Wildalone (33 page)

“Your daughter is one of my best students,” Giles volunteered readily, unaware that my father's heavy accent had just camouflaged a subtle hostility. “Yet I am sure that, when she calls home, she has more pressing things to talk about than the myths of a world many believe to be long gone.”

To my relief, the subject of Elza never came up. Giles left eventually, and there was still enough time for my parents to meet everyone before the reception was over. When Jake offered to take us out to dinner afterward, Dad shook his head.

“You kids go celebrate. We'll head back and try to beat the jet lag, so that Thea can show us the campus tomorrow.”

I tried to convince them to stay, but they looked overwhelmed and tired. On the way out, Dad pulled me aside and his eyes welled up.

“You were fantastic tonight. We've never heard you play like this.”

“Like what?”

“As if you've suddenly . . . grown up, you know?”

“This is college, Dad. One grows up just by breathing the campus air.”

“That may be, it may very well be. But try not to grow up too fast, all right? Even though, I must say, this Jake does seem like a great fellow.”

I wondered what he might have said if the “fellow” with us that night had been Rhys.

THE HONKING CITY SWEPT US
into its lunacy. Limousines and yellow cabs feuded for access outside Carnegie's main entrance, while next to them, on the sidewalk, people elbowed their way through—frantic pins in a box that someone wouldn't stop shaking.

“What kind of a place are you in the mood for?” He looked calm; the pin box didn't seem to bother him at all.

“Something peaceful would be nice.”

“How about Asian food?”

“Take me anywhere you want. It's your city.”

The restaurant he had in mind turned out to be anything but peaceful: the line started outside, by a heavy wooden door over which a single word—
TAO
—loomed on a red awning. Just as it had done at Tapeo, the name Estlin worked its instant magic, and a man who looked like he worked for the Secret Service (black suit, shaven head, and an earpiece) came to show us to our table.

Jake took my hand. “Don't let me lose you.”

We walked by the bar—an area so crowded we could barely pass through—and, for a few seconds, I had the illusion of being his. His girl. Following him, hand in hand, on one of many Friday nights, our date just beginning.

(“What kind of a place are you in the mood for?”

“I just want to walk with you. On the longest, most crowded street in the city . . .”)

We were escorted up to the second level, to a table separated from the others at the end of a long glass bridge. Next to it, an enormous stone Buddha
presided over the ritual of food, exuding indifference to anything except his own inner peace.

I glanced at the menu but closed it right away, clueless about most of the words on it.

“Is it not what you wanted?” Jake slid to the edge of his seat, ready to leave if I asked him to. “We can go somewhere else. The thing is, though, New York doesn't get much more peaceful than this.”

“No, it's perfect. The nicest restaurant I've been to, actually.”

“This one?” He looked uncomfortable already—either for my lack of dining experience, or because he had inadvertently outdone Rhys. “Let's get you some food.”

“Would you mind ordering for me?”

“Sure. How about sushi?”

“I've never had it.”

His eyes widened with disbelief. “Never?”

“It's not that popular in Bulgaria. And I haven't seen it in the cafeteria either, at least not in Forbes.”

“Even better, then. You're in for a treat.”

I watched him say the strange name of each item to the waitress—without hurry, projecting serenity and the disarming warmth with which he did everything else. The food arrived quickly. Miniature tree trunks of rice and seaweed, arranged on narrow rectangular plates.

I looked for utensils but there were none.

“Have you eaten with chopsticks before? It's easy. Just keep the lower one in place with the thumb, like this—” He helped me adjust my fingers. “And the upper one here, like a pen, so you can use it to lift your food.”

The sticks fell on the plate as soon as he let go of my hand. We both laughed.

“Try once more. It's not as hard as it seems.”

It was much harder than it seemed. My pulse raced from his touch and I would have dropped anything, even a simple fork.

When the waitress came back to check on us, he pointed at the rose that I had left on the table.

“Could we also get a vase for this?”

She obliged right away.

“Jake, I've been meaning to ask you . . . Why exactly this of all flowers?”

“Because . . .” He stopped himself. Maybe I shouldn't have asked, now that we were under a friendship pact. But it was his fault too—giving me the same flower yet again, in an exact repeat of Alexander Hall. “I figured it might be your favorite.”

“Based on what? You didn't know anything about me, back when you and I . . . when we first met.”

He tilted his head in disagreement. “I had seen your concert flyers.”

The flyers. They had mentioned Bulgaria. And it took just a quick Google search to find out that Bulgaria was famous for its roses—entire valleys of them, feeding the world's perfume industry with rose oil extract. Basically, the rose was a gift of geographical trivia.

“So . . . is it?”

“Sorry, is what
it
?” I tried to focus back on the conversation.

“Is it your favorite flower?”

“No, not really. But it's beautiful nonetheless.”

“Well, there was one more reason . . .” His eyes were still fixed on the vase and the stem in it. “Watching you play that night had reminded me of something.”

“Of what?”

“A poem I've loved ever since I read it.”

So he was into poetry too? Probably handwriting his own lines in books. With red ink, directly over the printed text.

“Which poem?”

He wouldn't tell me.

“Jake, come on. I want to know.”

“Maybe you will, one day.”

“One day? Meaning never?”

“No. Meaning . . . when it becomes safe to talk about it.”

“How is giving me that flower any safer than talking about it?”

“It's not, you're right. I overstepped my bounds. And I shouldn't have.”

The obligatory reminder. As if I could forget that this wasn't a date. That he was spending the evening with me only as a favor to his brother.

The drive back to Forbes was just as awkward—sitting next to him in the dark car, mostly in silence. It was a black Range Rover (the exterior, the leather seats, everything black), looking brand new, as if before that night it had never been driven in the busiest city on earth.

“Isn't it a hassle to have such a big SUV in Manhattan?”

“It's not mine. This is the family car and it usually stays at Princeton.”

From what I had seen, “family” included just the two of them. “Do you even need a car here?”

“No. I have a bike.”

“It's a bit difficult to picture you on a bicycle down Fifth Avenue.”

He laughed. “Not a bicycle. A motorcycle.”

“I really don't get it. Rhys is the bad boy, yet you are the one living this wild New York life and riding a motorcycle. What do you do with it, meet the other gang members?”

“It's a gang of one, for the moment.” His eyes flashed at me, then returned to the road. “Rhys had an accident with his, years ago.”

“What happened?”

“Nasty luck. Somebody got hurt and my brother blamed himself. Now he won't come near anything that has only two wheels.”

“And he doesn't mind you driving one?”

“He does; he used to go insane with worry. Then the fight turned ugly and he gave up.”

I couldn't see Rhys losing a fight, even one against his brother. “You know he's right, though. Motorcycles are too dangerous.”

“Not really.” He smiled—not to me, not even to himself, but to something in the darkness ahead of us. “The same lightning doesn't strike twice in the same family.”

His voice was starting to sound reckless and I looked for a safe change of subject. But there seemed to be no safe subjects between me and Jake—so I said nothing else.

When we reached Forbes, he parked past the main entrance and walked with me down the side road that led to my window.

“I had a great time tonight, Jake.”

“Me too.”

A huge moon dispersed the darkness enough to let me see that he wasn't smiling. We said good-bye with a hug—a brief one—and I hurried to pull the window open, hoping that its sound would sober me up from the urge to run after him, to be in his arms again.

“You forgot something.”

I turned around. He was back. For a moment, I had the craziest thought: that he would kiss me.

“What did I forget?”

But he was no longer looking at me. His eyes were fixed on something behind me, in the room. Something I hadn't seen yet, whose unexpected presence had reminded him not to overstep his bounds again.

“What did I forget, Jake?”

“It doesn't matter.”

I wanted to tell him that it did. That few things mattered more and that I didn't want him to leave.

Except he was already gone.

I realized what I had forgotten in the car: his rose. Now in my room, left while I was out, waited a vase of red poppies. In the moonlight, they looked almost black.

Did you feel me kissing the Albéniz out of you

from across the hall?

The note had been folded in two and dropped right in the middle of the bursting petals. With just a few words, it confirmed what my mind refused to believe: that silhouette in the back of the Spanish square had been real. Despite letting me spend the entire evening with his brother, Rhys had come to the concert, after all.

I WOKE UP WISHING IT
were Sunday. And dreading it. Rhys had promised me answers, but the questions kept piling up. Sending Jake to New York with me, only to then sneak into Carnegie and watch from a distance—who did that sort of thing? Maybe it was a test of his brother's loyalty? Or mine? Not to mention those flowers. How did one go about finding poppies in November?

I tried not to dwell on this and to focus on something I had been dreaming about for months: showing my parents Princeton. They wanted to see everything—my dorm, the classrooms, the libraries, and, of course, Alexander Hall. We even went to the art museum, but I steered clear of the Greek galleries and took them through the main floor instead, where my mother fell in love with Monet's melting Giverny meadows, and my father kept returning to Modigliani's portrait of Jean Cocteau.

After a late lunch in Forbes, Mom's headache forced her to take a nap in my room while Dad and I sat for a cup of coffee on the porch outside. He took in the landscape and, for the first time that day, grew quiet.

“Dad, what's wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong, quite the opposite. It's great to see you settled so nicely here. You seem happier than I've ever seen you.”

“Happiness is a complicated thing.”

“Even at eighteen?” He shook his head, smiling. “Wait until you reach my age. That's when things start to get really complicated.”

I looked at him, more carefully than ever before. My wise, humble, bighearted dad. Even now, when he was content and at peace, his face seemed resigned to its permanent sadness. I wondered if I should show him Elza's paper. She was his child; he had the right to see it. But what good would it do? His wasn't the kind of sadness that could be lifted by an old memento. He wanted answers. The belated truth. And in the best of worlds—some form of justice.

“Thea, remember back when you were leaving home you promised me not to dig into the past?”

“Of course I do.” And I had kept my promise. Mostly. “Why do you ask?”

“Your Greek Art class, for one. Is this how you stay away from the past, by taking the same courses as your sister?”

“I swear I had no idea.”

A pause, as his frown deepened. “And what's the deal with that professor of yours?”

“You mean Giles?”

“Yes, Giles. The weird Greek scholar who came out clean in the end because he had no motive. They never have a motive, do they?”

It hadn't occurred to me that Giles might have been a suspect. Yet, given the vanishing of Elza's body, the list of suspects probably included all who had known her.

“Dad, just teaching that class doesn't mean he—” Then I sensed his hostility toward my professor again. “Or is there anything you aren't telling me?”

“Unfortunately, no. Only what you already know.”

He pulled out his wallet, and from it—two newspaper cutouts, folded to the size of a dollar bill. When he handed them to me, I recognized the articles I had seen many times over the summer, published in the
Daily Princetonian
three days apart, in December of 1992.

Friday's headline—
STUDENT FOUND DEAD
,
CAUSE UNKNOWN
—preceded a brief entry, barely more than an obituary. A girl's body had been found the day before by a jogger, on a hiking trail south of campus. There were no indications of violence, no grounds for alarm in the student community. A memorial service was to be announced shortly. In the meantime the body would remain at Harriet's Funeral Home, until the family made the necessary arrangements.

The second article had a very different tone, and although the weekend had delayed the news from seeing print, the urgency hit you from the start:
BODY OF DEAD STUDENT DISAPPEARS
,
CAMPUS SECURITY ON HIGH ALERT
. A staffer had found the empty casket on Friday morning, after unlocking Harriet's premises. This time there was scandal. An implied possibility of a crime. Drugged on fresh gossip, the reporter had dished out the details over several columns, peppered with reports of past death incidents, lists of
security measures, and even a critique of the way Harriet's ran its business.