Page 36 of Nine Lives

“Awkward pause,” Ethan said.

“It wasn’t awkward. We were both thinking. Conversations should have more pauses, not less, I think.”

“Very profound, professor.”

“Thank you.”

“So how about you, are you afraid of dying?” Ethan said.

“I’m nervous, for sure. But the thing is, I’ve always been nervous, about everything. I get nervous about every class I teach, and I get nervous when it’s my turn to give my order at the coffee shop, and I get nervous for my weekly call to my mother, even though all we talk about is television and what she made for dinner the night before. But now I have something real to be nervous about. My name is on a list of people who seem to be dying, and it feels okay to be nervous. It’s like my emotions match reality and suddenly I feel better. Does any of this make any sense?”

“I think so,” Ethan said. “Why worry about your coffee order when you can worry about getting murdered?”

“I guess that’s pretty much it.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to belittle the whole thing.”

“No, you didn’t,” Caroline said, but Ethan could tell that his tone had lessened the conversation somehow. “Being slated for death puts things in perspective, I guess.”

“Even though we’re always slated for death.”

“Exactly.”

There was another slight pause, and Ethan forced himself to not comment on it. Instead, he said, “I know I’ve asked you this already, but do you have any new theories about what our connection is? Why we’re all on this list together?”

“Nothing new. I think it’s random, that somehow we were randomly selected.”

“My newest theory is that the list is a smokescreen,” Ethan said. “Like maybe someone wanted to kill Frank Hopkins, the first one murdered. So they make a list of eight random people plus Frank, send the list out, then kill Frank, and the police are so worried about the list that they miss the obvious suspect sitting right in front of them.”

“Except two more people have died,” Caroline said.

“Maybe it’s random. I mean, if you think about it, any list of nine people is a list of nine people who are going to die.”

“But not a list of nine people who will be murdered.”

“Right.”

“That plot you described is the plot of an Agatha Christie novel, but I can’t remember which one,” Caroline said.

“It’s from The A. B. C. Murders, one of the Poirot books.”

“That’s right. Are you a mystery fan?”

“When I was a kid, I was,” Ethan said. “I read all the Agatha Christie books, and all the Fletch books, and Father Brown, and stuff like that. Then I discovered Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac and I stopped reading mysteries.”

“I read all the Agatha Christies as a kid too. But then I discovered Jane Austen.”

“Well, at least we have Agatha Christie in common.”

“We have a lot of things in common. We both like poetry. We have a similar sense of humor. What else?”

“We’re on a death list?”

“Yes, we’re on a death list,” Caroline said.

Another small silence, and Ethan forced himself to not fill it. Caroline said, “I should go to sleep, I think.”

“Okay. I’m glad we talked on the phone. This was nice.”

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