Never Saw Me Coming

by Vera Kurian

“He—he was like that when I got here. The power was off.” Belle was standing at the entryway.

  Elena popped to her feet. “Did you call 911? How many shooters were there?”

  Belle nodded, but then looked confused. “You mean, you think they could still be around?”

  Elena pictured a shooter prowling, a figure in black combat gear carrying a suicide note to a girl who had rejected him.

  “He wasn’t shot,” Charles said suddenly. He gestured for her to hunker down and look with him. He pointed to the body, which had bled heavily from the chest and stomach area. He pointed to the base of the MRI where bloody buckshot lay. “The buckshot didn’t go into him. It came out of him.”

  “I’m going to be sick,” Elena muttered, stumbling out into the hallway. The police were on their way, but there was one other phone call that was just as important. Of course Leonard wasn’t picking up—he was probably meditating or something. “You need to get down here,” she hissed into his voicemail. “The police are on their way. Oh, it’s awful. It’s Kellen. He’s been murdered. Leonard, it’s the second student in the program in weeks—what the hell is going on?”

  18

  Charles caught a cab to Old Ebbitt Grill. The police had kept him so long for questioning that he was now significantly late for dinner, not to mention that his head was reeling with new information. Poor sweet Elena—she was book smart but sometimes lacked the sort of common sense that would tell you to be far away from a psychopath when having a private conversation. And what Charles had heard was critical: that body was the second student from the program who had been killed in less than a month. He wasn’t even sure what to think.

  Old Ebbitt was downtown, closer to all the touristy stuff, frequently stuffed with these tourists because it was the oldest restaurant in DC. It was typically dark inside, accented with polished wood. It was one of the places his father had arbitrarily decided to take a liking to. They mixed a good cocktail—that was probably the reason.

  He pushed past the tourists and spotted Kristen from behind. She wore a pink silk blouse tucked into a pencil skirt, her straw-colored hair tumbling in waves past her collarbone. He came up behind her, placing his hand on her lower back. She jumped, then laughed, realizing it was him. His older brother, Eric, was supposed to be here, which probably put her on high alert. Eric had come on to her at the last Portmont family Christmas party. “What took you so long?” she asked.

  “I saw a car accident. A hit-and-run. The police had to interview me as a witness and it took forever.” The lies came simply, and there really wasn’t another option. The last thing he wanted was the drama of a family dinner when what he really needed to do was think. Two students in the program killed. What was the probability of that being random? Best not to say anything to Kristen until he knew the entire story and there wasn’t anything for her to worry about. She already worried about him too much.

  “God, were they okay?”

  “No,” he said, “they weren’t.” Kristen probably assumed that he was concerned about his father being mad about his lateness, which at least provided some cover for the furrow in his brow. She was the only person who understood the complicated knot that was his family. Sure, he talked about it sometimes with Dr. Wyman, but hearing it was one thing—seeing it another.

  A waiter who recognized Charles led them to a table in the back of the restaurant where his family was already seated. Luke Portmont was opening a lobster claw, sitting at the head of the table. He was apparently annoyed about some political squabbling in Congress. Luke, silver-haired, had passed on his handsomeness to his son, but not his eyes, or the mouth that was somehow cruel-looking. Eric, the elder brother, sat at his right side. Both were drunk already. Charles’s sister, Julia, was in town, and popped to her feet to hug them both. She was six feet tall and unapologetically wore her body with the presence of an Amazon. His mother, Lynn, a petite, soft-spoken woman, followed suit.

  The conversation about politics continued, Luke not even acknowledging Charles, nor his tardiness. Charles wisely said nothing, unfolding a napkin onto his lap, a vapid, polite look on his face not unlike the one his mother wore. Two people in the program had been killed. Luke gestured for a man in all black to come over and ordered a Manhattan as if he hadn’t already drunk all the five boroughs. The man, clearly a busboy and not a waiter, said he would let the waiter know. If two people had been killed, did that mean Charles was in danger? He had recognized the guy in the MRI room—Kellen, Elena had called him. Not a friend or an acquaintance, but someone he had run into at a party or two.

  Charles’s wandering attention snapped back when he realized the focus of conversation had turned to him. Being late was bad—not paying attention was even worse. Charles’s father cracked another lobster claw, shaking his head. “Now why the hell you would want to be the president of some no-name school when you could have gone to Georgetown.” His fresh drink arrived, which he sipped, then used to point at Kristen. “Did you know this? I pay to high hell to get my idiot son into Georgetown on legacy and he decides not to go.”

  “Well, then he wouldn’t have met Kristen,” his mother said, trying to turn this into a kind moment.

  “Plenty of Kristens at Georgetown,” Eric said, not even looking in her direction.

  “It really doesn’t matter where you go to college,” Julia said.

  “It matters because of the connections you make,” his father said. “Prestige matters. Our name matters. You think you could get on in this world without our name? Where do you think you’d be?”

  “I think I’d manage to get by,” Charles said.

  He almost couldn’t comprehend what happened next. He looked up from his beet salad because there was a blur of movement. Then wetness hit his face with an intense sting to his eyes. Something heavy cracked against his forehead. There were audible gasps and not just from their table. The sickly sweet smell of bourbon and cherry covered Charles’s face, dripping down onto his shirt. His eyes were screaming, his contacts like films of acid sticking to his eyes. “I can’t see,” he said.

  “Come on,” Kristen whispered urgently, grabbing his arm and standing him up, leading him through the restaurant.

  Charles held his hands over his eyes, blinking constantly. “Is he all right?” someone, a stranger, asked. He heard hushed voices. Kristen led him to what must have been a bathroom and ran the water. He reached at it blindly, trying to flush his contacts out.

  “Wait, I have eye drops.” Charles pulled himself up onto the counter. Kristen tilted his head back, used the drops and swiped at his eyes a few times, retrieving the contacts. The drops soothed his eyes, but only a little. The bathroom door opened—Charles tensed—but it was only their waitress, looking mortified, and the busboy his father had barked his drink order at. The latter held a towel filled with ice, which he gestured with. The waitress nodded sagely.

  Kristen pressed it to Charles’s forehead.

  “Should we...?” The waitress trailed off. “If you have a concussion, you shouldn’t go to sleep,” she said. “I read that once.” The busboy nodded in agreement.

  Kristen touched his arm. “Let’s just leave,” she whispered. “We can go out the back.”

  God, he loved this woman. Charles got to his feet, then took out his wallet. He handed three crisp hundreds over to the waitress, who looked confused.

  * * *

  They rode home in a cab silently, but the moment they got inside Kristen’s house she made Charles a bag of ice. She perched at her computer and started looking up the symptoms for concussions. “You have to tell me if your headache gets worse. Or if you throw up or lose consciousness.”

  “I don’t have a concussion,” he said.

  “Do you want to go to Urgent Care?”

  “No.”

  “Let me find you some more drops.”

  “Come here,” he said quietly. Kristen cli
mbed onto the couch and embraced him. She cried silently, but Charles quickly noticed. “Hey, come on, I’m fine. It’s no big deal. I’ll probably just have a bump for a day or two.”

  “I hate him,” she cried into his chest.

  “It’s okay,” Charles said, balancing the ice on his head so he could hold her with both arms. They lay still for a while, Charles stroking her hair.

  “Do you think they’ll call?” she whispered.

  “Let it go to voicemail if they do. I’ve gotten you sticky. Let me take a shower.”

  She went back to her internet medical sleuthing and he went into the bathroom and shed his clothes. The shower was tiled with glazed, striated tiles in a blue-gray color, and had several showerheads at different levels. A steam bath, as well, which you could also use simultaneously if you really felt like wasting water. Which he did. He washed the bourbon off, then touched at his wound again. It stung.

  Something bothered him. Why had he given that money to the waitress and the busboy? He had done it without thinking. Well, it was a tip, some part of him replied quickly. Yes, a tip—a tip for checking on him. No, not so much a tip. The money had been a compensation somehow. For what? Well, because he had been embarrassed. His father had thrown a glass at his face, emasculating him, and what would make up for it was flashing a bunch of cash to people who lived off tips. Was that it? Or because they would have to put up with his father and his brother for the rest of the night. What was that, that grain of feeling in him? Was this what guilt was? Maybe—maybe not.

  Charles blinked, realizing that there were blank spots and jagged lines on the tiled wall. He turned off the water quickly and wrapped a towel around himself, not caring that he dripped water onto the floor and out into the hallway. “K, I’m having an aura.”

  Kristen popped to her feet immediately. They kept Excedrin at both their places and Charles always carried two capsules in his wallet in case he felt an aura coming on. He typically had an aura before he had a migraine, either visual abnormalities or the hallucination of smells that weren’t actually there. Once he got one, there was only a small window of opportunity to stave off the debilitating pain.

  Kristen pushed two white pills past his lips and handed him a glass of Coke (caffeine helped the medicine hit faster). “Just lie down—I’ll put the TV on,” she said. He nodded silently.

  With his eyes half-open, he watched Kristen look for the remote. She had left her laptop open on the coffee table. The little green light on the webcam was on. Something about that bothered him—it had been broken for weeks and she hadn’t been able to use FaceTime—but thinking was getting increasingly hard as the migraine rolled in, like a dense carpet that snuffed away any rational thought.

  19

  Day 40

  Charles was very much not being helpful by ignoring my texts asking if he had seen or heard from Will again. Will hadn’t posted anything on social media since Charles’s party and I hadn’t seen him. I started to worry that he had skipped town. I hovered in the hallway outside of his poli-sci lecture, intermittently peering through the window to see if he was there.

  I fucked up: he hadn’t had enough Rohypnol and I shouldn’t have hit him. If it was the video Charles had caught him desperately searching for and not something else, then he probably remembered some stuff from the night of the party. Contingency 1: Will didn’t remember. I could continue getting closer to him, maybe interrogate him again. Get him to admit to me where he keeps all his secret things. Contingency 2: he remembered. Then I would have to escalate, because why would he willingly hand it over?

  For six years, I have obsessed about the video. What happened to it, who had access to it. Will doesn’t strike me as someone who is strategic or meticulous about covering his tracks, so I was pretty sure he still had it somewhere. Either Will was so fucked up that he kept it because he liked to watch it, or Will was so fucked up that the video meant nothing more to him than the endless party selfies and family photos that he never got around to deleting.

  I eyed every student who trickled out of the lecture, becoming increasingly angry as each one wasn’t Will. Everything was taking too long. I had missed the discussion section for my Ethics class to look for Will and was now becoming dangerously hangry. I sulked all the way to the main dining hall, my boots making clomping noises on the sidewalk. They better have the good pizza today. Then I had to fucking wait in line only to have some bitch take the last pineapple pizza. I jammed the business end of a slice into my mouth as I sat by the window, chewing viciously.

  My eyes skipped over the students, then my teeth clenched. Will must have skipped class because there he was, eating pizza like an asshole. I dumped my half-eaten slice in the trash and prepared my face with an innocuous look. Friendly eyes, hair tucked behind ears. I approached his table from the side so he wouldn’t notice me until I was right beside him.

  “Will! How are you?” I said brightly. His jaw twitched when he saw me. I instantly had a bad feeling.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “I haven’t seen you since the party.” I smiled, but I knew it was too late. There was no charming this snake.

  He stared at up at me. He remembered something from that night, although how much? But then I knew, because he said, “You need to get away from me and leave me alone.”

  I wasn’t going to waste any time. “Where is the video, Will?” I asked quietly. I stepped toward him, leaning down, trying to make myself seem menacing.

  “I don’t have the stupid video. You’d better leave me the fuck alone.”

  “I know you have it.”

  He snorted. From across the cafeteria a bunch of guys—lacrosse players—entered and Will waved them over. “I threw out that phone years ago.”

  “Then why were you looking for it after I mentioned it? You found it. Give it to me. Did you upload it anywhere?”

  “Why would I literally hand you something that incriminates me?” The boys were closing in, coming closer. The corner of his mouth went up into a smirk. “Besides,” he said, standing up, looking down at me. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned down too close to my face. He was reminding me that he was bigger, stronger. “What are you going to do about it?”

  He turned to walk away, not even in a hurry. Halfway across the cafeteria, surrounded by his bros, he half turned back at me with one of those looks that’s supposed to make you feel small.

  I stood rooted to where I was, rage washing over me, the exact same feeling I had just before I hit him with the geode. He doesn’t understand just who I am. He doesn’t understand how patient I can be. That his days are numbered.

  Will is like every man who has ever kicked a dog. When they kick a dog, they forget that the dog cries and puts its tail between its legs only because of thousands of years of domestication and training. They forget, every time they kick, that every now and then they’re going to come upon a dog with teeth.

  20

  Can you meet me at the Bean at 11? Charles texted Chloe. It’s urgent. He stared at his phone, waiting for her to respond. It was 8 a.m. Kristen was still curled up, asleep, and the only evidence of last night was the bottle of Excedrin on the nightstand. He ignored the plying text from his mother, the one that acknowledged that Charles probably “wasn’t feeling well,” but didn’t acknowledge that it was because her husband had thrown a glass at his head.

  It was only a matter of time before rumors would start swirling about the two students murdered on campus, and of course Kristen would hear about it. But there wasn’t any way she would find out that they were both in the program, was there? The only way she could was if he told her, Charles reasoned, and he didn’t plan to. What was he supposed to say, that now she had to worry someone might be hunting down students in Wyman’s study, one by one? And that suddenly these things started happening with the appearance of a certain female psychopath, Chloe Sevre? And the fact that he h
ad colluded with said highly flirtatious female psychopath to cover up an assault at his own house, and that the aforementioned psychopath might also be an MRI-using serial killer? He didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he hoped to get it sorted out today.

  His phone pinged: Okay, she wrote. I have a present for you lol.

  * * *

  Bean and Nothingness was the second coffee shop in the SAC, located on the top floor. It was large, its windows overlooking campus, but most importantly, day or night it was always filled with students studying and talking. It was a public place.

  Charles arrived at the Bean early to position himself with his back to the window, facing the entire coffee shop. He watched for Chloe and observed closely as she came in. Chloe did not look like a girl who had just stabbed a guy to death and killed another—one who was almost a foot taller than her—using an MRI machine. She looked like the sprightly spokesperson for mint-scented face wash. She had one of those infinity scarves in autumn colors all the girls were wearing that reminded Charles of lions’ manes. She sat down and pushed a packet wrapped in a Safeway bag across the table. “It’s your shirt. I washed it,” she said, then waited as if expecting applause. “So...?” she asked. She evidenced no fear on her face. “Have you seen Will?”

  “I haven’t seen him since I told you.”

  She leaned forward. “I did. He threatened me.”

  “What did you expect? You almost killed him.”

  A look crossed over her eyes. Humor? “What I did was an accident. I just want my property back.”

  “Ah, yes, the mystery video.” She ignored the comment and smiled idly at one of the waiters, inviting him to come over. He made an “in a minute” gesture.

  Chloe leaned back, her eyes taking him in. “You’re not going to tell anyone, right? If you’re trying to blackmail me, you’re barking up the wrong poverty tree.”