“Cooper!” I can’t believe what I’m seeing. This is a side of Cooper I’ve never witnessed before.
And am pretty sure I never want to see again. Maybe this is why he won’t tell me what he does all day. Because what he does all day is stuff like this.
Cooper finally releases the kid, and Winer slumps to the floor, clutching his hand and curling into a fetal position.
“You’re gonna regret this, man,” the kid wimpers, fighting back tears. “You’re gonna be real sorry!”
Cooper blinks like someone coming out of a daze. He looks at me and, seeing my expression, says sheepishly, “I only used one hand.”
I am so stunned by this explanation—if that’s even what it is—that I can only stare at him.
A tousled blond head peeks in from the bathroom doorway. The girl from the water bed has managed to pour herself back into a bright orange party dress, but she’s barefoot, her wide eyes focused on Doug’s prone form.
But she doesn’t ask what happened. Instead, she asks, “Are my shoes in there?”
I lean down and lift up two orange high-heeled pumps.
“These them?”
“Oh, yes,” the girl says gratefully. She takes a few hesitant steps around her host and seizes the shoes. “Thank you very much.” Slipping the pumps onto her feet, she says to Doug, “It was very nice meeting you, Joe.”
Doug just moans, still clutching his injured hand. The girl scoops some of her blond hair from her eyes and leans down, displaying an admirable amount of cleavage.
“You can reach me at the Kappa Alpha Theta House anytime. It’s Dana. Okay?”
When Doug nods wordlessly, Dana straightens, grabs her coat and purse from a pile on the floor, then wiggles her fingers at us.
“’Bye, now!” she says, and jiggles away, her backside swaying enticingly.
“You get out, too,” Doug says to Cooper and me. “Get out or I’ll… I’ll call the cops.”
Cooper looks interested in this threat.
“Really?” he says. “Actually, I think there are a few things the cops need to know about you. So why don’t you go right ahead and do that?”
Doug just whimpers some more, clutching his hand. I say to Cooper, “Let’s just go.”
He nods, and we step from the room, closing Doug’s door behind us. Standing once again in the Tau Phi House’s hallway, inhaling the rich odor of marijuana and listening to the sounds of the football game drifting out from the game room, I study the spray paint on the wall, which the maid who’d answered the door is trying to wipe off with paint remover and a rag. She’s barely started on theF inFAT CHICKS. She has a long way to go.
She has a Walkman on, and smiles when she sees us. I smile automatically back.
“I don’t believe a word that kid said,” Cooper says, as he zips up his anorak. “How ’bout you?”
“Nope,” I say. “We should check his alibi.”
The maid, who apparently hadn’t had the volume on her Walkman turned up very high, looks at us and says, “You know those guys are gonna back him up whatever he says. They’re his fraternity brothers. They have to.”
Cooper and I exchange glances.
“She has a point,” I say. “I mean, if he didn’t talk when you had him in that hand lock, or whatever it was… ”
Cooper nods. “The Greek Association really is a marvelous institution,” he remarks.
“Yes, it is,” the maid says, just as gravely. Then she bursts out laughing and goes back to scrubbing the F.
“About what happened back there,” Cooper says to me, in a different tone of voice, as we stand waiting for the elevator. “That kid… he just… the way he treated that girl… I just… ”
“Now who’s got the Superman complex?” I want to know.
Cooper smiles down at me.
And I realize I love him more than ever. I should probably just tell him that, and get it out in the open so we can stop playing these games (well, okay, maybe he’s not playing games, but Lord knows I am). At least that way I’ll know, once and for all, if I have a chance.
I’m opening my mouth to do just that—tell him how I really feel about him—when I notice he’s opening his mouth, too. My heart begins to thump—what if he’s about to tell me thathe lovesme? Stranger things have happened.
And hedid ask me to move in with him, pretty much out of the blue. And okay, maybe it was because he felt bad about the fact that I’d just walked in on my fiancé, who happens to be his brother, getting a blow job from another woman.
But still. Hecould have done it because he’s secretly always been in love with me… .
His smile has vanished. This is it! He’s going to tell me!
“You’d better call your office and tell them you’re going to be late getting back,” he says.
“Why?” I ask breathlessly, hoping against hope that he’s going to say,Because I plan on taking you back to my place and ravishing you for the rest of the day.
“Because I’m taking you over to the Sixth Precinct, where you’re going to tell Detective Canavan everything you know about this case.” The elevator doors slide open, and Cooper unceremoniously propels me into the car. “And then you’re going to keep out of it, like I told you.”
“Oh,” I say.
Well, okay. It isn’t a declaration of love, exactly. But at least it proves he cares.
12
The “rat” in “unreliable narrator”
The “lie” in “silliest”
The “end’ in “narcissistic tendencies”
The “us” in “total disgust.”
“Rejection Song”
Written by Heather Wells
“What do you mean, we have to go to tonight’s game?”
“Departmental memo,” Tom says, flicking it onto my desk. Or should I say his desk, since he’s apparently taking it over for the duration of Gillian Kilgore’s stay? “Mandatory attendance. To show our Pansy Spirit.”
“I don’t have any Pansy Spirit,” I say.
“Well, you better get some,” Tom says. “Especially since we’re having dinner beforehand with President Allington and Coach Andrews here in the café.”
My jaw drops. “WHAT?”
“He thinks it’s just the ticket,” Tom says, in a pleasant voice I happen to know is solely for the benefit of Dr. Kilgore, behind the grate next door, “to show the public that the Fischer Hall cafeteria is safe to eat—and live—in. He’s upset about everybody calling this place Death Dorm.”
I stare at him. “Tom, I’m upset about that, too. But I don’t see how eating warmed-over beef-stroganoff and watching a basketball game is going to help.”
“Neither do I,” Tom says, dropping his voice to a whisper. “That’s why I’m taking a little peppermint schnapps with me in a flask. We can share, if you want.”
Generous as this offer is, it doesn’t quite make the evening sound more palatable. I’d had big plans for tonight: I was going to go home and make Cooper’s favorite dinner—marinated steak from Jefferson Market, with
