Liquid Fear (6 page)

In short, whether drugs should be used to make everyone feel the same. To feel “normal.”

God, what she wouldn’t give for a normal life.

Wendy was only ten minutes late for her noon class.

The eight students in Studio Drawing II were working in their sketch pads, some with charcoal, some with Conte crayons, and two with fat pencils. A tape of eighties synth-pop band The Cars thumped and squished from a cheap boom box in the back of the room, and Wendy was grateful for perhaps the hundredth time that she didn’t have a demanding career with a fire-breathing boss.

This class was self-selecting, juniors or seniors with a serious yen for art, and they didn’t really need motivation. In fact, they seemed as joyful not to have a “real class” as Wendy was not to have a “real job.”

After the odd incident at the restaurant, the reprieve was doubly welcome, and the aroma of paint thinner cut the memory of bacon grease and chaos and Anita’s recollections of the past.

“Hey, folks,” she said, and most of them nodded or gave quick waves before returning to their work. “I’ll just be chilling at my desk in case you need me.”

Wendy had a tiny office, with a long counter and slots underneath for students to store their portfolios, but in typical bureaucratic shortsightedness, a battleship-sized metal desk took up much of the floor space. She parked herself behind it to collect herself before launching into instructional mode.

She picked a piece of glass out of her pocket. The E-Z’s front window had been comprised of safety glass, although the square shards were still capable of cutting flesh, as evidenced by the wound on Anita’s forehead. Wendy tilted the piece of glass like a prism, looking for a rainbow in its oblique surface.

Although she was still shaken by the incident, and the fact that officials had offered no explanation, she’d shrugged it off as just another bit of crazy in a world built of the stuff.

Once settled into the scarred wooden chair that looked to be a holdover from the days of segregation, she fiddled her cell phone from the folds of her jacket.

Anita answered on the second ring. “I think it was Halcyon,” Anita said.

“Calm down, hon. I knew I shouldn’t have left you.”

“Briggs did it.”

“Nobody did anything.” Although she couldn’t understand why an unoccupied car could navigate itself into a building, she failed to see a looming conspiracy theory that would make Oliver Stone cream his jeans.

She was annoyed that Anita brought up the name of a drug they swore they’d never mention again. “It was just an accident.”

“But he knew I was there.” Anita paused and then added with an anxious rush, “First my psychiatrist and now this.”

“Your psychiatrist died of a heart attack.”

“I don’t know that for a fact. Besides, there’s only one way to die, and that’s when your heart stops beating.”

“Anita, you’re worrying me.” Anita had been so distressed at the scene that Wendy, despite a vague sense that she probably should have offered some sort of eyewitness testimony to the police, had yielded to her friend’s frantic desire to leave. Not that Wendy had really seen anything. It wasn’t like she could have identified the driver.

“Did you see the way they looked at me?”

“Who?” Wendy was used to people staring at Anita. Besides being beautiful, her friend often evoked a feeling of vague recognition, as if the viewer had seen her somewhere before but couldn’t place the face. Some did but couldn’t admit it in polite company.

“The cops,” Anita said. “They know.”

“You told me you quit drugs when you left LA. You’ve never been paranoid before.”

“Just like the trials. Freak out, and then forget.”

“You didn’t take more of that stuff your dead psychiatrist gave you, did you?”

“Right after you left. I couldn’t wait till noon.”

“Damn. I told you to consult your doctor before you took more.”

“I needed it. Those monsters in their holes—”

“Listen—”

“I have to go now. They’re coming. Like they came for Susan.”

“Nita?” Her query fell into the white noise of a dead connection.

Susan. Who is Susan? And why is that name scaring me?

She wondered if she should call the police or 911. Given Anita’s persecuted state of mind, the sudden arrival of uniforms might drive her to—what? Wendy didn’t know.

Her friend, though flamboyant and prone to deep depression, had never suffered from irrational complexes. Anita lived only two miles from campus, but with college-town traffic, it might take half an hour to reach her apartment.

I shouldn’t have left her, but she seemed fine.

Wendy tried the phone line again but gave up after seven rings. She was about to try again when she sensed movement in the office doorway behind her.

Her chair squeaked as she turned, the grating noise causing her to grimace. The door seemed far away, the office walls appearing to stretch from her and tilt at steep angles.

The sudden onset of vertigo disturbed her. She wondered if she was catching the flu, or if the Long-Haul Breakfast was making a contaminated run. Her head had been aching and mildly stuffy all morning, but she had no fever.

The morning’s events had been stressful, but she considered herself adaptable and able to handle the unexpected. She was bracing for an attempt to stand when a shadow fell over the door.

“Wendy?” It was Chase Hanson, a student who wore his hair in a 1950s duck and favored checkered shirts. Mediocre talent, but like many aspiring artists, he thought attitude and style far outweighed the need for craft. “Got a sec?”

She swallowed and closed her eyes, hoping he wouldn’t notice her unease. She motioned to a chair in the corner. “Sure.”

Chase closed the door behind him, and the room felt impossibly cramped, like a mausoleum vault.

Like the factory.

He turned and gave her a smile, but his teeth descended in vulpine proportions. The look on her face must have startled him, because the boyish grin froze.

“I thought…” He looked past her to
Madonna of Egypt
, one of Wendy’s surrealist creations, an oval-faced, hollow-eyed female swathed in filthy bandages like a mummy. “About yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” Wendy gripped the arms of the chair, hoping the solidity of the oak would reaffirm her corporeality. Her pulse beat a steady path across her temples and her ears rang with a high-pitched whine.

Chase waved his hand at the desk. “What happened.”

Not trusting herself to stand and face him, she sagged into the chair, which was now as unaccountably soft as a stack of pillows. She nodded, barely hearing him, focused on the three spots of cadmium-yellow paint that adorned his left boot.

“I know you could get in big trouble for something like that,” he continued. “Probably even lose your job.”

The implications of his words finally broke through the sensory gauze. She attempted to sit upright but failed. “What are you talking about?” she said thickly.

He grinned again, but this time the expression was lewd instead of gregarious. “Ah, I get it. It never happened, right?”

“Chase—”

He fell into a mockery of an old advertisement for laundry detergent. “Ancient Chinese secret, huh?”

“That was lame in seventh grade. What’s wrong with you?”

The real question was what was wrong with
her
, but she wasn’t willing to ask that one. The potential answers were too disturbing.

“Hey, don’t go getting all upset,” he said. “Although you’re sexy when you’re all scrunched up.”

Chase’s tone had changed from cautious to cocky, an “Aw shucks” charm he donned as if it were a thrift-shop beret. If only the walls weren’t leaning in opposite directions, she would stand and usher him out the door. As it was, she scarcely trusted her lips, because she wasn’t sure they would move at her command. She tried anyway.

“You’re making me uncomfortable,” she said, though in truth she had been uncomfortable before he had even entered the office. Now the floor was a jiggly magic carpet of Jell-O.

“I know, sweetie,” he said. “I’ve been getting hot and bothered myself. You know what they say about guys my age.”

Chase must have picked up a crossed signal somewhere, and she searched her memory for some suggestive classroom joke or double entendre she might have dispensed. She was cautious around her students for the very reasons Chase had suggested: she could get in big trouble and maybe even lose her job.

“Whatever you think is going on, you’re the only one,” she managed.

A print of Munch’s
The Scream
, taped to the wall behind the student’s head, seemed to ripple, and she could swear she heard the desperate ululation arising from that rounded O of a mouth. Or maybe the sound was coming from
her
mouth.

Chase put a finger to his lips. “Shh,” he said. “Wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.”

“What’s the right idea?” she said, feeling angry and foolish over her own helplessness.

“That you want this,” he said. “Just like last time.”

He reached his painting hand toward her, black flecks under his fingernails, the skin smelling faintly of linseed oil and turpentine. Instead of drawing away, she found herself leaning closer to let the rough fingers graze her cheek. He stroked the soft skin beneath her cheek. It tickled but she was unable to laugh.

“See there, babe?” he said. “You haven’t forgotten after all.”

He stooped so their faces were at the same level and she stared into his glacial blue eyes. His puckered lips glided toward hers, and something about the movement was familiar and disturbing.

To her horror, she felt her own mouth part in welcome and the wet cement of her arms set with a weighty permanence against her chair.

Then their lips met and her body broke free of its trance. As she jerked her head away, the unwelcome kiss cut a slick trail across her cheek.

She exploded from the chair, throwing her shoulder into his chest and knocking him off balance, the anger clearing her head.

The icy eyes grew narrow and colder, and Chase’s swollen lover’s lips shifted into a sneer. He hovered over her as she retreated into the corner. “Hey, what’s your problem?”

“If you leave right now, I won’t file a complaint.”

“Didn’t bother you any yesterday,” he said. “You practically jumped my bones, remember?”

The trouble was, she
didn’t
remember, and he spoke with such conviction that the student judicial affairs committee would be as likely to take his side as hers.

“You’re mistaken,” she said, hating herself for going on the defensive.

“Hell with it,” he said. “You’re just a yellow cock-tease. So you want a one-off, that’s fine. Slam, bam, fuck you, ma’am.”

Her lungs were marbled sculpture, but she managed to force air past her vocal cords. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Man, I’m lucky you didn’t yell ‘Rape.’ Glad I used a rubber. You’re probably boning every guy in the department.”

“You’ll drop the class,” she said, with a surprising modicum of calm. “I’ll approve the paperwork.”

“Damn right,” he said. “I’ll take it under Wingate. Her tits are so withered she doesn’t go around shaking them in her students’ faces.”

He retreated and fumbled with the door handle, and it was only then she realized he had locked it upon entering. What exactly had happened the last time he had locked her office door?

Alone, heart pounding, she held her head for a full minute, eyeing the telephone. It looked fat and liquid, the handset like a swollen grub. Should she call an ambulance? Would she be able to punch the numbers?

Some of the disorientation left her, the geometry of the room falling more or less into right angles. Her respiration and pulse rate were only slightly above normal.

Anxiety attack.

That would explain a lot, except for Chase’s behavior. He had moved with a practiced confidence. Like he’d done it before. Here.

Could she have done the things he’d suggested?

No. Don’t give it an inch.

She didn’t want to think about it. She would call Anita instead of the hospital.

First, she would fill out the form that would drop Chase Hanson from the class. His painted canvases would soon be gone from the studio, the garish Rothko imitations consigned to a dusty dorm closet until the artist needed them to impress some eager coed. Somebody else to slam bam.

The rage helped clear her head as she opened the drawer. Lying on top of the shuffled stacks of memos were paper clips, pastel crayons, a solar-powered calculator, and a dull linoleum knife.

And a ripped square of foil that had once housed a condom.

Unconsciously, her thighs squeezed together. She lifted the empty wrapper and rubbed a thumb along the serrated edge.

Not ours. Please let it not be ours.

Behind it, in the shadows of the drawer, was a plastic pill bottle.

Burnt orange, for prescription medicine.

The label bore script as if from a pharmacy but contained no drug store or medical logo. The bold text in the center of the label wasn’t the sort prescribed by a physician: “W. Leng. Take one every 4 hrs. or else.”

Glancing at the open door, she twisted the cap free. The pills resembled tiny green breath mints. She poured them on the desk. One rolled past the telephone and arced to the floor, where it bounced off the dirty tiles. Wendy retrieved it and then counted them.

Eight. The bottle was large enough to contain at least fifty of the green pills.

And they looked disturbingly familiar.

Oh my God. How many of these have I taken?

She nudged the pills onto a sheet of paper, funneled them back into the vial, and tucked the container in her pocket. Chase Hanson’s paperwork could wait. Right now, she wanted a look at Anita’s Halcyon prescription, because she had a feeling those pills were also green.

Every four hours.

Wendy wondered when she’d last taken her prescribed dose, and what would happen when she failed to take the next.