She let the phone take another message. David wouldn’t be surprised not to reach her.
They never talked at this time of day.
As expected, Darren’s shadow was soon hovering over her table.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Not at all.”
He slipped into the seat opposite and began unloading his tray. When he looked up and took in her face, his expression melted.
“Whoops,” he said. “Do you really want company, Claire?”
“No, it’s …”
“I can see you’ve got things on your mind.” He put his hands on the table, preparing to stand. “I always enjoy seeing you, but we can do this some other time. Really.”
His face was empty of pretense, and it seemed so clear that he truly did sympathize that Claire was tempted to take him up on his offer. But there were other faculty in the room, and it would look strange if he reseated himself at another table. Besides, he was being nice, and she was touched.
“No, no, I mean it. It’s okay.”
If Darren was flirting, Claire was pretty sure he was wasting his time. Even forgetting David, it had taken her only five minutes after meeting Darren to go from Hmmm? to I don’t think so. He’d taken a while getting his PhD, so he was the right age, but there was something slick about him that bothered her, maybe something that lingered from his years selling condos in San Diego. It also didn’t help that he had a bitchy relationship with Sid, hinting to everyone that he considered Professor Cranmer’s deconstructionist theories over the hill. Sid had caught wind of this and responded, during a faculty meeting, by publicly describing Darren’s scholarship as “California Dreamin’.” The air in the meeting had crackled.
Despite all this, she had to admit it wouldn’t be the end of the world if she and Assistant Professor Mattoon happened to find themselves stranded on a desert island for a few hot nights. He certainly was easy on the eyes, and his second book, which had come out that spring, was a good read—just the right blend of cultural analysis and new historical research, with a soupçon of wry, superior humor. The lavish New York Times review had marked its status as far above the typical, going-nowhere tenure tome. Whatever Sid thought, Darren looked like a dead cert for tenure.
Claire glanced up as Darren took a bite of his grilled chicken salad. Another point in his favor was that, unlike many of the older males on the faculty, he did not talk with his mouth full or dribble things down the front of his shirt.
“You’re worried about Sid, I bet.” He dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin.
“Is it so obvious?” Claire was surprised.
“Everybody’s worried about Sid.” He sipped his coffee and swallowed. “People can’t talk about anything else.” He peered around the room and began nodding at adjoining tables. “I bet they’re talking about Sid, and I bet they’re talking about Sid …” He raised his thick blond eyebrows and smiled. “Everyone’s talking about Sid. ‘The sword of Damocles,’ as one of my students said, ‘is hanging over Pandora’s box.’”
Claire shared a laugh with Darren over the idiotic quote.
Darren quickly followed up. “But I hope you know I’m taking no pleasure in this latest catastrophe, Claire.”
“Well, in a way, I wouldn’t be surprised, I guess. You two are kind of …”
“It’s true, I didn’t appreciate his public dig, and he knows that I think his 1970s-style, ‘sense of nonsense,’ postmodernist analysis of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is paradoxical poppycock.” He paused, set down his fork, and leaned toward Claire. “But this latest thing is appalling and, I truly hope, totally undeserved.”
“Of course it’s undeserved. It’s awful.” She looked around the murmuring room. “And, you’re right, the gossip must be brutal.”
“Besides that, you, um, you know his judge.” He smiled primly. “That’s another topic on everyone’s lips.”
“Well, people saw us at the garden party. …”
“Garden party, nothing. You were mentioned in court this morning. Someone at the college picked it up off a Twitter feed, and the news has been tearing around campus ever since.” Claire could see her startled reaction reflected in Darren’s face. “Didn’t you know? It’s already in the online edition of the Republican.” Darren spread out his hands to frame the headline. “‘Judge Discloses Amherst College Connection.’ He told the attorneys you were a close friend.” Darren speared a piece of chicken and peered at Claire over the top of his glasses. “You’re a celebrity.”
“Shit.” Claire put down her fork. “I can’t believe this.”
“I guess a lot of people didn’t know that the two of you were …” He paused for a beat and cleared his throat significantly. “Close friends.”
Claire took a deep breath. She hated the idea of being talked about.
Again, she noticed Darren was watching her closely. Claire was beginning to be bothered by her own transparency.
“Sorry,” Darren said. “I’m overdoing this. We can talk about something else.”
He busied himself buttering a roll, giving Claire time to initiate some other topic. She didn’t say anything, simply chewed without tasting. To her left, the magnificent view from the dining room’s south-facing windows fanned out into the distance. The vista over the green hills and church steeples of South Amherst and off into the Holyoke Range was one of the cherished perks of the college faculty. The outline of the range’s promontories in the distance was like the profile of a giant sleeping under a nubbly green blanket. She and David would get through this, of course, but it was going to take some work.
After a few minutes, she realized the silence was getting awkward. “Sid is an old friend and a dear man.”
“Old may be the operative word. Really. Putting this latest horror aside, don’t you think he’s kind of edging up on his sell-by date?”
“You’re the new kid on the block, Darren. You frighten Sid, so he acts like an asshole. Cut the poor guy some slack, for heaven’s sake.”
“Ignore me,” Darren said. “Professor Cranmer’s a fine teacher, and I’m sounding like a jerk, doing the classic young buck–old bull thing. Predictable but dreary. I’m sorry.”
A large silver-haired man at an adjoining table pricked up his ears at the sound of Sid’s name. It was Harlan Graves. Like Sid, Graves was an English Department dinosaur. The two old professors had been at swords’ points for decades. Graves leaned toward them with a merry smile.
“Poor Professor Cranmer! Who would have thought it!” He rubbed his hands together and his eyes lit up. “Did you hear the limerick that’s going around? One of my students shared it with me after class this morning. Let’s see if I can remember it.” Professor Graves turned to the view, making a show of reaching into his memory. It did not seem to Claire that he needed very long to bring back the words.
“Something like this.” He lifted his hand and beat out the measure, like an orchestra conductor. “A worn-out professor named Sid. Had a hobby he had to keep hid. While his lectures weren’t prime. He had a great time. Having sex with a nine-year-old kid.”
Darren frowned at Graves. “That’s a cheap shot.”
“My God,” Claire said quietly. “Have things already gone this far?”
“It may have been ‘five-year-old kid,’” Harlan Graves said, knitting his brows. “I can’t quite recall.”
11
Elizabeth Spencer was the best thing that was ever going to happen to Ryan Jaworski, but it was taking her some time to get that fact through Ryan’s thick head. The two of them were jogging, side by side, heading out South Pleasant Street past the Amherst Golf Club. Their pace was relaxed and steady, making talking easy.
“So how’d it go with Lindemann?” Ryan asked.
“She was great. The internship is all set.”
“So, you’ll still be her
e over the summer?”
Ryan’s attempt to hide the concern in his voice was obvious. Elizabeth suspected that Ryan was disappointed that, with the summer internship, she’d be staying on the East Coast instead of heading back to Minnesota. He clearly had things he wanted to do over the next couple months that did not include her—exactly what, or with whom, she hadn’t wormed out of him yet.
“Right,” Elizabeth said. “If you want, I could come down to New York on the weekends.”
“Of course I want. Are you kidding?” They shifted into single file to get around a woman with a baby stroller. When Elizabeth drew up next to him again, Ryan added, “But Dad says they’re going to have me running my ass off at Goldman—weekdays and weekends.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We could probably do a couple days on the Vineyard in August at the cottage. My aunt will be there, but there are plenty of bedrooms. It’s beautiful. The lawn goes all the way down to the water.”
Elizabeth didn’t say anything. Ryan Jaworski had a capacity for pure sweetness and generosity so extraordinary that it took her breath away. No other guy had ever come close. But she also remembered, as she felt his eyes lingering nervously on her, that for him, there were never any forks in the road. He just went straight ahead, latching onto whatever arose in the moment. This intensity made him very attractive, but she also knew that, if she wanted to keep him, she needed to stay in the center of his field of vision.
“We’ll see,” she said after a while. Even without looking, she sensed that her slightly distant tone was getting the desired effect. Her boyfriend, with his visit-me-sometime-on-the-Vineyard crapola, was sliding a little off balance. Good.
Ryan Jaworski was the sort of guy Elizabeth Spencer had pictured herself ending up with in her grade-school Prince Charming fantasies—someone handsome and going somewhere, someone, she had to confess, rich and a bit regal, but with a puppy-dog side, too. Someone smart, but she hoped not quite as smart as she was.
She’d met him two years ago at the beginning of her sophomore year, when he was a freshman. Ryan was a midwesterner like her, but growing up in the Hyde Park area of Chicago, he was of a much different pedigree. He’d managed to tell her during their first conversation that the Jaworski house was only two blocks from President Obama’s and that his dad was a member of the Chicago Mercantile Board. When she’d revealed that her hometown was Golden Valley, Minnesota, and that her father had worked for General Mills, the company that made Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms, he’d actually started to chuckle, caught himself, and looked embarrassed. That was when Elizabeth decided to make a project of getting him. It hadn’t been hard.
Ryan had acquired his touch of preppie charm from attending Choate Rosemary Hall, John F. Kennedy’s old private school alma mater, whereas Elizabeth had gone to Hopkins High, a good but distinctly public secondary school. As they got to know each other, Ryan confessed that, being a midwestern Polish Catholic, he’d found it tough to find a place among the offspring of the elite New England families that dominated Choate. For four years, he’d had to endure the nickname “Smote,” when a witty upperclassman bent a fragment of Hamlet and dubbed him “Smote, the sledded Polack.” The vulnerable look that swept over his face when he described this refined bullying was one of the things that had drawn Elizabeth to him.
She let Ryan’s eyes keep dodging over at her, not saying anything for a quarter mile or so as they continued their run. Finally, she turned her head and delivered a sly look, a code only the two of them could read. Instantly realizing what this meant, Ryan grinned happily. They’d return to his condo, take a nice cool shower together, and let things unfold from there. Maybe even get their velvet handcuffs out.
Ryan wanted to make a video of Elizabeth to remember her by while he was in Manhattan. If he was good, one day she might just let him. Ryan’s dark brown hair, Chopin-pale skin, and especially the single dimple that appeared on his left cheek when he smiled still gave her goose bumps, even after two years with him. Elizabeth had always been a sucker for an asymmetrical dimple.
Ryan turned to a favorite topic. “She say anything about Cranmer?”
“She’s worried he’s in a lot of trouble.”
Ryan laughed. “I love it! Serves him right. Cocky little shit.” He picked up the pace.
“Well, I don’t love it, Ry.” Elizabeth kept up with him easily. She could bust him if she needed to. “This is not a joke. I mean, the FBI and everything …”
“He’s getting a little embarrassed, Lib. So what? The college will smooth it out.”
They ran along for a while, not talking, gradually increasing the pace. The sidewalk petered out, and they continued along the shoulder of the road.
“And there’s other stuff.” Elizabeth pointed at some broken pavement ahead. “Look out. The cops missed a file of old photographs during the search. Pictures of Dodgson’s naked little girls hidden in the drawer with a false bottom. I’m not sure what I should do.”
“Does Sid still keep a key under the hose mount? Maybe I’ll come by and have another look.”
“Forget it, Ryan. Once was enough.”
“Fine.” He glared straight ahead. “Whatever.”
He was being a shit about Professor Cranmer. It made her sick that Sid was being falsely accused like this, especially after all her work to help him get better.
“You weren’t there when these guys came through the door. It felt like freaking World War III.”
She might just have to invent something important she had to do after the run. Let him twist in the wind for a while. Hoist with his own petard.
Ryan held up a hand. “Stop for a second, okay?”
They halted under a huge sycamore, all mottled bark and bobbing splotches of shade running up and down the trunk. Ryan tilted back to gaze up into the branches.
“I love these big old trees.” He breathed a couple times, recovering his wind. “Did you know that Jaworski comes from the Polish word for sycamore?”
“I didn’t know that.” She looked up. “That’s actually quite cool.”
Ryan held out three fingers. “Three points.” He sniffed and puffed out a last, large breath. “First, I love you, Lib. I can be a dick, I know, but you make me happier than anything or anyone ever has or ever will.”
“I love you too, Ryan. I’m working on the happy part right now.”
“Keep at it, please. Second, in spite of what I said, I am sort of sorry for Cranmer. He’s a miserable little fuck, but he probably doesn’t deserve what he’s going through. The main thing is I know you feel loyal to him and this is hard for you, and I’m really sorry about that, okay? I’m on your side.”
“Okay.”
“FYI, I was talking to Professor Mattoon about this, and he mentioned that a lot of the faculty have been, like, worried about Cranmer for a while now. Think about it. The guy’s never married, just lived with his mother, right? Isn’t straight, isn’t gay, never even dated? Up and down moods all the time? So, at least to Mattoon, and to some of the other faculty, this kiddie porn stuff is not a titanic surprise.”
“He’s not like that. If I ever thought he was, Ry, believe me, he’d regret it. I practically raised my little sisters after dad died. Sid’s a little odd maybe, but he’s—”
“I know. I know. You think he’s a sweetie pie, but they know him better than you do, Lib.” Ryan started to laugh and stopped himself. “I guess there’s even a limerick about him the faculty’s passing around now. I saw it, and it’s pretty funny.”
“A limerick. How creative. So what’s the third thing?”
“The third thing is that there is nothing you or I can do about this, right? Cranmer’s the one with the kink, or the bad luck, or whatever, and he’s the one who has to take the consequences. I’m sorry, but that’s life.”
Elizabeth looked down at the ground, taking this in. Afte
r a few seconds, she lifted her head. “He doesn’t have a kink, at least not a kiddie porn kink. I don’t know what happened, but this is just bullshit.” Ryan was standing with his hands on his hips, still a little out of breath, perspiring, looking very handsome. Most of the time he was incredibly kindhearted. “But you’re right that we can’t do much, I guess.”
“Good.” Ryan looked closer at Elizabeth and suddenly grinned. “Why are you gawking at me like that, you sexy thing?”
Elizabeth dropped her eyes and smiled a little sheepishly. He was looking unusually hot, it was true, but there was something else going on with him that she couldn’t put her finger on. Was it just that he was talking so much? She could see through him so easily in most places that it bothered her when she hit a spot she couldn’t quite penetrate.
“Just enjoying the view.” They’d go back to his condo. It was okay. “And you’re right about Sid.” Elizabeth looked down along the row of trees and wiped her upper lip, bobbing on her toes, ready to resume.
“I know I’m right.” Ryan nodded down the sidewalk. “Go.”
Elizabeth broke into a strong lope, letting Ryan get a good look at her long legs and making sure he was going to have to work a little to keep up with her.
12
While Claire was finishing her lunch with Darren Mattoon, Judge Norcross was descending an escalator at the Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC. As he stepped off at the bottom, two men in dark suits appeared, presented their Secret Service credentials, and hastily escorted him to a waiting car.
En route to Ray’s town house, Norcross managed to convince the driver to pull over and let him grab a pizza. Dinnertime was still a ways off, but he wasn’t sure whether he would need to provide something for Lindsay and Jordan to eat. A person in loco parentis might have this responsibility, and given what he had to discuss with the two girls, they certainly couldn’t go out to a restaurant. He picked something inoffensive and reheatable, pepperoni and green pepper. As they resumed their journey, the comforting aroma of oregano leaked out of the box and filled the car.
The One-Eyed Judge Page 9
