Crime of Privilege: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 running. Long enough for me to think I should go in there and check
     on her. But then a different door opened. It was the one through which we had entered,
     through which Peter and Jamie had exited, and it brought with it the distant sounds
     of the cocktail party that I had almost forgotten was taking place.
    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 tothe 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
.
    I
CALLED 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
     connected to the student’s room.
    “I’m