"As I've said," Mira said (pointlessly, because no one ever left), "this is optional. You can wait for us here, or leave altogether if you need to. No penalties."

The shock turned to resignation then. In some, it looked like excited antic.i.p.ation. They might insist that they did not want to see dead bodies, but they did. And each semester this viewing was a turning point in her cla.s.s. For a while afterward, anyway, they would feel in a way they hadn't felt before that the living body was a temporary condition. Funereal black would no longer be a fashion statement. They would communicate with one another and with her more carefully.

The gla.s.s doors slid open, and Kurt stepped through them, and Mira and all of her students followed.

66.

"I love you," Nicole said again, and squeezed her eyes and kissed him. "I love you, and I love you, and I love you. But now I have to go."

He watched Nicole's small, tight, perfectly smooth body as she got out of his bed to slip into the black dress she'd bought to wear that night to her sorority's ridiculous ritual. Except for the girls who were being raised, who wore white dresses, the others were to wear funeral black. The ones who'd already been raised, and the ones who were yet to be raised, were "mourners."

It was ridiculous, he thought, even as he admired the dress as Nicole unfurled it from the hanger she'd so carefully put it on when she brought it to his room-and even more ridiculous that the sorority hadn't been imaginative enough to come up with a name for it that didn't rhyme with hazing.

Still, he vowed, he would say no more about it. It was the kind of absurdity you had to be outside of to see. Nicole, he knew, would have found absurd the painfully hard slaps on the a.s.s his track teammates gave each other after a meet, and the writers' conferences he went to with his father (languid poets and novelists wandering around with gla.s.ses of wine and little leather-bound diaries), not to mention the tradition among teenage males in Fredonia every winter, just before the ski resort opened, of getting naked in the middle of the night on the slopes, dropping acid, and beating the living s.h.i.t out of each other.

Briefly it crossed Craig's mind to call Lucas and ask him to crash the party with him, but he dismissed it instantly. He couldn't risk the wrath of Nicole's sisters again. He wasn't even allowed to step onto the porch to pick her up anymore. And Nicole would hate him for it.

Her black dress was made of something that seemed silkier than silk. Craig sat up with his feet on the floor, and had to will himself not to crawl to her on hands and knees and kiss the hem of it. She'd gotten her hair cut a few weeks before, and although it was still long, there were blunt little ends now that curled up a little around her shoulders. She'd started wearing it loose more often. Sometimes, when she was studying or thinking or standing in front of the mirror, she'd run her fingers through it and it would appear to pour through them like molten gold.

Now she pulled out Perry's desk chair and started rolling a sheer black stocking up her leg, and Craig stared at her ankle until she started to laugh.

"You're drooling, Craig," she said, and he snapped his mouth closed.

Her other foot was still bare.

The toenails were painted pale pink. In the light that shone through the crack in the curtains, those toenails seemed to glow-and then he was on his knees, crawling across the floor, taking the foot in his hands, cradling it, bringing it to his lips, kissing first the top of it, up near the ankle, and then moving down toward the toes, until she was squealing, "Stop! Stop! It tickles!" And then he heard a key flip the lock on the door, and Perry was standing there, looking down at Craig, in his underwear, on his knees in front of Nicole, holding her bare foot to his lips.

"Excuse me," Perry said, looking up to the ceiling. "But if you could open the door when you're done. I've got to get my food plan ID out of the desk to get some dinner." The door slammed shut behind him, but not before Craig and Nicole had burst out laughing. How could they not? What must the scene have looked like to Perry? Craig released the foot and took her face in his hands, and pulled her gently toward him for a kiss, and then sat back on his heels to look at her. All that gold hair. Her cheeks flushed.

He tried not to imagine her then, in a bas.e.m.e.nt, in a black dress, a bunch of drunk and stoned sorority girls holding hands and chanting.

"We'd better hurry," Nicole said. "Perry will be mad."

"Screw Perry," Craig said, loudly, toward the dorm room door, as if for Perry's benefit, although he doubted Perry could hear him through the solid wood of the door, and he really had no great desire to hurt Perry's feelings or p.i.s.s him off. Perry had been particularly nice lately, letting Craig go on and on about his parents' divorce, offering commiserating head shakes. He was gratifyingly appalled by the behavior of Craig's mother, leaving his father. Once, he'd been in the room when Craig had called home and his mother had said to him, wearily, "Craig, this has nothing to do with you. This is between me, and Dad, and Scar."

"Between you and Dad and Scar?" Craig had shouted, and then, without waiting for her answer, he'd slapped his phone shut and thrown it against the wall.

Perry had jumped up from his computer and taken Craig by the shoulders and said, in the voice of a really mature guy, "It's okay, man. It's okay. You gotta calm down, okay?"

He'd helped Craig duct-tape his cell phone together again. (Perry was great at fixing broken mechanical things, as Craig had learned when Perry'd accidentally stepped on his own calculator.) Afterward, he'd gone to Z's with Craig, and they'd gotten pretty s.h.i.tfaced-Craig, albeit, much more s.h.i.tfaced than Perry.

And Craig found that he had grown oddly fond of the way Perry bleached his socks and rolled them into obsessive little b.a.l.l.s lined up in the top drawer of his dresser. When Nicole was off at some sorority function, they'd eat in the cafeteria together, and now and then they'd go down to Winger Lounge and sprawl all over the couch to watch some basketball game neither of them cared about.

"Don't be mean to Perry," Nicole said. "He's like family."

Craig turned back to Nicole. She wasn't joking. She was so sweet.

"You're right," Craig said. "I lucked out in the roommate department."

"Yeah, Perry's true blue." She was looking at the ceiling as she said this, and her eyes looked oddly blank to him. He stood up so he could see her better, and even from overhead, the expression on her face seemed strange to him. She looked pale, he thought. Even her irises.

"What?" she asked, without looking at him, as if she were blind.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"I . . . don't know."

"Then don't be silly." There was so little intonation in her voice, and her face still looked weird. Could he be having one of those dreaded acid trip flashbacks, even though he hadn't dropped acid for years?

"Nicole?"

She snapped out of it then, and looked at him. Pure Nicole. Little dimple near the right corner of her lip. He was so relieved, he put a hand on his chest and sighed.

"What's the matter, sweetheart?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said, but suddenly he had a very bad feeling about the Spring Event.

"Nicole," he said, kneeling down again at her feet, looking up at her. "Can't you blow this off? This is so f.u.c.king stupid, and-"

"Are you crazy, Craig?" She was serious. She looked sincerely shocked, as if he'd suggested they jump off the roof together. He shook his head, to let her know he wasn't going to push it. Instead, he straightened up, and she slid the stockings all the way on, and slipped her feet into lacy black heels, blew him a kiss, opened the door, and Craig heard her call bye-bye to Perry, musically, as she stepped out of the room, and he stepped in.

"Want to go to dinner?" Perry asked, grabbing his meal card off his desk, as if he hadn't just walked in while Craig was half-naked kissing Nicole's little foot, as if it were just any of the other hundreds of times they'd headed down to the cafeteria together.

67.

From the Waiting Mortuary, Professor Polson's friend Kurt took them into a hallway lined with doors.

There were numbers nailed to the doors, but the numbers seemed random. Room 3 was adjacent to 11. Room 1 seemed to be missing altogether. Tacked to the door of Room 4 was a photograph of a white cat standing beside a blue mailbox. Perry wondered about that photo, in a place where there were no others, what the significance of that could be, when someone in a pale green shower cap and matching scrubs opened the door and looked out, white light pouring on him (or her), before shutting it again.

Everything in the hallway was bright, and cold. It wasn't the outdoor, winter kind of cold, but a dry, artificial cold, as if freeze-dried air were being poured down from the ceiling by the fluorescent lights.

When they reached the end of the hallway, Kurt stopped, turned, and held up a hand.

"Thank you for being so quiet," he said. "We do not have them today, but this is where sometimes a parent or a wife or husband must come to identify a deceased person. It is not like in the TV show, exactly, because we do not bring them into a room and take off a sheet and show them their loved one's face. Instead they are shown the effects. Wallet, jewelry, et cetera, and then a Polaroid photograph of the deceased's face. They know, or do not know, and if they are not sure, they must see. If they are sure, but still wish to see the body, they may request. It is easier, the Polaroid. Luckily for us, today, any families have already been and gone."

Nicole. Nicole had been here, of course, and it had been Josie Reilly who'd come to identify her-and although it was utterly impossible to imagine Josie Reilly clipping down this hallway in some pair of cute little shoes, it was even harder to imagine Nicole in this cold brilliance, laid out in whatever manner they laid out the dead, which he was about to see, and suddenly did not want to.

But wasn't this one of the reasons he'd taken this cla.s.s? To see for himself?

He felt exhausted, dizzy, as if a grave mistake had been made by someone he used to be and no longer was. He put a hand to his head.

Professor Polson, standing off to the side of the hallway, looked over and raised her eyebrows as if to ask him, you okay? But she seemed preoccupied, too, looking at Perry as she also held her cell phone to her ear. After a few seconds, she looked at it in the palm of her hand, and then she seemed to be scrolling through her messages, or her address book. The fluorescent light turned her hair to a reddish gleaming that Perry had never quite noticed before. He watched her until he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Karess was staring at him, again, staring at Professor Polson.

"Today," Kurt said, "is an autopsy, but it is not yet to begin. I am taking you to autopsy room, where there is one body, which you will see it. This is not someone who has been disfigured, but will look typical of a corpse who has died by strangulation, because it is believed he has hanged himself. If you will faint, or be disturbed, you might wish to not."

Kurt nodded solemnly then, as if they'd all understood what he meant, and then, whether they did or not, they followed him into Room 42-all except Professor Polson, who was again holding her cell phone to her ear, seeming to be trying to get a connection, which Perry thought pretty unlikely, deep in this bas.e.m.e.nt, a place out of which he imagined very few cell phone calls were intended to be made or received.

"We shall proceed," Kurt said, "four people at a time. You will wear booties, cap, and gown." He pointed to a doorless locker where the mint green garb was hanging on hooks, and he shrugged. "We have only so many clothes." He made clothes a two-syllable word, and tapped four students-one of them Karess-on the shoulder, pointing toward the locker. "You must wear such cloth-es when there is a body."

Karess looked backward then, directly into Perry's eyes, seeming to be asking for some kind of guidance.

Stupidly, apologetically, Perry smiled frozenly, and she looked away. Her new friend Brett Barber was another one of the four included in the first group, and he leaned over and whispered something into Karess's hair. Perry guessed it was a bad joke when he saw Karess lift a shoulder as if to block Brett from saying anything else-a flinch-and then she was stripping off her coat and her ratty, lovely sweater, bearing her long, thin arms for the surgical scrubs, and sliding the pale green of them over her body.

68.

Mira couldn't figure out how to turn up the volume on the cell phone she'd bought to replace the one Clark had taken with him when he left. It was a cheaper model, but it had even more b.u.t.tons and games and gadgets than the older, more expensive one.

During Kurt's spiel about the autopsy room, and while the first group of students were putting on their surgical booties and gowns, Mira had noticed a new voice mail-the little cartoon envelope on her cell phone window-although she'd never heard the phone ring. She called for her messages immediately, worried it might be Jeff, that the twins needed something, or he needed to know something, or something worse. (Andy had taken to crawling on the back of the couch, and Mira had taken on terrors that he'd fall off and hit his head on the window behind it.) At some point, Mira had stopped expecting Clark to call, and she figured that if he came home while Jeff was there, Jeff could handle it. Jeff was far too affable to pose any threat to Clark.

But the message wasn't from Jeff. The call was from the college (Mira recognized the first three numbers on the caller ID as the university's prefix), but she could barely hear the message, and couldn't figure out how to turn the volume up. It seemed miraculous that she was managing to get any reception at all, there in the morgue, deep in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the hospital-all cinderblocks and heavy fire doors-but reception didn't do any good if she couldn't make out the message: "Mira, this is . . ." (Dean Fleming?) ". . . after all . . . within the next couple of . . . absolutely imperative that . . ."

It surprised and alarmed her that he already had this new phone number. She'd left it with his secretary only two hours earlier. She didn't recall his ever dialing her cell or home number before, always casually leaving his messages on the voice mail in her office, or scrawled on sticky notes and left on her office door.

Mira hit Return Call, but as soon as she did, the phone went dead in her hand.

Perry Edwards walked past then, made eye contact with her, and Mira flipped her phone closed, held up a hand for him to stop.

"Perry," she said. "I've got a call I've got to return. I'm going out to the alley, or maybe up to street level if I have to, can you-?"

He was nodding before she'd had her request articulated. "Sure," he said. "I'll come get you if we need you."

"Yeah," Mira said. "If, G.o.d forbid, someone faints, or-?"

"We'll be fine," Perry said. "You go ahead."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," she said, hurrying out. He was such a good kid. Mira had thought they'd stopped making his kind around 1962.

She'd had an urge to kiss his cheek before she hurried out with her phone, the way she might have kissed Andy or Matty's cheeks, but she didn't. She just said thank you again for a fourth time, long after he could have heard her.

69.

"Why are you playing games with him?"

"What games?" Nicole asked.

"What games?"

She was pulling on a green silk tank top, no bra, and let it linger over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s before she covered them, and then she turned her back on Perry.

It was exactly the cream white expanse he'd imagined with his eyes closed and his hands running down it, but he winced and turned his face away when he realized what it reminded him of: Mary. Her backless prom dress. Slow-dancing to some dumb song while she whispered to him about how in love with him she was. His hand on the bare expanse of soft skin between her shoulder blades.

Nicole came over, wearing the tank top and nothing else, and sat down on the bed beside him. She ran her hand up his chest, to his neck, let it linger there, and then lifted it to his cheek, and then up to his eyes, the lids of which she gently closed with her fingertips before leaning over him and kissing them.

Perry felt the staticky gossamer wisps of her blond hair around his face, her breath (licorice, Mountain Dew) near his ear. She ran her hand down his side, to his hip. She moved her mouth down to his Adam's apple, kissed it, licked it, and then bit it hard enough to make him flinch, and then she sat back and laughed.

He opened his eyes. "You didn't answer my question," he said.

"No," Nicole said. "You didn't answer mine."

Perry put a hand over his eyes so he was no longer looking at the delicate curve of her breast beneath the silk top, or the cool shoulder bone, the startlingly perfect flesh of her upper arm. If he looked further, he could have found the perfect golden triangle between her legs. Who was he, to be doing this with her? Who was she?

With a hand over his eyes, he said, "Craig thinks you're a virgin, Nicole. He thinks you're a Christian, and some kind of white-bread Midwestern milkmaid."

"Well, he thinks you're a great roommate, and a true-blue Boy Scout. He thinks you're a virgin, too."

"Yeah. I'm a s.h.i.thead, and I admit it. A s.h.i.tty friend. A s.h.i.tty roommate. But he just tolerates me. He thinks he's going to marry you. He thinks you're the future mother of his children. Pure angel. He thinks it's his duty to preserve your innocence in this filthy world."

Nicole laughed again, and said, "Well, I'd say he's the one playing the game, in that case."

Perry waited for her to go on. She didn't, and eventually he asked, "What do you mean?"

"Well, why does he want to believe those things? And if that's what he wants to believe, why shouldn't he?"

"Because it's not true."