Fool's Journey

by Comstock, Mary Chase

  "Don't, Mrs. Ruiz," Deirdre interrupted. She needed to think.

  With an obvious reluctance, Mrs. Ruiz set the receiver back in the cradle.

  Deirdre still sat on the sofa with the open box on her knees. She needed to think. She picked up the lid and closed it, placing her hands flat on top.

  Panda and Mrs. Ruiz exchanged a glance, but neither said a word. Deirdre knew what they were thinking: whoever had taken her hair also knew where she lived.

  They were right to be worried. This was serious. Any normal person would head for the telephone and call for help, but she knew too well where such a call would lead: investigation, the press, and eventual exposure. That was more perilous. Her simple life would be over and, with it, all the bright promises the future held. She wouldn't risk that for the devil himself.

  The minutes ticked silently by. Finally, Deirdre stood and walked to the window, one hand still playing with the ends of her shorn strands. The rain was coming down hard, and the premature dusk of autumn had begun to usher in the first twinkling of city lights. She wanted to be by herself, to sit with her confusion and translate it like a line in a stubborn poem.

  "Don't worry," she said as she turned to face Panda and Mrs. Ruiz. "I promise I'm not going to be stupid about this, but I think I'd be over-reacting to bother Mrs. Ruiz' nephew."

  "You're already being stupid," Panda fumed. "Look at this place!"

  She strode to the door and pounded it in several different places. "The door is hollow core. Sure there's a lock, but anyone with the strength of Winnie-the-Pooh could kick this thing off its hinges. Besides, there's just this flimsy security chain—I’ve got ankle bracelets stronger than this—and no peephole. I shudder to think how often you've opened that door to me without even asking who was there. You don't even have another door, so there's no escape route if somebody got in. Yet here you stand—"

  "You're right," Deirdre cut her off, keeping her voice calm and subdued. "I'll tell the landlord I want a deadbolt installed–"

  "Him!" Panda shuddered dramatically. "I'd forgotten about that guy. He's always given me the creeps. How do you know it's not him?"

  For the first time that afternoon, Deirdre felt like laughing. "Panda, only you would find Mr. Simmons creepy. He's a total innocent and he looks like Santa."

  "The eye of the beholder, I suppose," Panda muttered. "There’s something a little weird about Santa, too, if you ask me. Old fat guy. All those elves! Maybe I'm out in left field, but you can't be too careful. You ought to at least call the police. They might know something. Maybe this isn’t an isolated incident."

  An immediate sense of relief flooded over Deirdre. What if she herself wasn't a target in particular? What if she had been chosen at random? What if some psycho was running around Pike Place Market collecting hair samples? Cold comfort, but she'd take it.

  "Do you really think so?"

  "Either that or the Voodoo Poetry Society putting out a hit on the literary princess,” Panda said. “Just call the police. Doing nothing is playing with fire. It doesn't matter if this craziness was random or not."

  It did matter though, Deirdre thought, but she wasn't going to explain.

  "What would I tell the police?" Deirdre asked. "The whole thing sounds unlikely. Even if they believed me, I doubt a crime's been committed."

  "Assault and battery," Mrs. Ruiz supplied immediately. "I sit in on a couple of Manny's law classes last year."

  "Really, Mrs. Ruiz?" Panda asked, leaning forward. "Assault and battery?"

  "Sure." The little woman nodded her head wisely. "Assault—it happens every day. I raise my fist at you . . . that's assault. I don't even have to touch. If I do, we got battery. That's what they call general rule anyway. Easy. And for this, they charge big tuition. Another thing, too. They cut your hair, Deirdre. That means scissors or a knife. Now maybe we got assault with deadly weapon."

  "If I'd known that," Panda said, laughing, "I'd have had my last hairdresser locked up.

  “What are you going to do, Deirdre?" she asked more soberly.

  Deirdre fought to convey composure. She had to think clearly, but it was so hard, especially with Panda harping at her. She wanted to be alone, to drop her facade and rail against the universe for a while.

  As if in answer to her thoughts, Mrs. Ruiz said quietly, "I think we better go, Panda. Deirdre's a smart girl. She's got a Ph.D., right? She knows what to do."

  "Hey, I've got a Ph.D., too," Panda snorted. "That's not a guarantee of anything but the stomach to stick around a university for years at a time." She gave Deirdre a hard look, "If you have the sense God gave a radish you ought to get out of this place—tonight. Come over to my place."

  "I'm not that scared." Deirdre turned to Mrs. Ruiz. "You wouldn’t understand unless you’d seen her apartment. I’m always expecting to find a shrunken head in the sugar bowl."

  "Come on, Deirdre," Panda protested. "I swear it's not that bad, Mrs. Ruiz. It's just the lifestyle that goes with the job. Besides, I've gotten rid of about half of the artifacts from my last study."

  "Gotten rid of them?" Deirdre asked.

  "In a manner of speaking,” Panda hedged. "I had to rent a storage unit. I wrote it into my last grant proposal. Anyway, the guest bed looks a little less like a sacrificial altar than it did last time you were there. Come on, Deirdre," she urged. "We can have a slumber party."

  "You, me and the rest of the urban legends?" Deirdre shook her head. "Not tonight."

  "Aw, come on! I'll turn on the tape recorder and we can listen to some ghost stories I collected at a junior high last Halloween. You wouldn't believe how many of them think their school is haunted."

  "You don't believe in ghosts, Panda?" Mrs. Ruiz asked, her eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch.

  "I believe in them, all right, Mrs. Ruiz. What I can't accept is the notion that anyone would haunt a junior high school. A castle, maybe. A locker room, nope. What do you say, Deirdre? I’m leaving for that conference in New Orleans in the morning and you could have the whole place to yourself for a few days. I’d feel so much better if you got out of here."

  Deirdre sighed. It seemed clear that Panda was not going to give up on this. "Well," she said slowly, "I guess the main thing is that I'm not going to take any chances. If it will make you feel better, I suppose I could call the non-emergency number at the Police Department."

  "Good start,” Panda said. “But what about coming home with me?"

  "Thanks, Panda, but I've got work to do for tomorrow. I've got classes to prepare for. My computer's here and I can't get anything done without my word processor. You know what that’s like. I can’t write legibly in longhand anymore. I promise, I'll just stay here and I won't answer the door."

  "Even so. . ." Panda began tentatively.

  "And, if you don't mind, Mrs. Ruiz," Deirdre went on, "I guess I would appreciate it if you'd call your nephew. Maybe he can give me a few ideas for making this place more secure. It would be nice to have someone I can talk to informally."

  "I call him from my next job, Deirdre," Mrs. Ruiz promised. "I gotta go now. You be careful. I call you tomorrow. You come too, Panda. Deirdre needs to be alone."

  "Okay," Panda grumbled. "I know when I'm not wanted. You want my pepper mace?" She began to rummage in the depths of her purse.

  Deirdre groaned. "Enjoy New Orleans and don't worry about me. I'll be sure to lock my door."

  "Push a chair up against it," Panda added.

  "Right," Deirdre smiled. "And scatter some broken glass on the carpet, set up a trip wire…

  "Okay, okay, Deirdre. While you're at it, be sure to plug in your electric knife by the bedside." Panda laughed and gave Deirdre's arm a little squeeze. "I'm glad to see you've got your sense of humor back. You scared me a little. I’ll bring you back some good magic."

  VI.

  Deirdre shut the door behind them and leaned her forehead against it. Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length. Hers had lasted all of three days.r />
  She let her face relax, and felt the expression of forced composure give way at once to the apprehension beneath its surface. All her life, survival had dictated that she disguise her jagged thoughts with a pleasant demeanor. Wearing a bright mask helped her negotiate the uncomprehending world. It had become routine, and today it had stood her in good stead.

  Regardless of her promise to Panda, she had no intention of calling the police. She'd had sufficient dealings with them to last a lifetime. If Panda asked her about the call, as Deirdre knew she would, she'd just say they treated the incident with routine indifference. The police were busy, no one had been harmed, etc., etc.

  She'd make it believable. Layers of lies protected her secrets and she was a pro by now.

  Ever since she had discovered the contents of the package, the image of her hair tangled in the wreath of flowers had wound through her thoughts. Even with her back turned to the room, she was aware of the box, still sitting on the coffee table. What hands had done the weaving? What mind had devised such a nightmare as today had been?

  Her hair.

  What sort of souvenir had it become?

  It had been a long time, but she could still hear the echoes of a psychology class she took as an undergraduate. The professor was always going on about the symbolic nature of hair. According to him, it was usually associated in some way with sexuality, desire…control.

  What someone did with another person's hair was evidence of the ways they wanted to control them. Some mothers cried the first time their baby had a haircut. They saved the clippings in little envelopes or taped locks of hair inside the baby book. They wanted them to stay babies. There were men who became outraged if their wives changed their hairstyle without permission. They wanted to be the creator of the woman. Not to mention the morbid Victorians who made bracelets and brooches from the hair of dead relatives.

  Yes, hair was a means of controlling a person. In her own past, it had played a small but significant part. That's why today's incident had rattled her so thoroughly. The attack itself was almost nothing in comparison to the sensation of someone touching her hair. Far worse demons haunted her, but memories of her hair being pulled or petted all those years ago brought the bile to her throat. Always, it had been the prelude to violation. And then, that final night…

  Now, someone had cut her hair again.

  That was menacing enough, but to be followed home, to make sure she continued to be scared…

  She returned to the sofa and sat down. Before her on the table lay the letter announcing the Dovinger Prize. Next to it was the teaching file she'd begun to compile for the tenure committee. Then, the box with the wreath. One, two, three. Things happen in threes. Dreams and nightmares, perhaps even fate, loomed here as they did in the tarot cards.

  The Dovinger prize had come first, out of the blue, an affirmation that good could come from evil. The poems that had prompted her book, Porphyria's Revenge, were deeply personal, but so couched in metaphor and symbol no one would ever guess the personal hell lay behind them. The title would suggest a mere response to Browning's poem of misogyny, and titles went a long ways toward guiding a reader's perception of text. Receiving the Dovinger meant that her poems would be read, and her story told, however obliquely.

  Tenure was another thing altogether. She had never known a happy home, but at least Northwest University was the place where she was comfortable. A strange attribute of universities was that people knew less and less about one another as time passed. Professors were described by what they taught. She's in the Americanist position. He's our medievalist. Deirdre was the Poet in Residence. The title appealed to her: it implied habitation. Now, with tenure, she could stay and teach and make her place in the world.

  But the hair cutting, the wreath. What did they mean in this series of three, if anything at all? She picked up the box. After a moment, she opened it and forced herself to touch the wreath and the hair. She wondered if this wreath was the very one she had tried on. It looked the same, but there was no way of telling.

  And the hair. One long, curling tress. Gingerly, she felt the spot where it had been cut away. Whoever had done this had only used a bit of what they'd taken. What would they do with the rest?

  It didn't matter. A bad moment in time. A line gone wrong and crossed out. She would not let this be significant.

  VII.

  Deirdre arrived on campus early the next morning and made her way to her office, a thin-walled former closet that marked her as an untenured assistant.

  As she shut the door, she could feel the words piling up inside her almost palpably. She hadn't been able to write last night. Images had swirled through her head all night—the flower wreath, tarot cards, the lock of hair.

  Now, finally, they crystallized into words.

  She pulled a yellow legal pad from the piles of papers on her desk, paused a moment, then scrawled:

  My scissors itch for more than hair

  and you must pray – if fiends can pray

  – for angels smite with wrathful care

  She smiled, pleased with her work. Writing felt good. It energized her, helped her take control.

  As was often the case, the act of writing energized her, helped her take control. The telephone had rung only once—just Panda checking on her before she left town. No one had even knocked at her door. Through the thin walls, though, she could hear that her colleagues on either side had arrived and there was conversation in the hall. She stretched and looked at her watch. It was time to venture out.

  Deirdre opened the door and glanced down the long corridor in both directions. Several students sat along the narrow corridor waiting to talk to professors, their papers strewn about them. Stepping through this obstacle course, she continued to the English Department office. Just inside the doorway, she stopped to check her mail. There were the usual memos from the administration, various committee reports, catalogues from publishing companies. Nothing menacing. She didn't realize until she actually sifted the mundane correspondence that she had been afraid of finding something ominous.

  "Well, here's our little Emily Dickinson, bright and early.” Freemont Willard’s patronizing voice spoke from behind her. . She bit the insides of her cheeks to check a bad-tempered retort.

  "Good morning, Freemont," she replied without looking up. Of all the people she might have run into, Willard was the worst. Regardless of Northwest University's scholarly reputation, Willard's lackluster performance was legendary. He had published poetry in several good journals during the early days of his career, but he had produced very little in the last ten years. Despite Deirdre's junior status on the faculty, the volume and quality of her own work easily outshone his. Now the Dovinger would snuff out his tiny bit of fame like a guttering candle.

  It was impossible to feel sorry for him, though. She couldn't remember a time in the past three years when his comments to her had pertained to anything other than her appearance. Today, she had pulled her hair back into a severe twist to hide its unevenness, and she knew he would say something.

  "You really mustn't hide your pretty locks."

  God! Sometimes she hated being right.

  "What a shame!" he continued in his oil slick tone, as he placed one large hand on the top of her head and caressed it slowly. His hand stopped at her bare neck and stayed there for a few seconds.

  "Don't do that," she said, shaking his hand away and turning to face him. Willard had by now stepped back. His hands rested innocently in his pockets, and his lips eased back in a smiling leer. He should have stood over six feet tall, but he slouched at five foot ten.

  Willard continued to beam down at her.

  "I really didn't mean anything by it, dear Emily,’ he said. “But it is so tempting. I can't think why, but the roundness of it, the sheen, as it were, reminds me of the smiling Buddha. What is he called? Hoti, I think. I rub his belly for luck, you know." He winked slowly.

  Deirdre’s face grew hot. She wanted to say, 'Fuck you,
Freemont.' But it was a chance she was not going to take. Her future here was too important to give into such temptation. The Dovinger would carry plenty of weight, but tenure reviews traditionally provided a forum for vengeance. As a full professor, Freemont had a vote and she didn't want it to become a weapon.

  "You know, it's really very becoming," Willard went on, still smiling, his head cocked to one side.

  "Thank you, Freemont." One. Two. Three.

  "By the way, I've heard your thrilling news. The Dovinger Prize. What a big feather for such a little cap! And a treat for me as well: I'll be observing one of your classes this week. I've been asked to serve on your ad hoc tenure committee, you know."

  Deirdre froze. "No. I didn't know. I thought it was Michael and Veronica."

  "Well, I was a bit concerned." Willard lowered his voice to a confidential tone. "Michael's scholarship is confined, after all, to medieval studies. I felt him out about it, and as I suspected, he didn't really feel qualified to make judgments about writing pedagogy. So, naturally, I volunteered to take you on. Just as a favor, you know."

  Willard widened his smile a fraction then and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You have no idea how I miss teaching poetry. You'll be giving me a vicarious thrill. I'll just need to take a peek or two at your classes, and after the observation is over, I'd like for us to have a tête à tête. Perhaps we can discuss this famous approach to teaching of yours I've heard so much about. In fact, Deirdre, " he said, looping a long arm over her shoulder, "why don't I cook dinner for you? A celebration in your honor. You'll like my place. It will remind you of a poem. In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn a stately pleasure dome decree."

  A moment later, Deirdre watched numbly as Freemont Willard disappeared down the hall. "Pompous ass," she muttered.

  English department politics were known for their viciousness throughout academe, but at Northwest University, they generally translated into petty rivalries and apathetic innuendo. This was different—something was up. That much was clear.