Red 1-2-3

14

After dark, cool air settling over the campus, Jordan slipped into torn jeans, old running shoes, and a black parka, and found a threadbare navy watch cap which she pulled down over her hair as tightly as possible. She waited in her room until she heard some of the other girls in her dormitory gathering to head out to an evening lecture-the school was forever bringing in writers, artists, filmmakers, businessmen, and scientists to speak informally to the upper-class students. Jordan knew the other kids would gather in the vestibule of the converted house and then launch themselves out in a giggling, tight-knit group. Teenagers tended to travel in packs, she knew. Wolves did as well, except she doubted that the wolf that concerned her joined any group.

Lone wolf, she thought. The phrase made her shudder.

Jordan exited her room and hesitated at the top of the stairs until she heard four other girls, voices raised, laughing and teasing each other, barrel loudly through the front door.

Moving swiftly, taking the stairs two at a time, she sprinted out just behind them, trying to make it seem as if she were a part of that group without getting so close that they would turn and draw attention to her. She wanted to make it seem to anyone watching that she was hurrying to catch up with her friends.

She trailed a few feet distant, but as they turned left, heading toward the lecture halls, she abruptly ducked into the first deep shadow she could find, pinning herself against the side of an old redbrick classroom building, scrunching up against twisted knots of ivy branches that poked her in the back like an unruly child vying for attention.

Jordan waited.

She listened to the sounds of her classmates disappearing into the evening and waited for her eyes to adjust to the night. Hidden in shadow, she counted seconds off in her head: one, two, three. She did not know if she was being followed, but she assumed she was, even though the rational side of her told her loudly that this was completely impossible. No wolf, no matter how clever, how dedicated, or how obsessed, could spend all his time outside her dorm room just waiting for her to emerge and then trail after her.

She repeated this to herself insistently, but she was unsure whether she was reassuring herself or lying to herself. They seemed equal possibilities. Yes he is. No he isn’t.

She wondered if she should be scared, and then realized that the mere act of wondering made her muscles tense up and her breathing grow shallow. It was cold, but she felt warm. It was dark, but she felt like she was beneath a spotlight. She was young, but she felt old and unsteady.

Jordan squirmed closer to the side of the building. She could still feel the Wolf’s presence, almost as if he was jammed into the ivy branches beside her, hot breath on her neck. She half-expected to hear his voice whispering “I’m right here” in her ear and she exhaled sharply, the whooshing noise seeming as loud as a train whistle. She clamped down on her lips.

When silence-or enough silence, because she could still hear distant voices echoing across the quadrangles from other students, and a Winterpills song she really liked playing inside a dormitory-surrounded her she stepped out of her shadow, and hunching her shoulders up against the chill, keeping her head lowered and her pace fast, she wove her way rapidly across campus, zigzagging erratically, avoiding every light, turning up one dark path, then cutting across the grass to another, backtracking before racing inside a dormitory, and then using a different door at the far end of the building to exit back into the night.

Finally, persuaded that no wolf could successfully follow her drunken trail, she sprinted out through a set of tall black wrought iron gates that marked the school’s entrance. She quickly turned onto an ink-shadowed side street. She slowed slightly to a jog as she headed toward the center of the small town that encapsulated the school. She felt a little like she was acting in some Hollywood spy movie. It was cool enough so she could see her breath.

Antonio’s Pizza was lit up. Bright lights and multicolored neon signs. There were a half-dozen schoolmates of hers gathered around the stainless steel counter in front of the oven, waiting for a slice or two. She watched two men wearing white smocks and aprons serving up the orders. They did this with a flourish, using large wooden paddles to shoot the pizzas into the oven and then remove them moments later.

From where Jordan lingered on the street, she could imagine happy voices and the sound of the cash register. The pizza joint was like that-a difficult place to be depressed or distracted. There would be a happy buzz inside, laughter and raised voices mingling with the enticing smells of roasted meat and spices and the welcoming blasts of heat that rolled from the ovens each time they were opened.

She waited, half-hungry in that way that teenagers are; she could easily have stuffed herself with hot pizza. Except every time she thought about the Wolf, her hunger fled, replaced with a gnawing sensation in her stomach. Fear versus food. An unfair fight.

A cold breeze rattled an awning above the sidewalk in front of an antique store that was shut down for the night. Jordan was about to glance at her watch when the spire that rose above the small town’s offices chimed seven times.

She looked up and saw a small station wagon pull up in front of the pizza place. She hunched back, once again seeking a shadow to conceal herself in, and waited. Right on time, she thought. She didn’t know whether this was good or bad.

The car put on its flashers. Yellow lights painted the sidewalk. She could see the driver leaning across the front seat, staring into the restaurant, searching hard.

That was where Jordan had said she would be.

But instead, she was just down the street, in a vantage spot between two buildings where she could see without being seen.

She waited, holding her breath.

Jordan watched the figure in the station wagon sit upright and undo the seat belt. Then the figure opened the car door, stepped out and stood close to the car, continuing to stare at the group of teenagers inside the restaurant.

It was dark and the bright neon lights from the few stores open threw odd rainbow colors across the street, reflecting off glistening black macadam. Yellow sodium vapor streetlights tossed sickly shades down on the cement. It was a confusion of color; blacks and reds and greens and whites all mingled together, making lies of realities: A green car looked blue. A scarlet parka seemed brown.

She could not tell with certainty that the person’s hair was red. She bit down on her lip and decided that she had no choice but to chance it.

Jordan stepped from the shadow and walked quickly forward to the car. She saw the woman turn in surprise toward her. She had a sudden look of shock, as if Jordan were holding a knife. “Red One?” Jordan asked. She wanted her voice to be firm and confident, but she could hear a crack, like ice fracturing under too much weight on a frigid day.

The woman nodded. Her face seemed to relax.

“Hi. I’m Red Three.”

“Jump in,” Karen replied, gesturing toward the passenger side. She was trying to sound as if this were the most natural meeting in the world.

When Jordan hesitated, Karen said, “I’m not him. I promise.” She watched the younger woman seem to assess the validity of her statement, then cautiously slide into the car. Karen only had a few seconds to measure Jordan, especially the few strands of her red hair that escaped from beneath the tight-knit hat. She’s so young, the older woman thought as she got behind the wheel of her car.

“I’m Jordan,” Jordan said quietly.

“And I’m Karen,” the older woman replied. Jordan nodded. “Where shall we go?” Karen asked.

“Anywhere,” Jordan replied as she shrunk down in her seat, as if by lowering her profile she could avoid being seen. “Anywhere you think it’s safe.”

She paused, then said in a low voice, “No. Anywhere you are absolutely fucking certain it’s safe.”

Karen unwittingly mimicked Jordan’s evasive path as soon as she put her car in gear. She accelerated hard one instant, turned down a side street, squealing her tires with the sudden turn, then backed into an alleyway and made a U-turn. A mile outside the town there was a modest strip mall, where Karen turned in to a McDonald’s and drove through the take-out window before exiting in yet a different direction. She steered the car onto the interstate highway, drove fast for a few miles, then pulled into a scenic rest area and waited, her eyes constantly scanning the rearview mirror to make sure no one was following them. Finally, when she had seen nothing but darkness for a few minutes, she once again drove fast, heading toward a spot she knew that fit Red Three’s standard of being safe and fucking certain.

Jordan said nothing during the trip. Not even when she was thrown sideways and jerked forward as Karen pushed the car wildly around a corner. Karen imagined that the teenager was probably accustomed to wild, aimless rides.

“This is getting to be my regular driving style,” Karen said briskly. She half-hoped that a little light talk might help them to connect. But her passenger remained quiet, as if lost in thought. Karen glanced from time to time at the younger woman. She thought Red Three preternaturally calm.

The hospital complex was lit up with security lights, especially near the emergency room access. There was a small white kiosk with a bored rent-a-cop guarding the doctors’ parking lot. Karen pulled in there, giving the sullen security guard her name and a five number code, which he checked on his computer before waving her in wordlessly.

Karen found a spot near the back, hidden from view.

“Let’s go inside,” Karen said. “Follow me.”

Again without speaking, Jordan complied.

The two women marched across the parking area. They passed from shadows into the cones of wan light dropped from above by high-intensity lamps. The light made their skin seem sallow, sickly. Each thought the same thing: that even if they had been followed at the start, their precautions had to have done enough to lose any wolf on their trail.

Neither of the two really believed this.

Shoulder to shoulder, they hurried out of the night into the hospital. There was a triage nurse at a desk in a brightly lit waiting room outside the emergency room. She looked up at the two of them with a world-weary look. There was a water fountain in a corner, and two state policemen in gray-blue outfits and three navy-blue jumpsuited EMTs were sharing a joke nearby. There was a burst of laughter from the three men and two women. Jordan glanced at the people waiting on uncomfortable molded plastic chairs. An old man buried under winter coats. A young Hispanic couple with a child in a pink parka seated between them, and a baby in the woman’s arms. A pair of college-aged boys, one of whom looked both sick and drunk and was, somehow, sitting unsteadily.

No Wolf, she thought, waiting for us.

Karen dug around in her large, oversized leather purse, found an ID card, and waved it toward the triage nurse, who in turn hit a buzzer entrance. Karen gestured as the automatic doors swung open. Inside the emergency-room treatment suites, she waited for the doors to slam shut with an electronic locking thud.

With Jordan in tow, she passed the curtained exam rooms, pausing only to wave at a physician she seemed to know, before exiting through another set of doors and then traveling down a long sterile corridor that opened up into a cafeteria.

“Do you want something to eat?” She asked. “Or coffee?”

“Just coffee,” Jordan replied. “Cream and sugar.”

She sat at a corner table away from white-jacketed or green-surgical-gowned groups of interns and residents as Karen went to the counter and fashioned two steaming cups of coffee. Jordan nodded to herself and thought, This is a good place. If the Wolf came in he’d stand out unless he was in scrubs. She half-smiled when Karen returned to their table.

The young woman and the older woman sat across from each other, sipping the coffee, not saying anything for a few moments. It was Jordan who broke the silence.

‘So,” she said, “I gather you’re a doctor.”

“Internal medicine.”

Jordan shook her head. “I was hoping you were a shrink.”

“Why?” Karen asked.

“Because then maybe you’d know something about abnormal psychology, and that might help us,” Jordan answered. “I’m just a student,” she continued. “And not a real good one lately, either.”

Karen nodded, and then said, “But we’re both something else, now. Or, at least, it sure seems that way.”

“Yeah,” the teenager responded with a sudden burst of bitterness. “Now we’re targets. It’s like we’ve got bull’s-eyes painted on our backs. Or maybe we’re just soon-to-be-dead victims. Or some combination of the two.”

Karen shook her head. “We don’t know that. We can’t…” Her voice trailed off. She looked up into the harsh ceiling lights of the cafeteria, trying to think of something reassuring to say. And then she gave up. She took a deep breath. “What do we know?” she asked.

Jordan paused before answering. “Not too fucking much.”

The obscenity rolled freely off her tongue. Ordinarily she would never have used that sort of language with an older person. It gave her a sense of freedom to be so rude with Karen.

“No,” Karen corrected her softly, “we know a few things. Like there are three of us. And one of him-”

“We don’t know that,” Jordan interrupted instantly. She had a queasy feeling in her stomach, because her next thought-the one she was about to speak out loud-had just struck her. Lone wolf? How do we know? “We only know that it feels like there’s just the one guy out there hunting all three of us. That’s because in the fairy tale there’s just the one Big Bad Wolf. But we don’t know for certain that there aren’t two or three guys out there, like a little club. Maybe they’re like the Knights of Columbus or some fantasy football team, except they’re all about killing. And maybe they’re lounging around some nice rec room in somebody’s basement drinking beers and eating pretzels, giggling and guffawing and thinking this is just the damn funniest thing ever, before they get their acts together and come kill us.”

Karen hadn’t considered this. She felt cold, almost iced over inside. The two messages from the Wolf just automatically led her to certain assumptions. She looked up at Jordan. It took a child to make her understand that nothing was clear.

Karen gripped her coffee tightly to hold the cup steady. “You’re right,” she said slowly. “We can’t assume anything.”

The two women watched each other, letting a small silence fit into the table space between them. After a moment, Jordan shook her head and smiled weakly. “No,” she replied. “I think we have to. I think we’ve got to make some decisions. Otherwise, we’re just walking alone through the forest, just like he told us we were.”

“Okay,” Karen said, slowly elongating each syllable. “What do you think…”

“I think we need Red Two,” Jordan said briskly. “That’s the first thing. We have to find Red Two.”

“That makes sense.”

“Unless, of course, Red Two is the Wolf,” Jordan said.

Karen’s head spun. This thought seemed impossible, but at the same time eerily accurate. There was no way of telling.

She saw the teenager shrug. “We shouldn’t guess. Find her and then the three of us can start to plan.”

Karen nodded, although she was surprised. She had thought that it would be her leading the teenager, not the other way around, even though she had no real idea where to lead anyone, given their situation.

“Okay, how…”

“I can find her,” Jordan said. “I’ll do it.”

Karen breathed out slowly. Leave it to the teenager, she thought. If there’s anything a teenager knows, it’s computers. She reached down and brought up her purse from the floor. “Here,” she said. She opened it up and removed three disposable cell phones. “I bought these this morning: One for you, and one for Red Two when we find her, and one for me. This way, at least, we can communicate privately.”

Jordan smiled. “That’s smart.” She took the phones and immediately started to program them with all three numbers.

“I’m not a complete idiot,” Karen said, although she felt a little like one. “I’ll try to figure out some safe places, like this”-she gestured around the cafeteria-“where we can all meet if we need to.”

“Okay. That’s a good idea, too.”

“Yes,” Karen said, “But that’s pretty much the end of my good ideas.”

“Well.” Jordan shook her head. “I’ve been thinking. And I think it’s pretty simple.”

“Simple?”

“Yes. We have to find him before he finds us.”

“And what do we do…” Karen said slowly. The teenager in front of her seemed both intimately familiar and a total stranger simultaneously.

“You know what we do then,” Jordan said.

“No, I don’t,” Karen replied. But she did, even before Jordan filled in the silence.

“We kill him first,” Jordan said matter-of-factly, just like she was slapping away a stray mosquito that had landed on her arm. The teenager leaned back in her seat. She was a little astonished at what she’d said. She did not know precisely where the idea had come from, but she thought it must have been hiding behind all her fears, just waiting for the brightly lit, oppressively clean place she was seated in to emerge. But just as quickly, she was pleased. For the first time in days, maybe even months, she thought, she liked the direction she was suddenly going in. Cold-blooded and determined. She could feel her pulse quicken. It was a little like jumping up toward the basket and releasing the ball and realizing that her fingertips had scraped the bottom of the rim. Boys, she thought, dream of high-flying slam dunks, so they can pound their chest with look-what-I-did bravado. I’m more modest. I just want to be able to reach the goal and touch it.