Free Long Knives by Charles Rosenberg Page B

student died. I’m a mess.”
    “Of course I heard. It’s all over the school. I’ve been worried sick about you.”
    “You could have dropped by my condo when you couldn’t reach me.”
    As soon as I said it, I realized it had been the wrong thing to say. He was trying hard to care about me and I was being a jerk.
    “Jenna, you’ve told me several times never to do that. Under any circumstances.”
    Which was true. I didn’t like being dropped in on. Maybe some of the lack of intimacy was on my side. I’d never agreed to move in with anybody, despite several heartfelt invitations, and I didn’t even like staying overnight with a guy.
    In the end I didn’t respond to what Aldous had said about dropping in on me but asked, instead, “What are they saying around the school about Primo?”
    “Nothing specific. Just a lot of shock and supposed grief, although I haven’t run into anyone who really knew him well.”
    “Nobody’s saying what killed him?”
    “No. Do you know?”
    “No. I have no idea. I went with him to the hospital in the ambulance, but they wouldn’t say much because I wasn’t a relative. And anyway, at that point they seemed to think he’d be fine.”
    “Who told you that?”
    “Some doctor who also tried to pick me up.”
    “Did he succeed?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Not yet?”
    “I’m teasing you, Aldous.”
    “You don’t usually tease.”
    “I know, I know. I need to lighten up, don’t you think?”
    Before he could answer, the chime sounded and we went in.
    Aldous had reserved seats in the middle of the third row of the orchestra. One of the things I’ve always liked about him is that he drives an old VW Bug and only flaunts his wealth in small ways. Which got me thinking, as we sat there waiting for the curtain to go up, that if I wanted to, I could become Mrs. Aldous Hartleb, retire and grow prize gladiolus or something. Sure, I’d have to overlook the lack of emotion in our relationship, but maybe all that stuff was overrated. And marrying Aldous would make my father happy. Maybe it would make me happy, too.
    The play was, thank God, a classically staged Hamlet , not a jazzed-up, modern version with Hamlet wearing a pin-striped suit and living amid Danish modern furniture. As the actor began the soliloquy and spoke the famous lines, “Tobe or not to be,” it hit me that Primo had been alive when the sun rose in the morning and was now dead. He was, and now he was not. And it struck me that Primo wasn’t the only one who had gone through an arc. When I got up that morning, I had been a happy camper on my way to tenure. Now, not much more than twelve hours later, I had become an almost unhinged camper whose hands shook. In fact, when the curtain went up I had shoved my hands under my thighs to hide them from view, just in case that started again.
    During the intermission we ran into a couple of other faculty members from the law school. We all drank champagne and made small talk. No one mentioned Primo, but his ghost was clearly present and walking around. I looked at the hand holding my champagne glass and was relieved to see that there was no tremor at all.
    After the play ended, Aldous and I were standing on the sidewalk in front of the theater, talking about where to go to dinner.
    “I’m thinking the Napa Valley Grille,” he said.
    “I’m thinking someplace less fancy,” I responded. “Maybe a late-night burger place. Preferably someplace far from Westwood, where we won’t run into anyone from the law school. I’m finding seeing people from there and not talking about Primo unnerving, even though I very much don’t want to talk about him.”
    “Well, what about…”
    He never got to finish his thought because just then a slight, dark-haired young guy wearing a black leather jacket burst out of the alley next to us, sprinted up to me and began shouting in my face, “Where’s the map? Where is the damn map!?”
    Aldous put his large hand on the kid’s thin