"I'm just saying, it's very odd."
Laura and Karl were searching a park on a bright and steamy morning in Trenton. Sebastian had told them to look for a young blond woman in a white blouse, but had failed to say which part of the park they could find her, so they walked the path and scanned through the trees.
"I agree," Laura said. "It's a little crazy. But if he's looking for a journalist to work with, why not me? And at this point he's in control, he's calling the shots. If he sets up some hoops, we have to jump them."
"But was he waiting for someone to poke around Princeton? And who tipped him off? I wonder if it was Portman, the little busybody. Did he have this little scenario prepared? It seems a bit too convenient."
"Maybe I can ask him those questions at some point. But first we have to talk to this Amanda."
Laura spotted some picnic tables and solitary woman sitting at one of them. They angled off the path and approached. The woman stood as they neared. She could have been Laura's younger sister, if she'd had one—slim figure, a little on the short side, long straight pale hair, big blue eyes. They introduced themselves and sat at the table. Laura took out her notepad. Karl was all grins. Amanda had her hands around a coffee cup and looked at each of them in turn. She seemed eager to talk.
"So, Amanda," Laura said. "Tell us about yourself."
"Well, I live and work here in Trenton. I'm twenty-six. Single." Amanda gave a quick glance at Karl. Laura suppressed an eye roll. "I graduated from Princeton a couple years ago. That's where I met Professor Sebastian. Oh, and Amanda isn't really my name, but you can call me that."
"All right. But I wasn't going to use your name anyway. You really don't have to worry about your anonymity. And you don't have to reveal anything you don't want to."
"Well, okay. I guess I had this rehearsed in my mind a certain way. I created a whole identity... I should tell you, I don't actually live and work in Trenton. I'm not actually twenty-six either. Or single."
Laura crossed out some lines in her pad. "But you do know Dr. Sebastian?"
"Right, yes. And he said I can talk about anything I want."
"What would you like to talk about?" Karl said.
"Actually, can I ask you two some questions? Like, how long have you worked at your newspaper?" she asked Laura.
"Almost a year," she said.
"Do you like it?"
"Yes, I do. I mean, I feel like I'm fighting for a better position, I usually don't get the meaty assignments, but I'm getting there, I'm doing okay."
"But you got this assignment. Writing about Professor Sebastian? That's something, right?"
"I suppose. Hopefully. It's certainly turning out different than I thought it would."
Amanda turned to Karl. "And you work at the newspaper too?"
"Not really. I teach at NYU. A few months after Laura started working there—and you had nothing to do with this, right?"
"Right."
"Yeah, I was asked for input on a piece, some little pop psychology thing, and it was fun, and I made a few friends at the paper, and they would occasionally ask for opinions or explanations, and I sort of became the expert consultant on psychological matters. So this summer, not really having much to do, I circulated around the offices there, seeing if I was needed anywhere, and this Sebastian situation exploded, and suddenly I'm working with my little sister. Crazy, huh?"
"How old are you?" Amanda asked.
"I'm thirty, she's twenty-seven," Karl said.
"Are either of you married?"
"No," they both said.
"How would you describe your family?" Amanda said.
Laura and Karl looked at each other, then looked at Amanda. Laura sensed that their answer might be important, that her access to Sebastian hung in the balance—and yet, what was there to say? How would she describe her family? Normal? Boring? What exactly did Amanda want to hear?
"Our father beat us," Karl said. "No, just kidding. We come from a fairly typical, white, upper middle class, relatively privileged family. It's a little embarrassing."
Laura said, "It's just us, no other brothers or sisters."
"No aunts or uncles or cousins either," Karl said. "If we have more distant relatives, nobody's ever said anything about them, so I don't know."
Amanda nodded. "I only have my brother too. But I have a ton of cousins. You wouldn't believe the family reunions." She took a long drink of her coffee, put the cup down and stared into it. "Professor Sebastian has been such a big influence in my life. You don't really know him, do you?"
"I only talked to him once, last night, very briefly," Laura said.
"He had a reputation for having some lively classes. His lectures on psychology tended to veer into the sexual side of things, and his views on sexuality weren't always what you'd expect. He talked about some crazy stuff, and the way he would talk about those things, it wasn't raunchy or creepy, but it wasn't cold and clinical either—it was just with a deep sense of curiosity and wonder. Do you know what I mean?"
"Sure," Karl said. "There are teachers out there with that gift."
"He talked about sexuality as if, on the surface, it's so simple, but once you dig down, you find it to be complex and powerful and unpredictable, but never incomprehensible, or obscene, or shameful. I loved his classes. I would sit in the back and watch everybody's reactions. Just tiny ripples of body language spreading through the room as they listened and took notes and let these ideas seep into their brains.
"When he started talking about incest," Amanda went on, "he definitely covered that topic in more depth than any other. I realize now that he was exploring the ideas that would eventually become his book, and that he had already started his research on it. A lot of the students were picking up on his fascination with the subject. Or was it their own fascination with it? Incest kept popping up in conversations. It was kind of a joke that swept the campus, a quiet joke, whispers and rumors. Professor Sebastian would bring up real cases of incest that he was researching, but with the names changed, and these were cases of consensual incest, of course, and we wondered, was he talking about fellow students? Was it anybody we knew?"
"Was it?" Laura said.
"Nobody really knew. In my circle of friends we had our ideas, but... look, it was never malicious, not really, everybody thought it was funny, or even kind of exciting? I don't know why the reaction around the university to the idea of incest was so, well, I wouldn't say positive, but maybe lighthearted? Maybe it was the way Professor Sebastian presented it."
"Did you talk to Sebastian about it?" Laura said. "Did you ever work with him on his research?"
"Eventually, yes," Amanda said. "The thing is, at the time, my brother was dating one of my friends at school, so he was around a lot. So we were the butt of a lot of jokes. Which was fine, I didn't think it was a big deal. Because nobody found out that I'd been having sex with my brother since I was nineteen."
