Read The Empty Room for Free Online Page A

it or not. You couldn’t make an ultimatum like that and not keep it; if you did, the rest of your life would be hell, wouldn’t it? And so she’d let him go and then things had gone bad for him—too much cocaine and booze—and he lost his job and came back to Toronto. He worked at a small brokerage now, but like her, he didn’t keep jobs more than a few years. They stayed in touch, couldn’t seem to break away completely. A now-and-again thing, always with the possibility that someday, somewhere … They talked, and sometimes he called and didn’t say anything, but she knew it was him. She knew he was probably high, or drunk. He came close to getting married once, but nothing worked out. Now there was nobody again, not for either of them, and well, you never knew, right?
    Roughly once a month she dreamed about Jake. They were strange dreams in which she didn’t know she was dreaming, but thought she was awake and aware she had recurring dreams about him, and in the dream they understand each other, finally. They know each other and will be reunited, as they were always meant to be. They’re holding onto each other, and she can smell that spicy-woodsy scent of his and feel his muscles and she’s just on the verge of telling him about how she’s always dreamed of him, that they’ve always been tied in some mystical way, and then she either realizes she’s dreaming, or she just plain realizes she can’t stay with him, and all this loss and grief pours down on her and her heart breaks all over again, and she wakes up in tears, longing for him.
    It was ridiculous.
    Did she call him last night? Probably. Heat ran up her neck and over her ears. She had to stop calling him. It did no good. She couldn’t remember what she said. Jake might be the love of her life, but he wasn’t safe and the better part of her knew that. After they broke up but while he was living in New York, he would come back to Toronto now and then—his family was still here—and show up at her office, drunk and crying, or at her apartment in the middle of the night. He scared her. She wouldn’t let him in. He banged on her door until she threatened to call the cops. Then he went back to New York and the nobody-there calls started. She wanted him to stop, but then again, she didn’t.
    Colleen realized she was frowning and must look sour. That was no way to walk into the office, especially at … oh God … 9:27.She smoothed her hair and put a pleasant expression on her face. Maybe Moore was in his office at the back. Maybe the profs were all in class. Maybe Sylvia was off sick. She opened the door to the department office and there, ever so professorial in his khaki pants and tweed jacket, loomed Dr. David Moore, the Chair, talking with Sylvia, his assistant.
    “Good morning,” Colleen said. “Did you all have trouble getting in today? I don’t know what was happening on the Bloor line, but my God, the number of people! I waited for three or four trains to go by before I managed to get on one.”
    Dr. Moore merely crossed his arms. Sylvia stood next to her tidy desk, with her tight little sweater, unbuttoned just so, and her shiny black bob and oh-so-hip retro nerd glasses, her deep plum lipstick and those appalling furry boots. She smiled, tapping a file folder, and said, “I’m glad I live close enough to walk to work.”
    “Aren’t you lucky?” Colleen hung her coat on the rack, stuffed her purse in her drawer and sat down in front of the alarmingly high pile of papers and folders on her desk. Things had been so much better when Eppie Goldman was David’s assistant; she had been a lovely old thing, even if she did have that unfortunate gum-chewing habit, and besides, when she retired, Colleen should have been promoted to Assistant to the Chair. They shouldn’t have hired from outside.
    Why didn’t David say anything? What had he and Sylvia been talking about? Sylvia looked at her and widened her eyes in the oddest way, and then