Free Death of the Black-Haired Girl by Robert Stone Page A

mentor was up here looking for you last night,” Shell told her. “Like he came twice. A big old professor coming to the squalid chambers of us waifs. For you, his sweetheart. Only he was on his way to the airport to pick up his wife, I guess, ’cause he got a call from her.”
    “Shut up!” Maud shouted and slammed the bathroom door.
    When Maud came out, still pale, Shelby was contrite.
    “I always talk too much in the morning, sweet thing. Birdseed under my tongue.”
    Maud stood weeping. And in her tears she looked to Shell like a savage child Shell never before glimpsed in her friend.
    “I don’t know what to do.”
    Shell went over and hugged her.
    “Maud, honey, I been there. I been so unhappy. I been so scared. This, by God, happens to us.”
    She left Maud in the middle of the room and went to look out the window. Bums lining up for the church feeding, like pigeons.
    “It’s all good,” she said. “Except how it sucks. Listen, Maud, go home. That’s what you do. Get out of this laughing academy. It’s break next week; a few days won’t hurt your line. Go home and get away from him and me and this
vida loca
up here.” She took Maud’s duffel bag out of the closet and put it on the bed. “Get out of town before—”
    “I want to see him,” Maud said. She had stopped crying. Her mouth tightened, her teeth clenched behind a thinning of her long lips. Her jaw trembled. She pressed her nails into her palms.
    Shell shook her head.
    “Uh-uh.”
    She emptied Maud’s drawer into the bag and went to her own closet and filled the bag with various things—jackets, a beret, some bracelets.
    “Hey, lookie, I’m gonna give you cool shit of mine I never paid for. My bling and my star-quality wardrobe and starlet shoplifting trophies. You can’t have my dope or my gun, but.”
    She put her best fake-fur coat around Maud’s shoulders and turned her roommate toward the door and hugged her again.
    “Keep warm, Maudie-pig. I love you round the neck. Don’t drink so much, your ears’ll swell up. It’s true!”
    Maud went out but left her bag on the floor. Shell did not pursue her, only watched from the window as her friend headed up the street toward the college with the fake fur wrapped around her shoulders. Then Shell stared blankly at the sky and sighed.
    It had come to Maud that Brookman, returned wife or not, had a class scheduled that morning. As she passed Bay’s en route to the college, Herbert, the café’s chief of inmates, defying the weather at his outside table, bellowed a hoarse greeting at her, demanded Shell, whom he so loved. She hurried on toward the quad, Shell’s coat close around her, and began to run.
    At the quad the locks slowed her. She failed to intercept Brookman coming out of class and so went to his office in Cortland Hall. She sounded no tattoo for him this time, just three knocks, each knock a little louder than the one before. He opened the door, showing no surprise.
    “Come in, Maud.”
    “‘Come into the garden, Maud, for the black bat, night, has flown.’ That it?”
    “Sit, sweetheart.”
    “You don’t want to touch me? Don’t you want to shake hands?”
    He took hold of her hands.
    “Better close the curtains, huh?” Maud suggested.
    “I looked for you last night.”
    “But you had to go pick up your wife at the airport.”
    “Yes. Remember, I told you my wife was coming back.”
    “Did you? Yeah, I guess you did. That why you avoided me?”
    “What I wanted was to catch you sober and in an orderly state of mind.”
    She pulled a hand free and, Brookman thought, came close to hitting him.
    “I was concerned about you, Maud. How could I not be? And you know my wife was coming here. She’s pregnant.”
    “Pregnant,” Maud said, “really? That’s ironic, isn’t it? Timely topics.”
    “Maud, sit down.”
    She stood where she was. A disturbing notion occurred to Brookman. He felt he had been given an insight into what her father, the detective, might