Ramsey barked out a bitter laugh. “You called my bluff. No. I don’t want to hear about it. To be honest, Abrams, I could never take you seriously as a historian. When you first came along, all I could think was, ‘Where did Conklin dig this stiff up?’ Yeah, you always had the nitty-gritty down cold. The dates and people and places. The details of daily life in thirteenth-century wherever. Enough to convince Conklin and Katz and the rest you were something special. But you always managed to make it so deadly dull. And then when you started mixing in that Kablahblah nonsense—”
“Kabbalah,” Abrams corrected mildly.
Ramsey kept talking as if he hadn’t heard.
“—it was just insulting. That stuff doesn’t have any place in a history department. I mean, no one was going to let me teach a course on Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.”
“That’s a rather offensive analogy, Bob.”
“And the really amazing thing,” Ramsey plowed on, “is how tiresome you still were. You’d think all the pseudo-magical hoo-ha would’ve made you interesting, in a pathetic kind of way. But no. You were still the biggest bore in the department. I mean, no wonder you’re interested in vampires. You could suck the life out of anything.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Bob.”
A muscle just under Ramsey’s right eye twitched.
Nobody called him “Bob.” He was Robert Ramsey. Professor Robert Ramsey. Or at least he had been once.
“Karen always felt that way about you, too, by the way,” he said. “I’m sure she’s been all sweetness and light to your face. She needed your help with Conklin and the tenure committee. But do you know what she used to call you, Andy? When it was just her and me snickering in bed?”
Ramsey let the question hang there a moment, hoping to savor Abrams’s humiliation. But the man refused to squirm.
“Oh . . . are you waiting for me to guess?” Abrams said. “I assumed it was a rhetorical question, Bob.”
The muscle twitched again.
“‘Mr. Spock,’” Ramsey said.
Abrams enraged him by having the gall to look pleased.
“Really? How ironic.” He held up his right hand, his middle and ring fingers parted to form a V. “Did you know that the Vulcan salute is actually based on an ancient Kabbalistic blessing meant to evoke the Hebrew letter—?”
“Oh, shut up, you pedantic twerp.”
If passive-aggressive wouldn’t get Ramsey the reaction he wanted, he’d just drop the “passive.”
He took a quick swig of his beer, then jabbed the bottle at Abrams like a pike.
“I know your secret, Abrams. I’ve known it all along. I saw the way you used to look at Karen, when you thought I wouldn’t notice. You’re not all robot.”
“I think you’re confused, Bob,” Abrams said. “Mr. Spock wasn’t a robot. Perhaps you’re thinking of Mr.—”
“You want her for yourself,” Ramsey spat. “That’s why you pried her away from me. But you’ll never have her. Not for a second. She could no more love you than she could love an encyclopedia. And when I get her back, there you’ll be, eating your shriveled heart out because I’m the one she . . .”
Ramsey locked his bottle to his lips again even though there was nothing left in it but foam. He had to shut himself up.
Coming back had nothing to do with Karen—that’s what he’d meant to tell everyone. He just wanted to stop drifting, get as much of his old life back as he could. Karen wouldn’t be a part of that. Couldn’t be. He’d accepted that . . . he would say.
And now, one day back and he’d already said otherwise. Already said too much. All because a backstabbing S.O.B. had showed up on his doorstep with some beers.
Why did people always mess with him? Why did they push him like this—and then blame him when he pushed back? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.
“Damn it!” Ramsey leapt up and threw his bottle across the room. It smashed into a framed Le Chat Noir poster propped against the wall. He took some satisfaction from the way the explosion of glass made the little man on the couch flinch.
Abrams said nothing for a moment. He just tipped back his head and took his first real drink since coming inside. When he was done, his bottle was empty, too. He bent over to place it oh-so-gently on the floor, then looked up into Ramsey’s eyes.
“You’re wrong on a few counts, Bob,” he said calmly. “I didn’t have to pry Karen away from you. She ran, remember? And you’re not getting her back. Ever. Because now she’s with me.”
To this, Ramsey said the only thing he could.
“Huh?”
Abrams nodded, another small, tight smile pinching his thick lips.
“It’s ironic, really. All those jealous rages of yours. The suspicions. The accusations. The paranoia. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Eventually, you weren’t being paranoid. Karen was having an affair.”
Ramsey took a step toward Abrams. He was still in shock, but he managed to grate out a slightly more articulate reply this time.
“What?”
“Oh, come on, Bob. What do you need—a syllabus? I’ve been shtupping Karen for a couple of years now. It started not long after you split her lip the first time. It was me who convinced her to move out. Me who suggested going to Katz. Me who said it was time for a restraining order. Me who took those e-mails and letters to the police.”
Ramsey took another step toward the smugly smiling man sitting on his couch. He could feel the old, familiar rage boiling up inside him. He even had a name for it: “The Hulk.” That’s what he called it whenever he was apologizing to Karen. It was something alien, something other, something he couldn’t control.
“Just . . . don’t get me angry,” he would say. “You won’t like me when I’m angry.”
“Gee, Bob,” Abrams said to him now, “you’re not about to Hulk-out on me, are you?”
Ramsey clenched his fists so hard his fingernails bit into his palms, breaking the skin.
“Why are you doing this?” he growled.
“So you can see what life’s going to be like for you if you stay. Everyone knows you’re a psycho, Bob. None of your old friends will have anything to do with you. I mean, there’s Cynthia and Jason right on the corner, practically across the street, and have they dropped by with balloons and cake? No. Because you’re an outcast. Totally alone. All you’ll get if you stay is the knowledge that at any minute you could walk around a corner and bump into me and Karen strolling hand in hand. Maybe we wouldn’t call the police, Bob, but it would be our—”
“I am not Bob!”
Ramsey wasn’t even aware of the last few steps to the couch. It was as if those seconds had been snipped from a film he was watching. One moment he was standing, the next he was on the floor, sitting on Abrams’s chest, his hands wrapped around the man’s throat.
“Do I look like a Bob? Is this what Bobs do? If I’m Bob, why am I in Robert’s house? Huh? Do you see what Bob is doing to you? I wish Bob would stop, but what can I do? I’m Robert!”
Abrams flailed, squirmed, kicked. But not hard. Just enough to make Ramsey squeeze more tightly, bang Abrams’s head against the floor with more force, until there was no reason to keep squeezing or banging or anything.
Abrams lay still beneath him.
Ramsey rolled over onto his back, stared up at his hands, sobbed. He didn’t cry long, though. After a couple minutes, he stumbled to the kitchen in a daze and got one of his own beers from the fridge. One slurp sobered him up. By the time he was taking his second, he knew what he had to do.
SATURDAY, 12:01 A.M.
There was a knock on Robert Ramsey’s door. It was loud, insistent. Maybe it started off soft, but if so Ramsey hadn’t heard it over the sound of running water.
He was in the bathroom washing the dirt from his hands. He turned the water off and waited for the knocking to stop.