Mr. Davenport, Fritz’s father, was barely present himself. He ran some sort of IT firm in Arlington, and my impression was that he was a thoroughly busy man who read people swiftly in order to determine whether he needed to bother with them. Apparently I had made the cut. On my first visit to Fritz’s house, I saw Mr. Davenport use a Montblanc pen as he sat in his easy chair going over paperwork, and I made some comment about how I’d write a novel with a pen like that one day. It was a ridiculously vain and pompous thing to say, but he’d chuckled at it, not unkindly. Later that year, on my birthday in January, I received a gift box from the Davenports containing an identical Montblanc pen.
That first weekend, Fritz also took me to visit his horse, Ranger, at a nearby stable. Ranger was a beautiful chestnut Thoroughbred with a white blaze down his face. He would nod and stomp his front hoof once when he saw Fritz. Ranger was a show hunter—Fritz had ridden him in competitive events, jumping fences and presenting excellent riding form. “Basically his job is to look good without trying,” Fritz told me, stroking Ranger on his muzzle. I was wary of Ranger, afraid he would step on my foot, but I petted him on the nose and he blew warm air on my hand. I watched Fritz as he rode Ranger in the training ring of the stable, gently putting him through his paces. Ranger was getting older, but when he and Fritz approached a fence, Ranger went over it like a dolphin arcing out of the water, a single smooth motion that hardly interrupted his canter.
Fletcher Dupree had snorted with delight at learning that Fritz rode English style on a horse named Ranger (Fritz had been reading Tolkien when he’d first gotten him). At first, Fritz just rolled his eyes and ignored his comments, but one day at lunch, when Fletcher was talking about how gay English riding looked, Fritz put down his glass of iced tea and patiently explained that he loved his horse, that he had recently won second place at the Southwest Virginia Hunter Jumper Association Finals, and that he had done it while also playing varsity football. “So suck it,” Fritz added sweetly, causing the whole table to laugh, even Fletcher.
In truth, Fritz had several trophies that he had won with Ranger, but what he enjoyed far more was to just ride across the fields by the horse stable. He tried to get me to go riding with him once, but I demurred, uncomfortable with the sheer size of the horses. I regretted that later, because that summer, when I was working as a lifeguard at the country club pool in Biltmore Forest, Fritz sent me a letter saying that Ranger had contracted Potomac horse fever and that they had had to put him to sleep. Ranger had been old, Fritz wrote, and he had known his horse wouldn’t be around forever, but it was a hard thing to lose him. It’s like he stamped a hole through my heart, he wrote. I realized then that Fritz had loved riding Ranger, and I had been offered an opportunity to share that passion with him, and now that opportunity was gone forever.
IN THE FALL OF our sixth form year, Fritz harassed me to invite Abby to the Fall Dance, a semiformal in October. I’d still been seeing Dana, but things had unraveled some since fourth form year, and when I had asked her to the dance, she said she’d already made plans to be in D.C. that weekend, so I didn’t have a date. Still, I resisted Fritz. “Oh, come on,” Fritz said. “Abby’s fun, I’m taking her roommate, and you like her. What’s the problem?”
“I don’t know. It’s a little weird, you know? I mean, she’s your sister.”
He laid his hands on my shoulders and looked earnestly into my face. “I give you permission to date my sister, you dipshit,” he said.
Oddly enough, that settled it, and I called Abby—this was before Blackburne allowed students to have cell phones—from one of the old house phones in the hallway of Walker. She spoke brightly into the phone when she realized it was me, and I stumbled through a nonchalant invitation, holding my breath and my heartbeat as I waited for a reply. When Abby said she would love to come, I thought I would lift out of my shoes.
The weekend was a lot of fun, not least because she and her roommate, Heather, were two of the most attractive girls at the dance, and Fritz and I enjoyed the complimentary stares of our classmates. Around most girls I was either tongue-tied or babbled like a fool. I did both with Abby, but only at first, and as the weekend progressed and Abby spoke easily with me, my discomfort melted away. I even told her I wanted to become a writer, something I hadn’t told anyone at Blackburne except for Fritz. In turn, she told me her dreams about going to Juilliard and becoming a concert cello player like Yo-Yo Ma. I remember we were walking across the Lawn toward Mr. Hodges’s house where she was staying, and she turned to me with a smile. “So we’re both artists,” she said. “How cool is that?” She linked her arm with mine as easily as if we had been doing so for years, and I thought in a haze of rapture that I wanted to keep walking with her on my arm forever.
I enjoyed the dance, but I don’t remember much about the dinner beforehand, or the music, or the dancing. What I do remember is that Abby and I engaged in a few long, warm kisses with the promise of real heat behind them. The next morning, when she boarded the bus that would take her back to Saint Margaret’s, I kissed her good-bye in front of Fritz and everybody, and then stayed to watch the bus leave, standing there long after its brake lights had winked one last time before it drove into the trees and out of sight.
After the dance, we exchanged a few desperately romantic letters and hoped to see each other over Christmas break, but her father announced a surprise family vacation to a dude ranch in Montana, and we had to settle for a couple of long and maudlin phone conversations. During one of them, a week before exams and Christmas vacation, I said, “Play something for me. On your cello.”
She laughed. “What, over the phone?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve never heard you play. I’d like to hear you play.”
Max Goren, who was walking down the hall, started making gagging noises as he passed me. I flipped him off and turned my back on him, hunched over the phone.
Abby snorted on the other end. “Do you know how big a cello is? It’s not like a harmonica or something. You can’t just pull it out of your pocket and play. I don’t even keep it on dorm. It’s in the music studio.”
I grinned. “No problem,” I said. “I’ll wait for you to get it.” I wasn’t sure where this cocky bravado came from, or why I was pushing Abby on this, but I liked it and suspected she did, too.
Abby lowered her voice. “I am not going to play the cello over the phone in front of my whole hall.”
I kept grinning. “I don’t care. Play for me, Abby.”