Grey Zone (13 page)

‘W–ooo–w!'

Dulcie's reverie was broken by a howl.

‘Esmé, are you all right?' Dulcie raced up the stairs. ‘Esmé?'

No blood greeted her. Not even any shards of glass or pottery.

‘W–ooo–w!'

The howl took Dulcie's breath away, but when she looked toward its source, she saw the little cat sitting quite serenely in the door to Suze's room. She turned toward Dulcie and blinked once, mewing more softly this time. ‘W–ooo–w?'

‘Oh, kitten, I don't get you.' Dulcie reached for her pet – and noticed the disarray inside. Unlike Dulcie, Suze tended to keep a neat room, and it was easy to see Esmé's work. A dictionary had somehow been pushed off the desk and, as Dulcie went to retrieve it, she saw an opened pair of scissors and a letter opener beside it on the floor. A gift from Suze's mother, they made up part of a nice leather desk set that Suze was rather fond of.

‘Esmé! You've got to be careful.' She retrieved the scissors and letter opener and replaced them in their leather sheath. ‘These are not toys. And they're not yours.' Neither the shiny metal nor the soft leather seemed to be scratched. ‘Besides, you could have been hurt.'

She finished neatening up and closed the door behind her, first making sure that the little cat was out of the room. Oblivious to the trouble she had caused, Esmé was in the kitchen sitting calmly on the window sill, and Dulcie joined her pet in contemplating the view outside. In a few months, there should even be greenery. For now, though, the view was as bleak as any in
The Ravages of Umbria
, if only the rocky crags had been replaced by the neighbor's triple-decker and the circling eagles by pigeons.

‘What was Mr Grey talking about, Esmé?' Dulcie stroked the smooth black fur. A low rumble grew into a purr. ‘You and me? Chris? Or was he trying to tell me something about
The Ravages
?'

The kitten turned once toward Dulcie and then back to the window, before letting out a series of low, chattering noises.

‘That's not an answer, Esmé.'

‘Meh–eh–eh.'

‘It's almost as if she expects me to learn her language,' Dulcie said in exasperation.

‘Who?'

Dulcie almost jumped. But the voice coming up the front stairs belonged to Suze. ‘You're home!'

‘Just for a pit stop. Seems it's spring out, suddenly.' Suze peeled off her sweater as she passed through the kitchen on her way up to her room, and Dulcie felt a rush of relief that she'd been able to tidy up after the kitten. ‘So whose language are you learning?' Suze's voice carried down the stairs.

‘Oh, it's nothing.' Dulcie felt a rush of self-consciousness, and then berated herself. Suze had been her best friend for years. ‘I mean, I was thinking about Mr Grey and then about Esmé here.' Silence. Perhaps Suze hadn't heard her. ‘I've been feeling kind of out of sorts. Like, maybe, because I've been so busy, with Chris and everything, I haven't been taking good care to train Esmé.' Silence. Suze hadn't noticed anything, and so Dulcie continued: ‘And that, well, maybe Mr Grey is moving on.' There, she had it out, and she swallowed the lump in her throat.

‘And you think that would be a bad thing?' Suze came back down the stairs, buttoning up a cotton blouse. ‘Spending more time with your boyfriend than with the ghost of your last cat?'

Suze saw the look on Dulcie's face and gave her a quick hug. ‘It's not the end of the world, Dulcie. I swear it isn't. But maybe, well, maybe it is time for you
both
to move on.' And then, grabbing a light jacket, she was gone.

SEVENTEEN

T
he room is the same. A small, ill-lit chamber dominated by a writing desk, papers. A quill. The wind makes its way through the rattling panes, causing the candles to flicker. The woman at the desk looks up, staring for a moment at the rain on the windows, at the darkness. Her hand aches. But as she stands to draw the drapes, a gust makes its way down the chimney, raising a shower of sparks. The papers she has just left shift, and she turns with a gasp to grab them as they fall. The movement opens the cut on her finger, and she watches as her blood despoils a page.

Does it matter? The question echoes through her head. There are connections to be made: a woman, a young girl. There has been so much she's left unsaid. What did one small spot mean, already spreading, already turning dark as ink? So close to being gone . . .

‘Mrrow!' Dulcie woke to find her hand wrapped around Esmé's tail, the kitten turning on her in dismay.

‘Sorry, kitty. Sorry.' Dulcie sat up. The dream had been so real, the feeling of desperation so palpable. Dulcie's heart was racing, and she took a deep breath to calm it. This was natural, this anxiety. It had to do with approaching the end of a project. Her thesis. An author's novel. It didn't have to mean death. It didn't necessarily mean suicide.

Or did it? Dulcie felt, rather than saw as the kitten settled down again at the foot of the bed and proceeded to groom. The emotions of the other night's dream had been clearer – and more fearful. Tonight, the woman had felt despair. She had also been nervous, true, but had it been for herself – or for some young girl? A character? Carrie's face sprang to mind, those strange, light eyes wide open in fright, or . . . No, she was mixing her messages. There had been something else as well: a desire to get something done. To make some kind of move. To write, probably, before the feared doom fell. That could be a deadline, or it could have been – could be – something more physical.

That was it. If Dulcie had been toying with the idea that her dreams were not about the mysterious author, she dismissed those hesitations now. This wasn't some fancy created out of half-remembered novels or last night's salami-sausage pizza. This was real.

‘What do you think, Esmé?' In the dim light, she could barely make out the kitten's black body at the end of the bed. But even in the pre-dawn, her white muzzle shone, moving rhythmically as, wrapped around herself like a pretzel, she worked away on the fur of her lower back. Dulcie waited. She watched as that tongue moved on to her white booties, spending an awfully long time on each foot. The kitten could hear her. She just had to find a way to make herself understood. ‘Does this mean I'm on the right track?'

Bath done, her companion curled up for a nap. ‘Great.' As Dulcie lay back on her own pillow, she realized it was damp with tears.

From the time Suze had left last evening, Dulcie had been on edge. She'd meant to tell her room-mate about the strange phone call – more confident in Suze's advice than in anything Lloyd or Trista could say. After all, Suze knew the legal ins and outs of the university, and knew about Dulcie's unfortunate interaction with the police, too. But Suze had run out too quickly, and Dulcie had felt odd about ringing her when she knew her friend was either heading back to work or to some rare private time with her boyfriend. In the normal course of things, she'd see her again soon.

And besides, Dulcie had had her own work to do. After Suze had taken off, Dulcie had tried to settle down, although the passage of time hadn't made her feel any easier. Promising herself some couch time with the kitten and with a new collection of essays –
The Female Domestic, Continental Views –
she had tried to turn her mind to grading. She'd gotten through three papers before she'd quit in disgust and ordered that pizza. Why did students bother with literature, she'd thought, if all they cared about were the grades? Didn't they know there were no ‘right' answers in the arts?

The irony of her own complaint had hit her. How long had she been researching – searching, really – for some kind of truth? And how much writing did she have to show for it?

‘But that's different,' she'd said out loud, waking Esmé. ‘I'm trying to find out what happened to a real person.' The kitten had grunted and rearranged her tail, and Dulcie had taken the book to bed.

The essay by Dulcie's author wasn't the only piece of interest in
The Woman Question.
The anthology, a collection of pieces by her author's contemporaries, had been extremely useful in placing Dulcie's subject, and many of them supported her ideas about the novelist's philosophy. But reading them last night had only made her feel more lost. Three centuries later, and how much progress had been made? Even worse, Dulcie had to admit, was the disregard in which the great fiction of the day was held. Nobody seemed to care about the great Gothic novels any more. Sure, they were over the top, with their ghouls and specters, their romance and abductions. And they were fun, acknowledged Dulcie, feeling that slight niggling desire to justify her academic interest. But they were also one of the first incidences of popular fiction written largely by and for women. For all anyone knew, the author of
The Ravages of Umbria
had been as big as Danielle Steele in her day.

And about as respected, Dulcie had realized last night, with a sinking feeling. ‘Not that anyone at Harvard will care about her in two hundred years either.' In fact, if anyone cared now, she'd mused, it was only in some semiotics pop-culture sense that would have the textural purists in her department running for cover in the depths of Widener.

‘Can I help it if I'm ahead of my discipline?' Dulcie had called out for the kitten. ‘Well, can I?'

The kitten hadn't answered. In fact, nobody had, and as the evening had worn on, bringing with it a windy rain that lashed at her own twenty-first century windows, the silence had begun to wear on her. The only time the phone had rung, Dulcie had jumped to answer it. It was Lucy, calling with an urgent message that she claimed had been channeled by her new spiritual cohort, Merlin:

‘She's found a guru, dear. Something about a guru.' Her mother had a tendency to start conversations in the middle, as if Dulcie had been participating all along.

‘She? I thought Merlin was a male.'

‘He is, dear. Don't be dense.' A loud bang and some very un-PC cursing could be heard in the background. Lucy kept talking, and Dulcie decided to ignore it. At least her mother wasn't involved in one of the community's feuds. ‘The message is about a woman – a “she” – and so I immediately thought of you.'

‘A guru?' Dulcie looked at the clock. Eleven. If Chris were going to call, it probably wouldn't be until midnight. ‘You mean, like a teacher?'

‘Yes, that's it exactly. It was about the teaching. All the teaching and the students, how distracting they can be.' Lucy must be calling from the communal space again, Dulcie realized. At least the cursing had changed to something sing-song. Chanting. ‘Maybe not the teaching. More the students.'

‘They do take a lot of time.' Dulcie thought with regret about the remaining ungraded midterm papers. Tomorrow, she promised herself. Besides, she needed to reschedule that meeting with Corkie. Something was going on, and the junior could too easily put her academic career in danger. Dulcie not only liked her, she also had an obligation to her as her tutor.

‘It's more than that, dear. There is something going on. Oh, Hecate.' Dulcie heard another crash, and a mental image of a falling soup pot flashed through her mind. Despite Lucy's best wishes, Dulcie wasn't psychic. She simply remembered the turmoil whenever the commune – the arts colony, she corrected herself before she slipped up out loud – prepared for its monthly moon feast. ‘May I call you back, dear? It's all gone— Oh!' And the line was dead.

After that, Dulcie had kept her phone turned on as she'd read, waiting for her mother's breathless explanation. Knowing that the night would only grow more frantic, she hadn't been overly surprised when no call had come. But now, in the growing morning light, she realized the phone was still beside her. Still turned on and charged. And still silent.

Chris had never called back.

‘
You didn't call him, either.
' A much lighter pressure, barely perceptible, announced the presence of another feline at the foot of her bed. From beneath the quilt, Dulcie could feel the feather-light footfalls as they made their way up the bed.

‘Mr Grey?' She ought to get out of bed. From where she lay, she could see the clock. It didn't matter. ‘Are you still there?'

A gentle purr greeted her, along with the light rhythmic pressure of paws kneading, just out of sight.

‘Mr Grey?' She wasn't sure how to ask. Or, really, if she wanted to know the answer. ‘If Chris and I— If we grow closer, will you still be there for me? Will you still be here?'

The purr only deepened, and she had the uncanny feeling that her spectral pet knew she was evading her real question. ‘You see, Chris was talking about me moving in with him. Suze is almost done with her degree, and the end of the semester is coming up. And, well, I think he feels like we're at some kind of crossroads. Only, I haven't been sure. Not about Chris, but about moving in. And now—' The memory of the previous day flashed before her eyes. Chris and his student. His tall, slim student. ‘Now, I'm afraid maybe I waited too long. Maybe it's too late.'

‘
And why would you ever think that, little one?
'

The feelings came in a rush. In a way, it was easier to talk about her fear of losing Chris than about her fear of losing Mr Grey. Hadn't she lost him once, already? Whereas Chris was real. He was here. Except that, more and more, he wasn't.

‘
Don't be so quick to judge, Dulcie.
' The quiet voice, deep and calm, had picked up on her question before she had voiced it. ‘
What is absence, anyway? What is presence?
'

‘Well, spending some time with me would be a start.' She heard the peevishness creeping into her own voice, even before she felt the slight, sharp slap of a leathery paw. ‘I'm sorry. I'm just lonely. And I think, maybe, I did something wrong.'