“Lucas!”
Perry recognized the ponytail and the long lopsided gait from a block away, and he jogged up behind Lucas on the sidewalk, and then next to him. “Hey.”
Lucas jumped and spun around. He had apparently not heard Perry calling his name until he was right next to him. “Jesus Christ, Perry,” he said. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry. I thought you heard me.”
“I didn’t,” Lucas said. He was panting. His face, in the bright autumn sunlight, looked strangely haggard, much paler than it had even the week before, when Perry had last seen him. He looked like he’d been stoned for days, and maybe like he hadn’t slept more than a few hours the night before, and maybe like he was losing weight, rapidly.
“I wanted to tell you something,” Perry said.
Lucas stopped. He turned to Perry, although he was glancing to his left and right at the same time, as if looking for someone, or wondering who might be nearby to overhear them. But there was no one on their side of the street. All the students were flooding in the direction of Main Campus, hurrying to make their morning classes on time.
Lucas was carrying a bag. It looked like maybe he’d just come out to go to the store and buy a six-pack, and was headed back to his apartment.
“Is it about her?” he asked.
“Not exactly,” Perry said. “It’s about my professor. Professor Polson. I’m taking her seminar.”
“The Death one?”
“Yes.”
“I thought that was for freshmen.”
“Yeah, well, she let me in.”
“Why?” Lucas asked. He looked expressionless and suspicious at the same time.
“Because I asked her to make an exception. I wanted—”
“Because of her?”
“Partly,” Perry said. Lucas had made it sound like some kind of accusation, and Perry felt defensive. “Also, Professor Polson is working on a book about—”
“Why are you talking to me about this?” Lucas asked, suddenly animated, waving his free hand as if to shoo Perry away. “I don’t want to hear about this.”
“Because she wants to talk to you, Lucas. Professor Polson wants to ask you some questions. About Nicole. I told her what you told me. And about Patrick, too. And what I’ve seen. She’ll believe you. She needs to interview you, though.”
“You talked to a professor about this? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Lucas, it’s important. She can help.”
“Help? What’s she going to do to help?”
Perry opened his mouth to answer, but could think of nothing to say.
It was raining when Perry and Professor Polson had met, after class, at Espresso Royale. They sat at a table near the back, far from the windows that faced the street, but Perry could hear rain on the roof—hard, fast rain, like a lot of small feet running furiously overhead—and Professor Polson’s dark hair was curled in damp ringlets that clung to her neck and the sides of her face. She looked cold, wearing only a silk dress and a cardigan, and she’d gotten soaked, it seemed, on her walk over from Godwin Honors Hall. Perry had gone ahead when she’d told him she had to stop by the library and drop off a book before meeting him. Now, looking across the table at her, he felt bad. He’d had an umbrella. If he’d known she didn’t, he would have given her his own, or walked with her to the library and then to the café. She wrapped her hands around the white paper cup and brought it to her mouth to breathe in the steam before she sipped from it. It was the kind of thing Perry had seen women do in movies—drink a cup of coffee like this, with both hands, sipping and peering up over the rims of their cups at the same time, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anyone do it in real life. Professor Polson’s hands were very white and thin, with a few pale blue veins crisscrossing them.
“I’d like to interview Lucas,” she said. “Have you told him that you shared his information with me?”
“No,” Perry said. “But he never told me I couldn’t tell anyone. I’ll find him. I’ll bring him to your office. I think he’d be willing.”
“Maybe not the office,” Professor Polson said. “I’d like to record it. I don’t want him to be inhibited by the office. Let’s meet off campus. Perhaps you could bring him to my apartment.”
“Sure,” Perry said.
“After that, we’ll see. Maybe Patrick Wright, too. What do you think?”
Patrick had been, it seemed, avoiding Perry since the night he’d spoken about Nicole. He’d been drinking when he called Perry. They barely knew each other—Patrick had been a sophomore on Perry’s and Craig’s hall at Godwin the year before—but he knew that Perry had gone to high school with Nicole, and he knew that Perry’s roommate had been the one who’d had the accident that had killed her. (“I just wondered,” Patrick had slurred, “you know. Have you seen her? Am I losing my mind, Perry? Whass happening here?”) Perry’d had no idea what to say to Patrick, so he had stammered something about sobering up and calling back in the morning, but Patrick never called, and Perry didn’t run into him. He’d heard the details from Lucas.
“But, let’s see how it goes with Lucas first. And, Perry?” She put the cup down on the table between them and tucked her hands somewhere inside her sweater. “Have you told anyone else—for instance, anyone else on the faculty—about any of this?”
Perry had no idea why he was unable to hold her gaze. He hadn’t told anyone, and he had no reason to lie to Professor Polson, but he glanced down at her cup instead of at her. There was something about her eyes. She had crow’s feet—something he knew women worried about, because his mother had about a hundred different potions to combat those and was always complaining that they didn’t do a thing—but around Professor Polson’s eyes, they were crinkly and intriguing. They made her look both sexy and wise.
“Perry?” she asked again.
“No,” he said. “No, ma’am. I haven’t said anything to anyone. Not even Craig. Not even my parents. You’re the only one I’ve talked to about any of this.”
Professor Polson removed a hand from the place she’d had it tucked between her sweater and her dress, and raised it over her cup, and said, “I’m not asking you not to. I’m just curious what the rumors might be, if any.”
“I understand,” Perry said, nodding.
“And I don’t want to mislead you, Perry. My angle on this might not be exactly what you’re hoping for. I believe what you’re telling me, that you believe it, and that what you’re hearing from others, like Lucas—I believe you’re each telling the truth as you see it. But I also know that death is a deep, potent, incomprehensible force on the psyche—especially for the young. In other words, I’m not necessarily on a hunt with you for Nicole Werner, Perry.”
“I understand that,” Perry said.
“But I also believe you. I believe in your sincerity, and also in your intelligence,” she said. “I have no reason not to. Based on what I’ve seen so far, you’re an impressive person, Perry. I’m proud to take on this project with you.”
“Why would she believe me?” Lucas asked. He lifted one shoulder, let it fall again, and it seemed to Perry that his shirt shifted oddly on his back, as if he might be even thinner under his clothes than he appeared to be.
“She believes me,” Perry said. “She’s open-minded. I mean, I don’t think you have anything to lose, Lucas. She’s not going to have us both committed, or—”
Lucas shrugged again, and said, shaking his head and starting to walk away, as if the conversation were over, “I’ve definitely got nothing to lose.”