mostly those from the Department of Virology, whose administrative office was just down the hall from her cubicle. Others were strangers, but everyone acknowledged her. She might have been experiencing a crisis of confidence in her professional competence, but at least she felt welcome.
On the main floor Marissa stood in line to sign out, a requirement after 5:00 P.M., then headed to the parking area. Although it was winter, it was nothing like what she’d endured in Boston for the previous four years, and she didn’t bother to button her coat. Her sporty red Honda Prelude was as she’d left it that morning: dusty, dirty and neglected. It still had Massachusetts license plates; replacing them was one of the many errands that Marissa had not yet found time to do.
It was a short drive from the CDC to Marissa’s rented house. The area around the Center was dominated by Emory University, which had donated the land to the CDC in the early ’40s. A number of pleasant residential neighborhoods surrounded the university, running the gamut from lower middle class to conspicuously rich. It was in one of the former neighborhoods, in the Druid Hills section, that Marissa had found a house to rent. It was owned by a couple who’d been transferred to Mali, Africa, to work on an extended birth-control project.
Marissa turned onto Peachtree Place. It seemed to her that everything in Atlanta was named “peachtree.” She passed her house on the left. It was a small two-story wood-frame building, reasonably maintained except for the grounds. The architectural style was indeterminant, except for two Ionic columns on the front porch. The windows all had fake shutters, each with a heart-shaped area cut out in the center. Marissa had used the term “cute” to describe it to her parents.
She turned left at the next street and then left again. The property on which the house sat went all the way through the block, and in order for Marissa to get to the garage, she had to approach from the rear. There was a circular drive in front of the house, but it didn’t connect with the rear driveway and the garage. Apparently in the past the two driveways had been connected, but someone had built a tennis court, and that had ended the connection. Now, the tennis court was so overgrown with weeds it was barely discernible.
Knowing that she was going out that evening, Marissa did not put her car in the garage, but just swung around and backed it up. As she ran up the back steps, she heard the cocker spaniel, given to her by one of her pediatric colleagues, barking welcome.
Marissa had never planned on having a dog, but six months previously a long-term romantic relationship that she had assumed was leading to marriage had suddenly ended. The man, Roger Shulman, a neurosurgical resident at Mass. General, had shocked Marissa with the news that he had accepted a fellowship at UCLA and that he wanted to go by himself. Up until that time, they had agreed that Marissa would go wherever Roger went to finish his training, and indeed Marissa had applied for pediatric positions in San Francisco and Houston. Roger had never even mentioned UCLA.
As the baby in the family, with three older brothers and a cold and dominating neurosurgeon for a father, Marissa had never had much self-confidence. She took the breakup with Roger very badly and had been barely able to drag herself out of bed each morning to get to the hospital. In the midst of her resultant depression, her friend Nancy had presented her with the dog. At first Marissa had been irritated, but Taffy—the puppy had worn the cloyingly sweet name on a large bow tied around its neck—soon won Marissa’s heart, and, as Nancy had judged, it helped Marissa to focus on something besides her hurt. Now Marissa was crazy about the dog, enjoying having “life” in her home, an object to receive and return her love. Coming to the CDC, Marissa’s only worry had been what to do with Taffy when she was sent out in the field. The issue weighed heavily on her until the Judsons, her neighbors on the right, fell in love with the dog and offered—no, demanded—to take Taffy any time Marissa had to go out of town. It was like a godsend.
Opening the door, Marissa had to fend off Taffy’s excited jumps until she could turn off the alarm. When the owners had first explained the system to Marissa, she’d listened with only half an ear. But now she was glad she had it. Even though the suburbs were much safer than the city, she felt much more isolated at night than she had in Boston. She even appreciated the “panic button” that she carried in her coat pocket and which she could use to set off the alarm from the driveway if she saw unexpected lights or movement inside the house.
While Marissa looked over her mail, she let Taffy expend some of her pent-up energy racing in large circles around the blue spruce in the front yard. Without fail, the Judsons let the dog out around noon; still from then until Marissa got home in the evening was a long time for an eight-month-old puppy to be cooped up in the kitchen.
Unfortunately, Marissa had to cut Taffy’s exuberant exercise short. It was already after seven, and she was expected at dinner at eight. Ralph Hempston, a successful ophthalmologist, had taken her out several times, and though she still had not gotten over Roger, she enjoyed Ralph’s sophisticated company and the fact that he seemed content to take her to dinner, the theater, a concert without pressuring her to go to bed. In fact, tonight was the first time he’d invited her to his house, and he’d made it clear it was to be a large party, not just the two of them.
He seemed content to let the relationship grow at its own pace, and Marissa was grateful, even if she suspected the reason might be the twenty-two-year difference in their ages; she was thirty-one and he was fifty- three.
Oddly enough the only other man Marissa was dating in Atlanta was four years younger than she. Tad Schockley, a microbiologist Ph.D. who worked in the same department she ultimately had been assigned to, had been smitten by her the moment he’d spied her in the cafeteria during her first week at the Center. He was the exact opposite of Ralph Hempston: socially painfully shy, even when he’d only asked her to a movie. They’d gone out a half dozen times, and thankfully he, like Ralph, had not been pushy in a physical sense.
Showering quickly, Marissa then dried herself off and put on makeup almost automatically. Racing against time, she went through her closet, rapidly dismissing various combinations. She was no fashion plate but liked to look her best. She settled on a silk skirt and a sweater she’d gotten for Christmas. The sweater came down to mid- thigh, and she thought that it made her look taller. Slipping on a pair of black pumps, she eyed herself in the full- length mirror.
Except for her height, Marissa was reasonably happy with her looks. Her features were small but delicate, and her father had actually used the term “exquisite” years ago when she’d asked him if he thought she was pretty. Her eyes were dark brown and thickly lashed, and her thick, wavy hair was the color of expensive sherry. She wore it as she had since she was sixteen: shoulder length, and pulled back from her forehead with a tortoiseshell barrette.
It was only a five-minute drive to Ralph’s, but the neighborhood changed significantly for the better. The houses grew larger and were set back on well-manicured lawns. Ralph’s house was situated on a large piece of property, with the driveway curving gracefully up from the street. The drive was lined with azaleas and rhododendrons that in the spring had to be seen to be believed, according to Ralph.
The house itself was a three-story Victorian affair with an octagonal tower dominating the right front corner. A large porch, defined by complicated gingerbread trim, started at the tower, extended along the front of the house and swept around the left side. Above the double-doored front entrance and resting on the roof of the porch was a circular balcony roofed with a cone that complemented the one on top of the tower.
The scene looked festive enough. Every window in the house blazed with light. Marissa drove around to the left, following Ralph’s instructions. She thought that she was a little late, but there were no other cars.
As she passed the house, she glanced up at the fire escape coming down from the third floor. She’d noticed it one night when Ralph had stopped to pick up his forgotten beeper. He’d explained that the previous owner had made servants’ quarters up there, and the city building department had forced him to add the fire escape. The black iron stood out grotesquely against the white wood.
Marissa parked in front of the garage, whose complicated trim matched that of the house. She knocked on the back door, which was in a modern wing that could not be seen from the front. No one seemed to hear her. Looking through the window, she could see a lot of activity in the kitchen. Deciding against trying the door to see if it was unlocked, she walked around to the front of the house and rang the bell. Ralph opened the door immediately and greeted her with a big hug.
“Thanks for coming over early,” he said, helping her off with her coat.
“Early? I thought I was late.”
“No, not at all,” said Ralph. “The guests aren’t supposed to be here until eight-thirty.” He hung her coat in the hall closet.
Marissa was surprised to see that Ralph was dressed in a tuxedo. Although she’d acknowledged how handsome he looked, she was disconcerted.
