A Faint Cold Fear

  Lena looked up at the sky, taking a deep breath to try to clear her mind. She needed somebody to talk this out with, but there was no one she could trust.

  “Nice night,” Ethan said, probably thinking she was enjoying the stars. “Full moon.”

  “It’s going to rain tomorrow,” she told him, clenching and unclenching her hand. A nasty bluish black bruise circled her wrist where Ethan had grabbed her, and Lena was pretty sure something was damaged. The bone ached when she held her hand to the side, and the swelling had made it difficult for her to button the cuff of her shirt. She had kept her wrist wrapped until Ethan had knocked on the door, but Lena would be damned if she’d let him know she was hurting.

  The problem was, Lena did not get paid until next Monday. If she went to the emergency room for an X ray, the fifty-dollar co-pay her insurance required would wipe out her checking account. She figured that no bones were broken, because she could still move her hand. If it was still hurting Monday, Lena would do something about it then. She was right-handed anyway, and besides, she had lived with worse pain than this for longer than a couple of days. It was almost reassuring; a reminder that she was alive.

  As if he could sense what she was thinking, Ethan asked, “How’s your wrist?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’m sorry I did that. I just”—he seemed to look for the right words—“I didn’t want you to leave.”

  “Nice way to show it.”

  “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  “Whatever,” she mumbled. Somehow talking about it made her wrist throb more. Before she left her room, Lena had put another Vicodin and an eight-hundred-milligram Motrin in her pocket in case the pain got worse. While Ethan was looking at a group of kids in the student-union parking lot, she dry-swallowed the Motrin, coughing when it went down the wrong way.

  Ethan asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” she managed, patting her hand to her chest.

  “Are you getting a cold?”

  “No,” she answered, coughing again. “When does this party start?”

  “It should be revving up about now.” He headed toward a path between two bushes. Lena knew that it was a shortcut through the forest to the dorms on the west side of the campus, but she didn’t want to walk it at night, even in full moonlight.

  Ethan turned when she didn’t follow, saying, “This way is faster.”

  For obvious reasons Lena was reluctant to follow anyone into a dark, secluded area. On the surface Ethan seemed to regret hurting her, but she had already discovered how mercurial his temper could be.

  “Come on,” Ethan said, trying to joke. “You’re not still scared of me, are you?”

  “Fuck you,” she said, forcing her feet to move. She tucked her hand into her back pocket, hoping it looked like a casual move. Her fingertips brushed against a four-inch pocketknife, and she felt safer knowing it was there.

  He slowed down so he could walk beside her, asking, “Have you worked here long?”

  “No.”

  “How long?”

  “A few months.”

  “Do you like your job?”

  “It’s a job.”

  He seemed to get the message, walking on. He dropped back again a few minutes later, though. She could see the shadow of his face but not read his expression. He sounded sincere when he said, “I’m sorry you didn’t like the movie.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Lena said, though he had chosen the subtitled French film.

  “I thought you’d be into that kind of thing.”

  She wondered if anyone in the history of the world had ever been more wrong. “If I want to read, I’ll get a book.”

  “Do you read much?”

  “Not much,” she said, though lately she had been sucked in by some of the sappy romances in the school library. Lena had taken to hiding the books behind the newspaper rack so no one would check them out before she finished them. She would slit her own throat before she let Nan Thomas find out what kind of trash she was reading.

  “What about movies?” Ethan asked, undeterred. “What sorts of movies do you like?”

  She tried not to sound too annoyed. “I don’t know, Ethan. The kinds that make sense.”

  He finally got the message and shut up. Lena watched the ground, trying not to trip. She had opted for her cowboy boots tonight, and she wasn’t used to walking in a shoe that had a heel—even a low one. She was wearing jeans with a dark green button-down shirt and had put on a little eyeliner as a concession to going out in the real world. She had left her hair down just to tell Ethan what she thought of his opinion.

  Ethan was in baggy jeans, but he was still wearing a black long-sleeved T-shirt that covered his arms. Lena knew that it wasn’t the same shirt from before, because she could smell the laundry detergent on it with just a hint of what smelled like musk cologne. Industrial-looking steel-toed work boots completed the ensemble, and Lena thought if she lost him in the woods, she would be able to track him by the deep impression the soles left in the soil.

  A few minutes later, they were in the clearing behind the men’s dorms. Grant Tech was pretty old-fashioned, and only one of the dorms was co-ed, but, this being a college, students had found a way around the rules, and everyone knew that Mike Burke, the professor in charge of the men’s dorms, was deaf as a post and not likely to hear girls sneaking in and out at all hours. Lena thought they must have stolen his hearing aids and thrown him into a closet tonight. The music coming from the building was so loud that the ground pulsed beneath her feet.

  “Dr. Burke’s at his mother’s for the week,” Ethan explained, flashing a smile. “He left a number in case we need him.”

  “This is your dorm?”

  He nodded, walking toward the building.

  She stopped him, raising her voice over the music to tell him, “Just treat me like your date in there, okay?”

  “That’s what you are, right?”

  She gave him a look that she hoped answered his question.

  “Right.” He started walking again, and Lena followed.

  She cringed at the noise as they got closer to the dorm, which had every light burning, including the ones in the dormer rooms upstairs that were restricted to the housemaster. The music was somewhere between a European dance-party mix and acid jazz with a little rap thrown in, and Lena felt like her ears would start bleeding at any moment from the high decibel level.

  Lena asked, “Aren’t they worried about security coming?”

  Ethan smiled at this, and Lena conceded the point with a frown. Most mornings when she showed up for work, whoever had been on the evening before was still in the cot in the back room, a blanket tucked under his chin and drool on the pillow from a long night’s sleep. She knew from the schedule that Fletcher was on duty tonight. Of all the night men, he was the worst. In the short time Lena had been at the college, Fletcher hadn’t noted one incident on his log. Of course, a lot of nighttime crimes either were unreported or went unnoticed under cover of darkness. Lena had read in an informational pamphlet that fewer than 5 percent of all women who were raped on college campuses reported their attacks to the police. She looked up at the dorm building, wondering if someone was being assaulted right now.

  “Hey, Green!” A young man who was slightly taller and stockier than Ethan came up and pounded his fist into Ethan’s shoulder. Ethan returned the pounding and they exchanged a complicated handshake that called for everything but a do-si-do around the dance floor.

  “Lena,” Ethan said, his voice straining to be heard over the music. “This is Paul.”

  Lena tried her best smile, wondering if this was Andy Rosen’s friend.

  Paul looked her up and down, as if to assess her fuckability. She did the same back, letting him know he did not meet her standards. He was pretty bland-looking in that way teenage boys can be when they’re trapped between adulthood and adolescence. He wore a yellow sun visor with the bill backward, a shock of close-cropped bleached-blond hai
r sticking up at the crown. He had a child’s pacifier and a bunch of charms that looked like they were from the Hello, Kitty collection hanging from a green metal chain around his neck. He saw her notice and put the pacifier in his mouth, smacking loudly.

  “Yo,” Ethan said, punching Paul’s shoulder, acting a bit territorial. “Where’s Scooter?”

  “Inside,” Paul said. “Probably trying to get them to stop playin’ this nigga shit.” He postured, throwing his hands around with the song.

  Lena bristled at his use of the word but tried not to show it. She must not have done a good job, though, because Paul asked, “You down with the brothers?” in a heavy dialect that only a racist pig would use.

  “Shut up, man,” Ethan said, punching him a lot harder than he had before. Paul laughed, but he fell back into a crowd of people walking toward the woods, catcalling racial slurs until he was far enough away for the music to drown out what he was saying.

  Ethan’s fists were clenched, the muscles along his shoulders rippling under his shirt. “Fucking asshole,” he spit.

  “Why don’t you just calm down?” Lena said, but her heart was thumping in her chest when Ethan turned to her. His anger pierced her like a laser, and she put her hand into her back pocket, touching the knife like a talisman.

  Ethan said, “Don’t listen to him, okay? He’s an idiot.”

  “Yeah,” Lena agreed, trying to diffuse the situation, “he is.”

  Ethan gave her a rueful look, like it was very important for her to believe him, before heading toward the dorm.

  The front door was open, a couple of students standing just inside. Lena could not tell what sex they were, but she imagined that if she hung around a couple of seconds more, she would see for herself. She walked past them, averting her eyes, trying to pin down a peculiar odor in the air. She knew the smell of pot well enough after working in a school for seven months, but this was nothing like that.

  At the entrance a long central hallway with a stairway connected the three floors, with two perpendicular hallways branching off each side giving access to the rooms and the bathrooms. The dorm had the same layout as every other student dorm on campus. The unit Lena lived in was very similar, but for the fact that every room in the faculty dorm had a small suite with its own bathroom and a sitting area that doubled as a kitchenette. Here students were packed two to a room with communal bathrooms at the end of each hall.

  The closer Ethan and Lena got to the end of one hallway, the better able she was to guess what at least two of the odors in the air were: piss and vomit.

  “I just need to stop in here,” Ethan said, pausing outside a doorway that had a HAZARDOUS WASTE sticker on the outside. “Do you mind?”

  “I’ll wait out here,” Lena told him, leaning against the wall.

  He shrugged, sticking his key into the lock and jiggling the door so it would open. Lena did not know why he bothered to lock it. Most of the kids on campus knew that if you shook the knobs hard enough the doors popped open on their own. Half the thefts Lena was called out on showed no sign of forced entry.

  “Right back,” he said before going in and closing the door.

  She looked at the message board on the outside of his door as she waited. There was a corkboard on one half and a dry-erase board on the other. The cork had several notes thumbtacked to it that Lena was not curious enough to unfold and read. On the white board, someone had written, “Ethan gives good head” alongside a drawing that looked like a deformed monkey holding either a baseball bat or an erect penis in his three-fingered hand.

  Lena sighed, wondering what the fuck she was doing here. Maybe she should just go to the station tomorrow and talk to Jeffrey. There had to be a way to convince him that she was not involved in this case. She should just go home right now, pour herself a drink, and try to get some sleep, so that when the morning came, her head would be clear and she could plan a course of action. Or maybe she should stay and talk to Andy’s friend, so that at least she had something to offer Jeffrey to show she was acting in good faith.

  “Sorry,” Ethan said as he returned, looking much the same as he had when he went into the room. She wondered what he had been doing in there, but not enough to ask. He had probably assumed she would go into the room with him, where he could seduce her with his boyish charms. Lena hoped she did not look as dumb as he thought she was.

  “Aw, crap,” he said, wiping the message board with the sleeve of his shirt. “That’s just the guys playing around.”

  “Right,” she said, bored.

  “Honest,” he persisted. “I stopped doing that in high school.”

  Lena believed him for just a beat, then allowed a smile when she realized he was joking.

  He walked down the hall, asking in a loud voice, “Do you like this song?”

  “Of course not,” she told him, debating again whether to call this whole thing off. She could just get the kid’s name and let Jeffrey handle it tomorrow.

  Ethan said, “What kind of music do you like?”

  “The kind that doesn’t give you a headache,” she said. “Are we going to talk to this friend or not?”

  “This way.” Ethan gestured toward the front stairs.

  A piece of plaster fell from the ceiling above her as they walked into the main hall, and though Lena could hear only the music, she knew that the floor was creaking overhead.

  Upstairs there would be a large central gathering room at the head of the stairs with a TV and tables for studying, not that it sounded like anyone was studying now. There would also be a community kitchen, but, judging from the other student dorms Lena had seen, probably all it contained was a hairy refrigerator, a microwave with the door stuck shut, and some vending machines. There were fewer rooms on the second floor, and even though these rooms were smaller, the second floor was more coveted. Having smelled the odor from the more often used bathrooms on the lower floor, Lena could hazard a guess as to why.

  “This way,” Ethan yelled.

  Lena followed him as they wound their way through the people sitting on the stairway. Not one of them looked older than fifteen, but they were all drinking a pink concoction that had enough alcohol in it for Lena to smell it as she walked by. She recognized the third odor in the house: hard liquor.

  The upstairs hallway was more packed than the stairs, and Ethan gently took her hand so she would not get lost. Lena felt herself swallow at the sudden contact, and she glanced down at his hand in hers. He had long, delicate fingers, almost like a girl’s. His wrists were bony, too, and she could see the knobs sticking out just below the sleeve of his shirt. The room was so cramped and hot she couldn’t imagine how he stood the heat. No matter what Ethan hid under his sleeves, it couldn’t be worth sweating to death in a room filled with at least a hundred people, all of who were jumping up and down to the beat of what could only loosely be called music.

  Suddenly the music stopped. The room groaned in unison, then laughed when the lights were turned off.

  Lena’s heart jumped into her throat as strangers bumped into her. A man next to her whispered something, and a girl laughed loudly. Behind her another man pressed his body into Lena’s, and this time there was something more purposeful to the contact.

  Somebody said, “Hey, let’s get the music back on!”

  Another person answered, “Gimme a minute,” and a flashlight was turned on over by the corner as the DJ tried to get his shit together.

  Lena’s eyes finally adjusted, and she could make out shapes of people all around her. She inched forward, and the man behind her followed like a shadow. He slid his hands up her waist and breathed “Hey” into her ear.

  Lena froze.

  “Let’s go somewhere,” he said, rubbing against her.

  Lena tried to say “Stop,” but the word caught in her throat. She lunged toward Ethan, wrapping her hands around his arm before she could restrain herself.

  “What?” Ethan asked. Even in the dark, she could see him look behind her and ge
t his answer. His muscles tensed, and he slammed his fist into the guy’s chest, hissing, “Asshole.”

  The guy backed off, holding up his hands like it was a simple misunderstanding.

  “It’s okay,” Ethan told Lena. He draped his arms around her, protecting her from the crowd. She should have pushed him away, but she needed a couple of seconds to calm her heart before it broke out through her ribs.

  Without warning, the music started back up and black lights flicked on. The crowd cheered and started dancing again, their white T-shirts and teeth glowing purple under the light. Some started waving green and yellow glow sticks in front of one another. A few had small flashlights they used to shine in other people’s eyes.

  “It’s a rave,” Lena said. At least, she thought she did. The music was so loud she could not hear her own voice. The crowd was rolling on Ecstasy, and the lights enhanced the experience. Paul’s pacifier made sense. He would use it to keep his teeth from chattering while he was rolling.

  Over the music, Ethan yelled, “Come over here,” making her walk backward. She reached behind her, stopping when she felt a wall.

  “You okay?” he asked, his face close to hers so she could hear him.

  “Of course,” she said, pushing her hand to his chest to put some space between them. His body was as solid as the wall, and he did not move.

  He brushed her hair back with his fingers. “I wish you had worn your hair back.”

  “I didn’t have anything,” she lied.

  He smiled, watching his fingers glide through her hair. “I could get you a rubber band or something.”

  “No.”

  Ethan dropped his hand, obviously disappointed. He changed the subject, offering, “You want me to go talk to that asshole again?”

  “No,” she said, but part of her wanted him to—more than part of her, actually. She liked the idea of Ethan’s beating the shit out of the jerk who had rubbed up against her.