As she sat there, holding Christine’s cold hand, this person she barely knew but had experienced a traumatic event with, Alex wondered what she was still doing in this city. After finishing her PhD in wildlife biology, she’d come here to be with her boyfriend and fill a postdoc research position on the northern parula, a small migratory warbler. But she and Brad had broken up two months ago, and her research job had ended even before that.
Before this ceremony, she’d considered staying here, but now, shocked and horrified in this tiny pocket of wild surrounded by a teeming city of humans waiting to do violence to one another, she knew it was time to move on.
They each gave a statement to the police. Crime scene techs arrived with the press, and Alex watched as the police taped off the area. Finally the first two responding officers walked her and Christine back to their cars, saying they’d contact them if they had other questions. As Alex got into her car, she looked up at Officer Scott. “Do they know what happened?” she asked him. “Who the other shooter was?”
Scott shook his head. “I can’t discuss it. I’m sorry. But I’m sure it’ll be all over the papers when we find out.”
She started up her car. All she wanted to do was go home, get a hot cup of tea, and curl up on her couch. But as she drove across the city and arrived at her apartment building, she realized Scott wasn’t kidding. A gaggle of press awaited her there, and they were already crowding around her car before she’d even parked.
Above them, the storm finally unleashed its fury, lashing the city with rain.
Two
Reporters pressed against Alex’s car door, shouting questions. She couldn’t get it open. “Did the gunman threaten you?” “How did you feel witnessing a shooting like that?” “Did you personally feel in danger?”
She crawled across to the passenger side and managed to squeeze out. Cameras flashed in her face, reporters jostling her all the way to the door of her building. “Please,” she said, “no comment. I just want to go home.” Her legs shook as she pushed through the swarm.
The reporters crowded around her, still throwing out their questions. “Do you think the victim will survive?” “Did you see the second shooter?”
She managed to unlock the main door and slip inside, and still the press continued to film her and yell questions through the glass. Her flat was on the top floor, and she started wearily up the stairs.
She could hear her landline ringing from inside her flat as she unlocked the door. Once inside, she hurried to the phone, hoping it was her friend Zoe. She could use a friendly voice about now.
But instead it was a persistent reporter. “Do you have cell phone footage of the shooting that you’d be willing to sell?” he asked her.
Alex hung up, only to have the phone immediately ring again. She picked up, this time hearing a whiny voice on the other end. “This is WBSR news. We’d like to invite you onto our news hour tonight to describe the shooting.”
Alex couldn’t hang up fast enough. But the phone immediately rang again. “Leave me the hell alone!” she shouted into it.
“Are you okay?” Zoe asked from the other end.
Alex breathed a sigh of relief. “Zoe! It’s so good to hear your voice. The press is hounding me. Yes, I’m fine. A little shaken up, considering.”
“I’ll say!” Zoe huffed. “I kept checking the Boston feeds for your interview, and when I saw that a gunman had shown up, I about had a heart attack. I tried your cell, but it kept going straight to voicemail.”
Alex fished her phone out of her pocket. “I forgot I turned it off before I did my interview.” She powered it on now. She could feel the stress flowing out of her body just hearing Zoe’s voice, knowing that she had such a solid friend. She’d met Zoe Lindquist in college when Alex had dusted off the oboe she’d played in high school and joined the pit orchestra of a college production of Man of La Mancha. Zoe had been cast as Dulcinea, and between cast parties and disastrous rehearsals that went late into the night, they’d become close, never losing contact, even when Alex went on to grad school and Zoe went on to make her mark in Hollywood.
“It was pretty terrifying,” Alex told her.
“So you were there? I mean, right when it happened?”
“Yes. And it’s an experience I’d like to un-have.”
“I’ll bet. Are you okay? Did they catch the second gunman?”
Alex pulled a kitchen stool closer and sat down. Through her open window, she could still hear the press clamoring below. “I don’t know.” Outside, a terrific peal of thunder rattled her windows.
“I’d have been scared out of my mind.”
The numb feeling she’d been carrying around since the shooting had started to wear off. Alex shifted her weight on the stool, leaning one elbow on the counter and running a hand over her face. She felt so tired. “I was. It was crazy.” She exhaled. “Zoe, I don’t even know what I’m doing in this city anymore.”
“Things with Brad still not right?” Zoe asked.
“Things with Brad aren’t happening at all.” She and Brad had said it was a temporary separation while they worked things out. Since then, they’d played phone tag and sent a text message now and again, but Alex had the feeling that they both knew it was over. They’d broken up once before, after a bad experience at her first job as a postdoc, but that time they managed to reconcile. She didn’t think it would happen this time.
“Are you happy or sad about that?”
“Weary, I guess, more than anything else,” Alex told her.
Zoe went silent for a minute, and Alex could hear a saw going in the background, then someone shouting about lighting. “Are you on set?”
“Yes, endlessly sitting around while people make adjustments, forget their lines, eat way too many mini-bagels off the craft services table.”
Zoe was complaining, but Alex knew she loved being an actor.
“What’s the project this time?” Alex asked her.
“It’s a thriller, a noir kind of thing, period and everything. You should see my hair right now. If I have to pick a lock, I’ll certainly have enough bobby pins. And this tweed suit! Talk about itchy!”
“Period sounds fun. You get to dress up.”
“That’s true. But it also means there are five times more things that can go wrong on the set. Hurry up and wait. Hurry up and wait. The director’s always yelling things like ‘Oh, that shot was beautiful except that Corolla just drove by in the background.’ Or ‘I thought I told you to take off that digital watch!’ I got here at six a.m. and haven’t shot a single line yet.”
“It’s a hard life.”
Zoe laughed. “It is! They ran out of blueberry cream cheese two hours ago.”
“My god, how are you able to survive in such harsh conditions? Besides, I thought you weren’t eating berries.” Zoe was always on some strange diet or another, seeking out ways to hold on to her youth, which at thirty she already thought was fading.
“I’m back on berries now. Trying this diet where I drink two glasses of water, eat a single egg, then wait four hours and have a handful of unsalted peanuts and blueberries.”
“What a feast.” Unlike Alex, Zoe loved to eat, so she knew it must be torture for her friend. Alex saw eating as a necessity, something to do when required, preferably with as little fuss as possible.
“It’s supposed to tighten the skin around the jawline,” Zoe explained. “Though I don’t see how. Still, it’s worth a try.”
Alex felt sorry for Zoe, for the enormous pressure Hollywood put on female actors to be eternally youthful, a standard they didn’t apply to male actors, which meant that as women aged, many got less and less work. Zoe lived in constant fear of this, even though she was still getting fantastic roles. This was due in no small part to her outstanding ability to network and make people feel good about themselves, and her almost preternatural ability to flatter the right people, even when she found them to be toady and insufferable.
“So how are you doi
ng, really?” Zoe asked, her voice a little quieter. “I mean about the shooter.”
“Freaked out,” Alex told her honestly. “A little shaky.”
“Did you think he was going to shoot you?”
“I sure as hell did. He got close, too. If it hadn’t been for that second gunman, you probably wouldn’t be talking to me right now.”
“Jesus, Alex. You got someone you can get a drink with?”
“You mean I should call Brad?”
“I mean call anybody.”
“I’m okay,” Alex assured her. “Just need to curl up on the couch and shake for a while.”
Just then a car laid on its horn, making Alex jump. Someone cursed on the street below. She heard the slam of a van door, probably another film crew arriving.
“And I probably need to get out of this city.”
“How did the TV interview go beforehand?” Zoe asked. “I mean, do you think it did any good?”
“I don’t know. The reporter was a little . . . chatty.” Alex felt bad even saying that, thinking of the woman in the hospital right now, probably undergoing surgery. “I’m not even sure if they’ll air it now.”
“I’m sorry it didn’t go as you’d hoped. I know you were excited.” A loud klaxon started sounding on Zoe’s end. “Here we go. They need me on set.”
“Okay. Hang in there. Hopefully reinforcements will arrive with blueberry cream cheese.”
“If wishes were horses,” her friend said. “Not that I could eat it anyway. Berries, yes. Cheese, no. I’ll check in on you later.”
“Thanks.” Alex hung up, and instantly the landline rang again.
Thinking naively that Zoe had forgotten to tell her something, Alex picked up. A rushed voice said, “This is Diane Schutz with the Boston View. Would you be willing to give me an exclusive on your experience witnessing the shooting today?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Alex told her, and hung up. Her cell phone suddenly buzzed on the counter, startling her. She looked at the screen, seeing a blocked number, so she pressed ignore. It rang again, showing an unknown local number. Dreading talking to more reporters, she turned off her phone, took a shower, and changed, then slumped down on the couch.
What an afternoon. She didn’t even have the energy to make tea. She stared across at a collection of boxes that her ex-boyfriend Brad had packed up but never taken to his new place. Brad loved this city, thrived in it, but the more Alex was here, the less she seemed to understand it—how people worked, what they thought about, what they valued.
Finally she got up, made a cup of tea, and tried to reclaim her day. At the counter, she sipped from the hot mug and flipped on the TV, only to be confronted with endless coverage speculating on the shooting. The second shooter had eluded the police, and there were no updates on the condition of the reporter. She flipped it off.
She hadn’t eaten all day, too nervous about her interview to make breakfast this morning. At last she switched on her phone to order some takeout. Alerts from dozens of missed calls sprang up, mostly from blocked and unknown local numbers. But her dissertation adviser from Berkeley had called, leaving a message to call as soon as she could. She hadn’t heard from him in a year, not since she started her postdoc research in Boston.
She returned his call and he answered on the second ring. “Philip!” Dr. Philip Brightwell was a warm, gregarious man whom she’d been lucky enough to have as the head of her dissertation committee. He’d been a tireless champion of her work at the University of California at Berkeley, and she owed him a huge debt of gratitude. She could picture him now, sitting in his office with teetering stacks of papers on either side of him, his sepia face eyeing a stack of blue exam books.
“Dr. Carter!” he returned, always making a point to address her formally since she’d received her PhD. She had to admit she loved the sound of it.
“How is California?” she asked.
“Oh, you know. Cursedly sunny and mild. What I’d give for a real rackingly good thunderstorm right about now.”
“Well, one’s brewing up here, if you want to borrow it.” She missed California, the creative buzz in the air, the strange mixed-up seasons in which flowers bloomed in January, filling the myriad hidden stairways of San Francisco with exotic blooms. She hadn’t wanted to leave the Bay Area, but came across the country to be with Brad after he got a job at a prestigious law firm.
“And how are things in Boston?” Philip asked her.
“Had quite a morning.”
“How so?”
“I went to a wetlands dedication ceremony, and a gunman showed up.” Her voice shook as she said it, even though she was trying to keep her tone light.
“Oh, dear god, are you all right?”
“I am, yes.”
“Terrifying.”
“It was,” she agreed.
He exhaled. “I’m relieved to hear you’re okay. Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’m okay,” she lied.
She heard him shuffle some papers around. She could imagine him in his office, elbows leaning on the mahogany desk, bookshelves overflowing with volumes thin and fat. “Listen, Alex, I know how fond you are of Brad, and that you moved all the way out there to be with him, but how would you feel about a field job?”
“To study what?” she asked, sitting back down on the stool.
“Wolverines.”
Alex’s mood instantly brightened. Wolverines meant the mountains, and mountains meant rugged landscapes, meadows strewn with wildflowers, and, perhaps best of all, a little solitude and quiet. “Consider my interest piqued.”
“An old friend of mine is the executive director of the LTWC. The Land Trust for Wildlife Conservation. Have you heard of it?”
“I have.” She knew they’d bought tons of connective lands for wildlife corridors. People also donated land to them or put conservation easements on their own land for the protection of wildlife and waterways. In other parts of the world, they worked to eliminate poaching and animal trafficking.
“They’ve secured a massive donation of land. It’s the site of an old ski resort in Montana, a mecca of the elite back in the thirties through the sixties. It finally closed down in the early nineties and has been sitting vacant ever since. The owner donated his adjacent private land, too, so the property is a little over twenty thousand acres, mostly montane forest and alpine zones. They had some people out there initially to survey the area and inventory species, do a little mapping. But what they’re really interested in at this point is a wolverine population study.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“Back when the resort was being built, there were a few eyewitness accounts of them. But the sightings dwindled as more winter activity took place up there. When more ski runs were opened, sightings went to zilch. One hasn’t been seen up there since 1946. But now that the resort is closed down, the LTWC is wondering if wolverines are returning to the area. They had a guy out there, but he had to leave suddenly to fly to London for a family emergency. So the position’s yours if you want it.”
Alex remained still, blinking. Outside, more horns blared and she heard someone angrily yell, “Get outta my way!” In the distance, sirens wailed, and the smell of car exhaust from the busy street below filtered up into her flat. Reporters intermittently pressed the buzzer to her apartment, wanting to talk to her.
She glanced to the corner where Brad’s things were boxed up: some law books, a baseball signed by Lefty Grove of the Boston Red Sox, a handful of clothes, and some half-filled legal pads, his cramped, tiny print visible from where she sat.
Philip went on. “It would mean hiking in some pretty steep terrain, and you’d be out there through the winter alone. They don’t have the funding to hire more than one person. But you’d be able to stay in the old resort, which should be a sprawling place full of rooms you could choose from. I just recommend not watching The Shining before you head up there.”
She laughed, feeling a little stunned at the sudden opp
ortunity. “I’ll do it,” she said after a pause.
“You will?” He sounded a little surprised. “You don’t want to think about it?”
“It sounds like just what I need.”
“Wonderful! I told him what a meticulous researcher you are, and he’s pleased as punch to have you.”
“When do I leave?”
He cleared his throat. “That’s the not-so-great part. The LTWC is sending out their regional coordinator tomorrow. He was going to meet with that other researcher, catch up on his findings. But now he’ll have to show the new person the ropes. He only has the one day, because he’s got to be back in Washington, DC, to meet with a research team who’s heading out to South Africa for a rhino anti-poaching project. It’s got to be tomorrow.”
Alex’s eyes widened and she stood up off the stool. “Tomorrow? They want me to be in Montana tomorrow?”
“Yes. Think you could pull it off?”
She glanced around the room, mentally thinking of what she’d have to pack, the gear she’d need.
Philip read her mind. “They have the field equipment you’ll need out there. GPS units, remote cameras, a microscope. So all you’d need are your field clothes.”
Her mind went to her closet: her boots, internal-frame backpack, water purifier, rain gear. “I can do it,” she told him.
“Excellent!”
She took a deep breath. “Thank you, Philip. To be honest, I’ve been really restless here lately, and things haven’t worked out with Brad.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. You two were thick as thieves here.”
A heaviness pressed down on her heart. She remembered strolling across the Berkeley campus with Brad, her heart light, laughing, pausing to kiss in the quad, feeling that anything was possible. “Things change, I guess,” she said, feeling lame at summing up everything that had happened in two such tiny words. She didn’t want Philip to feel uncomfortable with her bringing up something so personal, so she quickly added, “So this is perfect. A chance to get away. To clear my head. To see wolverines.”
A Solitude of Wolverines Page 2
