The Shape of Desire (27 page)

“She knew she could trust you with her life,” he said.

“She was my best friend.”

He lifted a hand and for a moment I thought he was going to touch my face. He wasn’t wearing gloves; I imagined his fingers would feel like icicles tapping the frozen surface of my skin. “I have a feeling most people know they can trust you,” he said. “Even if they’re not one of your best friends.”

That sounded embarrassingly melodramatic, but I was pretty sure he was sincere, so I just said, “I hope so.”

“I’ve seen you around the dorm,” he said. “You’re usually talking to someone, like you’re in some deep, serious conversation. Except, you’re always the one listening. The other person is always the one talking.”

I opened my mouth, shut it, tried again. “Yeah, well, that’s just girls, you know? We always think everything’s a big dramatic event in our lives, and we have to tell someone else about it. I do my share of talking, too.”

“I just have this feeling about you,” he said. “Like I’d be safe with you.”

Everything else fell away from me—the cold, my various physical discomforts, my ongoing wonder at the notion that
Dante Romano
was bothering to have a conversation with me at all. “That’s kind of a weird thing to say,” I replied in a quiet voice. “Why don’t you feel safe with other people?”

He was staring back at me with those intense eyes, dark as a collie’s. For a moment I flashed on the notion that he was some highly intelligent alien creature attempting desperately to communicate, attempting to
will
knowledge and understanding into my head since he was unable to formulate the words. “I think a lot of people would try to hurt me if
they knew,” he said. “I think people would like to experiment on me, or lock me up and see what happens when I take different shapes. Maybe I’m crazy, maybe I’m paranoid, but I just feel like, if people knew, they would put me away somewhere.”

“That’s what happened to the Dionne kids,” I said.

My digression wholly confused him. “What?”

“They were the first set of quintuplets that survived birth, and they were put on display so people could walk by and stare at them. Like zoo animals.”

A corner of his mouth twisted into a half-smile. I could tell that my comment had derailed him a little, but that he didn’t entirely mind. He thought I was kind of funny, and not in a bad way. “Right. Just like that. I don’t want people turning me into a tourist attraction. Or worse. And I’ve always thought that if I wasn’t really careful, it could happen.” He blew out his breath on a sigh of exasperation. “And I can’t believe I was so drunk the other night that I told
four
people the truth about me.”

I was backhanded by a curiously strong slap of disappointment. “Oh. Are you making a point of talking to each of us separately and asking us to keep your secret?”

His eyes were fixed on my face again. “No. I’m hoping everyone thought I was just making up stories. I mean, that’s what Gary said to me the next day when we woke up—hungover as hell, I might add. He said, ‘You just invented all that shape-shifting crap on the spot, didn’t you?’ I said yes.”

I cheered up instantly. “That’s probably what Janine and Rochelle thought, too.”

“But you didn’t,” he said.

Again, my first answer died on my lips. For a long moment of silence, I met his gaze squarely. I was searching his eyes, searching his face, looking for truth; I was opening up my own soul to him, hoping he could read it through the medium of expression. I was asking and answering with
one long stare.
Will you promise never to lie to me? Will you promise to share all your secrets with me, all your heartaches, all your fears and all your sorrows? In return, I will believe in you, I will support you; I will be your safe haven and your source of strength. If you trust me, I swear that your trust will never be broken.

“I didn’t,” I said at last. “I thought you were telling the truth.”

“It didn’t make you afraid,” he said.

I shook my head.

“It didn’t make you—
excited
—like, in a creepy way,” he added.

I couldn’t help a giggle. “No.”

“What did you think?”

“I thought, ‘No wonder Dante is so interesting.’”

He reared back a little, as if that wasn’t the answer he was expecting and he wasn’t sure he liked it, but then his face relaxed. “Right,” he said. “You just figured it’s what makes me
me
.”

“Part of what makes you
you
,” I corrected. “There’s got to be a lot more to you than changing shapes two or three days a month.”

He wore an arrested expression. “I guess so,” he said. “But mostly that’s what I figure controls my life.”

“If you let it, I suppose. But—what about the other twenty-eight or twenty-nine days? I mean, you’re taking classes, you’re holding down jobs, you’re dating girls, you’re seeing movies and reading books and skiing and hiking and
living
. You’re not just the person who changes into an animal now and then. You’re a person who does a lot of other stuff.”

He was smiling broadly. I wasn’t sure why he thought my comments were so funny. “That’s right,” he said. “So can I date
you
? While I’m doing all this other stuff?”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. “Are you asking me out?”

“Well, duh.”

“I don’t seem like your type.”

Now he laughed out loud. “You’re kind of in-your-face honest, aren’t you?”

“When I’m not keeping secrets,” I amended dryly. “Yes.”

“So will you? Go out with me, I mean?”

Suddenly I felt fluttery and nervous. “Sure. If you, you know, have a specific thing in mind you’d like to do.”

He laughed again. “How about dinner? How about tonight?”

Now my frozen toes felt like they were floating several inches off the unfriendly ground. “That sounds great.”

“What kind of food do you like? Pizza? Burgers? Seafood?”

“Yes.”

“All right. I’ll come by your room around six thirty, does that sound good?”

“Yes.”

He bent down to peer at me in exaggerated concern. “Are you going to be able to say anything but ‘yes’ during the whole meal?”

My mouth shaped the word again and he shook his head warningly. I laughed. “Depends on what you ask me,” I substituted.

“I’ll see if I can come up with some interesting topics,” he said. “See you later.”

He nodded and took off, striding back toward the dorm. Cold as I was, dumbfounded as I was, I just stood there staring after him. It was hard to determine which part of our conversation I had found most astonishing.

The fact that he asked me out
, I decided at last. As if in a trance, I turned slowly toward the door and finally stepped into the heated air. But it was as if I no longer cared or noticed that my toes were frozen, or that my hands were blocks of ice. Like Dante himself, I had transmogrified into some magical nonhuman state where common concerns of the flesh ceased to matter. I thought it was likely that I would never feel ordinary again.

The truth is, I never have.

T
he rest of the week stumbles by like a drunk on a bender, but most of us manage to get a little work done. I have a series of end-of-the-month reports to finalize, and they take a clear head and reasonable concentration, so I am forced to shut down the buzzing in my brain in order to get them finished. I contribute to the fund-raiser held on Kathleen’s behalf, dutifully ask Ellen and Marquez if they have any news, and shake my head like everyone else when it turns out the police still haven’t identified the animal that attacked Ritchie in the park.

“But I watched the news last night on Channel 5,” says a woman from the marketing department, speaking in a meaningful tone of voice. “And one of the reporters—that good-looking guy, you know, Brody something—he was saying that all sorts of questions were being raised by the media. Is there a dangerous animal on the loose? Can all these deaths be tied together? He said the police will have no choice but to close the parks down until this thing is caught. And if the police won’t do it, maybe the governor will.”

“Well, it’s about time,” says a girl from the mailroom. “I’m afraid to leave my house these days! I mean, don’t they care about public safety? I can’t believe the families of the dead folks haven’t sued the state over this.”

On Wednesday, I run into Grant in the lunchroom. I haven’t seen him since he was wearing his snow leopard costume on Halloween. He greets me with a quiet “hey” as I head to the hot water dispenser to make a cup of tea.

“Have you talked to Kathleen?” he asks.

“Not since Sunday. Ellen’s going over there this afternoon, though.”

He nods and then just stands there, stirring creamer into his coffee. This is the first time I can ever remember seeing Grant without a smile on his face. “I just can’t stop thinking about her,” he says. “She was so happy at the party. She was wearing this kitten outfit, you know, with these paper ears and whiskers painted on her face. She was saying how much she loves Halloween, that Ritchie would dress up like a mummy and hide behind one of the bushes, and when kids would come up and ring the doorbell, he’d walk out with his arms in front of him, stiff, like he was dead—” He shakes his head, not able to finish the sentence.

“Yeah,” I say heavily. “The whole thing just sucks.”

“It makes you think,” he replies. “You never know. You think you have all the time in the world and then—” He snaps his fingers. “Gone.”

I feel certain Marquez and Ellen would want me to take this opportunity to do a little spy work, so I force myself to make the monumental effort of an inquiry. “You mean, like, chase the dreams you’ve put off? Or tell people you love them? Or stop living a lie?”

He nods. “All those things.”

I find that even knowing how ephemeral life is does not make me any more inclined to start sharing certain truths about myself. I’m already pretty good at telling people I love them—some people, at least. So Ritchie’s death, while it is having a profound impact on my existence, doesn’t make me want to modify my behavior.

I know I should ask, “Who do you love?” but instead I go with, “You’ve been living a lie? Do tell.”

Now his face takes on its more accustomed contours as he grins. “I’m really a white man,” he says.

It’s so unexpected that I choke on my tea. And then I laugh. I had thought laughter was a thing of the past. “God, I never would have suspected,” I gasp.

“I’ve been meaning to confess for a long time now.”

“I won’t tell anybody,” I promise him.

“I know you won’t. Everybody knows they can trust Maria.”

R
ight before the day ends, my mom calls. She and Aunt Andrea drove down from Springfield this morning to go shopping, and they’ve decided to spend the night in St. Louis. Would I like to have dinner with them?

“I’d love to,” I say. God, yes, undemanding and affectionate company to fill the nightmare hours. “Do you want to stay at my house? One of you can have the spare room and one of you can sleep on the couch, unless you’d rather share a bed.”

“No, Andrea has some AARP discount at a hotel in Clayton and she wants to use it. And she has some frequent-flier miles she wants to apply before they expire. I couldn’t follow it all, to tell you the truth, but anyway, that’s where we’re staying.”

“I’ll meet you at six.”

I
pick them up at their hotel and we head to the Delmar Loop, a funky little area close to Washington University, crammed with shops and restaurants. Delmar Avenue is impassable on weekend nights, but since it’s Wednesday, we don’t have much trouble finding a parking spot or a
table. As we stroll by Iron Age, my mom and Aunt Andrea dare each other to go in for tattoos, and then start giggling like teenagers.

“You ought to do it,” I say a few minutes later as we study our menus at Blueberry Hill. It’s a restaurant/bar/live-music venue where Chuck Berry still performs from time to time. Mostly college students hang out here, but my mother likes hamburgers, which the place is famous for, and Aunt Andrea likes any place with a lot of color and noise. “Get tattoos. I think it would be cool.”

“Yeah, mine would say, ‘Older than dirt,’” Andrea replies with a snort.

“I could get a dinosaur,” my mom says. “Low on my back, where all the girls have them. What do they call that?”

I am dissolving with merriment. “A tramp stamp.”

“Right. I want a dinosaur tramp stamp. A triceratops.”

“Bet they’d do it,” I say.

“I think I’ll get a nipple ring instead,” Andrea says, which sets me off again. “I think their sign said they do body piercing, too.”

My mom frowns in my direction. “You don’t have any tattoos, do you?”

“No, and no nipple rings, either.”

Beth has a tattoo, though I don’t say so, of course. Clara’s name, in a small heart, inked over her left breast just low enough that a reasonably cut neckline or swimsuit will cover it. I went with her when she had it done—here at Iron Age, as a matter of fact—and I seriously considered getting one of my own. I would have, if I’d been able to settle on something that I wanted to be branded onto my skin forever. I’ve never been able to come up with a slogan I wanted for a vanity license plate, which could be easily discarded; it’s even harder to decide on a permanent ornament for my body.