Stubbs drove fast, hands shaking and knuckle white on the steering wheel. Lancaster’s last bottle of Grolsch nestled cold between his legs. He paged through Annie Walsh’s journal on the seat next to him. He flipped to the last entry, read it.

Tonight I see Professor Morgan.

Not much help, but it was the last entry. This Morgan guy might’ve been the last person to see her. He flipped back through the journal. A car honked loud. Stubbs had slipped over into the other lane. He jerked the wheel back, kept thumbing in the journal.

He was breathing heavy, still seeing Lancaster’s face. Damn, snotty, know-it-all kid. He gulped beer. Wiped his forehead with his sleeve. The window was down, cold air blowing, but Stubbs felt hot. Around his neck. His ears. Sweat.

Jay Morgan.

Okay, Professor Egghead. Let’s see what you have for old Deke.

twenty-six

Morgan tried to get Ellis on the phone, but the kid was nowhere, hadn’t shown for class. The dean would probably go ape-shit. Whittaker wanted Ellis.

Okay, screw it. He’d try calling again later, perhaps call some of Ellis’s other professors. Maybe they knew where he was keeping himself. In the meantime, Morgan could get some work done.

He spread a blank sheet of lined paper on his desk, stared at it. Today he would write one good poem. Only one. He looked at the paper. It was still blank. He’d cleared his day, no tutoring, no grading. Nothing. Only the poem.

He got up, went into the kitchen, and put on a pot of coffee. He watched it brew. He looked over his shoulder at the relentlessly blank sheet of paper on his desk.

Poetry was hard.

He watched the pot fill, then poured a mug, walked slowly back to his desk, sipping. He eased back into the chair. Morgan had not one idea in his empty head, not even the seed of an idea rattling in his hollow, freshly swept cranium.

He thought fleetingly about smoking the cigar for the old man. The idea danced just over the horizon of his imagination.

He picked up his pen. He made the point of his pen touch the paper. It left a black dot. Soon he’d make the pen move. It would be the start of a word. He felt it coming, the word forming. Potential energy built in his thumb and forefinger. Here came the first word. The poem was beginning.

The phone rang.

“Cocksuckers!”

Morgan threw down the pen, grabbed the phone. “What?”

“Hey now, Morgan. Get up on the wrong side of the bed?”

“I was working, Reams.”

“Listen, how about you come over this afternoon and help me with a project? I’m building a gazebo. Just got back from Sears with quite an impressive assortment of tools. The lumber’s piled high as an elephant’s eye.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“How hard can it be?” Reams said. “Hammer nails, saw wood, nothing to it.”

“I told you I was working.”

“So you did. What on?”

“Trying to write a poem.”

“Is that all? Dash it out quick, then head over to my place. The sun’s out and the beer is in the cooler. Be a good change of pace. Work with your hands for a change.”

“I can’t.”

“You’ll love it,” Reams said. “We’ll let our pants sag low until our butt cracks are showing. Sweat and everything like real handymen.”

Morgan sighed. “I appreciate the call, Reams, but really I need to get in some writing.”

“Well, okay then.” A pout in Reams’s voice. “Maybe next time.” He hung up.

Morgan looked at his piece of paper. There was a jagged ink mark where his hand had jerked at the sound of the telephone. He crumpled the paper and tossed it over his shoulder. He spread a fresh sheet. This time he got a word out. The. He looked at it, shook his head, crossed it out, and replaced it with A. He crossed that out and wrote The again.

Good. This was progress. He began writing in earnest. Sweat broke out across his forehead. It came properly now, a line or two at a time. He crossed out a line, replaced it, switched lines around.

Finally Morgan had four good lines. The first stanza. He felt exhausted. He looked at the clock. Eighty-two minutes. Not bad. His coffee had cooled. He took his mug into the kitchen, dumped it into the sink, and poured a fresh cup.

Back at his desk.

The next stanza was crucial. He needed a good transition. He wanted the poem to make a turn in thought, but it needed to be subtle. His pen stalled again. He should never have gotten up for coffee. His rhythm had broken and he’d lost momentum. He frowned at the paper, tried to conjure the mood again.

A knock at the door.

“Goddammit!”

He looked out the front door’s peephole. Ginny Conrad stood on his porch. She’d done something with her hair. It was pulled back, highlighted with garish burgundy streaks. She wore only a light jacket. Reams was right. It was a nice day, sun brilliant in the wide sky. Perhaps winter was fading at last.

She knocked again, and he opened the door.

“I was writing,” Morgan told her. He wanted to preempt any ideas she might have about shucking her clothes and crawling into his bed.

She seemed not to hear, pushing her way in. “I thought we could have lunch.”

“Lunch.” Morgan tasted the word, rolled it around on his tongue. His concentration had broken anyway, and a bite would be good.

They ate at the same pizza joint Morgan had gone to with Annette Grayson. This time the meal was more relaxed. He wasn’t on the make. No pressure. They talked of unimportant things and laughed.

Once, a silence between them stretched, and Ginny leaned slightly across the table and asked, “Do you wonder what it might be like if I were a little older and you were a little younger?”

“No, not really,” Morgan said.

A grin tickled the corners of Ginny’s mouth. “Neither do I.”

“Good. Better this way.”

“Better what way?” Ginny asked.

“Like this,” Morgan said, but he really didn’t know what he meant.

“I guess,” Ginny said. “I don’t know what I want.”

“I don’t know either.”

“What?” Ginny asked. “You mean you don’t know what I want or you don’t know what you want?”

“I don’t know.”

And that about summed it up.

Back at the house, Ginny already had her blouse off before Morgan could decide to protest or not. He didn’t want her. He felt guilty about not writing, and he was full of pizza.

He was, however, beginning to develop some sort of friendly feeling toward her, like for a distant niece or a cat. But he didn’t want to sleep with her again, not now. It just wasn’t in him. Even when she stripped completely, running her stiff fingers down between her furry folds, he couldn’t quite imagine taking her in broad daylight after a heavy meal. It had been different during the driving rainstorm. Or maybe it was different now. Maybe everything was changing. Maybe he’d changed.

The phone rang.

She’d already slipped into his bed. “Let it ring.”

“It might be important.” He grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

“Is this Jay Morgan?” A woman’s voice.

“Yes.”

“This is Nurse Benneton at County General Hospital. We have a Louis Reams here. He’s been injured, and he listed you as a contact name. Can you possibly come down and pick him up?”

“He listed me?”

“Yes, sir. Can you come down in the next twenty minutes or so?”

“But why would he list me?”

A pause. “Sir?”

“I don’t want to pick him up.”

Another pause. “He really shouldn’t drive himself.”

“How bad is he? What happened?”

“I’m afraid I can’t release patient-”

“But you called me to pick him up, right? Doesn’t that entitle me to know what happened?”

Ginny came to the bedroom doorway, holding a sheet over her but failing to cover up any of the important parts. She mouthed the words “what’s wrong?”