Burning Down the House

by Lev Raphael

  “It scares me now to think of not having one.”

  He pushed me away enough to see my eyes. “This is

  Michiganapolis, this isn’t Afghanistan.”

  “If it were, I’d be in the market for a rocket launcher.

  But I’d have trouble wearing those funny pants.”

  “You wouldn’t have to shave, though.”

  “Pray continue, I find your narrative strangely

  fascinating.”

  His mood had changed as much as mine; we were clearly both committed to backing down from a rhetorical dogfight. I already felt ashamed of throwing Perry Cross at him, since I had promised myself never to turn into a fishwife harping over the past. I apologized for that, and Stefan seemed to hear it and accept it. But he looked exhausted, as if he’d had two workouts at the gym. His shoulders drooped, and there was a sheen of sweat at his hairline, which he ineffectually brushed at with the back of one hand. I was tired, too, but hopeful that we were done with the fireworks.

  We sat at the counter, and I calmly took him through my visits to the gun shop. I omitted Juno’s involvement, but his first question was about her. “What does she think of the .22?” Given that he thought she was too volatile, I was surprised he was granting her any authority about guns, but perhaps that was simply because she was the only person we knew who owned a gun, and he was trying to ground himself in this new reality.

  “It’s not her style, but she understands why I’d want a .22.” I didn’t say that a .22 was a good place to start, since I hadn’t ruled out moving on to a more powerful gun when I was ready.

  “Her style? Do they make leopard-print semiautomatics?”

  I waited for him to ask me if she’d been at the gun shop with me, but he didn’t. He leafed through the Smith & Wesson catalog with as much discomfort as if he’d been looking at a magazine for aficionados of gross-out exotic body piercing. “This is really disorienting.”

  “I know what you mean. Crate and Barrel’s catalog has better illustrations.”

  He shook his head. “I feel like we’ve gone Through the Looking Glass.”

  “Actually, we’ve been there ever since we started

  teaching at SUM.”

  “You’d get a gun lock?”

  “Of course.”

  “And keep the gun in the safe in our closet?”

  “Sure. You know, you can’t transport it loaded. The

  ammunition has to be in the glove compartment, say, and the gun in your trunk.”

  “Good.” He nodded. “But wait a minute, you really don’t know anything about guns besides what you’ve read, do you?

  So how can you buy a gun? What’s the point?”

  “There’s a firing range in town, and I can have private lessons or do them with a group.”

  He smiled. “Isn’t that too intellectual—taking a class?”

  “Touché.”

  Stefan seemed much calmer now, and he asked if I

  wanted some coffee. He poured it, took some lemon

  shortbread from the treat cupboard, and laid it out on a plate for me like a peace offering. I indulged.

  With my mouth full, I said, “Shit—I never told you about my swim—I mean before my swim yesterday! Cash was in

  the locker room—”

  “Cash? What’s he look like?”

  That inevitable question (whose unspoken second half

  was “in the nude”) stopped my narrative flow, and I had to take a quick detour: “Ripped, mostly hairless, hung.”

  Stefan nodded and waved his hand in a “Thanks, go on”

  gesture.

  “So Cash complimented me on going berserk at the

  meeting, thanked me for it, sort of. I guess he was glad somebody else spoke up. But you’re not going to believe what he did next.”

  “Made a pass at you?”

  “Nothing that clichéd. He said I should run for chair.”

  “Chair?”

  “Yes, chair. Of EAR.”

  “You?” Stefan cracked up, his rare laugh filling the room like a party. “You run for chair? You don’t have tenure.”

  I explained the loophole Cash’s grandmother had created, but Stefan didn’t seem impressed. “It’s still pretty bizarre to think of you running for chair.”

  “It’s mildly appealing to think of doing an end run around the tenure committee. But running wouldn’t be bizarre— quixotic is a better way to put it.”

  “Nick, try suicidal. Why would he even suggest it?

  Unless he’s got some kind of plan.…” Stefan squinted as if trying to make out shadowy figures at some distance.

  “Exactly. Maybe he’s afraid Juno could win and wants

  me in the race because he thinks I’d siphon off votes.”

  “That’s pretty perverse, but Summerscale’s already

  going to do that anyway. And be serious, Nick—who would vote for you? Don’t even pretend to look wounded. Even if I did, that would just make two votes. What did he say?”

  “Wait a minute. If you voted for me?”

  “Stop right there and tell me what he said.”

  I shared Cash’s reasoning for why I should run.

  “And you listened?”

  “He was nude—he was hot. Why should I tell him to

  shut up?”

  Stefan nodded and had some more coffee. “Nick, he may have been around SUM for a while, but he doesn’t know it well. Sure, you have a sense of humor, but that’s actually a minus in an administrator. So is being young, relatively.”

  “Relatively young, or relatively a minus?”

  “Both. Maybe Cash was stoned. Did he look high?”

  “I wasn’t paying attention to that. But if he was high, what’s he wasting his drugged state on me for? Why wasn’t he out getting laid or just enjoying it?”

  “And why are we being so cynical? Maybe he feels he

  owes you something, since you saved his ass, or maybe he really does admire you now, after what you said at the meeting. He was pretty isolated there, and some people would say you defended him. He may think it’s time for the Young Turks to stage a coup in EAR, but neither one of you has any kind of power base. You’d be the Young Turkeys. The

  department would eat you for dinner and make turkey salad afterward.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Nick, you didn’t take him seriously, did you? You didn’t think he could be your James Carville?”

  “Of course I did. I was already planning how to

  redecorate the inner EAR suite.”

  “The idea of you running for chair makes having a gun in the house seem a lot less scary. You’d need a gun if you ran for chair.”

  Because harmony and good humor were restored

  between us, I debated telling him about Mrs. Fennebresque’s assassination recipe, but his face was so open and receptive, I couldn’t hold it back.

  “A nipple from a baby bottle? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Maybe so, maybe not. I haven’t tried it. But I’m sure somebody fired a gun at the reception and was trying to hit or scare Juno.”

  “Are you going to start that again?”

  I put my hand on his arm and stopped him. “Listen to

  this.” Then I explained about finding what looked like a bullet hole at the Campus Center.

  He didn’t criticize me for going there or even try to pin down when I’d made my investigation or why. He sighed when I was done arguing my case, letting acceptance of the reality spread through him. “If that gun woman told you about silencing a .22, who else has she told?” It was an inevitable question, but he said it reluctantly, like a soldier reporting a battlefield defeat to his general.

  “Bingo. If we find out who in EAR she’s sold guns to or might have talked to, then we’ll know who’s been harassing Juno and—”

  “We? Nick, you’re not a PI or a vigilante. This is

  Valley’s job, whether you like him or not.” E
ven though his tone was still warm and his face open, I could feel him drawing away inside, becoming anxious and critical. “And why would this Mrs.—what’s her name? Fennel—”

  “Fennebresque.” I spelled it for him.

  “Why would Mrs. Fennebresque tell you anything?

  Wouldn’t that be some kind of privacy violation?’’

  “I don’t think a gun dealer is like a psychiatrist exactly.

  Anyway, she likes me.” That was true enough, but without explaining that Juno had been there on my second visit and our being taken for a couple, it sounded weak and

  unconvincing.

  “I like you, too,” Stefan said, eyebrows waggling in a bad imitation of Groucho Marx.

  We spent the next hour or so violating each other’s

  privacy.

  Stefan had some reading to do, so I drove to campus to pick up his mail and mine when it was getting on to dusk. The traffic heading away from campus was dense and annoying, but you could drive onto campus at that time of day with dreamlike ease. I realize that anyone living in a city would consider our traffic nothing substantial, but when you’re used to getting someplace in five minutes and it takes ten or even fifteen, you can feel as trapped and enraged as anyone being cut off at ninety miles per hour on a California freeway. At least it was still unseasonably mild for December; people were wearing light jackets or open coats, and students had no trouble biking around campus.

  As I walked into Parker’s second-floor hallway, I saw a startling trio leave the conference room and bustle over to the main office: Tyler Mooney-Mauser, Avis Kinderhoek, and Dulcie Halligan. They looked excited, and somehow mean— like high school kids who’ve just egged the class reject’s locker and torn up his homework.

  What could they possibly have in common—unless there

  had been some meeting I didn’t know about? I hung back as they entered the EAR office, then hurried down to the meeting room to look inside. It was empty. Puzzled, I trailed to the department office warily.

  Inside, Avis and Tyler were nowhere to be seen, but

  Dulcie was confiding in the other secretaries. When she saw me, she grinned defiantly, looking like a lost Poe story: “The Rictus of Revenge.”

  “I’ve just won an award!” she announced, drawing

  closer to the counter, and the other two secretaries rose symmetrically behind her, like backup singers in a sixties girl group. They even had matching wilted bouffants.

  “Really?” Maybe that explained why she’d been hanging out with the provost’s bully-boy. But where did Avis fit in?

  “It comes with a medal. It’s called the President’s Medal for Service. I’m going to be the very first person at SUM to get it. There’s a dinner at the Faculty Club, and President Littleterry is going to make a speech and award it to me, and my picture will be in the campus newspaper and the

  Michiganapolis Tribune and on the university website for a full year!”

  “That’s impressive.” I sidled to the mailboxes to remove my mail and Stefan’s.

  “It’s for the Diversity Tree! Because it’s so innovative and because it’s done so much for the university.” She was as spitefully triumphant as Tim Curry in The Shadow bragging, “I bet you never thought I’d grow up to have an atomic device!” The tree shone there on the counter, even more heavily bedecked now with objects so miscellaneous it was hard to imagine they represented anyone’s faith. Added to the previous ornaments, I saw a Rubik’s cube, a fancy scissors, and a troll doll. I guess no one was vetting these offerings, or pantheism had taken some strange turns at SUM.

  “That’s great, Dulcie.” What had she done for the

  university? Created more enmity? I tried to exit the office as if I weren’t desperate to leave her sneering voice behind me. As the door closed, I heard mocking applause.

  Wonderful. Dulcie hated me, and so did the other

  secretaries.

  I headed down the empty, echoing hallway to Juno’s

  office in the hope that she was in; her open door was like a benison. She was at her desk holding what looked like a Waterford tumbler with about a finger of scotch. I assumed she wasn’t having office hours.

  “Dulcie’s getting an award,” I said, closing the door quietly behind me though I wanted to slam it shut.

  Juno grimaced. “Are you sure you don’t mean there’s a warrant out for her?”

  “No. Littleterry’s giving her a medal. For the Diversity Tree. It’s called the President’s Medal for Service.”

  Juno’s eyes widened, then she squinted. “The PMS?

  Brilliant.”

  Despite my outrage, I laughed.

  “For that fucking tree?” Juno asked. “Are you sure?”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  “Christ, I need another drink as soon as I finish this one.” Juno opened up the file drawer on her desk and pulled out a cut-glass decanter. “How about you?”

  “It’s kind of early.”

  “Nick, if this university is honoring Dulcie Harridan, it’s actually too fucking late.”

  I took a glass, and we toasted each other, then she

  poured herself more.

  Juno was brooding. “The only problem with being chair is you can’t fire the secretaries. They have a bloody union.”

  If she thought that was the only problem with being

  chair, she would be in for many disappointments in the unlikely eventuality that she won. Though given the field, it seemed just as unlikely that any of them would win.

  “How would you like to be associate chair for graduate studies?” she asked. “You’re good to the grad students, you treat them with respect. It would be a change to put someone like you in the position.”

  “I don’t have tenure.” If Cash was right about his

  grandmother’s rule, I didn’t think it applied to associate chair positions.

  “I’d get you tenure,” she said dismissively, as if we were talking about nothing more complicated than filling up a car at the gas station.

  I downed the rest of my scotch.

  “I suppose there’s to be some kind of ceremony,” Juno said gloomily. “For Dulwit.”

  I nodded.

  “Will they dare invite faculty, though?” Juno seemed to perk up at the thought of more possibilities for academic mayhem. This time she could wear a Kevlar vest.

  “They may have us watch it on closed-circuit TV—or on the Web.”

  Without any transition, Juno said, “You know Nick, I’ve been wondering if we’ve gone too far.”

  She’s going to dump me, I thought, and was so shocked at the unbidden words that I wanted to slap myself for even thinking of her in those extravagant terms.

  “Everything’s quiet—no calls, no more letters, my car’s okay. Perhaps it was a fluke or a stupid bloody joke. It could have simply been an accident that I was pushed down at the reception, and even roughed up. There was a mob scene, after all. I suppose I’m lucky there wasn’t more of a panic, and I wasn’t trampled.”

  “But what about the bullet hole?”

  “Are you a forensics expert? Am I? No. That hole could have a perfectly innocent explanation—several, perhaps. We just don’t know what they are.”

  I felt so disappointed at her backing down from the

  assertion that she was being stalked or at least harassed that I instantly suspected my own intensity. Shit—did this mean I was committed to the idea of someone being after her? Why?

  To play savior, or at least sidekick?

  Channeling Stefan, I said, “Well, in that case, why not at least tell Valley about the bullet hole—or whatever it was?”

  “Nick, Nick, Nick. The man has a foreskin for a neck!”

  “What?”

  She scowled. “He’s a prick.”

  I changed subjects to distract her. “When I came up to this floor, I saw Dulcie leaving the meeting room with Tyler Mooney-Mauser and Avis. What do you think they were

 
doing?”

  “Casting spells, I bet. Sticking pins in dolls.”

  “Be serious.”

  “Avis is seriously deranged—what kind of person

  changes her name from Mavis to Avis?”

  “Maybe she got some kind of deal on the Internet, I

  don’t know. But why were the three of them together?”

  Juno shook her head, exhausted. “Honestly, I can’t even imagine. Details about the fucking medal?”

  “But Mooney-Mauser works for the provost. And Avis,

  she doesn’t have any connection to Littleterry.”

  “Perhaps she nominated Dulcie.”

  “But when? Where? I’ve never heard of this medal

  before. Have you? There haven’t been any memos about it, and nothing in the Faculty Bulletin.”

  “Ah yes, that landfill of print.”

  “Secret medal? Secret nominations? What the hell else is going on at SUM?”

  “Nick, you’re starting to sound just like one of those conspiracy-theory nuts. It’s just business as usual.”

  I apologized. “You’re right, it’s probably no big deal. It’s probably just another piece of PR. ‘Look how wonderful the university is—honoring an office manager.’”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’d think they’d want to make more of a fuss,

  though, and have it well publicized.”

  “I don’t know. This way, it’s a surprise.”

  “Shock. Why would they give Dulcie a medal? It’s

  crazy.”

  “Perhaps—” Juno licked her glossy lips, pondering.

  “Perhaps it’s a sign. That the administration approves of the Diversity Tree. That would explain Mooney Mouseboy being here.”

  I suddenly had an image of Juno and me seen from the

  outside, sitting there griping about a stupid medal going to a secretary. We were worse than snobs, we were pathetic, begrudging Dulcie some petty recognition. That’s what EAR

  did, made anyone else’s smallest success seem like a theft, like it not only robbed you of whatever might come your way, but of what you already had. Stay there long enough, and anyone could become infinitely mean-spirited about what seemed like finite rewards.