Holmes Sweet Holmes

by Dan Andriacco

  As we waited for our orders, I found myself staring at Lynda. Partly I was wondering how she really feels about me and what she really thinks about me (two different things) after all these years. But mostly I just like to look at her.

  On that cloudy day after Labor Day, she was wearing a white blouse and tan skirt, with a gold chain necklace resting on her womanly bosom and a scarf the color of fall leaves around her neck.

  Lynda’s Italian half is most evident in her dark complexion and her naturally curly hair. She had changed her hair style in recent months, letting her locks run down to her shoulders for the first time in the nearly five years I’d known her. Today she had it gathered behind her ears, affording a good view of the big loops of gold in her ears. I’d always liked those earrings. They matched the gold flecks in her chocolate brown eyes. I could look into those eyes forever.

  She leaned forward. I tried not to look down her blouse, but it wasn’t easy. Her shape is, well, shapely, and I find it hard to ignore. Just admiring the necklace, Lyn! “Okay, what’s up? There’s something. I can tell.”

  The flowery smell of her freshly shampooed hair made me tingle, and the sound of that throaty, Lauren Bacall voice threatened to unleash my inner caveman. This was going to be even harder than I had thought.

  “I’m in trouble at work,” I said.

  “Oh, no! What’s wrong?”

  “That story in The Observer today about Mac’s blog has Ralph throwing shit fits. If he has his way, I could be out on my ear faster than you can say ‘jobless recovery.’ I wish you would have at least warned me that the story was coming so I could marshal my defenses in advance. Maggie didn’t even contact me for a quote. She should have. There’s no official St. Benignus point of view in the story.”

  Before Lynda could open her mouth, the ever-efficient Vern set down our drinks and disappeared.

  “You’re right, Jeff,” Lynda said, clutching the Mountain Dew. “I apologize. It’s as much my fault as it is Maggie’s. She should have tried harder to balance the story, and I should have called her on that.” Well, okay then . . . “But just to be clear, the issue here is fairness. I have to say that if we’d gotten a quote from Pendergast that would have sufficed. We wouldn’t have been required by journalistic ethics to run the story past the PR flack before we published it.”

  “I’m just talking about a head’s up, not letting me see the story in advance. Besides, am I just a flack? Is that all I mean to you?” I was getting a little worked up, and I don’t mean romantically.

  “Of course not. You know that. But it is a part of you, Jeff, just as my job is part of me.”

  “There’s at least one difference,” I pointed out. “Your career seems to be going great, and I couldn’t be happier. But the way things are going with Ralph I might not have a job much longer. Did you ever stop to think about what you might be doing to me when you put that story on the front page?”

  “Here we are!” Vern set down our food orders. I like Vern, but it had taken me a long time to be sure that she was a woman.

  The way Lynda tore into her sandwich I wasn’t sure whether she very hungry, avoiding my question, or rubbing it in that she was eating from The Heart Attack Cook Book. Finally she came up for air and spoke with some restraint.

  “I get paid to do a job. I do it the best I can and I try to be fair to everybody. I’ve already apologized for failing on the fairness count. Look, Jeff, you know we’ve always had these conflicts and we always will as long as we have our respective jobs. We just need to be adults and figure out how to work through it by mutual respect. Other people have.”

  Marry me, Lynda. How’s that for working through it? She’s just so adorable when she’s being earnest. I struggled to maintain a stern demeanor.

  “If I wanted to be fight dirty,” she went on, “I could complain that you don’t seem concerned about helping me in my job. There’s more news at St. Benignus than in all the rest of Sussex County put together, but you never give me any of it - not anything juicy or excusive. The only way we got the story about the reaction to Mac’s blog was Maggie Barton’s ear for gossip.”

  “Maggie was born about 1917 and has pink hair.”

  “Not true. She isn’t even seventy until next month.”

  “But it’s pink. You have to admit that her hair is pink like cotton candy.”

  “Why do you always get caught up in side issues?”

  “Okay, sorry. Where were we? Oh, yeah. I should give you exclusives. I’m sorry, but that wouldn’t be professional. I can’t play favorites.”

  “Neither can I!”

  Well, she had me there. I concentrated on my peanut butter and banana sandwich. It was good, but I prefer the crunchy kind. Peanut butter, I mean, not bananas.

  Finally Lynda broke the silence. “You really sound worried about your job. You’re not exaggerating, are you?”

  I shook my head. “I feel like I’m on probation. Ralph and I had a bit of a blowout this morning over Maggie’s story. I explained to him that I have no journalistic influence over you - free press and all that - but it was like trying to dig through Mt. Rushmore with a spoon.” I stood up for you, my beloved; I deserve some brownie points for that. “Mac’s situation is even worse, though. Ralph has been out to break Mac, to kill the whole popular culture program, since the day he strutted in the door.”

  “McCabe is a big boy,” Lynda said. Well, there’s no denying that. But she wasn’t talking about his girth. “I think he can take care of Pendergast. He’s done okay up until now.” Lynda regards my brother-in-law as a lovable lunatic. She’s half right.

  “I’m just afraid this front-page flap could be the leverage he needs to do pull Mac down,” I said.

  Lynda sighed. “I can’t apologize for running the story because that’s my job and I’m proud of it. But I’m sorry you and Mac are in trouble. It seems like such a little thing. I thought it was a light feature. This sort of controversy must happen at bigger schools all the time without somebody losing a job over it.”

  “I don’t know about that. There’s an old adage about academia, ‘The fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small.’ And anyway, this isn’t a big school. It’s a school of fewer than two thousand, graduate students included, in a town of just under thirty thousand. It’s a small school in a small community. Some of the people who run it are pretty small-minded - only some, but enough for it to hurt.”

  “But surely the board of trustees, if it went that far, would step in to save the popular culture program,” Lynda objected.

  “Don’t be too sure,” I said. “This is off the record, but -”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why does it have to be off the record, Jeff?”

  “Do you want to hear this or not?”

  “Oh, all right. Go ahead, killjoy. Off the record.”

  “You know some of this, but not all of it. The board hired Pendergast last year with a mandate to shape things up. Father Joe has been a great president for a lot of years. The man’s a legend. But he’s also seventy-two years old. He’s lost interest in the details and the last provost wasn’t much better. Pendergast is here to pump up all the benchmark numbers, from enrollment to endowment. As long as he does that, I think the board will stand right behind him.”

  “That’s a helluva story - the power behind the throne.”

  Down, girl. “Get that gleam out of your beautiful eyes. It’s not a story yet. Right now it’s just a threat. If his attempt to kill the popular culture program becomes a story at this point, Ralph will never be able to back down without looking weak. He’ll be frozen into his position.”

  Lynda sat back. Uh-oh. Body language. “Okay, what’s the bottom here for me? How can I help you?”

  A bit of canoodling sometime soon wouldn’t hurt! Well,
that wasn’t going to happen unless I gave a little ground.

  “I understand that you can’t show favoritism any more than I can,” I said. “And I know you try to be fair. But maybe when you consider the sensitivities involved you can see that a story like today’s doesn’t have to go on the front page or lead the website.”

  She thought. I was afraid for a minute that I had overreached, but she surprised me with a slow nod. “That’s not unreasonable. News is a very subjective commodity. What’s worth page one is only a matter of opinion, really, and Frank usually leaves it up to me. I’ll keep your concerns in mind. At the same time, I hope you can remember that I’m really interested in what goes on at St. Benignus, even things that nobody’s going to want you to put out a press release about.”

  “Such as?”

  Lynda shrugged. “I’m thinking of minor controversies, or changes that don’t normally get announced, nothing that would really hurt the college. Who would blame you if you slip me a tip and Maggie pursues it on her own?”

  Ralph Pendergast, that’s who.

  But I considered what she was saying. In Lynda’s phrase, it was not unreasonable. Yes, I would be favoring one news outlet over all the others, but they would pick it up from The Observer and half the people who saw it on TV or heard it on WIJC-FM wouldn’t realize it had been in the newspaper first.

  “I can do that,” I said, “and I promise to try.” I almost reached over to shake her hand, sealing the deal. How much of my thought process that brought me to that point was personal (i.e., trying to move forward from “It’s Complicated” with Lynda) and how much was professional (i.e., trying to save my job and still keep my professional integrity) I didn’t want to examine too closely.

  By now both our plates were empty and Lynda pulled out a Werther’s Original caramel. She had been chewing gum and sucking on hard candy ever since she gave up cigarettes during the time we weren’t seeing each other at all. She still claimed my four years of providing helpful information about the harmful health effects of smoking had nothing to do with her decision to kick the deadly habit, but I had my doubts.

  “So, how’s the mystery writing going?” she asked.

  “Great,” I said. “It’s the selling that sucks.” I decided that she didn’t need to know about my latest rejection, so I didn’t mention it.

  “You mean you got another of those rejections by form e-mail? That’s really a shame.” She reached over and touched my hand sympathetically. “You’re a good writer, Jeff. But I think maybe your tough guys are just too tough.”

  “That’s your fault. I base them all on you.”

  She gave a throaty laugh that made me want to take her someplace without tables and chairs and other people. Marry me, Lynda. Please! Actually, wedded bliss had never been a front-burner issue for us even when we’d been a couple. Lynda shied away from the subject every time we got in its vicinity. There were some family issues in the way. But I still had my hopes.

  “If I’m the tough guys,” she said, “then who are all your lustful females based on?”

  “Me.” I’m actually not kidding here, sweetheart.

  “Hardly. Believe me, Jeff, nobody in the world of fact or fiction is like you. Think about it: You ride a bicycle everywhere, except when you walk or drive a twelve-year-old Volkswagen Beetle that looks like a lime.” That’s New Beetle, technically, and it’s thirteen years old. That baby will be recognized as a classic when the even-newer Beetle comes out in 2012. “When you saw a dead man’s body covered in blood back in the spring you tried very hard to be brave for me, but you turned the color of this blouse I’m wearing. And you’re too worried about your health to get into any fights. Face it, Jeff: You’re just not a hard-boiled guy. Maybe you ought to write about a soft-boiled private eye instead of the macho B.S. hero of yours. No offense.”

  “None taken.” Just cut my other wrist while you’re at it. At least she hadn’t called me neurotic, this time. That was encouraging. “Maybe you’re right. I’ll think about it.” Actually, I was already writing something different - the true story of the colloquium murder from my perspective. But it was so honest about my relationship with Lynda that I wasn’t sure I wanted to share it with anyone. “Jeez,” I went on, “I always thought by this age I’d be a little more settled, in my career and in my writing. Who knew?”

  Her luscious eyes popped a bit. “Your birthday! It’s next week, September 26 - you’ll be thirty-seven. You aren’t getting all gloomy about that, are you?”

  “No way. I haven’t had a rough birthday since I hit twenty-nine. For some reason, that was a hurdle. Since then it’s been a cake walk.” Lynda was twenty-nine now - coming up on the big Three-Oh in December. Neither of us was a kid; we just acted like it sometimes.

  “Good,” Lynda said. “After all, a birthday is just another day, and your age is just a number.” Yeah, but numbers add up. “Well, I’d better get back to work.”

  “Lynda.” She looked at me full on. “We can’t go on like this,” I said.

  I didn’t have to spell it out.

  “I know.”

  But we would, at least for a while. And limbo was better than hell. I picked up the check. Lynda grabbed it back.

  “I’ll walk you back to the office,” I said.

  We were maybe twenty feet from the front door of The Observer & News-Ledger when it popped open and out bolted a bulky woman with pink hair and a camera swinging from her neck as she ran.

  “Where the fire?” I shouted after Maggie Barton. I thought I was joking.

  “At the college.” She stopped long enough to point.

  Thick, gray smoke billowed heavenward about a quarter of a mile in the distance.

  Where There’s Smoke

  “Give me a ride?” I asked Maggie.

  “Hop in,” she shouted on the way to her old Ford pickup truck parked maybe half a block down the street. It was faded blue, rusted out, and probably passed the 100,000-mile point on its first trip around the odometer early in the second Clinton Administration. But I was in a hurry.

  I hopped in, stuck my head out the window to shout a goodbye to Lynda, and almost lost my lunch as Maggie tore off down Main Street.

  “Take it easy,” I pleaded. “We’ll get there.”

  “Not in time for the body bags. Not unless I hurry.” She fingered the camera with love.

  “Is it really that bad?”

  She shrugged a pair of huge shoulders, sending mounts of flesh rippling beneath a shapeless coral dress not entirely covered by a tan coat. “Just guessing. With all that smoke, something’s burning. People usually do get hurt in a fire like that.”

  Maggie Barton had been around. What she said made sense. It bothered me, but it was a perfunctory sort of anxiety. Things like that happened at other campuses, not here. Deep down that’s what I thought - until we were close enough to see where all that smoke was coming from.

  It was the Chemistry Building. To me that immediately suggested chemicals, toxic fumes, maybe an explanation. This could be a lot worse than video at eleven on the Cincinnati TV stations and a minor PR problem for a few days. It could be worse even than one or two body bags. The grip of real fear closed around me.

  I didn’t even complain about Maggie’s driving, which was twice as fast as the legal limit and reckless enough to suit a cab driver in any major metropolis of the world. I counted two near-misses before I closed my eyes, and one belly-flopping swerve after they were shut tight.

  The truck finally shuddered to a halt.

  “We’re here. And don’t forget that you owe me, Jeff.”

  Yeah, but I don’t hit old ladies.

  I opened my eyes and felt the sting of smoke. Maggie had somehow landed us right up alongside the Chemistry Building on one of the access drives only the official campus vehicles are supposed to use. I murm
ured my thanks and escaped.

  The image that sticks in my mind is the mass of people gathered on the quadrangle in front of the building as I walked around from the side, a handkerchief held over my mouth and nose. They must have come from every corner of the campus to watch the action. Consequently, there almost wasn’t any action. Eb Schonert and his crew of firefighters had to push like kids at a rock concert to get through to a point where they had a clear shot with the hoses.

  Through the smoky haze, three students of indeterminate sex - they all wore jeans and neck-length hair - coughed their way down the front steps.

  “Any more in there?” shouted Eb, a retired marine with the face of a steelworker.

  One of the kids shook his head. “Don’t think so.” A male voice.

  The others must have made their way out already, and none of them in body bags. The only ambulance was parked on the far side of the quadrangle, its driver standing beside it looking bored.

  “Any explosions?” I asked the girl next to me. She had the freshman look: acne and wide eyes.

  “Naw, just a lot of smoke.”

  Even that was thinning out. The crisis was under control and I still needed to find Mac. The TV news crews from Cincinnati, about forty miles downriver, weren’t on the scene yet but they all had my cell phone if they needed me. I decided to give Herbert Hall another shot.

  So I went back the way I had come, around the side, figuring to cut across the back of Chemistry and Biology and into Herbert Hall from the rear entrance. I was just past Maggie’s rusted-out truck when I heard: “Jefferson!”

  Only one person calls Thomas Jefferson Cody by my full moniker, and it’s not my mother.