Page 77 of Hell Bent

Less famous but also found in these same windows is the tale of “The Kid and the Wolf.” Separated from his herd, a young goat encounters a wolf. “As I must be eaten,” he says, “will you not play me a tune that I may die dancing?” Happy to have music with his meal, the wolf obliges, but from across the pasture, the huntsman’s hounds hear his playing. Chased through the woods, the wolf marvels at his own foolishness, for he was born a butcher, not a piper. The moral offered in most readings is strange indeed: “Let nothing keep you from your purpose.” Then are we to understand ourselves as the wolf? Why is the clever goat not our model? Take then this lesson: “When faced with death, better to dance than to lie down for it.”

—A Reconsideration of the Decoration of Sterling Memorial Library, Rudolph Kittscher (Jonathan Edwards ’33)

23

Alex waited until daylight to walk home to the dorms and change her clothes. She borrowed a soft gray cashmere sweater from Lauren, and put on her least-shabby-looking pair of jeans. She wanted to seem responsible, like a good investment, but there was nothing she could do about her scuffed-up boots.

When she’d called Anselm to ask for a meeting, she had expected him to tell her to meet with the new Praetor instead. But he was coming up on the Metro-North that afternoon and agreed to squeeze her in.

“You’ll have to forgive the name of the place,” he’d said. “I have a meeting there before I head back to the city, but I can meet you for a late lunch.”

Shell and Bones. It was an oyster bar right on the water. Alex checked to make sure her salt collar wasn’t visible beneath her borrowed sweater, then nudged her bike out onto the street. She forgot sometimes that New Haven was so close to the sea, that it was truly a port town.

The ride down Howard was surprisingly pretty, past leaves turning colors and homes that got grander as they neared the waterfront. They were nothing like the mansions of Old Greenwich. There was something public about their big porches, their windows facing the road, as if they were meant to be seen and enjoyed instead of being hidden behind a wall.

Dawes hadn’t taken the news of the missing Mercedes well, because of course the car was not just a car.

“What do you mean you lost it?” she’d cried.

“I didn’t lose it. I know where it is.”

“Then tell me so I can go get it. I have a spare set of keys. We—”

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”

Because I’m afraid. Because it’s too dangerous. But Alex couldn’t explain it all. Linus Reiter. What she’d been doing in Old Greenwich. The dream of Darlington restored to himself in the circle. I have been crying out to you from the start. It was too much.

“You lost him,” Dawes seethed. “And now this.”

“I didn’t lose Darlington,” Alex said, striving for patience. “He isn’t a shiny penny I dropped somewhere. Elliot Sandow sent a hellbeast to eat him, so go to the cemetery and bitch at his tombstone if you want to.”

“You should have—”

“What? I should have what? Known the right spell to speak, the right incantation? I should have grabbed him so we could go to hell together?”

“Yes,” Dawes said on a hiss. “Yes. You’re his Dante.”

“Is that what you’d have done?”

Dawes didn’t answer, and Alex knew she should let it lie, but she was too tired and bruised to be kind. “I’ll tell you what you would have done, Dawes. You would have pissed yourself. You would have frozen just like I did, and Darlington would be just as gone.”

Silence on the other end of the phone and then, as if she’d never spoken the words and didn’t quite know how to make the syllables match, Dawes shouted, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

Something about that stuttered bit of profanity pierced Alex’s miserable mood. The anger gusted out of her and she felt the sudden urge to laugh—which she knew would be a huge mistake.

She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Dawes. You don’t know how sorry I am. But the car doesn’t matter. I matter. You matter. And I promise we’ll get it back. I just … I just need a little grace right now.”

After a long moment, Dawes said, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes. For the time being. I’m sorry I was rude.”

Then Alex did laugh. “You’re forgiven. And you should swear more, Dawes.”

Alex knew the restaurant was at a yacht club, but it wasn’t what she’d anticipated. She’d thought there would be a valet, men in blue blazers, women in pearls. Instead it was an ordinary-looking building on the waterfront, with a flag out front and a big parking lot. Alex locked her bike to the railing by the steps. She would have liked to wear her hair up, look a bit more conservative, but the marks on her neck were still red and swollen, as if her body was staving off an infection, and if she just slapped another bandage on her neck, she’d look like she was trying to hide a hickey.