Every so often she wished she had been blessed with the right sort of eye and the command of language that would have turned her into a writer. She longed for creativity. In college she had taken writing courses, art courses, photography courses, acting classes, and even poetry courses-and been decidedly mediocre in all. That invention had always eluded her, saddened her. But she gave herself credit for coming up with the next best thing: life at the side of someone who could create magical things.
She stopped reading. She could feel a quivering inside of her. What she held in her hands was beautiful-but it was familiar. She left the book open on her lap and leaned back and closed her eyes a second time, as if in her darkness she might picture her husband’s new story unfolding right before her. There would be a relentless killer, she knew, and a clever detective hunting him down. There would be a woman at risk. Probably a quite beautiful woman, although she hoped that after the expected large bust and long legs, he’d modeled the character after her. The book’s pace would be steady, filled with unexpected and surprising twists and turns that, no matter how outlandish, would build toward a dramatic confrontation. She knew all the requisite elements of a modern police-thriller.
She kept her eyes closed, but reached out with her hands as if she could touch the words she knew were being created almost in front of her.
Mrs. Big Bad Wolf stroked nothing but empty air.
After a moment, she felt a little cold, as if the heat in the room had suddenly slid away. She sighed deeply and packed up her paperback and her lunch utensils and took a quick look at her watch. Her lunch hour was almost finished; it was time to return to work. There was a faculty meeting that afternoon, which her boss, the dean, would surely be attending. Maybe she could steal a few moments to read familiar passages when he was out of the office.
14
After dark, cool air settling over the campus, Jordan slipped into torn jeans, old running shoes, and a black parka, and found a threadbare navy watch cap which she pulled down over her hair as tightly as possible. She waited in her room until she heard some of the other girls in her dormitory gathering to head out to an evening lecture-the school was forever bringing in writers, artists, filmmakers, businessmen, and scientists to speak informally to the upper-class students. Jordan knew the other kids would gather in the vestibule of the converted house and then launch themselves out in a giggling, tight-knit group. Teenagers tended to travel in packs, she knew. Wolves did as well, except she doubted that the wolf that concerned her joined any group.
Lone wolf, she thought. The phrase made her shudder.
Jordan exited her room and hesitated at the top of the stairs until she heard four other girls, voices raised, laughing and teasing each other, barrel loudly through the front door.
Moving swiftly, taking the stairs two at a time, she sprinted out just behind them, trying to make it seem as if she were a part of that group without getting so close that they would turn and draw attention to her. She wanted to make it seem to anyone watching that she was hurrying to catch up with her friends.
She trailed a few feet distant, but as they turned left, heading toward the lecture halls, she abruptly ducked into the first deep shadow she could find, pinning herself against the side of an old redbrick classroom building, scrunching up against twisted knots of ivy branches that poked her in the back like an unruly child vying for attention.
Jordan waited.
She listened to the sounds of her classmates disappearing into the evening and waited for her eyes to adjust to the night. Hidden in shadow, she counted seconds off in her head: one, two, three. She did not know if she was being followed, but she assumed she was, even though the rational side of her told her loudly that this was completely impossible. No wolf, no matter how clever, how dedicated, or how obsessed, could spend all his time outside her dorm room just waiting for her to emerge and then trail after her.
She repeated this to herself insistently, but she was unsure whether she was reassuring herself or lying to herself. They seemed equal possibilities. Yes he is. No he isn’t.
She wondered if she should be scared, and then realized that the mere act of wondering made her muscles tense up and her breathing grow shallow. It was cold, but she felt warm. It was dark, but she felt like she was beneath a spotlight. She was young, but she felt old and unsteady.
Jordan squirmed closer to the side of the building. She could still feel the Wolf’s presence, almost as if he was jammed into the ivy branches beside her, hot breath on her neck. She half-expected to hear his voice whispering “I’m right here” in her ear and she exhaled sharply, the whooshing noise seeming as loud as a train whistle. She clamped down on her lips.
When silence-or enough silence, because she could still hear distant voices echoing across the quadrangles from other students, and a Winterpills song she really liked playing inside a dormitory-surrounded her she stepped out of her shadow, and hunching her shoulders up against the chill, keeping her head lowered and her pace fast, she wove her way rapidly across campus, zigzagging erratically, avoiding every light, turning up one dark path, then cutting across the grass to another, backtracking before racing inside a dormitory, and then using a different door at the far end of the building to exit back into the night.
Finally, persuaded that no wolf could successfully follow her drunken trail, she sprinted out through a set of tall black wrought iron gates that marked the school’s entrance. She quickly turned onto an ink-shadowed side street. She slowed slightly to a jog as she headed toward the center of the small town that encapsulated the school. She felt a little like she was acting in some Hollywood spy movie. It was cool enough so she could see her breath.
Antonio’s Pizza was lit up. Bright lights and multicolored neon signs. There were a half-dozen schoolmates of hers gathered around the stainless steel counter in front of the oven, waiting for a slice or two. She watched two men wearing white smocks and aprons serving up the orders. They did this with a flourish, using large wooden paddles to shoot the pizzas into the oven and then remove them moments later.
From where Jordan lingered on the street, she could imagine happy voices and the sound of the cash register. The pizza joint was like that-a difficult place to be depressed or distracted. There would be a happy buzz inside, laughter and raised voices mingling with the enticing smells of roasted meat and spices and the welcoming blasts of heat that rolled from the ovens each time they were opened.
She waited, half-hungry in that way that teenagers are; she could easily have stuffed herself with hot pizza. Except every time she thought about the Wolf, her hunger fled, replaced with a gnawing sensation in her stomach. Fear versus food. An unfair fight.
A cold breeze rattled an awning above the sidewalk in front of an antique store that was shut down for the night. Jordan was about to glance at her watch when the spire that rose above the small town’s offices chimed seven times.
She looked up and saw a small station wagon pull up in front of the pizza place. She hunched back, once again seeking a shadow to conceal herself in, and waited. Right on time, she thought. She didn’t know whether this was good or bad.
The car put on its flashers. Yellow lights painted the sidewalk. She could see the driver leaning across the front seat, staring into the restaurant, searching hard.
That was where Jordan had said she would be.
But instead, she was just down the street, in a vantage spot between two buildings where she could see without being seen.