Final Exam (9 page)

Mary turned, the twenty feet between us not able to disguise her surprise and suspicion at seeing me so close. Her brow wrinkled and she pursed her lips.

Kevin, not one to easily get the hint, stepped into the little space in which I had been hiding. “What were you doing in there?”

Mary gave me one last look and started up the stairs to the second floor of the convent, leaving me standing in the middle of the hallway looking as guilty as I felt.

Just a nun with her breakfast after hitting “snooze” too many times?

Or a protective aunt, harboring her supposedly missing nephew?

I was inclined toward the latter.

Eleven

I waited until I was seated at Kevin’s small kitchen table later that evening before I gave him what for for blowing my cover.

“How was I supposed to know that you were stalking Sister Mary?” he asked, carrying in a bottle of wine from the galley kitchen and placing it in a chiller on the table. The spectacular view he had of the river from his sixth-floor residence had lulled me into a dream state and I sat up straight, surprised to hear his voice.

“Why else would I be pressed up against the doors of the bookstore?”

“Because you’re not normal?”

I picked up the wine and poured us both a glass. “Very funny.” I told him everything—from the exploding toilet, to meeting the Brookwells, to the cemetery encounter with someone who I thought was Wayne, to finding Mary buying breakfast.

“What’s wrong with that?” he asked in reference to Mary buying breakfast in the commuter cafeteria. “Maybe she overslept.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Yeah. And maybe I’ll find out that Wayne Brookwell is in the Peace Corps building latrines in Uganda and just forgot to tell everybody.” I sipped my wine. “Ain’t gonna happen, padre.”

Kevin had prepared pasta with pesto, garlic bread, and some chicken cutlets, and we chowed down. I had brought Trixie up with me, and fed her some scraps from my plate which she gobbled up excitedly. After she had had her fill—or realized that there was no food left—she leaped up on Kevin’s leather couch and fell into a deep, snore-filled sleep.

“Make yourself at home,” Kevin called to her, but she was already out like a light. He turned back to me. “Did Maintenance replace your toilet?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. Any ideas on how to light a fire under them? No pun intended?”

Kevin thought for a moment. “I’ll make a call in the morning. Nothing scares the maintenance staff like the threat of eternal damnation. If that doesn’t get you a new toilet, nothing will.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Whatever you can do. I already have three messages in to them but not one has been returned. Nor do I have my own toilet on which to sit my butt cheeks.” I’d been sneaking around, using the decrepit bathroom facilities in the laundry room when I needed to.

“Too much information,” Kevin said.

I leaned back and smoothed down my blouse. “That was delicious, Kevin. Thank you. I hope you’ll take pity on me and invite me back soon.”

He started to answer but didn’t get a chance; the phone began ringing in the living room. Trixie raised her head as if the thought crossed her mind to answer it; when she saw Kevin crossing from the eating area into the living room, she laid her head back down and resumed her nap.

I busied myself clearing the table, trying not to overhear who Kevin was talking to or what the subject of the call was. I ran the water in the sink and washed the dishes; although Kevin has a pretty nice apartment, it lacks some of the necessary amenities, like a dishwashwer. In the time it took him to finish his call, I had all of the dishes washed, dried, and put back into the cabinets.

He was a little pale when he came back to the dining room table. He sat down and finished off his glass of wine in one gulp.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“That was the archdiocese. I have a meeting with the bishop tomorrow.”

I knew that couldn’t be good and I could see that fact reflected on Kevin’s face. “Maybe you’re getting a raise?” I asked hopefully, even though I knew that priests didn’t get merit increases like members of the general population. I started to feel dread creeping up my spine; Kevin looked pretty distraught. My only thought was that he was getting transferred. If Kevin left here, I would be lost.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

I sat back down at the table. “What else could it be?”

“I don’t know,” he said, none too convincingly. He averted his eyes and balled up his napkin. He stood suddenly. “Listen. I have to call it an early night. I’ll have some materials to prepare for tomorrow.”

If he didn’t know why he was being called downtown, then what material would he have to prepare? But it was obvious that he didn’t want to talk about it and I didn’t want to pry, so I called Trixie and we went to the front door. “You’ll call me the minute you’re back?” I asked, taking his hand in mine.

“I will. Promise,” he said, and gave me a quick hug. He bent and petted Trixie who gave his hand a generous lick.

I stood in the hallway outside his room, my stomach in knots. Kevin’s relationship with the powers that be wasn’t that great to begin with; he was a flaming liberal in a very conservative institution. What could they possibly want with him at their headquarters? I started down the hallway, Trixie in tow, and hit the button for the elevator that would take us down to the ground level and my lovely suite. We piled into the small, ancient elevator, Trixie pressed up against me. I pulled the gate closed and the outer door shut automatically. I pressed the button for the first floor.

The elevator lurched as it began its descent and I leaned back against the cool steel of the interior. Trixie decided that our journey was going to take longer than expected and fell to the floor with a thud, her head resting on her paws.

Through the small round window, I saw the fifth floor pass by, then the fourth. The third, however, never materialized as the elevator stopped in a very matter-of-fact fashion way short of its mark. No sudden or abrupt interruption of service, just a slowing, a slight whine, and a cessation of movement. Trixie looked up at me from her spot on the floor as if to say “uh-oh.”

I remained calm and pressed the button for the first floor. Nothing. After a few minutes, I frantically began pushing every button on the panel, finally resting my finger on the alarm button at the bottom. I checked my watch and saw that dinner service was nearing its end. I prayed that dinner had been terrible and that the students in the dorm had eaten hurriedly and raced back to their rooms to dine on the hidden stashes from the care packages their parents sent with regularity. Having stepped over piles of boxes in the mailroom, I knew that care package deliveries were frequent and that they got many college students through the dicey menu that the cafeteria offered.

I also knew, though, that one of the RAs was supposed to be manning the desk in the lobby. I wondered if whichever dedicated person it was would hear my cries from their area or even if the call box was wired into the computer that sat on the desk.

When nobody responded to the alarm, I started banging on the door. “Hello! Anybody out there!” I looked through the glass and could see the fourth floor about five feet above the elevator. “Hey! I’m in here!”

When nobody answered, I jumped up and down on the elevator floor, hoping to get it moving again. When that didn’t work, I tried to pry open the doors; I wasn’t sure what good that would do but I was hoping any movement at all might jolt the mechanism that made the damn thing descend. Trixie started to whine when she sensed my rising anxiety.

I continued calling out to someone, anyone, in the dorm. It occurred to me that most of the lacrosse team lived on the fourth floor and that possibly they were at a game somewhere. I pressed the alarm button again, leaving my finger on it until it ached.

Finally, after about fifteen minutes, the speaker for the call-box crackled and I heard a female’s voice. “Can I help you?”

“Hi!” I yelled, grateful for human contact. Fifteen minutes seemed like a day and a half, stuck in the cramped space with a dog with halitosis. “It’s Dr. Bergeron and I’m stuck in the elevator.”

“Oh, hi, Dr. Bergeron. It’s Amanda.”

“Hi, Amanda. I’m stuck,” I repeated.

“Yeah, that happens,” she said.

I waited for her to tell me what the usual protocol was for a stuck elevator but none was forthcoming. “What do you usually do?” I prodded. What had happened to the jittery, anxious, uptight student whom I had met two days before? She had been replaced by a dullard, it seemed. Maybe without Wayne, she was nothing.

“Well, there’re a few things we can do.”

I waited a few beats. “Like what!”

“Did you jump and down?”

“Yes.”

“Did you try to pry the door open?”

“Yes.” I sat down on the floor next to Trixie. “Suffice it to say, Amanda, that I’ve tried everything possible to get the elevator to start moving again. Let’s skip everything and go to Plan B. What do we do now?”

She was silent. “We’ll call 911,” she said finally.

I was hoping that that wasn’t Plan B, because my main goal was not to call any more attention to myself. First the exploding toilet, then the graveyard incident, and now this. I’d be living on campus for the rest of my known days if this kept up. But I had to get out of here and I was resigned to the fact that the NYFD was going to be involved. “Okay. Go ahead. Call 911.”

“Okay.” I heard her muffled voice as she relayed the location of the emergency to the operator. She came back on the callbox. “Called them.”

“Thank you.”

“Hey,” she said, apparently to pass the time while we were waiting for the fire department. “Have you found out anything about Wayne?”

Wayne, Wayne, Wayne. This girl was a one-note Johnny. “No. Have you?”

“Well, no,” she said, indignant. As if she would tell me if she had.

The callbox being our version of the confessional screen, I decided to prod her for more information, thinking that not being able to look me in the eye might prompt her to give up more information than she normally would be willing to. “You really miss Wayne, huh, Amanda?” I asked gently.

“I do,” she whispered.

“Was he your boyfriend?” I asked.

She didn’t answer right away. “Not really.”

I tried to remember the term. “Friends with advantages?” I asked.

“What?”

That wasn’t right. What was the damn phrase? Was I running out of air? Was that why I couldn’t come up with it? I ran through some phrases in my head. Friends who are advantageous? Friends who are beneficial? I thought about adjectives to “advantages.” “Friends with benefits?” I asked, thinking that I had hit on the appropriate terminology.

“Something like that.”

Well, it was either that or not that, so I took her answer as a “yes.” “Was that all it was?”

She sniffled loudly into the box, making Trixie’s ears prick up. “I really, really liked Wayne!” she cried. “He was so cool.”

So I’ve heard. “Like loved him?”

She didn’t answer but made a muffled noise that sounded like an affirmative. “It’s kind of complicated. I’m engaged.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Engaged?” I exclaimed.

She sniffled some more. “To Brandon. He goes to Princeton. I love him and I love Wayne. I’m so confused,” she said, sounding very dejected and extremely lovelorn.

“That is complicated,” I agreed. “Does Brandon know about Wayne?”

“I think he has an idea that I might be—”

“Conflicted?”

“Yes. That’s a good word. Conflicted.”

“Does Wayne know about Brandon?”

“Yes. He doesn’t care. He thinks that we’re meant to be together.”

Oh, one of those. I had an ex-husband who had played the same tune on his love guitar. Until he had lost complete interest in me, that is.

“When are you supposed to get married?”

The sound of crying came through loud and clear via the ancient elevator’s squawk box. “This August. After I graduate.”

I’d be crying, too, if I knew I had to marry a guy when I was also in love with somebody else. The whole situation was starting to depress me. I decided to change the subject.

“Amanda, do you have any idea where Wayne may have gone?” I asked. “Please. He might be in trouble and we need to find him.”

“He might be in trouble?” She sounded truly frightened.

I had let on too much; that was clear. I looked down at Trixie. “Damn,” I whispered. “Well, I don’t know, Amanda, but don’t you think it’s weird how quickly he left?”

“He said he was going to Mexico for spring break but that he would be back Friday. When I saw you in his room, I knew that he hadn’t come back.” She paused. “Maybe he got delayed?” she asked hopefully. “Maybe his flight got canceled?”

I didn’t answer because I was thinking about Mexico. And drugs. That was a start. I readjusted my position on the floor and Trixie took the opportunity to lay her head on my lap. As long as you’re comfortable, Trix, I thought to myself.

“Are you still here?” she asked.

“I’m still here.” Where would I have gone? “Did the 911 operator say how long it would take for the fire department to come?”

I didn’t hear whatever she answered because above me I heard a man’s voice. Like God. “Alison?”

“Kevin?” Not God, but close enough.

“Are you stuck?” he asked.

“I’m not in here voluntarily,” I said. I thought that was obvious.

“No need for sarcasm, honey. Press the ‘four’ and ‘five’ button at the same time,” he called down. “I pried open the door on six but I’ll close it now. See if that works.”

I heard the door to six slam shut and I stood, doing as Kevin suggested. In an instant, the elevator heaved downward, slowly, and picked up a little speed as we descended but not so much as to throw us to the ground upon arrival on the first floor. I pulled the gate open and the door took a moment to open, but finally did. I was greeted by four firefighters, Amanda and her tearstained face, and the most welcome sight of all, Crawford.

Trixie and I stepped from the elevator. “Everything’s fine,” I said. “I’m sorry for bringing you out for a nonemergency.”

The shortest and stockiest of the firefighters was wearing a coil of rope around his shoulder. Presumably he was the one who was going to haul himself into the elevator shaft and rescue the big, tall woman and her dog. “You okay, ma’am?”

“I’m fine,” I assured him. “You can go. Really. But thanks for coming.”

He turned to the other firefighters and waved them off. They looked like an eager bunch, ready for some action in the elevator shaft.

I turned to Crawford. “Hiya, Crawford. What are you doing here?”

“I thought we could catch a quick drink before I go home. But I didn’t know that you were this lonely. You didn’t have to call Hook and Ladder 13,” he said, hooking a thumb toward the firefighters clustered in the hallway who were reassembling the gear that they had brought in with them. He smirked a little bit. “How did you get out?”