The Season of Risks

Next day at the office I sent off a batch of replies to user complaints, saved all the Social Security numbers, then checked my own e-mail account. Jacey wanted to know what was up. Sloan said campus was quiet and the weather was cold. And Diana wrote, "How are things going?"



I wrote back. Nothing much up, I told Jacey. Weather also cold here, I told Sloan. And to Diana, I wrote, "Last night I became the woman I've always wanted to be."



I liked that sentence so much that I used it in my blog, too.



I expected that Cameron would call, in spite of what he'd told me-that it wasn't wise for him to be in touch, that during the next few months would come the campaign's most important segments: securing the popularity and endorsements that would help him and Hartman win the fall election.



I'd told him I understood. But I still expected him to call.



On my last night in Manhattan, all the interns and most of the NetFriend administrators went to a Russian bar. They drank vodka mixed with Picardo, and I did, too, though I didn't much like the taste.



I sat next to two guys who worked in Security: Josh and Quibble, they said their names were. They were skinny guys wearing black pants and neon-colored shirts, and both wore dark-framed glasses. I'd seen them a few times in the break room, playing chess. They'd seemed afraid of me. But tonight the vodka made them less afraid.



"What do you do when you catch a hacker?" I said.



Josh, who seemed smarter than Quibble, said, "We don't do anything."



"What kind of a question is that?" Quibble said. "We work with hackers to solve problems."



"Our hackers are the white hats," Josh said. "The good guys who try to find bugs and worms."



"Who are the black hats?" I could tell this conversation wasn't going to go where I wanted it.



Josh looked at Quibble. "The ones we don't hire," Quibble said.



"Until next month," Josh added. They laughed.



Quibble changed the subject. He talked about a former girlfriend of Josh's. After she dumped him, Josh went into her NetFriend account and had all of her friends "unfriend" her. "She was so desperate for company, she took Josh back again," he said.



"Then I dumped her," Josh said.



They laughed.



I smiled. "How do you use the Social Security numbers I send you?"



"We don't use them," Josh said. "We sell them."



Chelsea joined us. She'd been standing behind me, talking to some other admins. "What's with all the questions?"



"I only asked three," I said. "I might want to be a hacker someday."



"You aren't the type," she said.



Leaving New York in March to return to college was like leaving a party as it hits its peak. I walked around the apartment in the dim early morning light, saying good-bye to style and sophistication, then packed my suitcases. When would I wear the black chiffon dress again? Or the black stiletto heels with deep red soles?



But I packed them, just in case. Then I put on jeans and a T-shirt, the uniform of Hillhouse students, closed up the apartment, and carried my bags to the elevator and the car.



I wished a town car had been waiting there to drive me, so that I could have lounged in the back seat. But the Jaguar would have to do. Heading south, I decided not to stop for the night, but to drive straight through. I had snacks to keep me company, and I took a bathroom break near Richmond. Fifteen hours after I started, the Jaguar rolled up the Hillhouse driveway.



When I walked into the dorm, a group of students in the lounge stopped watching TV to stare at me. When I got to my room, Jacey, lying on her bed, reading, sat up with a start.



"Oh my god," she said, her voice high with excitement. "Ari, you're famous."



She held up the newspaper she'd been reading-not the New York Times, but a tabloid called the International Herald. SENATOR HAS MYSTERY DATE, read the headline, over a huge photograph of Cameron and me, my hand on his arm as I told him we didn't need a taxi, he could walk me home.



I stared at the headline. It would be on newsstands all over Manhattan, and I wished I was still there, walking down the avenue, people noticing me and saying, "That's her! That's the mystery woman."



It wasn't a bad photo, either.



"Your hair looks different," Jacey said.



"I had it styled."



I took the paper and opened it to read the article. Three more photos, the first showing Cameron and me entering Dr. Roche's apartment building, the second showing Cameron coming out alone in daylight, carrying the mahogany box. He looked tired, rumpled, pensive. The article said, "Less than a week after Neil Cameron told Time magazine that he has 'no one special' in his life, the Herald spotted Cameron in the company of someone very special indeed. But who is the woman in red?"



The third photo was the same as the one on the cover, but it had been cropped and enlarged to feature only my face. My eyes did indeed "pop" that night with mascara and liner and shadow, but I suspected the paper had retouched them as well. They seemed to jump out from the page, enormous and deep, full of secrets.



The photo caption featured a line of question marks.



Jacey stared at me as I read. "You look different," she said.



I noticed her braided hair and flannel pajamas, thinking how young she looked. "I've grown up," I said.



The article said the Cameron campaign had no comment to make at this time.



I'd begun to unpack, Jacey nearly squealing with admiration at my new clothes, when my cell phone rang. It had a ringtone selected by Diana: "Anitra's Dance" from the opera Peer Gynt.



The voice on the other end wasn't familiar. It belonged to a man who said he was a reporter for the tabloid that published the articles. "Have you seen yesterday's edition?" he asked.



I said that I had.



"Someone sent us a link to your NetFriend page. You look like the woman in the pictures with Cameron."



I said that I had no comment and disconnected the call.



Almost immediately the phone rang again.



"I like your ringtone," Jacey said.



We sat and listened to "Anitra's Dance" over and over again, until we were so sick of it I switched off the phone.



Next morning, I blocked calls from that reporter, but soon others were calling. My incoming calls all came from unknown numbers. I couldn't ignore them completely. One might be from Cameron.



Jacey agreed to answer my phone and screen the calls. She took my phone with her and drove to the gas station in town to buy a copy of that day's International Herald.



"My parents would die if they knew I was reading this stuff," she said when she got back. "I was halfway home from Pittsburgh when I stopped for gas and saw your picture on the newsstand. Ari, I couldn't believe my eyes. And here it is again."



I sat in front of her vanity table mirror, stroking mascara onto my lashes. Even if I was back in the middle of nowhere, I wanted to look my best.



"Did anyone call me while you were at the gas station?" I asked her.



She said she'd taken calls from four reporters and told them all I had no comment. "And there was one from some woman named Tamryn Gordon. Weird voice. She wants you to call her. She said it's urgent."



Jacey handed me the Herald. On its cover was the photo of me from my NetFriend page.



MYSTERY WOMAN NAMED!, the headline read.



"Maybe you should get a different number?" Jacey came to read over my shoulder.



"The senator's office will neither deny nor confirm it, but the Herald has received anonymous tips that the new woman in his life is Ariella Montero, a twenty-two-year-old student enrolled at Hillhouse, a liberal arts college in Georgia." The article said Herald reporters had contacted Hillhouse, which confirmed that Ms. Montero was a student there and had recently done an internship in Manhattan, and that an unnamed resident of the Blackstone apartments said he'd recognized the woman in the photographs, having seen her in the building elevator.



"I didn't know you were twenty-two," Jacey was saying when my phone rang again. She answered it, then handed it to me. "It's him," she whispered, her eyes wide.



I said hello in my sexiest voice. Cameron said, "Can you talk?"



I motioned for Jacey to go away, and when she'd left, he said, "Are you okay?"



"Except for all the phone calls from reporters, I'm fine," I said.



"You've seen the pictures?" he asked, and I said I had.



"I can't talk long," he said, "but unless you say otherwise, I'm going public about us later today." He said his advisors had decided keeping quiet would do more harm than good.



"Does that mean I can talk to the reporters now?"



He advised against it. "Let me handle the initial questions, and then we'll see what sort of reaction there is. Oh, and Ari? Could you please delete your blog? It's very flattering, I guess, but it could prove embarrassing."



The blog hadn't said anything explicit. I'd simply talked about becoming a woman and quoted lyrics from songs I'd heard on the radio. But I told him I'd delete it. "Anything I can do to help," I said.



"That's the right spirit." His voice sounded not encouraging or relieved but resigned. He ended the call abruptly, saying he'd be in touch again soon.



I opened my laptop and found the blog. A pity to delete it, really. It had some of the best lines I'd ever written. Before I pressed the delete key, I copied all the entries and saved them on my hard drive.



Everywhere I went that day, people stared at me. A few made comments, just loud enough for me to hear. They were wondering why I'd lied about my age and why a twenty-two-year-old was an undergraduate at Hillhouse. They were wondering what my affair with Cameron was like and how long it had been going on.



I stared right back at them, until they looked away.



The dean of student life came by the dining hall at lunchtime and asked me to meet with him. I went to his office. He asked how I was and if I wanted counseling. I said I was fine, and no, counseling wasn't needed. He said he'd had the impression I was younger, that he'd been surprised when he checked my records and found out I was twenty-two.



I said I guessed I was a late bloomer.



At dinner that night Sloan stared, too. He didn't say anything until Jacey left us to get a second dessert.



"What'd they do to you?" he said.



I kept my voice as low as his. "They made me older."



He shook his head. "They did more than that. They did you no good."



Jacey returned, carrying a large bowl of strawberry ice cream. "My favorite thing in the world," she said.



For some reason it reminded me of the game we used to play, Anything in the World. "If you could have anything in the whole world, what would it be?" I asked Sloan.



"I know that game," Jacey said.



"And we know your answer: strawberry ice cream. What about you, Sloan?"



His eyes had a faraway look to them. "The chance to rewrite history," he said.



"That's a good answer," I said. "I think that might be my answer, too."



Jacey said, "You forgot to take your tonic, Ari." I wished she'd stop nagging me. After all, she wasn't my mother.



As we walked up the hill toward the dorms that night, I asked Sloan when he'd finish my portrait. "Do you want me to sit for you tomorrow?"



"No," he said. "I can't do it tomorrow."



"Maybe Wednesday?"



He walked faster. "I'll let you know."



But when I ran into him the next day on campus, he said he'd put the portrait away for a while. "I'm doing other things," he said, "and besides, you're too much of a work in progress right now."



I didn't know what he meant by that. But I smiled and went on my way to class.



Internships are supposed to apply your academic experience to the real world. As a result, interns are likely to make important connections between theory and practice and synthesize their insights.



That's what the Hillhouse catalog promised. But from what I saw, the internships mostly made the interns unhappy when they had to come back to school.



Jacey incessantly yearned for Pittsburgh. In only eight weeks, she'd fallen in love with the city and with what sounded to me like an entirely thankless job tending tots at a day care center. But I understood what she meant when she said, "For the first time, I felt like a grown-up there. I was in charge of my own life."



Living in a dorm and going to classes didn't give us that feeling at all. We existed to please our professors, it seemed.



I was taking another creative writing class, this one a "mini course" on "writing about life experiences." In other words, we were supposed to write nonfiction, but we could use fictional techniques.



Jacey was the first one to workshop her essay, which was about a girl who had an abortion. The essay was painful to read and more painful to talk about, filled with fear and guilt and images of truncated trees and dying flowers. Even Professor Warner seemed at a loss for words. She hadn't handed out a list of prohibited topics for this course, but now she looked as if she was having second thoughts.



Jacey sat silent, not meeting anyone's eyes, as we critiqued her essay. I said something about the images needing to be more subtle. Sloan said the images were too subtle already and the essay needed stronger ones.



After the workshop we all walked to town for drinks at a bowling alley, but we didn't talk as we went. Richard didn't come. He hadn't been in class, either, and I expect we were all thinking the same thing: since he was the only boyfriend Jacey had ever had on campus, he must have been the father.



It felt odd to have everyone's attention directed at Jacey instead of me. But that didn't last long. The owner of Leo's Bowl, leaning on the glass counter where he rented shoes, was reading the International Herald. Cameron's photo topped the left page, and mine topped the right. The headline read: SENATOR ADMITS AFFAIR WITH MYSTERY GIRL.



The owner seemed oblivious to the fact that the mystery girl-excuse me, woman-stood right in front of him, trying to read the article upside down.



We were walking back to campus when a passing car slowed, then stopped. A man jumped out of the car and began taking photos of us.



Sloan grabbed my arm and began to run. I had no choice but to run, too. His grip was strong. We took off through the woods that bordered the road, and even after the photographer was far behind us, we kept running. We didn't stop until we reached the art barn.



"Better come in," Sloan said. "They've probably got your dorm room staked out by now."



We climbed the ladder to the loft. In his studio, Sloan motioned for me to sit on one of the rattan-seat chairs. He took the other one and sat facing its back, his elbows along its top edge.



"I want to hear your story," he said.



"Which one?"



"I want to hear your story, from the beginning," he said.



And so I began to tell it: growing up in Saratoga Springs without a mother, homeschooled by my father, running away to find her after my best friend was murdered. "She was killed one night for no reason at all," I said. "She worshipped my father and me."



I told the rest of it: hitchhiking south, fighting off a rapist by biting him, becoming other. Then finding Mae in Florida and coming to Hillhouse.



When I'd finished, he said, "What color are the words?"



"What?"



"The words of your story. See there, they're hanging there between us." He gestured at empty space.



I didn't have an answer for his question. Was he trying to trick me?



He answered it himself. "Rose madder. A color similar to alizarin crimson, wouldn't you say?"



"Yes," I said. "Exactly."



When I got to the dining hall the following night, no one was eating. Everyone stood around in little groups, talking in low voices. And they weren't talking about me.



Apparently someone posted Jacey's abortion essay on her NetFriend page, next to a photo of her. And someone commented on it: "Way to go, Richard."



Apparently Richard heard about it and took an overdose of sleeping pills. An ambulance had taken him away.



Late that night I was awoken by the sound of Jacey weeping. She made a deep, rhythmic noise, as regular as the sound of the tide striking the beach. I might have offered her some comfort, talked about heaven, that sort of thing. Instead I let the dull sound of her despairing lull me back to sleep.