chair, head thrown back at an unnatural angle. Everything is broken and red. The two young scientists leave the room at gunpoint. Bob closes his eyes. The eighth and ninth bullets in his head. As Bob dies, Chris Goertz’s body settles in his chair, a long sigh escapes his throat. Reload. Two more for Chris, one for Shan. Exit the building, cross two streets, run across the green, into building number two and upstairs.
The administrator, Anne Cleary, is summoned from her office by the receptionist. She speaks to him for a few seconds, he produces the gun and shoots her in the face. The receptionist, a young student working as a temp, is just beginning to stand when he shoots her in the mouth. He dispels the spent cartridges in the stairwell, loads new ones. Reaches the top of the steps, looks around. Is disoriented suddenly. The ringing and the smoke and the dissatisfaction of not checking all the names off the list. A slamming and a running sound, the shout of police. He walks into an empty classroom, takes off his coat, folds it carefully, and puts it over the back of the chair. Checks his watch; twelve minutes since it began. Places the barrel against his right temple. Fires.
The first call comes at four o’clock. I’m reading on the bench in the kitchen, one foot on a sleeping dog’s back. It’s Mary, calling from work. There’s been some kind of disturbance in the building, a rumor that Dwight was shot; cops are running through the halls carrying rifles. They’re evacuating the building and she’s coming over.
Dwight, a tall likable oddball who cut off his ponytail when they made him chair of the department. Greets everyone with a famous booming hello in the morning, studies plasma, just like Chris and Bob. Chris lives two and half blocks from the physics building; he’ll be home by now if they’ve evacuated. I dial his house and his mother answers. She tells me that Chris won’t be home until five o’clock, and then they’re going to a play. Ulrike, her daughter-in-law, is coming back from a trip to Chicago and will join them. She wants to know why I’m looking for Chris; isn’t he where I am?
No, I’m at home and I just had to ask him something. Could he please call me when he comes in.
She tells me that Chris showed her a drawing I made of him sitting at his desk behind a stack of manuscripts. She’s so pleased to meet Chris’s friends, and the Midwest is lovely, really, except it’s very brown, isn’t it?
It is very brown. We hang up.
The Midwest is very brown. The phone rings. It’s a physicist. His wife, a friend of mine, is on the extension. Well, he’s not sure, but it’s possible that I should brace myself for bad news. I’ve already heard, I tell him, something happened to Dwight. There’s a long pause and then his wife says, Jo Ann. It’s possible that Chris was involved.
I think she means Chris shot Dwight. No, she says gently, killed, too.
Mary is here. I tell them not to worry and hang up. I have two cigarettes going. Mary takes one and smokes it. She’s not looking at me. I tell her about the phone call.
“They’re out of it,” I say. “They thought Chris was involved.”
She repeats what they said: I think you should brace yourself for bad news. Pours whiskey in a coffee cup.
For a few minutes I can’t sit down. I can’t stand up. I can only smoke. The phone rings. Another physicist tells me there’s some bad news. He mentions Chris and Bob and I tell him I don’t want to talk right now. He says okay but to be prepared because it’s going to be on the news any minute. It’s 4:45.
“Now they’re trying to stir Bob into the stew,” I tell Mary. She nods; she’s heard this, too. I have the distinct feeling there is something going on that I can either understand or not understand. There’s a choice to be made.
“I don’t understand,” I tell Mary.
We sit in the darkening living room, smoking and sipping our cups of whiskey. Inside my head
Lynette Eason, Lisa Harris, Rachel Dylan