by Clea Simon
‘We are extremely disappointed in you.’ Dulcie heard a voice behind her and jumped. A grey-haired man in a blue suit was speaking. ‘We gave you our trust, our every confidence.’
There it was again. Trust. She took a breath in order to respond – and he walked past her. Taking Sally Putnam by the upper arm, he led her away from the elevator, and back through the crowd where, Dulcie could now see, two uniformed policemen waited. As if noticing them all for the first time, the suit turned back toward the crowd. ‘There’s nothing to see here. Please go back to your workstations.’
As the two uniformed policemen marched Sally Putnam out, Dulcie felt a hand on her own shoulder. Still spooked, she whirled around. There stood the blonder of the two security guards, looking like a refrigerator in a suit. She stepped back, knowing that flight was futile. But he was smiling.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ She looked up at the square jaw, the thick neck, and shook her head. She’d remember a suit that large.
‘English 10. My freshman year. You taught my section.’ Dulcie racked her brain. Had there been a football player in one of her classes a few years ago? Those big conference courses drew all types. ‘I wasn’t there as much as I should have been.’ He cleared his throat and had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘But I remember you. You managed to make those Puritan sermons fun. Anyway, I’m here now.’
Dulcie nodded, a vague image of a younger, and possibly even bigger version of the blond refrigerator, his feet up on his desk, coming to mind. ‘You’re working as a guard?’
‘Management trainee.’ He shook his head. His neck was still as wide as his jaw. ‘But they want us to learn the entire business, so I’m doing security this month.’
A light began to dawn. ‘So, if you recognized me . . .’
‘I just couldn’t see you as the embezzling hacker type. For starters, I doubted you had the computer expertise. No offense.’ He held up palms that could have doubled as dinner plates, and for the first time she saw the engraved Harvard ring on his right hand. ‘But when you said your sweater had been stolen, I started thinking: what was a senior HR manager doing up in data entry?’
Dulcie smiled up at him. ‘You know, after that sweater went missing, my mother told me, anyone who steals a sweater is capable of doing anything. I didn’t believe her.’
‘Smart woman, your mom. You must take after her.’ While Dulcie was mulling over that bombshell, the guard reached out his meaty paw. ‘I’m Ethan, by the way.’
‘Dulcie Schwartz. But you know that.’ They shook. His grip was surprisingly gentle. ‘Hey, any chance I can look in her office? Maybe my sweater’s still there.’
‘You can’t.’ His smile became broader. ‘But I can. Why don’t you give me your number, and I’ll let you know what I find.’
Nobody seemed to mind when Dulcie picked up her day’s worth of files and took them back to her old workstation. But neither she nor Joanie got much work done as they caught each other up on their various adventures.
‘Ricky told me something was up with the old Snake, but he’d have been fired if anything had leaked out,’ Joanie confided. ‘I was trying to tell you not to worry.’
‘And all you did was spook me more.’ Dulcie shook her head in disbelief.
‘Well, you were being investigated for murder. And more computer hacking. Did they ever figure out how that virus got in?’
‘It was the Duke virus. Chris knew that.’ She liked saying his name. ‘Tim probably got a copy from one of his old prep school buddies. But he needed Stacia to put it into the Harvard system. We still don’t know why she used my computer – maybe she did want to implicate me. Maybe she just wanted to muddy the waters, so to speak. She says it was Tim’s idea, so who knows?’
‘Men.’ Joanie rolled her chair closer. ‘Maybe he was claiming you as his own. Marking you.’
‘Ew.’ Joanie could never know how distasteful that idea was. ‘If he pissed anywhere . . .’
Joanie laughed. ‘Hey, you seem to have it, girl. I noticed that big hunk downstairs chatting with you.’
‘Oh, I’m taken, I think.’ Dulcie thought back to the evening before. It had ended with a kiss, but she knew both she and Chris were looking forward to more.
‘Hey, don’t limit your options just yet. And there’s still the pretty rich boy, too.’
‘You should talk.’ Dulcie had seen the way Joanie looked at Ricky. ‘How long have you known Ricky?’
‘A couple of weeks at least.’ Joanie looked around. ‘And besides, his red hair looks so good against black.’
With very little actual data entry, the day flew by, and Dulcie realized with regret that her tenure at Priority was coming to an end.
‘Hey, two more weeks and I start classes.’ They were walking to the elevators in a building that had gone unnaturally quiet.
‘And that’s a good thing?’ Joanie was a student at UMass.
‘Yeah,’ said Dulcie, with assurance, ‘it is. I’ve got a thesis to write.’
Life seemed to be repeating itself, therefore, when Dulcie walked up her own street and saw Helene sitting on the stoop, holding a very young black-and-white kitten.
‘Hey, Helene, what’s up?’ She looked down the street. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Not exactly, child.’ Helene’s broad face looked worried. In her hands, the tiny kitten squirmed to be set free.
‘What’s the problem?’ Dulcie sat beside her neighbor and automatically reached out for the kitten. The feisty little beast batted at her hand. ‘Little fighter!’
‘It’s this little girl, actually. My buddy Jackie adopted her last week. Just fell hard. But it turns out she’s allergic and her boy has asthma. She’s heartbroken, but she’s got to give her up.’
‘Oh, that’s too bad.’ The kitten was exploring Dulcie’s shirt, attempting a claw-by-claw ascent. ‘But this little gal’s so young and cute, someone else will take her.’
Helen shook her head. ‘They had an outbreak of distemper at the shelter and they’re not accepting any new animals, not unless they’re old enough to be vaccinated. It would be a death sentence, and so, well, I was wondering, would you be interested? Even if you could just foster her until she’s old enough to get her shots.’
‘Foster a kitten?’ Dulcie could feel the minuscule claws through her shirt. The kitten was making headway – until it lost its grip and fell to her lap. ‘Yeah, maybe I could do that.’
As Dulcie carried the kitten into her apartment, she could see her machine had flicked on. A familiar voice was leaving a message.
‘Dulcie, I’m so sorry I’ve been out of touch. You wouldn’t believe what’s happened.’
‘Suze?’ Dulcie picked up. ‘Is that you? It’s been so long. Ow.’ She detached the kitten from her chest and set it on the floor to explore. ‘I caught a murderer.’
‘I knew you would.’ Suze sounded distracted. ‘And I’ve got my own news, too.’
‘OK, you first.’ Dulcie knew her friend had to get something off her chest. Besides, she had to figure out a way to tell Suze about Chris.
‘I’m in love!’
Dulcie stepped back in surprise – and narrowly missed the kitten. ‘Whoa! Uh, I mean, that’s great.’ She hopped over to the chair. ‘Who is he? And how did this happen?’
‘Well, you remember how I was spending all those hours in the library?’
Dulcie made an appropriate noise and reached to pet the kitten.
‘There was a systems analyst, you know, working with their computers, and he was really so helpful. His name is Ariano.’
‘Ariano – oh! Sorry, I just got bit.’ Dulcie withdrew her hand. She was going to have to get some cat toys. And a litter box. And cat food. And— ‘Hey, Suze, you’re not staying down there, are you? I really don’t want to deal with another room-mate!’
Now it was Suze’s turn to laugh. ‘No way. One summer here was enough! But Ariano is transferring. He’s got a job at Harvard.’
The next two weeks flew by, partly because Dulcie saw Chris almost every night. In addition to burritos, good coffee, and libraries, the two discovered a shared love of old movies. Including, thought Dulcie a bit smugly, the really romantic ones that Jonah had never liked. Even before the semester started, she’d found time to type up her notes, and her adviser was optimistic that ‘“Jealous Spirits”: A New Reading of The Ravages of Umbria’ would be publishable. Dulcie knew that soon she’d be spending hours on end back in the stacks, pulling out diaries and letters to support her claim that the unknown author had been leaving clues with both wit and language. But that was something to look forward to, rather than fear. The stacks were her own again, not an escape, but a scholar’s cave, where ideas were born and nurtured.
Her one regret, as summer turned to fall, was that Mr Grey seemed to have disappeared.
‘Maybe he was only there when I needed him,’ she suggested to Suze one Sunday morning over coffee. It was a rare weekend morning when both women were alone, and a great chance to catch up.
‘Maybe it was the fact that you needed him to be there.’ Suze let the idea hang as she poured them both a refill. ‘I mean, cats are strange beings. Maybe,’ her voice grew soft, ‘he just lives on in your heart.’
‘Maybe.’ The morning seemed a little dimmer after that, but just then the kitten started to climb up Dulcie’s leg, demanding attention and just a bit of the butter from her toast.
‘Do you think it was all in my mind?’ she asked Chris later that day. It had taken a while for her to confess about her ghostly companion. But he’d taken it in his stride, pointing out that such a phantom feline would fit with her academic discipline. ‘Do you think I made it all up?’
‘You didn’t make up the murder, and something helped you through that.’ He reached for her. ‘Something besides me, that is.’
Sunday nights were the quietest time for the computer labs, so Chris left soon after. Suze was downstairs watching Mystery on TV and Dulcie thought about joining her.
‘Kitten, where are you?’ She’d still not entirely taken to the idea of adopting the little tuxedo cat. But increasingly she was thinking it might be time, soon, to give up and grant the little animal her own name. She needed more friends in her life, the kind she could trust. ‘Kitten?’
She heard a voice. Had Suze come upstairs? But no, this was a young voice, a girl’s, and it was in the middle of a conversation.
I’m working at it, really! I’m using all four paws and purring as loud as I can.
I know you are, little one. The answering voice was male, adult, and very familiar. She just takes time to come around to new ideas. She’s a human, after all. And they can be very stubborn. But she’ll learn, little one. She’ll learn.