Perry stood in the middle of his apartment and spoke to Craig’s voice mail, leaving him a message (“Where the hell are you, man?”) when he realized that the cell phone he was trying to reach was lying on the coffee table about three feet away from him, turned off. It had been twenty-four hours since he’d seen Craig, and he was going to be late to the class field trip if he didn’t leave that second. “Fuck,” Perry said to the phone, hung it up, grabbed his backpack, and headed for the door.
He was late.
Professor Polson was standing in the foyer with the class already gathered around her. She was giving them some directives—telling them that the university morgue was actually a secured facility, and that it was a special privilege to be allowed to visit it, a privilege granted to them because her research gave her a faculty pass, which she’d managed to have extended to “visiting scholars.” The fact that her “visiting scholars” were actually freshman in a first-year seminar had apparently not been brought to the attention of the morgue director or the hospital security. Yet. And the class needed to provoke no interest or suspicion so it would stay that way. “Okay?” she asked. There were nods all around.
It also happened, she explained, that she was personal friends with the diener (the class snickered at the word, so close to diner, although Professor Polson had defined it for them as “the person responsible for handling and washing bodies”). This morgue’s diener, coincidentally, had worked at a mortuary she’d visited in Yugoslavia, and they’d stayed in touch over the years, and then he had come to the United States.
“If there’s joking, disrespect, theft—God forbid—or any kind of undignified behavior, I will likely never be allowed back with another class. More important, for you, the student or students responsible will fail my course and receive whatever other punishments I can come up with.” She said this lightheartedly, but it was clear from her expression that she wasn’t kidding.
That morning Professor Polson was wearing a black sweater and a deep purple skirt. Her hair was shiny and smooth, and there was color in her cheeks. She looked, Perry thought, as if she’d slept well that night. For the last few weeks there’d been circles under her eyes, but today they looked clear and bright.
She was so lovely to look at. Perry had a hard time taking his eyes off her, although he didn’t want to appear to be staring. Through the gauzy scarf around her neck, he glimpsed what looked like a gold cross dangling near her breast bone. Maybe the slightest hint of a lace-trimmed bra or camisole. He had to will himself to look away, and found his gaze caught by Karess’s.
She held it without smiling.
Perry tried to smile himself, but it felt to him more like a grimace as he did it, and the look on Karess’s face—surprise, annoyance—made it seem even more likely that his own face wasn’t doing what he wanted it to do.
But she also didn’t look away. She seemed to be refusing to look away, so Perry, unnerved, pretended suddenly to notice that he needed to tie his shoe. He crouched down behind Alexandra Robbins’s enormous ass, where he could see no one and no one could see him, until he heard Professor Polson say, “Okay, follow me.”
On the walk to the morgue, Perry kept well behind the rest of the other students, most of whom seemed to be trying as hard as they could to walk next to Professor Polson (an impossible task, since the sidewalk was wide enough for only two people at a time, and there were sixteen of them). Karess was, herself, off on the muddy grass, slogging through it in cowboy boots. She was wearing what looked like two miniskirts—one black lace and, over that one, a denim one with a torn patch at the hip. There were feathers braided into her hair, as well as a couple of beads. She glanced over her shoulder for only a second, and it seemed to Perry that her face sparkled. Not with pleasure, but with that glitter girls sometimes wore. He remembered Mary having some of that on her cheeks at the prom a couple years ago, and how, as they danced, every time he looked at her it appeared as though her cheeks were awash in tears.
Brett Barber was doing his best to keep his position beside Karess. It looked like he was trying to take baby steps so as not to get too far ahead of her. Karess had begun waving her hand around in the air in front of her as if she were trying to explain some important concept to him, and Brett was watching her lavender wool mitten as if it held the key to the universe and he was afraid she might drop it.
The guy must have thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Perry didn’t remember ever seeing Karess so much as glance in Brett’s direction even once. If Perry’d had more energy, if he hadn’t been up half the night waiting to hear Craig knock (wherever it was he’d gone off to, he’d left his keys behind), he would have tried to hurry ahead and catch up, step between the two of them. But, first of all, his legs wouldn’t move that fast. Second, he didn’t know if he was up for whatever kind of response Karess might have to his approaching her. He was hoping they’d parted yesterday as friends, but he had his doubts.
After Starbucks, after Josie slapped him hard in the face, and he and Karess had stumbled out into a strangely heavy snowfall, Perry had made the mistake of going with her back to her room, where the roommate excused herself the second they arrived (to “go study in the lounge”), as if on cue.
“Let me see you,” Karess had said, and turned to Perry. She approached him with her hands open as if she were carrying a bowl, and she took his face in them—but instead of inspecting him, she kissed him.
The kiss lasted a long time. Karess was about his height, and with her arms wrapped around him and her body pressed against his, he saw no way (or at least so he told himself) to disengage without giving her shoulders a shove. He let her bite his lower lip, and his tongue traveled over her teeth, which tasted both like clove and like mint, but he kept his hands firmly planted on her shoulder bones, and didn’t move them, although her own hands traveled up his back, and down it, and then to his face again. With her index finger she traced a line from his temple to his lips, and then she put her finger to the corner of his mouth and dipped it in.
Perry opened his eyes then, and hers were open, too, looking into his, and she stepped back, shrugging off her jacket, letting it fall to the floor, and took his hand and pulled him toward the bed, which had what looked like some kind of Indian tablecloth on it, along with about a million decorative pillows and a stuffed black cat with creepy green eyes. Perry shook his head.
Karess looked at him, and shook her own head as if in imitation. “What?” she said. It wasn’t exactly a question.
Perry said, trying to sound apologetic, “I’ve got to go.”
“What?”
“I just,” Perry said. “Can’t. I have to go.”
“O-kay,” Karess said, and then glanced at his jeans. He couldn’t hide the erection. She said, “It looks like you can.”
“It’s not. That.” Perry was trying to think of a way to say what it was, without himself knowing.
She was so beautiful. He knew what any roomful of guys hearing this story would have called him.
But Nicole had been beautiful, too.
And it had been awful, being with Nicole.
Whereas with Mary—who was not, by any standard, beautiful like these girls—he had wanted her so badly for so long that he would have died for it. He’d woken up some nights groaning. Some days in the hallway at school, he would take circuitous routes to classes and the cafeteria in order to avoid her, because he couldn’t stand it, seeing her. Seeing her in whatever pretty blouse or silky skirt she was wearing would make him ache all day.
“Well, then, what is it?” Karess asked. “I’m not your type or something? You’re not gay, are you?”
“No,” Perry said. “You’re so beautiful, but I—”
“You have a girlfriend, don’t you?” Karess said. She sighed. “I wondered what the deal was. You never even look at girls except for Professor Polson. I thought you were either a virgin, or a Christian, or you were sleeping with our professor, but you have some girl up there in whatever that town is you’re from—Bad Ass?—waiting for you, wearing a yellow ribbon or something, don’t you?”
Perry hesitated at first, but Karess continued to stare at him, and not knowing what else to do, Perry nodded.
“Is that why that sorority bitch slapped you?”
“Well,” Perry said. “Not exactly. She—”
“Well, thanks for sparing me her fate, anyway. Now, would you get out of here, Mr. Bad Ass? I’ve had just about enough of you for one day.”
It was mostly a joke, but Karess turned away from Perry and went to the window and looked out, and she made a motion with her hand for him to go, and Perry cleared his throat, trying and failing to think of something to say before he unlocked her door and stepped out into the hall, and closed it quietly behind him.
Now Brett Barber was trotting beside her, all but wagging his tail, and whatever Karess was talking to him about, it seemed to require no response on his part. He wasn’t even nodding his head. Professor Polson was taking long strides, in knee-high, shiny black boots, across the parking lot, and the group continued to follow down through an alley, which grew narrower as they walked. Soon it was narrow enough that only one person could pass at a time, so they followed her in single file. A couple of people laughed nervously, looked at the people behind them, raised their eyebrows. “Where the hell are we going?” someone whispered.
It surprised Perry, too. He’d expected the morgue to be its own building, bright and goofy like Dientz Funeral Home back in Bad Axe. Every holiday they decorated the front lawn—ribbons, flowers, wreaths, Easter eggs, Valentine’s hearts—except for Halloween.
But the university’s hospital morgue seemed to be sequestered exactly where you’d expect a place where dead bodies were kept to be hidden away: in a dungeon. Out by the hospital Dumpsters. No sign out front welcoming them with a smiley face. No euphemistic directions to CARE CONCLUSION FACILITY, or MEDICAL OUTSTAY LABORATORY.
Professor Polson kept going, and they kept following, past Dumpsters and chain-link fencing and No Trespassing signs, and on to a point beyond which it seemed they would find no entrance to anything, and certainly past the point where anyone would wish to trespass, and then Professor Polson was descending a long flight of stairs to a dark alcove and a windowless brown fire door on which was stenciled, in large caution-yellow letters, MORGUE.