Dark Rooms (21 page)

“Go ahead,” he says, blotting his eyes with the cuff of his shirt.

“This isn't a bluff. I'll go over to their house right now. I'm not kidding.”

“So who's stopping you?”

I hesitate, frantically trying to think of another move. I can't. Snatching the note from his hand, I exit the studio.

Ten minutes later I'm standing on the Millses' porch, lifting their heavy brass knocker. No answer. I let thirty seconds pass, lift the knocker again. Still no answer. I cup my hands around my eyes, bring them to the glass panel beside the door. The houses owned by Chandler aren't quite identical but almost: narrow, ramshackle, poorly ventilated, historic plaques from the Hartford Preservation Society in the first-floor windows. And the front hall I'm peering into could be ours. I see a side table with a Suzuki Method piano book on it—the Millses have a kid, a little girl, four or five years old, whose name I'm blanking on at the moment—a framed print on the wall, a Miro, I think, a pair of galoshes by the stairs. No people, though.

I don't know the Millses very well. They've only been at Chandler a few years and are part of the administration rather than the faculty. And, as the CFO, Mr. Mills, an intense balding guy in his midforties,
travels a lot, putting the financial squeeze on the school's far-flung alumni. When he is home, he seems to spend most of his time in the garage, working on his model railroad. It's more often that I see Mrs. Bowles-Mills, a Canadian woman about a decade younger than her husband, pretty in a wan, no-makeup sort of way, wears her hair in a braid wrapped around her head. She's always with her daughter—Beatrice, I just remembered, the daughter's name is Beatrice—taking the little girl to swim in the pool in Houghton or to feed the family of ducks that live behind the Science Center. When we run into each other, we smile or wave or nod, but that's about it.

I send Damon a text, letting him know he's going to have to get himself to and from the courthouse today. Then I drop down on the porch's top step, settle in to wait for one or both of the Millses to come home. I hope it won't be long. Informing a husband of his wife's infidelity isn't exactly my idea of fun. It's necessary, though, a point of honor almost: I told Mr. Tierney I wasn't bluffing; now I've got to prove it, not just to him but to myself. Still, I'm in a state of dread, sweat sliming the back of my neck and the underside of my arms, nausea souring the pit of my stomach.

Yet as I continue to sit there, picking at the bracelet of dried clay on my wrist, I realize that the expectation of an ugly scene isn't what's troubling me so. At least, it's not the only thing. There's something else—a feeling I'm getting. I close my eyes, concentrate on this feeling. After a while I determine it's not a feeling so much as a hunch, a gut-twinge, and the gut-twinge is telling me that Mr. Tierney wasn't lying when he said he didn't have sex with Nica. It was his attitude toward the accusation—incredulous rather than defensive—that gave his denial the ring of truth. And once he read the note, the charge of carnal knowledge of a minor didn't seem to interest him anymore, his focus shifting entirely to the Millses. Now I'm sitting on their doorstep, a bomb ready to go off, blow their lives to smithereens, and I can't shake the sense that I've been planted here by Mr. Tierney, that
he's working me in some way I don't understand for reasons that are beyond me.

But how, I wonder, could
he
be working
me
? I'm about to turn his greatest fear into a reality. It's possible, though, that he wants his greatest fear turned into a reality, is on a weird self-destructive trip. Who knows? Not me, that's for sure. I've been pretending I know, careening from conviction to conviction like a human pinball, setting off every light and spark and bell, absolutely positive about one thing, then absolutely positive about another. But, the truth is, the only thing I'm absolutely positive about is that I don't know anything at all.

No, that's a lie. I do know one thing. I know that I don't want to go on that self-destructive trip with Mr. Tierney. Yes, it's disconcerting that he was slipping Nica cryptic personal notes, evidence that there was something improper about their relationship, insufficient boundaries at the very least. Not evidence, though, that he killed her, which is all I care about at present. This isn't to say I'm done with him, or the Millses, but I need more information before I proceed.

I'm just getting to my feet when I hear the grinding of garage gears, smell a whiff of glue. I cock my head, see a pair of men's work boots sticking out the bottom of the rising door. Mr. Mills. He must've been in there the whole time. I grab my bag, book it down the front path. By the time the door's all the way up, I'm nearly across the street. Unable to resist, I turn around. Mr. Mills is standing at the top of the driveway in safety goggles and a paper mask. He looks like a monster in a creature-feature movie: half man, half insect.

I turn back around, keep walking.

I wake up the next morning depressed. Disgusted, too. The encounter with Mr. Tierney had yielded nothing but an ugly scene. No new suspects, no new leads. I half wish I'd gone ahead as planned yesterday,
said to the Millses what I'd come to say. So what if I was being manipulated by Mr. Tierney, blundering into a situation I knew little about? Even if my actions were stupid, reckless, ill-informed and even iller-advised, at least they were that—actions. I'd be making something happen. Instead I'm back to where I was at the end of the conversation with Damon: trying to find out why Nica broke up with Jamie, not a clue as to how to go about it.

The A/V Department is busy that day for the first time. I get a last-minute request for a screening from the Asian Culture Appreciation Society, which is meeting that afternoon. I'd set up for them during eighth only. Mr. Krueger wants to show the “always be closing” speech from
Glengarry Glen Ross
to his Introduction to Behavioral Economics class during eighth, and it isn't until the period's three-quarters over that he gives me the cue to hit play.

I'm run-walking back to the A/V room to pick up another DVD player (Krueger asked me to leave the one I brought behind so he could show the speech to his Advanced Behavioral Economics class tomorrow) and a copy of
Eat Drink Man Woman,
trying to beat the chapel bell, tolling any minute now, when I realize I'm going to be late to Fargas no matter how much I hurry. I stop, pull my cell out of my bag to call Damon, tell him to cover for me. Right away, though, I get self-conscious. Cells are such a big time no-no at Chandler. Boarders are forbidden to have them; day students are forbidden to use them. If a day student is caught making or receiving a call during school hours, his phone isn't just confiscated for the day, it's confiscated for the semester. I'm staff now and the rules no longer apply to me, but I still feel like I'm doing something wrong. I kill the call before it goes through.

As I'm tucking my phone back into my bag somebody yells my name. I turn, see Shep. He's jogging toward me from the opposite side of the quad, blond hair bouncing, flip-flops making flat slapping sounds against the concrete. Watching him, I feel, in addition to the expected impatience, unexpected if not unfamiliar guilt. It takes me a
second to trace its source: voice mails, the two he'd left that I'd never listened to.

When he reaches me, he says, slightly out of breath, “Did you get my messages?”

“I did, yeah. My cell, though, Shep”—my eyes wavering from his, dropping to the sunglasses dangling crookedly from the collar of his shirt—“it's kind of messed up. It cuts out a lot.”

“Luckily, I don't put much trust in modern technology, which is why I also had a bunch of these printed.” He reaches into the pocket of his overalls, extracts a sheaf of bright yellow papers, holds them out to me like a bouquet of flowers.

I pluck one. It reads:

The Outdoor Club, of which Shep is founder and faculty sponsor, is exactly what it sounds like: a club for people who are into the outdoors. One Sunday a month club members travel by van to some picturesque New England spot and engage in an at-one-with-nature activity, biking or kayaking or, in the winter, skiing or snowshoeing. It used to be the only kids who belonged to it also belonged to FUCCU! (Friends of Urban Connecticut Conservation Unite!), Chandler's environmental group, and Cheesed Off, Chandler's vegetarian society; they wore hiking boots with every outfit, carried around tattered copies of
The Prophet,
and cared deeply about the fate of the Sumatran
tiger. But in the last couple years, the club's really caught on with the cool boarder crowd. Jamie and Ruben had both joined, Nica and Maddie along with them, and I'd never understood why. And then a breeze stirs, coming from behind Shep, sending a waft of patchouli-scented air my way, and suddenly I do. It wasn't the natural world that attracted them, it was the natural high.

Marijuana.

I can't know this for sure since when I was a student at Chandler I avoided situations in which Shep was likely to be present, and that certainly included any organization he might be head of. And since I also avoided situations in which Nica, Jamie, Maddie, and Ruben did drugs—well, not drugs drugs, pot mostly, a tab of acid every once in a while—because, though I always kept my face a careful blank whenever Jamie opened his Altoids tin or Ruben whipped out those small squares of what looked like origami paper wrapped in aluminum foil, Maddie claimed she could still feel my “narc eyes” on her, and they ruined her experience. I think I'm right, though. It's not that tough to get loaded on campus, but it's definitely easier off. And Shep's the type who'd ask what the funny smell is, believe it when he's told incense, preferring to imagine it's his senses that are lying to him rather than his students. God, that explains Nica and the others' weirdly indulgent attitude toward him, why they put up with his touchy-feely cluelessness. He's a sucker. His touchy-feely cluelessness is the best part.

Shep taps the flyer with his index finger. “I'm thinking of taking the club to Narragansett Bay the last weekend in September. Teach those landlubbers how to surf. I figured this movie would put them in the right frame of mind.”

“Yeah, it should,” I say, eager for him to get to the point so we can wrap up this conversation and I can be on my way. “I've never seen it. I've heard good things, though.”

“Well, you'll see it on Friday at the club meeting, won't you?”

Putting it together, “Oh! You want me to run the movie for you? Like for work? For the A/V Department? That's why you called?”

“No, I want you to watch the movie, for you. And not for work. For, like, fun. I called to invite you. And, rewinding, you heard good things about the movie because it is good.”

“Oh, it's, um, really nice of you to think of me, Shep, but—”

“Maddie's going to be there. Jamie, too, probably. They'd like to see you.”

My laugh doesn't sound like my natural one. “I wouldn't be so sure about that.”

“Of course they would. They're your friends.”

“They're Nica's friends.”

“They're yours, too, even if you don't realize it. And they're hurting the same way you are.”

I feel a twitch of annoyance. I'm not one of his charges anymore, and my emotional well-being is no longer his responsibility or concern. Instead of reminding him of this fact, though, I let loose with another unnatural laugh. “Hurting?” I say. “I think Maddie's more into inflicting pain than feeling it.”

He doesn't laugh with me. “I know it seems like that. But sometimes the harder a person pushes you away, the more the person actually wants to pull you close.”

“Then Maddie must really want to pull me close. Like really really want to.”

“Could be.”

I snort. “Yeah, to put me in a choke hold maybe.”

Shep gives me a pained look, shakes his head.

Switching my tone to serious since that's how he's taking everything I say anyway, “The problem is, though, I've already sort of got plans that night.”

“Got or sort of got.”

“Got,” I say definitely.

“So bring whoever you have plans with along.”

“But don't you already have a lot of people coming?” I say, trying not to sound as desperate as I feel. “Your place isn't that big, is it?”

“It's big enough. And the more the merrier.” When I don't respond, “Just tell me you'll think about it.”

I'm mad at myself. Had I listened to his messages, I'd have had an excuse polished and at the ready, wouldn't be getting backed into a corner the way I am now. “Fine,” I say with a sigh. “I'll think about it.”