F. Paul Wilson - Reprisal

But the most immediate problem was what to wear. These things were casual but Lisl didn't want to be too casual. Most of her comfortable clothes fell into the too-casual category; and her good stuff really didn't fit her anymore. She'd gained more poundage over the summer and was now weighing in at one-sixty-five.

You're a cow , she thought, looking in the mirror.

She rarely looked in the mirror. What for? To check how she looked? She wasn't all that interested. Since the divorce she hadn't been able to dredge up much interest in anything besides her work. Certainly not much interest in men. Not after what Brian had put her through. Six years later it still hurt.

Brian… they'd met as freshman in calculus class at U.N.C., both of them aiming toward a B.S., Brian a premed in biology, Lisl a math major. A tentative courtship, a growing affection blossoming into love, at least on Lisl's part, and then sexual intimacy, the first time for Lisl. They were married immediately after graduation and moved to Pendleton where Lisl went to work teaching high school math while Brian started his stint at Darnell University medical school. Lisl supported him through most of those four years, taking occasional night courses toward her masters in math. During Brian's fourth year in medical school she discovered that he was having an affair with one of the nurses at the hospital. That would have been bad enough, but she learned from one of the other nurses that since he had begun his in-hospital clinical training, Brian had been bedding any female employee who would have him.

Lisl felt her throat constrict at the memory. God, it still hurt. After all this time, it still hurt.

Lisl filed for divorce. This seemed to infuriate Brian. Apparently he had wanted to be the one to do the dumping. Lisl's lawyer told her that he was probably terrified, too, because of a recent legal precedent in which a wife who had supported her husband through medical school could demand a share of the future proceeds he reaped from that diploma.

Lisl wanted no part of that. She only wanted out. And she had gotten out.

But Brian made sure he had the last word.

When all was said and done, when all the papers had been signed and notarized, Brian had caught up to her as she'd fled the attorney's office.

"I never loved you," he said, then walked away.

No amount of physical abuse, no tirade of vituperation, no stream of curses, no matter how long, how loud, how vile could have hurt Lisl nearly as much as those four whispered words. Although she had said nothing and had walked coolly and calmly to her car, inside she'd been shattered, completely, utterly.

I never loved you .

The words had been echoing down the empty hallways of her life ever since.

Even now she felt her knees wobble with the hurt. And the worst part was that he was still around. He lived on the other side of town and was now on staff as an orthopedist at the county medical center.

Shaking off the memory, Lisl searched deep in her closet for something to wear, but stopped when she came across a familiar-looking shoe box. She lifted the lid and found her old shell collection from childhood. She smiled at the memory of how she'd once wanted to be a marine biologist.

Shells. All through her life she'd assigned shells to the people in her life. She picked up a beautiful brown-striped chambered nautilus. This was Will—big, mysterious, hiding who-knew-what in all those inner chambers; and secretive, withdrawing and snapping his lid shut whenever anyone got too close. The razor clam was Ev, thin, sharp-edged, smooth-surfaced, unadorned, what you saw was what you got. And here was Brian, a starfish, gentle and appealing on the surface, but it survived by trapping a mollusk with its arms, boring through its shell, and sucking out the soft parts inside, leaving an empty husk.

Like me , Lisl thought, picking up a chowder clam shell—common, uncollectible, its pale, dull surface windowed by a starfish burr hole. Me .

She lidded the box and continued her search for something to wear. She wound up squeezed into a pair of cream-colored slacks topped with an oversize lightweight sweater. She felt like a sausage from the waist down but it would have to do. A little makeup, five minutes with the curling iron, and she was set. All she had to do was get through the evening without splitting a seam.

Someday soon she was going to do something about these extra pounds.

* * *

Lisl noticed him as soon as she walked through the front door. She'd never seen him before. Young, not tall—no more than five feet ten, she guessed—and very slim. Hardly prepossessing physically, yet he was the first man she noticed. His movements were smooth, relaxed, and graceful. With his neat mustache, Latin coloring accentuated by the perfectly pressed white slacks and shirt that fit as if they'd been made just for him—and perhaps they had—he stood out in the crowd of paunchy, shaggy, patch-sleeved academics like a prince among peasants. This young man had style.

He was handing drinks to a pair of faculty wives who were blatantly gushing over him. As he turned from them, his eyes brushed past her, then returned. He smiled and gave her a tiny bow. Unaccountably, Lisl blushed, pleased that he had picked her out for a personal welcome.

Probably does that to every woman who comes through the door, she thought as he turned away to speak to someone.

Lisl sidled through the press of guests in the living room, nodding, smiling, saying hello to the faces she recognized. Her immediate goal was the bar—a card table laden with beer, jug wine, soda, mixers, and a few bottles of hard liquor. Lisl didn't drink much, but a half-filled glass in her hand made her look and even feel like someone who belonged.

As she moved, she noticed from the corner of her eye that the stylish young unknown seemed to be watching her. Who was he? Somebody's son?

At the bar she found Calvin Rogers, the host, a portly, jovial sort, an aging Puck who sported a goatee to offset the hair he was losing on top. He held up a glass and smiled.

"Hi! Want a drink?"

Lisl could see by his expression that he knew her face but couldn't quite connect it with a name.

"Sure."

"Wine, beer, or booze?"

"A white wine, please."

"Great!" As he poured from a two-liter bottle of Almaden he said, "House rule: I make you the first; after that you're on your own."

"Fine," Lisl said. "No limit?"

He raised his eyebrows and grinned.

"Oh, it's going to be one of those nights, is it?"

"Not really," Lisl said with a laugh. She hesitated a moment, debating whether she should ask him, then decided to plunge ahead: "Say, I see some new faces here. Some young ones."

"Yeah. I invited a couple of the new graduate students."

"I see," she said, glancing at the dark young man.

"That's Losmara," Rogers said, following her gaze. "Rafael. Bit of a dude, isn't he? But a brilliant mind. Brilliant. Comes out of Arizona State, which isn't exactly a heavy hitter in psychology, but he sent this proposal for a paper outlining a cybernetic model for schizophrenia that just blew me away. I knew right then this was a guy who was going somewhere. And wherever he was going, I wanted him to come from here. I couldn't offer him money—I understand his family's half as rich as Croesus—so I played coy and conned him into choosing Darnell for his doctorate. Figured he might teach the rest of us something before he's through. I invited him and the other grads tonight, figuring they won't drink much and it'll make them feel more at home with the department."

"That's nice of you."

He smiled and handed her the glass of wine. "I'm a nice guy. Or so they tell me."