Grey Expectations

by Clea Simon

  ‘If it were worth millions?’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘Thousands,’ she said, breaking it to him. ‘And only to a certain small group of collectors.’

  Her boyfriend visibly deflated. ‘That’s the trouble with the theory. We have what we call imperfect information,’ Chris concluded sadly. ‘I’m sorry. I guess that doesn’t help at all.’

  Beside them on the table, Esmé started to wash. Each wet tongue stroke slicked down a small area of fur, flatter and shinier than its neighbor until her pink tongue came through again, adding another damp patch to the overall black of her back. ‘No, it’s a good idea,’ said Dulcie, absent-mindedly. Watching the cat was making her think of something. The question was: what? ‘What do you call it when patterns repeat? Fractions, or something?’

  He smiled. ‘Almost. Fractals – the larger patterns are reproduced even in the smallest parts.’

  ‘That’s it, Chris.’ Dulcie was staring at the paper. ‘We’ve got a bunch of parts. We just need to figure out the larger patterns.’

  ‘Unless—’ He stopped himself.

  Dulcie looked up. So did the kitten. ‘What?’

  ‘Unless these are not connected at all.’ He put the pencil down and lifted his hands in surrender. ‘Maybe these are just random occurrences.’

  ‘That’s chaos, right?’

  ‘That’s one word for it,’ he said as Esmé pounced, sending the pencil flying.

  THIRTY-TWO

  She woke to the pounding of hooves, the carriage horses in their haste striking sparks ’gainst the frozen ground. The noise hadn’t woken her, though, dragged under by an exhaustion as thick as the fog that had shadow’d her early steps. ’Twas the hand, the touch of the stranger beside her, reaching rudely beneath her woolen cape. Searching for her purse, or to accost her person. Perhaps, she dared not think, to uncover the secret she held so close. Clutching the hem of her cape, she tore it from that noxious hand and turn’d away. None knew her here, none ever could. She had made her journey in darkness, without her name. She would not tear that veil of secrecy. She would not call out now.

  Their attempts at outlining the problem should have been discouraging; their conclusions had been so . . . inconclusive. But Dulcie woke energized. Maybe it was having Chris there. Maybe it was simply that she had hit bottom the day before, between the library and that essay. Whatever the reason, she bounced out of bed before the alarm went off, full of ideas.

  ‘Shh, Esmé, let’s not wake him.’ The cat looked similarly wide awake, and Dulcie felt a pang of regret as she tiptoed by her to the bathroom. ‘I can’t play now. I’m sorry.’

  The cat was still watching when she emerged and dressed, jumping up on the desk as she scrawled a note. Going to talk to Thorpe. Touch base later, it said. Theories were all well and good, but Dulcie hadn’t gotten this far by applying abstract rules to her research.

  ‘Start with what you know,’ she whispered to the cat as she reached for her sweater. ‘Then take it from there.’

  The little cat watched as she left, jumping up to the window to follow her progress down the sidewalk.

  ‘She’s so brave,’ Esmé said, her quiet voice just carrying to the grey shadow who had appeared at her side. ‘And so trusting.’

  ‘It’s her great strength, little one. And her great weakness.’

  ‘But, what if she doesn’t see—’

  Just then, Chris walked into the kitchen, Dulcie’s note in his hand. He joined Esmé at the window, in time to see Dulcie’s curls disappear beneath the new green leaves of a maple.

  ‘Good luck, sweetie,’ he murmured, under his breath, his hand on the smooth black back of the cat, and then went off to shower.

  ‘Mr Grey!’ The little tuxedo cat looked around, once she was alone. ‘This is scary. What can I do to help?’

  ‘What we always do, little one.’ The voice seemed to resonate out of no one place. ‘We keep the home safe. She’ll need that, once she returns.’

  Three blocks away, Dulcie heard none of this, although a certain satisfied warmth kept a bounce in her step. It must have been having Chris around – and getting a good night’s sleep – she decided, which made today’s course of action so obvious. Thorpe might not always respect her, but he trusted her. His actions yesterday, speaking up for her after the cellphone mishap, proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. She’d go to him and explain about the blue ticket, that there was no way she could have been in the Mildon the previous Friday. And she’d ask him to – well, not to intercede for her with Coffin, that would be asking too much of the skittish, balding man – but to advise her. That was, after all, his job.

  And then? Her steps grew a little heavier as she considered the other topic she ought to bring up with Thorpe. That essay, the one from the blue volume . . . . If she accepted the identification, and she had no reason to doubt it, then she had to acquiesce to the obvious conclusion. The author of The Ravages of Umbria was a fair-weather feminist. For whatever reason, she’d changed her tone here in the New World.

  Unless – Dulcie picked up speed again – the dream had meant something. A woman, pursued, traveling under cover – under a false name, maybe. Even though the morning was bright and sunny, Dulcie shivered, pulling her sweater around her. She felt that cold, the bone-jolting rhythm of the carriage ride. The woman in her dream had been exhausted, frozen, and scared. Dulcie flashed back to how she had felt the night before, when everything seemed allied against her. Was that all her dreams were? Gothic re-castings of her own daytime woes?

  No. She stopped short. Her dreams had led her in the right direction before. They were linked to her author, to her studies. And the woman in her dream had been defiant. Had been traveling on, despite fatigue and cold and fear. Dulcie felt her spirit. The woman in the carriage, whoever she had been, was not the kind to recant her forward views, no matter what she faced. She might use subterfuge, she might hide, but she would not give in. Dulcie remembered the stranger’s hand. She could feel how the dream woman had grabbed her cloak and roughly turned away, protecting herself and – and what?

  Although she stood on a sunny Cambridge sidewalk, Dulcie tried to place herself back on that frozen road. The woman had been hiding something in her cloak. Jewels or coins, most likely; a woman traveling alone, especially in the early 1800s, would need to be able to pay and pay well, if she expected to be left unmolested. Still, somehow Dulcie didn’t think that was all.

  ‘Why send me this dream if it’s just about her avoiding being robbed?’ Dulcie asked a squirrel. The grey beast had paused, halfway down a tree trunk. He didn’t respond, but he didn’t flee either, remaining in place as the distracted human started to walk again, wandering past his tree in a daze. ‘Was that scene – the groping hand – tied in with the essay in the blue volume? Part of her disguise? Was—’

  Dulcie stepped off the curb into a space between two vans, not seeing the Zipcar that had come careening around the far corner, its driver unaccustomed to the narrow Cambridge streets.

  Behind her, the squirrel lifted one white paw, reaching out as if to stop Dulcie as she passed between the vans, invisible from the road. The car wove, as the driver reached for a map. The squirrel screamed.

  And Dulcie’s phone rang, bringing her to a halt.

  ‘Lucy?’ She turned back toward the sidewalk, unaware of the squirrel, which was now panting with relief. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Nine a.m. Cambridge time meant six in the commune. And her mother, Dulcie knew, was always more of a daughter of Luna than a sun worshiper.

  ‘You do have the gift! I knew it.’ Her mother’s voice, crowing with pride, caused Dulcie to roll her eyes. The squirrel scurried away. ‘It’s no surprise.’

  ‘I’m not psychic, Lucy.’ Dulcie started off again, a little more aware of her surroundings. ‘I’m simply stating the obvious. It is early for you to be phoning me. Therefore, by deductive reasoning . . .’

  ‘Oh, Dulcie,’ her mother interrupted her. ‘Let’s no
t argue. That will only make this harder to tell you.’

  Dulcie bit her lip. Her mother never liked to call with bad news. Usually, it was up to Dulcie to find out what bills were overdue.

  ‘You still there, honey?’ Lucy, now that Dulcie thought about it, sounded anxious.

  ‘I’m here, Mom.’ Dulcie rarely used that word. Lucy had actively discouraged it when she was young, and Dulcie had chosen her mother’s given name over Squash Blossom, her totem at the time. ‘You can talk to me.’

  The big sigh that followed, echoing all the way from the Oregon forest, actually served to relax Dulcie. If her mother could go for the drama, whatever was bothering her wasn’t too bad.

  ‘Did you have a vision?’ Dulcie ventured. Though these had died down in recent years, Dulcie had heard her fill of them, most of them sounding suspiciously like the result of empty-nest syndrome. ‘Again?’

  ‘You say that like they’re common.’ Lucy had evidently regained her composure, so Dulcie waited. ‘But, yes, I did. And, Dulcie, it was horrible, just horrible.’

  Dulcie looked around. She was about ten blocks – maybe as many minutes – from the Square. There had to be a way to hurry her mother along. ‘Did it have a message?’ She tried the obvious. ‘Was there a message you needed to impart to me?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, there was.’ Lucy paused, but before Dulcie could prompt her again, she came back. ‘But it wasn’t just the message, Dulcie. It was what I saw.’

  ‘Oh?’ Dulcie was passing the big psych tower now and had to walk more carefully. Pale and distracted undergrads were queuing up at the entrance, while others leafed through books. Dulcie checked her watch. The last exams of the semester were about to start.

  ‘To start with, you were on a journey. Some kind of terrifying, desperate journey.’

  ‘Really?’ If it had been anyone else on the line, Dulcie would have interrupted to relate her own dream. Right now, she only wanted her mother to finish. She made her way through the crowd.

  ‘You were being carried away – that was key, away. Like you were being kidnapped. And there was a tower: it looked just like the Rider deck’s card for the tower. And so when I woke up, I did a reading for you—’

  ‘Wait a minute. Lucy?’ Dulcie paused as the worried undergrads milled about her. Right now, she envied them their focus. If she wasn’t careful, this call could go on all morning. ‘Was that it for the dream? That I was being carried away? Because if that’s all there was . . .’ She hesitated. How does an only child, on the brink of adulthood, break it to her mother that she is, in fact, leaving?

  ‘No, Dulcie, there was more. It’s just hard to say.’

  Dulcie waited, looking around for the deliverance she knew would not come.

  ‘It was—’

  ‘Hang on!’ Past a small clique of smokers, heads bent together, she’d seen blonde hair – a particular shade, almost white, cut in layers. ‘Lucy? Just a minute.’ She put the phone down as she leaped up, waving wildly in the air. ‘Trista! Trista!’

  Her mother was still talking. Dulcie could hear her voice as she pushed by the smokers. ‘Trista!’

  The head was retreating, caught up in a sea of brunettes. ‘Tris!’ Dulcie called again, silently cursing her lack of height – and her friend’s tendency to wear earbuds. ‘Damn.’ She had lost her. ‘Sorry, Lucy,’ she said, speaking once more into the phone. ‘What were you saying?’

  ‘I was saying that it was dark, Dulcie. There was a heavy darkness covering you.’

  There she was. The blonde, away from the crowd and turning toward Dulcie. Maybe coincidence, or maybe she had heard Dulcie’s call – heard the urgency if not the name. Only, now that she’d turned, Dulcie could see it wasn’t Trista. Younger, maybe a little more waiflike in her thinness, it was the undergrad who Dulcie had mistaken for her friend once before.

  ‘It was blood, Dulcie.’ Her mother’s voice reached her, tinny and far away. ‘You were covered in blood.’

  In that moment, the blonde saw Dulcie. They locked eyes, and Dulcie tried to smile. But with a look of horror, the younger girl turned and ran away.

  THIRTY-THREE

  ‘Lucy, I believe you.’ Dulcie was upset. Not at her mother’s dream, but at the strange interaction. ‘I promise. And you can tell me about my reading later. Tonight. I’ll call you. And, yes, I’ll be careful. Really, I have to go.’

  It could be anything, she thought. Maybe she – Dulcie – looked like someone the girl knew and wanted to avoid. Maybe she had a thing about grad students. Or Goths. Still, the timing – seeing that look of horror just as her mother related her nightmare – had left Dulcie spooked.

  ‘It’s this week,’ she said to herself as she turned the corner. ‘What else could go wrong?’ Then it hit her: she had forgotten to call ahead. Martin Thorpe might not seem to have much of a life, but it would have been a courtesy to request an appointment with the man who had so much control over her fate. Still, nine fifteen on a Friday, where else was he likely to be?

  ‘Hi, Dulcie!’ Nancy, the departmental secretary, sounded as chipper as always, her warm greeting going a long way to salve Dulcie’s frayed nerves. ‘I just put a fresh pot on.’

  Dulcie found herself smiling back at the plump brunette. Thorpe might be the acting head of the department, but Nancy was its warm heart. ‘Thanks, Nancy.’ She dropped her bag on a chair and headed for the coffee-maker. ‘Is Thorpe around?’

  Nancy shook her head. ‘You just missed him.’ She sounded as sad as she ever could. ‘He’s been all caught up in this Codex business.’

  ‘Great.’ The coffee tasted the same as always, ever so slightly burned. It was Dulcie’s taste buds that had changed. She put her mug down. ‘Is he coming back?’

  ‘I hope so.’ The secretary lowered her voice. ‘Professor Coffin came by just a few minutes ago. He just missed him, too. Only, he has an appointment.’

  ‘He’s up there now?’ Dulcie looked up the narrow steps, but Nancy was shaking her head.

  ‘Back conference room,’ she said, her voice still soft. ‘I didn’t think, what with everything going on, Mr Thorpe would want someone alone in his office.’

  ‘Smart.’ Nancy clearly had more spine than her boss, Dulcie thought as she reached for her bag. The thought was inspiring, or perhaps the caffeine kicked in then, because she paused and reconsidered. Thorpe wasn’t available, and when he did return, odds were that he’d be tied up with the bigwig now sitting in the back of the building. Maybe she should follow the secretary’s lead and confront Coffin directly.

  Dulcie pictured the large man. Somehow, she couldn’t see him relaxing in any of the worn Harvard chairs, and she wondered if he’d taken advantage of the back door to let himself out on to the small porch. It was turning into a lovely day, and the porch, under the shade of an ancient, if somewhat shabby, oak, was a comfortable place to sit. It was also – she was thinking – her territory. If she ever wanted to approach the fearsome curator, this would be the place to do it.

  ‘Do you think he’d mind if I joined him?’ she asked, and Nancy looked up, silent for once. ‘I just have a few quick questions.’

  ‘Oh, Dulcie, I don’t know.’ Her broad brow wrinkled. ‘Be careful. He’s – he’s not a nice man.’

  ‘I know.’ It helped to have someone else acknowledge it. But she was Dulcinea Schwartz, doctoral candidate. She was not going to be held back by fear of some overblown librarian.

  Taking another sip of her coffee for courage, she headed down the hallway. At this hour, the building was silent, and the gentle clicking of Nancy’s typing followed her all the way to the back.

  The door was closed, and she knocked softly. ‘Professor Coffin?’ There was no answer, and she knocked again. ‘Professor?’

  If the curator had in fact stepped out on to the porch, he probably wouldn’t hear her. Dulcie considered for a moment. She could go around the back, climb the steps by the big oak.

  No, that was what she would do if she were afr
aid, sneaking around like that. Besides, she was short enough already. If he were up on the porch and she approached from the ground, she’d feel like she was approaching a king. She knocked one more time.

  ‘Professor Coffin? It’s Dulcie Schwartz. Could I speak to you for a moment?’

  Nothing. She pushed open the door and stepped into the room, right into the puddle of blood.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  It was like a nightmare. A particularly vivid nightmare. And instead of a storm or a horse-drawn carriage, there was blood, a large pool of blood. And Dulcie was not, at that moment, a brave heroine, determined to continue her voyage. She was a goldfish on the counter. A breathless voice, gasping. Trying to scream.

  ‘Help,’ she whispered, the words barely squeaking from her throat. ‘Help? Help?’

  ‘Are you all right, dear?’ The words like a lifeline reached her. Nancy.

  Dulcie turned. ‘Help?’

  She had no clear recollection of what happened after that. Something in her face – or maybe its complete lack of any color – sent the secretary running, and the next thing Dulcie knew for sure, she was sitting in Nancy’s office, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. It hadn’t been cold that morning, not that she could remember, but her teeth wouldn’t stop chattering, and she pulled the blanket closer. The movement sparked a memory, a hand, but just then Nancy’s face appeared, hovering like a worried moon. ‘Drink this, dear.’

  Dulcie reached for the mug, but Nancy held on to it, steadying her. She smelled tea and tasted honey.

  ‘You need something in your system besides coffee. You’ve had a shock.’

  ‘His face. It was his face.’ Dulcie knew, in some vague way, that she wasn’t making sense. But if the uniformed policewoman standing beside Nancy insisted on asking her questions, she could only try to say what was on her mind. ‘It was . . . upside down.’