The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(27)

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Molly didn’t see quite how small her studio apartment was until Doug Ellison was standing inside it. She offered beers; he hovered behind her as she bent to pull them from the mini-fridge. They went to the love seat. The room was intimately lit, and her bed asserted itself, making its presence known like an alpha male spreading his legs in a bar, as they sat together sipping beers.

Finally Molly turned to Doug and asked, “Have you ever had a student disappear?”

He laughed. “Wishful thinking.”

“Be removed, I mean,” she said. “Legal issues.”

“Sure, why?”

“I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

“Now, Molly. If we only did what we’re allowed to do, would we ever have any fun?”

She rolled her eyes. “I keep thinking the strangest things. Where he is. What he’s doing right this minute. I keep seeing him in one of those awful orange jumpsuits they make them wear, behind barbed wire or something. Don’t laugh.”

“You’re sweet.”

“I keep thinking, what could I have done? What could I have done to make it different?”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Doug said. “You know, these kids have resources you and I can only dream about. Damon Flintov—of course I know who you’re talking about—he’s got a mansion, a Beemer, parents with more money than God.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just saying, he’ll be fine. Damon Flintov may be a belligerent moron, but trust me. In ten years he’s living the high life while you and I are still droning on about the five-paragraph essay.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I became a teacher in order to teach.” As soon as she heard this, her voice tight with righteousness, she knew it was untrue. “I wanted to help them. I wanted books to save them the way they saved me.”

Doug nodded. “I might’ve felt that way once. But there are other aspirations.”

“Like what?”

Doug took a swig of his beer. “Look,” he said. “Some people get what they want. Some people don’t. We tell kids life is fair, hard work, bootstraps, et cetera, but you know, and I know, that it isn’t. The deck is stacked. You and I, for example. We’re smart, we did well in school, we work hard. And our kids’ worst nightmare is to end up like us.”

“You’re wrong,” Molly said.

They were quiet. Molly could see, on Doug’s jaw, where he’d nicked himself shaving, a small, dark bead of dried blood. She had the urge to push him out of her apartment—her hand closed around her beer bottle as if it were a weapon. But why? He’d made no threats.

Or every threat. He was scanning her garnet bedspread, her stacked books, the single framed snapshot on her bedside table. Her college graduation, on the sun-browned lawn of Fresno State. In the photograph Molly was flanked by her sister and her dad, her black gown open in the heat. “You look like a baby,” Doug said.

“It wasn’t that long ago.”

He leaned forward, squinting at the picture. “That your guy?”

“Who, my dad?” In the photo Molly’s father hunkered unsmiling, eyes shielded by dark glasses.

“The other one.”

“Oh. That’s Josh.” Her ex-boyfriend was there, she realized, at the edge of the photo, grinning into the sun. The frame cut off his right ear. He wore the same wraparound sunglasses he always wore, as though his life were one long river cruise on the San Joaquin. Maybe it was, now that she’d gone.

“You broke his heart, didn’t you?” Doug said. “Crushed it. Ground it into tiny little pieces.”

She winced. He’d hit a tender place, one she hadn’t known was still vulnerable to thoughtless blows. She said, carefully, “I couldn’t give him what he wanted.”

“Go on.” Doug set down his beer and stared very seriously into her face, as though plotting to pry her open with a churchkey. His glasses magnified his eyes. She saw the teenager in him, nerdy and guileless.

“We met my sophomore year of college,” she explained. “Josh was outgoing, popular; I guess I intrigued him. We were happy when we were alone. But at parties, we were strangers. He’d make instant friends with everyone—it was so easy for him—and I would want to join in but I couldn’t, somehow. Then we’d fight. Of course he got fed up with me. ‘Why do things have to be so heavy all the time?’ he’d ask. ‘Why can’t you just be happy?’ I’d tell him, ‘I hate parties, you know that.’ But I couldn’t explain what I wanted instead.”

Doug nodded. After a moment he said, “Well, he looks nice. Not for you, though.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I see you with somebody different, is all. Less Mr. Nice Guy. More like—”

“You?” she ventured.

“More like you, I was going to say.”

She drank her beer. It had gotten warm. She set the bottle on the floor. “What am I like?”

He turned toward her. His knee nudged hers. He smelled of sandalwood cologne: alcohol, pencil shavings, cream. There were freckles on his knuckles.