Майкл Корита - If She Wakes

Climate change?

“Lovely place,” Oltamu said, facing forward again. “So charming.”

“It was the perfect college town for me,” she said, and she realized with some surprise that she wasn’t just delivering the student-tour-guide shtick. She meant it. She could see the area just as he did: bucolic, quaint. A town designed for a college, a place for young adults to bump up against the real world, every experience there for the taking but with a kinder, gentler feel than some of the large campuses she’d visited.

“It is truly excellent when one finds where one belongs,” Dr. Oltamu said as Tara drove away from the harbor. The car climbed and then descended into the valley, where the campus waited across the Willow River.

Oltamu was gazing behind them again.

“I’m looking forward to your talk tonight,” she tried once more. Your talk about... artificial intelligence?

“I appreciate that, but I’m afraid I’ll surely bore you,” he said with a small laugh.

Come on, gimme some help here, Doc. “What’s the most exciting part of your work in your opinion, then?” she asked. A pathetic attempt, but now she was determined to win the war. She would figure out what he did without stooping to ask him flat-out.

He paused, then said, “Well, the Black Lake is certainly intriguing. I’ve just come from there, actually. A fascinating trip. But I doubt there are many creative-writing majors who are fascinated by batteries.”

There it was! Batteries! He designed some sort of solar panels and batteries that were supposed to save fuel consumption and, thus, the earth. You know, trivial shit.

Tara was embarrassed that she hadn’t been able to remember this on her own, especially since he’d somehow remembered her major from the chaotic introductions at the restaurant. Then again, he had a point — batteries were not an area of particular fascination for her. But you never knew. There was, as her favorite writing professor always said, a story around every corner.

“Where is Black Lake?” she asked, but he’d shifted away yet again and was staring intently out the back window. A vehicle had appeared in her rearview mirror in a sudden glare of lights and advanced quickly, riding right up along her bumper, its headlights shining down into the CRV, and she pumped the brake, annoyed. The taller vehicle — a truck or a van — backed off.

Tara drove beneath a sugar maple that was shedding its leaves, a cascade of crimson whispering across the hood, bloodred and brittle. No matter what warm and beautiful beach was within walking distance of wherever she was next year, she would miss autumn here. She understood that it was supposed to be a somber season, of course, that autumn leaves meant the end of something, but so far in her life, it had marked only beginnings; each fall brought another birthday, a new teacher and classmates, sometimes new schools, new friends, new boyfriends. She loved fall precisely for the way it underscored that sense of change. Change, for Tara Beckley, twenty-two years old as of a week ago, had always been a good thing.

She crested the hill, made the steep descent down Knowlton Street, and turned onto Ames Road, a residential stretch. The headlights behind them vanished, and Dr. Oltamu faced forward again.

She was just about to repeat her question — Where is Black Lake? — when he spoke.

“Why so dark?”

“Pardon?”

“The street is very dark.”

He wasn’t wrong. Ames Road was unusually dark.

“There was some fight with the property owners over light pollution,” she said, a vague memory of the article in the student newspaper coming back to her. “They put in new street lamps, but they had to be dim.”

She flicked on her high beams, illuminating another swirl of rust-colored leaves stirring in the road.

“I see. Now, Hammel is a walking campus, I understand? Things are close together?”

“Yes. In fact, we’re coming up to a place where I run every morning. Almost every morning at least, unless there’s a big exam or... something.” Something like a hangover, but she didn’t want to mention that to the good doctor. “There’s an old bridge down here that crosses from campus into town, and it’s for pedestrians and cyclists only. There’s a railroad bridge next to it. In the morning, if I get up early enough, I can run with the train. I race it.” She gave a self-conscious laugh.

In the darkness below, the old railroad bridge threw spindly shadows across the Willow River. Beside it, separated by maybe twenty feet, was the new pedestrian and cycling bridge, part of a pathway system that wound through the campus and town. Tara started to turn left at the last intersection above the bridge, but Oltamu spoke up.

“May we stop and walk?” he said.

It was such an odd and abrupt request that it took her a moment to respond. “I can show you around after your talk, but they’ll kill me if I get you there late.”

“I would very much like to walk,” he said, and his voice now matched his tense posture. “It’s my knee. Stiffens up and then I’m in terrible pain. Distracting pain.”

“Um...” She glanced at the clock, doing the math and trying to imagine how she might explain this to Christine.

“Please,” he said. In the mirror, the whites of his eyes stood out starkly against his dark face. “You said the bridge goes to campus, correct?”

“Yes, but we’d really be pushing it for time. I can’t get you there late.”

He leaned forward. “I would very much like to walk,” he said again. “I would like to see the bridge. I will make it clear to anyone involved that this was my delay. But I walk quickly.”

Even with that bad knee? “Sure,” she said, because she was now more alarmed by the strange urgency in his request than by the specter of an angry Christine. “We can walk.”

She eased the car down the hill, toward the old railroad bridge and the new footbridge. A dozen angled parking spaces waited beside a pillar with a plaque identifying the railroad bridge’s historical significance. The spots were all empty now, but in the morning you’d see people piling out of their cars with dogs on leashes, or removing bikes from racks.

She pulled into one of the angled spaces, and Dr. Oltamu was out of the car almost before it was parked. He stood with his back to the river and the campus and stared up the hill. Everything there was lost to darkness. He’d wanted to see the bridge; now he faced the other way. He’d been worried about time; now he wanted to walk. He had a bad knee; now he craved exercise.

“Why don’t we head across the bridge, sir,” she said. But he ignored her, took his cell phone from his pocket, and beckoned for her.

“May we take a picture together? I’ve been asked to use social media. You know... for a broader reach. I am told photos are best for engagement. So may I? You are my Hammel escort, after all.”

She didn’t love the way he said escort, but she also wasn’t going to be shy about putting an elbow into his windpipe if he tried to grab her ass or something, so she said, “Sure,” and then leaned awkwardly toward him for the photo — head close, ass away — and watched their image fill the screen of his iPhone. The phone seemed identical to hers, but the camera function was different; the screen was broken into a grid of squares. He tilted the phone in a way that centered Tara in the frame, and her smile grew more pained and she started to pull away as he snapped the photo. He didn’t touch her, though, didn’t say anything remotely lewd, just a polite “Thank you very much,” and then he turned his attention to the screen, tapping away as if he intended to crop, edit, and post the photo immediately.