I’ll have to remember to ask Sarah.
“The reason I ask is that the police”—slight lie, but oh well—“the police found a used condom under Roberta’s bed this morning. It was, uh, pretty fresh.”
This seems to clear a little of the fog out of Lakeisha’s head. She looks at me, and this time, I can tell she really sees me.
“Excuse me?” she asks, in a stronger voice.
“A condom. Under Roberta’s bed. It had to have been from last night.”
“No way,” Lakeisha says, firmly. “There is no way. Not Bobby. She’s never—” She breaks off and studies her Nikes. “No,” she says, again, and shakes her head with such force that the beads on the ends of her braids click like castanets.
“Well, someone had to have left that condom,” I say. “If it wasn’t Roberta, who—”
“Oh my God” Lakeisha suddenly interrupts, with actual excitement in her voice. “It had to be Todd!”
“Who’s Todd?”
“Todd is the man. Bobby’s man. The new man. Bobby never had a man before.”
“Oh,” I say, somewhat taken aback by this information. “She was… um—”
“A virgin, yeah,” Lakeisha says, distractedly. She’s still trying to digest the information I’ve given her. “They must have—they must have done the deed after I left. He must have come over! She musta been so excited.”
Then Lakeisha’s excitement dies and she shakes her head again. “Then she had to go and do something so stupid—”
Okay. Now we were getting somewhere.
I slow down my pace, and Lakeisha slows hers as well, unconsciously. We are within two blocks of the counseling center.
“So elevator surfing wasn’t something your roommate did regularly?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
“Bobby?” Lakeisha’s voice breaks. “Elevator surf? No! Never. Why would she go and do something so stupid? She’s a smart girl—was a smart girl,” she corrects herself. “Too smart for that, anyway. Besides,” she adds. “Bobby was afraid of heights. She never even wanted to look out the window, she thought we were up too high as it was.”
I knew it. I knew it. Someone had pushed her. It’s the only explanation.
“So this Todd guy,” I say, trying not to let my eagerness show. Also the fact that my heart had begun slamming a mile a minute inside my chest. “When did Roberta meet him?”
“Oh, last week, at the dance.”
“Dance?”
“The dance in the cafeteria.”
We’d ended up not canceling the dance that had been planned for the night of Elizabeth’s death. Sarah hadn’t been the only one to throw a fit at the suggestion—the student government had rebelled as well, and Rachel had caved. The dance ended up being very well attended and there’d only been a single moment of unpleasantness, and that was when some Jordan Cartwright fans got all riled up over the music selection, and nearly came to blows with some residents who preferred Justin Timberlake.
“Todd was there,” Lakeisha says. “He and Bobby started hanging out together that night.”
“This Todd,” I say. “Do you know his last name?”
“No.” Lakeisha looks momentarily troubled. Then her face brightens. “He lives in the building, though.”
“He does? How do you know?”
“ ’Cause Bobby never had to sign him in.”
“And this Todd guy—” I’m practically holding my breath. “You met him?”
“Not met him, but Bobby pointed him out to me at the dance. He was kinda of far away, though.”
“What’d he look like?”
“Tall.”
When Lakeisha doesn’t go on, I prompt, “That’s it? He was tall?”
Lakeisha shrugs.
“He was white,” she says, apologetically. “White guys… they all. You know.”
Right. Everyone knows all white guys look the same.
“Do you think this Todd guy”—now Lakeisha is calling him “this Todd guy,” too—“had something to do with… what happened to Bobby?”
“I don’t know,” I say. And as I say it, I realize we’re at the building that houses the campus counseling services. So fast! I’m disappointed. “Oh. Well, Lakeisha, this is it.”
Lakeisha looks up at the double doors without seeming really to see them. Then she says to me, “You don’t think—you don’t think this Todd guy… pushed her, or anything, do you?”
My heart slows, then seems to stop altogether.
“I don’t know,” I say carefully. “Why? Do you? Did Roberta mention that he was… abusive?”
“No.” Lakeisha shakes her head. The beads click and rattle. “That’s just it. She was so happy. Why would she do something so dumb?” Lakeisha’s eyes fill with tears. “Why would she do a thing like that, if she’d found the guy of her dreams?”
My feelings, exactly.
11
Ooh La La La
Ooh La La La La
I said
Ooh La La La
Ooh La La La La
That’s what I say
Every time
He looks my way
I say
Gimme some of that
Ooh La La La La
“Ooh La La La”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Valdez/Caputo
From the album Rocket Pop
Cartwright Records
I fill Magda and Pete in on the whole thing during our lunch break. I tell them what’s going on, including the part about Cooper—
But not that I’m madly in love with him or anything. Which of course makes the story much shorter and far less interesting.
Pete’s only response is to scoop up a forkful of chili and eye it dubiously.
“Are there carrots in this? You know I hate carrots.”
“Pete, didn’t you hear me? I said I think—”
“I heard you,” Pete interrupts.
“Oh. Well, don’t you think—”
“No.”
“But you didn’t even—”
“Heather,” Pete says, carefully placing the offending carrot on the side of his plate. “I think you been watching way too much Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. ”
“I love you, honey” is what Magda has to say about it. “But let’s face it. Everyone knows you’re a little bit”—she twirls a finger around one side of her head—“cuckoo. You know what I mean?”
I cannot believe a woman who would spend five hours having the Statue of Liberty air-brushed on her fingernails is calling me cuckoo.
“C’mon.” I glare at them. “Two girls with no history of an interest in elevator surfing dying from it in two weeks?”
“It happens.” Pete shrugs. “You want your pickle?”
“You guys, I’m serious. I really do think someone is pushing these girls down the shafts. I mean, there’s a pattern. Both of these girls were late bloomers. They never had boyfriends before. Then, suddenly, a week before they died, they both got boyfriends—”
“Maybe,” Magda suggests, “they did it because after saving themselves for the right man for all those years, they found out sex wasn’t so great after all.”
All conversation ceases after that, because Pete’s choking on his Snapple.
The rest of the day is a blur. Because the two deaths occur so close together in the semester, we’re bombarded by the press, mostly the Post and the News, but a Times reporter calls as well.
Then there’s the memo Rachel insists on sending to all the residents, letting them know that a counselor will be on hand twenty-four hours a day this weekend to help them all through their grief. This means I have to make seven hundred photocopies, then talk the student worker into stuffing the memos into three hundred mailboxes, two for each double room, and three for the triples.
At first Tina, the desk worker, outright refuses. Justine, it seems, had always simply made one copy per floor, then hung them next to each set of elevators.
But Rachel wants each resident to receive his or her own copy. I have to tell Tina that I don’t care how Justine had done things, that this is how I want things done. To which Tina actually replies, dramatically, “Nobody cares about what happened to Justine! She was the best boss in the world, and they fired her for no good reason! I saw her crying the day she found out! I know! New York College is so unfair!”