The Inferno Collection

by Jacqueline Seewald

  “I don’t want you getting in trouble with your boss. He makes me uneasy. I don’t trust him.”

  “Neither do I, but he does know everything that goes on at the library. He’s very professional, even if he is a creep.”

  Lorette pursed her lips. “Just be careful what you say to him.”

  “Are you going to confide in me? Tell me something about this inferno collection you want me to find. What’s supposed to be in it? Do you know?”

  Lorette turned away from her. “Drop the whole thing. Forget I asked about it, will you?”

  Kim found Lorette’s behavior infuriating. Maybe she should stop making any attempt to involve herself. If Lorette did not trust her enough to confide in her fully, there really was no point in continuing. She picked up the pizza and drove back to the apartment without further discussion.

  Don and Jim were discussing Shakespeare when they returned to the apartment and she was glad they at least seemed to be getting along well. Her mind was preoccupied as she got the salad from the refrigerator.

  The two men did most of the talking through dinner, mostly to each other. Lorette ate little and said less. Kim wasn’t feeling very sociable herself.

  “I’d like the two of you to be the first to know that I proposed to Lorette today. I asked her to marry me right and proper.” Jim looked very pleased with himself.

  Lorette appeared unhappy, and Kim could not help but wonder if that was the distraction that had caused her to forget to bring the threatening note.

  “Congratulations,” Don Bernard said, his voice cool.

  “I wish you hadn’t said anything just yet,” Lorette said, her eyes lowered.

  “I was fairly bursting with the news, darlin’. Besides, Kim is your friend. No need for us to keep it a secret, is there?”

  Lorette did not answer. Kim went out to the kitchen and saw to the coffee. Lorette joined her.

  “Are you going to accept?”

  Lorette trained her gaze on the red-checkered linoleum. “I don’t know yet. Living together is one thing. Marriage is something quite different.”

  They didn’t speak about it again, and soon after everyone had been served their cake and coffee, Lorette complained of feeling exhausted. Jim would have gladly lingered, but Lorette told him that her head was pounding and they quickly left with a brief apology.

  After the other two had gone, Don opened the liqueur he’d brought and poured them both a small measure in juice glasses.

  “Sorry about not having wine glasses,” she told him. “I rarely drink or have company.”

  “That’s all right. Come sit down on the couch with me and relax a little. You seemed tense tonight.”

  “I’m not used to playing hostess. I guess it shows.”

  He gave her that charming smile of his, showing his dimpled cheek to advantage. “This peach brandy will help. I also give an excellent massage.”

  “I think the brandy will do for right now,” she said and took a sip, letting the heat of it burn from her throat to her stomach.

  “She’s going to turn him down,” Don said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t think she’s capable of committing herself.”

  “I hope you’re wrong. Jim seems terribly nice.”

  Don drank some more of the liqueur slowly and thoughtfully. “He does have his head on straight which is more than I can say for a lot of other people.”

  “Meaning Lorette?”

  When he didn’t answer, she continued. “Why don’t you like her? You gave me the initial impression that you thought highly of her.”

  “I do as a student. She’s very bright and an excellent writer.”

  “But?”

  He shrugged. “A gentleman never tells.”

  She felt suddenly awkward. “Sorry, I did have a sense that you and she had a personal relationship.”

  “Over and done with nearly a year ago and not at all memorable. I’d rather talk about you than Lorette. I was pleased but also surprised when you asked me over here tonight.”

  “We are friends.”

  His arms moved to her shoulders. “You are a very attractive woman, although you do your best to hide it. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather get to know better. But I’ve always felt that you wanted to keep our relationship entirely platonic. I can respect that, however…” He stopped speaking, leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.

  It was not an unpleasant sensation. He tasted of alcohol, coffee, and cake. His kiss deepened and the mixed flavors gave an exotic quality to the evocation. She sighed, allowing herself the luxury of enjoying this intimacy. His mouth opened to hers and his hands began to move ever so gently over her body. Then suddenly, old thoughts and feelings took hold of her, and she pushed him away and got up from the sofa.

  “‘Had we but world enough and time, this coyness, lady, were no crime.’”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry; I can’t.”

  “Can’t allow yourself to feel more than friendship for me?”

  “For any man.”

  “Why not?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not something I can discuss.”

  He looked at her with concern. “Can’t or won’t? All right, we’ll leave things as they are for now. I value you too much to press you.”

  He was out the door in a matter of minutes, leaving behind the wonderful male scent of his after-shave. She picked up his glass, took a sip from it, put it down again on the end table, and willed herself not to cry.

  “Damn you, Carl! Stop haunting me!”

  FIVE

  On Sunday morning, Kim woke up feeling miserable, both physically and emotionally. Her throat ached, but even worse was the knowledge that her tentative efforts to host a casual dinner party had been a fiasco. She hadn’t even gotten to examine Lorette’s threatening letter, and she’d probably ruined her friendship with Don Bernard by inviting him over and sending mixed signals. In short, everything she’d done was wrong. She felt woefully inadequate.

  No, she was not going to continue to think this way! It wouldn’t change anything and she would just hurt herself. She was thinking with Karen’s mind again. Kim Reynolds did not think negative thoughts. Kim Reynolds looked for solutions, for ways to set matters right. No loser mentality. Our fate is in ourselves, not in our stars. There would be no more self-pity, no defeatist attitude.

  She closed her eyes against the light; under her coffined lids, patterns of red and green dots formed against the darkness. She willed herself to relax and rest but could not. Slipping from the sofa bed, she retrieved her robe and walked into the kitchen area. When upset, she found it best to keep active. She busied herself boiling water for instant coffee and cutting an orange into quarters.

  Sunday morning—coffee and oranges in a sunny chair—Death, the mother of beauty. For some unaccountable reason, that line of poetry caused a chill to slither down her back. She drank her instant coffee thoughtfully.

  Kim knew she ought to call, ought to make arrangements to see Ma. But she picked up a romantic suspense novel instead and buried herself in it for more than an hour, fully aware that it was cowardly and foolish to avoid the inevitable. Eventually, she made the phone call. The phone rang several times before it was picked up. She found herself hoping that it would not be answered, then hated herself for thinking that way. The conversation was brief and strained. It was agreed that she would come by in the afternoon.

  The drive to the beach brought back many memories. The old house was very much as she remembered it, weedy lawn with sandy places, the house badly in need of a paint job. It had been over a year since she’d been back, although they lived not more than a half hour apart.

  Ma looked older, her hair grayer, lines etched in her forehead. “How’s my girl?” she asked.

  The question made Kim ache inside. “Fine,” she said.

  “I’m looking forward to Florida. It’s lonely here.”

  She wondered for a moment if Ma
meant to make her feel guilty but decided that wasn’t like her. Once Ma had friends, but they’d turned away. That was so often the way when bad things happened.

  “I went to the cemetery yesterday, just to make sure his grave was tended. I wish you’d come sometime.”

  “I hate cemeteries.” She didn’t say that she hated him, although that was the truth.

  “You see the ghosts?”

  “Sometimes I see them. Sometimes I just hear them.”

  Ma sighed. “Just like your grandma. I’m sorry you’ve been cursed with her awareness.”

  “It’s not a bad thing when I can use it to help other people. Trouble is, I can’t always depend on it. Sometimes, it’s there with me. Lots of times it’s not. I never really know. It’s just not reliable.”

  At least, she could talk openly about it with Ma. She was cautious not to discuss it with other people. How do you explain that you have a form of psychic ability, a kind of intuition? They’d think she was mad, eccentric at the very least, a few slices short of a loaf.

  There was an awkward moment of silence.

  “Guess we don’t have very much to say to each other anymore, do we? What a shame that is.” Ma looked so sad, Kim wanted to comfort her.

  Instead she said: “I’d like to look at the old things.”

  “Sure. I’ve kept your room exactly the way it was when you left for good. Always thought you might come back someday.”

  Memories rushed through Kim’s mind. The full scholarship she’d earned had allowed her to live away as an undergraduate. It had freed her. Summers, she managed to work for the college. But holidays had been difficult. She recalled the day she’d started her first teaching job and could afford to leave home for good. She could remember the immense sense of relief that had permeated every part of her being. The ghosts wouldn’t haunt her anymore.

  Ma allowed her to go to the room by herself, which she appreciated. She looked around and saw that everything had indeed been kept neat and clean, just the way it once was when she resided there. Even some of the old clothes were in the closet, the ones she’d left behind. But as she looked through the dresser drawers and the closet, she realized that these things belonged to Karen. They had no part in her present life.

  However, there was something that she wanted, but she wasn’t sure that Ma would let her have it. She decided to ask anyway. Ma was in the living room dusting the old family pictures when Kim came into the room.

  “I don’t want anything from my old room.”

  “Not even the high school yearbook?”

  “No, not even that. But there are a few things in the attic.”

  Ma’s expression immediately changed; she looked closed and wary. “What would you want up there? There’s only dust and things from a time you weren’t even born.”

  Ma had never liked her being there. It seemed some things never changed.

  “I just want to look around a little.”

  “There’s loose floorboards. It could be dangerous.”

  “I’m a grown woman, Ma. I’ll be careful.”

  “What are you looking for? Maybe I can find it.”

  “I’m not sure. I just want to have a look before you throw it all away.”

  Ma was right about it being dusty in the attic. It was the one place Ma rarely cared to clean. Sometimes as a child, Kim would sneak up to the attic to play. She’d go through the old trunk of clothes, ancient things that had belonged to her grandparents. It was fun trying on the clothes and pretending she lived in those long-ago times.

  When she was fifteen, she found out about Jen. Once in a while people, mostly relatives, mentioned Jen. Kim never thought much about her. Who thinks to ask about someone who’s been dead so many years? Besides, Ma always looked so sad and unhappy when people mentioned her.

  But one day when she was playing in the attic, she’d found an old book. It turned out to be a diary. She’d begun reading it out of curiosity. The diary, it turned out, had belonged to Jen, Ma’s younger sister, the one who’d died so long ago. The interesting thing about it was that Jen had started writing it when she was only fourteen. Jen stopped writing it at fifteen, the same age that Kim had been when she discovered it. She left it in the attic and read it slowly, a little at a time, until she’d finished it. By then, Jen was very real to her.

  She began asking questions and getting unsatisfactory answers. Ma didn’t like her asking, that was certain. Now all she wanted was to find the diary and take it with her. She wanted to read it all over again, to make Jen come alive once more. She went through the old trunk where the diary used to be, but it was not there. She looked through old books and an unpainted desk, but still there was nothing.

  Downstairs, she confronted Ma. “I was looking for Jen’s diary.”

  “You could have asked in the first place if that was all you wanted from here.” There was an accusatory note in her mother’s voice.

  “May I have it?” Kim kept her own tone of voice calm and even.

  “If I find it.”

  “Ma, you always know where everything is.”

  “Carl might have thrown it out.” They looked at each other, exchanging understandings.

  She had no desire to talk about him, not now, not ever again. Someday she might have to, but not today.

  “If you find it, would you please call me? I really want to have it.”

  “Why does it matter?” Ma asked, her eyes searching.

  “I don’t know, it just does.”

  “Sad memories are best tucked away and forgotten like old clothes that don’t fit anymore.”

  “I’ve tried. I changed my life as best I could.”

  Ma took her hand. “No, you closed me out, and you closed away who you were and what you felt. That wasn’t right, Karen. I’ll look for Jen’s book. I promise to call you if I find it. I guess it’s only right that you should have it. You are a lot like she was in many ways.” Ma moved toward her, but Kim didn’t want to be embraced, so she quickly said goodbye and departed. If she had been in that house another moment, she would have broken down and cried.

  * * * *

  On Tuesday morning, Lorette visited Kim at the library. Kim was surprised to see her so early in the morning.

  “I came to visit you before heading to class. I went to my mailbox yesterday and had an unpleasant surprise.”

  “Another of those nasty notes?”

  Lorette bit down on her lower lip. “In a manner of speaking. But a different kind of threat this time.” She handed the note to Kim. “This is from the Director of Graduate English Studies.”

  “Simpson-Watkins?”

  “The very same.” Lorette’s eyes looked puffy, as if she had been crying recently.

  “Did you see him?”

  “I did indeed. He said that he thinks it might be best if I finished my degree at another university.”

  Kim was shocked. “Did he offer some explanation for making the suggestion?”

  “He claimed that there were questions regarding my background. I asked him to explain, but he was reluctant. When I pursued the matter, he finally opened up enough to say that certain accusations had been made against me, serious ones. Then he reiterated that it would be best if I withdrew from the university as soon as possible. I’m afraid I really lost my temper. I told him about the threatening notes and the accident. I said I was determined to find out who my accusers and enemies were. But he wouldn’t say another word.”

  “I can’t believe anyone would do this to you.”

  “Neither can I. I’m furious! It’s totally absurd.” Her eyes burned with rage. “You know how I feel about having a meaningful career. I would do just about anything to become a professor. I’m thinking about taking legal action. I need that information about the inferno collection if you can get it. I know it’s here somewhere. Certain people are covering it up. Please try to find out about it, Kim, just be careful. I don’t want anyone threatening to harm you too.”

  “All r
ight, I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Teaching’s given me the greatest rush imaginable. When I connect with a class, when they get enthusiastic about what I’m teaching, it’s a greater high than drugs, alcohol, or even sex. I finally know what I want to do with my life. I can’t and won’t give that up. I’m going to fight what they’re trying to do to me!”

  Kim touched Lorette’s arm. “I understand. I’ll help you in any way I can.”

  “Thanks. That means a lot to me. I’ve got to get to class. I’ll call you soon.”

  Kim observed her supervisor at a distance watching them, his expression anything but friendly as Lorette swung out through the electronic doors. No doubt Kim would hear a lecture later about not engaging in personal conversations on university time. She let out a deep sigh and got back to the business of filling an interlibrary loan request.

  SIX

  On Thursday evening, the telephone rang around eleven o’clock. Kim was already asleep, having dozed off in front of the television set. She reached for the phone next to the sofa bed. Her hand was a little unsteady and the phone rang again before she could pick it up.

  “Hello,” she said in an uncertain voice still groggy with sleep.

  “Kim, it’s Lorette. Sorry if I woke you. I seem to be making a habit of it. I could call back tomorrow or maybe stop by the library.”

  “No, that’s okay. You can stop by and we can have lunch tomorrow, but what did you want to talk about?”

  “Just to tell you that I found something out. I might even be able to get this thing settled before I see you. I blundered miserably. Ironic, isn’t it? I, who tried so hard to court favor.”

  “You found out who’s behind the nastiness.”

  “I’ll tell you all I know tomorrow. I can’t talk too much now. I just had this fanciful notion. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I were like Sir Gawain and could receive a magic token that would protect and keep me safe from all harm?”

  To Kim, Lorette’s words seemed cryptic. “Where are you?”

  “I’m at my mother’s place. That’s one reason I don’t want to talk much at the moment. She might overhear. I don’t want her involved.”