Люциус Шепард - The Best of Lucius Shepard

Andrea, for all intents and purposes, had moved in, along with a high-energy, seven-month-old Irish Setter named Timber, and was in process of subletting her apartment. We were, doubtless, a disgusting item to everyone who had gotten to know us during our adversarial phase, always hanging on one another, kissing and touching. I had lunch with her every day—they held the back booth for us at McGuigan’s—and one afternoon as we were settling in, Mia materialized beside the booth. “Hello,” she said and stuck out a hand to Andrea.

Startled, Andrea shook her hand and I, too, was startled—until that moment, Mia had been unrelentingly hostile in her attitude toward my ex, referring to her as “that uppity skank” and in terms less polite. I noticed that she was dressed conservatively and not made up as an odalisque. Instead of being whipped into a punky abstraction, her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. The raspberry streak was gone. She was, in fact, for the first time since I had known her, streakless.

“May I join you?” Mia asked. “I won’t take up much of your time.”

Andrea scooted closer to the wall and Mia sat next to her.

“I heard you guys were back together,” said Mia. “I’m glad.”

Thunderstruck, I was incapable of fielding that one. “Thanks,” said Andrea, looking to me for guidance.

Mia squared up in the booth, addressing me with a clear eye and a firm voice. “I’m moving to Pittsburgh. I’ve got a job lined up and I’ll be taking night classes at Pitt, then going full-time starting next summer.”

Hearing this issue from Mia’s mouth was like hearing a cat begin speaking in Spanish while lighting a cheroot. I managed to say, “Yeah, that’s… Yeah. Good.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I’m leaving tomorrow. But I heard you and Andrea were together, so…” She glanced back and forth between Andrea and myself, as if expecting a response.

“No, that’s fine,” I said. “You know.”

“It was a destructive relationship,” she said with great sincerity. “We had some fun, but it was bad for both of us. You were holding me back intellectually and I was limiting you emotionally.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Absolutely.”

Mia seemed surprised by how smoothly things were going, but she had, apparently, a prearranged speech and she by-God intended to give it.

“I understand this is sudden. It must come as a shock…”

“Oh, yeah.”

“…but I have to do this. I think it’s best for me. I hope we can stay friends. You’ve been an important part of my growth.”

“I hope so, too.”

There ensued a short and—on my end, anyway—baffled silence.

“Okay. Well, I… I guess that’s about it.” She got to her feet and stood by the booth, hovering; then—with a sudden movement—she bent and kissed my cheek. “Bye.”

Andrea put a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God! Was that Mia?”

“I’m not too sure,” I said, watching Mia walk away, noting that there had been a complete absence of moues.

“An important part of her growth? She talks like a Doctor Phil soundbyte. What did you do to her?”

“I’m not responsible, I don’t think.” I pushed around a notion that had occurred to me before, but that I had not had the impetus to consider more fully. “Do you know anyone who’s exhibited a sudden burst of intelligence in the past few weeks? I mean someone who’s been going along at the same pace for a while and suddenly they’re Einstein. Relatively speaking.”

She mulled it over. “As a matter of fact, I do. I know two or three people. Why?”

“Tell me.”

“Well, there’s Jimmy Galvin. Did you hear about him?”

“The gardening tool. Yeah. Who else?”

“This guy in my office. A paralegal. He’s a hard worker, but basically a drone. Lately, whenever we ask him to dig up a file or find a reference, he’s attached some ideas about the case we’re working on. Good ideas. Some of them are great. Case-makers. He’s the talk of the office. We’ve been joking that maybe we should get him to take a drug test. He’s going back to law school and we’re going to miss…” She broke off. “What’s this have to do with the new Mia?”

I told her about Rudy’s cartoons, Beth’s novel, Kiwanda’s newfound efficiency, the millworker, Stanky’s increased productivity.

“I can’t help wondering,” I said, “if it’s somehow related to the stars. I know it’s a harebrained idea. There’s probably a better explanation. Stanky… he never worked with a band before and that may be what’s revving his engines. But that night at the Crucible, he was so polished. It just didn’t synch with how I thought he’d react. I thought he’d get through it, but it’s like he was an old hand.”

Andrea looked distressed.

“And not everybody’s affected,” I said. “I’m not, for sure. You don’t seem to be. It’s probably bullshit.”

“I know of another instance,” she said. “But if I tell you, you have to promise to keep it a secret.”

“I can do that.”

“Do you know Wanda Lingrove?”

“Wasn’t she a friend of yours? A cop? Tall woman? About five years older than us?”

“She’s a detective now.”

The waitress brought our food. I dug in; Andrea nudged her salad to the side.

“Did you hear about those college girls dying over in Waterford?” she asked.

“No, I haven’t been keeping up.”

“Two college girls died a few days apart. One in a fire and one in a drowning accident. Wanda asked for a look at the case files. The Waterford police had written them off as accidents, but Wanda had a friend on the force and he slipped her the files and showed her the girls’ apartments. They both lived off-campus. It’s not that Wanda’s any great shakes. She has an undistinguished record. But she had the idea from reading the papers—and they were skimpy articles—a serial killer was involved. Her friend pooh-poohed the idea. There wasn’t any signature. But it turned out, Wanda was right. There was a signature, very subtle and very complicated, demonstrating that the killer was highly evolved. Not only did she figure that out, she caught him after two days on the case.”

“Aren’t serial killers tough to catch?”

“Yes. All that stuff you see about profiling on TV, it’s crap. They wouldn’t have come close to getting a line on this kid with profiling. He would have had to announce himself, but Wanda doesn’t think he would have. She thinks he would have gone on killing, that putting one over on the world was enough for him.”

“He was a kid?”

“Fourteen years old. A kid from Black William. What’s more, he’d given no sign of being a sociopath. Yet in the space of three weeks, he went from zero to sixty. From playing JV football to being a highly organized serialist. That doesn’t happen in the real world.”

“So how come Wanda’s not famous?”

“The college is trying to keep it quiet. The kid’s been bundled off to an institution and the cops have the lid screwed tight.” Andrea picked at her salad. “What I’m suggesting, maybe everyone is being affected, but not in ways that conform to your model. Wanda catching the kid, that conforms. But the kid himself, the fact that a pathology was brought out in him… that suggests that people may be affected in ways we don’t notice. Maybe they just love each other more.”

I laid down my fork. “Like with us?”

A doleful nod.

“That’s crazy,” I said. “You said you’d been plotting for months to make a move.”

“Yes, but it was a fantasy!”

“And you don’t think you would have acted on it?”

“I don’t know. One thing for certain, I never expected anything like this.” She cut her volume to a stage whisper. “I want you all the time. It’s like when we were nineteen. I’m addicted to you.”