The Black Hour (10 page)

Cara glanced down the hall. “Julia?”

“Yeah, I mean, I thought you two were twins or something.”

“We don’t look a thing alike,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. Bryn did that, but I still didn’t know what it meant. That she needed a haircut? Or regretted not wearing a ponytail? “She’s prettier than me.”

“I don’t think so,” I said, and then realized how I sounded. Cara smiled. “I mean. I thought—”

The rest of the class crowded around us. I had no idea what I was saying anyway. Better to stop talking.

The other girl, Julia, and the guy from our other class, who I’d learned was named Ryan, walked up to us. Julia helped herself to a sip of Cara’s drink while Ryan stared into the snack machine. “Got any money?”

I got out my wallet. If the assistantship didn’t come through, I’d need to find a job. Maybe two. I gave him a dollar.

“You’re awesome.” But he meant the bag of chips he had his eye on. “How’s your project?”

I shrugged. The library visit had been fruitful in a way. I had some new sources for my files, but hardly any new information. But then the librarian.
No one would get it right.
What did that mean? What did it feel like to go through life believing something so—ambivalent? What about science and truth? There were ways to get things right. There had to be. “I’m in the research phase,” I said.

“Did I tell you that kid is in my class?” Ryan said around a mouthful of chips. “Well, his roommate.”

The girls talked quietly to each other. Ryan was looking at me.

“I’m sorry—what?”

“In the class I’m the TA for,” Ryan said. “I met the students this morning. Bunch of business and chemistry majors. They are
devastated
to be there. There’s like a vibe? In the room? I think they might stage a revolution. Man, Sociology 101. Like I wanted to take that again.”

Cara and Julia pulled away. I shoved the rest of the candy in my mouth and talked around it. “But you’re not taking it again. You’re teaching it.”

“Yeah, that’s cool, I guess.”

About ten, I guessed. About ten medical schools he hadn’t gotten into. “So which student is in your class?”

“That kid. His roommate, I mean.” Ryan made a gun out of his hand and shot it at the side of his head. “Shooter McDude, I don’t remember his name.”

“Leonard Lehane? Er—his roommate?” I searched my memory for the roommate, but I was pretty sure I’d never read anything about him. “What’s his name?”

“I so don’t remember. At all. There were twenty of them at least. Heard someone talking about it after class. Hey, we’re thinking about hitting the Mill after this—”

The elevator doors opened and Dr. Emmet emerged. “Race you,” she said.

We slipped down the hall, the tap of her cane urging us forward.

Dr. Emmet let us out a little early, too. It wasn’t because of anything I said this time. Except that just after she dismissed us, she leaned toward her cane and shot backward as though it were hot. “Nathaniel, will you stay for a minute?”

Ryan and the girls looked at one another and hurried.

“Hey, meet you at the Mill in a few, Nathaniel?” Ryan said.

In the second half of class I’d learned that Ryan came from California, that Cara got nervous when asked to speak in front of people, and that the guy in the boots probably didn’t have a motorcycle but really was a douchebag. “I’m hoping to wrap this up in under four years,” he’d said, flicking with nonchalance at the closed cover of his notebook. Dr. Emmet kept it together pretty well. “This?” she’d said. “You mean the study of complex human interactions? If you want,
you
can wrap it up tonight, and we’ll get on with our lives.”

During my introduction, I’d kept pretty close to the facts. Name, undergraduate university, hometown. “What’s something interesting about yourself, Nathaniel?” Dr. Emmet had said. I drew a blank. For a moment, the only thing I could think of was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre photo on my wall. “I’m not that interesting,” I said, and then felt like an idiot when the others laughed. The worst thing to say, because it was the truth.

“The Mill?” I said to Ryan now. “Maybe. Sure.”

They started to file out. At the last minute, Ryan came around to my side of the table and left a folded piece of paper on my books. “I remembered,” he said. “Because—well, if you meet him—” I opened the note and saw a name I didn’t know.
James Baker.
I nodded to him as he slipped out the door.

Dr. Emmet waited until the last of the footsteps had faded down the hall before she opened her eyes.

“I’m really sorry,” she said. “About the other day. That was no way to get off on the right—foot.” She sighed. “The right foot. I have to start thinking about what comes out of my mouth.”

“That’s OK. I mean, I was happy to help.”

“Are you?” She gave me a strange, solid look, sizing me up. My mind jumped ahead, and I didn’t like where it went. “
Happy
to help?”

“You said maybe a—an assistantship or something?”

“Absolutely. Yes. That’s for real. I just—I could use some help in ways that wouldn’t
technically
—officially—”

I tried to keep what Kendall would say out of my head. “That’s no problem.”

“It might be something really stupid.”

I thought about that. “Did you need something right now?”

Her eyes slid away from me. “Will you pick up my cane for me?”

“Sure,” I said.

“And help me stand?”

“OK.”

“I took my pill,” she said.

“OK.”

“But sitting here. Three hours almost.”

“That must hurt.”

“A f—great deal.” She gripped my arm and raised herself to standing. “Seriously, starting tomorrow, let’s set aside an hour to get you started. Can you make it to my 101 class tomorrow? You can be my TA for that class, two days a week, plus some things on the side.”

On the side. I felt that one deep down. I would never repeat a single word of this conversation.

We were making our way to the door. She still held my arm. She was thin, too thin and, maybe I was imagining this? Shaking, as though her entire body hummed. “Do you want to teach? Research?”

“Research. Write. And teach.”

“I can help you with all that. Really. I just need—I could use some specialized help until I get back on my feet.” She shook her head. “Dammit. Why are so many clichés based on feet and legs? I have to stop relying on clichés, that’s all.”

“It’s no problem.”

“I’ll help you, is what I’m trying to say. What do you need help with?”

I thought of the photo of Bryn in my drawer, of that dark night when my dad had left me alone in the house and I searched attic to basement for something I couldn’t name. Then: the girl, studying the Chinese newspaper with her head tilted to one side. Cara, her eyes round with horror. “Nothing. I mean
plenty
, but right now—”

“What?”

“Do you know where the Mill is?” I said.

She laughed, at first low and then loudly, until I joined her, not really sure why.

Finally I stopped laughing. Did I know where the Mill was? I certainly did. At one point, my mail could have been forwarded there.

“Did you want to go, Dr. Emmet?” Nathaniel said. He’d walked me down the hall to my office and then, without me asking, waited for me and escorted me to the elevator, through the Dale Hall lobby and to the parking lot. “To the Mill, I mean,” he said now. “With us.” He grinned in a way that made me think the kid hadn’t had an
us
to speak of in a while.

I did want to go. I wanted the beer. I wanted the Mill. I wanted to sit in a high-backed, cracked, red faux-leather booth and have a drink with my students. Laugh with them, get to know them. A thing I had done all the time, before. Before. I was beginning to hate that word, which cleaved my life into two spheres, the second one a lot less promising. The second one, in which I was stuck forever.

“Not this time,” I said. “But keep asking.”

His grin twitched a bit.

“I used to go to the Mill with my classes the first night. Every semester. It’s just been—a long day.”

“No problem. I mean—some other time.”

He was a cute kid. “I’ll see you tomorrow then,” I said.

He loped off in the direction of the Mill, and I was left to my own devices. I eased into my car as slowly as I could. Getting in and out of the car was the hardest part. Finally folded into the shape of the seat, I tested my ability on the pedals before navigating out of the space, then the faculty lot and campus to city streets. The commute, on foot—at least on sturdier feet than mine—took less than fifteen minutes. By car, it was ridiculous. Five minutes, tops, and I was pulling into my apartment lot, trying not to nick my neighbor’s Subaru.

A cute kid. Not that long ago someone Nathaniel’s age would have been a viable option for me. I couldn’t think of them as men, but that’s what they were. Live wires, every muscle in their bodies tensed toward a fantasy they’d already imagined in full detail. Of course, I’d gone the other way—Doyle was fifteen years older, had an ex-wife, a mortgage on a beautiful home he didn’t like, a boat and slip in the harbor. A fine pedigree in family, education, in everything. And two kids. And now a current-wife, too. Not viable.

The students weren’t, either. Rothbert’s strict ethical code—and really, my own—outlawed relationships between students and faculty. It wasn’t about age. It was about power, and the abuse of power that always seemed to follow. I’d seen ugly scenes played out, heard terrible stories. He said, she said. Grades inflated. Letters of recommendation and other prizes given out to the sexual favorites. As a student, as a faculty member, I’d had my share of inappropriate offers. The trick was: never allow for gray areas.

I hadn’t aged many calendar years since the last time a student had hit on me, actually. But the timeline had jarred loose. In one short year, I’d gone from young professor, not bad-looking, better-looking when I smiled, straight down the scale to crone. The male students had once looked at me in a way that I understood—I’d been absolutely viable for them. Wish fulfillment.

Now the cane.

I couldn’t imagine that any of the students in tonight’s class would want me at the Mill. They didn’t want to talk to me. They wanted to talk
about
me.

Except Nathaniel. Nathaniel seemed serious, focused. I hoped I wasn’t reading him wrong.

I launched myself out of my car. My building’s locks operated by punch-button codes, thankfully, no keys to juggle along with my cane, my bag, the books in my arm. I’d had a ground-floor apartment all along. “Lucky you,” Cor had said when she’d helped me move back in from the hospital, and then shut up when she saw the look I gave her.

Inside, the tidiness of my apartment surprised me anew. The cleanliness was a phenomenon of the After part of my life. A nice Lithuanian woman came twice a week to keep my mess out from under my own feet. The neatness was nice, but it felt false. Was false. My apartment was small, bare, folded, and put away. Without Doyle and Doyle’s stuff, it had seemed cavernous, and now this antibacterial way of living turned the place surgical. I lived in a museum.

Of course, the order masked how chaotic everything really was. The books were lined up on the shelf by color, since Ausra’s English was selective. Things were in their place, but I couldn’t find anything. The dishes were clean, the counters clear, but I wasn’t hungry. The bed sheets got changed, but I’d forgotten how to sleep. When I did sleep, the dark dreams came. The manuscript I’d worked on for the last two years was burned, as far as anyone knew, and my head was empty. I’d announced to my class that my feelings on crime might have changed. But I didn’t know if they had. I couldn’t know—I couldn’t think.

Sounds to me like you’ve already identified your next project.
Not as easy as Joss made the enterprise sound. I had to be able to think, didn’t I?

But if I never pursued answers to the questions I still had, would I ever be able to concentrate on anything else? If I couldn’t work, what would I do with myself? Who would I be?

I threw my bag down, and then picked it back up and hung it on the back of a chair. I set the books in a neat stack on the table. Who was I now? Not myself, no matter what Woo said. If no one treated me the same as they used to, was it even their fault?