“Professor Polson’s on her way over.”
“Our professor is on her way to your apartment?” Karess asked. She was standing by the window with her arms crossed over her chest. Since they’d left the morgue and come back to the apartment, she’d never stopped shaking. She and Perry had walked so quickly they might as well have been running, and he was, himself, sweating in his jacket, but when they got to the front door and he saw how pale she was, and how much she was trembling, he took her in his arms and held her as she muttered, “Oh, God, Oh, my God, I remember that guy. Me and my roommate bought weed from him during Orientation. Oh, my God, Perry, that was his dead body.”
Perry had pulled her into the hallway and pressed her up against the mailboxes, trying to warm her, hold her close enough to calm her—or maybe himself—but it hadn’t worked at all. Hours and many cups of hot coffee later, Karess was still shaking, standing against the window with her legs pressed to the radiator. She’d barely spoken until now, except to say hello to Craig when Perry introduced them to each other, and to say no when he asked her if she wanted something to eat.
“Does Professor Polson spend a lot of time here?”
“We’re working together on—”
“Yeah,” Karess said.
“Look,” Perry said. “She’s never been here before, but this thing, with Lucas—I could tell on the phone, she’s really upset.”
“Fuck her,” Karess said, suddenly completely animated. The jewels and feathers she was wearing started to swing and flutter around her. She stomped the heel of her boot hard enough that Perry felt pretty sure that if anyone had been sleeping in the apartment below them, they weren’t anymore. “She was upset? She had us all set up, Perry. Couldn’t you tell? That’s why she left us all there, and went out in the alley. She knew there was a body in there, that it was a guy our age. I mean, that was her other boyfriend in there, that diener. You didn’t notice the big hug and all that? You think he didn’t bother to tell her there was a dead college kid in the morgue today? Professor Polson’s been trying to scare the shit out of us since day one, and I for one plan to file a complaint about it. This class has been a freak show from the beginning. My parents are not going to be amused.”
“She didn’t know,” Perry said. “I’m telling you, she had no way of knowing. She was as shocked as the rest of us. I was there when she recognized Lucas. I thought she was going to pass out.”
“Yeah. Right,” Karess said, and turned her back to him. He could see her shoulder blades under her sweater and the tank top and sheer blouse she was wearing. It crossed his mind that, undressed, she might be either impossibly beautiful or a skeleton. She was always decorated in so many layers of flowing clothes he could never have begun to guess how much she weighed, but it couldn’t have been much.
From the bathroom, he could hear the shower running, and Craig in there bumping around in the tiny shower stall, and then the intercom buzzed through the apartment, and Perry hit the button to open the apartment house door. Karess snorted out of her nose, and Perry went to stand in the hallway, listening to the sound of what he thought were Professor Polson’s black boots on the stairwell (solid, steady steps in sharp heels, as if she were tired or trying to figure out if she was in the right building, heading toward the right apartment), so he was surprised when the woman turned at the top of the stairwell, and she wasn’t Professor Polson. At first he thought somehow that she was his aunt Rachel. Same coloring. Reddish-blond hair. Pale skin. Maybe forty years old. Pretty, but not trying to be. This woman was wearing a silk dress and a very large black down parka. “Are you Craig?” she asked.