The Blindfold Test

by Barry Schechter

  “So Tom!” he barked, imitating the unalloyed good cheer with which he imagined a man leading an ordinary life might greet an acquaintance. “What brings you out to this neck of the woods on such a cold night?” Not a smart question; he’d invited the committee to declare its intentions. He anticipated guns coming out, the Cadillac bouncing over the curb across his path.

  “That position we discussed? It’s yours. There wasn’t time to mail a letter of acceptance, and we’ve been having trouble reaching you by phone.” To get Parker past standing and staring, he added, “You remember—this is Huntley Crane’s course load. Delbert Zontar was set to postpone his sabbatical and take the winter courses, but Del has infectious hepatitis.”

  Parker had gotten two calls that week from Bill Hungerford of the committee; each time he’d hung up as soon as the man identified himself.

  “We were just at your building.” To fill the long pause Tom added, deadpan, “You weren’t home.”

  If this were ordinary life, one might ask questions. “Um, what would I be teaching?” Parker had decided that instead of dropping the groceries when he bolted, he’d hand them to Tom. It might give him an extra second or two if the guy was armed. The thought of Tom as a hitman was incongruous, but that hardly counted against it.

  “Modern British and American Poetry and Intro to Criticism. I know this seems very odd. Till the last minute we thought Del would be back in time, and then we…why bore you with this? Tonight we decided to give it one last try before taping the dreaded note to the door. Your Modern Poetry section starts in less than an hour.”

  Parker resisted the urge to laugh in his face. Tom, would you mind holding this? No, just push the bag on him; he’d take it out of sheer reflex. Run back toward Granville—if there was traffic, the Caddy might have have a hard time pursuing the wrong way up the narrow street.

  “We don’t usually act this spontaneously,” said Tom Grand, “and it’s true that the idea of our driving up here came while the committee was deliberating at Little Joe’s Bar and Grill. Someone joked that if you thought your all-powerful enemies had come to take you away, you might go quietly, like a Kafka character.” Realizing that his joshing—if that’s what it was—had failed to inspire confidence, he got down to business. “Tonight just show up. Write your name on the board, give your class some notion of the reading and the requirements. You’d be on an accelerated tenure track. I don’t foresee any problem there, but get serious fast about updating your bibliography. Frankly, that’s the only thing that could hold you back.”

  Update your bibliography: Nice touch. Behind the tinted rear passenger window he thought he saw a hand raised in a wave.

  “When I was a kid,” said Tom Grand, “we used to play a game called Cap. One guy holds his hand out, knuckles up, while the other guy holds his fists behind his back. The object for this second guy—the hitter—is to try to punch the hand. If the one with his hand out—the mark—pulls it away before the punch comes, he has to keep it out while the hitter gives him three of his best. But if the mark sees the punch coming and draws back his hand in time, then it’s the hitter who gets the penalty. In both cases the trick,” he said gliding back deftly as Parker thrust out the bag, “is to watch the eyes.”

  Disoriented by this feat of perfect timing, Parker hadn’t bolted. He pulled the groceries back to his chest.

  “Don’t run off and waste all this good…” Tom bridged the distance he’d just opened and reaching into the bag held up a can of Beefaroni as if it were Yorick’s skull. Putting it back, he gave Parker what appeared to be a look of commiseration.

  “I know,” said Parker. “It’s sad-guy food. I’m over that.” It was idiotic to confide in him, but then, why not? “Tonight was going to be my last can—I’d planned a little ceremony.” It looked like there’d be no post-Beefaroni days after all.

  “Think of it this way. If we were really…never did know who you think we really are. The Mafia?”

  “Whatever.” There was a clattering noise; a couple with a bundled toddler in a stroller steered around them. The kid had a wet mouth, a wind-reddened face, eyes straining toward perfect roundness, and a green stocking cap topped by a fuzz-ball. “EEE!” he proclaimed, raising his arms like a conductor. Ordinary life: Parker turned to watch it pass.

  “—then I wouldn’t be standing here trying to persuade you,” Tom Grand was saying. “We’d be already be ‘taking you for a ride.’ ”

  “Things like this don’t happen in ordinary life,” Parker insisted.

  Tom Grand had a robust and gravelly laugh. “Clearly you haven’t had much experience with ordinary life!”

  “Got me there,” Parker conceded. As they approached his building he decided to test the scope of his freedom. “All right, what the heck! Count me in.”

  Tom Grand gripped his shoulder and shook his hand. “You’ve done the right thing. You have to move forward in your life, enemies or not.”

  As casually as he could, Parker said, “I’ll just drop off my groceries and pick up my notes. Wait here, I’ll be right out.”

  Surprisingly, Tom found that acceptable. “Don’t worry if you can’t find the notes.” He looked at his watch. “Tonight it’s especially true that ‘Ninety percent of greatness is showing up.’ ”

  Parker took the steps two at a time to his floor, and before he had the key in, the thought he’d been suppressing forced itself upon him. What if this were a real job offer? What if pigs flew! He unlocked the door and slammed it behind him, turned the two locks, set the groceries on the card table, and sprinted for the back door.

  The key stuck in the bolt; you had to turn it slowly!; he turned the key and yanked open the door. He was startled by the full moon and the crisply focused sky. Panting, he forced himself to breathe deeply—it felt like he was inhaling the cold, sharp stars. There was no one in view from the porch but the familiar stocking-cap guy going through the trash bin in the alley. No sign of the Caddy. He stood with his hand on the half-closed door; a job at Circle would be a boost to eventually getting a job in New York. The fact that this wasn’t exactly the job he wanted—did that make it more plausible? He’d begun applying in December after Hank Monroe, Jr. died: too late for even the fall term at many universities. He’d despaired of proposing on his Skokie Valley salary, but now…there’s no job, dipstick!

  The bell rang; to buy another minute, he came back in and pressed the intercom button, which tonight proved to be working. “Yeah, what?”

  “If we were the Mafia”—Tom Grand sounded like Lamont Cranston on the tinny speaker—“would we be leaving you to your own devices up there? Free to sneak out the back?”

  “If you were an academic committee, why would you hire a guy you believe to be a paranoid nutcase?”

  “We never believed any such thing. Now can we please shake a leg?”

  “You obviously—”

  “We know you have enemies because of the letter. I’m referring, of course, to the infamous rumor letter. It was so over-the-top no one ever believed it. Bill was just looking for an issue.”

  It seemed like such a prime example of academic spitefulness, Parker was nearly convinced. A new thought occurred to him. “Maybe you’re not going to kill me. Maybe I’m just back in the old slow-roast hell.”

  He regretted the outburst—it was unseemly to let your enemies or your colleagues hear you whine—but it didn’t deter Tom Grand: “Look. This isn’t just a decision about a job. It’s about how you’re going to live your life. In a minute we’ll give up and drive away. You’ll sit up there thinking it’s some kind of trick. Maybe in a few hours you’ll start prowling around the building until you’ve convinced yourself we’re really gone. You might be relieved at first. Pleased with yourself—nobody takes Jeffrey Parker for a sucker! You’ll be less self-delighted when it finally sinks in. Is that how you want to live?”

  The prophecy
was weirdly compelling in his crackling old-time-radio voice. But Parker had already decided: If there was a job, and he took it, he thought he could marry Fran.

  “I’ll be right down.”

  * * *

  —

  By the time he came out he was thinking, might as well. If the worst were true he’d never get away; he could only escape if he ought to have stayed. And why concoct so elaborate and unconvincing a ruse just to kill him? But as Tom Grand, playing chauffeur, snapped to attention and opened the car’s rear door, it occurred to Parker that if you looked for the point you were playing their game. The interior radiated heat, booze, and perfume. Peering inside he recognized a bright burst of hair: it was Esther, the redhead he’d flirted with at the interview, and on her other side was George, the hulking man who’d blocked his way. The driver was the white-haired woman with the bangs and the big glasses—the one who’d complained about rabbits in her garden. Parker thought of Tom Grand’s warning: He didn’t want to look back in twenty years and think, I could have changed my life but I was scared of the rabbit woman. He ducked under the doorframe and sat down exchanging hellos. Next to the rabbit woman, Bill Hungerford turned around and glared unabashedly: “Hello.” There was something reassuring in the thought that regardless of which scenario was true—the conspiracy or the job—this man was his enemy. When Tom Grand had closed the back door, walked around to the passenger side, sat down next to Bill and closed the front door, the locks came down with a Chunk!

  Experimentally Parker raised and lowered his button.

  “Please don’t play with the buttons,” said the rabbit woman as they pulled out.

  “Sorry.”

  Tom Grand said, “You’ll have to come down some day before five this week to fill out your W-4 form, sign your contract, and so forth. The department’s on the twentieth floor of University Hall. Stop in and say hello to the chairman, Bob Overby. We couldn’t have got this through without Bob’s support.”

  “All right.” It was beginning to seem awfully like a job, though in one part of his mind Parker was thinking, W-4 form: Nice touch.

  Bill was still turned around giving Parker the look. There was a passive-aggressive bully like this in every university department, always on a committee. Their very presence was a silent dare to name anything they’d done to give offense. After all, they observed every legalism and made sure that everybody else behaved with equal circumspection—what was wrong with that? And if Bill’s tiny pouty face seemed to be glaring, well, define glare. He was just looking at you, and what was the rule against that? And he had said hello—so how was he being rude? And his hair was impeccably combed. Guys like Bill were the reason civilization had never worked out. Parker had been planning to use his last seconds on earth—if that’s what he was heading for—to reflect on his life. But he thought the time might be better spent planting a fist beneath those tinted aviator glasses. If the job was a ruse, was this guy just pretending to be an asshole?

  Bill said, “I want my opposition on the record. What are we saying to future applicants with this appointment? ‘If you want a position at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the best interview strategy is a gun-toting brawl.’ ”

  “Bill’s sore that you hung up on him,” Tom Grand explained. “I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding.” Parker grasped the implication that he could smooth things over with an apology, but he wasn’t in the mood.

  “Tom thinks you’re a brilliant intellect”—Bill’s sarcasm edged on hysteria now—“who ‘took a wrong turn in his life,’ whatever that means, and all you need is a second chance. I never thought it was the department’s mission to be Boy’s Town for troubled academics, especially when the ragamuffins instigate gun-toting brawls.”

  “You’ve made your position clear.” Esther uncrossed her legs and leaned toward Bill. “You’re not advancing an argument any more, you’re having a tantrum.”

  “I just think we should be honest and straightforward about our requirements. Next time we advertise in the PMLA—”

  “Bill,” she warned, “if you use the phrase ‘gun-toting brawl’ one more time—”

  “She can do it,” murmured George looking out his window. “Better shut up.” They were turning off Bryn Mawr onto Lake Shore Drive.

  “This evening,” Tom said cheerily, “George and I were discussing some esoteric points of golf. Do you play, Jeff?”

  “A few times. I don’t really—”

  “It’s more a philosophical problem than a golfing one. Our dispute was on the matter of gross interference. Suppose, for example, that as your ball is rolling to a stop, some passerby kicks it in another direction.”

  The subject was of no interest to Parker, and he was tempted to go into his nod and stare routine, but there was something urgent in Tom’s voice.

  “None of the PGA rules seems like a fair remedy,” Tom was saying. “You could, for example, invoke the ‘free drop’ rule: You measure the distance of your longest club, usually the driver, stand at that spot, and then drop the ball at arm’s length over that new spot. You play it from the position to which it rolls after it’s dropped. But what if the interfering kick rolled the ball downhill? It could go dozens of yards off course, and the free drop rule doesn’t redress that injustice. And why shouldn’t justice apply in the game of golf? Another possibility is to retake the shot, but the rules call for the addition of penalty strokes, and so we still have the problem of fairness.” He was getting at something besides golf, Parker thought, what the hell was it?

  “The PGA rule book,” Tom continued, “has an entire section on ‘Acts of God,’ but frankly those remedies also seem…I’m sorry to keep coming back to this…unjust.”

  It’s a parable, Parker thought. He’s giving me the truth in a parable, and I’m too goddamn dense to get it.

  “Now sometimes in a friendly game the players apply more informal ‘winter rules.’ A few years ago I was visiting my in-laws in Peru, Indiana, and my father-in-law and I played a round at a course there. A local screwball teenager ran onto the links, grabbed my ball, and disappeared with it into the woods, later to sell it to another golfer. Invoking ‘winter rules,’ my father-in-law allowed me a ‘free drop at the point of injury.’ Now George here is a golfer of the old school, and when I told him that story he was overwhelmed with disgust. But my own solution to the problem of gross interference would go even beyond ‘free drop at the point of injury’: I believe that to restore justice, you sometimes have to pick up the ball and set it down exactly where it belongs.”

  Suddenly it made sense, and the force of revelation, combined with the soporific heat in the car and Esther’s hard-sell perfume, made him lower his head and inhale. He fought off wooziness as she leaned close.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine, thanks.” His head began to clear as she drew away. Bill went on giving him the evil eye, his frozen smirk threatening to crack. Tom Grand also remained turned in his seat, waiting, it seemed, for Parker to indicate that he understood the parable.

  “You’re speaking,” Parker began, “of the conspiracy of good. What Harry Krell called the new order. I’ve been so…so sad these last weeks; I didn’t realize it till now. I just knew I was waiting. I kept telling myself my enemy’s dead, the conspiracy’s over, what could I be waiting for? And now I see. I was waiting to get everything back. I want everything that was taken from me, though I’m not sure I could tell you what that is. I lost something, I want it back. I want the life I would have had restored, if you can restore something you’ve never had. I’ve been waiting—and I love the way you put it, Tom—to be picked up and inserted into that life. So that’s what this job is all about: ‘Winter rules!’ ”

  Tom Grand had listened to this outpouring with his usual deadpan alertness. He regarded Parker for one more beat, then turned to George. “Ever played Augusta?”

  “Never
made it down there. A friend of mine has a membership at Pebble Beach, and I’ve played a few rounds there. Best course I’ve ever played. Can’t say it was the best golf.” He laughed.

  As they went on discussing golf, Parker’s belief in the new order waned.

  * * *

  —

  Esther, Tom, and George were escorting him to his building. Conspirators or colleagues, they must have been worried that he’d run.

  They were following in the shadow of the overhead walkway, and as Parker surveyed the deserted campus he nearly laughed out loud. The concrete pillars, the stone amphitheater, the infernal orange lights, the sparse tortured dwarf trees, the dim glow behind opaque windows slotted in gray girders: it was all a bad movie of his dread. By the next time, he hoped, it wouldn’t be an image of anything—it would just be another evening at work.

  “What do you have planned for tonight?” Tom asked.

  To run? Now? “I couldn’t find my notes, but I remember my old Intro to Modernism lecture. Oh, I usually start with Virginia Woolf’s idea that everything changed ‘in or about December, 1910.’ ” He tried to recall the distant moment in his own life when everything changed. He wanted to believe that tonight would be the night everything changed back.

  As they stepped from the darkness beneath the walkway, Esther did a childish twirl, her face raised to the sky. A languorous snowfall was crowding the air, blossoming around the lights. The stark gray-slab campus looked a tiny bit whimsical among the suspended flakes.

  “Listen.” She put a finger to his lips. “What do you hear?”

  The shock of her touch was one more thing fizzing through his nerves. She might have been flirting, but her watchful smile made him think she was trying to calm him down.

  “I have a girlfriend who does this, and I hate it. Oh, all right.” The closest other people were coming out of a classroom building a hundred yards away. “I hear our footsteps. My breathing. That breeze sound distant traffic makes. Distant shouts. What did Joyce call history? A cry in the street.”