Free Apprehensions and Other Delusions by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro Page B

And I’ve got two papers assigned in my classes. I can’t miss them. The students are depending on them for a third of their grades.” She stared at the window, seeing the plants growing on the far side of it. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
    “Go to a hotel,” said Naomi, determined to make some contribution. “There’s places around here that don’t cost an arm and a leg, and they aren’t awful. What about that place down from campus that does bed and breakfast, the old Victorian place? This time of year they must have a lot of space. And it’s a great building, all that gingerbread. And quiet room service, too, so they tell me.” This last was embarrassed.
    “Yeah,” said Fanchon. “Well, thanks anyway.” She was ready to hang up; there was nothing else to say.
    “Give me a call when you decide what you’re going to do, Fanchon, will you? We can get together for coffee or lunch or ... we can talk over everything. Okay?”
    “Sure,” said Fanchon, hanging up. So she was trapped in the house, and there was nothing she could do to change it. No matter where she went, the road would bring her back here.
    She found an excuse to go back to campus for a good part of the day and into the evening. So much research, so many appointments with students—it took time, and time was what she wanted to have away from her flat. She hated to think of Eric as an insensitive clod, but she could not avoid such a conclusion, not after everything that had happened to her. He wanted more statistics and he didn’t much care where they came from, except downstairs was convenient. It was easier to resent Muir than to think about what might be happening to her. There was too much mystery, too much of the unknown for her to dismiss it as a freak or an accident. Somehow that made the whole thing worse.
    By the time she had been back in her flat for twenty minutes, Eric Muir was knocking on her back door. Reluctantly she let him in, not bothering to apologize for her bathrobe and ratty slippers.
    “It’s been worse,” she said, indicating the low level of throbbing that echoed through her rooms.
    “You could put it that way,” said Muir, leaning back against the old-fashioned kitchen counter and crossing his arms. “We listened to the tape today.”
    “And?” She had started to make some soup, and offered him a bowl with a gesture instead of words. She was pretty sure she could keep soup down.
    “Let’s go out for some fish instead. I’ll give you fifteen minutes to change. There’s a lot to tell you. This whole thing is damned weird. And that’s a rare admission for a theoretical physicist to make.” He looked at her more closely, as if seeing her for the first time. “You’re exhausted, aren’t you?”
    “I suppose so. I haven’t been sleeping much.” She might have laughed if he hadn’t been so worried.
    “It’s more than that. You’re ... drained. Get changed. Find your coat. It’s starting to rain and you shouldn’t get wet.” He did not wait for her to refuse but turned off the fire under her pan of soup. “You can eat that tomorrow, if you want to.”
    “I can’t afford another dinner out,” she warned him, recalling the twelve dollars in her purse that was supposed to last her until Friday. “I don’t have enough for anything fancy.”
    “Then I’ll buy. I think I owe you something. You’ve been through a lot, and you haven’t anything but circles under your eyes to show for it.” He rested his hands on the back of one of her two kitchen chairs.
    “Yeah,” she said, trying to remember the last time she had had dinner out with a man for any reason other than professional.
    “Good.”
    She changed and ran a brush through her hair. As an afterthought she put a little lipstick on, then took her four-year-old trenchcoat from the closet before joining him at the front door.
    They drove in silence, and when they reached the restaurant they were told that it would be a twenty-minute wait