by Carolyn Nash
“What part? You said yourself everybody thinks you’re some little grad student who succumbed to my charms. Ain’t that just about the way it is?”
I pressed my hand to my stomach, just below my breastbone where the black hole had reappeared. “But I have to look out for those two men.”
“I really don’t think I need you to spot those two guys.”
“But you only saw them briefly at the airport.”
“Even so, I hardly think I’ll forget them, do you?”
“But, you’re still not well. What if something happens, if you start bleeding again?”
“I’ll sit down, put a Band-Aid on it, and wait for it to stop.” He finished tying his other shoe and then pushed up off the mattress. He didn’t even wince. “I’m feeling fine. I don’t need help.”
He walked over and put a hand on each of my shoulders. “You stay here and take a break from all of this. After all, you want to be well-rested when you get back. First biochem exam is in two weeks.”
I twisted out from under his hands. “I don’t care about the stupid biochem exam.”
“You’d better. If you don’t pass biochem we’ll throw you out on your keyster.” He laughed. “Come on, don’t argue now. It’s better this way.”
“No.”
“Good God, what does it take? Look Melanie, as I said, I really do appreciate everything you’ve done. But I need to do what I have to do without you interfering at every turn. It’s gotten so I can’t make a move without an argument.
“I’m not arguing.”
“What do you call this?” he asked. “Just for once shut up long enough to listen. I don’t want you. Got it?”
“Oh,” I said.
“Sorry to be so blunt.”
“No,” I heard myself say. “That’s okay. I can be pretty stupid sometimes.”
I twisted out from under his hands and walked to where my skirt and my pink sweater were drying in the sunlight coming through the door. I had washed them out the night before and they should have been dry, but when I knelt down to feel them, they were both still a little damp. I fingered the sweater. Why in the world had I ever chosen that color pink? And the style was definitely not me; I was baggy sweatshirts and jeans, not frou-frou little feminine trash like this.
I snatched it and the skirt up and headed for the bathroom. The few cosmetics I’d brought in my purse were scattered on the counter. I pulled a t-shirt off the curtain rod, swept the cosmetics into a pile and brushed them into a pouch I made out of the shirt. I looked around. The only thing left was Andrew’s white, tattered silk shirt hanging on the shower curtain rod. I reached out and touched where the bullet had gone through, then angrily snatched my hand back.
“Go back to Miss Perfect,” I whispered. “What do I care?” I grabbed my brush and walked back out into the main room.
Andrew was sitting on the mattress. When I walked out, he didn’t look up. He quickly bent over his shoe, pulled the laces loose, and then retied them carefully. He tightened the strings, adjusted them, pulled them tighter. His eyes flicked over at me and he brought his other foot up, untied the lace, and started the whole process again.
“Good lord, I can be stupid, can’t I Andy!” I threw my things across the room. The t-shirt with the make-up in it slammed against the wall and landed on the bed. My skirt and sweater hit Andrew in the face. “This isn’t an episode of Lassie. I’m not going away just because you kick me. I told you I’m in this because I choose to be.”
He clawed my clothes off his head and threw them aside. “You’re not going.”
“Yes, I am, Andy.”
“It’s too dangerous!”
“Dangerous. Who the hell got you out of the airport? Who got you out of the hotel room? You think that wasn’t dangerous?”
“That’s just it. You’ve done enough. I want you to stay here.”
“No.” I walked over and stood in front of him. “You said back in the hotel that I was your friend. Was that a lie?”
He wouldn’t look at me. “No, you are, but”
“No buts.” I squatted down. “You think as your friend I’m going to let you go all cowboy and walk into something like this alone?”
He reached out and took my hand and looked me in the eye. “You think as your friend I could stand to see you get hurt?”
I pulled my hand away. “I’m not going to get hurt,” I said, “and stop taking my hand or we’re going to start talking about you losing it at the elbow, again.”
“Sorry. Did I hurt you?”
I looked at him long and hard. “Yes.”
He flushed and looked away. “Melanie, I want you out of this.”
I stood up and stepped back. “‘You can't always get what you want,’” I sang. “‘You can’t always get what you want. But, if you try sometimes...’”
“Melanie,” he said.
I put my hands on my hips. “Poor Tiny Tim. Poor, poor Tiny Tim. Disappointed again.”
“Oh, no.” He began to laugh. “I knew it was a mistake to tell you that story.”
“Wait. Wait. Story. Another story. Bullseye. Andy. Oh my sainted aunt! ‘Toy Story.’ That’s why you always go by Andrew.”
“You try being named Andy. The teasing was brutal.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say that no guy wants to go through junior high being asked if he is still playing with Woody.”
“But you named your rat, Bullseye.”
“Could there be a more awesome name for a rat? Besides, no one had figured it out until you poked your smart nose in.”
I bowed then looked him straight in the eye. “To Oz?”
He studied my face for several seconds and then nodded. “To Oz.”
* * * *
We sat side-by-side on the Muni bus. I looked pointedly at the flannel shirt stretched over Andrew’s distended stomach. “Leonard, I swear. You’re going on that diet starting tomorrow. That’s heart attack weight.”
Andrew patted his well-stuffed shirt. “No way, Phyllis. No way you’re putting me on any diet.”
“We’ll just see about that.” I grinned. One of the smaller pillows from the apartment was crammed under the shirt I’d bought him and his jacket hung open so that the “stomach” protruded convincingly. His distinctive red-blond hair was stuffed under a Giants baseball cap. I’d used my eyeliner to artfully darken some of his laugh lines into wrinkles and shade bags under his eyes. (He was a far cry from that man in the tuxedo plastered across the front page, which was, naturally, exactly what we wanted.
I had pulled my hair back and braided it, and I wore another t-shirt I’d picked up at the tourist shop. This one had ‘Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore’ written across the front. It was the only other shirt that had been in my price range, and I’d had to buy it even though it was a size too small. It fit in well with the outfit though, tucked, as it was, into my too-tight jeans. In this get-up, I didn’t look anything like myself, at least to me. I’m not exactly a skin-tight clothes kind of girl. Next to me on the seat sat my purse with all the tools we thought we’d need to get into J.P.’s lab.
“Diet, huh,” Andrew said. “I like my belly. I think it’s distinguished looking. Why, Phyllis? Why are you always trying to change me?” He shook his head in hurtful disappointment and looked away, out the window at the passing buildings.
“Ah, Lenny, it’s not that I don’t like you the way you are. It’s just that there is so much room for improvement.”
“So humorous. So very funny.” He looked up the street. “Campus coming up,” he whispered.
I took a deep breath. “Okay.”
He turned and smiled. “Nervous?”
“Terrified.”
“Me too.”
The bus pulled smoothly to the curb and we swung into the aisle and stepped down the back steps. I followed Andrew, watching him closely, but either he was not feeling any pain or weakness, or he was hiding it well. He moved perhaps a bit more slowly
, but that could have been part of his overweight, older man disguise. The door shut behind us and the bus pulled away. I looked after it a trifle wistfully as it belched a puff of grey exhaust, pulled into traffic and went on down past the campus to disappear into the city.
We crossed the sidewalk and walked up onto the lawn. The grass rose up a low hill to the university buildings. Students with backpacks and stacks of books were clustered in groups over the lawn, stretched out to soak up the warmth of the afternoon sunshine as they read and talked. Other students were passing hurriedly along the walkways. Several were on bikes, snaking in and out of the crowds, ignoring the fact that they were narrowly avoiding collision with pedestrians, who in turn ignored the cyclists. A trio of young men and a young woman were involved in a vigorous round of Frisbee. As I watched, the young woman flashed the Frisbee across the grass and one of the young men leapt up, spun around and caught it behind his back. The other two laughed and applauded and he made a sweeping bow. I turned to watch them as Andrew and I climbed the low rise.
“Keep your eyes peeled for those men,” he said in a low voice.
I jumped. “Oh, yeah. Okay.” I reluctantly looked away from the Frisbee throwers and scanned the lawn, the trees near the building, looked back over my shoulder.
We crossed onto one of the cement paths that led between the outer perimeter of buildings into the center of the campus. The buildings on the outer edge were newer, built during the 1950’s when the style had been an unfortunate utilitarian blandness. They looked like office buildings planned by a consortium of insurance companies, dentists and accountants: low rectangular blocks; narrow, uniform metal-framed windows set in white stucco; brown-painted steel girders running the length of each floor. The overall effect was of an enormous quadruple-decker Wonder bread sandwich, squashed by some giant three-year old hand so that old peanut butter squished from between the layers.
The saving grace of the outer campus was the liquid amber maples and Dutch elms planted along the skirting which were old enough to have overgrown and screened much of the buildings. It being October, only some of the leaves were still green; most announced the coming winter with the gold, orange, red and brown leaves fluttering from the branches and blowing in drifts against the buildings.
The two of us moved past the outer circle into a large central quadrangle of grass faced by older brick buildings. This was the scene that was photographed for the covers of all the admissions brochures: the dark green of the ivy against the deep red of the old brick buildings; the clean white trim of the porticos and window frames; the blue sky arching above grass encircling a fountain shooting water up in rhythmic blasts; students spread thinly over the lawn. Another Frisbee game involving at least a dozen people was going on on the opposite side of the quad just past the fountain. It was so perfect and so peaceful it looked to have been staged. Instead of nostalgia this time, though, the whole thing gave me a cold blast of what the hell am I doing here?
Andrew paused briefly under a tree and the two of us scanned the lawn. “Anything?”
I shook my head. “I don’t see them.”
“Good.” He took my elbow and I shook it out of his grip.
“Sorry.” He led me diagonally across the grass toward the far corner of the quad. We stopped under an elm just up from what looked to be one of the oldest of the brick buildings if only judging by the fact that the ivy had crept up the brick all the way to the fifth floor, just one floor short of the top. The dense greenery also draped over the large white, pillared portico which framed the large double wooden doors leading into the building. The only break in the thick mat of green was for the dozen or more old-fashioned, center-hinged windows which stretched across the front of each floor. They windows looked to open onto a hallway on each floor that had doors on the opposite wall leading into what I assumed were classrooms and labs.
“Okay.” Andrew nodded up through the leaves toward the front left corner of the building. “J.P.’s lab and office are there, on the fourth floor. The storeroom where we’re going to hide is on the first floor in the back.”
I nodded. He started to say something and stopped.
“What?” I asked.
“I was going to say there is still time to go back, but I was afraid you’d hit me.”
“You’re right. And my purse has a hammer in it. Come on, let’s get this over with.”
“Charge,” he said softly.
The two heavy front doors opened into a small foyer which held a couple of orange plastic couches. A ten-foot wide hall led straight back from this front area. To the left and right equally wide hallways ran toward the side and then turned toward the back of the building. The overhead lights were old fluorescent tubes shining feebly through yellowed plastic panels; the liver-colored linoleum floors, the beige walls, and the inadequate lighting didn’t exactly add to my sense of comfort. There was one other source of light down that long hallway; it came from the inset glass panels in the classroom and office doors along both walls. Glass that people could see through.
We walked down the hall toward the rear of the building. I found myself once again trying to look in all directions at once. There was but one lone student in sight, sitting against the wall outside a classroom, her head bent over an open book in her lap. She never even looked up as we approached and passed. The near desertion brought a small measure of comfort, but all of those doors were almost worse than if the hall had been packed with people. It was that lady-or-the-tiger feeling. What was going to leap out at any second and devour us? We’d pass a door, frosted glass, a professor’s name stenciled on the door, and I’d hear the rumble of conversation, or see a shadow passing across the glass as someone moved between the light source and the door, and I would hold my breath waiting for the door to suddenly slam open, and it would be Beer Belly standing there, silhouetted against the light, gun in hand, raised to fire. But one by one, we passed those doors and they didn’t slam open, and I would breathe again until the next came into view.
The doors with clear panels, on the other hand, were almost comforting because they led into classrooms. In some rooms I could see students sitting at desks, in others they were propped on stools beside laboratory benches like those that had been in my own undergrad classrooms. The flood of nostalgia flowed back. Andrew paused in a shadow to look in at a professor in one of the rooms we were passing.
The woman stood at a blackboard, waving an arm as she sketched enthusiastically with a long piece of chalk. She slashed a long stroke across the board and the chalk snapped. The piece flew across, ricocheted off the lab bench running across the front of the room and landed at her feet. The students jumped slightly, but the professor never hesitated as she continued her lecture.
Andrew saw me watching him and grinned. “Dr. Danbury. She does so love the Krebs Cycle.” I guess I wasn’t the only one longing for old times.
We continued on, hurrying while trying not to appear to hurry. The main hall ended in a T intersecting with a corridor that lead to the left and right and connected with the halls on the sides of the building which ran back up to the front lobby. To the left, at the end, was a door marked ‘Stairs.’ To the right was a set of double doors with large clear glass panels. Below the glass was a sign: ‘Biology Storeroom, Hours 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.’
Andrew looked at his watch. “4:45,” he whispered. “Perfect. Bernie should be in the back.” We started toward the doors. “He shuts down the tank for the liquid nitrogen, rolls down the doors on the loading dock, starts locking up.” Andrew stared at the door. I nodded absently at his words, watching behind us, watching the doors we were passing. “You always had to catch him before 4:45 or by god you just didn’t get what you needed and that was it.” His eyes were fixed on the glass as he whispered. There was no movement. Nothing visible.
“Are you sure it’ll still be Bernie?” I whispered.
Andrew’s lips twitched. “Oh, yeah. I’m sure. ‘Even unto death’--and maybe after,” he whis
pered. “I think he’s got it worked out so that when he dies they’ll build a tomb for him under the linoleum in front of the supply counter.”
I smiled and nodded as I continued to look behind us, in front, to the sides. I was getting that itchy-crawly feeling in the middle of my back again.
About twenty feet from the doors I saw a movement behind the glass. I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything Andrew yanked me across the hall, spinning me through a swinging door. I barely saw the word ‘Men’ on the door before I came up against a cold metal bathroom stall. I looked around in dismay, then quickly checked for feet under the stall doors. Thank the patron saint of porcelain, there weren’t any.
“Andrew.”
He stood at the door, listening at the crack.
“Andrew, we’re in the Men’s Room.”
“Hush,” he whispered, “I know.”
“Okay,” I whispered back. “But if anyone comes in here, you’re going to have to explain.”
“Fine, now hush.” He waved a hand back at me, then stood, head bowed, listening.
I watched him for a moment, but then my eyes began to wander. After all, I’d never been in a Men’s Room. Well, technically I’d been in a Boy’s Room. In second grade, my best friend Maureen Benson had dared me to run through the Boy’s Room near Mr. Corkson’s science room because it had a door in the hall and another door on the other end that led into the playground. I had naturally double-dared Maureen back, and the two of us had run through, out the other end, straight into the arms of a playground supervisor. We’d spent an hour in the principal’s office after school and it would have been worth it except I hadn’t seen anything because I’d been running with my eyes closed.
I snuck a look at Andrew, and then started to move past the stalls to take a peek at what lay around the corner. It’s not that I thought men had anything truly special in this little sanctuary, but I had always been curious why it was one of their favorite places to read.
“Melanie? “Hey,” he whispered, “where are you going?”
I spun around, hands clasped behind my back. “Nowhere.”