Charlaine Harris - An Apple for the Creature

“Oh, Andy . . .” she said.

She didn’t go on, but it was obvious what her words would have been if she had.

What could you do?

They talked a little longer after that, only getting up to leave when students started drifting in for the next class. Mossler had a lecture of her own to give downstairs, in one of the big halls. After that, she was going to take her friend’s advice. She would hop in her Prius and get out of town.

“It’ll be good practice,” she said. “I mean, if I’m going to run away, I might as well start getting used to it.”

Abrams shocked her by leaning in to give her a hug. He usually wasn’t the hugging type.

When the awkward embrace ended, she left.

Abrams sat back down. He didn’t move—didn’t even blink—until another professor spoke a few minutes later. The man was behind the table at the front of the room.

“Will wonders never cease? The eminent Professor Abrams seems to be auditing one of my classes!”

“Oh . . . sorry, Paul,” Abrams said, chuckling dutifully as he rose to go. “You caught me daydreaming about a new course I’m planning.”

From there Abrams went straight to the nearest grocery store, where he bought two bottles of wine and a six-pack of beer.

FRIDAY, 5:53 P.M.

There was a knock on Robert Ramsey’s door. Half of him thought it would be the police. No part of him at all was expecting Andy Abrams.

“What are you doing here?”

Abrams held up a six-pack of beer that was missing a bottle. “We’re your welcoming committee.”

“Unbelievable.” Ramsey snorted and shook his head in disgust. “I wouldn’t have thought you had the balls to come here.”

Abrams shrugged. “Yet here I am. Can’t I come in for a talk? Man to man?” Abrams gave the six-pack a little wiggle. “Beer to beer?”

His eyes were droopy, his words slurred. Ramsey could tell he’d already put away a lot more than that one missing beer. The little guy was lit.

Even when things had been at their worst, Ramsey had never feared Andy Abrams. He saw no reason to start now.

“Suit yourself.”

Ramsey reached out, plucked a beer from the six-pack, then turned and stalked off into the house.

Abrams followed.

The first hour or so was all stilted chitchat. They sat in the living room, surrounded by dusty boxes and jumbled furniture fresh from the U Store It, and talked about everything except what mattered. Ramsey’s wanderings during his yearlong “sabbatical.” The history of American labor he was working on. The college kids he’d rented his house to who’d seemed nice at first, but you know how that goes. . . .

Abrams nursed his beer, taking a sip every five minutes, saying just enough to keep the other man talking. He’d needed the booze to goose up his nerve, Ramsey figured, and now he was letting his host catch up. Fine.

Abrams had taken her side—had been one of the key players on what Ramsey thought of as Team Bitch. So he was happy to down the little bastard’s beer now. Abrams owed him a lot more than a few Leinenkugels.

“Tell me what you’ve been up to, Andy,” Ramsey said when he finally tired of talking about himself. “Still working on that book about how Dracula was really Jewish?”

Abrams offered him a prim little smile. All Abrams’s smiles were prim and little. Like the man himself.

“That’s not quite the gist of it, Bob. It’s an overview of Jewish vampire traditions stretching from the Testament of Solomon and the Lilith myths all the way to . . .”

Abrams paused and looked back at the picture window behind him. The blinds were drawn, and no more light bled in around the edges. Outside, night had fallen.

He turned back to Ramsey.

“You don’t really want to hear about my book, do you?”

Ramsey barked out a bitter laugh. “You called my bluff. No. I don’t want to hear about it. To be honest, Abrams, I could never take you seriously as a historian. When you first came along, all I could think was, ‘Where did Conklin dig this stiff up?’ Yeah, you always had the nitty-gritty down cold. The dates and people and places. The details of daily life in thirteenth-century wherever. Enough to convince Conklin and Katz and the rest you were something special. But you always managed to make it so deadly dull . And then when you started mixing in that Kablahblah nonsense—”

“Kabbalah,” Abrams corrected mildly.

Ramsey kept talking as if he hadn’t heard.

“—it was just insulting. That stuff doesn’t have any place in a history department. I mean, no one was going to let me teach a course on Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.”

“That’s a rather offensive analogy, Bob.”

“And the really amazing thing,” Ramsey plowed on, “is how tiresome you still were. You’d think all the pseudo-magical hoo-ha would’ve made you interesting, in a pathetic kind of way. But no. You were still the biggest bore in the department. I mean, no wonder you’re interested in vampires. You could suck the life out of anything.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Bob.”

A muscle just under Ramsey’s right eye twitched.

Nobody called him “Bob.” He was Robert Ramsey. Professor Robert Ramsey. Or at least he had been once.

“Karen always felt that way about you, too, by the way,” he said. “I’m sure she’s been all sweetness and light to your face. She needed your help with Conklin and the tenure committee. But do you know what she used to call you, Andy ? When it was just her and me snickering in bed?”

Ramsey let the question hang there a moment, hoping to savor Abrams’s humiliation. But the man refused to squirm.

“Oh . . . are you waiting for me to guess?” Abrams said. “I assumed it was a rhetorical question, Bob.”

The muscle twitched again.

“‘Mr. Spock,’” Ramsey said.

Abrams enraged him by having the gall to look pleased.

“Really? How ironic.” He held up his right hand, his middle and ring fingers parted to form a V. “Did you know that the Vulcan salute is actually based on an ancient Kabbalistic blessing meant to evoke the Hebrew letter—?”

“Oh, shut up, you pedantic twerp.”

If passive-aggressive wouldn’t get Ramsey the reaction he wanted, he’d just drop the “passive.”

He took a quick swig of his beer, then jabbed the bottle at Abrams like a pike.

“I know your secret, Abrams. I’ve known it all along. I saw the way you used to look at Karen, when you thought I wouldn’t notice. You’re not all robot.”

“I think you’re confused, Bob,” Abrams said. “Mr. Spock wasn’t a robot. Perhaps you’re thinking of Mr.—”

“You want her for yourself,” Ramsey spat. “That’s why you pried her away from me. But you’ll never have her. Not for a second. She could no more love you than she could love an encyclopedia. And when I get her back, there you’ll be, eating your shriveled heart out because I’m the one she . . .”

Ramsey locked his bottle to his lips again even though there was nothing left in it but foam. He had to shut himself up.

Coming back had nothing to do with Karen—that’s what he’d meant to tell everyone. He just wanted to stop drifting, get as much of his old life back as he could. Karen wouldn’t be a part of that. Couldn’t be. He’d accepted that . . . he would say.

And now, one day back and he’d already said otherwise. Already said too much. All because a backstabbing S.O.B. had showed up on his doorstep with some beers.

Why did people always mess with him? Why did they push him like this—and then blame him when he pushed back? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.