US News & World Report‘s annual college issue had given Darnell University a top rating, even going so far as to call it “the new Harvard of the South.”
“I’ll bet John Manning’s sorry now that he left for Duke. All we need to complete the picture is a Division One basketball team.”
“And you can coach it,” Lisl said.
Ev gave one of his rare, heh-heh-heh laughs, then rubbed his palms together.
“Well, what can I do for you?”
“I’m going to lunch now. You want to come?”
“No, I don’t think so.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll be stopping work in two minutes. After that, I’ll be eating lunch here and catching up on some reading. You’re welcome to join me.”
“That’s okay. I didn’t bring anything today. See you later.”
“Very well.”
He smiled, nodded, and reseated himself at his computer.
Relieved, Lisl turned away. Asking Ev to lunch was a private game she played. He always brown-bagged it, always ate in his office. A safe courtesy. He never accepted. Ev Sanders was nothing if not predictable. She wondered what she’d do with him if he ever did accept.
She grabbed the vinyl-covered cushion from behind her office door and headed for the caf.
3
The caf’s lasagna was good as a rule, but the weather was a little too warm for a hot lunch. She picked out a fruit cocktail and turkey on white.
There. That looked sensible.
Then she came to the dessert counter and snatched a piece of coconut cream pie before she could stop herself.
Who’ll notice?
She scanned the tables in the faculty room and saw no one she cared to sit with, so she headed outdoors to the grassy knoll behind the caf. She hoped Will would be there.
He was. She spotted Will Ryerson’s familiar figure leaning against the wide trunk of the knoll’s only tree, a battered old elm. He was sipping a can of pop and reading, as usual.
Her mood buoyed at the sight of him. Will had proved a tonic for her. Ever since she’d started dabbling with this idea of submitting a math paper, Lisl had found that her insides tended to twist into tight little knots of tension when she was working on it. Her underarms would dampen from the intense concentration, like someone doing hard physical labor. All that tension uncoiled within her now as Will looked up and saw her. A welcoming smile lit through his graying beard. He closed the little book in his hand and slipped it into his lunch box.
“Beautiful day!” he said as she joined him under their tree.
Their tree. At least that was the way she thought of it. She didn’t know how Will thought of it.
“That it is.” She dropped the cushion on the mossy ground and sat on it. “What were you reading there?”
“Where?”
“When I came up.”
Will suddenly seemed very interested in his sandwich.
“A book.”
“I gathered that. What book?”
“Uh … The Stranger.”
“Camus?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t read that one by now.”
“I have. I thought I’d try it again. But it doesn’t help.”
“Help with what?”
“Understanding.”
“Understanding what?”
He grinned at her. “Anything.”
Then he took a savage bite out of his sandwich.
Lisl smiled and shook her head. So typical of the man. She’d once heard something described as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. That was Will. The philosopher groundskeeper of Darnell University.
Lisl first met him two years ago under this very tree, on a day like today when she’d decided to sit outside to correct some test papers. Will had come up and informed her that she had taken his spot. Lisl had looked up at a tall bearded stranger. His accent was definitely from somewhere to the north, he smelled of motor oil, his hands were heavily callused and looked to be permanently stained with engine grime, his green overalls were dusty and sweat-stained, his work boots were clumped with grass clippings. He had clear blue eyes and long graying hair pulled back and fastened into a short ponytail with a red rubber band, a nose that had been badly broken, and a wide scar on the right side of his forehead.
An aging hippie-type handyman who’d managed to land himself a steady job, she’d thought as she smiled and moved exactly three feet to her right. He seated himself and produced a sandwich and a Pepsi. No surprise there. But when he pulled out a copy of Kierkegaard’s Sickness Unto Death and began reading, Lisl had to revise her assessment. And she had to talk to him.
They’d been talking ever since. They became friends. Sort of. She doubted Will had a true, deep friendship with anyone. He was so secretive about himself. The most she knew about his origins was that he was from “New England.” He would tell her his deepest thoughts on life, love, philosophy, religion, politics—and listening to him it was quite apparent to her that he had done a lot of thinking in those areas. He would expound on any subject but Will Ryerson. Most men loved talking about themselves. Get them started and they’d never stop. Which made Will all the more intriguing.
Lisl sensed that he was a lonely man and that she was one of the few people in his life he could communicate with on his own level. The other groundskeepers weren’t in Will’s league, or he wasn’t in theirs. He had often complained that, as far as his co-workers were concerned, if it wasn’t in the sports section, or didn’t have big breasts, it didn’t matter. So he used his lunchtimes with Lisl to vent the thoughts that accumulated during the time they were apart.
That was why she couldn’t understand why he was being so evasive about the book in his lunch box. She was sure it wasn’t The Stranger. But then what was it? Porn? She doubted it. Porn wasn’t his style. And even if it were, he’d probably want to discuss it with her.
Lisl shrugged it off. If he didn’t want to tell her, that was his business. He didn’t owe her an explanation.
She watched him tear into his lunch. Another of those belly-buster subs he favored, where anything within reach was sliced up and piled between two halves of a loaf of Italian bread and splattered with oil and vinegar.
“I wish I were like you.”
“No you don’t,” he said.
“Metabolism-wise, I do. Lunch-wise, at least. Good Lord, look at the size of that sandwich—and I can imagine what you eat for dinner. Yet you don’t put on a pound.”
“I don’t sit at a desk all day either.”
“True, but your body does a far better job of burning calories than mine.”
“Not as good a job as it used to. With each passing year I can feel the machine slowing down.
“Maybe, but men age better than women.”
Will was aging pretty well in Lisl’s estimation. From the references he made from time to time—especially about the 1950s—he had to be in his sixties, but he didn’t look it. Maybe because he carried his weight so well: lean and muscular, a good six foot in height, perhaps a little more, with broad shoulders and no gut. Maybe it was his long hair and beard, both of which had grown grayer over the past two years. His clear blue eyes remained mild and gentle, though—and impenetrable. Will had equipped the windows of his soul with steel storm shutters.
“Men simply don’t worry about it as much,” he said. “Look at all the guys on the maintenance crew with beer bellies.”
Lisl smiled. “I know what you mean. Some of them look eight months pregnant. And if I put on any more weight, so will I. If only I could shed the pounds like you.”
Will shrugged. “I guess it’s just like everything else about us—opposites. What you can’t do, I can. What I can’t do, you can.”
“You know, Will, you’re right. Together you and I make one well-rounded, well-educated person.”
He laughed. “What I said: I know next to nothing about the sciences, and you might well be classified as culturally deprived as
far as the humanities go.”
Lisl nodded, agreeing fully. These pastoral lunch hours with Will had made her realize how painfully lopsided her education had been. She had her Ph.D., yes, but it seemed as if she had gone through high school, college, and graduate school with blinders on. Science and math, math and science—they’d been her whole life, all she’d cared about. Will had shown her how much she’d missed. If she had it to do all over again, she’d do it differently. She’d missed a whole other world out there, rich and colorful, filled with stories, music, art, dance, schools of thought on ethics, morals, politics, and so much more. Missed completely. She still had plenty of time to catch up. And with Will as a guide, she knew it would be fun. Still, the thought of all that wasted time irritated her.
“Well, thanks to you, I’m certainly less deprived than before we met. Can we keep this up?”
She sensed his face soften behind the beard. “As long as you want.”
Just then, Lisl spotted someone waving from the base of the knoll. She recognized Adele Connors’s stout, compact figure.
“Yoo-hoo!” she called in her squeaky voice. “Lisl! Look, y’all! I found them!”
She trundled up the slope jingling a set of keys in the air.
“Your keys?” Lisl said. “Oh, good!”
Adele was one of the stalwarts of the secretarial pool. Lisl had found her wringing her hands and lamenting the loss of her key chain yesterday. Adele had searched most of the afternoon with no luck. Finally, since she couldn’t start her own car without her keys, she’d asked Lisl to drive her home.
Which had vaguely annoyed Lisl. Not that she minded doing Adele a favor, it was just that the secretaries tended to treat her like “one of the girls.” And Lisl wasn’t “one of the girls.”
Although not tenured yet, she was an associate professor in the university mathematics department and wished sometimes they’d treat her as such. But she had herself to blame. As the only female in the department, perhaps she’d become too chummy with the secretaries when she first arrived. Unaccustomed to being in a position of authority, she’d been oversensitive about coming off as a tight-assed bitch. Plus, a little girl-talk had come in handy—she’d got the low-down on everyone in the department without even asking.
But still … as useful as the camaraderie had been, she’d paid a price. She couldn’t help noticing how the secretaries addressed all the other Ph.D.s in the department as “Doctor,” while she was always “Lisl.” A minor point, but irritating.
“Where’d you find them?” she asked as Adele reached the top of the knoll.
“Right behind my seat cushion. Isn’t that something!”
“I thought you said you searched the entire area.”
“I did! I did! But I left out one thing. I forgot to ask for the Lord’s help.”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Will pause in mid bite. She groaned inwardly. Adele was a Born Again. She could go on interminably on the subject of Jesus.
“That’s great, Adele,” Lisl said quickly. “By the way, this is Will Ryerson.”
Will and Adele exchanged nods and hellos, but Adele was not to be turned from her favorite subject.
“But let me tell you how the Lord intervened for me. After you dropped me off home last night, I got big Dwayne and little Dwayne together and we knelt in the middle of our living room and prayed to the Lord for help in finding my keys. We did that twice last night, and once again this morning, just before the school bus came for little Dwayne. And you know what?”
Lisl waited. Apparently it wasn’t a rhetorical question, so she took a wild stab.
“You found your keys.”
“Praise the Lord, yes! When big Dwayne dropped me off this morning, I went to my desk, sat in my chair, and felt a lump under my cushion. I looked and, praise the Lord, there they were! It’s a little miracle, that’s what it is! Because I know they weren’t there yesterday. God found them and put them where I was sure to happen across them. I just know He did. Isn’t the Lord wondrous in His ways?” She turned and started back down the slope, bubbling and babbling all the way. “I’m spending the whole day just witnessing and praising Him, witnessing and praising my wonderful Lord. Bye y’all!”
“Bye, Adele,” Lisl said.
She turned to Will and saw him leaning back against the tree and staring after Adele’s retreating figure, the sandwich lying forgotten in his lap.
“Incredible!” he said.
“What’s the matter?”
“People like that make me lose my appetite.”
“Nothing makes you lose your appetite.”
“The Adeles of the world do. I mean, how empty-headed can you get?”
“She’s harmless.”
“Is she? I mean, where’s her perspective? God isn’t a good-luck charm. He’s not there to help you find your keys or make it a nice day for the church’s Labor Day picnic.”
Lisl sensed the growing heat behind Will’s words. He usually avoided the subject of religion—anything else was fair game, but he didn’t seem to like to talk about God. This would be good. She let him roll.
“God helped her find her car keys. Great. Just great. Praise the Lord and pass the mashed potatoes. Where’s her head, anyway? We’ve got thousands—no, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people starving in East Africa. Desperate fathers and mothers kneeling over the bloated bellies of their starving children, crying out to heaven for a little rain so their crops will grow and they can feed their families. But God’s not answering them. The whole damn region remains a dustbowl with children and adults alike dropping like flies. Adele, however, sends up a couple of quick Our Fathers and God hops right to it. He locates those lost keys and shoves them under her seat cushion where she’s sure to find them first thing in the morning. There’s still no rain in Ethiopia, but Adele What’s-her-name’s got her goddamn car keys.” He paused for breath, then looked at her. “Is it just me, or is there something wrong with that scenario?”
Lisl stared at Will in frank shock. In the two years she’d known him she had never heard him raise his voice or become angry about anything. But Adele obviously had touched a raw nerve. He was seething; the scar on his forehead had turned red.
She patted his arm.
“Calm down, Will. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. Where does she get off thinking that God’s ignoring prayers for rain in the Sudan so he can go put her car keys where she can find them? It’s not fair for her to go around telling everybody that God’s answering her ditsy prayers while prayers for things that really matter go unanswered!”
And suddenly it was clear to Lisl. Suddenly she knew why Will was so angry. Or at least thought she did.
“What did you pray for, Will? What did you ask for that didn’t happen?”
He looked at her, and for a moment the shutters were open. In that moment she had a glimpse into his soul—
—and recoiled at the pain, the grief, the agony, the disillusionment that welled up in his eyes. But mostly it was the overriding fear that shook her so.
Oh, my God! Oh, my poor Will! What happened to you? Where have you been? What have you seen?
And then the shutters slammed closed and once again she faced a pair of bland blue eyes. Opaque blue eyes.
“It’s nothing like that,” he said calmly. “It’s just that the childishness and superficiality of that kind of religion—religiosity, rather—gets to me after a while. It’s so prevalent around here. You hear of bumper-sticker politics, but it seems to me they’ve got bumper-sticker religion in these parts.”
Lisl knew from what she had glimpsed in his eyes that it was much more than that, but sensed it would do no good to probe. Will had shut down tight.
Lisl added another mystery to the mental list she’d been keeping about the enigmatic Will Ryerson.
“Not just around these parts.”
He sighed. “Yeah. Ain’t that the truth. It’s all over the country. Televangelism. God as
game-show host. A heavenly Wheel of Fortune.”
“Except the money flows from the contestants instead of to them.”
He looked at her. “You’ve never said much about it, Leese, but I gather you’re not very religious.”
“I was raised a Methodist. Sort of. But you can’t get too far into higher math and stay very religious.”
“Oh, really?” He smiled. “I’ve looked into some of those journals you bring up here. I’d say it takes quite a leap of faith to get involved in that stuff.”
She laughed. “You’re not the first person to feel that way.”
“Speaking of higher math, what about that idea you had for a paper? How’s it coming?”
Just thinking about the paper started a buzz of excitement within her.
“It’s going great.”
“Good enough for Palo Alto?”
She nodded. “I think so. Maybe.”
“No maybes. If you think so, you ought to enter it.”
“But if it gets rejected—”
“Then you’re right back where you started. Nothing lost except the time you spent working on it. And even then the time isn’t completely lost, because you’ll no doubt learn something. But if you don’t do the paper, and don’t submit it, you’re betraying your potential. It’s bad enough to let other people stifle you. But when you stifle yourself—”
“I know, I know.”
They’d been over this ground before. Lisl had grown so close to Will over the past couple of years. She’d opened up to him as she had to no man before, more even than to Brian during their marriage. She never would have believed she could be so intimate with a man without sex edging into the picture. But that was the way it was.
Platonic. She’d heard of platonic affairs but had always thought them fantasies. Now she was living one. Once she had broken through Will’s shell, she’d found him warm and accepting. A great talker and a better listener. But she’d remained wary of him. The deep discussions during lunch hours here on the knoll during the week, the long, aimless, languorous drives on weekends … through them all Lisl had stayed on guard, dreading the inevitable moment when Will would put the moves on her.
The Complete Adversary Cycle: The Keep, the Tomb, the Touch, Reborn, Reprisal, Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) Page 153
