She raised her eyebrows. They were delectable. “Well, anything is, really.”
Nick followed those eyebrows down to her high cheekbones. He opened his mouth but couldn’t make a sound. He stared at her full lips, against which she was tapping a chewed-up pencil. Nick never wanted to leave.
“Here’s another book you can look at. It’s a definitive study of lycanthropy, and it groups together many of the myths and tales that go hand in hand with shape-shifting.”
“Myths?”
“Anything we don’t quite understand we explain away as mythology. For instance, Atlantis. I believe that one day we’ll locate ruins that prove the place was no myth. It’s just a matter of time. The literature of too many cultures has references to this city, and that can’t be an accident. In the meantime, those of us who keep open minds look like fools to some.” She smiled. “But at least we’re keeping our minds open.”
“Like with UFOs,” Nick muttered. He was entranced by her smile, but she took his reticence as doubt.
“Right! Why be so conceited as to think we’re the only ones in this universe the size of which we can’t even conceive? I’ve never seen a UFO, but I’d like to.”
Nick tried not to narrow his eyes at all. He’d sought understanding, but had he found a kook?
Professor Stewart was still ruffling through the pages of the book. She looked up suddenly and her hair fell into her eyes. She swiped it off absently.
“I’ll be happy to let you lend this book to your friend, but you’ll have to take responsibility for it. It’s not something I can find at the corner drugstore.”
“Uh, that’s okay, I’ll be glad to sign a note or something with my address on it.”
“That’s all right—you’re on my class list, and so is your address. Computers, you know.” She smiled again and held out the book. His hand brushed hers as he took it, and he blushed. She looked right at him, and he thought he saw the ghost of a strange loneliness, or something darker, hovering just behind her bright eyes. He roused himself before becoming impolite.
When she ushered him to the door, he saw another student waiting outside. She’d let her appointment wait while talking to him! Her words washed over him and he nodded his thanks even though he couldn’t have repeated any part of what she said. Then he was heading down the hall, the book clutched tightly in his hand, her gaze a memory he could not erase.
Later at home in the dingy, barely furnished apartment he shared with a rugby player and a fellow “undeclared major,” he snatched one of the last beers from the fridge and turned off the lights in his room. The headphones brought him the buzzy Moog synthesizers of Rick Wakeman’s “Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table” as well as a sort of peace. Tears came during the tragic climax, the fall of Arthur’s realm. They always did. This time, the face of Caroline Stewart shone like Guinevere’s out of the darkness, which enveloped him with the memory of her scent.
He read the book quickly and returned it, saying his friend had also read it. She burrowed a few more out of the barely organized piles in her office. They chose to discuss the books only after they’d both read them, so their out-of-class meetings were brief and impersonal. Even so, Nick heard whispers in the lecture hall. He sensed that some of the other male students had picked up a subtle difference in Professor Stewart’s demeanor—she nodded eagerly when Nick made a point, she put him in charge of a study group, and she handed him outside reading materials. At any time somebody might complain to the dean, Nick knew, but he couldn’t bear to distance himself from her now that they’d been drawn together by his research.
Nick had relayed some of Grandma’s stories as Caroline listened intently. At first they met only in her office, but one fall day they walked to the library together and it was only natural then for them to amble to the student union.
“How about coffee—or a beer?” Nick’s sheepish grin countered his brazen invitation.
“Down to the Gasthaus? I haven’t done that in a while. Why not?”
“You’ve been there?” He hurried to catch her at the stairs to the basement.
“Nick, I skipped my share of lectures while sitting in the corner booth—you know, the really dark one.”
In that very booth, after two draft beers and a basket of salty popcorn, they broached the subject of Nick’s “friend.”
“Has any of the material helped your friend?”
Caroline’s dusky voice had softened with the beer, and Nick wished somebody would kick the plug out of the jukebox so he could hear her better. Besides, he didn’t consider The Cars real music. New wave was a fad, nothing more. He leaned in conspiratorially.
“I think he’d really like to find someone to prove himself to,” Nick said. “Prove that the whole thing isn’t in his head—that it’s real, even if it does sound like a bad horror flick.”
“Well, maybe I’d be willing to be that person,” Caroline said around a mouthful of popcorn.
Nick had hoped she would volunteer, but now that she had he didn’t know how to proceed. How does one confess to such a long list of lies and half-truths?
“I’ll be sure to ask him,” he croaked weakly. Under the table, he bent an index finger all the way back to his wrist—punishment for his weakness.
“Good. I’m curious about his condition. I mean, I have to remain skeptical, but I want to believe. I’d like to prove all the stuffed shirts wrong. Something like this, properly documented, could revolutionize modern psychology. Or zoology, I guess. Thanks.” She picked up the plastic cup Nick had refilled and drank. She smiled a lot now and waved her arms.
Nick wasn’t sure how it happened exactly, but it was several hours later and she had just closed her apartment door behind him. He swayed just a little, but he was sober enough to know that everything—his entire life, in fact—was about to change.
Caroline shot the bolt and turned around to face her student, and before either of them could say anything, she had drawn his face closer to hers and gently placed her warm lips on his. And then each action achieved a response, their passion exploding into a series of firm, probing kisses that shocked them both, leaving them breathless.
“I shouldn’t—” began Nick.
“I didn’t mean to—” Her words collided with his.
Their lips joined again, this time with fierceness. Nick felt her hands caress his body as no high school girl’s ever had, and he let himself be led to her bedroom, where they fell atangle onto the brilliant white bedspread.
There was no time and there was no pressure.
There was only passion, and this they shared equally.
When Nick awoke hours later to find Caroline tucked into his arms, he realized the enormity of what had happened.
But it was too late.
Nick Lupo and Caroline Stewart were lovers.
He couldn’t help wondering, though, why there were still traces of tears on her cheeks. And why, at one point during their lovemaking, Caroline had let out a scream and a whimper that sounded more frightened than aroused.
They tried to keep their affair secret, but there was no mistaking Professor Stewart’s new “glow,” or her obvious enjoyment of Nick Lupo’s presence in her classroom. He became a staple visitor during her office hours, bringing her a deli lunch on those days she could not schedule a long enough break.
The university frowned on such relationships, but sexual harassment had not yet entered the public consciousness and both were aware of numerous professor-student liaisons occurring throughout the psychology, English, music, and art departments. Therein lay their safety net—a bold sweep of these inappropriate relationships would surely decimate the Humanities faculty, not to mention the graduate school, and no dean could weather the ensuing political storm.
For all intents and purposes, no one could touch them as long as they didn’t flaunt their connection, make love in public, or lead anyone to believe that Nick’s grades would improve dramatically. Ultimately, the
y realized there was no human way for them to stay apart, and their acceptance of the fact seemed somehow to satisfy others who might have objected. The occasional comment that made its way to Nick’s ears tended to involve envy and awe, not anger or bitterness.
Sometimes after the last office hours Caroline closed her door and took Nick into her arms, ravishing him with body, hands, and lips. Their passion transported them far away during these brief moments, and invariably she wept whenever it seemed to veer out of control.
“It’s nothing,” she replied when Nick once inquired about her sadness. Her fear.
“Whenever you’re ready to talk about it, I’ll be waiting.” He wondered if the same would be true when he finally disclosed his own secret.
Nick knew that Caroline had decided to treat his friend’s story as fixation, and his long and involved descriptions as symptoms of that fixation, but he hoped to prove his earnestness to her soon enough—perhaps at the time of his next change.
If only he could figure out how to do it without endangering her life.
For now, he contented himself with their passionate unions and with the notion—newly formed—that she might need him every bit as much as he needed her. He heard her weeping in the darkness, as always after intercourse, and so secretively.
When alone, Nick thought of her sadness and wore out the grooves on ELP’s Works, Volume One, in which Greg Lake’s baritone drew emotion from his soul with no apology. Nick foundered amid the tragedy of his love and of whatever secret ate away at Caroline, but the music kept him from drowning.
Other times she grabbed him as he walked past, cradling him gently until he was ready and then ravaging him with lips and searing fingertips. Then clothing would be shed and they celebrated their love as long as their stamina held.
But Nick felt the heaviness of something dark lying in her past, something hinted at in her eyes. Sometimes he looked there and felt an irrational fear, seeing a reflection of his own demons. Then all he saw was passion. She would only let her guard down for a few moments before shoring up her defenses and deflecting his curious gaze.
The feeling of a shared bond continued to torment Nick after each liaison. While he wanted to share his own secret, he also understood that he could not do so easily—it was too fantastic, and traumatically so—to share with anyone. And he knew that as much as he wanted her to share her secret with him, she would view hers in exactly the same way. Still, this similarity was the bond, and Nick was intelligent enough to catch the irony.
Within a year Nick had moved into Caroline’s East Side apartment, a cavernous space of white-painted woodwork and shiny wood floors where they grew closer even as they deftly dodged discovery by relatives, friends, and colleagues. Nick’s name no longer appeared on her class lists, however, so the intensity of an illicit relationship no longer hovered over them.
Lupo threw off his blankets and snarled. It was impossible to keep the images from his mind. No matter what abstract terms he used in his head, the visuals always began with her face and ended with her mutilated remains.
Blood.
It had splattered everywhere.
He had awakened thirsty as always, mouth coated in blood. Human flesh. His head ached so hard it seemed as though it would burst. And the body next to his, what was left of it, was Caroline’s. It was as if he’d torn her apart, a crazed Jack the Ripper. He choked back vomit and tears, realizing that it was too late for that, too late for anything but covering up, trying to escape with his life, trying to move on without her, the one thing in his life that had made sense.
He whimpered and cried all day, but he wiped and cleaned and removed every bit of his life from her surroundings, thankful now that they had never added his name to the lease. Yes, they would know she’d had a lover and there would be a description, but no one would connect him directly with her, would they? It had been years since he’d been her student, and the university faculty had turned over somewhat. No one would remember that she’d been rumored to have slept with a student, and so many profs were doing it that no one would have mentioned it if they did.
Nick Lupo had managed to disappear from Caroline Stewart’s life, but she could never disappear from his, haunting his existence with the guilt he would always feel, knowing what he had done.
To this day, Lupo’s sleep was affected by the memories of Caroline, and now he had to add a new name to his list of failures. Corinne. The woman who could have replaced Caroline was gone, too, and he surely shared in the blame.
He cried in his sleep, wishing away his cursed existence.
Chapter Fifteen
Martin
He awoke with the Feeling.
His eyes were still closed, but he came awake with the same unaccustomed suddenness.
Sounds squeezed into his head. Someone shouting in the hallway. A door slamming. Footsteps past his door and down the concrete stairs.
None of it mattered. Not with the Feeling rapidly making its way through his body.
The itch in his hands burned with the intensity of a propane torch, as if the blue flame were licking his skin and charring it in the most delicate way possible. It was a sensation he had come to both dread and savor, in the way of most things in his life.
The cheap alarm clock on his nightstand kept time with a loud, inelegant clacking. He had bought it when the other alarm clock proved too difficult to program, like a damned computer. This one was old-fashioned—big black numbers on a white face, with big knobs on the back. Sometimes he thought the sound of it rattled in his brain, and sometimes it seemed so far away it was nearly muffled by his own breathing.
He catalogued each tiny nuance of the Feeling carefully, keeping track of any new ones. There had been no new nuances since his time in Cincinnati, which probably meant he was due for something new.
The itch in his hands was driving him insane and, by this point, his erection was rock hard and straining at the single sheet that covered him. Sweat broke out on his forehead and dribbled sideways down his face and into the pillow. He handled himself, gently at first, then more roughly, the itch driving him on until he could wait no longer.
He opened his eyes and turned his head far enough to look at the ancient chest of drawers near the bed. On its scarred top sat the Case. Old-fashioned, covered with a fading flower print. Safe. Exactly the way it was on the day he had taken its possession. He flashed back, for a second, on that first blush of ownership—how he had caressed and fondled the Case long into the night, driving himself beyond any hope of return, and how he had finally accepted what the Case meant to him, and the perfection of the way in which he had gained ownership. As he thought about that day, he felt himself surrendering to the memory fully and without restraint. He held himself as he stared at the Case, mentally preparing for the next part of his ritual.
Slowly, but without effort, Martin sat up in the bed and let the sheet slip off his loins. He felt slick there, his hand warm and comforting. Without taking his eyes off the Case, he slid out of bed and slowly approached the bureau. He reached out and put his hand on the Case, fingering the cylinders inside through the thinning fabric, a quiver running through his belly and below.
His eyes roved upward and met those of the Martin in the mirror. They were the same, Martin and he, but only to a point. Martin knew that the other Martin pushed him farther than he wished to go, that the other Martin sometimes dictated his behavior. But he also knew that he often liked the direction the other Martin pushed him.
It had served him well in the Institute, his skill at playacting. He had played the Martin-in-the-mirror game with them until they believed in his belief without reservation—that a version of himself, which resided only in mirrors, could force him to act in ways generally not associated with his own behavior patterns. In that way, many of Martin’s more outrageous actions could be written off as the influence of Martin-in-the-mirror. He had found himself so adept at acting out this delusion that, after a dozen years, he sometimes wondered
whether it was acting, or had always been true, or whether he had made it come true.
“What is this? What have you done, Martin? Oh, my God, you’ve soiled your sheets again! This is intolerable. I’m going to tell Dr. Berthold! I just can’t trust you to keep yourself clean, can I?”
“I’m sorry, Miss Dievers,” Martin whimpered. “I had to go, but he wouldn’t let me! He told me I had to just do it here or burst!”
The teenager pointed at the bureau mirror, and the nurse found herself looking into it as if there was a chance she would see Martin’s tormentor somewhere inside, but all she saw was her own nose and mouth wrinkled at the smell that came from the boy’s bed and had now permeated the whole room and her clothes and ruined her dinner, which sat half-eaten at her station (just waiting for her to return so she could toss it into the wastebasket—like most of her meals when she was assigned to this floor, she suddenly realized). She rolled her eyes at her own image and got to work, gathering up the bedclothes and fussing the boy until he was heading for the bathroom down the hall. She would check on him in a minute, to make sure he was scrubbing off the half-dried patches of his own waste. She would throw out the now-unappetizing remains of her meal and then write up a Martin-in-the-mirror report for Berthold to go over in the morning, the day’s fifth. She wondered, briefly, just how real this imagined Martin was to the young man who claimed he was forced to do things by this image only he could see. Well, that was Berthold’s problem. His territory, his patient, his problem. She just wished she could have been transferred out of the chronic wing, so she could at least have some respite from the loonies.
After she had remade his bed and disposed of the ruined sheets, she checked on him as he stood in the trickling shower. She stepped back, startled, when she saw him handling his engorged penis, the whole while carrying on a conversation with no one—there was no one else in the communal shower. Wait, no, that was untrue. She stood half-in and half-out, watching Martin talking to his own image in the full-length mirror bolted to the wall that faced into the shower room. Martin wasn’t standing in the spray, because then he couldn’t have seen himself in the mirror, but he was naked and fully engaged in self-pleasure. Despite herself and her long experience, she felt a blush creeping up her features.
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