Cleveland’s face when I shouted at him on the stairs.
A wave of anxiety washes over me. I seem to be shouting at him a lot. In my office, in the main staircase of the Observatory. I know why. And if he is not a complete dunce, he knows it, too.
God, he was furious with me!
By the time I had washed my tear-stained face and composed myself enough to go downstairs and find someone to unlock my office for me, Larry the janitor had long since gone home. The night watchman knew about the new locks—apparently all offices on the fourth floor were due to have their locks changed—but couldn’t tell me why I had not been informed, or where I might get hold of a new key. So next week, which already features my appointment with Amanda Cleveland, will begin with a show-down between self and Larry, to be followed by a set-to between self and Dancey, if I know anything about Larry and his refusal to take responsibility for anything at all that happens in the Observatory.
Next week I’ll ask Selena O’Neal to have lunch. It was eminently prudent of me to keep quiet during the meeting, but if Cleveland won’t talk tachlis with her, somebody else must. He recruited me for grad advisement, so advise her I will. Perhaps I can salvage that dissertation of hers, even if I seem unable to salvage my own career.
The stench and the noise of the Shaftsboro bypass clash painfully with the quiet of the riverside path, and I cut into the woods again with only a vague idea about how to find my way home. It should be due north, but how’s a girl from Queens to know where north is when she’s cycling through a densely forested area and the sky is gray?
In the same moment that I see water glisten among the trees I also see evidence of human life, or rather canine life. Two large dogs of indeterminate breed are speeding across the path onto a clearing to my left. At first I’m a little alarmed when the second one catches up with the first and they turn summersaults among the dry leaves in a bundle of legs and tails and fur, but as there is no fierce growling or painful yelps, and they immediately pick themselves up and start chasing each other again, they are presumably just playing. It’s a pleasing sight, the animal exuberance, two creatures enjoying the energy of their bodies, and I stop and lean against a tree to watch. The dogs break out of the narrow, overgrown path on the other side of the main track, and I think I can hear twigs crack under a foot. Is there any danger? I’m still finding it hard to get my head around the fact that country lanes might be as dangerous for a lone female as empty urban alleyways.
A man appears from between the trees, stamping his foot to get a clump of wet leaves from his hiking boots. He’s wearing frayed corduroys and a thick blue Royal Navy sweater, which strikes me as oddly ominous. Then he lifts his head to look for his dogs, and it’s Giles Cleveland.
Giles. A sense of dread swamps me, almost like fear and my first and spontaneous thought is, I hope she isn’t with him! I can bear seventy-five-year-olds holding hands on Sunday lakeside walks, but the sight of Giles Cleveland in affectionate physical contact with his wife would do something to my precarious emotional balance that I won’t even analyze.
I see him before he sees me, so I have a couple of seconds to adjust my face before he freezes. His reaction makes me feel that I ought to apologize for being here, on his turf, in his way. Luckily I can stop myself from so abject a gesture.
Be cool. Be off-hand.
“They belong to you?” I nod toward the dogs that come bounding up to him and, having ascertained that all is well with him, begin to examine me on my bike.
“Yes,” he says slowly, doing the same, but with his eyes. “Are you okay with that?” He means the dogs’ attention.
“Yeah, sure. Ignore them, right?”
“That’s right.”
The smile that has been lurking in his light eyes now reaches the corners of his mouth. He looks different, in his old corduroys, his hair windswept into his face; younger than in his working-day suits, and again I see the college athlete in his