The Jinx. Jennifer Sturman

for Sara.

      Flu season was in full gear, and the clerk at reception was busy with other visitors, but I guessed that Sara would be in the Stillman Infirmary on the fifth floor, so I headed for the elevator bank, punching the call button impatiently. Nobody ever seemed to stop you when you gave off the air of knowing exactly where you were going.

      The elevator arrived, and I jabbed at the button for the fifth floor, and then the button to close the doors. The elevator rose at a glacial pace, ticking off each floor with a beep. When the doors finally parted, I strode to the nurses’ station. “I’m here to see Sara Grenthaler,” I announced in my most authoritative tone. While UHS was probably less strict than a normal hospital, I worried that visitors would be restricted to family, of which Sara didn’t have much.

      “And you are?” asked the nurse behind the desk.

      “I’m Rachel Benjamin. Sara’s cousin.” If you were going to lie, I knew that the only way to do it was simply and with confidence. And there was, after all, a small chance that we were distantly related—her father’s family and my father’s family could have lived in the same Russian shtetl, many generations back, being persecuted by the same Cossacks. It wasn’t a complete lie.

      My bluff seemed to work, or it may have been completely unnecessary, because the nurse consulted her computer terminal. “She’s in five-oh-six, ma’am.” I ignored being ma’amed—now was not the time to get hung up on concerns that I’d become prematurely matronly. Instead I hurried off in the direction she’d indicated, counting off the room numbers on either side. The door to Sara’s room was ajar, and I gave it a gentle knock before going in.

      She was lying in one of the two hospital beds, and she looked awful. Her head was wrapped in white gauze, and she was hooked up to a variety of tubes and monitors. Her eyes were shut, and her skin was nearly as white as the gauze that framed her face. I let out an involuntary gasp.

      “It’s okay. The doctor said she’s going to be all right.” I turned, startled, to the corner, where a young woman rose from a chair. “I’m Edie Michaels,” she said, proffering her hand.

      “The roommate,” I answered, putting the name to the face.

      “Well, one of them.”

      “I’m Rachel Benjamin. From Winslow, Brown.”

      “Oh, sure. You had dinner with Sara last night.”

      “Yes. So what happened?”

      Edie sank back into the chair, running a hand through her mass of curly black hair. Her big dark eyes were worried in her olive-skinned face. “Well, you know how Sara rows every morning?”

      I nodded, perching myself on the second, unoccupied bed. “We were just talking about it.” The previous evening suddenly seemed very far away.

      “Apparently, she did her workout, and she was putting her scull away when somebody hit her over the head with an oar. A homeless man saw the whole thing—he’d come in to use the bathroom in the boathouse.”

      “Did they catch the guy who did it?”

      “No, he ran out when he realized he’d been seen. And the homeless guy was too busy checking that Sara was all right to follow him. He’s the one who called the ambulance and the police. All he saw was somebody wearing a ski mask and a big coat with a hood—it was still pretty dark out, and he wasn’t even sure if it was a man or woman.”

      “And what did the doctors say?” I asked anxiously.

      “They think she’s going to be fine. She has a bad cut on her scalp, and she had to have stitches. They did X-rays and everything, and there’s some swelling, and they said she might have a slight concussion, but they didn’t think too much damage had been done. She was conscious when they brought her in, but she didn’t remember seeing anyone. They gave her a sedative after the stitches, and it knocked her right out.”

      “So she really was attacked,” I said in disbelief.

      “I know. I can’t imagine who would have done such a thing. It’s so…gritty.”

      “Maybe it was a vagrant of some sort? Maybe she surprised somebody who was hiding out there?” There was a pretty sizable and less than mentally stable homeless population in Harvard Square, and I could easily imagine one of them using the boathouse as a temporary shelter and freaking out that his space had been invaded.

      Edie shook her head. “I thought that, too, at first. But I’ve been sitting here, trying to figure it out, and I don’t think that makes sense.”

      “Why not?”

      “If somebody were hiding out there, she would have surprised him when she went into the boathouse in the first place, to get her scull. And if he were going to attack her, why wouldn’t he have attacked her then? But she was attacked when she was leaving.”

      “Sort of like someone was waiting for her when she came back from her row?”

      “Exactly. Especially when you think about the ski mask. I mean, what sort of random attacker would come equipped with a mask? That sort of thing just screams premeditation.” I recalled Sara mentioning that Edie planned on finding a job in entertainment, and going by her dramatic choice of words, it seemed that she would be well-suited to it.

      “And you’re sure it wasn’t the guy who said he witnessed the entire thing?”

      “I don’t think so. George, the homeless man, is sort of a fixture around Harvard Square. There’s a shelter at the University Lutheran Church, and both Sara and I have volunteered there. He knew Sara and had talked to her—I mean, it’s not like he’s the most sane person you’ll ever meet—in fact, he’s a total nutcase—but he has no history of violence. If he’d run into Sara, he would have just tried to engage her in conversation of some sort. He thinks he’s a real intellectual, and he’s always trying to debate philosophy or literary theory or whatever with students. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. Bore them to death, maybe, but that’s as bad as he gets.”

      “That’s funny. I think I might remember him from my college days.” I hazily recalled a shabby man who would sit in on my English lectures, occasionally posing an interesting and clearly well-informed question.

      “Yeah. He’s a bit of a legend around here. Anyhow, the hospital called our room, and I picked up the call and came right over.”

      “So it probably wasn’t George.”

      “No. I’d be really surprised if it were.”

      “Then I wonder who. And why.”

      Edie was quiet for a moment. I had the sense that she was taking my measure, wondering if she could confide in me.

      “There’s something else, isn’t there?” I asked.

      She nodded. “Look, I feel sort of uncomfortable talking about this, but I know that Sara trusts you. And looks up to you.”

      The idea of anyone viewing me as a role model was a bizarre one, and coming so soon after being ma’amed, it made me wonder if the time had come to ask my doctor about Botox. “Well, I don’t know about the looking up part, but she can definitely trust me. And you can, too.”

      “Okay.” She seemed to make up her mind. “Sara’s been getting these strange letters.”

      “Letters?”

      “Yes. Like love letters, but sort of sinister. I mean, they’re all flowery and gushy and go on and on about how beautiful she is. But they’re never signed, and there’s no return address or even a stamp or postmark on the envelopes, and they show up in the weirdest places—not just her mailbox at school, but slipped into her bag or a notebook. She once even found one on her bed.”

      “Creepy,” I said.

      “And invasive. I mean, the letters seem harmless enough—really badly written, but harmless. But when they show up in her personal space, it’s