Fool's Journey (15 page)

           
Manny’s mug froze midway to his mouth. He returned it to
the table with a distinct clunk.
 

           
“Start from the beginning.”

           
Deirdre felt his eyes on her, the force of his attention
almost palpable. What she said next, however much or little, would irrevocably
affect the future she’d so carefully devised.

           
Manny searched Deirdre’s face for a clue to what its
still surface might hide.
I would never
betray your secrets, no matter what they are.
He willed her to feel his
thoughts, to accept his help, to trust his intentions. He knew she might not be
able to confide, though, even if she were willing to try. Behind the delicate
traces of strain that framed her eyes, Manny sensed an iron wall of
self-protection. Whatever she told him, he would have to be careful not to
probe too deeply or too fast.

           
“Do you know Diana Vibert’s poetry?” Deirdre asked him
suddenly.

           
He shook his head. This was not what he had been
expecting. “The name is familiar. I don’t remember reading anything of hers,
though.”

           
“It doesn’t really matter, I guess. Just believe me when
I say her work was beautiful.” She rested her head in her hands for a moment,
then took a deep breath and continued. “I’m going to tell you a long, rambling
story. I heard it myself for the first time today. Just stay with me to the
end, and I think you’ll see how the threads of it manage to come together.”

           
Manny listened silently as Deirdre recounted the story
Bess had told her earlier in the day. He could see she felt the iniquity of
what had happened to this Diana Vibert as forcefully as if she herself had been
the victim. During the whole narration, she kept her eyes averted, and her
fingers grasped the edge of the table so tightly the white showed in her
knuckles.

           
Long before she reached the end, a sickening sense of
wrongness crept over Manny, almost as if he were being forced to watch the
wings torn from a butterfly. He wanted to take Deirdre’s hands in his own and
tell her everything would be all right. He’d be lying though. Nothing was
guaranteed. The cold fingers of instinct tracing his spine told him that the
ordeal was far from over.

           
 
When she finished,
Deirdre picked up her cup again, took a sip, and grimaced.

           
“Cold,” she said, and pushed it away. She huddled back in
her chair and looked out the window into the night.

           
“So,” Manny said at last, “you think it’s this Willard?”

           
She nodded. “It has to be. I know it.”

           
“He seems like the best possibility, but...”
 

           
But where was the blackmail, he wondered? Aunt Rosa had
warned him Deirdre had secrets, but he could not believe that the woman before
him could have anything so horrible to hide.

           
“Everything points to him,” Deirdre continued. “He’s
sadistic, he hates women, he’s done this before –”

           
“It’s not quite the same this time, though,” Manny
interrupted.
 
“Willard seems to be
playing with you, true, but that may be all it turns out to be. It’s horrible,
but unless he really has something on you, he can’t do what he did before.”

           
She shook her head. “He’s going to act soon. I know
it.
 
Then we’ll see. He’s coming to my
class tomorrow. He’ll show his hand then.”

           
Her voice was both bitter and frightened. What was she
hiding?

           
“Deirdre,” he said, “can you trust me a little?”

           
Deirdre raised her eyes to his. “I trust you as much as
anyone,” she whispered, “but there are some things...”

           
Manny smiled. “You don’t have to tell me specifics, but
do you know of anything Willard might be able to use against you?”

           
She said nothing, merely shook her head. It was hard to
say whether she was indicating there was nothing to tell – or that there was
nothing she was willing to tell.

           
“A woman looked at my palm years ago, when I was just a
little girl,” Deirdre said. “She told me she couldn’t see anything, but...she
had tears in her eyes.”

 
          
A
moment passed, and then she held out her right hand in front of him.
“Here.
 
Look for yourself.
 
I think it’s all there.”

           
Her trust wasn’t offered in the way he had hoped, but for
now, it was enough. Manny took Deirdre’s outstretched hand in both of his and
held it for a moment.

           
“I don’t read palms in the usual way,” he said. “I don’t
pay attention to the lines.”

           
As Manny studied Deirdre’s hand she wished she could look
at her palm through his eyes for even a moment, see what he was seeing. Would
he be able to interpret what was there? She didn’t know whether she wished he
could or not. By stretching out her hand to him, she had opened a window on her
life.

           
“What do you see then?” she asked quietly.

           
He shrugged as he continued to study the hand before
him.
 
“I don’t really see anything in the
sense you mean it. I don’t see with my eyes. I get ideas, though. Pictures,
symbols. Then I try to figure out what they mean.”

           
“Like writing a poem,” Deirdre said. “I don’t know what
it means until I’m almost done sometimes. Maybe not even then.”

           
“There are a lot of cages,“ he said suddenly.
 

           
Deirdre shuddered.

           
“Some of them are gilded, like a bird’s,” he went on.
“Others are like jail cells.”

           
An impulse shot through Deirdre’s arm, almost as if she
had received an electrical shock, a reflex to withdraw her hand from his
scrutiny. There were cages in her past, sure enough. They had been
metaphorical, except for one, but she had been confined as surely as if they
had been real.

           
“The doors are twisted off their hinges. Whatever,
whoever escaped must be very powerful.”

           
Manny’s strong fingers closed over her hand again,
enveloping it in warmth. He looked into her eyes. “Remember, Deirdre: In the
court of God, justice is all that matters.”

           
Deirdre felt the tears prick at her eyelids. She blinked
them away and tried to smile.

“I’m
sorry, Manny,” she said. “I know I could tell you everything and it would be
all right. But I can’t even get the words to form. Why can’t the past stay
buried in its grave?”

           
“It’s a lesson we all have to learn,” he said
quietly.
 
“Nothing stays in the grave
that’s not at rest.”
 

XX.

           
After Manny dropped Deirdre at her apartment, he found
himself making his way back towards the university. The need to get some hard
evidence had grown moment by moment since Deirdre revealed her suspicions. She
was probably right about this Freemont Willard character, but knowing that was
helpful only to a degree. Until Manny discovered connections between Willard’s
motives and the means to achieve them, his ability to help was crippled.
Deirdre hadn’t given him much to go on.

           
He’d always had a way with reading palms, or so people
told him, but he was more comfortable with facts. Even without looking at her
hand, he’d known that her past was as troubled as her present.

What
could be so horrible that its exposure would prompt such fear? If she wouldn’t
tell him, maybe Freemont Willard would, one way or another.

           
As Manny drew up to the campus, he could see that most of
the buildings were still lit. Night classes often went until ten o’clock. He
knew from his aunt’s days as part of the university custodial staff that some
professors worked late and students often delivered papers under office doors,
particularly if the assignment was late and they didn’t relish a confrontation.
No one would think twice about his presence in the building, even at this hour.
 

           
Parking about a block from the English department, he
walked up to the building through a double row of dark oaks. As he climbed the
stairs to the fourth floor, he could smell the familiar scent of pine cleaner
on old wood and was reminded of his childhood, following Aunt Rosa as she went
about her work.

           
 
He glanced at the
door to Deirdre’s office as he walked by. Unlike other doors in the same
corridor that displayed political cartoons and cryptic literary messages, hers
was anonymous except for posted office hours and class times. Just across the
hall, Freemont Willard’s office stood open, an abandoned custodian’s cart just
outside.

           
Looking in the door, Manny saw a man hunched over the
keyboard of his computer, grinning.
 
Even
at a glance, Manny could spot a slime and this one would leave a trail a foot
wide.
 
The thought of this
gusano
, this worm, harassing Deirdre
made his fingers curl.

           
Manny cleared his throat. “Professor Willard?”

           
Willard looked up and the grin disappeared from his
face.
 
“I told your
compadre
not to bother me,” he snapped. “You can come back later
and empty the waste.”

           
Manny had planned to ask for next
term’s syllabus, just as a means of scoping out this guy, but Willard’s
assumption prompted an even better opportunity.

           
Manny shrugged, grabbed a dust rag from the cart outside
the door and walked into the office. “
No
comprendo
,” he smiled as he took two more steps forward.

           
“Idiot,” Willard muttered.

           
Manny picked up the wastepaper basket and gestured toward
a pile of student papers on the desk. “¿
Mas
?”
he asked, and made as if to sweep them in with the rest of the garbage. If his
blood weren’t burning, he might even find this assumed idiocy pretty amusing.

           
“No!” Willard growled.
“¡No mas!
 
Get out! Now!”

           
Manny smiled again. “
Gracias,
señor
,” he said with a mock bow.
 
Then he began to dust, whistling a tune as he did so.
 
Freemont Willard was fuming, but apparently
he’d already run out of simple Spanish phrases. On the screen of the computer
monitor, Manny could see a partially composed letter to the Dean of Liberal
Arts.

           
...It is my regret
to bring a matter of considerable consequence to the English Department, indeed
to the entire campus, to your attention. I have recently learned that one of
our junior faculty, Professor Deirdre Kildeer...

           
The monitor went black. When he looked up, Willard was
pointing to the door. Manny shrugged and backed out of the room, taking the
trash with him.
 

           
As Manny loaded the waste from Willard’s office into the
front seat of his car, he glanced at the luminous dial of his wristwatch.
 
Ten thirty-five.
 
Not too late to call Deirdre.
 
He doubted she’d be asleep yet after the day
she’d had.
 
The story of Diana Vibert had
unnerved him, too. This Willard needed to be dealt with before he could do more
damage.
 
Manny glanced about the darkened
campus, pulled out his cell phone, and dialed.

           
“I hope I didn’t wake you,” he said when Deirdre
answered.

           
She laughed briefly.
 
“Did you think I was already tucked in, dreaming of the sugar plum
stalker?”

           
“I hoped not. I have some stuff to show you that might be
important. Can I come over?”

           
“What is it?” she asked. Deirdre sounded as if she were
holding her breath.

           
“Well,” he hesitated, “I’m on campus and I’m not sure
this is a good place to talk. I can be there in fifteen minutes if you don’t
mind staying up a bit.”