Love in the Time of Serial Killers(30)

This was why I preferred to keep people at arm’s length. Things got so much more complicated when you actually cared if someone sent you a text, or accepted an invitation, or wanted to hang out.

I shut the driver’s-side door, rolling down the window to give Sam a jaunty wave. “Thanks for all your help,” I said. “I guess . . . see you around?”

“It’d be hard not to,” he said.

I backed carefully out of the space, checking my rearview mirror when I’d reached the exit of the library parking lot. Sam was still standing there, the disconnected cables in his hands, the hood of his truck still open. I almost thought about opening the door and calling back to him, seeing if maybe he wanted to grab that lunch after all, if we met back at our houses first. But then I remembered that I was supposed to be working on my dissertation, that any invitation would lead to a bunch of annoying logistics about where should we go and whose car should we drive, and god forbid he thought it was a date. God forbid I did.

I flicked my signal light on, and made the turn to leave.





TEN





THE PROBLEM WITH putting off writing was that the words didn’t just magically appear the longer you left your computer to its own devices. If anything, the blinking cursor on my open dissertation document seemed more accusatory than ever, as if to say, What’s the holdup, bitch? If you love In Cold Blood so much, why don’t you just write about it, then?

The internal voice of my computer was quite rude, apparently.

When I was really trying to buckle down to work, I would switch my Wi-Fi off to remind myself to stop dicking around on the internet. Of course, the only thing stopping me from turning it back on was a double click and my own fragile willpower. So I told myself I was taking a quick break, and searched for the Sunrise Slayer’s daughter’s name.

Most of it was the expected stuff—reviews of her book, an interview she’d given for a local CBS affiliate. On the third page of results, I found a post she’d made a year ago on a quilting website, where she was asking if anyone had extra of some discontinued fabric she needed. In one of her follow-up comments, she mentioned her local fabric store, and I searched the name of that, too.

It was about an hour from my dad’s house. So apparently she did still live in the area. And more power to her, too, because my dad didn’t even murder a bunch of people and I still felt all antsy just being back in this place where I had a higher probability of running into people who might’ve known him.

My phone rang on the desk next to me, and I answered it without looking away from the search results. “Hello?”

“Phoebe. How are you?”

Of all the voices I’d thought I’d hear, I hadn’t expected Dr. Nilsson. She never called me out of the blue without setting it up by email first. I closed out my boondoggle internet search and pulled my document back up, as though she could see my screen through the phone and knew I was fucking off.

“Great,” I said, my voice pitched a little higher than was natural. “Just working on my Capote section.”

I wondered if this was about the last chapter I’d turned in. Had it been so bad that she had to call to personally ream me out? Did I comma splice one too many times and cause her eyeballs to bleed, and she’d barked an order for Siri to call me as her one last action before she went under the deep sleep of anesthesia?

Shit, had I used irregardless again? I’d carelessly used the word once in a five-page response in her class, and she’d double-underlined it and written NO in the margin. The only things that could scare me were the brief shot of the girl in the closet in The Ring and those two letters written in her spidery script.

“I was talking to a colleague at Stiles College,” she said. “I believe that’s in your neck of the woods?”

I’d heard of the school. It was a small liberal arts college about forty-five minutes south in Sarasota, known mostly for being a little eccentric. The only kid I’d known from high school who’d gone there had been a state unicycling champion, for example. He’d wanted to show off his skills at the school talent show, but the vice principal vetoed it, citing liability issues. Meanwhile they let two girls do a very DIY gymnastics routine to Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” but okay.

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, yes. It’s close by.”

“Dr. Blake teaches African American literature,” Dr. Nilsson said. “Their scholarship on Octavia Butler is impeccable. And they agreed to meet with you for a mock interview before school starts back up again, if you reach out with your availability.”

Oh. I hadn’t expected this development at all. So much so that I didn’t even know how to feel about it. I was grateful that Dr. Nilsson had thought of me, that she was clearly still so committed to helping me with my future career prospects. At the same time, this all felt a little fast. I still hadn’t written that teaching philosophy—I couldn’t even finish this fucking chapter—and she wanted me doing mock interviews?

“You are available?” she asked, her inflection making it just enough of a question to be polite.

“Of course,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I think it will do you good to have someone outside the department assess your employability,” Dr. Nilsson said. “Goodness knows we all have our biases toward our favorite students. But Dr. Blake will pull no punches, so I would advise you set up the interview for at least a month out. Give yourself some time to prepare. You should wear a blazer. Do you own a blazer?”