Zombies in Love (9 page)

              "Fine," said Sloane.  "She made a total recovery."

              "That's good," said Ian.  Wait, had Sloane taken her midterm yet?  Not that he could remember.  "Are you here to take that makeup test?  Because the final's in two weeks."

              "I have another problem," she said.  "My boyfriend was fixing the roof.  At his parents' house.  And it had been raining, and the ladder was slippery, and he fell off--"  She trailed off, sniffling a little.

              "Sloane, you haven't taken any of the quizzes since the first week of class.  Or the midterm.  How am I supposed to give you a grade?"

              "I thought I was excused.  Because of my grandmother.  And the wedding.  And now my boyfriend fell off a ladder, and they don't know if he'll ever walk again..."  She burst into tears.

              Ian held out the Kleenex box to her, and she grabbed it greedily.  She looked like she was blowing her nose, but was she really watching him to see his reaction?  Maybe it was just that it looked like he was going to be handling Sarah's grading, as well as his own, but Ian was starting to feel a little cynical about Sloane's story.  "You know," he said.  "I think we should take this to the dean and let him figure out how to handle it." 

              "Fine with me," said Sloane, carefully wiping under her eyes so her eyeliner didn't smear.  "He's best friends with my dad.  I'm sure he'll be willing to help me out, even if you aren't."

             
I hate undergrads
, thought Ian.

#

             
Sam paced back and forth in his hotel room and thought.  It might have been impossible, he reflected, that Jack had survived being murdered and dumped in the bay.  But let's not worry about how he did it, yet.  Let's try to figure out what he did next.

              Let's say Jack tells himself, everyone thinks I'm dead, they'll never know what happened to me, so I'll just run away.  Forever.  That'll really tie Sam up in knots!

              Did that even make sense?  There was no good reason for Jack to have disappeared, if he wasn't dead, or at least no reason that Sam could understand.  He'd won.  Why not enjoy the victory?

              It made no sense, but nothing Jack did ever made sense to Sam.  He needed to stop wasting his time trying to decipher the random alcohol-driven firings of his cousin's brain, and start focusing on where he had gone, so that Sam could kill him properly. 

              All right, tracing Jack after he sold the car hadn't worked out.  What did Sam know that the private investigators didn't?

              Put it another way.  Jack could, apparently, live without contacting his friends, or his family, or getting a job, or doing anything that would bring him to the attention of the government or Google.  Though he had to have gotten a job, didn't he?  Otherwise he would have starved by now, because the money he got from selling his car wouldn't have been enough to live on for long, and he hadn't taken anything else with him.  But Sam would have known if Jack had worked at a newspaper, he had enough pull for that.  Somewhere else then, somewhere he would get paid under the table, somewhere difficult to find.  And Jack had certainly never contacted any of his friends or family, Sam was sure of it.

              All right.

              Jack had walked away from every part of his old life, as far as Sam could tell.  Was there anything Jack couldn't live without?

Lisa stood on her front step and fidgeted, feeling very self-conscious in her new dress and shoes and earrings that the saleswoman at Macy’s had somehow talked her into buying.  Usually she just headed to Filene’s Basement when she needed new clothes, but going to Nancy’s house always kind of freaked her out, because Nancy made her feel like a total screwup.  Nancy had gone to college, where she met a nice guy who became a pharmacist.  They moved to the suburbs and had two girls, nearly teenagers now.

They were old friends, true, but hanging out with Nancy made Lisa feel like a perpetual kid, because she’d never gotten the things a normal adult would have: a husband, a family.  And the last time she’d gone to brunch at Nancy’s house had been miserable.  She’d made cinnamon rolls from scratch, and then no one would eat them but Nancy’s daughters, because every single one of Nancy’s friends was on a diet, even the men.  Nancy made some egg-white-only omelet crap that was totally rubbery and inedible, but everyone acted like it was the best stuff ever.  And Nancy had grilled her about her dating prospects and looked at her with these great big spaniel eyes,
poor Lisa, poor Lisa
, and she just couldn’t stand it anymore.

So when Nancy invited her to another (God help her) brunch, and said something about having a man there she wanted Lisa to meet, Lisa couldn’t help it-- she shot her mouth off and said, well, actually, she’d been dating someone, though privately she had no idea if you could call what she and Jack had been doing dating, since they never went anywhere besides her bedroom.  And then, of course, she had to ask Jack to go with her.  To brunch. 

What the hell was he going to eat?

So was it a date?  She didn’t know, but she’d been drawn into Macy’s like she’d been magnetized, and she’d found the oldest and surliest saleswoman she could, the kind who would tell her when she looked like the U.S.S. Constitution in a floral print, and she’d dropped a couple hundred bucks on an outfit, an actual outfit.  And instead of just taking her car, Jack had said something about picking her up.

A nice, neat Honda Accord pulled up in front of her, and Jack came out.  For the first time that she’d ever seen, he was wearing new clothes.  He looked sharp.  She liked when men dressed a little sharp, just a little flashy, so you knew they were paying attention. 

“You have a car?" she asked.

“It’s Arturo’s."

She started to open the door, but he cut in front of her and opened it for her. 

“You don’t have to do that,” she said.

“Now Miss Lisa,” he said, his accent getting so strong you could butter toast with it, “my mother taught me how to behave like a gentleman on a date.  Because that is how a gentleman obtains a second date.  And might I add that you are wearing a particularly lovely dress?”

She laughed at him.

He beamed back at her.  “I brought some flowers for our hostess,” he said, his voice sounding more normal.  “They’re on the back seat.”  He waved towards the passenger seat.

She sat down, and he closed the door behind her and followed her in. 

He looked very good to her-- his new blue shirt was exactly the color of his eyes (she could imagine him holding up shirt after shirt until
there! that's it!
) and she could have sworn the black belt was alligator, though it probably wasn't.  His charcoal pants were perfectly creased over his lean legs.  It was like he was made to wear clothes.  The one weird thing: no watch.  But she doubted anyone but her would notice.

He smelled good, too.  She remembered that when she'd first met Jack, she hadn't much liked his scent, finding it too sweet and strong.  But now she could see there were layers under it, first the sweet candy smell, and then the meaty scent of his body, like a rare steak ready for the grill, and she could swear a little hint of clean garden dirt.  So tasty, she just wanted to lick him. 

He'd worked to look good for her, and that made her heart pound in her chest.  God, she hoped Nancy wasn't too hard on him.

#

“It’s an amazing house, isn’t it?” Lisa said, looking up at the two-story-high ceiling of the foyer.

For a moment, Jack scanned her face, totally puzzled, and she remembered her earlier impression that this was a man who had once had a ton of money.  How did Nancy’s big, fancy house look to him?  Normal? 
Cheap?

A little trickle of pleasure ran through her at the thought. 

“Lisa!” cried Nancy, holding out both arms and crushing Lisa into a hug.  “And who is this?”

“Jack Kershaw,” he said, shaking her hand.  “Lovely to meet one of Lisa's oldest friends.”  He handed her the flowers.

“Thank you.  Your hands are freezing!” said Nancy.  “I had no idea it was so cold outside.  And what an unusual cologne!"  Lisa tensed, but Nancy just barreled on.  "Come on in!  Let me give you the grand tour.”

Lisa had seen the place before, of course, but Nancy never ever lost the chance to show the whole thing off, including her daughters’ rooms (
Moooom!  Moooooom!
).  Jack said all the right things when Nancy pointed out the custom faucets in the master bathroom, but Lisa held close her understanding of what he really thought. 
He thinks you're tacky, Nance! 

Heh heh heh.

Finally, Nancy trapped the two of them behind the island in the kitchen and grilled them about how they met.

“I work for her,” said Jack.

“Really?  Usually Lisa hires some real losers,” Nancy said with her typical frankness.

Jack smiled at her.  “And here I am.”

Nancy laughed and waved at him as if shooing a fly.  “What are you doing working for her?”

“I like working in a restaurant.  It’s not really about the food.  I mean, it’s pizza.  You can get it frozen in the supermarket.”

“Not as good as mine,” said Lisa, a little hurt.  Okay, a lot hurt. 
Warn me if you're going to tell me my entire life is meaningless, okay?

“No, that’s not what I meant.  You’re a fine cook, but what they really want is for us to take care of them.  You see how they come in, sort of shaky and lost looking.  And when they leave, we've fed them, and it’s like we brought them back to life.  You're good at that, Lisa.”

He looked at her warmly, and she felt her heart shift within her.  She would have taken his hand, or told him she loved him, but she wasn't the kind of woman who did that in public.  Or in private, actually.

Nancy knew what she was thinking, anyway.  “Very sweet,” she said, sipping her mimosa.

Jack noticed that all the men were gathered around the television watching baseball, and wandered off to join them.

Nancy watched him go.  "Did you talk to Tina yet?"

"Only because she nearly broke down my door."

"She told me what the buyer's offering, and it's a good deal.  And you've always wanted to travel.  But I guess it's bad timing on her part."  She nodded at Jack, yelling at the television with the rest of the men.  “I like him.  He’s smart.  Good looking, too-- too bad he’s so short.  But I like him.”

“Good to know,” said Lisa.

#

Now they were driving back to Somerville, listening to the cheeseball country station that Jack liked.  He drove like a spider, she thought, legs all over the place, arm out the window.  Fast, too, but she didn’t feel nervous-- he knew what he was doing.

"Did I pass?" he asked her.

"You got an A-plus.  Even Nancy liked you."

He smiled without looking at her.  "I mean, did anyone notice--"

"No.  You fooled them all."

"I made sure I kept breathing," he said.  "I think that made the difference."  He reached over and patted her leg, a gesture that usually annoyed her when previous boyfriends had tried it.  "I'm glad they liked me.  They want you to be happy."

"Nancy is a pain in the ass.  But I'm used to her."

She’d had a good time.  She’d actually had a good time with all her old friends, for once they weren’t looking at her like some kind of overgrown fuckup kid, feeling sorry for her, planning how they could fix her life for her.  And it was all because she’d brought Jack with her.  He’d charmed them all.  And it was even better because they didn't know the whole story about him.  It felt like she'd gotten away with something.

How did you thank a guy properly for that? 

It was obvious, wasn't it?  She had to cook for him.  If she loved the guy, she had to stop making him eat standing up on a tarp in the back bedroom. 

She'd been giving it a little thought, especially at night when she was trying to go to sleep, which was when she usually worked out recipes in her head.  It probably wouldn't be too hard to make him something nice.  She bet if you cut the muscle off an arm and ran it through a meat grinder, you could make some pretty good meatballs. Or a meatloaf, if she was feeling lazy, but after the party he'd just been to, he deserved a little extra work on her part.  He might even deserve some homemade ravioli.  A little leg, run through the grinder with garlic and onion and fennel seed, would probably be strong enough to stand up to a marinara. 

And bone meal!  She had to remember that Jack actually liked the taste, or at least the texture, of human bone.  If she pounded it fine enough, she could use it like flour in all kinds of things.  Or as a replacement for breadcrumbs.  Yes, human meatballs, with human bone meal as filler-- he'd love that.  She'd want to use a lighter meat-- arm? chest?-- and definitely there'd be some experimentation involved.

Okay, it was disgusting, but was it really nastier than cooking a whole chicken, which always made her think, hey, this is a little dead animal, which someone had to kill so I could make soup?  Or stuffing a Thanksgiving turkey, and trying not to think about where her hand was?  Wasn't that what a cook did-- pretty up dead things, so people could eat them without thinking about it? 

She didn't know why, but the idea of eating people was bothering her less and less these days.  Maybe it was just all the time she was spending with Jack.  People could get used to anything.

She'd start with the skull Uncle Frank bought her as a gag gift when she turned thirty.  If she remembered right, it was still sitting on a shelf in the hall closet.

Some days it paid to be a packrat.