Something Fierce by David Drayer Page A

calls that never come.”
    “Aren’t we all,” he said. Their eyes locked. Angry and sad. The space between them was charged with an almost unbearable carnality. Neither of them was breathing. Kat didn’t seem to notice. She was gazing at Seth like some love-sick girl from a black and white movie. He wrapped it up, wished them well, told them it was great to see them again and continued on to the faculty parking lot.
    What the hell did she mean by that? He did call, damn it! He called right when he said he would. And he followed that up with a text. He knew it was the right number. It was her on the voicemail, wasn’t it? He thought back. Yes. Definitely. No doubt. He didn’t know what that remark was supposed to mean and he wished to God he didn’t care. He replayed the conversation in his mind the whole way home.
    For the next week, it seemed that Kerri was everywhere. He saw her two and three times a day at school. They never spoke, but their eyes always met, suggesting some emotion: annoyance, confusion, longing. Mostly longing. Snippets of past discussions broke his concentration in the evenings when he was searching the Internet for work or working on lesson plans. Images of her—one especially, of her on top of him looking down, her hair falling over her face, half smiling—were always there when he tried to sleep at night. When he wasn’t seeing her at school, he was unconsciously looking for her, distracted, double checking every time a tall blonde entered his periphery. It felt like his head was on a swivel. It got so bad that he stopped eating in the cafeteria and took his lunch back to Dr. Jarrell’s office—also on loan until May—to get some peace.
    The office was another very nice and generous perk. No part-timers had an office and some full-timers had to share, but Seth had Dr. Jarrell’s all to himself. It was great, but it was strange too. While Seth had taken over much of the house, made it seem like his own, he hadn’t done anything with the office. The walls were covered with posters of another man’s favorite plays and photographs of unfamiliar relatives. Being there made him aware of how lonely he’d been lately, not just for Kerri but for companionship of any kind. Being the new guy in town, school was the only opportunity he really had to interact with people and there wasn’t a lot of socializing among the other professors. They always seemed to be scurrying to a class or a meeting and then rushing home to fulfill some family obligation, flashing quick hellos and sometimes throwing out vague, noncommittal offers to “get together.” He’d pressed the issue on a few occasions last semester, and while he’d managed to get one guy to actually meet him for a beer after school one night, neither pursued a second outing.
    He took a deep breath and another and then called Gail. “Well?”
    “The doctor thinks there could be an issue,” Gail said, her voice was heavy, tired, “but he’s not sure.”
    “He thinks there could be but he’s not sure ?” Seth said, feeling like a giant hand was squeezing his heart, lungs, and guts together. “Sounds like McLaughlin. Is that who she went to?”
    “Of course.”
    “Well, no wonder. He’s a quack. I’ve always said that and he’s got to be older than dirt by now.”
    “Will you calm down, please?”
    “I’m calm.”
    “You don’t sound calm.”
    “So we don’t know any more than we knew before?”
    “There are no definitive tests for this. He asked her questions to check her memory and thinking skills. She did good in some areas and not so good in others.”
    “Which means?”
    “There may be a problem or there may not be a problem. We don’t know.”
    “So what do we do?”
    “There’s not much we can do other than keep an eye on her for the next year or so.”
    “The next year or so?”
    “It’s better than a definite, ‘Yes, she has it’ isn’t it? I mean, if she does then we got it very early and if she