Moondance by Karen M. Black Page A

whole room full of engineers or commerce grads. They want diversity, different opinions. That’s what they advertise in their brochures, so that’s what you give them.”
    The discussion seemed to have taken place so long ago. Had Tori been fucking Kevin when they had that conversation?
    “Don’t rule out Rotman. It’s a good school and it’s always good to have options.” Right . Her eyes stung. She pushed away the ache. Fuck them .
    She tossed the files into the green garbage bag. At her computer, her chest a seething mass, she clicked on Outlook, deleting Tori and Kevin’s contact information though she knew their numbers by heart. She started on their email messages next, purging all traces of them from her computer’s memory. Sort. Highlight. Delete. Are you sure? Yes . Click. Gone.
    Unsatisfied, she paced the room, clenching and unclenching her fists. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, her face pallid and moist.
    The phone rang.
    “Al, don’t hang up. It’s me.” Tori . She had sent Althea a letter and this wasn’t the first time she’d called. Her anxiety grew, moving down her arms. All the cells in her body were alive, reckless, on fire.
    “I know who it is.”
    “I’m calling because I want you to yell at me or scream at me or something, because you deserve that, I deserve that.” Is that what Tori wanted? Althea struggled to keep her voice calm, expressionless, her rage like a chained animal. Show her nothing .
    “Al, I know this is no excuse, but it wasn’t planned. We didn’t ... I feel just horrible.”
    “I really don’t give a shit how you feel.”
    Althea felt her knees going weak and she leaned on the counter for balance. She had to do this fast. Tori wanted to be punished? Show her nothing . She coiled inside, measuring each word in monotone. “You really wanna know what I think?” Her heart sped and her breaths were shallow. “I think you want me to tell you to fuck off, so you’ll be able to feel better about yourself.” As she spoke, she picked up her notebook that lay on the floor beside her bed and doodled, drawing loops and circles, pushing into the paper until it began to tear.
    “No, please believe me, I feel horrible.”
    Althea felt her fury escalating, searing, radiating.
    “I’m sick of hearing how horrible you both feel, how you didn’t know how this happened. You really wanna do something for me?”
    “Yes. Okay. Anything.”
    “Don’t ever fucking call me again.”
    Althea hung up. Her head exploded in pain, and she ripped the phone out of the wall and threw it across the room, spinning with the effort. The phone landed with an unsatisfying thud behind the couch.
    She fell against the wall and sank to her knees, sobbing. She fumbled for some paper and a pen and began to write. She wrote for two hours, until her hand was shaking and cramped. When she was so exhausted she couldn’t write any more, she ripped out the pages, put them in an envelope, hastily addressed and stamped the envelope, and headed outside into the fresh autumn air.

chapter 9

    ROTMAN’S MBA PROGRAM KICKED off with a series of social events, then an orientation weekend covering personality-typing, team-building and career planning.
    The Madison pub, a Victorian house in the downtown Annex area just northwest of St. George subway station, was an established University of Toronto haunt. Althea walked into The Maddy slightly nervous. Kevin and she used to come here. As she entered, the crowd blocked her view, live music was playing and it felt different, new. She relaxed and followed the music. A piano player was working downstairs next to the bar, his head down and bobbing, the microphone close to his lips. She found the sign that said “Private Party.”
    On the third floor, which had been reserved for their first year class, the crowd was thinner. Stevie Ray Vaughn had replaced the piano-pop and she scanned the room, making her way to the bar.
    “Do you have single malts?