The Snow Garden (17 page)

     “No. She didn’t,” she said. Jesse nodded. “What happened?”

     “She didn’t like what she wanted.”

     Kathryn’s hands, clasped on the table in front of her, went white. She tried to read Jesse’s icy glare. “And you knew what she wanted better than she did?”

     “Unfortunately, I did.”

     Kathryn met his gaze. “It’s a damn good thing she made it clear it wasn’t rape.”

     Jesse narrowed his eyes. “You’re wrong. I do get to know people by sleeping with them. You want to know how you do it?”

     “No.”

     “Make sure they aren’t afraid to ask for what they want, at the same time you’re making them feel as good as you can. You’ll be shocked what you find out.”

“Hideous, isn't it?”    

     Startled, Kathryn turned, an unlit cigarette still clasped between her gloved fingers. She had no idea how long the guy had been sitting on the bench a few feet away. He had a slightly upturned nose and a mess of sandy blonde hair. His scarf was bunched just under the high collar of his trench coat, and despite his boyish appearance, his wire-rimmed spectacles suggested that he was older then she. He lifted a hand, gesturing vaguely.

     Overhead, giant crossbars of steel swept from the entrance of the Technology
&
 
Science Center to the first floor of the thirteen-story sciences library. The Tech Center was a four-story pile of plate glass attached to exposed I beams; its main staircase formed a rotunda at one end of the building, encased in white concrete punctuated by box windows. If the sun had been out, the Tech Center's walls of plate glass would have blinded her.

     Kathryn continued to survey the Price Courtyard. She had only been passing through when she paused to light a much-needed smoke, but now a stranger’s comment had drawn her attention to the polished steel of the benches and lampposts, which blossomed into mushroom shaped heads resembling giant metal lampshades. Underfoot, the names of generous alumni had been etched into each brick.

     “It probably looked better on paper,” she offered.

     “You have to wonder if the administration really thinks Michael Price is a genius, or if they’re just smitten with the fact that he’s regularly written up in
The New York Times.
Or maybe he’s got something on them. It must be kind of satisfying, though, coming back years later, to leave footprints on the campus of your alma mater entirely in plate glass and steel.”

     “I don’t get the sculptures,” Kathryn said.

     The guy surveyed the off-white sculpture sharing the bench with him. It was a naked human form, sitting with one leg crossed over the other, but what struck her most about it was that the body was perfectly proportioned and looked baby-skin smooth, while the face was a mess of clotted wax. Three more ghostly figures were caught in mid-descent on the steps leading to the sciences library, their frozen poses lifelike, their bodies detailed down to the folds of the skin, but their lack of any facial features made them eerie. What did they signify? Not science or technology. “My guess would be that when you’re an egomaniac like Price, you become convinced that you can master more than one art form. I bet no gallery in all of the Northeast would agree to exhibit his sculptures, but thanks to some hefty checks to the Alumni Foundation, he gets to plop them all over campus with abandon.”

     “I’m Kathryn,” she finally said, approaching the bench with an arm extended.

     He gave her a hard, polite shake. “I won’t ask where you’re from.” “Why?”

     “Because I’m sure freshmen get tired of that question by the second week.”

     “I look that wide-eyed and lost?”

     “Hardly.”

      “Then I must have ‘freshman’ tattooed across my forehead.”

     “Not at all. You just haven’t learned how to properly hate Michael Price yet. That’s usually an act most people get down by their sophomore year.”

     “Do you smoke .. . ?” She gestured for his name.

     “Mitchell. No. Thank you.”

     Kathryn withdrew her hand holding the pack, noting that there wasn’t much reason for this attractive guy to ,be sitting on a bench in the freezing cold unless he was a smoker (or wanted to talk to her). “I noticed you standing here,” he said, “and I just thought I would stop to tell you that modern architecture was a failed movement before it was subsumed by contemporary architecture, which is barely a movement at all. Just a collection of styles and volumes without any of the driving utopian philosophies that made modern architecture worthy of inquiry, but a popular failure.”

     Kathryn burst out laughing. Mitchell’s smile let her know he didn’t take himself too seriously. “You looked like you might be debating the question,” he added. She took a seat between him and ghost man.

     “Is this your field?” he asked.

     “This. No. This is... a little boy playing with steel and construction equipment.”

     “You seem to know your stuff.”

     “I’m a second-year master’s student in art history. As of right now, I’m supposed to know a little about a lot. Unfortunately, certain artists have more of a draw than others. Certain artists who have a worldview that’s entirely their own. Not” —he gave the entire courtyard a dismissive wave —“shiny gimmicks and eye-popping tricks of gravity.”

     Kathryn scanned the patio again, trying to see it entirely in his terms.    

     “And you?” he asked.

     “Pre-law,” she answered flatly.

     “Interesting. With all due respect, I don’t think pre-law is really a major.”

     “Why do you think I picked it?” she retorted. Mitchell smiled. She groped for a more genuine response.       “No, um, I’m kind of biding my time until I have to pick one next year.”

     “Sounds like a plan. What brought you here?”

     She gave him a puzzled look.

     “To Atherton,” he added.

     She rolled her eyes and blew out a drag. “You want the answer I gave on my essay?”

     “I don’t know. Do I?”

     “Yale waitlisted me and Claremont was too close to home,” she said. Mitchell grunted approvingly at her candor, so she continued, “Seriously, it was shallow. I didn’t apply anywhere early, so I got all of my acceptances and rejections in April, and when I did, I popped open my handy copy of
US News and World Report,
and Atherton was at the top. And when I visited last year, I don't know, it just looked the way I thought a college should look, I guess. Don’t get me wrong. On all of my essay questions I went on at length about how I was going to save the world. I think I told Brown I wanted to be
a
lawyer who would save the children of tomorrow.. ..”

     Mitchell’s smile was a half grimace.

     “I know. Shoot me, please. Anyway, now I’m here, and I’m surrounded by scholars and activists and all these people who have such passion. And I’m here because of the brochure.” Maybe her conversation with Jesse had put her in a funk, but depression settled with a sudden weight on her back and she found herself staring vacantly at the expanse of etched brick. “This wasn’t the answer you were expecting,” she said, trying to snap out of it.

     Mitchell, she saw, was observing her carefully. “I’m pleasantly surprised by your honesty. But I can’t say I was expecting any specific type of answer.”

     “Good,” she said, with a nervous laugh. “So. You?”

     “Me?”

     “What are you doing here?”

     “Dr. Eberman brought me here.”

     “Eric Eberman,” she said. “The guy .. .”

     “Yes. That one.”

     Kathryn just nodded her head out of respect for a dead woman she didn’t know. Mitchell’s eyes were downcast, his lips pursed as if they both needed time to let the .mention of Lisa Eberman pass like a gust of wind. “He’s a brilliant man. I read his book when I was an undergraduate at Middlebury.”

     “So you’re a TA?”

     “Yes. Against my will. Foundations One. Otherwise known as Slides One.”

     “My friend’s in that course.”

     “Who's your friend?”

     “Randall Stone.”

     Mitchell’s stare was blank, and she assumed he didn’t know him. “Sorry, I know there must be like a hundred—”

     “Your friend Randall’s kind of a character.”

     “Is that a polite way of saying he bothers you?”

     “No. Not at all. You’re right, there are almost a hundred students in the class, but Randall seems to stand out. He walks taller than your average wide-eyed freshman.”

     She smiled at the reference to her own line. “I guess New York forces you to walk tall at an early age.”

     “That’s where he’s from?”

     The mention of Randall seemed to have distracted Mitchell; his eyes had wandered past her and his brow was creased in thought. Several seconds of silence passed, during which the suspicion that Mitchell might begin to fish for information on Randall rushed to the front of her brain and made her consider switching schools.

     “Mitchell, can I ask you something?”

     “No.”

     “I’m sorry...”

     “No. I know what you're going to ask and the answer’s no. That isn’t why I find Randall to be interesting.”

     Kathryn breathed in, then out. “You have to forgive me. It’s the curse of being a gay man’s best friend. If a girl’s not playing his pimp, she’s consoling the guy he’s run through like a knife through butter.” She smiled so as not to seem bitter, and Mitchell returned a weak smile of sympathy for her petty plight.

     “I knew he was gay.”

     “What was it? The Prada everything?”

     “No.” Mitchell met her eyes. “Tell any of our resident activists I said this and there will be punishment involved.”

     “Uh-oh.”

     “Randall Stone has gay eyes.”

     She waited for an addendum to this bizarre statement, but Mitchell said nothing;

     “I’m sorry.
Eyes?"

     "They have this perpetual, self-aware glint to them. They're always rapidly alternating between surveying everyone around them and then pretending to be distant at the moment when they know they’re being surveyed. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a more evolved form of insecurity or paranoia. But I think it’s fascinating and I don’t mean it to be a slight to your good friend.”

     Kathryn nodded. “That’s pretty strange, Mitchell.”

     “Pay close attention to them. You’ll see what I mean.”

     “Deal,” she said.

     He lowered his bent leg and reached around his back for his satchel. Kathryn watched uneasily as he removed a notebook from his pad, began writing on the bottom of a piece of paper, and then tore it off and handed it to her. Hesitantly, she took it, for a brief second expecting it to be some sort of message that he didn’t have the courage to voice.

     Instead, she saw his phone number. When she looked up, he was already on his feet. He gestured to the paper in her hand. “I think it’s pretty barbaric that the university doesn’t allow freshmen to have cars on campus. If you ever feel the need to get off the hill, I know a pretty good seafood place down on the bayfront.”

     “Thanks.”

     “I have to go lead a discussion section. Forgive me.”

     She only had time to nod. She was about to slide the paper into her book bag when she noticed Mitchell had stopped several yards away, his head turned toward her.

      “Forgive me if this comes off as presumptuous,” he called back, “but even though the things that brought you here might seem shallow, you haven’t been here long enough to know why you’re here.’’ He gave her his weakest smile yet, and it warmed her when she realized that these words had taken up most of his nerve.

     She smiled and held up the paper in one hand.

     He must have thought the gesture to be a little too direct, because he bowed his head slightly as he left the courtyard.

     “Philadelphia?”

     Eric turned from the window and its view of students processing into Folberg Library across the street. “I’m sorry?”

     John Hawthorne swiveled his Herman Miller desk chair to face him. “The funeral was in Philadelphia, so I’m assuming Lisa was from there.”

     “Yes,” Eric said.

     The two men had been classmates, and Hawthorne took this as license to address Eric like an old friend. Never mind that, two years ago when he had assumed the role of the university’s publicist, John had to remind Eric that the two of them had graduated together.

     Eric eyed him as he returned his attention to several copies of the
Atherton Daily Journal
spread out on his desk. As usual, Hawthorne’s salt-and-pepper hair looked as if it had been plastered on his head with shellac, concealing any natural part. Eric assumed the man would have been more at home in a New York advertising firm, baring his teeth over the speakerphone and pitting journalists against one another. Two years of being forced to keep his tone gentle and conciliatory seemed to have worn away at the man’s patrician features.

     Clearly Eric wasn’t going to make small talk, so Hawthorne folded his hands on his desk and cleared his throat. “This is a small town, Eric. That’s why I asked you here. Sometimes I wonder why a city of Atherton’s size even has a local news station. But that being said, it should come as no surprise to either one of us that the local news media would attempt to . .. exploit the sensational details of your wife’s death.”

     “You’ll have to tell me what they’ve written. I haven’t read any of it.”

     “Unfortunately, one of the most egregious articles happened to run in our student newspaper here on campus. Which makes it more manageable.”

     “What exactly do you need to manage, John?” Eric’s tone was stiff enough to raise Hawthorne’s eyebrows.

    
“Manage
is probably the wrong word to describe my role here. It’s my job to stand by you during all of this.”

     “Protect me?”

     “Maybe.”

     “From what?”

     “Opportunistic journalists,” Hawthorne answered flatly. “The reporter covering Lisa’s death for the
Journal
is a pretty well-known staff writer. Richard Miller. The guy has a reputation for being a muckraker. I don’t know if you remember the river refurbishment scandal. Scandal that wasn’t, I should say. Miller was going to run an article on how the city was trying to lowball the contractors when their estimates didn’t fit the budget. He had quotes from a bunch of John Does, so the paper wouldn’t let him run it. He got his revenge by leaking it to Channel
2
,
and Channel 2 got theirs when it turned out the quotes were all from contractors who didn’t get the bid. Sending camera crews to city council members’ houses without any cause.”