The Secret History by Donna Tartt Page A

was like a robot.
    “Fine.”
    “That’s good.”
    “Here you go, old top,” said Bunny, producing the check.
    Henry looked hard at the total, his face motionless.
    “Well,” said Bunny chummily, his voice booming in the tense silence, “I’d apologize for dragging you away from your book if you hadn’t brought it with you. What you got there? Any good?”
    Without a word, Henry handed it to him. The lettering on the front was in some Oriental language. Bunny stared at it for a moment, then gave it back. “That’s nice,” he said faintly.
    “Are you ready to go?” Henry said abruptly.
    “Sure, sure,” said Bunny hastily, leaping up and nearly knocking over the table. “Say the word.
Undele, undele
. Any time you want.”
    Henry paid the check while Bunny hung behind him like a bad child. The ride home was excruciating. Bunny, in the back seat, kept up a sally of brilliant but doomed attempts at conversation, which one by one flared and sank, while Henry kept his eyes on the road and I sat in the front beside him, fidgeting with the built-in ashtray, snapping it in and out till finally I realized how irritating this was and forced myself, with difficulty, to stop.
    He stopped at Bunny’s first. Bellowing a chain of incoherent pleasantries, Bunny slapped me on the shoulder and leaped out of the car. “Yes, well, Henry, Richard, here we are. Lovely. Fine. Thank you so much—beautiful lunch—well, toodle-oo, yes,yes, goodbye—” The door slammed and he shot up the walk at a rapid clip.
    Once he was inside, Henry turned to me. “I’m very sorry,” he said.
    “Oh, no, please,” I said, embarrassed. “Just a mix-up. I’ll pay you back.”
    He ran a hand through his hair and I was surprised to see it was trembling. “I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,” he said curtly. “It’s his fault.”
    “But—”
    “He told you he was taking you out. Didn’t he?”
    His voice had a slightly accusatory note. “Well, yes,” I said.
    “And
just happened
to leave his wallet at home.”
    “It’s all right.”
    “It’s not all right,” Henry snapped. “It’s a terrible trick. How were you to know? He takes it on faith that whoever he’s with can produce tremendous sums at a moment’s notice. He never thinks about these things, you know, how awkward it is for everyone. Besides, what if I hadn’t been at home?”
    “I’m sure he really just forgot.”
    “You took a taxi there,” said Henry shortly. “Who paid for that?”
    Automatically I started to protest, and then stopped cold. Bunny had paid for the taxi. He’d even made sort of a big deal of it.
    “You see,” said Henry. “He’s not even very clever about it, is he? It’s bad enough he does it to anyone but I must say I never thought he’d have the nerve to try it on a perfect stranger.”
    I didn’t know what to say. We drove to the front of Monmouth in silence.
    “Here you are,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
    “It’s fine, really. Thank you, Henry.”
    “Good night, then.”
    I stood under the porch light and watched him drive away. Then I went inside and up to my room, where I collapsed on my bed in a drunken stupor.

    “We heard all about your lunch with Bunny,” said Charles.
    I laughed. It was late the next afternoon, a Sunday, and I’d been at my desk nearly all day reading the
Parmenides
. The Greek was rough going but I had a hangover, too, and I’d been at it solong that the letters didn’t even look like letters but something else, indecipherable, bird footprints on sand. I was staring out the window in a sort of trance, at the meadow cropped close like bright green velvet and billowing into carpeted hills at the horizon, when I saw the twins, far below, gliding like a pair of ghosts on the lawn.
    I leaned out the window and called to them. They stopped and turned, hands shading brows, eyes screwed up against the evening glare. “Hello,” they called, and their voices, faint and ragged, were almost one voice