LITMIR.BIZ

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of my professors just to make sure.”

      “Did the surviving girl ever recover?” Sylvia asked. “I’d sure like to meet her.”

      “I could probably arrange that—she lives just few blocks away. But I don’t want you to start crowding her.”

      “My,” Trish said, “aren’t we possessive?”

      “Our families were close, so I was sort of a big brother to the twins. I told James, if the cops get lucky and turn up the sumbitch who killed Regina, I almost hope he does get off. I can come up with some very interesting things to do to him—things that go way past the tepid sort of stuff allowed by the criminal justice system. Fire and white-hot steel hooks—that kind of thing.”

      “Whoo!” Erika said. “This one’s a real savage, isn’t he?”

      “Who was the surviving twin’s psychiatrist?” Sylvia asked me then.

      “Fallon. He runs that private sanitarium where she was staying.”

      “I’ve heard of him. He’s supposed to be very good.”

      “Maybe so, but could we talk about something else?”

      “Of course, Mark,” Trish said quickly, and she adroitly changed the subject to resurfacing the kitchen floor instead.

      After breakfast, I drove down to the campus; I’d encountered something I wanted to examine. It appeared that there’d been some fairly extensive contacts between Walt Whitman and an English group known as the pre-Raphaelites.

      We tend to get compartmentalized in our thinking. It’s almost as if British literature and American literature evolved on two different planets. The mail did get through, though, and we do speak approximately the same language the Brits speak. The possibility of transoceanic influence could be of genuine academic interest, so I headed to the library to pursue it a bit further.

      I stopped by Mary’s place on my way home.

      “Where have you been?” Renata’s aunt demanded when she opened the door. “I tried to call you, but nobody answered.”

      “I was facedown in the library,” I explained. “I guess the rest of the gang at the boardinghouse had things to attend to on campus as well. Is something wrong?”

      “Renata had a bad night. She was still awake when I got home from work.”

      “Did she tell you what was bothering her?”

      “It was some kind of nightmare, and whatever it was, it must have been pretty awful. Evidently she was flailing around while she was dreaming, because she’s got a lot of bruises on her arms.”

      “Maybe I’d better stay here tonight,” I suggested.

      “That won’t be necessary,” she told me. “I’ve got tonight off, so I’ll be here to keep an eye on her.” Then she gave me a speculative look. “Can you keep something to yourself, Mark?” she asked me bluntly.

      “If you want me to, yes.”

      “I gave her a sleeping pill, and I’d rather that her psychiatrist didn’t find out about it.”

      “Over-the-counter stuff?”

      “No, a little heavier than that. Just about everybody who works graveyard shift has an open-ended prescription for sleeping pills. I won’t make a regular practice of it, but anytime Ren starts getting all wired-up, I can put her down. Sometimes we have to bend a few rules.”

      “I don’t have any problem with that. I’ll give you a buzz later on this evening to find out how she’s doing.”

      “If she wakes up. If she was as wrung-out as she seemed to be, she might sleep all the way through until tomorrow morning.”

      “It would probably be good for her. I’ve got a hunch that this back-to-school business might have her wound a little tight. We were hoping that auditing classes instead of taking them for credit might keep the pressure off her, but maybe we’re still rushing things a bit.”

      “I’ll watch her. If it gets to be too much for her, she can either drop the classes for a few weeks—or let it all slide until next quarter.”

      “I don’t know about that, Mary,” I said dubiously. “If the boss gets wind of anything like that, he might insist that she come back home.”

      “Then we’ll just have to make sure that he doesn’t find out, won’t we?”

      “We can try.” I glanced at my watch. “I’d better get moving. If last night was any indication, the ladies get all torqued out when I’m late for meals.”

      When I got back to the boardinghouse, Charlie had his door open, and he was going at his walls with a paint roller. I stared into his room. “Boy, are you going to get yelled at!” I told him.

      “Trish said I could paint the room any color I wanted,” he said defensively.

      “I don’t think she’s going to like it much,” I predicted. “You don’t come across very many rooms painted black.”

      “It’s a neutral color. Nobody flips out when he sees a room painted white—or gray.”

      “Black’s different. What made you decide on black?”

      “It’s sort of outer-spacey, don’t you think?”

      “It’s definitely spacey. Are you thinking about adding stars later?”

      He squinted at the dull black ceiling. “I don’t think so. I think I’d like to keep the infinity effect. The ceiling’s as close or as far away as I want it to be, and it moves kind of in and out when I look at it. The whole idea is to make it indefinite. I’ll be working with some equations later on that won’t have spatial limitations, and I’ll need to be able to visualize them. I think those black walls and ceiling are going to help.”

      “I still think it’ll make Trish flip out.”

      “She’ll get over it. Did you happen to catch the news today?”

      I shook my head. “I was down in the bowels of the main library. Is something going on I should know about?”

      “We might have to start wearing flak jackets to class,” he replied. “Some guy got knifed on campus—down by the crew dorm.”

      “Crew?”

      “The rowing team—the guys who row those long, skinny boats in races. Their dorm’s down by the edge of Lake Washington. The last word I picked up on TV was that the cops thought it was a gang-related killing.”

      “Whoopee,” I said flatly. “As far as the cops are concerned, jaywalking’s gang-related.”

      “They do sort of lean on it now and then, don’t they?”

      “They might be pushing this one a little. Gangs normally use guns, not knives.” I shrugged. “I doubt that we’ll get too much in the way of details from TV. The cops clam up when they’re investigating something.”

      “Hello, up there,” Trish called from downstairs. “We’re home. Is everybody decent?”

      “We’re dressed, if that’s what you mean,” I told her.

      “I’m coming up.”

      “Feel free.” I called, then looked at Charlie. “You might want to close your door,” I suggested.

      “She’ll see the paint job sooner or later, anyway,” he replied. “Let’s get the yelling and screaming over with.”

      Trish surprised the both of us, though. When she reached the top of the stairs, she glanced through Charlie’s doorway and shrugged. “Interesting notion,” she observed.

      “You’re

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