“Will,” Emmy’s voice gasped from somewhere nearby. “Will, I can’t breathe.”
     Smoke poured out from beneath the doors on either side of the long, dark, hallway. It smelled like burning wax. “Emmy, where are you?”
     Will ran down the hall, trying each of the doors. None of them opened. “Emmy,” he called again. No answer.
     He yanked on the next door, and it yielded. Black smoke filled the room and flames licked the high ceiling. Emmy lay in the middle of the round room, her scarf pulled around her neck and over her face.
     “Will, I can’t breathe,” she whispered again, frantically. “The baby, Will. Save our baby.”
     He tried desperately to reach her, but with each step she receded. “Emmy! Emmy!”

     Will woke up. He was on the couch in a sweat. One arm, dangling over the edge, rested on the floor. It took some time for him to locate his other arm wedged between his body and the back of the couch. It was numb to the elbow. Next to his hand on the floor, a wisp of smoke curled up from a tiny piece of charred wick emerging from a pool of wax in the saucer he’d used for a candleholder last night. The brown lump of Emmy’s backpack lay against the bookshelf at the outermost edge of his side vision.
     It was daylight, but just barely. Nothing had emerged completely from the shadows. The smoke was his imagination; the wick was long since cold, but the smell of burning wax adhered to his memory, with the image of Emmy fighting the scarf over her face. He knew she hated anything over her face. Even when it was cold in bed she’d pull a corner of blanket over her ears, holding the rest back from her face with one hand.
     Will braced himself and sat up stiffly, feeling all of the aches which come with half-century-old bones. He picked up the candle saucer, put it on his coffee table. He got up from the couch and went over to Emmy’s pack, knelt beside it. Marta said that Bug gave it to her, but how did Bug come by it? Did Emmy give it to her? Marta didn’t know or wouldn’t tell him. Unopened the pack was promising, could contain anything, was mysterious like Emmy. That was why he hadn’t opened it yet, had held it on his lap all afternoon yesterday, had set it on the floor when he got home. It wasn’t what it might contain, but what it would not, could not contain. But, he reminded himself, he was a lost man already, so he pulled the drawstring open and inhaled the odors of herbs and ink. Emmy’s smells floated up at him like the memory of candle smoke.
     Will began to pull items from the pack. His hand encountered the bristly end of her hairbrush, thick with strands of her hair. He felt a shock and moved quickly to the next item, jabbing his finger on the sharp end of a pencil. Irritated, he upended the bag, spilling its contents out across the floor. Pens and pencils rolled away. On top of the pile, the last thing from the bottom of her bag was the scarf —from his dream, from that night when they had walked to Bartlett House and the moon had played tricks with the window. Will draped the scarf around his neck.
     Daylight had broadened, and the pile in front of him had become a distinct jumble —a wallet, tampons, small blue address book, a Gordon deMarco mystery novel. Several scraps of paper, mostly receipts. A small, artistically bound volume by Ger Killeen, locally transplanted Irish Poet. Emmy’s diary.
     His legs were cramping. He picked up the wallet and diary, put them on the coffee table, and leaving the rest on the floor, went to the kitchen to make coffee. When he had a strong black cup in his hands he went back to Emmy’s belongings.
     The wallet contained little of interest; a single dollar bill, her library card, more receipts.
     He picked up her diary and opened it to a random page.

     April 07
     Talked to Doug Bartlett this morning. I mentioned to him the idea of using the house as a youth shelter. He hesitated, but I think he will consider the idea. Meeting Colin and Marta tonight, maybe we should develop the idea further. Colin is starting to get on my nerves again. It’s wearing me down. Glad Marta will be there. Wish I could talk to Will about it.
     Why couldn’t she talk to me about it? That son-of-a-bitch —what was he up to?
     Hand’s shaking, concentration broken, Will roughly thumbed through the next few pages. He stopped when he came upon a newspaper clipping containing a photograph of Bartlett House. The caption read, “Developer Connie Crage, right, and Doug Bartlett, owner of the property, center, discuss plans for site of historic Bartlett House with City Councilor Teddy Milcheford.”
     Will’s eyes moved to the accompanying article:

     Historic House Center of Controversy:
     Development Plans Opposed by Preservationists
     A historic Portland home, at the edge of a fashionable West Hills neighborhood, has become the controversial battleground between developers and preservationists, of both the historical and environmental kind.
     Built before the turn of the last century by Portland businessman Andrew Douglas Bartlett, a man who made his own fortune as a land developer among other pursuits, Bartlett House will be removed to make way for a new high-rise apartment building. That is if developer Malcolm “Connie” Crage and his firm, Urban Visions, have their way. Opposing the development is a neighborhood group, Protect Our Social History (POSH), and some local environmentalists who cite the instability of the hillside on which the trendy new apartments will sit.

     Will remembered the morning he found that article and cut it out for Emmy. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning that Winter Term, he had stumbled into the Stumptown Café on his way to his nine-thirty, grabbed a cup of coffee and rummaged for a free newspaper. He would read it as thoroughly as time allowed, sipping his cup of house blend, black, before rushing off for class. This particular Tuesday morning, though, it was finals week and he could afford to take his time. Something else, he remembered, was different. He was happy. To tell the truth, he felt like a young man in love. This gave him some consternation, because he wasn’t a young man. And the young woman, the thought of whom had consumed him for the past five days, was barely half his age.
     Not that Emmy was the first young woman to divert his middle-aged libido. Occasionally one or another of his students would develop a thing for him and he would be unduly flattered. In fact, it only took a smile to set his heart fluttering. And though he carefully avoided returning their attentions, he took guilty pleasure in his fantasies.
     But Emmy was different. She was no longer one of his students. This was something with possibility. And the possibility made him uncomfortable. Will Adelhardt’s emotions thrived on discomfort. And the article had given him an excuse to call her.
     Now he removed the article from Emmy’s diary, and tucked in behind it was another one Will had cut out the same day from the society pages.

     Local Foundation Supports Youth Camp
     Douglas Anthony Bartlett made a rare public appearance last night at a celebrity fundraiser for Portland youth at the Crystal Ballroom. Among a flurry of reporters, he announced a gift from the Bartlett Family Foundation of $50,000 for improvements at Camp Horizons. Bartlett founded the camp, near Estacada, in 1982 to help troubled teens.
     Also present at the event were City Councilor Teddy Milcheford, his wife, legal aid attorney, Christine Langford, and retired Portland Police captain Frank Alexander, Camp Director. Capt. Alexander was a ROTC instructor when Mr. Bartlett attended PSU in the late sixties. They have remained life long friends.

     Like Will, in only a little over three months, Doug Bartlett had gone from being a total stranger, to becoming inextricably woven into the pattern and text of Emmy’s life. And now they were both left with that empty space, which Marta thought did not exist. Perhaps because she hadn’t learned how to recognize the existence of an invisible thing by comprehending distortion. Will realized the hole by the absence of light in the center of his internal vision, in the vicinity of it, a darkness rippled.
     Will did not know how it was for cousin Doug, a man essentially alone in the world. He had been discovered by Emmy. His world rounded out by her. She was family and he would have had no reason to believe that she would disappear so quickly, that she would increase the family plot of graves, instead of enriching the remainder of his life.
     The baby would have linked us together, Doug and I, thought Will. We would have had the child in common. And now we are merely two lonely, middle-aged men who just got knocked down by life. Maybe we could help each other up. Will rose and stretched. He went over to his window and looked to the north. He could see the top several floors of The Bartlett Building. Doug had an office there. They were neighbors really. Neighbors of a sort and almost relatives.
     Will fingered the handle of his empty coffee cup, felt restless. A distant sound of chimes announced the hour to the tune of Westminster Abbey. It was nine o’clock. Still early for Sunday. If he walked toward the hills, stayed away from the heart of downtown, he wouldn’t run into too many people.
     Will left his apartment with Emmy’s scarf still hanging around his neck, touching his nostrils with a fleeting scent of her. To his left, only a couple blocks away, Saturday Market was already bustling beneath the Burnside. Will angled toward his right, crossing the street, heading westward. He ambled up and down streets, looking in the windows of shops and galleries. When he reached the North Park blocks, he found a bench and watched pigeons strut on the sidewalk, cooing and quarreling. A couple of men slept on the grass a few feet away. The sun was warm; Will’s neck began to sweat under Emmy’s scarf.

     He was hungry. He remembered a little café near the bookstore where Emmy worked. They’d eaten there a couple of times. It wasn’t expensive and they served breakfast all day, which was what made Will think of it. He wanted breakfast. Bacon and eggs. He was surprised by the fierceness of his hunger and realized that he hadn’t eaten much for the last few days.
     Will left the bench and headed in the general direction of the café, past the children’s play structure, painted in primary colors, brightly empty.
     Detective DeChris sat on the last bench in the park, next to Burnside St. In front of him a crowd of pigeons pecked at popcorn, which had apparently come from the bag he now held crumpled in his hands.
     “Morning, Professor,” he said, standing. “Mind if I walk with you?”
     Will stared at him, dumbfounded. “Would it make a difference if I declined?”
     “Going to be warm today. Too warm for that pretty scarf you got there,” DeChris reached out as if to touch it.
     Will knocked the detective’s hand away, and the movement was déja vu. It was what Emmy had done. DeChris was looking angry and saying something, but Will was thinking about Emmy and the scarf and the dream.
     “You academics think you’re above the rest of us,” DeChris was saying. “You’re lucky I don’t run you in for assaulting a police officer.”
     Assault? That is an inflation, Will thought. “If you are going to arrest me, then do it. If not, leave me alone. I’m going to get some breakfast and I’d rather not have company.”
     DeChris shrugged and sat back down.
     At the cafe, Will found his appetite diminished. Nevertheless, he ordered breakfast. When it came, he put too much tobasco on the potatoes and left most of them uneaten. He picked at the eggs, cooked too hard, the bacon too crisp. Nothing about the breakfast evoked memories of eating there with Emmy.
     It was eleven before he left the restaurant and walked up the street toward Kuppenheimer’s Bookstore, where Emmy had sold books up until a few days ago. Orville didn’t distinguish between days, he was open every day of the year, working Sundays and holidays by himself. Will wondered if Orville had replaced Emmy yet. He hoped not. But there was no help wanted sign in the window.
     Will pushed the door open, tripping the bell. Orville came out of the back, peering at him over half-glasses. “Ah, it’s you. Wondered when you’d be coming around. Police been here. Wanted to know who she saw, talked to on the phone.” Orville leaned against the counter.
     “What did you tell them? Who did she talk to that day?” Will asked.
     “She had a couple of calls from that young man, Colin.” Orville looked closely at Will as if gauging his response. “They had plans for something that night.”
     “Plans?”
     “I heard her say she was going to meet him after work,” Orville said.
     “How do you know it was Colin?”
     “I answered the phone. Asked him, who may I say was calling? It was a little joke we had, Emmy and I.” He was looking off into the stacks now, not meeting Will’s eyes.
     “Are you telling me everything?” Why was Emmy making plans with Colin? Did it have something to do with ROOF?
     “They were going to meet at that house where she died,” Orville looked at Will now. “I know you didn’t do it. It was that boy. Something peculiar about that boy.”
     Will’s stomach lurched. The diary entry flashed in his mind. Colin is getting on my nerves. What had Colin wanted from her? Did she agree to meet him for some reason that he misinterpreted? Did he kill her because she wouldn’t give in to him? Will remembered Colin at Emmy’s funeral; I’m just a motherless child, wandering through this world alone… No, Will shook his head, not Colin. The police must not think so either, or Detective DeChris wouldn’t be planting himself in my path, Will thought. They still think I did it.
     “I’ve got some coffee in back. I could get you a cup,” Orville offered.
     “No, thank you, Orville. I’ve had enough coffee. If you don’t mind, though, I’d like to sit in one of your easy chairs for a while.” Will motioned toward the comfortable old chairs that Orville provided for his customers. Emmy told Will that Orville was always grumbling that the bookstore wasn’t a library. That he threatened on a daily basis to remove the chairs that made it so easy for people to read a book and leave without buying. But the chairs, inviting and cozy, had remained a fixture at Kuppenheimer’s for forty years.
     Orville hesitated, one hand gathering the folds of the curtain that separated his office from the bookstore. “Suit yourself. I’ve got work to do,” he said and left Will to himself.
     Will remained lost in his thoughts, staring at the faded jungle motif on the curtain. His mind turned it over and over, but Will was unable to reconcile what he knew about Emmy, with the idea that she could have had a tryst with Colin at Bartlett House. Emmy didn’t hate Colin, didn’t even really dislike him, but she seemed to find his come-ons irritating. She had never expressed a fear of him. But then she wouldn’t have agreed to go with him, anywhere, alone, if she were afraid. But what if there were a side to Emmy, one that Will didn’t know? Could she have been Colin’s willing partner? Might there have been someone else at the house that night? Just because she had said she was meeting Colin there didn’t necessarily mean that she did, or that they left together.
     Finally, the smell of dust and old books became oppressive and Will left the bookstore without saying goodbye to Orville.
     Outside, he noted that the sun was just to the west of being straight up in the sky. Most of the businesses that opened for Sunday trade were open now. The streets were a little more populated than when he had gone into the bookstore, but were not crowded.
     Maybe there is something in Emmy’s diary, Will thought as he rounded the corner of the block. Something that will tell me why she was planning to meet Colin. Except there isn’t an entry for that day.
     Lost in his thoughts, he paid little attention to where he was going or how long he had been walking. A trio of young women dressed in fifties retro, reminding him far too much of his mother, strolled toward him, filling the sidewalk. He stepped to the building side of the sidewalk to let them pass. He looked in the window beside him and was startled to see a woman, partially dressed in a leather bodice, the features of her face obscured by a mask. She was standing stiff, unmoving, but it took Will a moment to realize that she was a mannequin. Beyond her, behind a counter, he recognized Kimmi leafing through a magazine, behind her he could see the reflection of her back and his own face staring in the window at her like some kind of voyeur.
     Kimmi looked up, saw him and waved. Will lifted his hand to wave back and stopped. A new form had materialized in the window–DeChris lounging against a wall across the street. Will stepped back and now his own reflection overlaid the mannequin. Emmy’s scarf appeared to hang around the mannequin’s neck. The mask lay under Will’s face, under his eyes, his nose, his mouth, and that was it. Emmy, the dream, the scarf; she would never have consented to the mask. Emmy had been murdered. Will whirled around, looking for the detective, but he had disappeared.
     “Hi.”
     Will turned back to the storefront. Kimmi was standing in the doorway.
     “You want to come in?” she asked.
      “Kimmi,” was all he could manage to say. He followed her inside.
     “You look like you could use some water or something stronger.”
     “Water’s fine,” he said. “Thanks.”
     Kimmi took an unopened bottle of water from under the counter and held it out to him.
     He had expected a glass from a tap and started to refuse, but Kimmi insisted. While he drank, Kimmi played nervously with the row of studs that lined her left ear. It irritated him, and her familiarity toward him irritated him even more. What really bothered him though was the realization that his animosity resulted from Emmy’s dislike for Kimmi, not actual first-hand experience. He should give her a chance. He just didn’t know if he had the energy for it.
      “So, how’re you doing?” She asked when he put the water down.
     He didn’t answer.
     “Emmy and me, we didn’t get along so good, but she was real. You know?”
     The sincerity in her voice shamed him.
     “So, you work here?” He looked down at the display case. Fur lined cuffs, studded collars, delicate chains, were artfully arranged on shimmery satin as if they were the diamonds and rubies of the jewelers further downtown.
     “Yeah.”
     “So, I guess you know something about sadomasochism and bondage.”
     “Some.”
     “Do you know that Emmy was found dressed in an outfit kind of like that one on the mannequin by the window?” Will asked.
     “I heard that.” Kimmi seemed wary. “I don’t know anything about it. Emmy didn’t seem like the type, but you never know.”
     “I know,” Will heard the testiness in his voice. He calmed himself and asked, “Is Colin into it?”
     “Not S&M. He’s more a B&D.”
     “B&D?”
     “Bondage and Discipline, dungeon parties. Pretty tame, really,” Kimmi said.
     “Dungeon parties?” asked Will.
     “Yeah. It’s play-acting,” Kimmi said. She was fingering her piercings again.
     “It’s about power and powerlessness, isn’t it. I guess a person could get a little carried away. Maybe tying up isn’t quite enough. Do you know anyone who uses choking to get off?”
      “Yeah, I’ve heard of that. People like whips too. Some are velvet and some are leather. Depends on what gets you off.” She shrugged. Her face had closed up.
     “Who?” Will asked. “Who do you know who likes choking?”
     “I didn’t say I knew anyone. I just said I’d heard of it,” Kimmi said. “Listen, I like you. I think you’d better stay away from this. Let the police figure it out. I gotta get back to work.” She crouched behind the display case, rearranging the folds of velvet backdrop.
     She had clearly dismissed him. Will walked to the door, but he couldn’t let it go. “What about Colin?”
     “I thought you were a professor. When did you get to be a lousy cop? Do you think Colin killed Emmy? Is that what you think?”
     “I don’t know, Kimmi. I don’t know what to think.”