“I could tell by the way that you looked at him, all knight in shining armor, wasn’t he? So poetic. But Emily, do you not see that he wants what I want, what every man wants? It’s merely that he is lying. He will tell you all the sweet things you want to hear, all that rubbish about love, but it’s not you he is in love with. It’s an ideal he has in his mind, you know that. The more artistic, the worse they become. He will call you his muse and write all the music in the world to you. But it is not you. And in a little while, after he’s done fucking you, he will see your faults, see you for what you really are, and look for that muse of his somewhere else.”
He took two steps from where he stood, turned, and shut the door. His back remained to her.
“Dr. Vandin, open the door.”
“Funny that a musician would want someone like you. He must have deluded himself a great deal. Don’t they usually strive for the blondes with large…vocabularies? Look in the mirror, Emily. You know what you’ll see in the reflection: a driven woman that knows what she wants and will not let anything stand in her way. That is who you are. That is who I saw that the first time I laid eyes on you. You and I are a very much alike. There is fantasy out there, and there’s reality in here.”
“Open the door.”
“You’re not listening to me. You, an obscure little college student. A nearly famous rock star is really going to drop everything and remain here for you? Use your mind, Emily. He is using you, and you’re in too deep to see. It is the same way people perceive ghosts. They want to believe because it is so romantic and mysterious, so out of their hands. But nothing is out of our hands. We’re scientists. I only believe in things I can see and touch.”
His shoulders shifted under the pressed lines of his shirt as he breathed. “I know you feel the same. I could see it in your eyes from the start.”
“Open the door.”
He walked slowly back to his chair. “You let me kiss you once.” He took the tie off the back of his chair and held it in his hands. The silk slipped through his fingers like a rope. “Why was that?”
It was Monday evening, and Simon, Christian, and Andrew had just returned from a game of basketball. Their shoulders and legs burned from the grueling workout. Simon proceeded to shower while Andrew and Christian sat on the dusty tile floor of the bathroom and chatted about their day. Simon and Christian had gone down to Santa Cruz earlier to look at mandolins, Christian’s latest obsession. When they returned, Andrew had begged them to shoot a few hoops. All day he had been riddled with an anxiety that he could not shake.
His only break had come in an unexpected visit from Neil, who had appeared when Andrew was about to go mad trying to salvage a song’s lyrics from not sounding for shit. Neil had appeared just as bothered as Andrew, although about what, he wouldn’t say. Yet he had given him excellent advice and they had spent a productive hour lost in the effort.
Simon stepped out of the shower and yanked off a towel from a rod which crumbled from the wall. “Fucking Sid. When is he ever going to finish anything in this house?”
“Nick scared him off,” Andrew replied.
“What, he’s only working upstairs now? Where’s Emily? I thought you two were inseparable.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, ‘I don’t know’? How’d you manage that? Did you tell her ’bout your imaginary friend? Ah, sweet Jesus, don’t tell me you ran your mouth. Aw hell, look at your face. You did, didn’t you? What’s your fucking problem? You finally got a molly that’s live and breathing and you go and cock it up. So what’d you do now?”
“I’m the quintessential Byronic hero, apparently,” Andrew muttered bitterly.
“He does brood better than anyone I know,” Christian concurred.
“Well, you’re better off, if you ask me. It was getting too serious—you were losing your focus.”
“I didn’t ask you and my focus is fine. By the way, I finished the lyrics on ‘Under Red Tables.’ Actually, Neil finished the lyrics.”
“Neil?”
Andrew had just finished explaining the visit when a knock came from the front door. Simon tightened the towel around his waist before he strode off to answer it.
“Welcome, welcome, welcome all,” Simon bellowed, arm outstretched like some sarcastic game show host before stopping short. Zoey and Margot stood on the other side, their faces riddled with concern. Margot clutched a cell phone in her hand.
“Can we come in?”
Simon swung the door open, and they marched in and stood by the fireplace. Margot looked directly at Andrew. “Has Emily called? Have you seen her tonight?”
“No,” Andrew said, then taking in the severity of Margot’s expression, pressed, “What happened?”
“She made me promise. That’s all I’m saying—she made me promise, and like an idiot I agreed.”
“Where is she?” Andrew asked, his voice flat.
“We don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“She had a meeting with him early this morning, and we were supposed to meet for lunch afterward, but she didn’t show up. She should have been home hours ago. I called her cell phone but she didn’t answer. I found it in her room—she forgot to take it with her.”
“Who’s him?” Simon asked.
“No, she couldn’t, she promised me she wouldn’t,” Andrew said, frowning at Margot.
“Who’s him?” Simon repeated.
“That shite,” Andrew shot back, unable to understand how she had done such a stupid thing.
“Well that clarifies things.”
“Vandin, the professor who tried to—”
“Tried to what?” Simon pushed.
“To fuck her, Simon,” Margot said bitterly. “Please. I want to go to the college and find her. We can take my car—we can all fit in it,” she added quickly.
“Wait,” Christian interjected. “She’s probably doing research and stayed late at the library or something. It’s not like—”
“No. It’s exactly ‘like,’” Andrew muttered. “You’ve never seen him in action.”
13
* * *
ANDREW SAT IN THE FRONT of Margot’s car, with Simon and Christian crammed into the backseat around Zoey. The sun was setting red on the horizon as they ran the second light in a row. The street tunneled before them; people out on the warm night jumped into it, jaywalked, darted around street corners. He wanted to lean out the window and scream at them to move.
Next to him, Margot clenched the steering wheel. “It’s been hours. She’s never like this. She’s reliable, dependable…”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. She’s fine. Nothing happened to her. She’s fine. Stop.”
Christian pocketed his phone. “No one’s answering at the department—it’s an after-hours message. Will anyone be there at the building to ask?”
“It’s a college,” Margot replied curtly. “There’s always a body somewhere.”
“Fine choice of words,” Simon murmured.
“Watch out!” Andrew yelled. Margot swerved, nearly hitting a bicyclist.
“So this professor…” Christian began. “Why the hell didn’t she report him? I mean, that shit’s not right. There are rules.”
Margot gunned the engine down a mercifully empty patch of street. “I don’t know, but she wouldn’t. And Emily wasn’t the first, apparently. She should have put his ass in a sling a long time ago, but it would have been her word against his. She needed this final credit, and in the end I suppose she decided it was easier to just tough it out. And to think, I actually teased her about him.” She yanked the wheel hard to the left. “It was her last class. All she wanted was to get to that conference this summer. It’s all she ever talked about. Well, all she used to talk about…” She shot her eyes to Andrew and back to the road again.
“I really think we’re seriously overreacting here,” Christian said. “Let’s get to this jerk’s office first, and we’ll go from th
ere, okay? He’s a professor, and we’re all jumping to some pretty harsh conclusions. He isn’t going to jeopardize his job, he’s not crazy. She’s probably holed up somewhere studying, or she found some information about Nick and Nora and lost track of the time.”
“He doesn’t care about his fucking job. He’s a visiting professor,” Margot said. “He’s leaving at the end of the semester, probably to go off and find better hunting grounds before the administration catches up with him. A man like that never lasts long at any school, even ones that’ll look the other way just to have bragging rights to a such a famous professor on their faculty. And trust me, I’ve seen enough of what gets ‘looked over’ in my department.”
Andrew stared out the side window, prey to his mounting unease. He blamed himself for this. If he hadn’t closed up on Emily last night, maybe she would have told him. He had scared her away again, and off she went to do this alone.
If she was safe—which he knew she would be, of course she would be—he promised himself he would tell her everything, he would come clean; the lies, the evasions, everything would go. He didn’t want to think of her face as he had seen it in that lecture hall. He didn’t want to think of her being humiliated, bullied.
The car slammed to a stop. Andrew jumped out before the engine died, with Simon and Christian following. They stared up at Payne Hall, silhouetted in black against the scarlet of the evening sky. Lights glowed in the windows like unblinking eyes.
“His office is in the basement, I think,” said Margot. “We can take the stairs.”
A handful of students hung about in the lobby, tired and weary-eyed. Andrew zeroed in on the directory. T—U—V…There it was: Vandin, Room 61.
His feet pounded along the peeled linoleum floor; his hands shoved open the metal stairway door. Andrew could feel Simon next to him as they stomped down into the bowels of the building. Whatever his opinion on all of this, he had not said a word, though Andrew was in no mood to hear it. Zoey and Margot’s footfalls echoed behind them.
The doors crashed open as they reached the bottom floor; they stood together for a second to get their bearings. The hallway was dim, with weak fluorescent lighting, like a hospital ward. Andrew’s skin prickled; it even smelled the same.
He could picture Emily here. Alone, waiting. What the hell had she been thinking? Why didn’t she turn around? It was a naïve stunt to pull; she knew what Vandin was and how he felt about her. For the first time he felt angry, infuriated at her willful stupidity.
They rushed down to the end of the hall and reached a door. The placard read: Dr. Pavel T. Vandin, Professor.
The door was locked. Andrew pounded against it. No answer. He shouted Emily’s name. No answer. He slammed it with his open hand.
“She’s not here, Andrew. It’s been too long,” Zoey told him.
“He’s just left for the day, that’s all. We’ll look for her somewhere else. It’s after hours, no one is here,” Christian placed his arm around Zoey, hoping to calm the anxiety in her voice.
“I want to be sure,” said Margot and ran over to a janitor who was pushing a mop down at the far end of the hall. Seconds later she returned with him in tow; he was holding out his keys, his eyes beaming, eager to help.
“What did you say to him?” Simon whispered to her.
“You don’t want to know.”
He unlocked the door and pushed it open. In the darkness, they could only tell the room reeked of cigarette smoke and emptiness. A moment later, the overhead light flickered on.
“Holy shit!” the janitor cried at the sight before them.
A small reading lamp had crashed onto the carpet, its shade broken. Papers lay strewn across the desk but even more were heaped violently on the floor. Books toppled over each other in the bookcase, and pictures framed in broken glass lay scattered on the floor as if something or someone had been hurled against the wall.
Andrew griped the doorjamb as the room spun in and out of focus.
“We have to call the police,” Zoey said numbly.
“Oh Jesus,” Margot gasped, her face ashen. She stood in front of a wall-sized map that hung behind the desk and stared at her feet in revulsion. She knelt down and turned her face away like she was going to be sick. When she got to her feet, she was grasping something in her hand. An ashtray. A heavy glass ashtray. But something was wrong.
“There’s blood on it.” It slipped through her hands and crashed to the floor, a wet trail of crimson left on her fingers. “There’s blood…all over the floor.” She wobbled like she might faint and grabbed the side of the desk for support.
“Are you sure?” Andrew looked back to Margot.
“It’s sticky. It’s still sticky.” Her fingers rubbed together, and she bit her lips and swallowed down whatever words or bile would come next.
“Listen,” Andrew said. They turned to face him in a haze. “Christian, go with the janitor gent and get campus security, they’ll know what to do. Margot, you need to focus on where else would she go. Does she study anywhere? Could she have driven…?”
“Wait. You said she drove here, right? Is her car still in the lot?” Simon demanded.
Once back in the parking lot, Andrew yelled out to the others. “What does she drive?”
“It’s an old, green Citroën. You can’t miss it,” Margot answered, her eyes scanning the dim lot.
There must have been an evening class, because the lot was still full this time of night making their search difficult. After several minutes, they heard Christian shouting. “It isn’t here. It isn’t here. Well, maybe that’s a good thing, maybe—”
“What? Maybe she got away? Or maybe he got rid of her car? Maybe he drove her somewhere so he could—” Simon’s steady hand gripped Margot’s shoulder.
Andrew stared at everyone, Simon and Christian, especially. With a labored breath, he spoke clearly and with little emotion. “We need to talk with security first. Margot, find Vandin’s address in case they can’t help. Zoey, ring whoever’s the secretary of the department and get Vandin’s schedule for the day, did he check in with anyone, anything like that.” He told each of them to focus. They all knew what they had to do; they all were to reconnect every ten minutes via cell phone.
Simon looked at Andrew. “I think we need to phone the hospitals, just in case.”
Margot’s eyes widened, and she nodded her head; her fingers shook as she began searching for the numbers.
Hospitals move at a snail’s pace. Unless you’re gushing blood or have lost a limb, you wait. Broken spirits, Emily was to learn, count for much less.
Emily sat on a gurney, her hands like ice as she stared down at the borrowed cell phone, ready to call Margot, but she didn’t know how to find the words. Shock had taken her. Gored her. She closed her eyes and relived the memory…
“Open the damn door.” She was there in the office, trapped in quicksand, unable to move from the chair.
“There doesn’t have to be strings attached. Like I told you before, we are two discreet, consenting adults…”
“I can sue you. For sexual harassment.”
“I know, but you haven’t. Why is that? Because you know how very difficult it is to prove. And I could just as easily argue it was you who instigated the liaison. You did, didn’t you? Little Miss Thomas, infatuated by a father figure. An Electra complex. A classic evolutionary path: the younger woman drawn to an older man because she perceives he has the authority, the status, and the wealth to take care of her. Society has changed very little, Emily.” The tie remained taut in his hands.
“Put that down and open the door, now.”
“Or what? You’ll scream? You didn’t think she protested a bit, my previous appointment?” He studied the tie as he said this, as if testing to see how strong it really was. “You know another thing that’s hard to prove?”
Sheer black fear swept through her knowing exactly what he would say. He took a step closer and smiled. “Especially since we have shared such a close
relationship. Working together, you trying so diligently to get the job in the first place. The way I tease you in class, and the way you never complain. People might already think something is going on between us. No, I could merely say you preferred it rough, that you like to be bruised. Is that how he gives it to you? Does he like it hard and rough?”
His hands twisted the tie completely around each fist till there was nothing but a cord in his hands. Her lips bit back the tears that stung her eyes. Her mind clamped down on a singular thought: escape. The door, she had to get to the door.
He lifted the tie and held it aloft, arching his back. With a dark chuckle he lowered it, placed it under his collar, and yanked hard on the ends as he drew one through the other, making a perfect knot. Like he was leaving for work. Like he hadn’t mentally tortured her. Like this was the way he was. A sadistic psychopath.
“I’m traveling to London for a seminar next week, and my flight leaves soon—I don’t wish to be late. And to prove to you that I have a heart, you go ahead and write that paper of yours. It’s an interesting story, and if nothing else, it’ll give me something to look forward to when I return,” he said with cool aloofness.
An ice-cold pulse thundered in her veins. White blotches tore at her vision. The room was freezing. Shock. She was going into shock. Don’t faint, don’t faint, please don’t faint. He’ll hurt you. He will. He’s taunting you now like you’re his play-toy.
“Though remember when you write this piece de resistance,” she heard him say through the miasma, “ghosts are not based in reality, neither is love. They are both figments of the imagination to keep us from the void, from madness. And Ms. Thomas—” he nodded to the door “—don’t look so upset. The door was merely closed. You were the one who believed it was locked. You could have left at any time. You were the one who chose to stay.” With a nod, a blackish-gray lock from his slicked back hair fell on his forehead as he reached for his luggage. “Oh, and turn off the lights when you leave.”
Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story Page 18
