Stages of Grey

by Clea Simon

  ‘I heard it was a blast.’ Greg, across from Bronwyn, chimed in. ‘I was trying to get tickets for this weekend, but they’re sold out.’

  ‘Me, too.’ Bronwyn leaned in. ‘It’s like that girl getting killed? That was the best thing to happen to them.’

  ‘I know—’ Keira started, but Dulcie had had enough.

  ‘People.’ Her stern voice didn’t usually carry much weight. Today, though, she put an extra emphasis behind it. ‘Quiet, please. You don’t know what you’re saying.’

  Seven pairs of eyes looked up at her, waiting to hear more.

  ‘A young woman’s murder is not some kind of publicity stunt.’ She saw at least two of them slump back in their seats. She hoped that was because of some belated sense of shame.

  ‘Might as well be.’ So much for her optimism. But before Dulcie could gather the words to reprimand the young man who had spoken (Lance, she thought, though he was now looking down at his hands) she had another thought.

  ‘Have you all been trying for student rush tickets?’ She looked around the table.

  ‘They’re doing those?’ Alannah perked right up. ‘I didn’t think they were.’

  ‘No, is that what’s been sold out?’ Dulcie looked from the willowy blonde to Greg. He shook his head. ‘Not student tickets?’

  ‘They’re out of all tickets,’ Greg said. ‘I couldn’t even get on to the website. And when I called they told me, no luck. Sold out for weeks, they said. And I’d promised Elsie I’d take her, too.’

  ‘You’re in trouble.’ Bronwyn was smiling.

  ‘Enough.’ Dulcie slammed her hands down on the table. Something wasn’t right. ‘Look, it’s bad theater anyway. You’d get a lot more out of the text. And speaking of which, since we didn’t get a chance to discuss this week’s reading, I’d like a two-page paper from each of you on it for next week. That’s one-inch margins, double spaced, folks.’ She didn’t like having to spell this out, but her students had been getting more and more creative with their computer skills. She raised her hand in a vain attempt to silence the chorus of complaints. ‘No arguing. Have them printed out by section next week.’

  Dulcie could ignore the looks as the students filed out of the room. What she couldn’t ignore were the questions plaguing her. Was the URT show really that popular? Could it honestly be sold out weeks in advance?

  She shook her head. It shouldn’t be a surprise, she figured. Trista, for all her flightiness, wasn’t a complete know-nothing. And Chris had certainly enjoyed it – and he wasn’t smitten by the handsome Heath. No, Dulcie had to admit, she was the odd woman out here. The show was a hit.

  But if it was such a hit, then why was the troupe doing so badly?

  Maybe it was an oddity of theater, Dulcie told herself as she packed up her own books. Maybe production costs had run high, or the theater had opened with a deficit. Maybe the denizens of the old bookstore really had cursed the place when they left. Just because it didn’t make sense to her, didn’t mean it wasn’t true. It was another thing she could ask Roni at lunch.

  Dulcie slung her bag over her shoulder and pulled on her hat. She was looking forward to meeting the other woman, she realized. Roni was serious, a business woman, but clearly involved in the arts. She and Dulcie might not have as much in common as she and Trista did, at least in terms of background. But it wouldn’t hurt to make a new friend. And if the other woman really was in danger, Dulcie had a chance to help her out.

  Of course, she realized as she made her way down to Lala’s, Roni might not show up. Without her phone, Dulcie had no way of checking to see if the office manager had even gotten her message. Even if she had, she might be busy. She might have countered with another time.

  ‘Bother.’ Dulcie stopped short on the sidewalk – and nearly fell over as someone slammed her from behind. It was Heath. It was … ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry.’ A tall woman, cellphone to her ear, called as she passed. Dulcie took a deep breath and felt the pounding of her heart begin to subside. Too much had happened recently, and this was merely an accident, the result of her own sudden halt.

  The cellphone, though. That was it. She had been flustered and in a rush when she had left the message for Roni. She had borrowed Trista’s phone, intending at first to call, but then she had texted, without realizing the obvious. Roni would think that the message came from Trista, not Dulcie.

  Well, there wasn’t anything for it now. If Roni made it to the restaurant, Dulcie would explain the mishap. It might even give her an entry to ask about the hacking problem.

  Dulcie had planned to hold out for a table, once she got to Lala’s. No matter how closely they were packed in, a table would be somewhat more private. What she hadn’t counted on was the line that stopped her, as soon as she opened the door, of patrons hoping for even a stool at the bar.

  ‘You, come.’ Dulcie looked up to see Lala, the hefty proprietress, motioning her over. With a guilty glance at the line, Dulcie made her way up front. ‘Here.’

  ‘Lala,’ Dulcie yelled up at the big woman. ‘I can’t. I’m meeting someone.’ She looked back at the crowd. ‘At least, I think I am.’

  Lala looked down at her, her face frozen in thought. For a moment, Dulcie thought she hadn’t understood. Or, worse, that she didn’t approve. But another nod and a gesture to one of the wait staff, and suddenly another table appeared. Chairs followed and silverware followed, and then Dulcie felt a strong hand on her back, propelling her toward it.

  ‘Why does she …?’ The murmuring crowd fell silent as Lala scanned the waiting area. ‘Cop,’ someone muttered softly.

  Dulcie sat, her back to the wall, and felt her face grow red. It wasn’t just the heat, which was a welcome change after the frost outside. It was that she had been given the legendary police table: a semi-legal two-top that Lala pulled out whenever an officer came by. But despite the muttering, which had been picked up by the hungry lines, Dulcie was grateful. Particularly when, through a gap in the crowd, she spotted a pale face and glasses.

  ‘Roni! Over here.’ She stood and waved. Roni, spotting her, shook her head. ‘No, Roni!’ Dulcie called again, ignoring the looks of the other diners. ‘Please, over here.’

  ‘I can’t …’ Roni was peering around the restaurant, and Dulcie realized her mistake.

  ‘Roni, that was me. I called you. Sorry.’ She rushed to explain. ‘My phone – I’ll explain, but there’s something more important. I’m so glad you made it. We really need to talk.’

  ‘I gather.’ It wasn’t simply the cold, Dulcie decided. Roni looked pale and tense.

  ‘Roni, are you okay?’ It was a silly question, considering what she was going to tell her. Still, Dulcie was relieved when the other woman nodded, eyeing the crowd around them nervously, and shrugged off her coat. ‘They’re just peeved that I got this table.’ Dulcie leaned in. ‘Lala knows me. It’s a long story.’

  Even seated, Roni looked positively ill.

  ‘You should eat something.’ Dulcie craned her head around, but Lala was already on it. Two wide bowls of thick green soup were placed before them. ‘She sometimes decides what you should have,’ Dulcie tried to explain. ‘She means well. It’s pea soup.’ She paused, watching the other woman. ‘Do you want me to ask for something else?’

  ‘No, no.’ Roni seemed overwhelmed by the whole scene, and so Dulcie let her take a spoonful of the fragrant potage before continuing.

  ‘I need to talk to you about Heath.’

  It was too much, too soon. Dulcie realized she had overstepped when Roni coughed out her soup.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to touch on anything personal.’ Dulcie handed her a napkin. Everything she said seemed to be coming out wrong today. She waited while Roni caught her breath. She had to warn Roni, but at the same time, it was pretty apparent that the office manager had a crush on the handsome actor, and Dulcie knew from her own experience how vulnerable that made one – and how embarrassing it could be to learn that others knew your secre
t.

  ‘I know,’ she started in again. ‘Or, I should say, I’m aware of some things,’ Dulcie said. ‘Things that maybe I shouldn’t, and that I’m sure nobody else is aware of,’ she was quick to add. ‘And I wanted to talk to you, Roni. You need to know that I’ve heard some things.’

  Roni was staring at her, though with confusion or apprehension, Dulcie couldn’t tell. She needed to just come out with it.

  ‘I know you think you know Heath,’ she said. ‘You think you know who he really is, but I think you may be in over your head with him. I don’t think you can trust him.’

  ‘Like I can trust you?’ Roni’s voice was soft, but its edge was apparent.

  Dulcie sighed. Roni was seeing rivals everywhere.

  ‘Please, Roni, I’m not … I have no interest in Heath.’

  Roni seemed to relax at that, leaning back in her seat. She wasn’t eating any more of her soup, however, so after taking another spoonful herself, Dulcie decided to try again.

  ‘It’s not that I want to get involved,’ she said, between tastes. It had been a long morning and Lala’s split pea soup was fragrant and warm. ‘I sort of couldn’t help it. It was just those emails – and then Gus.’

  ‘The cat.’ Roni was nodding, as if she understood.

  ‘Yes, the cat. Speaking of him, you’ve got to find out how he’s getting out. It really isn’t safe for him. Out there.’

  Dulcie looked down at her bowl, the better to scoop up the last drops. When she looked up, Roni was leaning over her own untouched lunch, staring at her.

  ‘What do you want, Dulcie?’ The other woman’s voice was hard.

  ‘I want him to be safe.’ How could Roni not understand? ‘And I want you to be safe, too.’

  ‘Point taken,’ said Roni, pushing her chair back so fast she nearly hit a waiting patron.

  ‘Wait!’ Dulcie called out. She hadn’t had a chance to tell Roni about the virus. But it was too late. The office manager was already pushing her way back through the crowd, leaving her soup to grow cold.

  FORTY-TWO

  ‘Identity is key to both The Ravages of Umbria and the fragments in the Philadelphia bequest,’ Dulcie wrote. ‘The hidden or obscured identity of the malevolent Demetria in Ravages lays the groundwork for the author’s essential thesis on the destructive elements of the unequal – or ‘disequal’ – society of the time. The implied deception in the Philadelphia fragments involves the unnamed nobleman from whom the protagonist, a highborn woman like Hermetria in The Ravages, is fleeing.’

  Dulcie stopped typing with a sigh. This was taking liberties. Yes, what she had read implied that the story was going in this direction. She did, after all, have her heroine fleeing and then unburdening herself to the stranger, Monsieur Grey, who offers her a lift.

  What she didn’t have, she admitted silently to the close and dusty air of the basement office, was any confirmation that the danger the woman was fleeing was a man. Yes, it would fit neatly with the other fragment she had found in the Mildon – the one in which the woman is looking down at the body of some nobleman, a Lord Esteban. But Dulcie didn’t have any reason to put those two story fragments together. Nothing except some vague dreams and a bad feeling about Esteban.

  She shifted in her hard wooden chair and stared at the blinking cursor. The afternoon light filtered in through the office’s one high window, and even now the screen was growing dark. She ought to turn on another light. She ought to erase what she had typed. Dulcie reached for the keyboard again, and stopped herself. No, she decided. She would write it now and see what she could find. If she couldn’t connect the fragments by next week, she would revise them. This was a work in progress, after all. Thorpe wanted to see her revising, and if she waited until she had everything nailed down, well, then she wouldn’t even begin writing her thesis for at least another year.

  ‘The role of the Stranger is another mystery,’ she started typing again. And there she stopped and found herself staring at the bookshelf on the opposite wall, illuminated by an unlikely shaft of sunlight.

  Her impression was as intangible as that light – or the dust motes that danced and swirled before her. How could she explain the good feeling she had toward this odd character? A shadowy figure, only really defined by his green eyes, he might be an apparition or a demon. This was a Gothic novel, after all, and seductive demons were as much the rage among women readers two hundred years ago as they were in the twenty-first century.

  ‘The green-eyed Stranger whose carriage offers the protagonist a ride may be seen as a refuge.’ Dulcie was pretty sure the text referred to ‘succor’, but she didn’t want to disrupt her rhythm to look it up. ‘Equally, it might signify temptation; the desire to flee a responsibility or duty.’

  No, she backed up over those words. Dulcie didn’t believe that. There was simply too much about the strange man that signaled, or – if Dulcie wanted to get all semiotic about it – signified good. He did come to the woman’s aid. He wasn’t asking for anything and he only offered advice. He was, Dulcie felt down to her bones, essentially feline. A literary incarnation, in some way, of her own Mr Grey, she believed. And therefore he could not be evil.

  ‘You might be wrong, you know.’ Dulcie nearly jumped out of her seat. With Lloyd out leading his weekly junior seminar, she did not expect to hear anyone talking to her. She certainly didn’t expect to hear this particular voice saying those particular words.

  ‘Mr Grey?’ She resisted the urge to turn around, but felt the reassuring touch of a wet leathery nose against her hand. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘There are many ways to interpret a work of art.’ The voice, as soft as fur, seemed to come from close behind her right shoulder. ‘One shouldn’t stop seeking simply because one has found the first possibility.’

  ‘You’re not telling me that Monsieur Le Gris is bad, are you?’ Even as she asked, Dulcie felt her conviction wavering. If Mr Grey didn’t identify with the fictional character, who was she to make the connection? ‘Is it just that I’ve missed you?’ Her voice fell to a whisper, but her words still sounded overly loud in the small, closed room. ‘Have I forced an interpretation out of my own loneliness?’

  Something like a purr filled the still air, and Dulcie felt the pressure of a feline head against her hand.

  ‘I’ve misinterpreted, haven’t I?’ Dulcie said with a sigh, her disappointment muted somewhat by the presence of her spectral pet. ‘The stranger is dangerous. He’s bad news for the woman in the carriage.’ Silence. ‘The stranger could be evil?’ Nothing, and Dulcie felt a twinge of optimism. ‘The stranger is ambiguous, and I should keep reading?’

  The purr again, so loud that Dulcie worried that the grad students down the hall must hear it. ‘That’s it, isn’t it, Mr Grey?’ Dulcie started to reach for her laptop and stopped herself. Yes, she had work to do, but more than anything she wanted the feline presence to remain with her, just a bit longer.

  ‘The key to identity …’ The voice was growing fainter now, nearly obscured by the rise and fall of the purr. Was that Mr Grey she was hearing, or her own thoughts, already revising the paragraphs before her? ‘Identity is key.’

  ‘I’ve got it, Mr Grey,’ she said out loud. It was him. It had to be him.

  ‘There are many paths in.’ She strained to hear him, as the dust swirled and settled. ‘Many paths both in and out.’

  Something about his presence, about that purr, sparked another thought in Dulcie’s mind. ‘Are you talking about Gus, Mr Grey?’ Silence. ‘You know, Gus, the theater cat, who I saw outside? I tried to talk to Roni about him. I did, Mr Grey.’ A pang of regret that she hadn’t been more specific. It wasn’t safe for a small animal. Not in a city. Not in winter. ‘I’ll try again, Mr Grey. I promise.’

  All she heard was the purr, and then even that faded away.

  FORTY-THREE

  ‘Think of it this way,’ said Chris. ‘You won’t have to worry about turning it off when the show starts.’

  Du
lcie hadn’t even had to ask if her boyfriend had finished with her phone. She had arrived home to find it in pieces on the kitchen table. Apart from wondering how so many components could fit into the small, sleek device, she’d found herself puzzled about how her boyfriend had spent the day – or at least the last few hours. He’d told her that he’d come home around dusk, which at this time of year meant three thirty or so. Although she’d meant to leave herself more time, it was after five by the time she left her office, and already fully dark, and close to six when she’d climbed the apartment’s stairs. While she hadn’t been able to call Chris to ask about the state of her phone, she’d blithely assumed he’d have gotten to it. After all, he’d said he would finish it once he got home, if not before he left for the day. Plus, he’d been unwilling – or unable – to account for the last few hours,

  Granted, the tiny device looked more complicated than Dulcie had ever imagined. She knew she wouldn’t have been able to make hide nor hair out of it. Chris had never been flummoxed by complicated electronics before, but she had to wonder if the new technology had overwhelmed him – or if the dark had anything to do with it.

  That had been a disturbing thought, and Dulcie had done her best to push it from her mind. Besides, she’d told Chris, she needed to get moving. She and Trista were due back at the theater by seven, at the latest, and she needed to assemble an usher’s outfit: all black, like the actors.

  Even that was proving troublesome, however. And Chris, with his hangdog look, wasn’t helping. At least he’d given up apologizing, for now, and was instead following her around the apartment as she searched for her black sweater. ‘It’s a pullover.’ She checked behind a couch cushion. ‘Have you seen it?’

  ‘Is that the one from when we had the pasta accident?’ Chris asked, standing behind her. He sounded happy to change the subject, even if the news he was delivering wasn’t what Dulcie would want to hear. ‘I think it might still be at the cleaners.’