The Rebuilding Year

by Kaje Harper

  He wasn’t a fanatic. The smell of cigarettes annoyed him, but everyone was entitled to their vices. Heaven knew he had his own. A little pot didn’t bother him either. He figured it was pretty harmless stuff. But an open flame down there worried him. The aspen leaves were falling early this year, and the ground was dry and deeply carpeted. The last thing they needed was a fire.

  As he neared the grove, the flame still wavered. Not a lighter, then. A soft voice was singing in a breathy whisper, something about the moon’s orb. He spotted the singer and paused, surprised.

  He didn’t know the girl’s name, but he’d seen her around. She’d been a drab, mousy thing when she’d arrived on campus two years ago. Mid-brown hair, mid-brown eyes, bad skin and a slightly hunched posture that screamed, kick me. She was one of those who’d bloomed in college. Her skin was now clear, her hair long and braided.

  But she’d always seemed, if anything, too serious. She worked in the lab of one of the medical faculty, helping with some kind of research. Sometimes he saw her leaving work in the evenings. She always strode quickly down the well-lit paths to the dorms. She had never wandered the grounds with, of all things, a lighted candle.

  “Excuse me, miss,” he said softly from a distance. He didn’t want to startle her into dropping the candle. The girl turned slowly to face him, her eyes shining in the flickering glow.

  “The trees live, you know,” she said, with a smile.

  “Um, yes, they do.” What the hell?

  “It breathes, all around us. It speaks, if we could only understand it.”

  Okaaay. He edged closer. “What’s your name?”

  “Alice. I’m Alice. All of this is Alice too, in a way.” She smiled again, and made a wide gesture with the candle that set the flame flickering and spilled wax. A drop of hot wax landed on her hand, but she ignored it. “Isn’t it great?”

  “Listen, Alice.” He kept his voice gentle. “I think we should blow out the candle now. This place is too dry to have a flame burning.”

  “Is it?” She bent and puffed a breath onto the flame. It went out, leaving a small red glow at the tip of the wick. “Oh, that’s lovely too.” Her face was joyful and serene.

  He wondered what she was on. He wondered where he could get some. “Come on, Alice,” he said, holding out a hand. “You should head back to your room. I bet it’s lovely there too.”

  “It doesn’t sing like the woods.” But she stepped toward him obediently and put her hand in his. He slipped a finger across her wrist. Her pulse was strong, slow, and even. Her skin was cool, not feverish. He didn’t smell booze, or pot.

  “Come on.” He led her carefully up the slope. No way was he going to leave her to wander around the campus in her state. Their campus was probably safer than many, but if some man walked up to her and invited her home tonight, he’d bet she would find that lovely too. At least until morning.

  “Which dorm are you in, Alice?”

  “Where the moon shines down. Where the chestnuts grow.”

  As far as he knew there were no chestnut trees on campus. Horse chestnuts, yes. Maybe it was poetic license. He headed in the right direction for undergraduate housing. Maybe when they got close she’d give him a clue.

  They walked past the first tower, the freshman dorms. Then past the second block of midyear rooms. He was rethinking his strategy when she turned abruptly in on the path to Clarence Hall.

  “This is my stop,” she said gaily. “Good night, sweet prince. Night’s candles are burnt out.” She pulled her hand out of his and gravely handed him the half-melted candle.

  “Um?” said a voice from behind John.

  He turned quickly, and found himself face-to-face with a sardonic young woman with dyed red hair.

  “Oh good,” he said quickly. He didn’t want to give her time to start speculating. “Do you live here? Because this girl seems to think she does too. I found her wandering around the grounds with a candle. Whatever she’s on, I think she’d be better off safe in her rooms. Could you see that she gets there?”

  The girl made a face, but then shrugged. “I suppose. I’ve seen her around. She’s on the third floor.” She went to the door and swiped her card through the reader. The door clicked and she pulled it open. “Come on, then.”

  “Go on to bed,” John urged Alice gently.

  Alice looked at him. “If the moon lasts, there’s always a tomorrow.”

  “Whatever you took tonight, I think it’s a little strong for you,” John said. “I would stay away from it tomorrow. Go on in now.”

  She gave him another radiant smile, but turned obediently and followed the redhead inside. John breathed a sigh of relief as the door closed. Of course she could just leave again, but the other girl didn’t seem the type to take any nonsense. He could hope Alice would end up safe in her own bed.

  It was a lovely night. The air was soft and cool. The moon had risen, and where the electric lights dimmed, it was still bright enough to see the beds of flowers, and the waving stalks of plume grass. The shapes of his bushes and trees took on a bulk and a softness they lacked in the sunlight. Maybe Alice had things right. There was always a tomorrow. John headed for home.

  Chapter Two

  A couple of weeks later, Ryan dragged himself down the hallway to his apartment and jiggled his key in the lock. Anatomy lab had gone way past the normal hour. His dissection partner was going to drive him crazy. He could already tell. Better too slow than too sloppy, maybe. But if he heard Kaitlyn complain one more time that the real thing didn’t look like the book, he was going to pop her one. Real life never looked like the book. Real life was messy, and variable, and interesting.

  And noisy. He stepped inside the apartment and sighed. It’d seemed like a good idea to share an apartment with a second-year med student, someone who was already established and could serve as a native guide for a guy whose undergraduate days were a decade back. And he was really too old for student housing. He’d met Jason for coffee, compared expectations, and signed the shared lease. It should have worked.

  What he hadn’t realized was that Jason was a pussy-hound of the first order. And good-looking enough to be all too successful. In the two weeks since classes had started, he’d had no less than six different girls parading through the apartment. At least there were separate bedrooms, but it did bad things for Ryan’s nerves to walk into an unfamiliar, half-naked woman in his bathroom in the morning, when he needed to get to class. Especially when it wasn’t his own half-naked woman.

  And Jason liked his sex loud. Ryan wasn’t a prude, but he had a hard time studying to the tune of yes, yes, harder, do it to me, that seemed to last for hours. Today’s girl was already moaning and squealing behind Jason’s closed door. No verbal directions yet, but Jason sounded like he was working up to it. Ryan cursed under his breath. His bed beckoned. He could stretch out, and review the names of the blood vessels of the foot. Except for oh, Jason, oh, Jason, yes, Jason.

  He shoved his keys back into his pocket, grabbed the damned cane back out of the corner, and headed out. He could study anatomy somewhere else. Maybe with a snack and a beer. Maybe two beers.

  The town sprawled out away from the college on its edge. He’d done some exploring the last couple of weekends and found that there were several bars within his walking distance. The two closest to campus were clearly student hangouts. The music was loud and bad, the patrons young and intoxicated, and the food mainly fried. The one called Sly’s had looked promising at first, but proved to be stodgy. He was too young for that one by at least a couple of decades. He’d made a note to move on to The Copper Stein for his next round.

  The interior of The Copper Stein was a bit dark for ideal studying, but the music was reassuring. It actually had a beat, and lyrics, but wasn’t sixties rock. One end of the room had a short wooden bar with a brass rail, but most of the floor was filled with small tables. He went to the bar, requested a Harp’s, and then carried the bottle with him in search of study space. Unfort
unately he wasn’t the only one who’d chosen this Thursday night to get out on the town. There were no empty tables.

  He’d resigned himself to sitting at the bar when a vaguely familiar voice said, “Hey, Ryan, you can park it here if you like.”

  He glanced around. The guy’s face was immediately familiar, with its strong chin, hollow cheekbones, prominent nose. He recognized his rescuer from day one, but damned if he could remember the guy’s name. Oh well. He held out his hand. “Hey, thanks again. That makes twice you’ve rescued me.”

  “My pleasure this time. I hate drinking alone.”

  Ryan eased himself into the empty chair and set his cane on the floor. “Me too.” He took a long pull on his beer. When was the last time you didn’t drink alone? He couldn’t remember. Back before, anyway. He sipped again, slowly.

  “So how’s class? They working you hard?”

  “Not yet.” The workload was heavy but not unmanageable. He just had to adjust from doing-things mode to studying-things mode. He hadn’t been a student in a long time.

  “And how’s your head?”

  He shrugged. “It’s fine. My dad always says I have a thick skull. Sometimes that’s a good thing.”

  “Yeah, my dad said that too.” The other man raised his glass. Ryan realized he was drinking whiskey. “Must be a dad thing. Although I’ve never said it to my boy.”

  “You have a son?” Lately, he’d realized that the only thing he regretted about his no-strings dating history was that no serious relationships meant no kids. His brother Drew had two small boys, out in California, and Ryan was starting to envy him.

  “Yeah, one boy. He’s fourteen. And a girl, Torey, she’s twelve.”

  “That’s nice.”

  The man took a swallow of his drink, and then chased it with a sip of beer from a mug. “Would be nicer if they weren’t a thousand miles away. Nicer if they were actually going to visit within the next decade.”

  Ryan realized that the guy was a little drunk. “Divorced, huh?”

  “Yeah.” The groundskeeper slumped down in his chair and stretched out his legs, long and lean in battered black jeans and old cowboy boots. “Let’s talk about something more pleasant. Like the Bubonic Plague.”

  Ryan laughed. “Yersinia pestis. Still present, by the way, in the gopher population of the southwestern United States. There are cases in cats, periodically, and in humans now and then. Hooray for modern antibiotics.”

  “You’re kidding.” The other man sat up and looked startled.

  “No, really. I studied up on that kind of stuff before my med-school interviews. It’s out there. It’s just that with modern antibiotics, the bacterial diseases are less of a threat. It’s the viruses that get us now. Influenza, HIV, stuff like that.”

  “Okay,” the guy said. “That’s about all the optimism I can take for one night.”

  “Sorry.” Ryan was enjoying talking to someone who wouldn’t think of the nineties as ancient history. Hell, he was just enjoying talking to someone. “Tell me about your job. What does a groundskeeper actually do?”

  “Well my official title is Landscape Maintenance Architect,” the man drawled. “But that just means the same thing for more glory and less pay. Basically, I keep the outdoor parts of the campus tidy, healthy and esthetically pleasing. Fortunately, my predecessor held the job badly for thirty years, and changed nothing. Which means I have lots of scope for improvements, and won’t run out of work. I bamboozled the hiring committee with my credentials, and they gave me a budget and a pretty free rein. It’s not half bad.”

  Ryan wanted to ask about those credentials. Not many gardeners he knew used terms like esthetically pleasing. Then again, how many gardeners did he know? “They had a committee to hire a groundskeeper?” he asked.

  “Oh please. They’re a college. They have a committee to decide what day to celebrate Christmas.”

  Ryan snorted. “I’ve met people like that.”

  “Plus this bunch has a bit of an inferiority complex, since they would like to be an Ivy League university, except that they don’t have the staff, the space, or the reputation. The med school is their only professional program. They overcompensate everywhere they can. They’ve decided that since they have three hundred acres of campus, they will make it a showpiece. I’m not arguing.”

  “You have to keep three hundred acres groomed?” Ryan asked.

  “No, thank God. At least not yet.” The man flicked a finger toward his whiskey glass as the waitress passed. “Another of each, lovely lady.”

  “Coming right up, John,” she said easily.

  John. John. Ryan committed the name to memory. “You really want another shot?”

  “That I do.” John rolled his empty glass between his hands, staring at it. “I got a call from my lovely wife, Cynthia. Have you met Cynthia?”

  “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

  “Of course not. Because she’s a thousand miles away, too. And not as lovely as she once was.” John tucked a bill into the waitress’s pocket and took a gulp of his fresh drink. “She never comes here anymore. But the kids do. At least they did. But according to Cynthia, they’re busy again. Not only are they not coming this weekend, they’re not coming this month. Or next month. She’ll pencil me in for November. Maybe.” He chugged his beer.

  “Damn, that’s rough.” Even worse than not having kids would be to have them, and not get to be around them. His nephews were little hellions, and he missed them.

  “She has custody. She calls the shots. The tickets I sent were full price. She can change the dates. Again.”

  “Mm.”

  John put out a big hand and wrapped his fingers around Ryan’s wrist. “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to be dumping on you. You have a nice face, but you don’t need to listen to me complain.” He let go, and drained his glasses one after the other. “I’m lousy company tonight. I’ll head out and let you have the table.”

  Ryan watched him stand. John was steadier than Ryan would have expected, after knocking back those drinks, but he was far from sober. He turned and managed to make his way through the tables toward the door well enough. Then Ryan groaned. John had reached into his pocket and come out with a bunch of keys. Dammit, no way was he okay to drive home, no matter how straight he was walking.

  Ryan scrabbled for his cane under the table, hauled himself upright, and chased after him, grumbling about tall men and long legs under his breath. He caught up to John on the far side of the parking lot. The guy was fumbling around, trying to fit a key in the door of a battered pickup.

  Ryan reached around and took the keys. “No way, dude.”

  “Huh?” John blinked at him. “The lock’s just tricky. I got it.”

  “I don’t think so. You just had four drinks in fifteen minutes. Let me call you a cab.”

  “Can’t leave the truck here. I need it in the morning. I’ll drive careful.”

  “You won’t drive at all.”

  “I don’t like cabs. I can just sit here for a bit. It’ll be fine.”

  Ryan thought about it and sighed. He owed the man. “Get in and I’ll drive you home.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Yeah, I do.” He unlocked the door, shoved his cane and textbook under the seat, and swung himself in. It was an automatic transmission, thank God. His left leg wasn’t up to a clutch. He still missed his beloved Mustang.

  He reached down and slid the seat forward. Way forward. Either John was even taller than Ryan realized, or he liked to drive like he was sitting in a recliner. For all its dents, the truck started up smoothly. John was still standing in the open door, staring at him.

  “Get in already, and give me directions,” Ryan said.

  After another moment, John’s whiskey-soaked neurons apparently started firing. He closed Ryan’s door, walked around, and climbed into the cab. “Left on Calder.”

  The truck ran surprisingly quietly. Two more turns, following John’s muttered directions, and
they were on Central, heading out of town. John sat slouched in his seat, rubbing a hand on his knee.

  “I’m sorry,” John said eventually. “You’re right. Trying to drive was stupid. I usually keep it to two drinks, no more, so I don’t have to worry. I just slipped tonight.”

  “It sounds like you had a reason.”

  “I guess. All these years, she knows exactly how to get to me.” He blew out a whiskey-laden breath. “I love my kids, you know? And Cynthia makes it as hard as possible for me to see them.”

  “Where do they live?”

  “Los Angeles. Now.” John leaned back and sighed. “We lived in Chicago. When we got divorced, Cynthia moved to Springfield. So I moved too, to be close to the kids. I commuted to my job. Then after a year, she announced she was getting married and moving out here to Wisconsin.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Mm. Well, I found this job, moved out, got an apartment here in York. Then Cynthia started telling me my place was too small for the kids to stay overnight. They were too old to share a room. Which was maybe true, so I bought a house. Plenty of space. Then she told me they were moving to LA.”

  “How long ago?”

  “It’s been a year. I thought maybe I’d go… but she went out of her way to tell me that her new husband’s position in LA is temporary. They’ll move again in another year or two. So I just stayed here.”

  “When was the last time you saw them?”

  “July. They were here a week, between camp and a trip to Europe with the new hubby. He has money. She said they’d come this weekend— they have Friday off. Some school thing. I should be picking them up at the airport right now, with two and a half days before I’d have to drop them off again. But something came up. So then it was going to be in October, the school-conference week. But she just called again. They were invited to someone’s mountain cabin to go horse trekking. Exciting stuff. And she knows I wouldn’t want to deprive them of the chance to make new friends. So maybe around Thanksgiving.”