“What makes you think I’ll be studying here?”
“You’ve made friends,” he said. “You will be worried about them.” He let go of the branch and walked away. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Julie Olsen.”
“Maybe!” I called. “I haven’t decided yet!”
He kept walking.
I sat under the apple tree. Somehow leaving Ashlyn and Brook to his tender mercy didn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
I was pretty sure I could get admitted into this school. It wouldn’t be that hard.
I was right. Kate had set me up.
But then again, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.
An Introduction to Jewish Myth and Mysticism
STEVE HOCKENSMITH
Steve Hockensmith is the author of the New York Times bestseller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls. His first novel, the mystery/Western hybrid Holmes on the Range, was a finalist for the Edgar®, Shamus, Anthony, and Dilys awards and spawned several sequels. His next novel, an occult-themed mystery, will be released in 2013. He is a Waspy Midwestern goy but hopes that’s not too obvious when you’re reading his contribution to this anthology.
FRIDAY, 9:47 A.M.
Everyone in the class noticed the woman come in. They would’ve noticed a gnat flying in. Room 202 wasn’t particularly big and it wasn’t particularly full.
The woman took a seat at the back and quietly began to cry.
Professor Abrams went on lecturing in the slow, deliberate, deadpan way that made it so hard for undergrads to drag themselves out of bed for History 340: An Introduction to Jewish Myth and Mysticism. But a little worry-furrow creased his forehead even as he droned on about the Golem of Prague and its influence on later stories of Jewish übermenschen.
For once, he ended class early—at 9:49 as opposed to 9:50. Then he walked to the back of the room and sat next to the woman. She was fortyish, with short, black hair salted gray here and there. Her cat-eye glasses were perched on a button nose speckled with faded freckles.
Some of the students knew her. Professor Mossler. Her class on Hollywood during the Depression was a lot more popular than anything Professor Abrams ever taught.
“Karen,” Abrams said, “what’s wrong?”
Mossler stole an embarrassed glance at the students filing from the room.
“Robert’s back,” she whispered. She began wiping the tears from her red, puffy eyes. “Cynthia saw him moving things into his house this morning.”
“Oh.” A flush of color came to Abrams’s already swarthy face, and when he spoke again his words had something they usually lacked: emotion. “I’m so sorry, Karen. Have you called the police?”
“You know what they’ll say. As long as he stays away from me, there’s nothing they can do. And when he finally decides not to stay away . . .” Fresh tears trickled over Mossler’s cheeks. “What do I do? Things can’t go back to the way they were. I can’t live like that. If he won’t leave, I’ll have to. I’ll have to give up everything I’ve worked for and pack up and—”
“It won’t come to that.”
“How do you know? How can you say what might happen this time?”
Abrams drew in a deep, deep breath, as if trying to suck in enough air to last him the rest of his life. When he exhaled, there was a smile on his face. It was a “C’est la vie” smile—small, sad, resigned.
“Tell you what,” Abrams said. “You already had plans to see Wally and Leslie this weekend. Go. Enjoy. Forget Robert. When you get back, maybe things will look different.”
“That’s your advice? Go on a road trip? ‘Enjoy’?”
Abrams nodded. “Yes. That is my advice. While you’re gone, I’ll poke around. See what I can do.”
He placed his hands over hers.
Mossler looked down at them in surprise. Then she tilted her head and gave Abrams the kind of look a mother gives her four-year-old when he offers to protect her from the bogeyman.
“Oh, Andy . . .” she said.
She didn’t go on, but it was obvious what her words would have been if she had.
What could you do?
They talked a little longer after that, only getting up to leave when students started drifting in for the next class. Mossler had a lecture of her own to give downstairs, in one of the big halls. After that, she was going to take her friend’s advice. She would hop in her Prius and get out of town.
“It’ll be good practice,” she said. “I mean, if I’m going to run away, I might as well start getting used to it.”
Abrams shocked her by leaning in to give her a hug. He usually wasn’t the hugging type.
When the awkward embrace ended, she left.
Abrams sat back down. He didn’t move—didn’t even blink—until another professor spoke a few minutes later. The man was behind the table at the front of the room.
“Will wonders never cease? The eminent Professor Abrams seems to be auditing one of my classes!”
“Oh . . . sorry, Paul,” Abrams said, chuckling dutifully as he rose to go. “You caught me daydreaming about a new course I’m planning.”
From there Abrams went straight to the nearest grocery store, where he bought two bottles of wine and a six-pack of beer.
FRIDAY, 5:53 P.M.
There was a knock on Robert Ramsey’s door. Half of him thought it would be the police. No part of him at all was expecting Andy Abrams.
“What are you doing here?”
Abrams held up a six-pack of beer that was missing a bottle. “We’re your welcoming committee.”
“Unbelievable.” Ramsey snorted and shook his head in disgust. “I wouldn’t have thought you had the balls to come here.”
Abrams shrugged. “Yet here I am. Can’t I come in for a talk? Man to man?” Abrams gave the six-pack a little wiggle. “Beer to beer?”
His eyes were droopy, his words slurred. Ramsey could tell he’d already put away a lot more than that one missing beer. The little guy was lit.
Even when things had been at their worst, Ramsey had never feared Andy Abrams. He saw no reason to start now.
“Suit yourself.”
Ramsey reached out, plucked a beer from the six-pack, then turned and stalked off into the house.
Abrams followed.
The first hour or so was all stilted chitchat. They sat in the living room, surrounded by dusty boxes and jumbled furniture fresh from the U Store It, and talked about everything except what mattered. Ramsey’s wanderings during his yearlong “sabbatical.” The history of American labor he was working on. The college kids he’d rented his house to who’d seemed nice at first, but you know how that goes. . . .
Abrams nursed his beer, taking a sip every five minutes, saying just enough to keep the other man talking. He’d needed the booze to goose up his nerve, Ramsey figured, and now he was letting his host catch up. Fine.
Abrams had taken her side—had been one of the key players on what Ramsey thought of as Team Bitch. So he was happy to down the little bastard’s beer now. Abrams owed him a lot more than a few Leinenkugels.
“Tell me what you’ve been up to, Andy,” Ramsey said when he finally tired of talking about himself. “Still working on that book about how Dracula was really Jewish?”
Abrams offered him a prim little smile. All Abrams’s smiles were prim and little. Like the man himself.
“That’s not quite the gist of it, Bob. It’s an overview of Jewish vampire traditions stretching from the Testament of Solomon and the Lilith myths all the way to . . .”
Abrams paused and looked back at the picture window behind him. The blinds were drawn, and no more light bled in around the edges. Outside, night had fallen.
He turned back to Ramsey.
“You don’t really want to hear about my book, do you?”