The Snow Garden (25 page)

     “Are you done yet?” Tim asked.

     Randall shook his head. “In a second.”

          I’ve never been so ready for someone to enter me before. He was gentle, he was affectionate, and as soon as he was inside me he whispered in my ear, “Just like your uncle, Lauren.” I experienced an immediate orgasm I could not prevent.

     “Jesus!” Randall tossed the essay aside and rose from the bed.

     Tim shot out of his desk chair and retrieved the essay off the bed.

     It took him a few minutes to finish, and when he did, he dropped it to his lap and looked to Randall, who was staring out the window. “How well do you really know Jesse?”

     “I’m starting to think Kathryn might know him better.”

     “Huh?”

     “She wouldn’t be surprised by a single word of this. She’s always thought Jesse was some kind of... predator. I always thought he was just a big hornball and that she was just attracted to him and had to take out her frustrations on him, but that’s not it. She always sensed that he was using his body, using how attractive he is to ... undo people.”

     “Very
Dynasty
,”
Tim commented wryly.

     Randall ignored him. “It’s almost like Jesse thinks the only honest thing in his life is his body and the pleasure it can give him. And he’s always trying to convince everyone else. I can see him ... I can
hear
him saying that to Lauren. And believing it.”

     “I repeat,” Tim said, retrieving his beer off his desk. “It has nothing to do with what we’re looking for.”

    “What was it doing in Eric’s house?”

     “You said you thought Mitchell Seaver dropped it off. Maybe he left it with the paper he hadn’t graded by mistake. Maybe Lauren is friends with him. I don’t know, Randall, but you asked me to help find out if he killed his wife, and this shit is not helping.” Tim took a slug of beer. “Better luck next time.”    
\

     “I have the bottle,” Randall said, turning from the window.

     Tim nodded. “That’s a start.”

     “Maybe. We can’t exactly take it to the medical examiner’s office and ask them to run a few tests without telling anyone except us what they find.”

     “I could take it to Richard. He’s covered the police beat here for twenty years. Maybe he’ll know some doctor who can run tests or something.”

     “That’s ridiculous, Tim. He’s a reporter. You don’t think he’s going to want to know why you’re bringing it to him?”

     “Look, we’re fairly limited in what we can do here, all right? Now unless you think you can dig around the house again and find some diary or something, then you might start considering my suggestions.” 

     “I’ve got a suggestion of my own,” Randall said. “Her sister.”

     “What about her?”

     “Lisa was spending every weekend with her. I’ll bet she wasn’t bothering to pack a suitcase. Anything she wanted to keep from her husband, she would keep there.”

     “The woman’s got cancer, Randall.”

     “That didn’t stop you the first time.”

     Tim flounced down onto his bed, holding his beer against his chest and draping an arm over his forehead to indicate a splitting headache. Randall knew what was coming, more poking and prodding at his real motive. Maybe he hadn’t given a good enough performance the first time. He inhaled deeply and took a seat next to Tim on the mattress. Tim opened his eyes when he felt Randall’s weight on the bed, and Randall met his gaze, infusing his voice with the necessary gravity.

     “You want to know the truth, Tim? I would love to go the police tomorrow morning. And then I’d go straight to Richard Miller and tell him everything I know about Eric. But if I did that, I would be out of here faster than you can blink.”

     “Why?”

     “My parents don’t even know I’m gay, Tim. If they find out that I’ve been sleeping with one of my male, married professors they would yank me out of Atherton the next day.”

     “And back to Park Avenue where they’d lock you up in a room padded with Frette couture and throw away the key. Poor baby.”

     “So I’m a baby. No one’s arguing with you on that.” Forced self-pity had brought a slight quaver to his voice. The sound of it emboldened him, and he continued, “But that’s not the point. If I’m locked up in their apartment, there’s no way I can find out who killed Lisa Eberman.”

     Tim propped his back against the wall and stared at his bent knees as he gave consideration to Randall’s suggestion. “I’ll call Paula Willis. Tell her I’m doing a follow-up on Atherton’s continued grief. She’ll like that—the idea that the whole town’s still mourning her sister’s death.”

     Randall nodded, collecting the contents of Lauren Raines’ file. 

     “It’s weird,” Tim continued distantly. “She talks so fast, it’s like she’s trying to get everything out before she goes.”

     “Call me if something works out,” he said, heading for the door. 

     “Randall.”

     He turned around. Tim looked older, drawn. “If she grants me another interview, you’re going with me.” Randall was silent. “To see her,” Tim added. Realizing that Tim was also going to play both judge and jury, Randall managed a curt nod before he shut the door.

Someone had opened his window to share the sound of Moby with all of West Campus. Randall slowed his
steps
as he followed one of the winding pathways through the labyrinth of red brick walls. He found an empty bench just off the pathway and lit by the blue light on top of one of the campus emergency phones.

     He flipped to the last page of Lauren’s essay.

          I did not hit him, I slugged him. It was like hitting a brick wall.

          “So it wasn’t just a story?” he asked me.

          He was so calm. So unfazed by the fact that I was coming apart right in front of him. I was practically sobbing by the time he got his clothes on. And the whole time all he kept saying was that it wasn’t wrong of me to enjoy what my uncle did to me. He told me that my uncle hadn’t been the one to fill me with poison—that job had been accomplished by the therapists who had to tell me it was wrong after the fact.

     Lauren’s story all but proved Kathryn’s suspicion that there was some darker motive beneath all of Jesse's sexual maneuverings. But Randall had resisted the idea for so long not because he liked Jesse and wanted to believe of him better than that. Randall’s path to Atherton had been paved with the sexual secrets of men. He had learned them and exploited them to the best of his advantage. But he had done it to survive. For Jesse, it was like a game. No, a pursuit, Randall thought. But why?

     Why was Jesse so desperate to show Lauren that the memory of her molestation would result in an orgasm?

     He continued reading in hopes of finding something that might spark an answer.

          I can’t claim to know Jesse Lowry. All I know is that I allowed him to violate me. I was lulled into a state of complacency by the lust I felt for him, and that lust comes from the same place my uncle poisoned. The sad reality is that Jesse might be half-right. How can I embrace my sexuality when all it wants to do is sink its teeth into me? My fate has been predetermined. I will never be someone capable of making love.

          As for Jesse, I’m only left to wonder what incident in his past would give him the conviction to attempt insight into mine. I can only speculate.

     So can I, Randall thought, lifting his head from the essay, wondering if he had just found the secret he had searched for on Jesse’s side of the room that morning.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON HAD TURNED INTO SUNDAY EVENING, AND
Kathryn had rewritten the E-mail twice already. Only one sentence had survived: “I know it’s probably too late to get a ticket.” It was not an E-mail she wanted to write or a trip she wanted to make, but after two days of not speaking to him, she assumed Randall had forgotten their trip to Boston. She had just started Rewrite Number Three when a knock on her door startled her. Randall ducked his head in. Before her face could betray her anger, she forced a weak smile and returned her attention to the computer, hoping the sight of her back communicated the anger she didn’t have the energy to voice.

     “Friday night,” Randall said. She waited for him to continue. He didn’t.

     “Yeah?” she asked without turning.

     “Is something wrong?”

     “Friday night?” she repeated, her tone clipped.

     “I was gone. I’m sorry. I skipped dinner and then once I got to the dance I realized I was trashed.” She nodded to the computer screen, not believing a word of it. She returned her hands to the keyboard before she realized her focus was shot. “Working?” he asked.

     “I have to write my mother an E-mail.”

     “Have you seen Jesse?” Randall asked, apparently not having gotten what she just said.

     She turned against the chair, one arm braced over the back. “No. I haven’t.”

     Started. Randall turned from April's bookshelf, where he’d been running a finger along the spines of her text books.   “Kathryn?” he asked, sounding wounded by the sharpness in her tone.

     “Yes?”

     His blue eyes were glazed and distant, stricken by her anger and suspicious of it's source. He took a seat on the edge of April’s bed.  “Don’t lie to me. Whats going on?”

     “ I’m writing an E-mail because I have to get down on my knees and beg her to try to find me a plane ticket for Thanksgiving.”

     “Oh shit.” Randall's exhalation sounded almost relieved. He got up from the bed, but she turned back to the computer.  He squeezed her shoulders with both hands. “Kathryn, I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you. I talked to my parents and they pulled the plug.”

     Your parents who never call, she thought, the parents you never talk about, and suddenly they want you home for Thanksgiving. “What did they say?”

     “Same old shit.”

     She laughed. The expression meant nothing in reference to Mr. and Mrs. Stone, whose
shit
Randall discussed in the most roundabout way possible.

     “I’m really sorry.”

     “Good,” she said, refusing to soften. “ I’m not about to spend four days alone here in this tenement!” She rose and his hands slid weakly off her shoulders. “And from the looks of it, the only way  I’m going to get home is on a fucking Greyhound, which would take four days anyway so . . .” She had left the chair without any clear idea of where she was going to. The room seemed five times smaller than usual. They stood an awkward few feet apart. Randall bowed his head, nervous breaths puffing his cheeks.

     “I said I was sorry.”

     “Say it again.”

     “How about something new? Like, it’s all my fault.”

     She nodded curtly as if the answer were acceptable. Which it wasn’t.

     “The last time I saw Jesse he was leaving the dorm,” she began, icily. “That was about an hour ago.” She studied Randall for a response that would give some clear indication of what happened on Friday night. Nothing; he was just a pouting child looking for forgiveness. 

     “I stopped by last night.”

     “I had a date.”

     “With who?”

     “Mitchell Seaver.”

     Randall just nodded as if accepting the inevitable. “How was it?” he asked tightly.

     “Nice,” she said, sounding like her mother. “Why were you looking for Jesse?”

     “Because I had to ask him something.”

     “About Friday night?”

     Randall hissed and lifted his hands to either side of his head, as if Kathryn’s continued anger was making his head swell.
“
What
is going on?”    

     “Are you pretending for my sake?”

     Randall’s face fell, his mouth curling open slightly and his eyes narrowing on her. Sudden fear added breath to his voice. “Did Jesse say . . . something to you?”

     “He shouldn’t have to.”

     Randall looked like he had been punched in the stomach. He turned away from her, grabbing the back of her chair with one hand to steady himself. “Fuck,” he whispered. “He told you.”

     “Of course he didn’t tell me. But he certainly wanted me to believe that something happened. He shows up at the door wearing nothing but his underwear and he won’t let me in the room. And then you’re out cold, stark naked—”

     Randall pivoted to face her again, and now his face wrinkled with confusion.
“What?”

     “Randall, you said you knew better.”

     “Oh my God. I didn’t sleep with
Jesse!”

     Ardor and disgust met in his words with convincing force. Kathryn felt confused as well as foolish. “Well... who did you sleep with?” “Friday night? No one. I was gone! I told you. The scotch ...” He stopped.

     “Oh my God,” she groaned, and flounced back onto her mattress. Randall crawled onto the bed next to her, his arm around her stomach bunching part of her shirt in his fist. Still a child trying to apologize, now with a sudden burst of physical tenderness. She tried to bury her head in the pillows.

     “You really thought I. ..”

     “Yes!” She groaned. “It was so weird. I walk in and I realize you don’t have any clothes on and Jesse’s just kind of sitting there smiling and ..Her words collapsed into another groan.

     “What did you say?”

     “I’m not telling you. It’s stupid.”

     “Come on, I’m sure it’s entertaining.”

     She rolled over, resting her head on the pillow with Randall’s face inches away. “I said he couldn’t get rid of you the way he did everyone else. I said you weren’t that stupid.”

     Pain flashed over Randall’s face so quickly she almost missed it, a slight wince while he kept his eyes locked on hers. Then his smile seemed uncomfortable, but it gained warmth and lifted his features. For several seconds, he stared at her, then brought a hand to the side of her face. She hadn’t expected her words to move him. His mouth opened. Nothing came out, so he tried again. “I’m very glad you were there to defend my honor,” he said, sounding slightly winded.