Other Resort Cities

by Tod Goldberg

  Proof was right in front of him, even: Professor Kochel’s name plate was above his on the little slider beside their office door. Respect was dead, so fuck it to death. Maybe I’ll get that inked on my neck in Old English, Cooperman thought. Fuck it to Death.

  “There you are,” Kochel said when Cooperman finally opened the office door.

  “Have you been looking for me?”

  “Your phone has been ringing constantly. I took some messages for you.” Kochel handed Cooperman a stack of Post-it notes. The first was from Katie Williard, another was from Enterprise Rent-A-Car—a problem Cooperman hadn’t quite taken care of yet—and another still that had one word on it: Bongo.

  “What did Katie Williard want?”

  “Lovely girl, isn’t she? So bright.”

  “What did she want?” Cooperman heard a new tone entering his voice. He liked it. Thought it made him sound like the kind of guy who just might have some neck ink.

  “Candidly? I think she’s upset about your afternoon class.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  “Briefly. She indicated to me that she just wasn’t satisfied in the level of teaching. It’s no reflection on you, William, I’m sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I’ve had Katie in other courses and she’s just very particular,” Kochel said. He had a look of smug satisfaction on his face that Cooperman recognized as the same face he used when he talked about how his faith in Christ allowed him to see that many of the great mysteries of science were merely God’s way of testing us.

  “Someone named Bongo called?”

  “Oh, yes, sorry,” Kochel said. “That’s what the name sounded like. I could barely hear him.”

  “He say anything?”

  “It was very strange,” Kochel said. “I thought maybe it was a wrong number. All he said was to tell you that he couldn’t get you twenty-four anymore. I have no idea what that means. Do you?”

  Cooperman looked out the window and down at the Quad, half expected to see an army of men already massed. But it was empty save for a lost seagull picking through an overflowing trash can. It was still sunny out, would be for another hour and a half, two hours, not that it probably mattered. The more frightening aspect was that Cooperman couldn’t remember ever giving Bongo his office phone number.

  This was not good.

  “No,” Cooperman said. “Must have been a wrong number.”

  “Anyway,” Kochel said, “you should really ask for voicemail in the fall.”

  “I won’t be here,” Cooperman said. He was still looking out the window, but wasn’t sure precisely what he was hoping to find. Something or someone that seemed out of place. Like a guy walking around with a MAC- 10. Across the Quad, a black SUV pulled up in front of Pollack Library. A man holding a stack of paper walked out of the Performing Arts Center. A gust of wind through the breezeway picked up a Starbucks cup from the ground. What he wouldn’t give for the Quad to suddenly fill with riot police.

  “No?”

  “I’ve been offered a job back in the sprinkler industry,” Cooperman said.

  “It really is a despicable profession, if you must know,” Kochel said. “From a geological and religious standpoint, if you must know.”

  “Who must know anything?” Cooperman said.

  Kochel started listing the people who must know things, starting with the media and the Muslims and all of the impressionable students who were being led to believe that science was the one true God. The Starbucks cup hovered in the air and then fell and then was swooped up again in another gust. Wind technology. Maybe that’s where he’d make his second wave.

  “What time did this Bongo call?” Cooperman asked when Kochel eventually ran out of righteous steam.

  “Now who must know something?”

  Cooperman turned from the window and found Kochel staring at him in beatific glory. Why had he left his gun in the car? A dumb mistake, really. But he wasn’t used to being the kind of person who was always packing, at least not on campus. “What fucking time, Professor Kochel,” Cooperman said, his voice finding an even deeper register than before, “did this fucking message come in?”

  “Ten minutes ago,” Kochel said. “Okay? Ten minutes ago.”

  “Thank you,” Cooperman said. He fixed his gaze back out the window. A man got out of the backseat of the SUV in front of Pollack and walked in a semicircle, a cell phone pressed to his ear. Cooperman couldn’t make out his age or his exact race from his vantage point, but could see just from watching his body language that the guy was confused about something. It was probably nothing.

  “If you want my opinion,” Kochel said, as if Cooperman had just asked him a question, “you might want to look into anger management courses. Your attitude in a corporate environment will be a real detriment. Not everyone is as easygoing as I am. You get back with a bunch of MBAs and those egos, well, I’m just saying it might be a bad fit.”

  The man from the car was walking toward McCarthy now, his cell phone in his hand. He looked like his head was on a swivel—looking this way, that way, back behind him—and when Cooperman looked back up at the library, the SUV was gone.

  “I’ll work on that,” Cooperman said.

  “I know this isn’t your speed, Will, but you might also start thinking about your relationship with the Lord.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Cooperman said. The man was in the middle of the Quad now, and Cooperman could finally make him out more completely. He was older—maybe fifty—and wore white slacks and a black shirt, had on wraparound black sunglasses, nice shoes. Cooperman thought he was maybe Mexican, but couldn’t really tell. He tried to think if he knew the difference between a Nicaraguan and a Mexican, at least in terms of appearance, and once again cursed himself for having lived in Orange County all of his life.

  It didn’t really matter, anyway. Cooperman was getting the fuck out while he still could. He grabbed his laptop, a few books that meant something to him—Forest Hydrology and Groundwater Hydrology—and, just in case, the Post-it with Katie Williard’s phone number. Maybe once things settled down . . . well, it never hurt to have options with shared interests. He tucked everything into his messenger bag while keeping an eye out the window. The man was on the move again now, his pace more brisk, his direction absolutely clear.

  “And anyway,” Kochel was saying, and Cooperman realized his office mate hadn’t ever stopped talking, was actually quite animated about something, “what you might find out is that everything has consequences, Will.”

  Cooperman turned to Kochel and studied him seriously. He didn’t hate Kochel, didn’t even really think about him on a regular basis, though he never enjoyed being around him. It wasn’t even the religion that bothered him. It was the presumption Kochel had that he was always right. “You know, this is all very fascinating. I’d like to learn even more about this, James. Can we continue this conversation after I get back from my car?”

  Kochel brightened. “Of course, of course, I’ll be right here.”

  Cooperman took one last look outside before he exited his office, saw that the man was now only twenty yards or so from the building, and closing fast.

  Professor William Cooperman stepped out of his office and closed the door lightly behind him. No panic, no fear in the least, just a person skipping out of his office briefly, just a person, just anyone at all. He looked down the hallway and saw that a few students were loitering down by the vending machines, another couple were lined up in front of the photocopier, two were sitting on the floor in front of his classroom reading from their textbooks. None of them bothered to look back at Cooperman, so they didn’t notice him slipping Professor James Kochel’s nameplate out of the slider and into his messenger bag, though Cooperman did pause for just a moment before exiting out the back of the building, to look at his own name. He liked how it looked on the slider by itself, thought that it looked esteemed and powerful and worthy of intense respect.

  Acknowled
gments

  I am indebted to the steadfast dedication and unwavering vision of my fabulous editors Gina Frangello & Stacy Bierlein and for their hard work on these stories. They ask me to take big chances and they don’t let me fail. Additionally, I am ever thankful to Lois Hauselman for publishing me in Other Voices over a decade ago–I am so honored to continue the journal’s singular tradition in these pages. Extra special thanks to Steve Gillis, Dan Wickett, Steven Seighman and the entire extended Dzanc family for bringing me into the fold and treating this book with such dignity and to Allison Parker for correcting my copious mistakes.

  So many people have played a role in these stories, whether they know it or not: Jennie Dunham, agent, friend and confidante; Lee Goldberg, Karen Dinino and Linda Woods, siblings foremost, but also fellow travelers in this literary world and a constant source of love and inspiration, and my mother Jan Curran for giving all four of us the passion for writing; Lynne Sharon Schwartz for opening my eyes again; Tom Filer for still being the voice in my ear; booksellers Lita Weissman, Jan Valerio, Linda Brown, Bobby McCue and Maryelizabeth Hart for continually championing my work; Jay Ray for inspiring “Palm Springs”; Michelle Harding for teaching me how to direct an MFA program . . . and for not getting too angry when I left early to do this job; the staff and faculty of the UCR-Palm Desert Graduate Center and the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program; my classmates in the Bennington Writing Seminars; my fabulous graduate students for understanding why they got their papers back so late; and, finally, my wife Wendy, who has so many words of her own to write, but who reads each of mine.

  These stories originally appeared, often in significantly different form, in the following publications: “The Salt” in Two Letters; “Mitzvah” in Las Vegas Noir; “Walls” in Barrelhouse; “Palm Springs” in Hot Metal Bridge; “Living Room” in Silent Voices; “The Models” in Santa Monica Review; “Granite City” (as “Where The Ends Meet”) in Indy Men’s Magazine; “Will” (as “Lines”) in Hobart.

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  © 2009, Text by Tod Goldberg

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher:

  Other Voices Books - 3629 N. Hoyne - Chicago, IL 60618

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  eISBN : 978-0-982-63188-1