Part 28 (2/2)
”Shhh-be quiet,” Nicole said, and she actually glanced around the room as if someone might have overheard, although they were half-naked and completely alone in his dorm room. Perry was at his afternoon Poli-Sci lecture. Even the curtains were closed.
”Nicole,” Craig said, but didn't bother to continue. It was cute, really, he thought. It reminded him of the way girls back in elementary school would get all excited about their own meaningless secrets, pa.s.sing notes to one another, freaking out if some boy grabbed a note out of some girl's hands, although those notes had never said anything more exciting than Deena likes Bradley!!! Like anyone cared.
”Well, the Pan-h.e.l.lenic Society could have our house closed if they found out. This is considered hazing.”
”How often does your sorority have these . . . raisings?” Craig asked, trying to make it sound like a serious question, trying not to make air quotations around the word.
”Twice a year,” Nicole said. ”They did it back in November, but we-the new pledges-had to wait upstairs. They don't let us attend until the Spring Event.”
Then, Craig couldn't help it. He laughed out at her calling it the ”Spring Event.” Basically they were getting sorority sisters drunk on tequila, having them hyperventilate until they pa.s.sed out, putting them in a coffin, and ”bringing them back from the dead,” all newly risen in the Omega Theta Tau sisterhood. It hardly fit, in Craig's opinion, under the kind of seasonal ”event” cla.s.sification the Rotary Club might give to an Easter egg hunt or a skating party for kids with Down syndrome.
”Craig,” Nicole said, and punched him softly on the arm. ”You said you wanted me to tell you everything. And you swore you wouldn't tell anyone.”
Craig held his hand over his heart and said, ”I swear. I mean it. Your secret society's secret is safe with me. But don't go brain dead on me or something, okay? You're sure this s.h.i.+t is safe?”
”It's so safe,” Nicole said. ”Hundreds of girls have done it since the fifties. Nothing's ever gone wrong.”
”Yeah, but what if it does? You read about this stuff all the time. People with heart conditions they didn't know they had, that kind of thing-”
”Well, we have a dozen founding sisters present at the event. And this year I'm just a celebrant. I don't get to be raised until next year.”
”Well, that's good,” Craig said, although it still vaguely alarmed him. (For one thing, who were these blue-haired old ladies from the fifties who showed up for this weirdness, and why? Jesus Christ, would Nicole still be doing this stuff when she was eighty years old?) ”I love you,” he said, ”but the idea of wiping the drool off your bib for the rest of your life is less than s.e.xy. Still, I'd do it.”
”Well, you don't have to worry. Anyway, we have our own EMT. The sorority pays him to be at the events and-”
”That guy,” Craig said, and propped himself up on his elbow. ”That guy. You said you didn't know who he was.”
”What guy?”
”The one who's always hanging around your sorority. I pointed him out. I said, 'He's got a patch on his pocket that says EMT,' and you were like, 'What's EMT stand for?' ”
”Huh?” She pulled Craig back down to her and kissed his temple. ”Your eyebrows are all furrowed, Craig. I hate that.”
She'd said that a lot-that she couldn't stand to look at him when his eyebrows were ”furrowed,” and when he'd tried to explain to her that it would be his forehead that was furrowed, because furrows were lines and you couldn't have furrowed eyebrows, she'd said, ”I don't care. I can't stand that face you make.”
”You know perfectly well what EMT stands for,” Craig said. ”Do you play dumb with me a lot, Nicole?”
”So, like, are you asking if I'm playing dumb or just actually dumb?”
He laughed, and she kissed his forehead.
”Don't make fun of me,” Nicole said, but she wasn't angry. She licked his forehead then and nuzzled into his neck, and he let his hands drift around the safe, soft, bare skin of her torso.
65.
Kurt embraced Mira in front of the students with all that Eastern European physicality she remembered from her year in that part of the world-smelling strongly of cologne, literally lifting her off her feet.
”Mira!” he said, and set her back down.
When she turned back around to her cla.s.s, they were staring at her with what could have been alarm, but mostly, she supposed, they were registering their surroundings (the starkness, the coldness) and smelling the lively, corporeal presence of Kurt against the antiseptic smell of the autopsy room on the other side of the sliding doors, from which he'd emerged wearing his white smock, red hair tucked up into a gauzy blue cap, big grin sans one front tooth.
”Mira,” he said again, and then looked at her students looking at him. He raised a hand to them and said, ”Welcome to the morgue.”
There was a burst of laughter, followed by nervous silence. The students nodded back with more energy than usual. Mira could already tell which of the girls were hoping to faint-although these were rarely the ones who actually fainted. The actual fainters were usually the tough guys or the serious young women who'd always wanted to be surgeons.
”We'll be entering the 'Waiting Mortuary' in a moment,” Mira said, and gestured for the cla.s.s to follow her through the sliding gla.s.s doors. ”This is the part of the morgue that was specifically designed for the purpose of confirming that a dead body was actually deceased. Until very recently, as we've already discussed, there were no trusted methods for verifying death, and people had sincere fears of being buried alive. The Waiting Mortuary was designed to house the dead for a period of time during which attendants would be on alert for any sign of life. Right, Kurt?”
Kurt nodded sincerely. He was nothing if not sincere. When Mira had first met him, they had been leaning over a grave full of Serbian dead together, peering down.
Skeletal remains. Some sc.r.a.ps of clothing. A couple of wrist.w.a.tches. A ring.
Kurt had turned to her, looked at her for what seemed like a long time, and then he'd reached over and put his hand over her eyes.
Since his move to the States, Mira had seen Kurt only during these visits with her cla.s.ses to the morgue. She'd asked him to have coffee with her once, but he'd said he was busy. She invited him over to dinner once, but he'd declined.
”Your husband wouldn't like it.”
”No, he would like it,” Mira insisted. ”Clark would like to meet you. He's heard so much about you.”
”No,” Kurt said again. ”I am a single man. He looks at me one time. He knows I feel for you. I am a shy man, Mira. Large, yes, but timid. I do not want to fight your husband.”
”Fight?” Mira had exclaimed, and laughed out loud, but Kurt was serious, and she realized that because of this seriousness, there could be no dissuading him without insulting him, without implying that her husband would never have considered him a rival, that there would be no fight. So she hadn't argued-although, when Clark had laughed and laughed after she told him about Kurt's fears, so adamantly amused, she'd briefly considered telling him, that, actually, Kurt had been a figure for quite a while in her s.e.xual imagination.
His large Eastern European presence with his scent of cologne and his experience of the world, and war, and hards.h.i.+p, and death.
Kurt bowed a little to Mira's students then and said, ”You must be very quiet, although of course the dead cannot hear.” (Again, excited and uneasy laughter.) ”But because, you know, the word morgue, it is a French word. It means, at one and same, 'to look at solemnly,' and 'to defy.' ” Kurt waited for this to sink in, and then said, ”You see, the sameness? And the strangeness?”
They were all nodding by this time. Perhaps they did understand, or maybe they were starting to feel as if their lives depended upon the goodwill of this man, their diener.
They stopped at the sliding gla.s.s doors. Mira turned and said, ”Here we are in what the Victorians quaintly referred to as the Rose Cottage. At children's morgues, they called it the Rainbow Room. And though these euphemisms might be charming, and funny, we have to remember that eventually most of us will find ourselves in a morgue, not viewing, but viewed.”
”Too-day,” Kurt said, ”we have a man who has had a brain aneurysm. We have a woman of old age. We have a suicide. But I must warn you, because it is disturbing, there are a family, two children, father, grandmother, they were hit by a head-on. It is a busy day at the morgue.”
One or two of the students took a step backward, and began to look around as if in a panic to find the exit.
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