The Raising: A Novel Part 17

"So, then, do you mind, Lucas, if I tape-record our conversation? Do you trust me when I say I'll share this with no one without your written permission? And, in fact, I'd like to give you this, to ask you to read and sign." She stood and went over to the bookshelf, where a piece of paper lay on top of a row of hardback books. "It states for the record that I won't share what you've shared here with anyone without first obtaining your written permission."

Lucas took the piece of paper, which fluttered loosely in his hand, and looked at it for a few seconds, nodding again, and when Professor Polson handed him a pen, he signed what seemed to be his name across the bottom of it.

"Okay," she said, taking the paper from him and putting it back on the shelf. "I'll make a copy of this and give you the original. So, is it all right if I record what you have to say?"

Lucas said, "Sure, whatever," and inhaled.

He did not, to Perry, look or sound like someone who would have the ability to speak loud or long enough to tell any kind of story, lucid or otherwise, truth or fiction, but when Professor Polson took out her little recorder-a s.h.i.+ning, silver thing, sleek and glinting like the charm between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s-pressed a b.u.t.ton, and set it on the table, Lucas began, as if he'd been waiting a long time, holding his breath, to speak: So, okay. Like. Jesus. (long sigh) You know, I didn't even know her very well. I was friends with Craig, and I didn't think she liked me. Right from the beginning he told me she told him she didn't approve of the smoking, that it was, you know, against her religion, and also that she thought it turned Craig into an a.s.shole. Which, I guess, you know, it did. Craig got really weirded out sometimes on weed. He'd start talking to himself, sort of muttering. He'd want to pick a fight, or he'd start crying about his parents getting a divorce or something. Or he wanted to steal things. I don't know. She had a point. And she thought I was his supplier, even though Craig was getting dope from other dealers. It wasn't just me. But she didn't like me, I guess, I thought. Or, he said she didn't like me. We hardly spoke two words. Except one time. Well, the one time before the other time. I was in my room, and I was smoking, and listening to music, and she knocked on my door, and as soon as I saw her I was like, Sorry, he's not here. I don't know where he is. And she was like, I didn't come to find Craig. So I just held the door open, and I was like, Okay, so, how can I help you? (Except I was stoned, so maybe I didn't say it like that, maybe I said, okay so what the f.u.c.k or something, because I remember she made a little disapproving thing out of the corners of her mouth.) And she just walked on past me into my room, which was a single, you know, because I was the resident advisor, and she walked over to my bed and sat at the edge of it. She was wearing a short skirt, and flip-flops, even though it was, like, the beginning of February, and she leaned forward and put her hands on her knees and just sort of looked at me, and I was standing there, and maybe because I was stoned and also her hair being so blond, so she was sort of covered with this light, like smoke light, and the light was sort of pulsing, like-I don't know. So, anyway, I'm not sure, but I think she unb.u.t.toned the top two b.u.t.tons of her blouse, and then she kind of pressed her b.o.o.bs together, and she said something like, Don't you like me? Which I did, I guess, but I was friends with Craig, you know, and they'd been going out already for like four months and he was totally in love with her, so I said something like, Sure. Did you and Craig break up? And she just burst out laughing, and she said, Haven't you ever f.u.c.ked your friend's girlfriend before? And then I guess I was so stoned I didn't know what to say, because I swear she had these little flames, like flickers, like horns, coming out of the sides of her head. I mean, sometimes when I'm really stoned, I see this stuff. It's a hallucination or whatever. I saw a halo once over my grandmother's head. And I thought my ex-girlfriend had a tail one night, when she got up to go to the bathroom, and it was swis.h.i.+ng around (laughs, coughs). But Nicole's little horns freaked me out, and I was like, Okay, Nicole, time for you to go, and I went over to the door and opened it, and stood there, and she got up really slow and walked past me with her blouse still undone, and then she put her arms around my neck and pushed up against me, and kissed me, and it was just a reflex, I mean, she was a very hot girl, maybe the hottest girl I'd ever even seen, really, so I was kissing her, and it went on a long time, and she sort of tried to pull me back into the room, but I said, No, you better go, and she started laughing, and b.u.t.toned back up, and then she said, I'll be back, Lucas. You're going to sleep with me, and you know it, because I know you want to, and I want to. After that, I just tried to avoid her when she was with Craig because I felt guilty, and because she made me really nervous. She only came to my room one more time without Craig, but Murph was with me, and we were cutting up this bag of (clears throat)-and she came in and lay down on my bed, and she was sort of reaching over and playing with my hair, and Murph was looking at me like what the f.u.c.k, so I told her she better leave, that if the cops or the administrators came by she'd be an accessory or something, and she was such a goody-goody on the surface that I knew she'd leave when I said that, and she did; she left. And then I was gone for a week, in Mexico at the break, and I barely saw her and Craig before that night, when he-I-I know it wasn't my fault, you know, but the whole thing. Her. Me. All the drugs I was selling, and doing, and it was my f.u.c.king car. She died in my f.u.c.king car. Because of my car.

(Here Professor Polson can be heard in the background, her speech m.u.f.fled, too far from the tape recorder to be distinguished clearly.) Yeah. Well I tell myself that every day. But, you know, you can't get around the fact that if I'd just said, No, man, you seem too freaked out, and I don't want you driving my car, or whatever. If I said I couldn't find the keys, or I'm taking the car someplace myself, they wouldn't have had the accident and Nicole wouldn't be dead. n.o.body else around here had a car to loan him. Well, whatever. It doesn't matter now, but basically I thought about that all spring. And the memorial service, and the posters, and . . . And I wasn't sleeping then either. And I was still smoking a lot. And I probably should have gone home or taken the job in Montana I was supposed to take for the summer, but I decided to stay here, I don't know. I didn't even really finish the semester, even though my profs gave me B's and let me slide on my finals and all that. So, I was here all summer, and it was like the whole town was empty except for me and Murph, and Murph was not doing that well either, for different reasons. His girlfriend. And also he got into speed, which was having this effect on him, so I wasn't even hanging out with him. I was subletting this apartment in a building over there on Coolidge, and the building had like forty apartments in it, and they were all empty, I think, except for one where there was this Meth Lady, and she was walking around the halls at night with black eyes and s.h.i.+t, talking about how she was looking for a baby and all this crazy stuff, and it was really creeping me out, so I started staying out of the apartment most of the time, walking around town listening to Coldplay on my iPod. That last CD, it's all about death. And that's when I started seeing her.

(There's a pause. In the background, Professor Polson: "Nicole?") Yeah.

(Another pause. A question is asked that can't be heard on the tape.) Okay. Sure. I knew. I mean, it wasn't a matter of wondering if it was her. It was her. I recognized her. She'd dyed her hair, but it was Nicole. She knew it was me, too. The first time, she pretended she didn't see me, and she turned around and started walking fast in the opposite direction. It was over by Barnes and n.o.ble. It looked like she'd just bought a book. I totally froze. It was like, I don't know. Not like seeing a ghost. It was like seeing . . . into a crack.

(Pause. Another question.) Exactly.

(Professor Polson: "I'm sorry to ask, Lucas, but were you stoned?") No. I wish I had been. That would have explained it. I was taking a break because I was applying for this seasonal job with the Road Commission, after I realized it would take me at least another year to graduate, and for the application there was going to be a drug test, but I ended up not going for the test anyway. And then that afternoon, I went back and got stoned-I knew I wouldn't pa.s.s it anyway, with all the s.h.i.+t I'd been smoking a couple weeks before-and then I started seeing her everywhere. She was sitting with some guy at the bar at Clancy's. They were doing something, like, looking at the screen of a laptop, typing things in. I knew it was her again. I mean, the hair was different, but that was it. And then I saw her a couple days later, crossing the street by the Law Quad, and she saw me. She was like, I don't know, fifty feet away, and I know she saw me because she smiled and gave me this little wave, and then, the last time, it was late, and I was coming back from Murph's, and I'll admit it, I was stoned, weed, and there were some other drugs involved, but I know what happened, I know- (Clears throat. Pause.) She was a block behind me, following me, and I kept looking behind me, and I could see that it was her.

(Professor Polson: "Wasn't it dark?") Street lights. It was bright out. I knew it was her, and I was trying to hurry, and then I guess I just thought, what am I doing, and I stopped, and I turned around, right outside the door to my apartment building, and I said, I know it's you.

She laughed, and she kept walking toward me, and I said, I'm going inside, and I kept walking, and went to my apartment and unlocked it, and went inside, but I didn't lock the door behind me-I guess I wanted her to come in. So I just sat on the couch and never even turned the lights on because, I don't know, it seemed worse to look at her in the light, and that's when she came in, and she just kind of hovered in the threshold for a minute, and I could really see her in the light from the hallway, and she was smiling, and she said, "Can I come in?" and I was like, "Yeah. You can come in," and then she shut the door behind her, and it was just like the first time, she unb.u.t.toned her s.h.i.+rt, which was sort of filmy and white, and took it off, and unzipped her shorts, and then she slid down next to me on the couch and we were kissing, and I think I was even crying, and when we were done she said, Told you, didn't I?

And then she put all her clothes on and left.

(Question. Pause.) I don't know. I don't remember what I said, or if I even asked her. I-It was like we were somewhere else. I was scared. Excited, too, but really scared, and I was shaking. I remember she laughed about that. My teeth were chattering. She thought it was funny. She was like, I'm the one who's supposed to be cold.

And now I haven't seen her since, but it's like I see her all the time. Every time I turn a corner, but then it turns out not to be her. I sleep with the light on, or I just don't sleep. I . . .

(Here the interview ends.) "Lucas," Professor Polson said. "I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I really have to do something now. I'm going to pick up the phone now and call Mental Health Services, and make an appointment for you."

Lucas nodded, as if he'd seen this coming.

Professor Polson was in the kitchen, on her phone, for what seemed to Perry like a long time, and finally came out with a sc.r.a.p of paper and the name of a therapist and an appointment time for Lucas in the morning. Lucas looked at Perry, as if questioning whether he should take the sc.r.a.p, and Perry nodded at him, feeling sad and relieved at the same time.

33.

Mira put a tiny drop of dishwas.h.i.+ng liquid into the dead center of each of the three mugs and then let the hot water pour into them, watching as they overflowed with suds.

It was 3:00 a.m.

After the boys had left, she'd walked around the apartment for half an hour-paced, really, a kind of back-and-forth followed by intervals of standing in place, wondering if she was standing in the middle of a particular room for a reason and, if so, what that reason could be. Finally, she'd noticed the three mugs-two on an end table, and one (hers) on the floor in front of the sofa, and was relieved to have a ch.o.r.e, a reason not to be in bed yet.

When the bubbles in the mugs stopped flowing, Mira turned the water off, tipped the cups over, poured the clear water out, and set them upside down on the dish drainer. She turned the lights off and then stood staring toward the sink for quite a while before she leaned against the wall and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor.

When was the last night she'd been at home alone?

Certainly it had been before the twins. But going back even further, it had been, she supposed, only a few times in the early days of her marriage-only in hotel rooms (conferences, job interviews). This was different. This was the place the twins were supposed to be, asleep with their blankets pulled up to their chins (they both did this, rosy fingers grasping the satin edges, lying on their backs, pink-cheeked, eyes moving around in their dreams beneath their vaguely light blue lids).

And Clark.

Mira was supposed to go into the bedroom now and find him asleep on his side, the bed torn to pieces by his s.h.i.+fting and rolling, s.h.i.+rtless. The silver St. Christopher medal she'd given him would catch the light from the hallway.

She'd brought that medal back with her from Romania when Clark was only a fantasy-after having spent only about a week in bed with him before she'd left for her fellows.h.i.+p year-just an intriguing and s.e.xy guy she hoped very much she might be seeing more of. Back then, it had been a gesture that surprised her even as she made it, sliding the paper-wrapped medal into her bag. She could not have called what she had with Clark when she'd left for Eastern Europe a "relations.h.i.+p." (And what were "relations.h.i.+ps" during those graduate school years when the most important virtue was negative capability, when you knew better than to even dare ask-such anxious grasping-"Will I be seeing you again?") She'd bought the St. Christopher at a little wooden stall outside of a church near the sh.o.r.e of the Black Sea, knowing as she bought it that it was for Clark. When the old man who'd sold it to her put it in the palm of her hand, he wrapped her fingers around it for her and then he kissed her fist.

If Clark were there, in bed, in their apartment, he'd grumble when she came in and lay down beside him, and Mira wouldn't know if he was asleep and annoyed to have been awakened, or awake and simply annoyed that she had entered the room. It had been a long time (a year? two?) since he'd rolled over and put his arms around her waist and buried his face in her hair.

Was this what it was like when you found yourself sliding, impossibly and inevitably, toward a divorce?

And what then?

Would she and Clark and the beautiful miracle of the twins be turned, as seemed the custom now, into one of those joint-custody arrangements? An elaborate plan sketched out, and signed by a judge? Thursday through Monday with Mira. Monday through Thursday with Clark. Or every other week? Or every two weeks? Vacations numbered, accounted for? Holidays divided up like so many s.h.i.+ny pennies?

Back in the days of Mira's childhood, when there was a divorce, the fathers generally just slipped away to California and were replaced by the mothers' new husbands. But Clark was not the kind of father who would slip away. He might very well be, in fact, the kind of father who would fight her for full custody. He might very well be the kind of father who would be granted full custody by a left-leaning judge who wanted to show that she valued the role of the stay-at-home father as dearly as that of a housewife.

Mira was, she realized, crying.

There were tears running down her neck. There were tears pooling around her lips. She wiped them away. She held her breath to try to make the hiccupping sobs subside. She was being ridiculous, getting way ahead of herself. Clark had said nothing about divorce, had he? He'd only taken the twins to visit his mother. It was his mother's birthday. His mother's seventieth. He would be back. He'd been right-she couldn't have come along in the middle of the week.

Mira took her hands away from her face and forced herself to think of something else.

The interview.

She would think about that. Lucas. Her research. Her book. When the boys had first arrived, Mira had been certain that she'd know what to make of Lucas and his account of events. He'd slouched into the apartment looking quite a bit worse for wear than she remembered him-but drugs tended to do that, even to the very young. Jeff Blackhawk had told her that Lucas was in his poetry workshop that semester, and was an interesting writer but seemed unable to speak. Mira remembered him as a terrible writer-all adjectives and unsubstantiated opinions-who could not be dissuaded from dominating every cla.s.s discussion with his opinions. Halfway through the term with her he'd had that trouble with a drug bust, and after that he had gotten quieter, although his papers became even more opinionated and full of purple prose. She remembered one essay he'd written that had nothing whatsoever to do with whatever a.s.signment he'd been given, and had become, instead, a rant against oppressive drug laws: Why does the United States, perhaps the earth's most variegated garden, feel it must oppress the very youth it purports to wish to nurture into blossom?

And she also remembered reading this first line to Clark while grading papers at the kitchen table. It was supposed to make Clark laugh, give him an idea of the mind-numbing work she was doing at the kitchen table as he bounced the newborn twins to sleep in the chair across from her, but Clark had just snorted and said, "Really," in agreement with Lucas's sentiment.

But the Lucas in her apartment that evening had appeared drained of his saccharine pa.s.sions. There was a strange quarter-size patch of hair missing just above his left temple, and repeatedly during the interview he'd pressed his fingers to that spot and rubbed it as if he were experiencing sharp pain there. He must have managed to rub the hair away, and then continued to rub enough to prevent it from growing back.

His monologue had been chilling, baffling, incredible. Unless he was a future Academy Award winner, this could not have been an act. Mira had the impression he'd not told a soul the story until then, and that perhaps he'd even managed not to think about it in detail until he'd opened his mouth to speak to her.

But what had actually happened?

Mira knew what she wanted to believe-the thing that would fit the thesis she knew she shouldn't have already developed, but had.

There were thousands of accounts of ghosts reported on college campuses. Murdered coeds thumbing rides to the cemeteries where they were buried. Suicides still weeping in dormitory shower stalls, drunken fraternity brothers still prowling around under the balconies they'd drunkenly fallen from. The youthful dead were particularly inspiring when it came to such stories, and the living youth seemed particularly inspired by their dead peers. And Nicole Werner was the perfect campus ghost. The beautiful virgin with that already ghostly senior portrait. The evil boyfriend. The grieving sorority sisters. The dark, cold night of her violent death. Her roommate had to identify her by the jewelry she was wearing because the gorgeous sorority girl had been unrecognizable.

In a graduate seminar Mira had been invited to take her senior year in college (because Professor Niro had said he thought she was the most serious undergraduate student of anthropology he'd ever encountered), they'd read Charles Mackay's cla.s.sic, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. The book had impressed Mira deeply-probably more than it impressed the other students, because she was so young. The professor had expressed some contempt for the shoddy research, the slapdash psychoa.n.a.lysis, the exaggerations in the book, but Mira had carried the impressions of that text with her through all the years of her education that had followed, and she still felt them. There had been no chapter on ghost sightings on college campuses, but Mira remembered very well Mackay's chapter on haunted houses, and his conclusion that the weak and credulous people who were drawn to them would be the very sort of people who would see ghosts in them.

Lucas might certainly be one of Mackay's weak and credulous. Lucas was easy. But what about Perry? Could both boys be suffering from the same overstimulation of the imagination?

Mira looked down at the watch glowing green on her wrist: 4:02. She had to teach her cla.s.s in five hours. And somehow it didn't even startle her (a movie camera would have captured her only casually looking up from her wrist.w.a.tch as if she'd been expecting the sound all along) when there was a tentative-sounding knock on the door and a whisper she'd never have heard if she had been in bed: "Professor Polson? It's just Perry Edwards again, if you're there."

34.

Nicole was down to her bra, her panties. They matched. Pink. He hadn't been able to look closely, but Craig thought he'd glimpsed a little heart, or maybe a bird, sewn onto the right-hand corner of the panties. And he was pretty sure he'd glimpsed the palest bit of downy hair between the panties and the high bikini spot of her inner thigh. Her cheeks had gone from a pink that matched the underwear to a deeper shade of pink in the course of their two hours in his bed. G.o.d only knew what color his own cheeks were. He was bathed in sweat. His hair was matted against his forehead. His heart had been beating so hard for so long in every part of his body that at least he knew for certain that he had no undetected heart defects. He'd never have lived through this if he did.

Perry was at home in Bad Axe for the weekend, so Nicole had spent the weekend rising from and returning to Craig's bed in their dorm room.

"No, Craig, not yet. But it feels so good. Oh my G.o.d. No, stop. O-"

It was like a refrain now to the loveliest song he'd ever heard. He would have done anything she'd said. He felt certain that if she'd have let him, he could have levitated with her in his arms and they could have made love on the ceiling. He could have unzipped his body and wrapped her in his skin. He could have buried himself in her neck and slipped into the place between her shoulder and her throat, and been soldered by pa.s.sion to her forever.

But she wouldn't let him.

"No, oh, Craig, it's so hard to say no. I want. But, no. Please. I'm not ready. If I were, it would be you, and it would be now. But-"

"It's okay. It's okay. I know." He breathed the words into her mouth. "I just want to press against you. Just let me hold you. Can I touch you-"

"There. Yes. Oh my G.o.d. O-"

35.

It was one of those October days during which it seemed like the middle of the night all day, and that, Sh.e.l.ly supposed, was why she was waking up so disoriented. That, and the bottle of wine.

Where was she? What time was it? Who was sleeping beside her?

Two bottles of wine?

They'd started drinking after lunch-some tuna filets in olive oil, some tomato slices. First, they'd split the expensive bottle of white, and then the cheap red stuff Sh.e.l.ly kept on hand for cooking. Had they finished both of them?

Truly, Sh.e.l.ly had no idea how much they'd had to drink, but she could still feel the wonderful muscle exhaustion of the s.e.x. Of the hours of s.e.x. Her lips were swollen with it, and she licked them, and there was the taste of it on her lips and tongue-salty, sweet. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s felt heavy. Her nipples were still hard as little nails. Between her legs she felt bruised and wet.

How, exactly, had she come to be sleeping in this bed beside Sh.e.l.ly?

How, exactly, had they gotten from there to here?

A full moon was s.h.i.+ning through the window (Sh.e.l.ly hadn't bothered to pull the shades), and after she finally managed to open her eyes fully and to rub them into focus, she could see clearly and deliciously that Josie Reilly was asleep on her side, the sheet pulled up only to her naked hip, pale and white, her black hair spilling over Sh.e.l.ly's rosebud pillowcases. In the corner something with green eyes blinked, and it took Sh.e.l.ly a breathless second to realize that it was Jeremy, standing stock-still, as if on high alert or turned to stone. Confused. Disapproving. Displaced. She remembered Josie saying in the sweetest, most apologetic voice, "Can you please get the cat off the bed? I really don't like cats."

Now, Josie Reilly sighed and opened her eyes, and smiled when she saw Sh.e.l.ly looking down at her. She reached up one elegant arm-the one with the silver vein of a bracelet around it-and placed her fingertips against Sh.e.l.ly's throat before propping herself up slowly on one elbow and kissing the place she'd touched as she slid her hand from Sh.e.l.ly's neck to her breast, and her lips moved up from Sh.e.l.ly's neck to her lips.

It had been just past noon when Josie had stepped into Sh.e.l.ly's house bearing two Starbucks cups, s.h.i.+vering in her soaked cashmere hoodie.

"Can I come in?" she'd asked, and Sh.e.l.ly had said, of course, of course, although she was incredibly annoyed to find Josie there, when she was supposed to be minding the office, and to have been woken up from her nap.

Josie's cheeks were crimson, mottled, and there were tiny raindrops on her forehead. Sh.e.l.ly must not have been able to hide the annoyance on her face, because Josie had bitten her lip and then said, "Oops. Should I not have come over? I thought you might need some cheering up."

"No," Sh.e.l.ly said. "It's fine. It's . . . nice. Thank you, Josie. How thoughtful." She took the cup Josie was holding out to her with one hand, and pulled her bathrobe closed around her chest with the other. "Come in. Sit down, and give me your hoodie. I'll toss it in the dryer-on the delicate cycle."

Josie blinked, looking pleased, and the raindrops fell from her eyelashes onto her cheeks. She handed her own Starbucks cup to Sh.e.l.ly so that she could unzip her hoodie.

"Thank you. I'm soaked."

The zipper made a sound that made Sh.e.l.ly think of a comet-something traveling at an incredible speed, very far away-and then Josie Reilly was standing before her wearing what she knew girls now called "camis," or "tanks," but which, when Sh.e.l.ly was this girl's age, had been lingerie. The kind of thing you might wear on your wedding night.

It was pale green, raw silk, hemmed with a paler green lace. It was also wet, and it clung to Josie's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, making the perfect outline of them visible, no imagination needed. Her nipples were hard. There were goose b.u.mps on her arms.

"Is it okay, I mean, if I hang out for a bit? I can't go out like this." She opened her arms as if to display herself fully in her camisole to Sh.e.l.ly, as if to invite her, incite her, to look at her body, and Sh.e.l.ly did-she couldn't help but look-and then she looked at Josie's face, and it was impossible not to interpret the expression on it as flirtation.

Flirtation verging on seductive invitation: Her lips were pressed together. She was batting her eyelashes. A small smirk played at the corners of her lips. Her weight rested on one leg, and the hipbone of the other was bare, a blinding inch of pale exposed flesh.

Sh.e.l.ly's breath felt ragged when she inhaled, and she raised her eyebrows, opening her mouth before exhaling and saying, holding up the hoodie, trying to sound casual, "I'll take this downstairs."

"Thanks, Sh.e.l.ly," Josie said, and then, "Is it okay if I sit down? I don't think I'm so wet I'll ruin your couch or anything."

"Of course," Sh.e.l.ly said, and even to herself she sounded like someone in a trance, under a spell, like someone who had just stepped off a treadmill onto uns.h.i.+fting ground. She was almost surprised, when she got to the bas.e.m.e.nt, to find the washer and dryer where they had always been. She pulled out the limp previous load of her own socks and panties, tossed them into the plastic basket waiting in the corner, and then ran her hand through the lint trap before putting Josie's hoodie on the delicate cycle and turning back toward the stairs.

"I love your house," Josie said.

She'd taken off her shoes and left them by the front door. Her feet were bare. Her toenails were painted silver, like her fingernails. She had one leg crossed over and under the other in a position that was impossibly dexterous and casual at the same time. Her elbow was propped up on the back of the couch, and her fingers were playing through her hair, lifting and pulling and twirling the black strands as, with her other hand, she lifted the Starbucks cup to her lips, sipped, licked them, and then said, looking around, "It's so cool. Do you live alone?"

"Yes," Sh.e.l.ly said. "Except for my cat."

"Oh," Josie said. "What's its name?" She looked around, as though worried that Jeremy would show himself.

"Jeremy," Sh.e.l.ly said.

"Why Jeremy?" Josie asked. "Isn't that a little odd for a cat name?"

"I guess," Sh.e.l.ly said.

She had, she realized, no clever story to tell about Jeremy's name. She'd simply wanted to avoid giving the cat the kind of name all of her single, academic, lesbian friends had given theirs: Plato. s.e.xton. Amadeus. Sappho.

She'd pulled the name Jeremy out of thin air, thinking it had no baggage whatsoever, that she'd never known a single person named Jeremy. It was only months later that she remembered the one Jeremy she'd forgotten: a r.e.t.a.r.ded boy who'd lived in her neighborhood, who'd fallen down a flight of stairs in his house and been killed.