Crime of Privilege

Suddenly I was afraid. What if someone else came in and saw this, saw her, saw me? What would I say? That it wasn’t me? That it was Peter and Jamie? And what about her, why wasn’t she saying anything? Why wasn’t she doing anything?

“Kendrick,” I said. I must have put my glass on the coffee table because I reached out to her with both hands and tried to pull her into a sitting position. “Kendrick, c’mon. You have to get up. Here, let me get your dress down.”

She did as I wanted, sat up like a doll that had to be held in place. I was tugging the dress, trying to pull it down to her thighs, tilting her one way and then another. I had to put one arm around her shoulders, use the other to pull down the dress, then switch arms and pull on the other side. Her face was pointed toward the floor so that when I stepped back to see if I had gotten everything I still had to keep my hand on her, make sure she didn’t fall forward. I didn’t know what to do about her breasts. She had a bra. It seemed to be a very flimsy bra and it seemed not exactly in place. I settled for straightening out the straps of the dress.

I asked if she was all right.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she said.

I looked around, feeling panic of a whole different kind than I had a few moments before. There was a maroon wastebasket with some kind of old-world map on its sides. I leaned Kendrick into the cushions, told her to hold on, ran to the wastebasket, and got it back to her just in time. I turned my head away so I didn’t have to see.

I had one hand on her, one hand on the bucket, my head twisted over my shoulder. I heard the sounds and almost instantly smelled the odor. I did not want to retch myself. I waited until she was done, tilted her back again, and ran with the wastebasket to a window. I undid the latch, shoved up the window, threw the entire basket into the bushes. Then I ran back to Kendrick. Her legs were straight out in front of her. She had vomit in her hair. “Shit,” I said.

“Shit,” she said, and started to laugh.

Was it a laugh? It wasn’t a real laugh. It didn’t last more than a note or two.

I looked around the room, trying to figure out how I was going to clean her up. My eyes went to the drapes, maroon, with gold figures on them. If I could get her over to the windows, I could at least use the cloth to clean her hair.

“Can you get up?” I asked, but I wasn’t waiting for an answer. I was already pulling her to her feet. “Okay, that’s it. Stand. Now lean on me. We’re not going far.”

The vomit, I feared, was getting on my sport coat. I would throw it out the window, too. No, I would use the drapes to blot it, then find a sink somewhere with ru

“You’re so nice,” Kendrick said.

“Yeah, I’m a saint,” I said, maneuvering her step by step. I got her to the windows, turned her around, guided her into a sitting position on a windowsill. “You okay there?”

She nodded.

“I’m okay,” she said, and got to her feet. She took one step, caught herself, and then staggered across the Spanish tile floor to a closed door.

There were three doors in the wall on the opposite side of the room from where I had intended to do my emergency cleaning. She went directly to the one in the far corner, the one that was behind and to the left of the Senator’s desk. Her head was slightly bowed and she did not walk in a completely straight line, but she knew where to go.

Which may explain how Mr. Andrews knew about the Winslow Homer.

She opened the door, hit a switch, and illuminated a small bathroom, a powder room, an antechamber with a toilet and a sink and a mirror over the sink and a rack with towels.

How drunk could she have been if she was able to go directly there?

The door closed and I could hear water rushing from the faucet into the basin. I sat on the windowsill, just as Kendrick had done, looked out the window, where the map-covered wastebasket was ensconced in a green-leafed bush with inch-thick branches and where the smell of vomit was mixing with the fragrances of jasmine, hyacinth, and gardenias, and wondered what to do. I settled for closing the window.

The water kept ru

The woman holding the door, her hand on the doorknob, her arm stretched out fully in front of her as she leaned in, was one of the Senator’s sisters, famous enough in her own right for me to know who she was.

“Oh, excuse me,” she said. It was her house, her family’s house, but she was requesting forgiveness for intruding. And then she realized that I was all alone. “Is everything okay in here?” she asked.

There was someone behind her. She obviously was going to show that person the library, or something in the library, and with that realization my eyes darted to a black object on the floor. I had been sitting there doing nothing for minutes and only now did I notice Kendrick’s silk-and-mesh underwear in a tiny, tangled bunch on top of a burnt-umber tile.

“Hello, Mrs. Martin. I’m sorry.” I pushed off the windowsill with my hips, took a step toward the little black mound. “I’m just waiting for my friend Kendrick.” I thrust my hand toward the door of the bathroom, thrust it harder than I needed to, harder than anybody in his right mind would have done, but I was taking another step and trying to get Mrs. Martin to look that way, to notice the noise of the rushing water, to not notice the cloth on the floor. “She isn’t feeling too well.”

“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Martin, and looked back at her companion. Then she looked at me again and by this time I had made it all the way to the underwear. I was standing in front of it. I had one shoe next to the other and was posed as rigidly as a West Point cadet while Mrs. Martin asked, “Do you think she needs some help?”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Martin, she’ll be all right in a minute.” And when my hostess seemed dubious, I added, “I think she’s embarrassed. That’s why I’m sort of standing guard.”

See? See how I’m standing?

“Oh,” she said to me. Then she looked at her companion again. Then back to me. “Maybe we’ll return in a minute,” she offered.

“Gosh, if you would. I’m sure it won’t be long and I know she’ll feel so much better if she thought nobody knew.”

Nobody knew she was drunk, shitfaced, puked on herself. Nobody knew she had just been fingered, fucked, screwed with a candle by your son, Mrs. Martin. Your deplorable son and your repulsive nephew.

5

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ICALLED BRYN MAWR. IN THOSE DAYS YOU COULD DIAL THE SCHOOL’S main number, get a school operator, ask for the student by name, and you would be co

“I’m sorry,” the operator said after putting me on hold for half a minute, “Miss Powell is no longer attending Bryn Mawr. She’s withdrawn from the school.”

“But she was just there a few weeks ago.”

“That’s all the information I have. Her number has been disco

I wondered if I should call information in Delaware. If the Powells lived in Delaware, they probably lived in Wilmington. Maybe Dover. Those were the only cities in Delaware I knew. But Powell was a common name and if Mr. Powell was as wealthy as Mr. Andrews said, he would have an unlisted number.

I thought of calling CPA Properties. Hello, can I speak to the owner? To the owner’s daughter?