I'd all but forgotten about my underhanded request for Bugayong's file. Stepping inside, I noted the department chair chatting with a few professors at the mail cubbyholes. The assistant held the file across her desk and grinned pertly. Dr. Peterson paused from her conversation to regard me and the assistant, the proffered file floating between us.
I lowered my voice before I realized I had. 'Thanks. But I got the matter straightened out.' I nodded at Dr. Peterson a bit too solicitously and withdrew, leaving the folder in the assistant's hand. Moving back down the hall, I couldn't help but glance around nervously. A clique of students snickered at something as I passed.
I knocked on the door of the tiny room I shared in rotation with three other instructors so we'd have somewhere to hold office hours. But whoever had been there last had already cleared out. I shut the door behind me, thunked my briefcase down on its side, and sat at the narrow desk. There are few places as depressing as a shared office. Lipstick-stained coffee mug holding gnawed pencils. Several dated textbooks and a cheap wooden carving of the three wise monkeys on the otherwise empty bookshelf. A beige Dell from the turn of the century.
Poking a finger into the slit of my briefcase, I lifted it open. The sheaf of ungraded scripts stared back at me. I tugged them out, patted my pockets and behind my ears for a red pen, and finally located one in the bottom drawer, next to a partially eaten muffin. It would have to do. I got through a script and a half before I found myself drawing little circles across the page, like the ones that had marked off the surveillance devices on our floor plan.
The Dell took two solid minutes to fire up. Dial-up Internet took even longer. After chewing my cheek, stalling, I found myself on the Gmail page, typing in patrickdavis081075 and my mother's maiden name for the password. My finger rested on the mouse, but I hesitated before clicking. An e-mail, they claimed, would arrive at four on Sunday, the day after tomorrow. So what was I so damn scared of now?
Deep breath. I tapped the mouse. The little hourglass trickled and trickled.
There it was. An e-mail account. My e-mail account. Waiting for me. With an empty in-box.
At the rap on the door, I jumped, almost knocking the keyboard off the desk. I hastily logged out just before Dr. Peterson stepped into the room. 'Patrick, I've heard that things have been a bit uneven with you lately.'
'Uneven?' I nudged the mouse over and tapped to clear the browser's history.
'Late for one class, another you never showed up for. An altercation with a student in the hall.'
'Huh?'
'Some kind of shouting match? Professor Shahnazari overheard you cursing at a student.'
'Right, that was--'
She raised her voice, talking over me. 'Then I find out you made a request to see a student file. Did anyone give you the impression that adjunct professors were entitled to review confidential student documents?'
'No. It was a bad judgment call.'
'We agree there.' Her lips, etched with small vertical wrinkles, compressed. 'I hope you can pull it together here in short order. And in the meantime, you'd do well to remember, invasion of privacy is something we don't take lightly.'
'No,' I agreed, 'nor do I.'
Chapter 23
Cleaned up, the house looked almost worse. I glanced around at the glaring holes in the walls, the misaligned flaps of carpet, the bags of trash. It looked more like itself now, just a badly damaged version. My Nikes were set out by the closet door, as if Ariana wanted to keep an eye on them, and beside her on the couch sat her raincoat, positioned over the slashed cushions like an invisible friend.
She'd taken up her hair in a ponytail and was wearing my ripped Celtics T-shirt from the '08 championship season. In her hand a Burgundy wineglass filled, no doubt, with Chianti; she loved cheaper reds, but the bowl-like glass made her feel more like she was drinking. She rolled her eyes at me and, pinching the phone between jaw and shoulder, made a mouth-flapping gesture with her free hand. 'If he hasn't returned your call, don't text-message. It'll just seem desperate.' A pause. 'I'm sure he got the voice mail, Janice. You just left it yesterday. Give the guy the weekend.'
I paused, taking in the surreal scene. In light of the ripped-apart house, the bugged raincoat, and the date we had with the curb drain in a few hours, it seemed bizarrely domestic.
'Look, I gotta go. Patrick just walked in. . . . I know, I know. You'll be fine.' She hung up, tossed the phone into the cushions, and said, loudly. 'That'll teach you guys to listen in.' A weary half smile. 'They probably committed hara-kiri in their surveillance vans. Speaking of . . .' She reached into her purse, withdrew the cigarette-pack jammer, and clicked the black button to knock out any surveillance devices that might have regenerated since Jerry's visit.
'You didn't say anything to Janice?'
'Please. Our problems pale in comparison to hers. Besides, I'm not sure how to slip this into casual conversation.'
'You did a great job,' I said. 'With the house.'
She blew a wisp of hair off her forehead. 'Still looks like a ten-car pileup.'
I handed her one of the throwaway phones. 'I programmed the number of mine in here. I don't want to not be able to talk to you when we're apart.'
Her face changed. My words hung there, so I replayed them, heard what they meant to her, to us. A few days ago, we were barely speaking.
I sat beside her. She offered her glass, and I took a sip. 'It's pleasant,' she said. 'Being nice to each other for a change.'
'We should have solicited techno-stalkers months ago.'
'I was sitting here looking at our house. All the crap in it. Dunn-Edwards Shaved Ice paint. Cavetto molding. That stupid chandelier I picked up in Cambria. And I thought a week ago this all looked perfect. And it felt like shit living here. At least it's honest now. This mess. This is where we are.'
A prim distance between us, we stared at the spray of wires where the plasma used to hang, sharing a glass of wine and waiting for midnight.
The black duffel tugged at my shoulder, bulging with the gear inside. We stood at the curb, Ariana clutching her jacket closed against a biting wind. Given the comforting yellow glow spilling around our curtains and blinds, it was easy to forget how torn up our house was inside. Apart from the occasional porch light, the neighboring houses and apartments were dark, which, along with an odd lapse in traffic, made the crowded neighborhood seem abandoned.
'Three minutes.' Shuddering, she looked up from her cell-phone clock to peer at the mouth of the curb drain. 'Hope it's wide enough.'
As I stepped toward the gap, dead leaves crumbled underfoot against the metal grate, brown flecks spinning down into darkness. A mossy smell rose with the warm air. I guided the end of the bulging duffel through the curb drain. A snug fit, but a fit.
Ariana checked the time again. 'Not yet.' She looked across at the apartment balconies, then down the slope of Roscomare Road, her eyes tearing from the cold. 'Wonder where they're watching us from.'
A silver Porsche flew by, the engine's roar shattering the calm. We both recoiled, Ariana raising her arms as if to shield herself from a hail of drive-by bullets, me stepping back, almost losing my footing on the curb. The driver, annoyed beneath his baseball cap, had scowled at our overreaction; he wasn't going that fast. My head buzzed from the shot of adrenaline and the burn-out blend of sleeplessness and caffeine. Ari and I took our positions again. Placing a foot on the end of the bag, I waited for her signal.
How much our lives had changed in four days.
Moths battered the flickering streetlight. Crickets sawed.
'Okay,' she said. 'Heave-ho.'
I shoved. The bag bunched at its midsection, then popped through. We waited to hear it hit, but instead there was a muffled thump. A soft landing. I looked down between my shoes through the metal grate, my eyes straining to discern the shape in the darkness.
What came into focus first were the whites of the eyes.
My skin was tingling everywhere--the back of my neck, up my ribs, the inside of my mouth. I blinked and the eyes were gone, the duffel with them. Just a muted sound against the moist, buried concrete--the faint heartbeat of
