“Oh, God,” Katie moaned. “I’m going to have to switch sections. I didn’t hear a word he said.”
“I did. Oh, God. He knows my name.” Melissa blushed the color of her plastic notebook cover all over again. Her voice dropped, developed a mocking precision of pronunciation. “Ms. Martinchek, maybe you can tell me about Joanna Ballyhoo … ”
“Baillie.” Gina, who came up and stood on tiptoe to stick a purple Post-it note to Melissa’s tit. “He wrote it down for me. This way you can impress him next week.”
Melissa picked the note off her chest and stared at it. “He uses purple Post-it notes?”
“I was right,” Katie said. “He’s gay.”
“Do you want to find out?”
“Oh, and how do you propose we do that? Check the BiGALA membership roster?” Melissa might be scoffing, but her eyes were alight. Katie swallowed.
Gina checked her wristwatch. She had thick brown-black hair swept up in a banana clip, showing tiny curls like inverted devil horns at her pale nape. “He’s got office hours until three. I say we grab some lunch and drop off our books, and then when he leaves we see where he goes.”
“I dunno.” Katie crossed her arms over her notebook. “It’s not like playing basketball with your shirt off is a crime … ”
“It’s not like following someone to see where they go is a crime, either,” Melissa pointed out. “We’re not going to … stalk him.”
“No, just stalk him.”
“Katie!”
“Well, it’s true.” But Melissa was looking at her, and … she had come to Manhattan to have adventures. “What if we get caught?”
“Get caught … walking down a public street?”
Right. Whatever. “We could just look him up in the phone book.”
“I checked. Not listed, amigas. Maybe it’s under his boyfriend’s name.”
Even Melissa blinked at her this time. “Jesus Christ, Gomez. You’re a criminal mastermind.”
Those same three girls were holding up the wall when Matthew left the lecture theatre, climbing up the stairs to go out by the top door. He walked past, pretending not to notice them, or the stifled giggles and hiccups that erupted a moment later.
He just had time to grab a sandwich before his office hours. Almost one o’clock; probably nothing left but egg salad.
He needed the protein anyway.
He supplemented the sandwich with two cartons of chocolate milk, a bag of sourdough pretzels and three rip-top packets of French’s mustard, and spread the lot out on his desk while he graded papers for his Renaissance drama class. With luck, no students would show up except a lonely or neurotic or favor-currying Ph.D. candidate, and he could get half of the papers done today.
He had twenty-four sophomores and juniors, and of the first ten papers, only two writers seemed to understand that The Merry Wives of Windsor was supposed to be funny. One of those was a Sociology major. Matthew was a failure as a teacher. He finished the sandwich, blew crumbs off his desk so he wouldn’t leave mayonnaise fingerprints on the essays, and tore open the pretzels before he sharpened his red pencil one more time.
Honey mustard would have been better. He should get some to stick in his desk. Unless it went bad. Honey didn’t go bad, and mustard didn’t go bad. Logically, an amalgam would reflect the qualities of both.
The spike of ice and acid through the bones of his hands originated from his iron Mage’s rings, and it not only made him drop a pretzel— splattering mustard across the scarred wooden desk—but it brought him to his feet before he heard the police sirens start.
He glanced at the clock. Five more minutes. “That which thou hast promised thou must perform,” he said, under his breath.
He left his lunch on the desk and found his keys in his pocket on the way to the door.
Their quarry almost ran them over as they were on their way in to start stalking him. Katie sidestepped quickly, catching Gina across the chest with a straight left arm. Melissa managed to get herself out of the way.
Doctor S. was almost running. His corduroy jacket flapped along the vent as he skidded between pedestrians, cleared four concrete steps in a bounce, and avoided a meandering traffic jam of students with as much facility as he’d shown on the basketball court. And if Katie had begun to suspect that it was just a bizarre case of mistaken identity, the toreador sidestep around the lady with the baby carriage would have disabused her. Doctor S. moved with a force and grace that were anything but common to academia.
Katie turned to follow him. It was only a small gesture to catch Gina’s wrist, and without more urging, Gina trotted along beside her. Which was good, because Gina was strong and stubborn, even if she was only three apples high. Melissa took two more beats to get started, but her longer legs soon put her into the lead. “Slow down,” Katie hissed, afraid that he would notice them running after him like three fools in a hurry, but frankly, he was getting away.
So when Melissa glared at her, she hustled, like you do. And Gina actually broke into a trot.
Doctor S. strode east on 68th, against traffic, towards the park. He never glanced over his shoulder, but kept rubbing his hands together as if they pained him. Maybe the rings were the magnet kind, for arthritis or something. RSI.
“I can’t believe I never noticed he wears all those rings.”
“I can’t believe I never noticed the muscles,” Melissa answered, but Gina said “Rings?”
“On all his fingers?” Melissa was too busy dodging pedestrians to give Gina the were you born that stupid or do you practice hard? look, and Katie was as grateful as she could spare breath for. They were disrupting traffic flow, the cardinal sin of New York’s secular religion. Katie winced at another glare. Somebody was going to call her a fucking moron any second.
Gina sounded completely bemused. “I never noticed any rings.”
Doctor S. continued east on 68th past Park Ave., down the rows of narrow-fronted brick buildings with their concrete window ledges. By the time he crossed Madison Ave., she was sure he was headed for the park. Every so often he actually skipped a step, moving as fast as he possibly could without breaking into a purse-snatcher sprint.
… he wasn’t going to the park.
Halfway between Park and Fifth Avenue—which, of course, unlike Park, was on the park—traffic was gummed up behind flashing lights and restraining police. Doctor S. slowed as he approached, stuffing his hands back into his pockets—“Would you look at that?” Gina said, and Katie knew she, too, had suddenly noticed the rings—and dropping his shoulders, smallifying himself. He merged with the gawking crowd; Katie couldn’t believe how easily he made himself vanish. Like a praying mantis in a rosebush; just one more green thorn-hooked stem.
“Okay,” Melissa said, as they edged through bystanders, trying not to shove too many yuppies in the small of the back. “Stabbing?”
“Sidewalk pizza,” Gina the Manhattanite said, pointing up. There was a window open on the sixth floor of one of the tenements, and Katie glimpsed a blue uniform behind it.
“Somebody jumped?”
“Or was pushed.”