Лиза Макманн - Fade

Day, wonders briefly if it should go on.

If they should go on.

Torturing each other unexpectedly, indefinitely.

“Cabe,” she says.

“Yes?”

“You know what always makes me feel better?”

He thinks a moment. “Milk?”

“Besides milk.”

“What?”

“When you hold me. Tightly. Squeeze my body like you can’t let go.

Or lie on top of me.”

He’s quiet. “Serious?”

“I wouldn’t joke about that. There’s something about the pressure on my body that helps the numbness go away.” She waits. Hopes she doesn’t have to ask him point-blank.

She doesn’t.

DURBIN DAZE

February 15, 2006, 8:04 p.m.

Janie pulls into Mr. Durbin’s driveway.

Cabel’s parked half a block away with a pair of binoculars and a view through the side window of the great room.

Baker and Cobb are stationed.

Janie’s not wired.

No one expects anything to happen.

Not quite yet.

Mr. Durbin’s too smart to ruin it.

She grabs her books and walks to the front door. Rings the bell.

He opens the door. Not too quickly. Not slowly, either. Invites her inside.

She takes off her coat and hands it to him. She’s wearing jeans and a low-cut, see-through shirt with a camisole underneath—an ensemble that wouldn’t be allowed in school.

He’s wearing sweatpants and a U of M T-shirt.

Sweating.

“Just got done working out,” he says, draping a towel around his shoulders. He shows her to the kitchen table.

“Great house,” she says. “Perfect for a party.”

“Which is why I bought it,” he says. “I like having a place for the students to kick back and crash now and then.” He grabs a bottle of water, offers her one, and says, “You get organized. I’m going to take a three-minute shower. Be right back.”

Janie rolls her eyes as he walks out, and then suddenly realizes.

He’s gone.

She glides through the main floor, checking things out. She hears the shower running.

Two bedrooms and a bath down the hallway off the great room. An office beyond the kitchen area, with all sorts of science-type chemical charts and books and bottles. And a master suite, which is where he’s showering. She peeks in quickly. It’s a large room with a king-size bed and a few items of clothing strewn around. On the bedside table, a porn magazine.

She moves quickly back to the kitchen table when she hears the water shut off, and she’s sitting there, looking engrossed in her notes, when he returns. Now he’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, à la James

Dean. All he needs is a cigarette.

He moves through the great room, closing blinds. Janie cringes internally, knowing that Cabel must be bristling right now. But Cabe promised Captain he’d be under control, and he knows he’s not allowed to be on the case if he’s not this way—he’s too close to it.

Janie thinks he’ll stay put.

“Okay, kid, what seems to be the problem?” Durbin asks as he walks back toward the table. He sits in the chair next to her, running his fingers through his wet hair.

“Kid?” She laughs. “I’m eighteen.”

“S’cuse me. What was I thinking. Ahhh,” he says, leaning in to see her notes. “Poisonous gases.” He rubs his hands together gleefully. “How exciting, eh?”

She turns and gives him a look. “Well, it’s interesting. But I don’t understand how this”—she points with her pencil—“leads to this. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Hrm,” he says, and draws the pencil from her fingers slowly. “Let’s start from the beginning.”

He flips the paper over and scribbles equations expertly on the back side. Whistles lightly under his breath as he goes. Janie leans in, as if to see better, an inch at a time, until he’s slowing his pencil.

Making a mistake or two.

Erasing.

Shifting in his seat.

She stops moving, and she’s nodding slightly. Fully, completely, overwhelmingly enthralled by the scratching of his pencil.

She takes a sip of water from the bottle he offered, and her swallow is the only sound in the room.

She watches his Adam’s apple bob reflexively.

“Okay,” he says finally. He explains the half-page-long equation from start to finish, and she’s turned toward him, her elbow on the table and fingers in her hair, nodding, thinking, waiting.

“I think I’ve got it,” she says when he’s finished.

“Now, you give it a try,” he says, looking at her. He takes the paper and slips it under her notebook, brushing her breast with his forearm.

Both pretend not to notice.

Janie pulls out a fresh piece of paper and begins from the initial equation. She leans over the paper, so her hair falls in front of her shoulder, and scribbles away. After a moment he draws her hair back over her shoulder. His fingers linger an extra moment on her neck. “I can’t see,” he explains.

“Sorry about that.” She flips her hair to the other side of her neck, and she can feel him looking at her. She hesitates in the middle of the process. Mulls it over. “Hang on,” she murmurs, “don’t tell me.”

“It’s okay,” he says quietly. He’s leaning over her, his breath on her shoulder. “Take your time.”

“I’m never going to get this,” she says.

His fingers touch her back lightly.

She pretends not to notice.

She calculates her moves, trying to get into the mind of someone who would welcome such advances. She decides that the someone would do absolutely nothing now, not wanting to risk a problem, and so she lets out a shallow breath and moves her pencil again, and then after a moment, dares a quick glance at him that tells him everything he wants to know.

“How’s that?” she asks, pointing to her work.

“It’s good, Janie. Perfect.” He lets his hand rest centrally on her back.

She smiles and looks at the paper a moment, and packs up her books slowly. “Well. Thanks, Mr. Durbin, for, uh, you know. Letting me barge in on your evening like this.”

He walks her to the door and leans against it, his hand on the handle.

“My pleasure,” he says. “I hope you come by again sometime. Just shoot me an e-mail. I’ll make it work.”

She steps toward him, goes to open the door so she can leave, but he’s still holding on to the door handle. Trapping her. “Janie,” he says.

She turns. “Yes?”

“We both know, don’t we,” he says, “why you wanted to come here this evening.”

Janie gulps. “We do?”

“Yes. And don’t feel badly about it. Because I’m attracted to you, too.”

Janie blinks. Blushes.

“But,” he continues, “I can’t have a relationship with you while you’re my student. It’s not right. Even though you’re eighteen.”

Janie is silent, looking at the floor.

He tips her chin up. His fingers linger on her face. “But once you graduate,” he says with a look in his eye, “well, that’s a different story.”

She can’t believe this.

And then she can.

It’s how he keeps them quiet.

Blames them.

She knows what to say.

It’s the saying it that makes her want to puke on his shoes.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so embarrassed.”

“Don’t be,” he says, and she knows he wants her to be.

She waits for it. Waits for the line she knows is coming next from this egocentric bastard. She resists the urge to say it first.

“It happens all the time,” he says.

She manages to turn her cringe into a sad smile, and leaves without another word, although she’s tempted to follow the movie ending by crying out, “I’m such a fool!”

About four seconds after she pulls out of the driveway, her cell phone rings. She waits until she’s out of view of the house before she picks it up.