Dying for Chocolate

“You’re not,” I told him with as much firmness as I could muster. Fire consumed my insides. The poison had to be diluted with water immediately, I knew that. I cupped my hand under the faucet and brought handful after handful of water to Schulz’s mouth, then to mine. Ten, twenty, thirty handfuis of water. My body burned with pain. In some distant part of my brain I heard Adele slam a door. She was leaving the house. Leaving us to die. Who would be blamed? The general? Me? Pierre the critic would have a field day with this one.

I swallowed more water, squeezed my eyes shut, and summoned a mental picture of Arch. I had to find him. I had to. Find, find, find. I repeated this mantra while I got down on my hands and knees and peered under the bathroom door.

Bathroom doors can’t be locked from the outside. To keep us in, Adele had anchored the general’s portable door jam under the knob. I could just see the rubber end of the extended pole on the wooden hallway floor. It was no comfort to think her fingerprints might be on the top of the jam.

I closed my eyes and saw Arch. I tried to think about what the general had told me about the door jam. The wedged pole made it impossible for an intruder to push a door open. The trick, the general had said, was to put the jam under a door that opened toward you.

I rolled over. I was not going to try to push the bathroom door out. It was constructed to open inward, so it would not swing out to hit anyone passing in the hall.

“I just wouldn’t understand, huh?” I said weakly as I delicately turned the knob, pulled on the door, and heard the jam clatter on the hall floor. “I don’t think so.”

I hauled up on my elbows, whispered a prayer that Schulz, who was groaning weakly, would understand why I was abandoning him, and dragged myself down the hallway. Spasms of nausea tore through my body. I crawled toward the garage. Twice on my way I had to stop to be sick.

I had thought Adele was my friend. I had wanted it. I had imagined we were confidantes. And now I was paying the price of my own self-deception, with the poisonous drug mistakenly taken when you tried to make people love you.

I kept my head up as I crawled. I visualized ice, coolness, anything to get my mind off of what was really happening inside my abdomen. I visualized Arch.

The garage door was open. I dragged my body across the gritty floor. Each movement was a struggle, getting into the van, hauling myself up, opening the glove compartment. My hand closed around my trusty safety kit. I prayed thanks and swallowed some ipecac.

When I had made my torturous way back to the bathroom I asked Schulz to try to get up on his elbows. I cradled his head under my elbow. His face was awash in sweat.

Before he would take the ipecac, he murmured, “If I die, I want you to know how I feel about you.”

“I know how you feel about me. Swallow.”

He did. I was sick into the toilet and then I held him around the torso while he was sick. It didn’t take long, but it was horrible. If Schulz and I could go through this together, we could weather anything. I stood up shakily, then helped him to his feet.

“I’m going to look for Arch,” I said once I had rinsed my mouth out with tap water.

“The heck you say,” he said feebly. He grasped the side of the marble basin and tried to steady himself. “I’m calling the department. Get help to track down Adele Farquhar. Get a medic here for you, me, and the general.”

I didn’t say anything. I was shaky but okay, and there was no time to wait for the Furman County Sheriff’s Department to muster itself up to Aspen Meadow. I needed more water, and then I was going to look for Arch, whether Tom Schulz liked it or not.

I limped shakily out to the porch. Bo’s face was extremely pale. His snores sounded like a small propeller-plane engine. I shook his shoulder. Nothing. The automatic timer flicked on the pool lights. It was 9:00 P.M. The murky, phosphorescent half-spheres on the walls of the empty pool cast an eerie pall across the patio. I heard Schulz wobble to the kitchen, then murmur into the phone. I moved slowly to the living room and picked up a bottle of Perrier from the bar. I didn’t have any weapons, so I threw the general’s toolbox into the van. Wrenches and Perrier: yuppie defense. I roared down the driveway.

Where could Arch be? Why had Adele seemed so sure he would die tonight? Where you won’t be able to save him this time.

The pool.

I peeled off in the direction of Elk Park Prep.