Something Fierce

by Drayer, David

She looked at the file. “How about before your Creative Writing class?”

  There was another pause. “After would be better.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  Robin hung up and relayed the message to Kerri, who thanked her and then, noticing her psychology professor going toward the part-time faculty lounge where the mailboxes were, followed the woman. She asked her some asinine question about the reading assignment. The woman answered her and when she left, Kerri was alone in the part-time faculty lounge. She found the slot marked “Hardy, Seth,” swooped up his mail and dropped it into her bag.

  She stopped in the study area and dug out his mail. She was relieved to find that the “urgent” message was from Seth’s sister, Gail, and not some other bitch. It wasn’t much of a message. It asked him to call immediately. Maybe his mother went off the deep end, which could be good. It’d make him forget whatever—or whoever—kept him out all night Saturday and leave him in need of comfort, something Kerri was more than willing to provide.

  So, she thought making her way through the halls, he wasn’t on campus yet, but he would be at noon. This gave her time to rethink her next move. Meeting him at the classroom door, she realized, wasn’t the smartest idea after all. She didn’t know why he was avoiding her calls, what he’d been doing at the Abyss Saturday night, or why at 3:00 in the morning, he still hadn’t come home. Therefore, she didn’t know how much damage control was going to be necessary. Of course, she could go strictly on the offensive, crying and irate, demanding to know why he hadn’t answered her calls, where he’d spent Saturday night (and maybe Sunday for all she knew). However, even a terrible liar would be able to come up with a logical explanation that couldn’t be disproved. And then what? A scene? Security getting involved? No. That wouldn’t do.

  Instead, she bought a latte from the student lounge and went to the once familiar, threadbare couch on the third floor of the science building. It gave an excellent view of the campus. Before she and Seth were lovers, when she was just a student in his class and he probably hadn’t even learned her name yet, this was where she would watch for him. The thought made her smile. After that first day of class—love at first sight—she remembered studying the semester’s catalogue of classes, highlighting right where he’d be when he was on campus, watching him from this spot, imagining the ultimate seduction. Even though she had the occasional fantasy of being his girlfriend and later his wife, she’d been willing to settle for sleeping with him a time or two, making her mark on his life which had seemed so free and romantic to her back then. She couldn’t have imagined how successful she’d actually end up being.

  Did he really think she would just let him go? Just let him walk away? After all they’d shared? After all she’d gone through to get him? Surely, he knew better than that. They were not whole without each other. Like Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, they could not live without each other.

  She looked down at the ring Kyle had put on her finger which reminded her that she was supposed to be having lunch with him. She slipped the ring off and dropped it into her purse. She took out her phone and sent him a text: Hey sweetie! I have a HUGE class project. Totally spaced it off. Can’t make lunch. Sorry. Call you tonight!

  Then, she looked up to see Seth walking onto the campus. Her stomach dropped and she remembered the first time their eyes locked in class, him walking into Coffee and Books, she closing his office door behind her. He was too far away for her to actually see his face, but she didn’t need to. His walk was unmistakable. “You belong to me, Seth Hardy” she whispered. “And I belong to you. We are soul-mates. Things are going to be good again. Better than good. Better than ever. I promise.”

  After he went inside the liberal arts building, she went to her car in the student parking lot. She drove around until she found a spot where she could see the red SUV across the way at the edge of the faculty lot. When he left campus, she would follow him. She prayed that he didn’t go to wherever it was he’d spent Saturday night—the thought made her feel physically sick—but straight back to his place. There, in that house where so many wonderful moments were shared, where no one would interrupt them, she would win him back. She’d do whatever it took to make that happen. Anything at all. Absolutely anything.

  27

  Seth didn’t remember how he’d explained the busted lip and the bruises on his face, but he knew he had. Nor did he remember segueing into the lecture, but here he was talking about the third-person point of view. “There is the objective point of view where the narrator stays out of it and for the most part, simply gives the reader the dialogue and actions of the characters allowing the reader to make up their own mind as to what’s going on in the story. A good example of this in your textbook is Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants.’ This is harder than it looks,” he heard himself saying. “Harder still and even more tempting to the novice writer is the omniscient point of view. The God-narrator…who knows everything.” Today’s assigned reading was on various points of view, he knew, and this is what he was lecturing on, but he was outside of himself and he did not know how to get back in. He felt like he was drunk, talking, and talking, and talking and not quite sure what he was saying or where he was going with any of it. He knew he was in trouble though because of the way the students were looking at him.

  “The single means of perception, however,” he went on, trying to find something to grab a hold of, “has more advantages for my money because…it is more real. The reader only knows what the character knows and the character can only know what he or she knows.” He cleared his throat and looked down at his notes. They were for a different lecture. A different class altogether. He stopped talking and looked from the notes to the class and back to the notes again. He could feel the heat rising in his face and his mouth going dry. With his tongue, he absently found the loose tooth and moved it back and forth in the socket, feeling the pain, tasting the blood. He looked up from the notes to the class again, feeling helpless.

  You don’t need notes. You know this stuff.

  Maybe. If he could get back inside of himself. But not from out here. He swallowed again and said, “For example, a character may intuit that his lover is not who he thinks she is, that she is lying to him, has been lying to him all along. So the woman he loves—whose kisses he can feel by closing his eyes, who smells of a sweet, spicy perfume, whose blond hair is so thick that it takes forever to dry after she washes it—may not exist at all. He may be one of many boyfriends or it may even be worse than that. Instead of simply being duped by a lying slut; he’s been raped by her. Psychologically raped. Fucked in the head, so to speak, again, and again, and again. But that couldn’t have happened because…well, that doesn’t happen, right?” He realized he was looking at Brittany, the snobby girl who always came in late and looked like she’d just come from a fashion show. Bratty Brittany. “Right?”

  She looked like she was about to make a run for the door. “Right,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

  “Surely, someone he loved,” he heard himself go on to the rest of the room, “couldn’t be that evil, that cruel and conniving. Surely not. But what if she was? What if she’d done every awful thing he suspected her of doing and worse, maybe much worse? What was he supposed to do now? Confront her so she could feed him more lies? Say, ‘My bad!’ and forget the whole thing ever happened? Hunt her down and kill her? What? I mean, where does this sorry bastard go from here?”

  The room was completely still. The students didn’t even appear to be breathing. He felt as if he were one of those students, watching the teacher lose his way and meltdown right in front of him and yet, he was the teacher too, looking at those faces looking at him. Those young, blank faces, more attentive than they have been all semester, the faces he saw rubbernecking at car accidents, staring as a body was pulled from the wreckage.

  “But that is his point of view,” Seth said, trying to get back to the lecture, needing to get back inside of himself, and fearing that there
was no self to get back to. “That’s how it looks from his perspective,” he said, trying again, reaching. “What about hers? I doubt she sees herself as a rapist or a monster. To fully understand a person’s actions…or rather a character’s actions…we have to see what they see. It’s the only way to understand. And understanding…is important. Understanding is necessary. Don’t you agree?”

  The students were stealing glances at each other now, looking anxious, confused, scared.

  You are losing it, Seth. Get out of this. Get out now!

  Even Eliot was looking concerned. Eliot, the kid with the intense eyes who sat in the far corner of the front row, who wanted to be a writer, who had Seth sign his book on the first day of class, and who often looked at his teacher like he could walk on water or turn that water into wine. The kid seemed hopeful, though, like he had faith that there was a rational explanation for Seth’s irrational behavior. This scruffy, tough-acting kid wasn’t one of the rubberneckers, but someone who wanted to believe, someone who—if asked—would help.

  Then let him help! Grab hold of his faith in you and pull yourself out of the wreckage.

  Eliot, Seth noticed, had a cup of coffee sitting next to his open notebook. Seth walked over to his desk, picked up the coffee, and with hands trembling, he pulled off the lid, and staring blankly at Eliot said, “What? You can’t read the sign that says no beverages in the classroom?” The kid looked embarrassed and tried to smile, but when Seth began to pour the coffee on to the floor—amid gasps and the screech of front row chairs jerking back to keep from getting spattered—Eliot’s face went slack, his mouth hung open like the jaw had been unhinged. Seth dropped the cup into the mess and calmly walked out the door.

  He was barely into the hallway when random voices erupted from the classroom. “What the fuck!” someone hissed. Seth took a deep breath. His hands were still shaking, but he was back inside of himself somehow. He could hear his heart in his ears. He shook off the jitters, took another breath and strode back into the room like he owned it. “Take out your journals,” he said, using everything he had to keep his voice strong and steady. Then with a sweep of his hand, he continued, “This half of the class describe the first” he glanced at his watch, “twenty minutes of this lecture from the professor’s point of view and this half of the class describe it from a student’s point of view.” A gush of laughter and “Oh, my God!” swept the room in an enormous wave of relief that had everyone, most of all Seth, giddy and unable to stop smiling. “Don’t waste the energy talking,” he said, above the din of voices and the rustle of notebooks. “Remember what you were thinking and feeling. Put it on the page. You are limited to the thoughts and feelings of either the professor or a student. Either/or. Not both.”

  “Does it have to be first person?” someone shouted out.

  “First person or third-person limited,” Seth said.

  “Does the student have to be me?” someone else asked.

  “Yeah, does the professor have to be you or can we imagine you as someone else.”

  “Do whatever works, however it strikes you. Go with it! Don’t analyze. Don’t think. Just write. You can revise later.” He put his hands on his hips and looked at the dark puddle on the floor. “Okay. I’ve got to find a mop.” A few students laughed at this, but for the most part, heads were down and pens were moving.

  “And Eliot,” Seth said going out the door, “I owe you a cup of coffee.”

  28

  Sitting in her car in the student parking lot, Kerri checked her watch for the umpteenth time. She hated waiting, but the longest hour of her life was up now and Seth should be walking into the faculty parking lot any minute. She kept changing her music, each song the soundtrack of what would happen when they were together back at the house. She had decided on one thing sitting here in this damned parking lot though: she was not going home tonight. She had to be with him, they had to be together and he had to see it her way. She would get him back tonight and she would not fuck it up this time.

  There was a loud knocking on the window that made her jump. Kyle opened the passenger door and got in.

  “What the hell are you doing here!?” she shouted.

  “You said you had a project.”

  “You said you stopped spying on me!”

  His eye was twitching so hard it looked like he was winking at her. “I wasn’t spying on you.”

  “Then what the fuck are you doing creeping around the student parking?”

  “I was going to take your car and put tires on it for you,” he said, looking all pathetic and hurt.

  Oh, how she hated that kicked dog look. Just the sight of him was making her want to puke. “And how were you going to do that without keys?”

  He held up a single key. “I still have the spare I made for you when you locked yourself out last fall. It was going to be a surprise.” He looked at her hand and his expression darkened further. “Where’s the ring, Kerri? Why aren’t you wearing the ring?”

  “I took it off during art class so I wouldn’t get clay all over it. I forgot to put it back on.”

  “You don’t have an art class. You’re lying.”

  “I am not lying. I added the class late.” She reached into her purse to produce the ring when she noticed that Seth’s vehicle was gone. “Oh, no.”

  “What? You lost it?”

  She started the engine. “I have to go. You have to get out.”

  “What?”

  She looked in every direction. There was no sign of Seth anywhere. “Get out!”

  “I want…I want my ring back.”

  “I don’t have time for this now. GET OUT!”

  “Not without the ring.”

  She smacked his face. “You don’t tell me!” she shouted and started pounding on his chest. “Get out of my car!”

  “Stop it!” He grabbed onto the collar of her jacket and slammed her against the door, bouncing her head off of the window. He was stronger than she’d ever imagined and never had he attacked her like this. It terrified her. His face was contorted, his lip and eye twitching madly, as he banged her head on the window a second and a third time. He was crying and screaming, “You can’t keep doing this to me. I can’t take it. I can’t. I can’t!”

  Kerri managed to find the door handle. The door swung open and they fell, hanging halfway out of the car with Kyle on top of her. She screamed. “Help me! Somebody please help me!” She screamed again and saw a young guy drop his backpack and start running toward them.

  Kyle was instantly off of her and trying to open the passenger door when Kerri sprang up and slammed the car into drive. It lurched forward and Kyle was thrown out as Kerri sped toward the nearest exit, head hurting, heart racing. She had to catch him.

  Every minute he was away from her was one minute closer to losing him forever.

  29

  Seth was sitting at a red light on Mentor Avenue with a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. He could hear the blood gushing through his brain. All that didn’t make sense over the past few months—things misplaced, lost, out of order; the rollercoaster of emotion, the agonizing sense that something was dreadfully wrong—added up now to a terrible and unthinkable truth. So outrageous it was, so cruel and malicious that it was all he could do—

  The rude, piercing blast of a car horn shot through him. The light had turned green. “Alright!” he shouted, his heart thumping madly, looking in the rearview mirror at the ugly, irritated face in the car behind him. Even after Seth started to move, the guy kept at it, laying on his horn, his face full of indignation, his mouth moving rapidly, his middle finger idiotically pumping at the air like he’d been waiting all day to attack someone for some minor infraction.

  Seth slammed on the brakes and the car screeched and squealed to a halt behind him. He was getting out of the vehicle to confront this bastard, show him there were consequences to laying on that horn, and waving that middle finger around, when he caught himself. This would be more madness. He didn’t n
eed any more madness. Everything he knew and believed and stood for was falling to pieces around him; he couldn’t seem to stop that, but by God, he could refuse more madness. He could stay inside of himself and renounce more madness. He put the SUV in gear and moved forward. He took the first exit he came to off the main drag.

  He took nameless roads, made random turns. He didn’t know where he was going except away, somewhere away from cars, and horns, and people, somewhere he could center himself. The strip malls and neighborhoods disappeared and were replaced by fields and forests. This was the right direction. This would work. He drove into the lot of a state park and shut the vehicle down. He laid his head back and gazed out the sunroof. Dark clouds gathered overhead; the wind picked up.

  His phone began to vibrate and his anger spiked again like hot bile in the back of his throat. Before he could think, he was answering her call.

  “Seth! Thank God!” It wasn’t Kerri. It was Gail. “He answered!” she said to someone in the background, then to him again. “Are you okay?”

  Okay? Not exactly. “Yeah. Why?”

  “Put him on speaker.” It was Tina’s voice in the background. “Where are you? Why haven’t you been answering your phone?”

  Before he could answer either question, Gail said, “We’ve been worried sick. We’ve called you a least twenty times since yesterday.”

  “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “You called me Sunday morning. Very early Sunday morning.”

  He’d been in the hotel very early Sunday morning. In the midst of a sleep-a-thon that lasted somewhere around thirty hours. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, Seth, you did,” Gail said. “You called me at ten after four Sunday morning. You sounded drunk. Really, really drunk. Or…worse.”

  “You don’t remember?” Tina asked.

  “No.” He rubbed a hand over his bruised face and a volt of pain shot through him. He tried to concentrate. “What did I say?”