Extracurricular Activities

by Maggie Barbieri

  After an arduous forty-five minutes of debate, during which I was able to keep my mouth shut, the meeting adjourned and I slunk back to my office, no closer to understanding what decision had been made or why.

  I was hungry. The hot dog from the night before was a distant memory and I needed more processed nitrates if I was going to make it through the morning. I looked at my watch and determined that I had one entire class period to spend in the cafeteria eating breakfast. I grabbed my wallet and headed out of the office area.

  I stopped in at the campus bookstore to get a New York Times to read while I had my breakfast. It was between classes and there were more students than usual browsing the stacks of books and magazines in that section of the store.

  A student in a blue and gold St. Thomas sweatshirt was bent over at the waist examining the newspaper choices on the bottom shelf of the rack. As is the case with many of my female students, this one was wearing the ubiquitous thong underwear that they found so attractive; it peeked from the waistband of her low-rider jeans. I tried not to stare but her butt crack was inches from my face, as was a huge, red heart tattoo.

  Miss Blurry Tattoo Ass.

  She stood and turned and I was only mildly surprised to find myself looking at Julie Anne Podowsky.

  “Oh, excuse me, Dr. Bergeron. Am I in your way?”

  I tried not to do a double take, instead opting for the old clear-your-throat time killer. “Oh, no. I just want to get a Times.”

  She bent over and picked one up, handing it to me. I had on heels so I couldn’t tell what the height differential was between us, but since we were eye to eye, I guessed that she had about two inches on me. A picture of her blurry, naked breasts popped into my mind and I looked away.

  “I really need to talk to you,” she said.

  “About your grade?” I asked, picking up a copy of Marie Claire and thumbing through it. I couldn’t look at her; I had seen her naked. Kind of. It was uncomfortable.

  She bit her lower lip. “Well, that, and maybe something else.”

  I am so not going there with you, I thought. “My office hours are posted online.” She seemed like a very sweet girl, but she had forearms that would rival a lumberjack’s. And having seen her thighs, I knew they were mighty powerful, too. Her demeanor didn’t say “killer” to me but what did I know, really?

  She nodded. “I’ll find a time that works for both of us.”

  I nodded. “Good enough.” I made my way to the front of the store and threw some coins on the counter to cover the cost of my paper. I walked across the bottom floor of the building without incident, crossed through the student center, and progressed down the long hallway to the commuter cafeteria. I had just reached the doors of the cafeteria, the smell from it not entirely appetizing, when I spied Crawford ambling down the hall toward me, coming from the direction of the convent. Weird, I thought; maybe he’s hooked up with a nun? Based on our lack of physical contact, I guessed anything was an improvement. He looked a little shocked when he saw me and more than a little surprised; there was a slight hitch in his step like he was reconsidering his straight path toward me. Kevin was close on his heels, not exactly with Crawford, but not exactly not with him, either.

  I stopped, my hand on the handle of the cafeteria door. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t Detective Crawford and his ward, Father McManus. You gentlemen out fighting crime together? Where’s the Batmobile?” When they didn’t laugh, I explained why I was there. However, it didn’t explain why Crawford was there. “I was just going in for breakfast. Care to join me?”

  Kevin made a great show of looking at his watch. “I have an appointment,” he said and scurried off down the hall, his black jacket billowing out behind him, the sound of his loafers click-clacking on the tile floor like he was warming up for Riverdance.

  I looked at Crawford. “I guess that leaves you. Coffee?” I asked, and held the door open for him. He appeared to be considering his options, finally deciding to follow me in. I approached the counter and put him in charge of getting coffee. “Can you handle that?” I asked.

  “I think so,” he said, and wandered off to the coffee bar. I watched him stand before the large coffee dispenser, trying to figure out what I would like and what I would take in my coffee.

  “Large! Milk!” I called after him and turned my attention to Marcus, my favorite cafeteria cook, who was making omelets behind the counter. “Hi, Marcus,” I said. “Could I have two scrambled egg and bacon sandwiches on rolls, please?” I asked. I looked around. The cafeteria was sparsely populated since the second class of the day was in session, and only a few students, all plugged in to something or other—headphones, MP3 players, or cell phones—hung around the outskirts of the room. Marcus whipped up my sandwiches which I paid for and brought over to a table by the window.

  Crawford joined me with two large cups of coffee and sat down across from me. I handed him a plate with a sandwich on it.

  “So, what’s going on, Crawford? Anything to report on Ray’s murder?” I asked, digging into my sandwich with gusto. I had thrown up on this guy’s shoes; I didn’t need to pretend I was a dainty, delicate flower when it came to eating.

  He shook his head. “Not a thing. We’re working a couple of angles…”—he paused when he saw my eyebrows shoot upwards—“the details of which I will not share with you.”

  Party pooper.

  “Did you talk to my neighbors? Jackson and Terri?” I asked.

  He knitted his brows together. “Yes. Why?”

  “Right after Ray was murdered, Terri came over and basically accused Jackson of the murder.” I went on to recount my visit with Max to Boscobel, but left out the part where Max rummaged through their underwear drawers. “Does he seem like a suspect to you?”

  Crawford thought for a moment. “I’ll go back through my notes, but my initial reaction was that he seemed pretty innocuous.” He took a bite of sandwich and gazed out at the river, glistening like a jewel beyond the great lawn of the building in which we sat. “Why would his wife accuse him and then carry on with him like that, though? I think I’ll talk to her again, too.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “And I guess you’re looking at the Miceli family, too?”

  He remained quiet on that subject. I took that as an affirmative.

  I decided to change the subject; as much of an amateur sleuth as I’d become, talking about Ray’s murder took its toll on me emotionally. “What are you doing here, Crawford?” I asked. I tried for that nonchalant insouciance that I always attempt, but am never successful at pulling off. Because, good Lord, he was handsome and I was a sucker for tall guys with chiseled good looks; call me crazy.

  “I came to see you,” he said, unconvincingly.

  “Liar.” I’m not all that observant, but I had this sneaking suspicion that he had been with Kevin prior to seeing me. That could mean one of two things: he was getting spiritual direction or help with his annulment. I didn’t let my mind wander too long as to the purpose of their visit. The look on my face must have conveyed other emotions or feelings because Crawford went into full mea culpa mode.

  “Listen, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this, but I’m sorry.” He tried to look at me, but couldn’t.

  I didn’t respond. What was there to say? I knew that he was sorry, but it didn’t mitigate my feelings of humiliation of having met the wife I didn’t know he had.

  “I don’t know what I have to do to make this up to you.” He rubbed his eyes, either just plain tired, or tired of this conversation.

  I spoke quietly but made my point. “You just have to get divorced, or annulled, or whatever it is that will make you available.”

  He nodded, almost imperceptibly. He had mentioned to me that he had finally signed his divorce papers but, in doing so, had promised his wife that he would go through the annulment process, her main stipulation in dissolving their marriage, but a process in which he did not believe. It was the proverbial catch-22: he would be f
ree of his marriage, but have to compromise his ethics in the process. And I knew Crawford well enough to know that that caused him more than a few sleepless nights.

  So while the papers were signed on his end, I didn’t know if Christine had signed them as well and I certainly wasn’t going to ask. Crawford was nothing if not intensely private and while I was dying to know how long this would take, I resisted the urge to probe him further on the subject. Kevin had hinted that an annulment could take upward of two years and that left me in a bit of a moral quandary: would I hold out that long or compromise my own ethics by dating a technically still-married man?

  “What’s the matter?”

  I realized that I had been staring at him the whole time that I had been working all of these details out in my brain. And I also realized that while staring at him and working out those details, I had inadvertently thought about my date with Jack. Damn that brother McManus and his straight white teeth. They had left quite an impression on me. “Nothing,” I said, and took a bite from my sandwich. I looked out the window.

  “You seem, I don’t know, nervous,” he said, and leaned in a bit. “Are you blushing?”

  “No,” I protested, my mouth full.

  “You are,” he said, a bit amazed. “Now, why would you be blushing?”

  I shrugged and smiled nervously.

  “Does it have anything to do with the…”—he paused dramatically—“date you went on last night?” The look on my face must have been priceless, because he burst out laughing. “Alison, if you’re going to go out on a date and you want to keep it a secret, make sure you’re not on television.”

  I swallowed my food and gulped slightly. “Sorry?” I said.

  He looked at me and it appeared that he was deciding whether or not to be angry. The tables had turned and now we were off his divorce and onto my dating life. I looked down at my sandwich, crumbled egg falling out of the side of the roll. That coupled with the acids in my stomach churning took away any feelings of hunger that I had.

  “How was the hockey game?” he asked, smiling.

  “It was great. Bouchard had a hat trick,” I said casually.

  “I know. I watched it on TV,” he reminded me.

  “Right,” I said, nodding.

  “Are you going to go out with him again?” he asked. He finished the sandwich, and pulled a few napkins out of the holder, wiping his fingers.

  No, I thought. “I don’t know,” I said out loud. Big mistake.

  “Oh.” He shoved his napkin and paper plate into his coffee cup; the look on his face told me that that hadn’t been the right answer. God, it was getting so I could almost teach a class in sticking one’s foot in one’s mouth. “Are you bringing him to the wedding?”

  “God, no,” I said. I thought that was obvious; I was the matron of honor and Crawford was the best man, so he was my date. But he really had gotten the wrong idea watching me on my televised date.

  “Well, how would I know that, based on your last answer?” He stood. “I’ve got to go. I have to go to work.”

  I stood and pulled at his sleeve. “Wait.”

  He looked down at me, his face sad. “I really have to go,” he said quietly.

  I nodded. I had blown this one but good. And no amount of bacon and eggs was going to make it better.

  But a lesson had been learned: cheating on your sort-of-married boyfriend with your priest’s brother can only come to no good.

  Chapter 12

  With just two days to go before the wedding, I finally found a dress and shoes and got Max off my back. I did as she instructed and went to Nordstrom, returning with a sophisticated black dress that defied Max’s edict of “no black” and that had cost me a fortune. The outfit was stylish, not too bridesmaidy looking, and suited my slightly gone-to-pot beach-volleyball-player build. The day of the wedding, I went to the beauty salon in Manhattan that Max patronized. Although I had what amounted to a giant bouffant the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Angie Dickinson played Pepper Anderson on Police Woman, I drew the line at wearing the diamond tiara that Max had bought for me and just went with big-ass, hooker hair. When I was fully dressed, however, I had to admit that the hooker hair looked better than I would have thought and I made my peace with it.

  The day of the wedding dawned bright and beautiful, a vintage New York September day. I hadn’t seen Crawford since le désastre cafétéria and until the rehearsal dinner the night before. There was so much happening at that event we didn’t have a lot of opportunity to chat; I had to reminisce with Max’s entire family, the Rayfields, and Crawford apparently had promised never to leave Fred’s side because the two remained side by side for the entire evening. I loaded up on vodka martinis and pigs in a blanket and let Max’s uncle Richard grab my ass during “The Girl from Ipanema,” so I had been a little preoccupied during the proceedings.

  I don’t know why I had blurted out that I didn’t know whether or not I would go out with Jack McManus again; based on Crawford’s revelation that things were moving forward on the divorce, I should have leapt into his arms and professed my undying love for him. But I hadn’t done that. I had gone on a date and been vague about my intentions toward my date.

  I would like to be able to say that I left my marriage to Ray unscathed, but based on my behavior the last few months, it would be hard to say it with any conviction.

  Max and Fred got married at the chapel at St. Thomas, which was the same location as my wedding to Ray, but the similarity between the two unions stopped there. My wedding had been a small affair with only forty or so people; Max and her parents had invited just shy of two hundred and fifty people, while the Wyatts had more like sixty on their side. The Wyatts, come to think of it, looked a bit overwhelmed by the loud and boisterous Rayfields and stayed on their side of the church, staring solemnly at the altar.

  The chapel is spectacular, with a long marble aisle and burnished oak pews. Max floated down on the arm of her father, smiling and crying. Fred, standing on the altar with me, Crawford, and Kevin, wept openly as he watched her approach.

  Fred, despite his earlier assertion to me that he belonged to some kind of ancient Samoan religious sect, had actually been baptized Catholic, even though he had received no other sacraments. Kevin fudged some of the paperwork so that it looked like he had made his first Holy Communion and Confirmation, but he never really admitted to me just how much he had lied in order to make this church ceremony take place. I didn’t want to know; the Vatican police are rough on heretics and liars. Despite a history of social justice, the Catholic church has been known to set a few people on fire or feed them to lions. So, Max, despite not having set foot in a church since 1987, in an effort to please her parents, was permitted to marry in the chapel and have Kevin officiate, even though he would probably go to Vatican prison if anyone found out about his subterfuge. If it had been up to Max, she would have eloped, but her parents wanted their only daughter to marry in the church, at St. Thomas, and in front of their few hundred closest friends. They got their wish.

  The wedding reception was at a big catering hall called the Lighthouse located at Chelsea Piers, a mammoth sports complex on the Hudson River. The room, to Max, was pedestrian, and she would have preferred an edgier, hipper location. But when your father is shelling out six figures for you to get married, you get married where he wants you to get married and you’re happy about it. She understood that. Had she gotten married in her twenties when she was slightly more headstrong, it might have been more of an issue.

  Max, Fred, Crawford, and I arrived in the limousine about a half hour after the guests arrived, due to a picture-taking session in the chapel. We were held in the limo for a moment while the maître d’alerted the band that we had arrived.

  I sat next to Crawford, who had thawed a bit since we had last seen each other. I attributed that to the short memory that most men have. Slighted women hold grudges much longer, in my opinion. I was a little happier now that we had polished off the b
ottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne that was in an ice bucket in the backseat. As far as Max and Fred were concerned, they were the only ones in the limo and they made out the whole way from the Bronx to Manhattan, a thirty-minute trip. That left plenty of champagne for me and Crawford, and we made short work of it, passing it back and forth between the two of us and drinking directly from the bottle since the limo company had forgotten to stock glasses. I’m nothing if not a classy dame.

  While we were waiting in the back of the limo, I handed Max a lipstick from my purse. “Here. You might want to freshen up,” I suggested. Her hair, which she had let grow a little longer for the wedding, was a mess, and she had a giant lipstick smear across her cheek. Crawford let out a little snicker next to me and I shot him a look.

  She put on some lipstick, and smoothed her dress down. “Better?” she asked, turning to Fred and rubbing his bald head.

  “You look great,” I said and took the lipstick back from her. I didn’t think I’d be able to reapply my lipstick; I couldn’t feel my lips. I put the tube in my pocketbook and snapped it shut.

  Fred stared across at me. “I forgot to tell you how nice you look,” he said in his deep baritone.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You look handsome in your tuxedo.”

  Crawford piped up. “What about me? Don’t I look handsome?” he asked.

  “If you weren’t an asshole, I would have sex with you right now,” Fred said. “That’s how handsome you look.”

  The maître d’ arrived and opened the door to the limo. Crawford jumped out and offered me his hand, which I took. He helped me out of the car and steadied me as I landed on the curb, slightly drunk from the champagne and in the highest heels I had ever worn. He grabbed me around the waist. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Never better,” I said and put one foot in front of the other as we made our way into the reception hall. I held on to his hand in a death grip. We stood at the bottom of the stairs that led to the dance floor and waited for our cue; both of us had done this before and knew the drill. Wait for the bandleader to announce your name, go onto the dance floor, smile, and then go to your table while the happy couple dances.