Flesh And Blood

“I appreciate it.”

“Hey,” she said, “we’re not even close to even in the thank-you department… Okay, here we go: This past quarter she took a full load – four psych courses: Introductory Learning Theory with Professor Hall, Perception with Professor de Maartens, Developmental with Ronninger, Intro Social Psych with Dalby.”

“Gene Dalby?”

“Uh-huh.”

“We were classmates,” I said. “Didn’t know he switched from clinical practice to teaching Social.”

“He came on full-time a couple of years ago. Good guy, one of the less pompous ones. Even though he drives a Jag.” Her eyes rounded and she pretended to slap her wrist. “Forget I said that.” She began to return the transcript to the drawer.

“Lauren told her mother she got straight A’s.”

“Like I said, Dr. Delaware, grades are confidential.” Her eyes dropped to the paper. Tiny smile. “But if I was her mother I’d be proud. Smart girl like that, I’m sure there’s an explanation. Here, let me write those professors’ names down for you. Ronninger’s on sabbatical, but the others are teaching all year. By this time I doubt they’re in, but good luck.”

“Thanks. You’d make a good detective.”

“Me?” she said. “Never. I don’t like surprises.”

She locked up, and I walked her through the lobby, both our footsteps echoing on black terrazzo. When she was gone I strode back to the elevators and read the directory. Simon de Maartens’s office was on the fifth floor, Stephen Z. Hall’s and Gene R. Dalby’s on the sixth.

I pushed the button and waited and thought about Lauren’s lie to Andrew Salander. No research job. Probably covering for her real employment. Stripping, hooking, both. Resuming her old ways. Or she’d never stopped.

Runway modeling. Another lie? Or maybe gigs at the Fashion Mart were just another way to cash in on her looks.

Smart kid, but enrollment in college and good grades weren’t contradictory to plying the flesh trade. Back when Lauren had worked for Gretchen Stengel, the Westside Madam had employed several college girls. Beautiful young women making easy money – big money. Someone able to compartmentalize and rationalize would find the logic unassailable: Why give up five-hundred-dollar tricks for a six-buck-an-hour part-time bottle-washing gig without benefits?

Salander had said Lauren was living off investments, and I wondered if her body was the principal. If so, her disappearance could be nothing more than a quarter-break freelance to accrue spare cash.

No car, because she was flying – jetting off somewhere with a sheik or a tycoon or a software emperor, any man sufficiently rich and deluded to fall for the ego sop of purchased pleasure.

Lauren serving as amusement for a few days, returning home nicely invested.

But if that was the case, why had she raised her mother’s anxiety by not providing a cover story? And why hadn’t she packed clothing?

Because this particular job required a new wardrobe? Or no clothing at all beyond the threads on her back?

She had taken her purse, meaning she had her credit cards. What did a party girl require other than willingness and magic plastic?

Maybe she was punishing Jane by slipping away without explanation – letting Jane know she wouldn’t be controlled.

Or perhaps the answer was painfully simple: rest and recreation after grinding away for grades. Cooling out in one of the places she’d used before – nice quiet Malibu motel – if that was true.

Maybe Lauren had done the L.A.-to-Reno shuttle, found her old stomping grounds lucrative, decided to stay for a while… The elevator doors wheezed open, and I rode up to five. Professor Simon de Maartens’s door was decorated with Far Side cartoons and a newspaper clipping about moose deaths from acid rain. Closed. I knocked. No answer. The handle didn’t turn.

I had no more success at Stephen Hall’s unadorned slab of chartreuse wood, but Gene Dalby’s door was open and Gene was sitting at his desk, wearing a rumpled white shirt and khakis, bare feet propped, gray laptop resting on a skinny stalk of thigh. He typed, hummed tonelessly, wiggled his toes. A pair of huarache sandals sat near the legs of his chair. Coffee bubbled in an old white machine. A single window to his left framed rooftops and the northern edge of the campus botanical gardens. From a boom box on the ledge came supernatural guitar licks and a bruised voice. Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Crossfire.”

I said, “Uh, hi, Professor Dalby. Could we talk about my grades?”

Gene’s head turned. Same bony pencil face and jug ears and rebellious ginger hair. His temples had silvered. Black-framed half-lens reading glasses rode the center of a swooping, askew hook of a nose. He grinned, placed the specs on the desk, did the same with the laptop. “No way. You flunk.”

Jumping up to his full, ostrich-necked six-four, all loose limbs and oversized hands and bobbing head, he clasped my shoulders and shook his head in wonderment, as if my arrival heralded the second coming of something.

Gene is one of the most outgoing people I know, a paragon of unadorned friendliness, hyperactive maestro of the thunderous greeting. His good cheer is nearly constant, and he avoids complexity. Unusual traits in a psychologist. So many of us were introspective, overly imaginative kids who got into the field trying to figure out why our mothers were depressed no matter what we did. In grad school a lot of people found him too good to be true and distrusted him. He and I always got along, though it rarely went beyond off-color jokes and casual lunches.

“So,” he said. “Alex. How long has it been?”

“A while.”

“Light-years, man. Here, sit – Coffee?”

I took a side chair, accepted a mug of something strong and bitter and vaguely coffeelike. He kicked the sandals under the desk. The office was tiny, and his size didn’t help. He hunched like a pet confined by a cruel owner.

“Working during the break?” I said.

“Best time, less distraction. Besides, back when I was in practice I used to see fifty, sixty patients a week. That was real work. This academic racket is legalized theft. Nine months a year, make your own hours.” He laughed. “These guys love to complain, but it’s a paid vacation.”

“When did you make the switch?” I said.

“Three years ago. Sold the practice to my associates and presented the department with an offer they couldn’t refuse: They take me on part-time, no job security, no benefits, and I carry a heavy teaching load, in exchange for a clinical full professorship and no assignment to committees.”

“No publishing treadmill.”

“Exactly, but the funny thing is even though I didn’t plan to, I’m doing research anyway. First time in years. Asking questions that really interest me rather than churning out garbage in tribute to the tenure gods. And I love the teaching, man. The kids are great. Despite what the idiot pundits say, students are getting smarter.”

“What kind of research are you doing?” I said.

“Political attitudes in little kids. We go out to grade schools, try to gauge their perceptions of candidates. You’d be surprised how much little kids know about the scumbags who run for office. I feel like I’m home – social psych was always my first love. I went into clinical because I also liked clinical and I thought it would be nice to help people and all that. But, mainly, because I needed to make a buck. Married with kids – unlike you, I never went through the swinging bachelor stage.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy there, Gene.”

“I don’t think so, man. I distinctly recall you being a departmental love object. Even the girls who didn’t shave their legs looked at you that way.”

“I must have missed it,” I said.

He grinned. “Listen to him, that coyness – all part of the charm. Anyway… you look great, Alex.”

“You too.”

“I look like I always did – Ichabod Crane on methamphetamine. But yeah, I’m doing what I can to stay in