A Shiver of Wonder (13 page)

“What’d she say to ya?” Bill’s eyes were as
bright as his reddened forehead, and the reflected light from the
TV made him appear slightly demented.

David gulped some more beer, attempting to
sort through all that Clair had said. “I asked her why she knew so
much.
How
she knew so much. She didn’t answer. Big surprise.
Why?”

Bill leaned further toward him. David got a
thick whiff of his breath, and it wasn’t good: fermented halitosis
with an undercoating of decay. “When she took your hand. What’d she
say to ya then? Was too soft for me to hear.”

“Mmm.” David tried not to dwell on the
weirdness of Bill down on his knees, eavesdropping through a crack
in the wooden fence as a first grade girl took hold of David’s hand
to whisper bizarre prognostications into his ears. “Something about
me knowing myself. That I would do so. Some day. Soon.”

Bill continued to gawk at him, his intense
gaze turning by slow degrees more and more befuddled. “What?” he
asked, a detonation of spittle going along for the ride. “What’s
that
s’posed to mean?”

David shrugged. “I don’t know. It was
strange, even for Clair. But that was what she said: that I’d know
myself.”

“Bah!” Bill’s hand flew up to bat at the
air. “Bah! I jus’ think she’s crazy!” He sat back in his chair
again, and David began to breathe once more with relief.

The can he had brought Bill was emptied,
crushed, and discarded. The volume of the game was turned up.
Bill’s eyes became glazed as he focused on the TV again, and David
realized that he didn’t want to be here anymore.

He stood, and Johnson leapt up as well. “I
gotta go call Genevieve,” he announced. “You want me to grab you
another one before I head out?”

A grunt and a nodded head were his
answer.

“All right.” David got Bill a fresh one,
thumped his shoulder twice, and then turned toward him one last
time before leaving. “You want anything else? A sandwich, maybe? I
can bring one over for you; I haven’t made dinner yet, anyway.”

Bill didn’t even look at him. “Nah,” he
uttered as he popped open the new can.

“Take care, Bill. Hope you get some sleep.”
David stepped outside, and quietly closed the door behind him. And
then he and Johnson walked through the darkened courtyard before
returning to apartment 1F for the remainder of the evening.

It was Monday morning, normally the time for
clear-eyed organization and planning for the coming week. This
Monday morning, however, David was in a fog. He’d woken up late,
and thus had had to take Johnson on his walk before breakfast. He
hadn’t gone shopping for almost a week, so his first meal of the
day was dry cereal with no milk or fruit. And Johnson wasn’t coming
to Culpepper Mills with him today, because David worried that
Detective Ormsby’s visit regarding his alibi for the previous
Wednesday had ruffled more than a few feathers. The last thing he
needed to do was to waltz in yet again with his dog, pester the
staff with his usual arcane questions, and then discover that
Johnson had shat on the already pissed off CEO’s carpet while David
was away from his desk for a few minutes.

At least Genevieve’s animosity had
downgraded from boil to simmer. David had finally texted her a bit
after ten the night before, asking if they could have dinner again
on Monday. At 11:45 his phone had lit up on the pillow beside him:
“Fine. 7:00. You make the reservation.” It hadn’t woken him up; he
had been unable to fall asleep until nearly two.

Johnson lay sulkily on the old couch after
David told him he wouldn’t be coming. It was incredible how animals
could act just like humans in their petty reactions to
circumstances they didn’t like! But business was business, and
David intuitively understood that he needed to toe the company line
for the moment.

He closed and locked the apartment door
behind him, and then rushed to catch the trolley that would hit
Piston and Third in a few minutes. To walk to Culpepper Mills would
only be fifteen minutes more, but he wanted to be inside the front
doors before ten.

As the trolley slid north, David closed his
eyes and attempted to compartmentalize the many rivers of silt
muddying his thoughts. Clair, Janice and Genevieve, the primary
branches. Bill, Heck and Ormsby, the tributaries dumping effluent
into the system. Jess, Mrs. Rushen and Abby Lowell, bystanders on
the banks whose roles were unclear, if roles they played at all in
the drama.

And what about Todd, that perpetually
invisible elephant in the room within David’s relationship with
Genevieve? Didn’t he provide his own oozing, gurgling stream of
negativity, weaving himself into so many conversations and wordless
glances and recriminations?

But of course, the recriminations were
mostly in David’s head, and knowing this fact only caused him to
brew up even
more
recriminations regarding his utter lack of
self-control.

He opened his eyes as Birch Avenue slid by.
Should he go talk to Abby again? But what good could that do? She
would merely repeat what she’d already told him, that he needed to
give it more time, and allow Genevieve to work through her issues
at her own speed, and in her own way.

Besides, David could already anticipate
Abby’s disappointment in him if he broached the same subjects
again. Especially if the two of them had discussed him on Sunday
when Genevieve had visited.

Which, of course, they had.

So why couldn’t he navigate the course of
his relationship with Genevieve without help? And why were the
people from whom he sought aid always
her
friends?

But David knew the answer to the latter
question: he had no friends of his own. And as for the former? He
shook his head in resignation. He had no confidence in his ability
to sustain a relationship, so why should he be surprised when one
was unable to be sustained?

The trolley’s bell rang twice as it crossed
Larch, and David stood, ready to exit at Willow. He could talk to
Lydia, but that idea still bumped solidly into the fact that she
worked for Genevieve, their friendship aside. As well, he couldn’t
help but acknowledge to himself that not-so-ignorable truth that
Lydia’s outrageous flirting catered mightily to his ego. Whether
her attentions were in seriousness or not was quite another
matter.

As he hopped onto the sidewalk and began
taking brisk strides toward Fourth Street, his thoughts turned yet
again to Clair. Clair of the shiny saddle shoes, and the strangely
worded phrases, and the seeming inability to answer a single
question with a straight answer. What was he to make of Clair?

The mullioned-glass doors of the Culpepper
Mills offices loomed. It was time for David to get to work.

~*~*~*~*~

Two and a half hours later, David had
slipped product details onto a score of web pages, built two more
templates, and learned more about the inner workings of a
warehousing floor operation than he’d ever desired to know. The
knowledge did have some application to his chore, as he was the
architect in charge of how orders would now be translated from
consumer to company, but the long-winded manager with whom he’d met
had been a virtual fountain of useless, rambling information.

David
had
discovered that the search
for Hector Vance’s murderers was intensifying. John “Deke” Decatur
and Lewis Allan Thickman were now considered prime suspects,
according to the newspaper one of Culpepper Mills’ vice presidents
had brought in to show him, she being the unfortunate corroborator
Detective Ormsby had found to question about David’s whereabouts on
the day in question.

“Poor Janice,” he had muttered to himself as
he’d skimmed the article before returning to his tasks. The
suspected killers were thought to be hiding out somewhere in
Greenville, and it had turned out that the ‘sister-in-law’ with
whom Heck stayed while there was in reality another girlfriend,
who’d been entirely unaware of the existence of Janice
Templeton.

David backed up his morning’s work, and then
headed outside. There wasn’t any point in visiting Gâteaupia, since
it was closed, so he bought a sandwich and an orange juice, and
then strolled south on Fourth Street as he ate his lunch. He’d work
from home for the rest of the day, and hopefully Johnson would
forgive him by the time the two of them took their afternoon
walk.

While at Culpepper Mills, David had managed
to keep his thoughts away from all that had occupied him before.
But as he left the Shady Grove business district behind, the
various conundrums began to descend once again. Genevieve, Clair,
Janice, Ormsby.

But Ormsby was probably off chasing bad guys
in Greenville. And Janice could take care of herself, was probably
already shrugging off, in fact, Heck’s latest duplicity as
something
else
she expected the men in her life to do
naturally.

Which left Genevieve and Clair.

He crossed Gum, and briefly entertained the
idea of turning onto Birch to drop by Genevieve’s house for a few
minutes.

But that was a terrible idea. She’d only be
irritated with him, and would probably cancel their dinner
engagement to boot.

David traversed Birch, continuing south. He
tossed the last bit of his sandwich into a trashcan, and drained
his orange juice before dumping the cup in as well.

A pair of women walked by with kids in tow,
and David nodded to them as they smiled at him. Up ahead, a group
of parents was crossing Fourth at Marion Avenue, all holding the
hands of what appeared to be kindergartners, probably being let out
after a half day of school.

Shady Grove Elementary was on Marion, one
block east at Fifth. Clair was there right now, David realized,
most likely at lunch with all of the other first graders. Could he
spot her on the playground if he walked by?

But before he could weigh whether or not
this was a good idea, he had turned onto Marion. More parents
passed by him, all offering greetings of some sort, no doubt
thinking that David was on his way to the school to pick someone up
himself.

The playground was a riot of children.
Eating, playing, running, shouting. David looked for Clair, but
quickly realized that it would be close to impossible to pick her
out among the hordes of moppets streaking about the asphalt. A
teacher blew a loud whistle three times, and all activity slowed
for a few seconds while she admonished a boy who had just kicked
another. But almost instantaneously, the frenetic whirlwind had
resumed at full force.

Was this Mrs. Jenkins? The wise, empathetic
teacher who Clair so clearly admired? David didn’t think so; this
woman appeared to be in her early twenties, and her visage was
already displaying the fine, harsh lines of the impatience that she
felt for her youthful charges.

He entered the school’s lobby.

“Can I help you?” An older, tired-looking
civil servant rose from behind a counter.

“Hi. I was wondering if…” If what? If he
could talk to someone about the strange little girl who lived in
his building? “… if Mrs. Jenkins might be around.”

“Are you a parent?” the woman asked.

“No,” David replied. “It’s a personal
matter.”

She stared at him for about six seconds with
her eyebrows raised, and then picked up a phone, still standing
erect with her eyes glued to the visitor. “Carol?” she said. “You
got a few minutes for someone to see you on a personal matter?”

David heard the murmur of a response emerge
from the receiver.

The mouthpiece was covered. “Name?” she
asked him brusquely.

“David Wilcott,” he answered, feeling even
stupider than before.

This was repeated into the mouthpiece. And
then a second later, the receiver was thunked down. “You know where
her classroom is?”

“No. I know she teaches first grade, but I –
”

A finger rose to point down a hallway. “One
twenty six. Third door on the right. Eighteen minutes till lunch is
over.” Without anything further, the woman sat, returning her
attention to whatever she’d been doing before.

David walked down the hall, smiling at the
hundreds of art projects that lined the walls all the way up to the
ceiling. None of them were of the quality he’d seen in Abby
Lowell’s room, but they were uniformly cheery, splashed with
brilliant colors and bold lines.

The door to Room 126 was propped open. David
knocked, and then stepped inside.

“You would have to be David Wilcott.” A
woman sat at a colorful wooden desk at the front of the room,
whiteboard behind her, classroom before her. The classroom itself
was a mélange of brightly hued numbers, letters, animals, places,
and elemental sentences.

“I am,” David replied. “I’m sorry for
bothering you during your lunch.”

She smiled, a warm, engaging gesture that
practically welcomed him to sit cross-legged on the plush red
carpet that lay between the children’s desks and her own. “You’re
too old to have been one of my students,” she said, “and I know
you’re not one of my parents. No briefcase, so you’re not a lawyer.
What can I help you with?”

David liked her, instantly. She was in her
late thirties or early forties, cute with a touch of plumpness. Her
demeanor was frank yet accessible, and the friendly smile had
remained on her countenance even as she waited for David to explain
his business.

“You have a student named Clair in your
class,” he stated.

A hesitation, and then she nodded. “I
do.”

“I live down on Piston, at the Rainbow Arms.
Clair lives there, too.”

Her head tilted as her eyes grew more
luminous. “I see. Mr. Wilcott, I have a feeling you might be here a
few minutes. Why don’t you grab that chair over there and sit right
here at the desk with me?”