“Good. Thank you! That’ll help balance off her C minus.”
“She gave you a C minus? Seriously?”
“I would never joke about a thing like that.”
“And she said the conclusion sounded juvenile,” Bernstein repeated, paraphrasing. “And I said it sounded too advanced for your age. And it turned out to be based on thoughts you got from an adult attorney. That’s funny.”
“Yeah,” Raymond said. “I thought that part was funny, too. She seems to think there’s just one objective reality, and good people will all see it if they’re willing to.”
“Hmm,” Mr. Bernstein said. “That’s a nice, predictable world she’s living in. It must be very pleasant there. I almost envy her that kind of thinking.”
Raymond stepped into the school library after last period. He almost skipped last period to go, but he had done that once before, and the librarian hadn’t reported him. He hated to press his luck with that.
“Well, look who it is,” she said, barely looking up from her book. “How’s the self-taught Spanish coming along?”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, I hate to even tell you. But it was kind of . . . for a specific purpose. That I don’t need anymore. So I haven’t done a very good job of keeping up with it.”
In fact, after he had returned the Spanish-English dictionary to the library, he hadn’t gone on to buy a phrasebook of his own. Because there had been no more Luis Velezes to find.
“Well, I just knew that was too good to be true. A student wanting to learn something just for the sake of learning it.”
“Don’t be too sure,” he said. “I came here to ask if you have any books about quantum mechanics. Not for any special situation this time. Just for the sake of learning it.”
“Interesting,” she said. “You almost renew my faith in students, Raymond. It just so happens I have a fair amount on the subject. Follow me.”
Chapter Sixteen
* * *
Despair
“I’m starting to get worried about you,” Raymond said. “You haven’t been outside for almost eight days.”
“Has it only been eight days?”
She looked up at him from her bed. Turned her face in the general direction of where he stood in her bedroom doorway. It was after ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. She was awake. But she still hadn’t gotten up and dressed.
“Time has been going so slowly,” she added. A bit wistfully, Raymond thought.
“I want my old friend Mrs. G back,” he said, surprising himself. He had thought it many times, but hadn’t expected to hear himself say it out loud. “I miss her.”
“She is here,” Mrs. G said in a thin and unenthusiastic voice.
“No. Not really, she isn’t. I haven’t seen her since the trial. And I’m getting worried about you. I think I should call that nice Velez family who invited us to supper. We could go tomorrow.”
“No, not tomorrow. Please, Raymond. Next Sunday. Or the Sunday after that.”
“Tomorrow is better. You’ve had plenty of time to rest, right?”
“Physically, yes, but . . .”
“I’m going to call her right now and tell her we’re coming tomorrow.”
“Wait!”
He was halfway out of the room, but he stopped. Because she sounded too serious to ignore. Almost approaching the border of desperate.
“Don’t go,” she said. “Don’t call. All right, if you want me to get outdoors, fine. Let’s go outdoors. But only you and me for now. Please. To meet new people, to be around a lot of people right now . . . I need more time. Tomorrow we will go somewhere, just the two of us. In a couple of weeks maybe we will go to supper with your friends.”
“Okay. That’s okay, I guess. Just . . . where do you want to go?”
“Give me until the morning to think. Come and get me in the morning, and I will tell you where we should go and what we should see. Only, you will have to see it for us both.”
At 9:00 the following morning he knocked on her door, then opened it with the key.
“You’re ready!” he said.
She was sitting up on the edge of the couch, wearing her red dress and white shoes, and the shawl she had worn to court. Her hair was neatly braided, the white braid falling forward over one shoulder. Her red-and-white cane was propped next to her against the couch. She held her purse tightly on her lap.
“Of course I’m ready. I told you we would go, so we will go.”