by Clea Simon
NINE
Lloyd’s return a short while later alerted Dulcie to the time. Her office hours were up, and as much as she would like to stay and read more of the mysterious manuscript, she knew she had a much less pleasant duty. Especially after this morning’s reprimand, if Martin Thorpe wanted to see her, she shouldn’t put it off.
With palpable regret, she powered down her laptop and shoved it in her bag. She hadn’t thought she’d made any noise, but she must have, because Lloyd looked up as she pushed her chair back.
‘You okay, Dulcie?’ His pale face showed friendly concern.
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ She tried to rustle a grin. ‘I’d just rather be reading than running off to Thorpe.’
‘Maybe he wants to apologize for this morning.’ Lloyd had an optimistic streak a mile wide.
‘Maybe.’ Dulcie couldn’t bear to disappoint him. ‘Only one way to find out.’
‘Hey, think of it this way,’ her friend said. ‘Maybe by next semester, he’ll be as dead as a Lake poet.’
With that cheering thought, she left the office. November, and it was as light out as it would get – if cloudy, grey, and damp counted as light. Still, Dulcie felt strangely ill at ease as she made her way toward the departmental headquarters. This was silly, she knew that. Even if her worst fears were true, she’d be fine during daylight. Wouldn’t she?
‘Excuse me!’ With her head down, deep in thought, she’d nearly walked into him. Tall, and rather wide, the man before her was staring at her as if she had suddenly turned into a fish. He was also blocking the sidewalk. ‘Do you mind?’ Dulcie didn’t want to be rude. She did, however, want to get this meeting over with.
‘Oh, sure.’ The broad man, made broader by his black wool overcoat, stepped aside. But as soon as Dulcie had passed him, she heard him sputter. ‘Uh, miss? Miss?’
She turned, but her annoyance faded as she saw his round white cheeks turn pink, as if from embarrassment. Despite a mop of glossy dark hair that matched the coat, he had the kind of face that made one think of antique dolls.
‘Yes?’ She looked up at him. He turned a deeper red.
‘Oh, no.’ He shook his head, the blue-black hair falling over his face. ‘I’m – It’s nothing.’
‘Fine.’ Dulcie turned away, determined to make up time.
‘It’s only …’ He kept talking. ‘You look so much like her.’
‘What?’ Dulcie spun around again to take in the big man. ‘Who? And who are you?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ The hand that pushed the hair back was white and looked soft. ‘I’m Josh, Josh Blakely. And I – you look like my girlfriend, Mina Love.’
Mina. Emily’s room-mate. ‘The woman who was attacked last night?’ As she said it, Dulcie remembered what Rogovoy had said – that the crime was probably ‘domestic.’ She stepped back.
‘Yes, but – but no.’ If his stammer was any indication, the pale stranger had correctly interpreted her slight retreat. ‘I know – I know what the cops think. I’ve been with them all morning. But they’re wrong.’
Dulcie shook her head. She knew Rogovoy. She didn’t know this man.
‘It wasn’t like that.’ He was still talking. ‘I mean, we’ve known each other forever. They just – they don’t know who did it yet, and they think, they think …’
‘Look, I’m sorry for your troubles. Really, I am.’ Dulcie knew what it felt like to be falsely accused. But this was not her problem. ‘I wish you the best.’
She turned. As she walked away, however, she heard his voice. ‘The resemblance is striking. You should talk to her. Maybe you’re related. Distant cousins.’
‘Great,’ Dulcie commented to herself. ‘Cousins.’ This day was getting weirder and weirder, and Dulcie pulled the collar of her big sweater up as she turned the corner. All these years without any family besides Lucy, and now this.
TEN
Martin Thorpe was not behind his desk when Dulcie arrived. He was, she saw as she pushed open the unlatched door and peeked inside, pacing. As he looked up and saw her, he ran a hand through his sparse hair in the kind of nervous gesture that explained its current state of disarray. He did, however, try to muster a smile at the sight of his student, as he retreated behind his desk.
‘Come in, Ms Schwartz.’ His feet still, he started to rummage through papers instead.
‘Are you …’ Dulcie swallowed, unsure how to proceed. ‘Are you all right, Mr Thorpe?’
‘What?’ Thorpe didn’t look up, which meant Dulcie was addressing a shiny bald spot. ‘Yes, yes. I’m fine. I wanted to talk with you about your latest chapter, Ms Schwartz. The one on the new manuscript?’
‘My latest chapter?’ This wasn’t making sense.
‘Yes, I’m sure I have it here, somewhere.’ More rustling, as Dulcie watched dumbfounded.
A few minutes passed, and she realized she had to say something. ‘Mr Thorpe?’ He was looking through a drawer now, and Dulcie cleared her throat to get his attention. ‘Mr Thorpe? I don’t think you’re going to find it there.’
He looked up, blinking. ‘I’m sorry. I seem to have misplaced it.’
‘No, you didn’t, Mr Thorpe. I didn’t turn it in yet.’ She saw him take a breath as his brows lowered and rushed to cut him off. ‘We talked about this last week, Mr Thorpe. That I would have it to you before the Thanksgiving break. That I should do a thorough search through the Mildon papers first. See what I can find, before I start writing.’
‘Well, the pages you gave me …’ He went back to looking. ‘I had some thoughts on them. I was sure they were here.’
Dulcie watched him a little longer, unsure how to break in. ‘Do you mean, the notes you gave me two weeks ago?’ She asked, her voice soft. ‘The ones on the chapter where I talk about finding the new pages?’
He stopped, blinking at the desktop. She kept talking.
‘The notes where you point out how I keep using the word “thrilling” and I should try to mix it up a little?’
That did it. The hands that only moments before had been restlessly searching now went up, first to the already tousled hair and then to cover his face. ‘I’m sorry, Ms Schwartz,’ he said finally. ‘You’re right. I’m not – well, I’m not myself right now.’ He ran a hand over his face, and Dulcie could see that it came away wet with sweat. ‘I haven’t been for a while.’
Dulcie watched, unsure of what to do. If he had indeed called her here mistakenly, she needed to find a way to exit gracefully. A way to make some friendly comment and stand and leave. To ignore the abject misery of the man before her.
She couldn’t. ‘Mr Thorpe, is something wrong?’ She asked. ‘Are you ill?’ The pallor, that sweat. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
He looked up, blinking, and it occurred to Dulcie just how strange this exchange was becoming. Martin Thorpe, bane of her existence. A man who only hours before she had suspected of – well, never mind. The man in front of her was in some kind of pain, physical or psychic, and she felt for him.
Dropping her voice still further, she asked. ‘Is it … the Newman lecture tonight, Mr Thorpe?’ Uncertain of how to broach the subject, she spoke so softly she wasn’t sure he had even heard. ‘Is it Professor Lukos?’
‘No, no.’ He was shaking his head sadly. ‘It’s not James Lukos. Even though his strictly textual reading is … well, it’s hard to explain. Things have been building up recently.’ With one hand, he removed his glasses; with the other, he rubbed his face and, at last, looked up, giving Dulcie a close-up of bloodshot eyes. ‘Last night, they came to a head.’
Dulcie froze, her sympathy turning to something colder. It was his eyes. The redness was alarming. Inhuman. Partly, she realized, because of the yellowing of the surrounding irises. Thorpe might be sick. He might also, she thought, her heart beginning to race, be feral.
‘Things?’ Her throat was too dry to say more. She swallowed and licked her lips. At least, she realized, she had just been vindicated. ‘So I did see you out on t
he street last night.’
‘What?’ He put his glasses back on and turned away. Embarrassed or self-conscious about his wild gaze. ‘Yes, yes, you may well have. So much was going on …’
He stood and walked over to the file cabinet by the window. Dulcie realized she was being dismissed.
‘So, you’re okay?’ It was an odd question to be asking her tutor. It was an odd situation.
Thorpe, however, had begun to act as if nothing had changed. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, face buried in the top drawer. ‘I’ll be waiting for your pages.’
‘In a few weeks.’ Dulcie stood and backed toward the door. ‘Getting them to you in a few weeks will be okay?’
‘Let’s call it one month to the day.’ He looked up and smiled, giving Dulcie another look at those wild, red eyes. Those jagged teeth. ‘Assuming, of course, that we’re both here.’
Not even Nancy’s calming presence could keep Dulcie from racing out to the street. It didn’t make sense. Dulcie knew that, but she also knew that something – something horrible – was happening. Thorpe was not himself; he had admitted it. And a girl was lying in a hospital, gravely wounded.
After three blocks, Dulcie’s heartbeat began to settle, and she was able to think through what she had learned. For starters, if the police were talking to the boyfriend – Josh – then they weren’t looking at Thorpe. She had tried to tell Rogovoy about her adviser, about his strange appearance last night, but he hadn’t understood. If all the police were looking for was a romantic entanglement, they would miss the more dangerous possibility.
She paused, breathing heavily. Rogovoy might be a dead end. She needed to reach out to the boyfriend too. He might not listen any more than the detective had, but she needed to tell him what she knew, what she had seen – and, maybe, what she suspected. He had the right to that information. It was only fair.
He also needed to know what Lloyd had said. Josh might think that his girlfriend was faithful. Maybe she was – is, Dulcie corrected herself. But Lloyd had thought he had been witnessing a flirtation. A flirtation with a woman who later that night had been attacked. A woman who looked – according to several sources now – like Dulcie.
As Dulcie walked in the fading light back to the apartment, she had another thought. She had been planning on attending the Newman lecture tonight anyway. All of English and American Lit would be there, and it was a chance to hear a noted scholar – the possible future department head – expound on his work. Now she had another reason to attend. Maybe it was because she felt sorry for Thorpe. Maybe she was simply hoping that no strange new development would arise to complicate her thesis. And maybe, she admitted, she had felt a little bad for Josh Blakely, too. For all his size, he had seemed earnest, if a little goofy.
Whatever the rationale, she thought, as she turned into the shadows of Cambridgeport, she was going to try something tonight. Trista would look at her funny, and Lloyd would raise an eyebrow. Nothing would happen, and Chris never had to hear of it. But tonight, Dulcie was going to put on a low-cut blouse and even some lipstick. Tonight, she was going to offer herself to the visiting Professor Lukos. Not as a potential acolyte, but as bait.
ELEVEN
Chris, blessedly, was already gone by the time Dulcie got home. Esmé, however, seemed to pick up on her plan immediately, and the little black-and-white cat clearly did not approve.
‘No, kitty. No!’ Dulcie lifted a white paw from the silk blouse she had just removed from the closet, gently disengaging the claws that had already found purchase in the delicate fabric. ‘This is not a toy.’
‘Then why are we playing?’ The answer came back as the cat scampered away, only to stop and glance back at her person with wide green eyes.
‘We aren’t – oh, never mind.’ Dulcie ducked down to retrieve a catnip mouse and tossed it. When Esmé darted after it, however, she remained in front of the mirror, contemplating mascara. This is what a girl needed girlfriends for, she realized, reaching for her phone. No, she knew what Suze would say. No mascara – and no playing games with suspected criminals. Besides, Suze was a bit of a jock. Neither of them had been particularly girly, even in their single days.
Still, they’d both ended up with loving mates. Maybe because they hadn’t played the usual games. Now that was a subject she’d like to see the post-structuralists take on: the role of exaggerated gender identification in undergraduate mating rituals. Or some such.
‘Looking for a friend?’Esmé had reappeared, and her voice – which sounded in Dulcie’s head like that of a young teen – caused Dulcie to turn. ‘I’m your friend!’
‘What did you say?’ Mr Grey had mentioned friends. Surely, there was a message here. ‘Do you feel I’m ignoring you, Esmé?’
‘Chase me!’The little cat lunged, then scooted away. ‘Chase me now!’
‘I wish I could, Esmé.’ Dulcie paused to watch the adorable creature, taking her invitation as an answer both to her query and to her previous question. Somehow the little tuxedo cat had managed to sum up what could have been someone else’s graduate thesis in just two words. ‘It would be a lot more fun, believe me.’
That prompted another lunge as the feline bounded back to pounce on Dulcie’s bare feet and ran away again. ‘Let’s play … at hunting!’
‘That’s about it, Esmé.’ Dulcie slipped the blouse on and looked in the mirror. The green silk – the color of Esmé’s eyes – really brought out the red highlights in Dulcie’s hair. ‘I only wish I knew what I was going to catch.’
With that, she grabbed her sweater. The little cat grew quiet as she headed toward the door. ‘Home soon?’Dulcie didn’t need to hear the plea; she could see it in those round eyes.
‘I promise.’ She bent to stroke the smooth black back and turned away. She and Chris had both been working too much, and she silently vowed to play more with the young cat as soon as she could.
‘She doesn’t understand yet, little one.’ Another voice, deeper and still,echoed in the air as Dulcie closed the door behind her. ‘She doesn’t realize she’s not the only one on the prowl tonight.’
TWELVE
The hall was packed, rather to Dulcie’s surprise. ‘A Reinterpretation of the Depiction of Personal Ornamentation in the Late Victorian Novel’ hadn’t seemed like a crowd-pleaser to her, but clearly she didn’t know the student body’s tastes. As she stood in the back of the hall, a wave caught her eye. Trista with – yes! – an empty seat. A little awkward in her one set of heels, Dulcie made her way over the already seated spectators, their bags, and increasingly bulky, increasingly wintery outerwear to join her friend.
‘You look nice.’ As Dulcie stripped off her own big sweater, Trista ran her eyes down Dulcie’s outfit, taking in the green blouse with its unusual amount of décolletage.
‘It’s not—’ Dulcie caught herself. There was too much to explain. ‘I figured I’d dress up for the reception after.’
‘Ah.’ Trista nodded thoughtfully, leaving her friend wishing she had taken the longer, more truthful route. However, at that moment, the new dean walked onto the small stage and turned on the podium mike.
‘Well, hello!’ The dean, a bespectacled science type, appeared a little surprised by the crowd as well. ‘Thank you all for coming out on such an inclement evening. I have an announcement before we start.’
He paused, and Dulcie leaned forward to hear. This crowd didn’t seem to care about bureaucratic formalities and mostly kept talking. ‘Because of scheduling conflicts, our next Newman professor will be here tomorrow, as opposed to next week,’ the dean was saying. ‘We are lucky that this hall will again be free, although I will not be able to attend, and I hope you’ll give as enthusiastic a welcome to that speaker, who will be – ah …’ A shuffling of papers and a pushing up of glasses followed. ‘Who will be Miss – ah, Professor Renée Showalter. But now, please, join me in welcoming Professor James Lukos.’
With a little more fumbling, the dean gathered up his notes to a general audience murm
uring. Dulcie looked around. This was the oddest assembly she’d ever been in. While she saw faces from her department – Lloyd, Ralph, that girl in Renaissance Studies whose name she always forgot – there were a ton of strangers, too. Mostly women, she noted. And in a moment, she saw why.
James Lukos did not look like an academic. No professor this side of Hollywood had hair that glossy, like a pelt, almost, or eyes that fiery. When the visiting scholar walked – no, loped – onto the stage, he dwarfed the dean, who scurried out of his way. When he stood behind the podium and took in the crowd, slowly scanning from right to left, a general sigh followed, as if those dark eyes had personally and sequentially penetrated several hundred hearts.
‘Who is this guy?’ Trista squirmed in her seat, leaning over to ask Dulcie.
Dulcie shrugged. ‘Victorian. You should know him.’
‘I wish.’ Trista tore her eyes off the front of the room briefly
to reassess Dulcie’s outfit. ‘You knew.’
‘I know he’s got a reputation.’ Dulcie ventured that much. ‘But, really, Tris, it’s not what you think. I want to find out—’
‘Shh.’ Trista, along with several hundred of her peers, leaned forward, mesmerized. Lukos was about to talk.
‘The devil is in the details,’ the visiting scholar announced. And with his own devilish grin, he began.
Forty minutes later, Dulcie still didn’t get it. Partly, she told herself, that was because the Victorians always bored her, and Lukos’s heavily theoretical approach didn’t make it any more appealing. Didn’t matter if the professor was handsome. All that bric-a-brac, all that sublimation … No matter how he interpreted it or what postmodern catchphrases he bandied about, there was nothing appealing about any of it. Partly, she admitted, it was because of what she suspected. Lukos wasn’t just a handsome man or even an egotist. Academia certainly had its fill of the latter, if not the former – she knew from experience of several full professors who had claimed papers and even positions when everyone knew that their grad students had done the work. There was something else going on here. Something different. The visiting professor had a good portion of this audience mesmerized, and he knew it. This was a man who had a certain power, and enjoyed exerting it. That, to Dulcie’s mind, made him unlikeable, if not actually villainous.