Woodstock. And that was just not something I was prepared to see.
Dealing with the state of my house was much easier than dealing with the state of my emotions: Crawford had called some company that, interestingly enough, specialized in cleaning up crime scenes. I wondered what you had to have on your résumé in order to get a job there (“1989–1991: Responsible for all cleaning and disinfecting of Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment”). Their specialty was getting blood out of carpeting, and although I didn’t have any carpeting in my kitchen, Crawford assured me that they would be equally effective on ceramic tile. As a fallback, I always had Magda’s grout-cleaning wizardry. I took his word for it. I didn’t know if I would ever go back into the kitchen, which wasn’t a terrible loss; I don’t cook and I mainly use it as a cut-through to the backyard and driveway.
The days after Ray’s death were a blur. The murder spun the campus into turmoil again, just like Kathy Miceli’s murder had a few short months before. And I was in the eye of the storm, the murder victim being my ex-husband and all. I tried to keep a low profile, going to school, teaching my classes, and returning home at the end of the day. Kevin’s and my usual socializing was canceled for the time being. I felt like I was becoming a pariah, having been peripherally involved in two heinous crimes, and really didn’t want to spend too much time in public. I knew that public stonings had been outlawed, but didn’t want to take any chances.
I took in the tabloid headlines every time I passed the faculty receptionist, Dottie’s, desk; they screamed of the blood and gore of Ray’s murder. “Out of a Limb!” “Dismember of the Faculty!” And a picture of me, snapped when I had gone out to get my mail: “Dr. Doom!” Seems I was getting a bad reputation what with my close proximity to dead bodies becoming common.
My phone rang as I was finishing up at school. I had just returned to the safety of my office fresh from syllabi reconnaissance. Sister Calista and her wicked coven of English instructors were freezing me out now; when I knocked on their office doors, they pretended that they weren’t at their desks, even though I could see the outline of their bonnet-shaped wimples through the glass. Neither Sister Mary nor President Etheridge was any help on that front, either.
When I picked up the phone, it was Max. As usual, she was mid-conversation with me even though I had just joined in. “You have to get a dress.” We had talked about this topic ad nauseam while I had been living with her, yet she was smart enough to sense that I wasn’t really going to take an active role in dress shopping unless she held a proverbial gun to my head. I hate shopping.
“Okay.” I picked my briefcase up and put it on top of my desk, balancing the phone in the crook of my neck. “When?”
“When’s the first day you can go?” she asked, screaming to someone to get her a latte. “No sugar!”
I reached into my briefcase and pulled out my planner. Every day was blank, with the exception of the notation regarding a meeting with the department heads a week in the future. “Anytime.” Loser.
“Go to Nordstrom as soon as possible,” she said, “and pick something out. No black.”
Black was my fallback color. “Black is the new…black,” I said, striving for a little humor.
“Black is blech,” she said. “I like black just as much as the next washed-out New York beatnik, but not for my wedding. Find something sexy. Fun.”
Sexy. Fun. Who did she think was buying this dress? Certainly not me. Right now I was dour and morose, but I didn’t think Nordstrom had a section devoted to those adjectives. I could see the tagline now: “Dour. Morose. The latest in wedding glamour.” “I’ll give it my best shot, Max,” I said, but she had hung up.
I took my car keys from my pocketbook and started to walk to my car, parked in the lot right behind my office. I heard my name being called and I stopped, turning to look around the dark lot. The person in the shadows was a few feet away and small, thin, and dressed in black. I squinted in the hazy charcoal of dusk, trying to discern who it was and my breath caught in my throat