saw the fourth-floor corridor so deserted was the night I overheard Selena and her lover in the dome. Of course this, too, is a moment convenient for an illicit rendezvous, with everyone out on the streets for the Parade. I am wearing soft-soled boots, so I am not very noisy, but I tread even more carefully and listen up the spiral stairs opposite my office. Take a few steps up, listen again. Nothing. And besides, do I want to know? As if I didn’t know way too much already about way too many people in this department. When all I wanted was to sit in my neat little office and write lots of articles about early modern English literature.
“What the—”
My office door springs open the moment I push my key into the lock. Crouching in front of the locked drawer in my desk is Nick Hornberger. With a screwdriver in his hand.
“You?” My first impulse is anger at this constant intrusion into my space, but when he gets up—two dusty patches on the knees of his suit—he is a big, heavy man with a pointy metal object in his hand. Anger is not my main response any more. I back out through the door.
“Anna.” He follows me. “Don’t overreact, okay?”
“What are you looking for in my office?” I yell at him, still retreating. “What the fuck do you think I am hiding in my office? What have I to do with your—fucking mess?”
“Will you stop shouting, you little bitch!” he snarls at me.
“You must be crazy to come up here—did you have the lock on my door changed? And was it you all the time, with the oil and the fish?”
“The oil and the fish? What, are you—you’re raving, woman! And be quiet! Be quiet!”
His voice is much louder than mine, which somewhat undermines his command, but I am not about to start arguing with a cornered, desperate man twice my size. At this point, I am ready to believe him capable of anything.
“Look, I understand you’re shocked.” He makes an effort at controlling himself. “You don’t understand what is really going on—how could you? You know nothing about us here at Ardrossan. So be a good girl, hand me your keys, and stand over there by the window.”
I throw him my keys and retreat to the window in the corridor, watching him.
“We talked about you yesterday.”
“At the reception? I’m not surprised.” He fiddles with my keys; it is the smallest of six. “It’s quite a fantasy, isn’t it? I bet those dried-up alumnae pretend to be all aghast. Nick Hornberger, the rapist professor. They wish.”
My blood runs cold at this blatant brutality. Maybe he knows he is finished, maybe he knows this time he has gambled too high and lost. I really don’t know what my evil angel thinks he is doing when he whacks his spurs into my flesh.
“Nick Eagleson, the rapist football player, actually.”
The effect is all I could have hoped for. Like Lot’s wife looking back at Sodom, he seems to turn into a pillar of salt.
“So you did find it.” He stands up slowly and leans against the back wall. He is huge in the small space of my office and in the gray afternoon light. His eyes focus on me through the doorway. “Where is it? Why haven’t you handed it over?”
“Handed what over? What are you talking about?”
We both realize in the same instant that he has said too much and betrayed himself. A strange movement runs through his body, and although I can’t consciously decode it, it activates my flight instinct. On a very short distance, I have a chance.
I bolt, darting along the corridor toward the staircase, never bothering to look back. “Help! Security! Up here! Security!”
In the great hall I find them, four watchmen standing at a bar table drinking left-over coffee. It strikes me that if I shriek at them to do their damn job and catch the intruder on the fourth floor, and they rush up there and intercept Professor Nick Hornberger, I’ll have a great deal of explaining to do. Have I thought that through? His word against mine?
Suddenly there is a shout behind me, from the second-floor landing.
“Guys? Guys, up here, quick!”
They charge past me and I follow them, but instead of running up the stairs, they turn off into the professors’ hallway. It is full of security men and the half-light of an over-cast late October afternoon, so I hear before I see.