Part 23 (2/2)

Jeremy thought he'd died and gone to heaven. Finally, he had a companion all day and all night-a companion who slept even more hours than he did.

Still, Sh.e.l.ly wasn't so foolish as to think she would stop living. Sooner or later she was going to have to pay the bills lying scattered on her floor. Sooner or later she would have to put the house up for sale, pack all of her things, and move somewhere she could get a job.

But not today.

Today would be another stare-blankly-into-Cold Mountain-day.

Back in the last months of her marriage to Tim, Sh.e.l.ly had lived for the few days a month when he'd go away for work or on one of his fis.h.i.+ng weekends and she could pull on the robe (it was, actually, the same robe she wore now) and pull down the shades, and crawl into their bed.

She'd never thought of herself as depressed back then. She had not yet seen the now-ubiquitous list of the symptoms of depression in magazines, at the top of which was always something like ”can't drag your a.s.s out of bed.” She'd ask Tim to call her when he was about an hour from home, and told him it was so she could have something on the stove for him-when, in truth, it was so she could get herself up, and shower, and dress, and be ready to face the world in the guise of Tim again when he stomped through the door.

Now there was no one to drag herself out of bed for, to impress or appease-although Sh.e.l.ly knew that if this went on much longer (the phone unplugged, the cell phone off, not even checking her email), Rosemary would become alarmed, and come by.

But Sh.e.l.ly had gone longer than a week in the past without talking to Rosemary. Rosemary would a.s.sume for a while that Sh.e.l.ly was just busy with work. Rosemary had no idea that Sh.e.l.ly had been fired. Sh.e.l.ly had not mentioned Josie to Rosemary again after the phone conversation during which Rosemary had asked, ”Are you in love with this girl?” She'd planned to tell her, eventually, but hadn't gotten around to that yet. Let alone the s.e.x. Let alone the photographs. Let alone the disciplinary meeting with the dean. There would be, as they said, a lot of catching up to do.

Sh.e.l.ly rolled onto her side, and Jeremy growled a little, dreamily, and rolled onto his side as well.

Jesus.

And to add to the horror, the shame, Sh.e.l.ly found herself, each time she closed her eyes, to her own shock and amazement, instead of thinking about the public humiliation, instead of grieving the loss of her livelihood and her ident.i.ty and her job and her life-thinking instead about Josie Reilly.

About her clavicle. About the shadows gathered there in the moonlight in Sh.e.l.ly's bed. About those white teeth locked onto her lower lip, damp and s.h.i.+ning in the morning light.

Like her cat, Sh.e.l.ly growled a little, and put her face in her hands, and remembered the last phone call she'd answered from the university administration. ”We want to be certain you understand that there is to be no communication between you and the student in question. Any attempts to contact her may result in legal action on her part or on ours.”

Sh.e.l.ly had held the phone away from her ear then, and muttered, ”Of course,” thinking, Oh my G.o.d, as she hung up. I've become the kind of lecherous vermin they fear will call and stalk a student.

But even as she was thinking it, Sh.e.l.ly was flipping her cell phone open to the address book, scrolling down to Josie's number, uttering a little cry before she snapped it closed.

Never again even to speak with the stupid little b.i.t.c.h, the most beautiful creature in this whole exhausted world?

s.h.i.+t.

Now she shoved off the blankets, put her feet on the floor.

What did she really have to lose?

They'd told her she could not attempt to contact the ”student in question,” but they had not told her she could not sit in the Starbucks that she happened to know for a fact the student in question visited ten times a day.

49.

”Where are you?”

”What do you care, Mira? The boys are fine. I've just dropped them off at my mother's. They were ecstatic to see her.”

”Why didn't you tell where you were going? Why didn't you call last night to tell me where you were?”

Mira was trying to keep her voice down. She was in her office and had just pa.s.sed Jeff Blackhawk in the hallway. A few days before, they'd made plans to talk in her office after their Tuesday cla.s.ses, and now he was waiting for her. She should have told him that something had come up, that they'd have to meet another time, but he was talking to Ramona Cherry out there, G.o.dwin's only fiction writer and its worst gossip, and Mira couldn't bring herself to speak as she pa.s.sed. She knew the expression Ramona would be wearing: that looking-on-the-misfortunes-of-others-from-a-distance-with-amus.e.m.e.nt look.

Schadenfreude, but Mira's Serbian grandmother had called it, so much more beautifully, zloradost-”eviljoy.”

Mira couldn't have stood it. She'd simply held up a hand in greeting and hurried past them, and then the phone rang as soon as she closed the door behind her.

”How was I supposed to know you were home?” Clark asked.

”What are you talking about?”

”Well, I waited for you. You said you'd be early, or at least on time, and then you didn't show up. For all I knew you were the one who'd taken off.”

”I didn't take off. I was late. I was in a meeting. I'm trying to make a living here, Clark.”

”Yeah, yeah, I know all about that Mira, and I'm sorry I've been such dead weight, you know, dragging you down the toilet along with your glorious career. In the meantime, everything's fine, and you can just go about your business, your important business. The twins are being taken good care of by their grandmother. I'll pick them up in a few days, and then-”

”What? What do you mean you'll pick them up? Where are you going?”

”I'm taking a little R-and-R. I've earned it, Mira. I've spent the last two years trapped in a nine-hundred square-foot apartment with two toddlers while you were pursuing your Big Career. Now I'm going to rent a little cottage on the lake, and maybe a boat. Maybe fish for a few days. I'll let you know-”

”Fish? It's almost winter.”

”Yeah, well, there are still fish in the lake, Mira. They don't migrate.”

”For G.o.d's sake, Clark, why did you take the twins with you? Why didn't you leave them home with-”

”Are you kidding, Mira? Because there's no one to take care of them at home! They need a mother. I left them with the only mother they have-mine.”

”f.u.c.k you, Clark. f.u.c.k you. f.u.c.k-”

But he'd hung up already, and Mira was holding the receiver in her hand, staring straight ahead at her bulletin board, on which a snapshot of the twins-red Kool-Aid smiles shadowing their real smiles, wearing Chicago Cubs caps and bathing trunks with sharks on them, Lake Michigan frothing in the background-was thumbtacked at a terrible slant so that they appeared to be slipping sideways into a pile of ungraded student papers on her desk.

Mira dropped the receiver and lunged at the photo, tore it off the bulletin board and pressed it to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She was clinging to it when Jeff Blackhawk pushed open her door, which she'd left unlocked in her hurry to answer the phone, and said, registering the expression on her face, ”Mira? Is everything okay?”

50.

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