“You want me to behave like a racketeer,” Fitger said.
“Yes. And try to be charming,” Janet said. “Start with Cassovan. Find out what it will take for every single member of your department to sign on to the same SOV.” She swished the liquid around in her glass. Fitger realized this was something he liked watching her do.
“Should we have another round? I wanted to ask you something else,” he said. “I have an undergrad who needs a job. Even an internship would suffice.”
“Are you referring to the undergrad you sent to my office, as a personal courier?”
“Ashkir? No, he’ll be running a Fortune 500 business in a few short years. I’m talking about a freshman, first semester. Her name is Angela. She’s bright and unsocialized and afraid of her own shadow—just the sort of person you would enjoy whipping into shape.”
Janet reached for her wallet. “I can’t find jobs for your undergrads, Jay.”
“Of course you can. You’re sitting on tuffets of money over there. And Angela is terrific. How about I send her to your office so you can meet her?”
“No.” She put a few wrinkled bills on the table.
“Will you be here over the winter break?” Fitger asked.
“Why does that matter?”
It mattered because he hoped she would hire Angela before then. Besides, it was a polite question. If Janet was in town over the break, maybe they could have another drink. As for his own plans: he would be catching up on some dental work, and probably dining on prunes and a pudding cup.
“No to the drink. And no, I won’t be here.”
“Really? Where are you going?”
Janet leaned toward him, the tendons in her neck like a bridge’s suspension cables. “Not that it’s any of your business,” she said, “but I’ll be with Phil, in the Caribbean. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”
Fitger imagined Janet dozing faceup on a white sand beach, her freckled breasts within groping distance of the dean. “You and I should have gone to the Caribbean. We meant to do that.”
“We were never going to do that. You hate the beach. You don’t like sand or salt water.”
This was true. In general, Fitger didn’t like the outdoors; it was always too windy or too bright—or rain or snow were falling from the sky. He tossed a peanut into his mouth and it lodged itself, with pinpoint accuracy, into the back of his throat. He coughed into his fist and then tried to inhale. It was as if someone had turned the spigot on a pipe—he was without air.
Janet was rifling through her wallet. “I need to go to the bank,” she said. “I thought I had more cash in here.”
Man chokes on nut in presence of ex-wife. Fitger wanted to laugh, but laughing would require breathing. He rapped his knuckles on the table to win her attention, but she was examining, one by one, a series of receipts. He surged to his feet.
“I guess I ate out during the past few days,” Janet said.
I’m going to die in the Flagon, Fitger thought. He tried to pound, Godzilla-like, at his own chest, then looked around for an appropriate surface against which to self-Heimlich. For lack of a better idea, he ended up diving, breastbone first, onto the tableful of peanut shells.
“Jay, what are you doing?” Janet asked.
Pinpricks of silvery light trickled into the periphery of his vision. He prepared himself for another walrus-like assault on the table, but found himself hefted off his feet by a colossal pair of arms that encircled his ribs, a fist forming an iron knot beneath his diaphragm and a bearded mouth exhaling onions next to his cheek.
He raised a hand as if to say, Caution! but the fist crashed like a battering ram into his sternum, and the peanut, accompanied by a gobbet of saliva, was quickly expelled.
He leaned over the table, catching his breath and wondering how many of his broken ribs might be perforating one of his lungs. He wheezed out his thanks.
“Yeah, that happens in here about once a month, I guess,” the bartender said. “It’s always the peanuts.” He ambled back to his post.
“And yet they still serve peanuts here,” Fitger said. “Wait. Are you leaving?”
Yes, Janet said. She had seen enough. She zipped up her coat and asked Fitger to send her regards to Dr. Moradi, and to enjoy eating pudding cup during the break.
* * *
—
For QUAP to function as fully and efficiently as it should—that is, for the committee to avoid the usual roadblocks and preconditions—it would need, Roland knew, some friendly administrative grease for its wheels. Which was why he was in attendance at one of the university’s “listening sessions”—twice-yearly gatherings during which President Hoffman and her adjutants pretended to consider the opinions of a small and carefully vetted group of faculty, students, and staff. Hoffman, as most everyone knew, was mainly a figurehead at Payne, but Provost Rutledge was scheduled to be at the evening’s session, and Rutledge, notoriously difficult to locate, was clearly the power behind the throne.
So: Roland had arrived early, noted the thirty place-cards around the horseshoe-shaped table, and switched his card with that of a student. Ten minutes next to Rutledge would be all he needed to gain a green light for QUAP’s operations; if time remained, he could discuss the need for more space in Willard Hall for his department, as well as the problem of the humanities (particularly English)—freeloading bastions of political correctness whose students were encouraged to be afraid of real-world ideas. But after ducking out of the room and returning several minutes ahead of the introductions, he found that his place-card, which appeared to have been clasped in soiled hands, had been moved. The seat next to Rutledge’s was now occupied by the ever-jocular Coach Klapp, who winked across the table at Roland. In his sweatpants and matching jacket, Klapp had the physique of a boiled potato with legs. Rutledge, Roland noticed, hadn’t yet shown.
For seventy-five minutes, seated next to an undergraduate who took notes on his forearm during the meeting, Roland listened to burning questions about sweatshop clothing in the bookstore, university sanctioning of various sexual inclinations, and the need for a Bikram (and not Iyengar) yoga instructor on campus. President Hoffman, as expressive as a department store mannequin, blinked robotically throughout. Roland stared at Rutledge’s empty seat while the student beside him wolfed down the entire assortment of cookies at their end of the table. Someone raised the usual complaint about the cost of tuition, which received—from Hoffman—a noncommittal response.
With ten minutes left, Coach Klapp, who always spoke as if accepting a major award, aired a request for a “greater commitment”—despite an 0–9 record—to football at Payne. The recent construction of a multimillion-dollar stadium, it turned out, only increased the need for financial investment. The coach stood up and blew a whistle, causing the double doors to open, and in walked L. J. Portman, Payne’s quarterback, in full uniform, along with the left tackle, Miles Quinn. Quinn had recently been released from jail (for the second time) for aggravated assault. Following Quinn were half a dozen grinning cheerleaders in their sparkling blue-and-white harem suits, and, at the end of the parade, none other than Pup-Dog himself, pileous head bobbing, oversized front teeth chomping away. Roland shuddered. The repulsive creature tunneled at the air with its tufted hands.
Coach Klapp insisted on a photograph, so they were all shooed from their chairs and arranged against the wall, Roland—given the continued absence of Rutledge—taking a position on the president’s left. If he might have a moment of her time to discuss something that—
“Say ‘Payne,’ everybody! Smile!”
Roland formed his lips into an arc, and then—good god, could it be the same absurd student in costume?—felt a furry, lascivious hand cupping his buttocks. Pup-Dog, behind him, erupted in a series of chittering barks.
The entire evening was a waste and a humiliation, with Rutled
ge truant and Hoffman exhibiting the insights and opinions of a telephone pole. Leaving the session feeling snappish and chafed, he walked through the center of campus, past the statue of Cyril Payne, whose sartorial preferences currently tended toward the Hawaiian, with a hula skirt and yellow bra.
Roland had left his briefcase in his office in Willard and, because the sidewalks were slick, he cut through the student center on his way there. The main area on the center’s first floor was a carpeted playground; it was brightly lit and full of energetic noise. A group of fifteen or twenty students were lying on the floor and decorating some sort of banner. Roland strode past. He didn’t generally work with the undergraduates, whom he found to be undisciplined and unprepared for education. They could be ferocious on the one hand, ready to burn their higher-ups in effigy for the slightest misstep; and on the other hand they claimed to be terribly sensitive, ever dreaming up new ways in which they believed themselves to have been harmed. It was the era, Roland thought, of the student-as-victim: one’s social status increased according to the extent to which one imagined oneself damaged and wronged. Here was a group of the oppressed right now, playing foosball and eating junk food in a corner. They wanted trigger warnings and petting and coddling—when what they needed, Roland thought, was a kick in the ass.
In Willard Hall, on the way to his office, Roland checked on the conference room formerly used by English. He was having it recarpeted and painted as an overflow meeting space for his own department, which would soon be expanding and required the room. So far it looked adequate, he thought. He strolled down the hall, noting the English faculty’s predilection for decorating their doors with clippings and cartoons and other retrograde paraphernalia: postcard images of leftist writers (Gertrude Stein was popular, perhaps because she was so unattractive) and Che Guevara, in his ratty beret. Roland paused to read a poem about trees, which he didn’t care for, and then noticed a poster on the office next door. It included the words “KILL WILL,” and the figure’s eyes—Shakespeare’s, he believed—were thickly crossed out. Interesting, Roland thought. He stepped back from the door. Of course: Dennis Cassovan’s office. Roland didn’t know Cassovan (he didn’t need to know him), but had read, with full attention, the article about the Shakespeare fracas in the Campus Scribe. Mind gently abuzz, he went upstairs to collect his things.
On his way out of the building a few minutes later, he took a tour through the basement, having put in a bid—and won dominion of—the modest space in which Payne’s literary journal (now defunct) had once had its home. English had no current use for it, or for the adjoining room to the south, for that matter—a room alternately described as a weeping station or a breastfeeding lounge. It was absurd that a department resembling a ragtag army of misfit toys should have two floors to the Economics Department’s one. True, the faculty in English taught three times as many courses, given the prevalence of freshman comp; and its cavelike basement-level was thoroughly crosshatched with dribbling pipes—still, half of the building, not a third, should logically belong to Roland’s department.
If the English faculty were persuaded to double up and share offices…Roland did a quick head count, reading the names on the basement doors. Zander Hesseldine (was that a poster of the Communist Manifesto?), Franklin Kentrell, Jennifer Brown-Wilson…Toward the end of the corridor, which resembled the backdrop for a Hollywood murder scene, a single door was ajar, the office lit. Roland slowed his steps and approached and noted the placard: TA/GRA UATE STU ENTS/IN TRUCTORS. He heard swearing, quietly pushed the door open, and walked in.
A slump-shouldered man stood at a table, struggling with a machine. This was the Department of English; was he building weaponry of some kind? Making counterfeit coins?
“Shit! You scared me.” The man leapt away from the table, spilling a handful of medallions onto the floor.
“Apologies,” Roland said. “I was on my way out of the building and saw the light on.” He introduced himself.
The poor-postured man wiped the sweat from his forehead before shaking hands. “Lincoln Young,” he said. “I’m a temporary instructor. And a research assistant. I’m doing some work for Professor Cassovan.”
“Ah.” Roland pulled out a chair. He hadn’t been in this part of the basement before and needed a moment to acclimatize. The room was hideous, with three filthy, barred windows and an asbestos-tile ceiling pockmarked with stains. Beyond the table at the front of the room were a dozen cubicles, a sort of academic sweatshop, the squalid fabric dividers between them so low they provided no privacy of any kind. The space would require much more than carpet and paint.
Instructor Young had scooped up the items on the floor and was clearly waiting for Roland to leave.
“You look familiar,” Roland said.
The instructor shrugged. Why did he seem nervous, as if he’d been caught doing something wrong?
“I’m good at faces. It’ll probably come to me.” Roland folded his hands in his lap in the attitude of a person patiently waiting for the evening train. He addressed a series of rambling remarks to the ceiling in an effort to put Mr. Nervous at ease.
After three or four minutes, this strategy bore fruit, and Cassovan’s little helper returned to his work, which appeared to be the manufacturing of medallions or buttons. Roland quickly saw the source of Lincoln’s previous frustrated swearing: the handle on the machine was sticky, and on every third or fourth effort, it jammed.
“Mind if I give it a try?” He stood up. On the table next to Lincoln Young’s machine (which bore a PROPERTY OF ART DEPARTMENT label) were a box of metal disks, a circle punch, and a series of round plastic coverlets and similarly sized paper. He turned one of the finished buttons over. The illustration was off-center but legible: a drawing—of Shakespeare, like the poster on Cassovan’s door—but this bard was behind the bars of a prison cell. Underneath him, in bold red letters, were the words “SAVE WILL.” Lincoln ceded his place, and Roland fiddled with the lever. He extracted a wrinkled bit of plastic from the turntable bed and, using the penknife on his keychain, gave the screw on the handle a few firm right turns. “It needed a bit of persuasion, I think.” He worked the machine, producing half a dozen well-centered buttons. “How much are you selling them for?” he asked.
What? Well, Mr. Nervous wasn’t selling them, exactly. At least, not yet. The buttons were…an experiment. A way of showing his support for Professor Cassovan.
“Admirable,” Roland said. He was getting into a rhythm with the machine: pop the button into the metal bed, cover with a Shakespeare illustration (of which there were several) and a Mylar disk, turn the dial, and pull. He noted the fraying cuffs of Lincoln’s shirt (signifying loneliness, debt, and a PhD that had led to a rotisserie of underpaid jobs) and remembered where he had seen him—at the celebration. Holding a tray. “I’m sure Professor Cassovan appreciates the support.”
Lincoln Young didn’t answer. A grayish-brown rodent skirted the baseboard.
“University politics,” Roland said, shaking his head. It was hard to keep up with all the various issues. He had heard or read about the schism in English—though perhaps “schism” was too strong a word.
Lincoln Young thought the word was appropriate.
“Out of curiosity,” Roland said. “How is the department leadership handling the conflict? You have a new chair this year, don’t you? Fitger?”
Lincoln Young looked carefully at Roland; his suit was beautifully pressed, with neat, pointed lapels. There was something here, he thought. Something deserving of his attention. “Some people in the department don’t care for Professor Fitger,” he said. “At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”
“Interesting,” Roland said. He picked up a button. “May I?”
Of course.
Roland dropped the “SAVE WILL” medallion into his pocket. “How much is Cassovan paying you?”
“Twenty-five an hou
r,” Lincoln said.
Roland knew this was a lie, but he didn’t care. He picked up his briefcase. By the by, he said, his own department—Economics—occasionally hired PhDs in other fields to work on short-term discretionary projects. Nothing permanent, but if Lincoln was available, the pay was thirty dollars an hour.
Lincoln was settling another metal disk into the machine. “What kind of work?”
“Communications. You might call yourself a consultant,” Roland said. “Come to my office next week. I’ll see if I can find something for you to do.”
NINE
It was all very peculiar and unsettling, Cassovan thought, the vandalized poster sparking a hum of unrest that began at the door to his office and vibrated throughout Willard Hall. In the following days, he felt himself to be observed. Through the semitransparent (and now vandalized) poster he could see people standing in the hall in whispered clusters. Students were intrigued by the “KILL WILL,” and colleagues—some of them coming from other departments—appeared to view his office as a sort of black spot, as if the poster were a notice regarding the plague. Lincoln’s remarks about harassment and the campus police were clearly extreme but, on the other hand, someone had carefully unscrewed the tiny fasteners on the plastic covering, lifted the poster out without tearing it, then defiled it and returned it to its home. Cassovan had originally assumed that this was the childish but annoying act of an undergraduate, but Willard Hall had been locked over the Thanksgiving weekend, when virtually every student on campus was away.
Could the vandal have been one of his colleagues? It had to be someone with weekend access and keys to the building. Zander Hesseldine often taught in the evenings and was probably a night owl. Helena Stang? Cassovan had heard her refer to Shakespeare as “the king of dead white irrelevant men.” But of course Virginia Beauchamp had once argued—and not facetiously—for the possibility of “problematizing” Shakespeare by including him in a survey on writers of color.
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