Fool's Journey (8 page)

           
There had been no more links in the chain of yesterday's
incidents, she reminded herself. Even so, today's events had taken on their own
ominous shape, as if she were looking at everything through a warped lens—her
encounter with Willard, Bess Seymour's veiled allusions, the oddly sexual
discussion in class. She felt as if she were waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Or worse.

           
Or my mind
misgives, there seems to be some consequence yet hanging in the stars.

Shakespeare always had
something that fit.
 

           
Was
she being overly dramatic? Could it be that everything that was going to happen
had already taken place? Had yesterday's events been random? Of course. They
must be. She was just the victim of some psychotic trick-or-treater who skipped
from life to life to see what havoc he could wreak, and then moved on.
 

           
The tarot, too, could be wrong, or at least misinterpreted.
Over interpreted. Hate, love, madness, Mrs. Ruiz had said. But that could mean
almost anything these days. God knew she had felt surrounded, fenced in, by a
perilous world long before yesterday.
 
Those cards would have been true for her through most of her life.

           
She remembered the long ago flash of the cameras in her
face as she was whisked away, out of sight. Years later, she had finally seen
the headlines. The stories with their speculation and idiotic theories. They
had called her Little Lizzie Borden, the beautiful child with a chip of ice for
a heart. Had she been drug-crazed? Jealous? A vicious bad seed?

           
They had no idea of the sacrifice she'd made in that one
moment. Or if they did, it hadn't made good enough copy for the tabloids.

           
Stop it.
She
had been through this endless loop of thought so often it had become a dark
mantra. Now, when life offered a bright alternative, banishing fear was more
than duty. It was vital.

           
As she sipped away at her brandy, her face slowly went
numb. Her hands and feet were getting cold. She wasn't used to drinking hard
liquor straight and that was probably a good thing. Numb was just fine tonight.

           
Holding her glass up to the dim light filtering in from
the street, she could see there was still a bit to go. She took a deep breath
and downed the rest in one shuddering gulp.

           
Now she'd try to sleep.
 
There is no sweeter thing, nor
fate more blessed than to sleep.

           
Who wrote that? Robinson? No. Masters? Maybe.

           
This was crazy. She'd been teaching English too long.

           
She turned away from the window into the blue-gray glow
from her computer monitor. The message window had come up.
You have mail,
it read.

           
She sat down at the desk and scanned the screen. Five new
messages. One was from Panda:

           
Hey, kiddo! Hope
your day went ok. Lock the door, curl up with some mace and say your prayers!
TTYL! Panda

           
Three others were from acquaintances. She yawned as she
clicked them open. One was a petition; the other two were long-winded academic
jokes, not terribly funny. The last message was an address she didn't
recognize. She'd probably gotten onto some list-serve without knowing it. She
opened it.

           
That moment she was
mine, mine, fair,

           
           
Perfectly pure and good: I found

           
A thing to do,
and all her hair

                       
In
one long copper string I wound

           
Three times her
little throat around,

                       
And
strangled her And strangled her And strangled her And strangled her And
strangled her And strangled her And strangled her And strangled her And
strangled her...

           
The poem
was so familiar it took a moment for her to see the change: The color of hair
in this quote had been changed from gold to copper, like her own.

The words danced before her as fear shot through
her heart. With one quick motion, she deleted the message and switched off the
computer, as if that would protect her.

The
lines were from “Porphyria’s Lover,” the story of a man who strangled a woman
with her own hair to keep her his alone. It was the focus of her upcoming book,
Porphyria's Revenge
, the Dovinger
prizewinner.

           
The implications washed over her. Not only had this
person, this other, violated her physically, then followed her home, but he
knew her well enough to follow her intellectually as well.

           
There was nothing a new deadbolt could do about that.

           
She took a deep breath and held it, releasing it after a
count of seven. That was better. Nothing had gotten any worse. Not really.

           
Then, three sharp raps came at the door, shattering the
nighttime silence.

           
Deirdre's heart stopped for a split second. Damn, she was
sick of fear, of quivering like a rabbit. She had a gun —she'd never been
without one since she'd been back in the world. She opened a drawer and slipped
it in her pocket.

Logically,
she knew it must be her landlord. He must have waited until she'd returned home
to make his repairs. The network connection must have been up when he'd tried
to call and an hour-long busy signal told him she wasn’t going anywhere.
Alarmist
, she thought as she went to the
door.

 
          
She
threw it open to the night, then froze where she stood. A man, a stranger,
stood on the landing. Deirdre slid her hand into her pocket as the he stepped
slowly toward her.

           
His long, black hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail
and his black eyes glittered at her from above high cheekbones. In the dim light
from the street, she could see a thin scar trailing down from the edge of his
left eyebrow to his jaw line.

           
Deirdre froze to the spot, but her fingers closed around
the gun.
 
She didn't want to use it, but
the man stood between her and the only possible exit. She swallowed hard and
stepped back, putting a small table between them.

           
The man stopped in his tracks and stood before her in the
doorway. Slowly, he smiled at her.

           
"Deirdre Kildeer?"

           
She nodded mutely.

           
"Hi," he said. "I'm Manny Ruiz – Rosa Ruiz'
nephew. Looks like I scared you. Sorry."

X.

           
Later, as Deirdre stole a glance at Manny Ruiz over a cup
of steaming coffee in her kitchen, she decided she wasn't crazy. Manny Ruiz
actually did look like he’d stepped out of a gang movie. The panic she’d felt
earlier wasn't entirely a product of her strained nerves. With the collar of
his leather jacket pulled up, he reminded her of a hooded cobra about to
strike.

           
But it was different when he spoke. Or smiled. Very
different.

           
"Have you been to the police yet?" He glanced
up and caught her studying him.

           
She felt a sudden

           
"Too busy today?"

           
"Not really.” She paused a moment and looked down
into her cup. “A little, I guess."

Panic
had set in again as soon as he'd said the word
police
, and she waited for her pulse to stop racing. Manny wasn't
going to be easy to lie to. He seemed the type to just bundle her into the car
and drive her down to the precinct office. She was glad she'd already changed
into her nightgown. Being ready for bed was the best excuse in the world to put
something off. Finally, she looked back at Manny. He sat silently, waiting for
her to talk to him. Instead, she asked a question.

           
"What has your aunt told you?"

           
Manny stirred some sugar into his cup. "She's talked
a lot about you before this. Professor, poet and all that. Then last night she
told me about the funny stuff at the Market and later with the wreath."

           
He looked up at her, his dark eyes narrowing. "She
said your cards looked pretty bad, too."

           
Deirdre liked to think she wasn't one to stereotype, but
still, she hadn't expected this sort of comment from a man. Usually they
scoffed at anything even vaguely intuitive, let alone occult. She heard no hint
of sarcasm in his voice, though. How refreshing.
 
It was good to have someone to talk to, after
all.

           
"It's a funny thing," she said, relaxing a
little. "I could tell the reading scared her. I'm sure she didn't tell me
everything she saw there."

           
"She never does." He shook his head and laughed
softly. "My Auntie Rosa saves up secrets like other women clip
coupons."

           
"There's something she doesn't know about,
though," Deirdre said after a moment.

           
Manny blew into his coffee and took a sip. "I
wouldn't count on it," he said with a brief grin.

           
She traced the rim of her cup with a fingertip, avoiding
his gaze for a moment. "Something else happened tonight," she said
softly. "Just a few minutes before you arrived."

           
She looked up at him. His eyebrows raised a fraction of
an inch, but that was as close as he got to asking a question. He seemed
content to let her story emerge as slowly as she wished. No probing, no
grilling. She took a deep breath.

           
"When I read my email tonight, there was a message
from…from whoever's doing this. I really screwed up, though. I was so scared
and angry, I deleted it almost immediately."

           
"What did it say? Can you remember?"

           
"There's no way I'll forget," she said.
"It's something I already know by heart.

           
That moment she was
mine, mine, fair, she quoted,

                       
Perfectly
pure and good: I found

           
A thing to do,
and all her hair

                       
In
one long copper string I wound

           
Three times her
little throat around,

                       
And
strangled her ...

           
Manny whistled low. "Robert
Browning?"

           
"It's from 'Porphyria's Lover,'" she told him
after a slight pause. She would have to stop being surprised by the Ruiz
family.

           
He frowned. "Bad poem."

           
"Careful. You don't want to trigger my professor
mode and have to sit through a lecture. What do you mean, 'bad poem'?"

           
He shrugged, then took another sip of coffee. "I
just mean the poem's got a bad spirit."

           
She leaned back in her chair. "You sound like a
mystic."

           
"I'm a Ruiz," he said simply. "Now I see
why I scared you so bad when I knocked at the door. I wondered about
that."

           
Deirdre blushed again. She knew her panic had shown.
"It's more than just what the poem says. It's been misquoted. In the
original–"

           
"I know," Manny said quietly. "It's golden
hair, right?"

           
"That, and the last line. And strangled her... it
was repeated all the way down, as far as I scrolled."

           
"Is this a poem you teach in any of your
classes?"

           
"Always," she nodded.

           
"And you've been teaching at the university for
almost three years," he mused.

           
She looked at him narrowly. How did he know?