“It was a night class?”
“It started at seven. We don’t usually make a big difference between day and night classes here. It’s all one schedule. Anyway, Chester and Darvelle were inseparable, until that class. And then they ended up sitting on opposite sides of the classroom glaring at each other. It was so bad, I nearly threw one of them out just so I could get something done. But we got through class, and the students left, and I sat behind for a bit to get myself organized.”
“Were you living in your car then, too?”
Penny gave him a look. “No,” she said. “Twelve years ago, the union hadn’t negotiated a contract that restricted adjuncts to only two courses in the system per term. I could afford an apartment all year round in those days. But here’s the thing. I waited a couple of minutes. I got my tote bag packed up. Then I went downstairs to the Frasier Hall parking lot. Students aren’t allowed to park there before five o’clock, but after five, it’s fair game. And there the three of them were, Darvelle and Chester and Kyle. Darvelle was kind of hanging back. Chester and Kyle were fighting.”
“Fist fighting?”
“Well, I don’t know about Chester’s fists,” Penny London said, “but Kyle was using his. I stood there and watched while he pulled back his arm and hit Chester so hard in the jaw that Chester went down flat on the ground. If I’d had a cell phone then, I would have called security.”
“Did Chester get up?”
“Oh, yes, he definitely got up. He took that bright yellow backpack of his and slammed it into the truck next to him hard enough to cause a dent. I saw the dent. I have to assume it was Kyle’s truck or Darvelle’s or even Chester’s own, because as far as I know there was no trouble about the dent. It was too bad, too, because that truck was mint new and shiny black. It looked like something out of a rock video about the devil.”
“Did you ever see it again?”
“The truck?” Penny asked. “No, not that I remember. But I wasn’t really looking for it.”
“And you never saw Chester again?”
“No, never.”
“How about Darvelle and this Kyle person?”
“Oh, they were in class every week. Darvelle always got A’s in everything she took. She pushed herself. I think Kyle just stuck with it because of her. It was that kind of a relationship. It still is, as far as I know. I see them around town together quite a lot. I asked some people I know, and they don’t seem to be married, but—well, you know. They always seem to be together.”
“Interesting,” Gregor said.
Penny London opened one of the smaller styrofoam boxes and discovered the first of the three desserts Gregor had brought in. She opened the other two and then took the big piece of chocolate cake.
“Do you always eat like this?” she asked him. “I’m surprised you’re not the size of Howard Androcoelho.”
SIX
1
Haydee Michaelman had to admit it. She had come to rely on Kenny Morton showing up out of the blue whenever she needed a ride, and she got a little depressed when she was hoping to find him and he wasn’t there. This was a very bad sign. She’d only met him at the very start of this term, and she’d only talked to him face-to-face just after Labor Day. It wasn’t all that long from then to now. Any minute now, she’d start mooning around, unable to concentrate on anything that was really important. She’d seen it happen too many time to too many girls. They started out with ambition. They started out with plans. They started out with a clear idea of who they wanted to be when they hit thirty.
Then they got pregnant.
Haydee rolled over in the unfamiliar bed with its massive wads of quilts and pillows and told herself not to be stupid. She and Kenny hadn’t even been out on a date yet, never mind done it. She wasn’t going to get pregnant just because she let some boy keep her out of the rain when she didn’t have an umbrella.
Haydee sat up and looked around. The door to the bedroom was open, and she could hear the sound of somebody messing around in a kitchen from the other end of the trailer. Trailers, Haydee thought, were all alike. In fact, the trailers in this particular park were identical. Somebody must mass produce trailers somewhere, tooling them up on a conveyer belt, dumping them onto big flatbed trucks at the end of the line.
Haydee looked at her watch. It was only six. The light outside the window was only pale and promising, not full-bore morning.
Haydee got up from the bed and went to the door. She could see down the hall to where Desiree was cooking something on the tiny kitchen stove. The door to the other bedroom was shut tight.