The Shape of Desire (30 page)

I wait until Brody Westerbrook and his colleague climb back into their white van and, slowly enough to show they’re doing it under protest, pull out of the lot and park across the street on the shoulder of the road. Then they disembark and continue filming, as Brody speaks into the camera and gestures toward our office building. I can only imagine what he’s saying now about freedom of the press and uncooperative citizens.

I take a deep, shuddering breath, and finally get out of the car.

As you might expect, the office is in a shambles again this morning. Everyone mills around the break room, sipping coffee or pouring a
second cup just because they can’t bring themselves to go back to their own offices and sit in silence. I hear the frequent refrain—“Did
you
talk to the reporter? What did you say?”—and a mishmash of replies. A fair number of people think Brody Westerbrook is using the power of the press to ensure the safety of the city, and they’re damn proud of him; the cynics say he’s mounted this campaign merely to boost his own career. I’m in the latter camp but I don’t offer an opinion. I don’t want to speak to reporters and I don’t want to speak to my fellow employees. I just want to get through the day with as little damage as possible.

Accordingly I huddle in my office, stare at my screen, and actually manage to produce a few of the more urgent reports. I decline the offer to have lunch with Grant and Ellen and a new girl in the creative department; I can tell Ellen is not surprised by my refusal, but she doesn’t push it. She’s strolled by my office a few times today and glanced in, but she’s kept her distance. She must know I feel like one single exposed nerve and that she’s the one who cut me open. But I know Ellen; this unaccustomed restraint won’t last long. By next week, she’ll be badgering me again.
Have you talked to him? What did he say? Are you all right? How can I help?

A friend like Ellen is both a blessing and a curse. I’m convinced that even if I quit my job tonight, never came back to the office, moved to a different house, got an unlisted phone number, changed my e-mail address, she would still find a way to track me down.
Are you all right? How can I help?
There are days I know I am lucky to have won a friend who is so steadfast, so insistent. Today is not one of those days.

A little after three, I hear the muffled sound of my cell phone singing inside my purse. It’s a scramble to dig it out before the music stops, and I sound breathless when I say, “Hello?”

“Hey, baby,” says Dante’s voice, and I feel my whole body spike with emotion. Elation and terror, equally fierce. “Got your message. What’s going on?”

“Wait, let me close the door,” I say. After I’ve accomplished this task and sunk back into my chair, I say, “Dante, it’s been so awful here. Kathleen’s husband, Ritchie, was killed, and so everyone feels terrible for
her
, and no one’s getting any work done, and now the reporters have started hanging around the office, interviewing anyone who will talk to them. So first it was depressing but now it’s scary, because I don’t want any reporters following me home and accidentally getting a glimpse of
you
.”

I have deliberately left out any mention of how Ritchie died. I have, with some calculation, allowed myself to sound so stressed and worried that I am not entirely coherent. My hope is that he won’t ask for too many details—and he won’t come to the same conclusions I have.
Hey, this sounds like he could have been murdered by a man who’s sometimes a beast. Does Maria think I had anything to do with this?
But, of course, my account is so vague that I am braced for a few questions.

“He was killed? That’s terrible. How did it happen?”

“The police haven’t been very specific.” I have a sudden inspiration. “He was in Babler one morning pretty early. I’ve heard speculation that it might have been a drug deal gone bad.”

Drug dealers. They use guns, or so I think. They’re unlikely to be shape-shifters. At any rate, if you think the cops are looking for a drug dealer, you won’t waste your time wondering if they’re looking for
you
.

If you think everyone else, even your girlfriend, believes that drug-dealer theory, then you can relax, even if you know the story isn’t true.

Half my life, I’ve been lying
about
Dante. Now I’m lying
to
him. I find, to my dismay, that it’s just as easy.

“Well, I’m sorry,” he says, and he sounds sincere. “How’s Kathleen holding up?”

“Not too well. She hasn’t been at work all week. We’ve taken turns going to visit her and bringing her food and stuff, but—It’s just so awful. Nobody’s getting any work done.”

“Sounds like you need a weekend,” he says. “Today’s Friday, isn’t it?”

“Very good! You must have seen a newspaper.” I try to take a bantering tone.

His voice matches mine. “I glanced at
CNN.com
when I checked my e-mail at the library.”

“Wow, so, you’ve been human for a while, huh?”

“Not quite an hour. I don’t think I have much time left.”

“I’ve been trying to figure out when your next long stretch will be. I think maybe Monday or Tuesday of next week.”

“Feels about right,” he agrees.

“Listen, what do you think about what I said in my e-mail? Meeting up in Kansas City or Columbia? Can you get that far? I just—I think I need to get away from here. A little vacation sounds nice. And I
don’t
want that stupid reporter snooping around my house.”

There’s a smile in his voice. “Oooh, hot vacation spots—Kansas City or Columbia! How will you choose between them?”

“If you were closer, I’d smack you,” I inform him. “I will
choose
based on what’s easiest for
you
.”

“Right now I’m in the Blue Springs area,” he says. “So Kansas City would be easy. But how do you want to work this? I can’t figure out the logistics.”

All the time I’ve spent
not
thinking about work has been spent wrestling with just this problem, so I have my answer ready. “You know where the Marriott is in the Plaza?”

“Sure.”

“You call me the minute you turn human for the long haul. I’ll phone the hotel, reserve a room, give them my credit card, say you’ll be checking in first. I’ll have my bags packed already, and I’ll just hop in the car five minutes later. I can be there in about four hours.”

“That’ll work,” he says. “But it’s a lot of effort for you.”

“Effort I am happy to expend on your behalf, silly.”

“But if this happens, say, next Tuesday—you don’t have much vacation time left, do you? Is this really how you want to spend it?”

Still holding the phone to my ear, I close my eyes and prop up my head with my other hand. I feel as if I have shut out the world, as if nothing exists but this small private cocoon of sound, my voice, Dante’s voice. “Yes,” I breathe into the phone. “I want to spend it with you.”

I can tell he still feels a little doubtful—on my behalf, not his—but he doesn’t have the time right now to probe or argue. “Okay. See you then. I’ll skulk around Kansas City and call you the second I can.”

“Love you. Can’t wait to see you.”

“Love you more,” he says, and hangs up.

I slowly fold the phone shut, then slowly bow my head to the desk and pillow my forehead on my arms. Good. For the moment he is not at risk. He’s in the western part of the state and he’ll stay there, at least for the next week or so. He has not yet realized that I suspect him of murder—and if I am any kind of actress, he will
never
realize it.

For the moment, nothing has changed. All is well. Like the tightrope walker I am, I have achieved a moment’s stasis; I am perfectly poised above a jagged chasm, perched on the narrowest possible support. The smallest miscalculation—a weighted gesture, an incautious tilt of my head—could cause me to overbalance and tumble, spinning, to the bottom of the rocky gulf. There is no safety net to catch me if I fall, nothing to intervene between me and ruin.

I must be very, very careful.

A
ccording to the informal lottery we have set up at the office, it will be my turn to go to Kathleen’s on Sunday. On my way home from work Friday night, I swing by a Schnucks grocery store and pick up some beef. I figure if Dante was in Blue Springs this afternoon, there’s
no chance he’s been captured and slaughtered in time to be turned into hamburger at my local butcher’s counter by this evening.

When I arrive at my house, the white husky is sitting on my front porch, waiting for me. “Hello, sweetie,” I say, bending down to scratch her head with one hand while I hold the straps of the canvas grocery bag in the other. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? Give me a minute to put everything away and I’ll be right back out.”

She licks my fingers, then settles on the concrete as if she’s understood my words. Maybe she has. In the kitchen, I hurriedly stuff grocery items in the pantry and the refrigerator, depending on where they belong, and then I haul out the dog paraphernalia. It takes me multiple trips to carry out the bowl of water, the bowl of food, and the old blanket for her to sleep on. She has taken up her old place, under the carport, against the wall of the house that borders the kitchen. There’s a small toolshed situated at the end of the driveway, and it helps block out most of the evening wind.

But I’m worried. I stand and watch while she devours the food as if she hasn’t eaten in three days. She looks relatively healthy, and I don’t immediately spot any fresh wounds, but it’s supposed to get cold tonight—dropping into the low twenties at least. She looks built to withstand an Alaskan winter, but I can’t shake the idea that she isn’t really a dog, and maybe not suited for outdoor living.

“Would you like to come in the house to get warm?” I ask her. “You’d have to stay in the kitchen because, pardon me, you’re a little dirty, but I swear I’d let you out again in the morning.”

She glances up at me and wags her tail a little; again, I’m convinced she caught the sense of my words. But when I open the side door that leads to the kitchen and try to lure her inside, she won’t cooperate. She refuses to budge when I make coaxing noises, and when I approach her, she dances away, uttering a short bark. She might be playing. She might simply be saying, “Stop it, Maria. I’m not coming in the house.”

“Well, hell,” I mutter, and ponder for a moment. I ordered a new
dishwasher last year and it arrived in a huge shipping box, which I broke down and folded flat and stored in the basement in case I ever needed it. So I fetch that, along with a couple more blankets, and I fashion a padded nest for my stubborn visitor. She knows exactly what it’s for. The minute I crawl back out of the box, she trots in, tramples a circle in the pile of blankets, and drops down with a sigh. Resting her pointed nose on her paws, she regards me from her haunted blue eyes.

“Yes, but that’s still not exactly
warm
,” I tell her. I’m too afraid of fire to run an extension cord out the side door to power a space heater, and I don’t really know what else I can provide her. Maybe a hot water bottle filled with steaming contents. Swap it out at midnight if I happen to wake up. “Though I suppose you’ve been sleeping out in the cold for the past few nights and you seem to have managed just fine.”

I refill the water and food bowls before finally going inside. I’m already chilled to the bone, which makes me worry even more about the husky.

I make myself a light dinner, check my e-mail, talk to Beth, try to read a book, try to watch a television show, convince myself that I’m tired enough to sleep. First I carry a hot water bottle out to the husky and debate where to place it near her body to do the most good. Eventually I wrap it in a fold of the comforter and snug it up against her stomach. Her mouth is stretched in what appears for all the world to be a laugh.

“Sleep well, my friend,” I tell her, patting her on the nose. “Let me know if you need anything.”

Then I go to bed and toss and turn for hours, catching snatches of sleep in short, unsatisfying intervals. I do get up once around three and head out in the frigid cold to retrieve and refill the hot water bottle. The white dog stirs when I approach, but doesn’t sit up; when I return with the bottle wrapped in a towel, she looses a sigh that sounds like contentment.
I’m probably projecting my emotions on her, but the whole interlude makes me feel a little better.

As I turn back toward the house, I glance toward the shadows of the front lawn. I’m standing in the broken patches of light spilling out of the kitchen window, so my eyes can’t adjust quickly enough to penetrate the deep darkness of the yard. But there’s a shape there—a silhouette against the empty road—and two amber refractions at about the height of my knees. Before my brain even consciously analyzes what I’m seeing, I experience a visceral spurt of fear that has me scrambling for the door. I’m inside and slamming the lock home before I’ve even realized I’d better run. My stomach churns with adrenaline and my arms feel weak.

Wolf. Lean body, pointed ears, hunter’s eyes. Focused on me.

There are no wolves in Missouri
, I remind myself, but I know what I saw. And anyway, the police haven’t yet identified the animal that attacked Ritchie. Wolf or not, what if this is the beast that has developed a taste for human blood? It would be an incredible coincidence, yes, but why couldn’t it have wandered by chance to my house and happened to pause in my yard just at the moment I stepped outside? Even if this particular beast is not a killer, surely I am justified to feel afraid of it. Primitive instincts, primal fear, would have urged me to flee the minute such a creature stepped into my sight.

Of course, it’s just as likely that the wolf is not an animal at all. I believe there’s one shape-shifter sleeping under my carport. Who knows how many others might be wandering the countryside while the rest of us carry on with our familiar, oblivious lives?

Or it could be Dante.

He told me he was in the Kansas City area, but I have no way to verify that’s true. After all, last month he told me he was in Sedalia when, in fact, he was near enough to call me from my own area code. He might
be curious about my sudden aversion to having him in my house; he might have recognized the falseness in my voice and guessed I was lying about something, even if he couldn’t guess what. He might have come by tonight to see if I was entertaining a much more interesting guest than a lost dog.