“Apparently, the internet celebrity driving your current fortunes extends to the university as well. The IT people tell me hits to the website are up 65%. Applications are up 35%. Even from top-tier high schools, which I personally would have thought immune to the cult of the Internet.” The president rolled his eyes and set down his coffee.
“Yes,” Miranda said, more a question than an answer. What current fortunes, she wanted to ask. Did he mean Blocked Poet? Suddenly, she wished she hadn’t skipped those emails from Ambrose.
“While you were not asked to sign a waiver to your creative works when you were hired, we do feel that in order to restore you in good standing to the community, some reparations, if you will, some service would be in order. You have placed us in a very delicate position. We do not wish to terminate your employment given your current circumstance, but misconduct as alleged in the complaint, no matter the student’s age or standing cannot be tolerated. Do you understand?”
“I’m beginning to,” Miranda replied.
“We have drawn up some papers, an agreement that outlines certain service expected of you in your new capacity as, what do they call it? Scrabble Poet, is it?”
“Blocked Poet,” Miranda said.
“When Mr. Reed first reached out to me, I must admit I didn’t understand. I don’t do much with the Internet except email donors and read the newspaper. I didn’t understand that anyone could cause the stir that you have and so quickly. Mr. Reed quickly educated me, though, and when I told the trustees—they all understood immediately. As your classes were already cancelled for this disciplinary action, we saw no reason not to request that Mr. Reed extend your trip, at your expense, to include certain stops beneficial to the university in terms of donors, etc.”
Mr. Reed. She nearly choked on the last sip of her coffee. A trip? What trip, she wanted to ask. What expense?
“Additionally, Mr. Reed assured us that you would be able to create volumes dedicated to the university with the proceeds directed to us.”
Miranda nodded.
“Let me be clear. You must meet these obligations to be reinstated in your position. Additionally, we expect the utmost in confidentially about this issue. We will settle things with the complainant in a timely fashion once these documents are signed.” He handed her a stack of paper with a rainbow of tiny sticky notes indicating where she should sign.
“I’ll leave you to review those, but I must caution you that this is not open for negotiation.” He rose and left the room, his feet made no sound on the heavily padded carpets. “You can leave them on the table when you are finished and show yourself out. Mr. Reed already has a copy.”
She didn’t even need to beg; instead, she signed.
C H A P T E R
HER COMPUTER SCREEN FILLED up with three hundred emails from Ambrose. The last one, sent just ten minutes before, read, “Call me,” in all capital letters and a font that blinked from a normal black to a bold red so rapidly that it could induce a seizure.
She pressed call on her phone.
“Miranda,” Ambrose said. “Let’s talk about your schedule. I trust the meeting with the President went as well as could be expected. I tried to contact you about this, but I figured you would probably want to keep the position. Internet fame is so fleeting. But really, a student? Must have been hot, right?”
He didn’t wait for her reply.
“Well, anyway. As the merch rolls out, I have scheduled different events for you. I started with smaller cities. Plus the events the university demanded; I figured you would want to placate them. So anyway, you will have two or three days in each. First a college bookstore or a seminar, talking about poetry, writing in general, and about the university-themed volumes in the Blocked Poet collection. Then you will do another session at a local Barnes and Noble or indie store or community center. Each stop will get a package with ten Scrabble boards. The idea is that you will show people how to play with words. These have been billed as interactive events. People pay money to see their “poems” photographed by you at these events and posted on the Blocked Poet feeds. Tickets sales have been through the roof. You will also need to sign books. Have you seen the books?”
“I haven’t seen anything!”
“There’s been some television. You didn’t see that? Not even Good Morning America? We had a rough fight for the afternoon talk time. Ellen won. That’s your last tour stop in Los Angeles, February 14th. I didn’t bother booking New York; I figured you could do that after you got back. Baltimore, Charlotte, Atlanta, Gainesville, Birmingham, New Orleans, Santa Fe, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Portland, and Los Angeles. You fly out of Newark tomorrow—I saw the engagement pop up on Facebook yesterday—congratulations—and then I had my assistant change the flight plan—figured you want to say goodbye to the new lover boy. I must say, you do move fast. I also need your financial information, you’ll want an accountant to keep track of taxes and your deductions, but you will be pleasantly surprised how much this has already made. There’s an ad feed on your website, and the ticket sales, books sales, coffee mugs, tee-shirts, and earrings. Links to copies of the e-books should be in your email.”
“Website?”
“Oh, dear, you haven’t read any of the emails have you?”
“I just got back.”
“They have Internet in Turkey. It’s not Patagonia. Shoot, they even have Internet in Patagonia.”
“I didn’t think I needed to check.”
“Can you check from now on? That’s how you’ll know the schedule. We may add stops.”
“Add stops?”
“Miranda, really? Scott said you were bright. Do try to keep up.”
Miranda looked at the suitcase she still had yet to unpack from Turkey. It already had her best outfits. They were dirty, yes, but there were laundry machines all across the United States from Baltimore to Los Angeles. The chance to see the country, flying from city to city, would have once filled her with ecstasy. Instead, she studied her phone, unsure what to text Scott.
Finally, she typed. “I need to tell you something.” Then she deleted it. “Text me your address,” she typed.
The address Scott returned was two hours and fiftysix minutes straight down I-87. She steered the car carefully to the interstate, then accelerated as quickly as she could, going as fast as she could without thinking too much about speeding tickets. The all rock music station blared “A Get the Led Out” tribute to Led Zeppelin. And she sang along with the music, letting the lyrics and guitar fill her mind instead of thoughts about the tour and her job and her future. She would think about that later, after she saw Scott and told him, after she made sure he hadn’t changed his mind, after she made sure that all of this would be okay. That they would be okay.
“Screw it,” he said in a whisper. They sat on Scott’s living room rug, print-outs of the itinerary spread around them like a couple of teenagers doing homework. Lynn sat on the white leather sectional, looking down over their shoulders as she pretended to color in a worksheet on the life stages of a caterpillar. “Lynn, why don’t you go watch television in my room?” he asked.
“What can I watch?”
“Anything,” he said.
“Even Cartoon Network?” she asked.
Scott sighed. “Yeah, even that.”
“Daddy hates Cartoon Network,” Lynn explained before running upstairs.
“Forty-two days. Extra stops to keep your job?”
“Yes,” Miranda said. “But it’s not all about the job. It’s a book tour. I’m a poet with a book tour.”
“More like blackmail.”
“Well, it is more than that, but if I want to keep my job, these are the terms.”
“Then screw the terms. Quit.”
“Scott, I don’t want to quit. I want to keep my position.”
“You do? Even after this?”
“These types of positions don’t grow on trees. I’m not exactly qualified to do anything else. And bottom line, I like teaching there.
How else could I support myself?”
“I could support you,” he said. “You could move here. Like right now. We wouldn’t have to wait.”
“You know it’s not that easy.”
“My mother did it.”
“Did what?”
“Stayed home, took care of things.”
“That’s hardly fair to say. She did that while your dad brought home a lawyer’s salary.”
“I could go back to it.”
“And then we would never see you. What would be the point? You said you could transfer upstate; you said they had a Montessori school, too.”
“You wouldn’t want to stay home?”
“Be a stay-at-home mom?” Miranda caught herself before she laughed out loud. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“I thought you would like it,” he said.
“What would make you think that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I feel like I don’t know anything anymore. This suddenly feels like a lot to figure out.”
Miranda felt the bottom of her heart give out. “At least we’ll have some time to figure it out,” she said, hoping to sound lighthearted.
“Yeah,” he said. He patted the space next to him. “Can we just enjoy being together for a minute first?”
She pushed herself against him and rested her head on his shoulder. She sighed, trying to release the tension from her body. The excitement of the last few days leaked from her; dreams never matched reality. While she wouldn’t want to give up this feeling, she didn’t want to trade away the last six years of her life and all she had worked for. Being a stay-at-home mom never even entered her thinking. Her mom worked as a trial lawyer until she got so sick that she couldn’t stand for longer than ten minutes. And even then, she took calls and consulted from home. Bunny’s idea of staying at home meant running every charity auction and playing tennis at the club every afternoon. Avery made a few stabs at putting dinner on the table, but at fifteen, even Miranda with her limited kitchen skills could cook dinner more safely than Avery. With relief, Avery turned back to her work, and the remaining domestic tasks were outsourced to a variety of services and hired staff. Miranda wasn’t the type of woman to swoon at babies or get excited about new recipes. She loved books and teaching, the way her mother loved the courtroom and the law. With her Blocked Poet work, Miranda could see glimmers of her old joy for writing, which by all accounts would be difficult to do while watching Dora the Explorer or waiting to carpool the soccer team. If Scott wanted that kind of life, that kind of wife, he picked the wrong person.
Then the doorbell rang, startling them both to their feet.
“Shit,” Scott said.
“What is it?”
“Kendra,” he said.
“Kendra?” she asked. “Is there something you haven’t told me?”
“I have basketball. Kendra is the sitter. Remember with the Facebook. I’m such a jerk to cancel now.”
“That’s not a problem—I’d like to see this basketball you speak of,” Miranda said.
“You would?”
The doorbell rang again.
“Yes, I would. Or is it weird for me to come? Do girlfriends go?”
“Girlfriends? Sometimes, but you are more than that. You’re my fiancée.”
Miranda felt her stomach flip over when he said it.
“I’d love for you to meet my friends. I’m sure this is all going to throw them for a loop. It will be fun to watch. You can make fun of me. They all do.”
“I couldn’t possibly. I’ll be your cheerleader.”
“You may want to rethink that after you watch him play,” Lynn said, rushing past them both to get to the door. “There’s a reason that I stay with Kendra. That and the pizza. Daddy, can Kendra and I get a pizza?”
Kendra was exactly what you would expect from a babysitter except in addition to the snapping gum and cell phone, she settled her AP Organic Chemistry book loudly on the table to shake Miranda’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” she said.
“You, too. That’s quite a book.”
“Yeah, I think the book is a warning sign that the class will kill you. Three of my classmates started seeing a chiropractor after starting this class! Two got eyeglasses. I’ve escaped the curse so far, but I do have a callous on my index finger from writing so many notes.” She held up her finger for Miranda to examine.
“Wow,” Miranda said.
Kendra snapped her gum.
Scott hustled into the room in basketball shorts and the most garish neon green sneakers. He handed Kendra twenty dollars. “Pizza is cool. Just don’t let her order the anchovies. She says she likes them, but she doesn’t.”
“I do, too,” Lynn said.
“You do not. We’ll be a little later tonight. I’m going to have to take Miranda for dinner after this to make it up to her.”
“Make what up to me?”
Scott pointed at his shoes and then the safety strap that he was attaching to a pair of yellowed, wrap-around glasses he pulled out of his pocket and affixed to his head.
“Oh,” Miranda said. “Well.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll change before dinner.”
Scott drove them slowly through the streets of his very quaint town. The main street, lined with both shops and houses, looked like something from Currier and Ives—all white clapboard siding and shutters in respectable colonial colors like hunter green and burgundy. The church, Dutch Reformed, was a giant stone structure with a triptych of stained glass documenting the passion of Christ over the glossy, red front door. The door itself was so massive, Miranda couldn’t imagine it even opened.
“You play in there?” she asked.
“Well, not in there, around back.”
Behind the stone church stood a glass and metal edifice that rivaled a modern art museum. “You play in there?”
“Yes, it’s like a Y.”
Women in high end yoga gear streamed out of the building, slipping into BMW and Lexus SUVs. Inside, they were greeted by a perky girl with dyed red hair wearing an all-black spandex suit.
“Kind of like a Y?” Miranda asked as Scott showed his identification and signed in.
“Well okay, a gym. The church had a campaign about bodies being the temple of God, and some of the members got together and created a gym. They opened it to community membership to help defray the maintenance. The pastor said yes because it meant they could spread the word of God to more people.”
“At a gym?”
“Yeah, all the treadmills replay the Sunday sermons. And the muzak is all hymns. Other than that it’s like a regular gym.”
“A regular gym with Bible verses on the wall,” Miranda said, pointing to First Timothy, 4:8 inscribed over the reception desk. “‘For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.’ Very valuable advice. Exercise now for the afterlife.”
“Don’t knock it until you try it. It’s nice here.”
“I know, I know,” Miranda said. “It’s certainly modern.” Everything glistened from being both new and clean. They walked past a room of treadmills and elliptical machines. People of all shapes and sizes, eyes fixated on the screens on top of their machines, walked, ran, and climbed to their own rhythms.
Scott opened the next door, which led to a cavernous gym with yellow wood floors that squeaked under your shoes just like in high school. Miranda was grateful that instead of the classic bleachers, the sides of the court were lined with stadium seats. “A local movie theatre closed and donated the seating. If you sit up there long enough, you can still smell the popcorn.”
On the far side of the court, five men dribbled and shot in a frantic rush. They bobbed and weaved around each other, each playing against his own invisible opponent.
“Finally,” the tallest and widest man, sweat already soaking through his oversized sweatshirt called. “Oh, I see, a chick.”
&nbs
p; “Not just any chick,” Scott bellowed back. “My fiancée.”
The other men stopped dribbling and trotted the length of the court to circle them. They stood panting, blatantly eying Miranda up.
“So you did it,” the bigger man said. “You really did it.”
Miranda held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers. “Yup,” she said. “He did.”
The big guy grabbed her up into a hug, lifting her feet off the ground. “Congratulations,” he whooped. Putting her down, he extended a hand, then pulled it back, wiping it on his sweaty shirt before extending it again. “Pastor Dan, welcome to the gym of the Lord.”
“That’s not what it’s really called,” the shortest man in the group said. His sneakers were a blinding fluorescent orange. “I’m Rabbi Irv. And mazel tov.”
“Let me guess,” she said to the next man. “You’re a priest?”
“No, close though, I’m a lawyer. Jonah. Nice to meet you.”
The next man, with the most ebony skin Miranda had ever seen, put out his hand. “I’m Francis. I’m the priest.”
“Geesh, guys. Congratulations. I’m Albert, house painter.”
They stood there staring at her, not saying anything.
“I’m sensing a joke here,” Miranda said. “But I am not sure how that would turn out. Nice to meet you all.”
Pastor Dan didn’t waste any time. “So are we going to play or what?”
The men immediately separated into two groups. Pastor Dan looked at his watch, fished a whistle out from under his shirt, and blew it hard. Miranda found the game tough to follow. After a few minutes, she pulled out her phone and began scrolling through the emails from Ambrose and now from his assistant, Kristen.
She immediately liked Kristen’s style. The woman favored a single K to the word okay. Though an English professor by trade, Miranda liked when the language went feral and changed. That these changes were taking place during her own time amused her. If the text-speak dialect had longer words, she would use them in her word sculptures.
Triple Love Score Page 21
