Phoenix Heart (26 page)

“Good lord, I can be stupid, can’t I
Andy
!” I threw
my things across the room. The t-shirt with the make-up in it slammed against
the wall and landed on the bed. My skirt and sweater hit Andrew in the face. “This
isn’t an episode of Lassie. I’m not going away just because you kick me. I told
you I’m in this because I choose to be.”

He clawed my clothes off his head and threw them aside. “You’re
not going.”

“Yes, I am, Andy.”

“It’s too dangerous!”

“Dangerous. Who the hell got you out of the airport? Who got
you out of the hotel room? You think that wasn’t dangerous?”

“That’s just it. You’ve done enough. I want you to stay
here.”

“No.” I walked over and stood in front of him. “You said
back in the hotel that I was your friend. Was that a lie?”

He wouldn’t look at me. “No, you are, but”

“No buts.” I squatted down. “You think as your friend I’m
going to let you go all cowboy and walk into something like this alone?”

He reached out and took my hand and looked me in the eye. “You
think as your friend I could stand to see you get hurt?”

I pulled my hand away. “I’m not going to get hurt,” I said,
“and stop taking my hand or we’re going to start talking about you losing it at
the elbow, again.”

“Sorry. Did I hurt you?”

I looked at him long and hard. “Yes.”

He flushed and looked away. “Melanie, I want you out of this.”

I stood up and stepped back. “‘
You
can't always get what you want,’” I sang. “‘You can’t always get what you want.
But, if you try sometimes
...’”

“Melanie,” he said.

I put my hands on my hips. “Poor Tiny Tim. Poor, poor Tiny
Tim. Disappointed again.”

“Oh, no.” He began to laugh. “I knew it was a mistake to
tell you that story.”

“Wait. Wait. Story. Another story. Bullseye. Andy. Oh my
sainted aunt! ‘Toy Story.’ That’s why you always go by Andrew.”

“You try being named Andy. The teasing was brutal.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say that no guy wants to go through junior high
being asked if he is still playing with Woody.”

“But you named your rat, Bullseye.”

“Could there be a more awesome name for a rat? Besides, no
one had figured it out until you poked your smart nose in.”

I bowed then looked him straight in the eye. “To Oz?”

He studied my face for several seconds and then nodded. “To
Oz.”

* * * *

We sat side-by-side on the Muni bus. I looked pointedly at the
flannel shirt stretched over Andrew’s distended stomach. “Leonard, I swear. You’re
going on that diet starting tomorrow. That’s heart attack weight.”

Andrew patted his well-stuffed shirt. “No way, Phyllis. No
way you’re putting me on any diet.”

“We’ll just see about that.” I grinned. One of the smaller
pillows from the apartment was crammed under the shirt I’d bought him and his
jacket hung open so that the “stomach” protruded convincingly. His distinctive
red-blond hair was stuffed under a Giants baseball cap. I’d used my eyeliner to
artfully darken some of his laugh lines into wrinkles and shade bags under his
eyes. (He was a far cry from that man in the tuxedo plastered across the front
page, which was, naturally, exactly what we wanted.

I had pulled my hair back and braided it, and I wore another
t-shirt I’d picked up at the tourist shop. This one had ‘Toto, I don’t think we’re
in Kansas anymore’ written across the front. It was the only other shirt that
had been in my price range, and I’d had to buy it even though it was a size too
small. It fit in well with the outfit though, tucked, as it was, into my
too-tight jeans. In this get-up, I didn’t look anything like myself, at least
to me. I’m not exactly a skin-tight clothes kind of girl. Next to me on the
seat sat my purse with all the tools we thought we’d need to get into J.P.’s
lab.

“Diet, huh,” Andrew said. “I like my belly. I think it’s
distinguished looking. Why, Phyllis? Why are you always trying to change me?” He
shook his head in hurtful disappointment and looked away, out the window at the
passing buildings.

“Ah, Lenny, it’s not that I don’t like you the way you are. It’s
just that there is so much room for improvement.”

“So humorous. So very funny.” He looked up the street. “Campus
coming up,” he whispered.

I took a deep breath. “Okay.”

He turned and smiled. “Nervous?”

“Terrified.”

“Me too.”

The bus pulled smoothly to the curb and we swung into the
aisle and stepped down the back steps. I followed Andrew, watching him closely,
but either he was not feeling any pain or weakness, or he was hiding it well. He
moved perhaps a bit more slowly, but that could have been part of his
overweight, older man disguise. The door shut behind us and the bus pulled
away. I looked after it a trifle wistfully as it belched a puff of grey
exhaust, pulled into traffic and went on down past the campus to disappear into
the city.

We crossed the sidewalk and walked up onto the lawn. The grass
rose up a low hill to the university buildings. Students with backpacks and
stacks of books were clustered in groups over the lawn, stretched out to soak
up the warmth of the afternoon sunshine as they read and talked. Other students
were passing hurriedly along the walkways. Several were on bikes, snaking in
and out of the crowds, ignoring the fact that they were narrowly avoiding
collision with pedestrians, who in turn ignored the cyclists. A trio of young
men and a young woman were involved in a vigorous round of Frisbee. As I
watched, the young woman flashed the Frisbee across the grass and one of the
young men leapt up, spun around and caught it behind his back. The other two
laughed and applauded and he made a sweeping bow. I turned to watch them as Andrew
and I climbed the low rise.

“Keep your eyes peeled for those men,” he said in a low
voice.

I jumped. “Oh, yeah. Okay.” I reluctantly looked away from
the Frisbee throwers and scanned the lawn, the trees near the building, looked
back over my shoulder.

We crossed onto one of the cement paths that led between the
outer perimeter of buildings into the center of the campus. The buildings on
the outer edge were newer, built during the 1950’s when the style had been an
unfortunate utilitarian blandness. They looked like office buildings planned by
a consortium of insurance companies, dentists and accountants: low rectangular
blocks; narrow, uniform metal-framed windows set in white stucco; brown-painted
steel girders running the length of each floor. The overall effect was of an
enormous quadruple-decker Wonder bread sandwich, squashed by some giant
three-year old hand so that old peanut butter squished from between the layers.

The saving grace of the outer campus was the liquid amber
maples and Dutch elms planted along the skirting which were old enough to have
overgrown and screened much of the buildings. It being October, only some of
the leaves were still green; most announced the coming winter with the gold,
orange, red and brown leaves fluttering from the branches and blowing in drifts
against the buildings.

The two of us moved past the outer circle into a large
central quadrangle of grass faced by older brick buildings. This was the scene
that was photographed for the covers of all the admissions brochures: the dark
green of the ivy against the deep red of the old brick buildings; the clean
white trim of the porticos and window frames; the blue sky arching above grass
encircling a fountain shooting water up in rhythmic blasts; students spread
thinly over the lawn. Another Frisbee game involving at least a dozen people
was going on on the opposite side of the quad just past the fountain. It was so
perfect and so peaceful it looked to have been staged. Instead of nostalgia
this time, though, the whole thing gave me a cold blast of what the hell am I
doing here?

Andrew paused briefly under a tree and the two of us scanned
the lawn. “Anything?”

I shook my head. “I don’t see them.”

“Good.” He took my elbow and I shook it out of his grip.

“Sorry.” He led me diagonally across the grass toward the
far corner of the quad. We stopped under an elm just up from what looked to be
one of the oldest of the brick buildings if only judging by the fact that the
ivy had crept up the brick all the way to the fifth floor, just one floor short
of the top. The dense greenery also draped over the large white, pillared
portico which framed the large double wooden doors leading into the building. The
only break in the thick mat of green was for the dozen or more old-fashioned,
center-hinged windows which stretched across the front of each floor. They
windows looked to open onto a hallway on each floor that had doors on the
opposite wall leading into what I assumed were classrooms and labs.

“Okay.” Andrew nodded up through the leaves toward the front
left corner of the building. “J.P.’s lab and office are there, on the fourth
floor. The storeroom where we’re going to hide is on the first floor in the
back.”

I nodded. He started to say something and stopped.

“What?” I asked.

“I was going to say there is still time to go back, but I
was afraid you’d hit me.”

“You’re right. And my purse has a hammer in it. Come on, let’s
get this over with.”

“Charge,” he said softly.

The two heavy front doors opened into a small foyer which
held a couple of orange plastic couches. A ten-foot wide hall led straight back
from this front area. To the left and right equally wide hallways ran toward
the side and then turned toward the back of the building. The overhead lights
were old fluorescent tubes shining feebly through yellowed plastic panels; the
liver-colored linoleum floors, the beige walls, and the inadequate lighting
didn’t exactly add to my sense of comfort. There was one other source of light
down that long hallway; it came from the inset glass panels in the classroom
and office doors along both walls. Glass that people could see through.

We walked down the hall toward the rear of the building. I
found myself once again trying to look in all directions at once. There was but
one lone student in sight, sitting against the wall outside a classroom, her
head bent over an open book in her lap. She never even looked up as we
approached and passed. The near desertion brought a small measure of comfort,
but all of those doors were almost worse than if the hall had been packed with
people. It was that lady-or-the-tiger feeling. What was going to leap out at
any second and devour us? We’d pass a door, frosted glass, a professor’s name
stenciled on the door, and I’d hear the rumble of conversation, or see a shadow
passing across the glass as someone moved between the light source and the
door, and I would hold my breath waiting for the door to suddenly slam open,
and it would be Beer Belly standing there, silhouetted against the light, gun
in hand, raised to fire. But one by one, we passed those doors and they didn’t
slam open, and I would breathe again until the next came into view.

The doors with clear panels, on the other hand, were almost
comforting because they led into classrooms. In some rooms I could see students
sitting at desks, in others they were propped on stools beside laboratory
benches like those that had been in my own undergrad classrooms. The flood of
nostalgia flowed back. Andrew paused in a shadow to look in at a professor in
one of the rooms we were passing.

The woman stood at a blackboard, waving an arm as she
sketched enthusiastically with a long piece of chalk. She slashed a long stroke
across the board and the chalk snapped. The piece flew across, ricocheted off
the lab bench running across the front of the room and landed at her feet. The
students jumped slightly, but the professor never hesitated as she continued
her lecture.

Andrew saw me watching him and grinned. “Dr. Danbury. She
does so love the Krebs Cycle.” I guess I wasn’t the only one longing for old
times.

We continued on, hurrying while trying not to appear to
hurry. The main hall ended in a T intersecting with a corridor that lead to the
left and right and connected with the halls on the sides of the building which
ran back up to the front lobby. To the left, at the end, was a door marked ‘Stairs.’
To the right was a set of double doors with large clear glass panels. Below the
glass was a sign: ‘Biology Storeroom, Hours 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.’

Andrew looked at his watch. “4:45,” he whispered. “Perfect. Bernie
should be in the back.” We started toward the doors. “He shuts down the tank
for the liquid nitrogen, rolls down the doors on the loading dock, starts
locking up.” Andrew stared at the door. I nodded absently at his words, watching
behind us, watching the doors we were passing. “You always had to catch him
before 4:45 or by god you just didn’t get what you needed and that was it.” His
eyes were fixed on the glass as he whispered. There was no movement. Nothing
visible.

“Are you sure it’ll still be Bernie?” I whispered.

Andrew’s lips twitched. “Oh, yeah. I’m sure. ‘Even unto
death’--and maybe after,” he whispered. “I think he’s got it worked out so that
when he dies they’ll build a tomb for him under the linoleum in front of the supply
counter.”

I smiled and nodded as I continued to look behind us, in
front, to the sides. I was getting that itchy-crawly feeling in the middle of
my back again.

About twenty feet from the doors I saw a movement behind the
glass. I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything Andrew yanked me
across the hall, spinning me through a swinging door. I barely saw the word ‘Men’
on the door before I came up against a cold metal bathroom stall. I looked
around in dismay, then quickly checked for feet under the stall doors. Thank
the patron saint of porcelain, there weren’t any.

“Andrew.”

He stood at the door, listening at the crack.