in Fischer Hall were the ones with whom he’d, um, dallied just days before.
Is he really such a man-slut that he’d known only the first names—the nicknames—of the women he’d seduced?
It certainly looks that way.
The effect my announcement has on Chris is really pretty profound. His fingers dig convulsively into my waist, and he begins to shake his head back and forth, like Lucy after a good shampoo.
“No,” he says. “That’s not true. It can’t be.”
And suddenly I know that I’ve made a horrible mistake.
Don’t ask me how. I mean, it’s not like I have any experience in this kind of thing.
But I know anyway. Know it the way I know the fat content in a Milky Way bar.
Christopher Allington didn’t kill those girls.
Oh, he’d slept with them, all right. But he hadn’t killed them. That was done by someone else. Someone far, far more dangerous…
“Okay,” says a deep voice behind me. A heavy hand falls on my bare shoulder.
“Sorry, Heather,” Cooper says. “But we have to go now.”
Where’d he come from? I can’t go. Not now.
“Um,” I say. “Yeah, just a sec, okay?”
But Cooper doesn’t look too ready to wait. In fact, he looks like a man who’s getting ready to run for his life.
“We have to go,” he says, again. “Now.”
And he slips a hand around my arm, and pulls.
“Cooper,” I say, wriggling to get free. I can see that Chris is still in shock. It’s totally likely that if I stick around awhile longer, I’ll get something more out of him. Can’t Cooper see that I’m conducting a very important interview here?
“Why don’t you go get something to eat?” I suggest to Cooper. “I’ll meet you over at the buffet in a minute —”
“No,” Cooper says. “Let’s go. Now.”
I can understand why Cooper is so anxious to leave. Really, I can. After all, not everybody deals with their exes by, you know, sleeping with them on the foyer floor.
Still, I feel like I can’t leave yet. Not after I’ve made this total breakthrough. Chris is really upset—so upset that he doesn’t even seem to notice that there’s a private eye looming over his dance partner. He’s turned away, and is sort of stumbling off the dance floor, in the general direction of the elevators.
Where’s he going? Up to the twelfth floor, to his father’s office, to hit the real liquor—or just to use the phone? Or up to the roof, to jump off? I feel like I have to follow him, if only to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.
Except when I start to go after him, Cooper won’t let me.
“Cooper, I can’t go yet,” I say, struggling to free myself from his grip. “I got him to admit he knew them! Roberta and Elizabeth! And you know what? I don’t think he killed them. I don’t think he even knew they were dead!”
“That’s nice,” Cooper says. “Now let’s go. I told you I have an appointment. Well, I’m late for it as it is.”
“An appointment? An appointment?” I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. “Cooper, don’t you understand? Chris said—”
“I heard you,” Cooper says. “Congratulations. Now let’s go. I said I’d bring you here. I didn’t say I could stay all night. I do have actual paying clients, you know.”
I realize it’s futile. Even if Cooper did change his mind and let me go, I don’t have any idea where Chris has disappeared to. And how smart would it have been, really, for me to follow him? I mean, considering what happened to the last couple of girls with whom he’d—how had I put it? Oh yeah, dallied. Hey, maybe I should be an English major. Yeah. A novelist, AND a doctor. AND a detective. AND a jewelry designer…
Cooper and I slip outside. I don’t even have a chance to say good-bye to anyone, or congratulate Rachel on her Pansy. I’ve never seen a guy so eager to get out of one place.
“Slow down,” I say, as Cooper hustles me to the curb. “I got heels on, you know.”
“Sorry,” Cooper says, and drops my arm. Then he put his fingers to his mouth and whistles for a cab that’s cruising along West Fourth.
“Where are we going?” I ask curiously, as the cab pulls to the corner with a squeal of its brakes.
“You’re going home,” Cooper says. He opens the rear passenger door and gestures for me to get inside, then gives the driver the address of his grandfather’s brownstone.
“Hey,” I say, leaning forward in the seat. “It’s just right across the block. I could’ve walked—”
“Not alone,” Cooper says. “And I have to head in the other direction.”
“Why?” I don’t miss the fact that Marian the Art Historian has just slipped out the library doors behind us.
But instead of walking over and joining Cooper on the curb, she shoots him an extremely unfriendly look, then hurries off on foot toward Broadway.
Cooper, whose back is to the library, doesn’t see the professor, or the dirty look.
“I’ve got to see a man,” is all Cooper will say to me, “about a dog. Here.” He shoves a five-dollar bill at me. “Don’t wait up.”
“What dog?” The cab starts to move. “Cooper, what dog? Are you getting another dog? What about Lucy? What’s wrong with Lucy?”
But we’re already gliding out into traffic. Cooper has turned and strode off towards West Third Street. Soon I can’t see him at all.
What had all that been about? I mean, really. I know Cooper’s clients are important to him, and stuff. And I know he thinks this whole thing with me and the deaths in my building is like a figment of my imagination, or whatever.
But still. He could at least have listened to me.
That’s when the cab driver, who appears to be Indian—like from India, not Native American—says, helpfully, “I believe that’s an expression.”
I look at his reflection in the rear view mirror. “What is?”
“See a man about a dog,” the cab driver says. “It’s an American expression. Like rolling stone gathers no moss. You know?”
I slump back into my seat. No, I didn’t know. I don’t know anything, apparently.
Well, I guess I knew that. I mean, isn’t that why I’m working at New York College? To get an education?
Well, I’m getting one, all right. And I haven’t even started classes yet.
22
You’re magic
Magic to me
I’m under your spell
Even my friends can tell
You’re magic
Magic to me
“Magic”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Dietz/Ryder
From the album Magic
