Still turned toward Parker, Bill said, “Before we go on to the Q-and-A, I think we should address the primary obstacle. Last time you applied—”
Esther leaned past Tom Grand to face Bill. “Really, Bill, you’re not going to bring that up!”
“Last time you applied we received a letter making certain allegations…”
“It’s outrageous to bring this up.” Tom Grand’s furious gravelly whisper filled the room. “Bill, you’re out of line.”
“Nobody is claiming the allegations are true,” said Carl Sagan. “But frankly they’re too serious to ignore. I’m sure we’ll all be eager to accept Jeff’s explanation.”
“Can I know what I’m charged with first?” Parker snapped. “Or doesn’t it matter?”
“I’m sure you realize,” Bill said, “how uncomfortable it would make any of us to describe them. I hope you’re not planning to use our understandable reticence as a means of evading the issue.”
“I know there’s some kind of rumor,” Parker said. “But everyone’s as squeamish as you are when it comes to telling me what it is.”
“You know there’s a rumor,” said the pinstripe man, “it’s kept you from finding work for most of your professional life, and you don’t know what it is.”
“I don’t know what it is,” Parker insisted, and everyone at the table except Tom groaned.
“The rumor will never be discussed in our deliberations,” Bill warned, “but I’m afraid that if you don’t take this opportunity to address it, it will be on everyone’s mind, and you might be rejected on some pretext.”
“It’s like trying not to think of elephants,” said the rabbit woman.
Parker was thinking no real search committee would behave in this manner, when it hit him. Maybe these people weren’t part of an obscure psychodrama staged by an immense conspiracy for its own impenetrable reasons. Maybe they were just jerks. He could deal with that. After all, it was a commuter university; he could teach his classes and leave. Aside from the odd unavoidable meeting and an occasional wave, he’d never have to see these people again. If he had to put up with their bloodsport to get the job and marry Fran, he’d clench his teeth and smile. He’d think of it as a trial—a kangaroo trial—of his devotion.
“I agree with Tom,” said Esther, “it’s outrageous to force you to answer rumors. But by not answering, you’re giving Bill a power he wouldn’t have otherwise. You’re giving specious importance to his specious issue. Why don’t you offer your side of things—of course you’ve every right not to!—and we can move on.”
“Let me put it this way,” Parker said. “Whatever the rumor is, I can assure you unequivocally it’s false.”
“It’s reassuring to hear you deny it,” said the rabbit lady, “but couldn’t you be a bit more specific? Can’t you offer anything beyond the bare denial? We want to be convinced. We’re begging you to convince us. Give us just a little more than ‘it’s false.’ ”
“Something’s puzzling me,” Parker said to Tom Grand. “Your colleagues profess their willingness to believe anything I might say about the rumor except that I’ve never heard it.”
“I was about to point out that very contradiction.” Tom was polishing his spectacles with his tie. “But I’m afraid we’re outnumbered, Jeff,” he said rubbing the pouches under his eyes. “Why don’t you just give them what they want?”
Things had progressed beyond the bounds of the jerk theory. “This isn’t a job interview, is it?” Parker asked Tom Grand.
“No, it’s not,” Tom said brusquely, replacing his glasses. “Let’s get on with it.”
Parker stuffed the unlatched briefcase under his arm and rose from his chair, then hesitated. For years he’d been the sole audience of this spectacle, and he felt an urge to sit through the ending. The point of it all, he couldn’t help believing, was about to be disclosed.
The others were watching him, waiting to see what he’d do next. He headed for the door.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Tom said.
“I’d love to stay,” Parker called over his shoulder, “but I’m scheduled for flogging at Loyola and cattle-prods at the U of C.”
The pinstripe man, who’d been sitting at the end closest to the door, arrived there first and blocked Parker’s way.
His name, Parker remembered suddenly and irrelevantly, was George. “Move, George.”
“Why don’t you sit down?”
George stumbled, struck from behind by the door as Steve Dobbs flung it open.
What followed seemed to happen in jump-cuts: George trying to pry loose Dobbs’s gun; Parker and the nervous woman pointing guns at each other from across the room, each trying to outshout the other’s terrified gibberish; Bill biting down on Parker’s gun hand; Parker punching the top of Bill’s head; Carl Sagan chocking Parker from behind; Parker clutching the gun under a pile-up, his face pressed to the carpet, the room constricted to punches, kicks, and breathing; the nervous woman yelling, “Get off him! I’ve got him covered!”; Dobbs firing into the air, shocking everyone stock-still while plaster dust drizzled from the ceiling…
They were running through the deserted campus between hives of darkened windows—Dobbs in the lead, bouncing off the balls of his feet, skinny arms pumping; Parker, still aching from the pile-up, still holding the gun and his briefcase, falling behind; the footfalls of the search committee coming up fast. Blood was dribbling into his open mouth. He tossed away the briefcase. A staticky blast of leaves made the lights strobe; the footfalls of the search committee reverberated off the walkway. By the time he reached Dobbs’ BMW behind University Hall he was wheezing, his heart butting against his eyeballs. Dobbs was honking the horn. Parker just had time to get in and lock the door before Bill sprinted ahead of his colleagues and hammered his fist on the window.
The glass muffled his words, but his face was engorged and distorted. He jumped back when the tires screeched, waving his fist as he diminished in the rear window.
* * *
—
“You know what?” said Parker, pressing the stop button of the recorder, which had somehow survived the pile-up with nothing worse than a cracked tape window. “I think that may have been a real job interview.”
The passenger window looked out over brick two-flats and empty lots and a horizon glittering with sulfurous factory lights.
“Are you nuts?” Removing a hand from the wheel, Dobbs picked up a wad of Kleenex from the holder between the bucket seats and pressed it to his bloody nose. “He told you it wasn’t a job interview.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Parker, using his handkerchief to mop at the cuts on his cheek and lower lip. “At that level they don’t call it an interview. They’re fastidious about distinctions—you’re not being fired, you’re just not being renewed.”
“I’d say their trying to kill us is pretty suspicious,” Dobbs said.
“Were they trying to kill us? You walked in there with a gun. They were pissed off—wouldn’t you be?”
Dobbs looked him in the face, then turned back to the road. “I walked in with a gun,” he enunciated, “because they weren’t letting you walk out.”
“Tom said ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’ Maybe his point was that I shouldn’t give up. That I shouldn’t walk out just because things had taken a bad turn.”
Dobbs snorted. “Why don’t you go back there and apologize?” He sounded even more like Bugs Bunny when he was mad.
“I’m not saying it was a job interview.”
“Don’t you see what they’re doing? They’ve been screwing with you for so long you’ve developed defenses. So they’ve come up with a new plan of attack. Hope! You’re not used to it—you’re a pushover.”
Parker was replaying the interview in his mind and turning over Dobbs’s advice, when he realized that he should have be
en seeing the lake from his window, not high-rise projects. They were heading south on the Drive. “We’re going the wrong way.”
“As I tried to tell you while you were playing with that thing, we’re being followed. I’m trying to lose ’em.”
“White limo?” Parker asked without turning around.
“Yeah!”
“That’s just Ziploc and his minders.” Parker proceeded to give him the short version of Ziploc.
“He’s going to grant your wish?” Dobbs searched his face for so long, Parker felt obliged to point at the road.
“I’m not saying I believe it.”
Dobbs was watching the rearview mirror. “By the way, you’re getting a shiner.”
Parker lowered the mirrored sun visor and winced as he touched the shadow under his eye. Examining his cheek and glistening lip by the lights of traffic, he decided he wouldn’t need an emergency room. He smiled just to see how it would look, and blood trickled onto his chin. Behind his reflection the white limo followed them into the exit lane.
“Let’s pull off,” Dobbs was saying, “get a drink, I’ll phone some cops I know and find out if there’s a warrant on us. You’d better hope those people weren’t real professors.”
* * *
—
They stopped at a dim New Wave bar near the U of C. Its black-clad patrons seemed torsoless—skinny necks and pale supercilious bulbs of faces blooming out of the darkness. They agreed that just in case Dobbs had saved Parker’s life, Parker ought to get the first round; and just in case Dobbs had wrecked Parker’s last chance at a career, Dobbs ought to get the second. While Dobbs went off to make his call, Parker ordered two Jack Daniel’s and watched his raw face throb behind the bottles.
Something popped up behind his reflection and disappeared. He turned on his bar stool and saw a glimmering object bob up over the heads of the crowd. It bobbed up again. Transparent and filled with floating vaguely organic shapes, it reminded Parker of a drop of water shivering under a microscope. As he nudged his way toward it he began to hear a desolate male voice moaning “no no no” and recognized the voice as Ziploc’s. He broke through to the head of the crowd, which had formed a circle around Ziploc and a group of drunken undergraduates who were playing Keep-Away with his Ziploc bag.
There were six of them, four men and two women. Parker looked around for the despairmen; where were they when you needed them? Probably waiting in the limo.
One of the guys held Ziploc back while a girl with purple lipstick held up the bag and shined a pocket flashlight through it.
“Open it.”
“No!”—she wrinkled her nose—“there’s some kind of gunk in there, honey or aspic or something, and there’s, like, stuff floating in it.”
The second girl peered in from the other side. “What’s that? A seahorse?”
“And that thing next to it,” said the girl with the flashlight. “It’s a picture of a baby! Half a locket with a picture of a baby! And what’s that thing there?”
“Dump it out!” said the guy holding Ziploc, and the other guys took up the chant. “Dump it out! Dump it out! Dump it out!”
Ziploc’s glasses flew off as his head whipped from side to side.
Some post-brawl adrenaline must have been coursing through Parker’s system because he stepped into the circle having no idea what he was going to do next. He snatched the bag and the flashlight. “Let him go,” he said, shining the light in their eyes and flipping open his wallet to give them a quick glimpse of his Skokie Valley ID. To discourage any expressions of skepticism, he opened his jacket and gave them a quick peek at the gun handle. The gun, presumably, was enough, but Parker was beginning to enjoy himself, and as a final touch he shined the light under his chin to make his face look scary.
Dobbs had stepped up to Parker’s side. “I think they’re ready to leave,” he whispered, “if you stop entertaining them.”
Parker traded the flashlight for Ziploc, and the students retreated to a table at the back. He was anxious about lingering in a place where he’d just flashed a gun, but Dobbs wanted to watch the ten o’clock news at the bar while he waited to try his call again, and the bullies, drunk and underage, were unlikely to call the police.
At the bar, Ziploc attempted to tuck a strip of torn shirttail into his pants or under his jacket. The stubble of his left cheek was empurpled with a recent bruise, and his glasses tilted at thirty degrees.
“We make quite a group,” said Parker, pointing at the mirror. “The Three Stooges, with consequences.” His own shiner was beginning to take on a russet hue. “So, Zip, can I get you a drink? Wait a minute. Are you on any medication?”
Ziploc began searching his pockets; Parker ordered him a Coke.
Leaning on the bar, Ziploc looked past Parker at Dobbs. “I like you, mister! You got brain energy! I can tell by the whaddayacallit—the emanations!”
“Oh, shut up!” Holding a ball of cocktail napkins to his nose, Dobbs stared hatefully at the TV screen, where Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze stood together at a podium, their expressions signifying the usual cautious optimism. “Arms control is such a fucking fraud. We hold the summit so Reagan can go to Congress for bigger appropriations for more weapons so we can use them as bargaining chips at the summit.”
Ziploc blinked and returned his attention to Parker. “So, Parker, whaddaya need!”
“Oh, my wish? I’m still thinking about it.”
Dobbs was looking past Parker at Ziploc. He set down the balled-up napkins and ran a finger over his red-rimmed nostrils. “Here’s the wish. End the Cold War.”
“Okee-dokee!” Ziploc picked up his bag, slid off his stool, and strode purposefully to the door.
“Hey! That was my wish!” Parker yelled.
“Wait a minute!” Dobbs called to Ziploc. “Come back here.”
Ziploc walked back and Parker grabbed his arm. “That was—”
Prying Parker’s hand loose, Dobbs asked Ziploc, “How do you plan to do it?”
“Call some guys!”
“How long will it take?”
“Don’t know!” Ziploc seemed eager to get on with it.
“Good-bye and good luck!” Dobbs laughed as Ziploc marched off.
“That was my wish,” Parker muttered. He dabbed his cuts with a napkin and gulped down his Jack Daniel’s, pushing out his lower lip so it wouldn’t bloody the rim. Closing his eyes, he followed the whisky’s warm descent. When he opened them the bartender was setting down Ziploc’s Coke in front of his empty stool.
“You really believe it,” Dobbs was saying.
“I don’t believe it, I just—”
“Don’t you see? They’re using hope against you. It’s worse than despair—it’ll eat you alive. So I wished for something even you aren’t gullible enough to hope for.”
“Thanks, pal. When you pass the abandon-all-hope-ye-who-enter-here sign, remember how lucky you are.” Parker stared gloomily at a commercial in which people smiled while shampooing their hair. He licked his lip and tasted blood. “We need first aid,” he said, brightening at the thought. “Bandages, compresses, lots of sympathy. Fran lives two blocks away.”
“I don’t think she likes me.”
“Nonsense!”
“Kinda late, isn’t it?”
“Oh, she’s still up. We’re bleeding! I rest my case.”
* * *
—
“I said I can’t see you now, Jeff. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Parker gaped at the speaker grill as if it, not Fran, had spoken.
Reading the mailboxes, tapping his foot on the earth-tone tiles, and fingering the caked blood under his nose, Dobbs was striving not to look at him.
Parker pushed the bell. “We’re bleeding!” he shouted into the squawk-box, startled by his voic
e booming in the entryway. Licking his lip he discovered that he’d stopped bleeding. He was gazing into the copper mesh of the grill, watching his worst suspicions take shape, when the buzzer sounded and his hand shot out for the knob.
Fran, in the black mini she’d worn the other night, was leaning over the second-floor banister. “What happened?”
“Job interview!” Parker called up. As he reached the landing he asked, “Just get back from a party?”
She shook her head, dislodging a fat tear and a spoor of mascara.
“What’s wrong?” He opened his arms, but she backed through the doorway and stepped aside from his view of Ken Fletcher rising from the couch.
Accustomed as he was growing to shocks, he couldn’t quite take this one in. Fletcher seemed violently out of context, like Parker’s first view of the gun when it was placed on his office desk. It required an act of will to place Fletcher in these surroundings—in front of the beige couch with its burnt-orange embroidered flowers; behind two half-empty wineglasses on Fran’s Aunt Margaret’s escalloped brass coffee table; among the refinished secondhand store chairs and bookcases; beneath the Chagall print of the bridegroom reaching up and gripping the bride’s hand as she floats away; across from the tall windows where the room floated among other lighted rooms above Hyde Park Boulevard.
“Jeff—” Fran swallowed.
“We’ve met. Hi, Ken! Last time we spoke you were expounding the ‘small world’ theory. I guess tonight proves it.”
“Hello, Jeff,” said Fletcher, amiably impervious to the sarcasm. “How are you?” He was wearing his tweeds. Fran, Parker supposed, would find that sort of thing endearing.
The Blindfold Test Page 18
