A Study in Charlotte

“Pay attention to my face, Watson. Not my words. Listen to my tone. How am I sitting? Where am I looking?” She snapped her fingers. “I own three dressing gowns. I dislike guns; they cheapen confrontations. I first took cocaine at age twelve, and sometimes I take oxycodone when I’m miserable. When I met you, my initial thought was that my parents had set it up. No, it was that you were dreamy.” Grinning, I put my thumb up; she pushed it back down. “No, I thought, finally what someone wants from me, I can give them. I know how to play to an audience. I liked you. I thought you were another chauvinistic bastard who thought I couldn’t take care of myself.”

“All true,” I said, quietly, before she could continue. “All of it. At one point or another, including the business about your brother. He’s done all those things, been all those things. You thought all those things about me.”

“Explain your method.” Holmes pulled a cigarette out of her pocket and lit it.

“Because, somewhere in that brain of yours, you’ve decided I should know more about you, but you don’t want to do it outright. No, it can’t be simple, you’re Charlotte Holmes. You have to do it sideways, and this is the most sideways approach you could dream up.”

She exhaled in a long stream, head tipped to the side. I suppressed a cough. “Fine,” she said, finally, and I chanced a smile. Grudgingly, she returned it. “But none of those deductions were methodical, Watson. That was all psychology. I loathe psychology.”

“It’s okay,” I told her. “I hate losing at games, too.”

The next day, she put me through another session, this time with a new test subject. I shouldn’t have been surprised that she brought in Lena.

We met on the quad after classes, shivering and stomping our boots. Lena’s hair hung in a braid down her back, and her hat had a knit flower that drooped down over her brow. She had a date with Tom in town that night, she told us, so she couldn’t stay too late. It was odd to watch her next to Holmes in her trim black coat, hands stuffed into the fur muff strung from her neck. When the wind nipped at us, Lena huddled against her roommate with a familiarity that was almost shocking. I wondered what they talked about together. I couldn’t imagine it.

For two hours, until the tips of my fingers were literally blue from the cold, I practiced reading Lena’s tells. (In the process, I learned her down to the ground. I really didn’t need to know that much about her sex life.) By the end of it, I was so exhausted from shivering that I wanted nothing more than to go to bed with a cup of something warm. Thankfully, when I went a full ten minutes without mislabeling one of Lena’s statements, Holmes let us call it a day. We ducked into the Stevenson Hall lobby for warmth.

“You guys are up to secret things, I can tell. How are your secret things?” Lena asked, unwinding the scarf from her neck.

“They’re about to go much better.” Holmes discreetly stuffed a roll of bills into Lena’s coat pocket. “Run the poker game as usual tomorrow, will you? I don’t want anyone to note a change in my behavior.”

Lena pulled the money back out and pressed it into Holmes’s hand. “Keep it,” she said. “I kind of like being your test subject.”

Holmes froze. “But—”

“Ugh, don’t be weird about it. We’re friends. And I don’t, like, need the money.” Standing on her tiptoes, she kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks, Jamie. That was a lot of fun, but I want to get to ask you inappropriate questions. Maybe we could have pizza in town sometime.”

“You’re having pizza in town with Tom tonight,” Holmes said.

“Sure,” I said, ignoring her. “I’d like that.”

Holmes had on the kind of scowl toddlers get when their favorite toy is stolen away. “We’re done here,” she announced, and dragged me off by my elbow.

When I arrived at practice the next day, Kline was surveying the rugby pitch, fists on hips like a taller, dumber Napoleon. He was mad, and not without cause—their record stood so far at a predictable 0–7.

“We’re starting in ten! Look alive!” he shouted. It was true, the team did seem dead. Our fly-half was actually sleeping, on his side, at midfield. Larson, our eight-man, trotted by and kicked him in the small of the back. Without a flicker of interest, Coach Q looked up from his director’s chair and then back down at his copy of Men’s Health.

“We’re down to fourteen players, so many students have gone home. I don’t think the school would’ve let you back on if that wasn’t the case.” Kline looked me over. “So, have you been staying in shape?”

“Running five miles every day,” I lied. “But I’ll do whatever. I’m happy to be back on the team.” Another lie, delivered smoothly. I’d been practicing. “Where’s Randall? I haven’t talked to him since Elizabeth . . . you know . . . and I wanted to make sure we were on decent terms.”

Kline pointed. “He’s getting ready to drill with the backs. If you want to talk to him, make it quick.” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “We’re starting in five!”

When I caught up with him, Randall was even redder-faced than usual. I wasn’t sure if it was from exertion or anger.

“Oh hey, the jackass is back,” he said, shoving past me on his way to the bench.

A bit of both, then.

“Randall, wait.” He slowed down slightly and I pulled up even. “Look. I wanted to say I’m sorry about Dobson. I didn’t know him that well, but I know he was your friend.”