to listen to me. But I’ve got proof that Greer did it. Then he said you knew where Fritz was, and I told him to bring me here, or I’d call the cops. I—”
“What proof?”
“I . . . He talked about planting drugs in my desk, selling to students. I recorded him saying it. It’s on my iPhone.” Then a thought shone in my mind, a bright warm light that drew me to it like a moth. “You could listen to it. It’s on the Memos app. He doesn’t say anything about you on it—he told me that later, after I’d stopped recording. You could use that. We could send him to jail.”
He raised an eyebrow. “We?”
I drew a shaky breath. “I want in,” I said. “On selling. At Blackburne.”
He laughed, incredulous. “You do think I’m stupid.”
“No! Look, Blackburne tried to ruin my life, Kevin. I went to jail. They took me out of my dorm in handcuffs, in front of students. But if they realize I didn’t do it, that it was Greer, then he’ll get fired and I’ll be set. I’ll be pure as fucking snow, Kevin. The school will freak out about lawsuits, or, or they’ll be scared I’ll write a book. That’d terrify them. They hate anything that could hurt their reputation. They’d practically beg me to come back and teach. And once I’m there, fuck them. I want in. I’ll help you. You can have my phone, do whatever you want with it.”
Kevin looked at me as if I were raving. But he wasn’t telling me to shut up or doing anything with the knife. He had even pulled it back a few inches from my face.
“Listen to the recording I made,” I insisted. “Greer said that you know where Fritz is. And . . . I want to know. I want to know where Fritz is. Just . . . please—”
“Shut up.” Kevin stood there, calculating. Abruptly he held out his left hand, his right still holding the knife. “Give me your phone,” he said.
“I—” Then I remembered. “I don’t have it. Greer took it. He made me give it to him before he drove me here. Call him and ask. Call my phone if you want. Or his. Whatever. He’ll tell you—”
“Shut up,” Kevin said again. I could almost see things moving into place in his head, facts and perceptions rearranging themselves like so much furniture. Then he pulled out a cell from his jeans. “What’s your number?”
I told him, and he dialed it into his phone with one hand, the other still holding up the knife. Maybe I could rush him . . . and get stabbed in the gut, or the face.