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That made me think back to the speech he’d made for Barbara, how warm and insider-jokey it had been, how much she seemed to appreciate it. But then I also remembered the way he’d seemed after—flustered, his skin flushed. I’d been thrown off becausehe’dapproachedmefirst, that night by my car, and I knew how difficult it could be for me to make first contact. But now I’d unlocked at least one more mystery behind Sam.
He was shy.
I was still trying to figure out how to respond, when henodded toward my car. “Try starting it now,” he said. “We’ll see if that was enough juice to get it going.”
I slid in the driver’s side, almost hoping I wouldn’t hear the car turn over. Obviously I wanted it to work again, but there wouldn’t be any harm if it took another five or ten minutes to charge up. Especially now that I felt like I was getting somewhere with Sam.
But of course, because I had the worst luck in the world, when I turned the key the engine sputtered and then roared to life. Through the front windshield, I saw Sam give me a thumbs-up.
“Sounds good,” he said, already starting to unhook the jumper cables. “You’re probably going to want to run your car for at least fifteen minutes before you turn it off again, to make sure the battery gets enough charge.”
“It doesn’t seem too busy here today. I’m sure they wouldn’t care if we hung out a bit longer.”
“Oh, you can drive it,” Sam said. “I’m just saying, maybe take the long way home, do a few loops around the neighborhood.”
It was enough to make me wonder if any connection we’d had was being transmitted through those cables, and now that our cars were apart again we were back to being separate, too. I’d had an idea to invite him to lunch, to offer to pay as a thank-you for helping with my car. But obviously that would be stupid, given that I’d run the risk of my car dying again at any new location, and he seemed anxious now to be rid of me.
This was why I preferred to keep people at arm’s length. Things got so much more complicated when you actually cared if someone sent you a text, or accepted an invitation, or wanted to hang out.
I shut the driver’s-side door, rolling down the window to giveSam a jaunty wave. “Thanks for all your help,” I said. “I guess... see you around?”
“It’d be hard not to,” he said.
I backed carefully out of the space, checking my rearview mirror when I’d reached the exit of the library parking lot. Sam was still standing there, the disconnected cables in his hands, the hood of his truck still open. I almost thought about opening the door and calling back to him, seeing if maybe he wanted to grab that lunch after all, if we met back at our houses first. But then I remembered that I was supposed to be working on my dissertation, that any invitation would lead to a bunch of annoying logistics about where should we go and whose car should we drive, and god forbid he thought it was a date. God forbidIdid.
I flicked my signal light on, and made the turn to leave.
TEN
THE PROBLEM WITHputting off writing was that the words didn’t just magically appear the longer you left your computer to its own devices. If anything, the blinking cursor on my open dissertation document seemed more accusatory than ever, as if to say,What’s the holdup, bitch? If you loveIn Cold Bloodso much, why don’t you just write about it, then?
The internal voice of my computer was quite rude, apparently.
When I was really trying to buckle down to work, I would switch my Wi-Fi off to remind myself to stop dicking around on the internet. Of course, the only thing stopping me from turning it back on was a double click and my own fragile willpower. So I told myself I was taking a quick break, and searched for the Sunrise Slayer’s daughter’s name.
Most of it was the expected stuff—reviews of her book, an interview she’d given for a local CBS affiliate. On the third pageof results, I found a post she’d made a year ago on a quilting website, where she was asking if anyone had extra of some discontinued fabric she needed. In one of her follow-up comments, she mentioned her local fabric store, and I searched the name of that, too.
It was about an hour from my dad’s house. So apparently she did still live in the area. And more power to her, too, because my dad didn’t even murder a bunch of people and I still felt all antsy just being back in this place where I had a higher probability of running into people who might’ve known him.
My phone rang on the desk next to me, and I answered it without looking away from the search results. “Hello?”
“Phoebe. How are you?”
Of all the voices I’d thought I’d hear, I hadn’t expected Dr.Nilsson. She never called me out of the blue without setting it up by email first. I closed out my boondoggle internet search and pulled my document back up, as though she could see my screen through the phone and knew I was fucking off.
“Great,” I said, my voice pitched a little higher than was natural. “Just working on my Capote section.”
I wondered if this was about the last chapter I’d turned in. Had it been so bad that she had to call to personally ream me out? Did I comma splice one too many times and cause her eyeballs to bleed, and she’d barked an order for Siri to call me as her one last action before she went under the deep sleep of anesthesia?
Shit, had I usedirregardlessagain? I’d carelessly used the word once in a five-page response in her class, and she’d double-underlined it and writtenNOin the margin. The only things that could scare me were the brief shot of the girl in the closet inThe Ringand those two letters written in her spidery script.
“I was talking to a colleague at Stiles College,” she said. “I believe that’s in your neck of the woods?”
I’d heard of the school. It was a small liberal arts college about forty-five minutes south in Sarasota, known mostly for being a little eccentric. The only kid I’d known from high school who’d gone there had been a state unicycling champion, for example. He’d wanted to show off his skills at the school talent show, but the vice principal vetoed it, citing liability issues. Meanwhile they let two girls do a very DIY gymnastics routine to Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” but okay.
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, yes. It’s close by.”
“Dr.Blake teaches African American literature,” Dr.Nilsson said. “Their scholarship on Octavia Butler is impeccable. And they agreed to meet with you for a mock interview before school starts back up again, if you reach out with your availability.”
