The Death of a Constant Lover

by Lev Raphael

  “He’s not in trouble anymore,” the ME said dryly. “Are you sure Angie’s disappeared? Have you tried her parents in Houghton?”

  I was embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t. Margaret Case asked me to hold a moment while she looked for the number. When she came back on the line, she apologized. “It’s at home. I’ll have to get it to you.” Then she said that there had been no defense wounds on Jesse’s body, which meant that he’d probably been stabbed unawares. The fatal wound was to his heart—the head wound was minor, from the fall. “His killer was shorter than he was, since he or she struck up at Jesse rather than straight in or down. The angle was pretty sharp. Aren’t you glad you called? Now you know that the murderer wasn’t tall. That should narrow it down a lot for you, right? Was he a favorite student?”

  “No, I was just nearby when the riot broke out and he was killed,” I explained.

  Dr. Case sighed. “Have you ever considered a quieter career—like skydiving?”

  When I hung up and passed on what little information I’d gotten from Dr. Case, Stefan and Lucille both looked as disappointed as I felt. Nothing I’d learned made much of a difference, did it?

  Lucille thanked us with a grin “for the tea and sympathy,” and we both saw her out.

  With the door closed, it was Stefan’s turn to do the hugging. I wondered how it was possible to be so angry at someone you loved and say such cruel half-truths, the anger shooting out like a flashlight’s beam in the dark, distorting whatever it lit up. Clumsily, arm in arm, we headed back to the kitchen to clean up the breakfast dishes and talk our way back home. I told him how sorry I was for what I’d said yesterday, and that I’d barely believed it, convinced by the heat of my own frustration and rage.

  “I guess I was jealous,” Stefan admitted slowly.

  I nodded, making a grave show of listening when I wanted to whoop. I had been so painfully jealous of one of Stefan’s ex-lovers a couple of years back that this moment felt like a weird vindication, a wonderful triumph. He was admitting that he was human, as flawed as I was.

  “Not jealous of you getting noticed,” he explained. “I supported your work on the bibliography completely, didn’t I? You know that—even though it was endless.”

  I nodded. Working on a bibliography is like one of those long medieval sieges that starts with triumphal marches, flapping banners, and deceptive predictions of victory but devolves into boredom, misery, and disease. Ultimately, the city may surrender—but what a price has been paid.

  “What I don’t like is the idea of Delaney hanging around you, helping you teach a course.”

  Of course I knew exactly where he’d been headed, and I had to laugh. “Oh, yeah, all that grading of student papers is guaranteed to work just like in Dante when that couple reads poetry together. Can you think of anything less romantic than grading papers?” And yet even as I said it, I felt a certain tingling in my face at the picture of sitting side by side with Delaney in my office, peering down at someone’s term paper, aware of each other’s heat.

  Stefan frowned. “I’m serious, Nick. I don’t trust him. He’s coming on too strong, from what you’ve told me—showing up here, badgering you about the course, arranging things for you.”

  “You make him sound like a stalker.”

  Stefan relaxed. “Well, maybe I’m exaggerating.” He struggled a little, either uncertain of what he had to say, or uncomfortable saying it. “Nick, he’s just so young.”

  I felt suddenly as old as a doddering reprobate in a Balzac novel. Was that what was going on? Was it as simple and timeless a story as that? Beautiful young man using his looks to get ahead? I flushed, remembering Delaney’s perfect body in the showers and his earlier request for a home tour.

  “So young,” Stefan repeated. “And so—”

  “Yup,” I agreed. “Delaney is very so. But how could you worry about me sleeping with anyone? You know how disorganized I can be about anything but my classes and Edith Wharton. I could never pull off an affair.”

  Stefan crumpled up his dish towel and pitched it at my head. I caught it, holding it with mock tenderness. “I’ll always treasure this as a memento of our talk. Now, if you want to hear about studying someone, let me tell you what Delaney was wearing when he came by.” I described the outfit.

  Stefan looked as if he’d just stepped into something horrid. “I hope it’s just a coincidence.”

  “I don’t know. He might have been trying to work on me subconsciously by dressing like you.”

  “Whose subconscious are you talking about? Because you picked it up right away, didn’t you?” He thought a moment. “If he’s got money for nice clothes, why does he need to teach an extra class?”

  We puzzled that one over and got nowhere, so I told Stefan to sit down. “I have good news. Van Deegan Jones wants me to do his Norton Critical Edition of Summer.”

  Stefan looked stunned. “When? He called you?”

  I explained all the details.

  “It’s a book,” he said, navigating slowly through his surprise as if he were a fogbound ship. “It’s a book you can do before they make the tenure decision. It’s relatively fast, it’s prestigious, and you get some money. Unbelievable! When do you start?”

  “I already have, in my head.” Once again I felt glad to have a deeply involving project that could help blur the recurring image of that bridge and that blood. And this was something I had control over, something that was in no way mysterious and made me feel anything but helpless.

  He understood—every book worked away inside you once you’d opened yourself up to it: That was the true beginning. You didn’t have to touch a keyboard, open a file, or pick up a pen to be writing. I knew that from watching Stefan.

  “We have to celebrate!” Stefan announced, glowing.

  I demurred. “Let’s wait till it’s done.”

  “The world could end before that.”

  “That’s a cheerful thought.”

  Stefan cocked his head at me. “Nick—when have you ever not wanted to celebrate some good news?”

  “When people are being murdered, when our friend and neighbor’s getting hate mail and bricks through her window. Life seems too uncertain right now.”

  “All the more reason to celebrate. Remember the line in The Purple Rose of Cairo? ‘Life’s too short to be worrying about life.’”

  “Okay, okay, okay. What do you want to do to celebrate?”

  Stefan rose and stood looming over me. “I have some long-range plans, and something more immediate in mind.”

  I grinned. “You are talking my language.”

  We adjourned to the bedroom, and like Tina Turner singing “Proud Mary,” we did the first part nice and the second part rough, rolling on the river.

  AFTER A SECOND shower of the morning, during which I lazily soaped his back, Stefan headed for campus, and I headed downstairs to my study to comb through my extensive Wharton library to help myself get more focused on the Norton book. Working on Summer would be fun, because this little-known novel of Wharton’s was so sensuous and beautifully written, a study of shame and social conventions in rural New England. It pleased me to think that my edition of this book would make it more accessible and enjoyable.

  I put on my favorite music-to-concentrate-by on the portable CD player, Mendelssohn’s Octet, and took out my Wharton bibliography. As usual, I marveled at how so many years of work and so much money on photocopying, phone calls, and faxing could have produced only this heavy but otherwise unremarkable-looking volume. As my mother had helpfully pointed out, it didn’t even have any photographs of Wharton. It was altogether too plain a book for her. After all, my father was the publisher of elite art volumes like the kind Rizzoli does, and so even though my book, since it was destined for libraries, was quite expensive, it was to them the bibliographic equivalent of Mission-style furniture compared to the Louis Seize furniture they preferred. Sometimes I wondered if my very chic parents even read the bibliography’s plainness, its s
turdy dull binding and unimaginative marshaling of facts, as some kind of indictment of their taste, a rebellion in print.

  “Well,” my mother had concluded in her fluent but formal English, “I’m sure it will be most helpful.” She could have been talking about a new kind of plunger, but despite her dim endorsement, my bibliography had proven quite useful. Even Stefan was surprised by the fine reviews that drifted in from academic journals during the two years after it was published, and more impressively, the fulsome fan mail from Wharton scholars and students.

  Seated in my favorite chair in the study, I let the bibliography slip to the floor, unwinding for the first time in days, glad to feel so deeply connected to Stefan again, sated, hopeful. And curious. I couldn’t help thinking about what Margaret Case had said. Someone stabbed up into Jesse’s heart—a small wound.

  I knew from my students that knives were nothing out of the ordinary on campus, and not just pocketknives or Swiss army knives, but switchblades, butterfly knives, hunting knives. My students had told me lots of stories about friends or roommates who collected knives, showed them off, and occasionally threatened to use them.

  The killer wasn’t tall, Dr. Case had surmised. Or as tall as Jesse. Well, that fit lots of people I knew, including Stefan, Lucille, Didier—

  I wondered if the assault on Lucille and Didier’s house was perhaps something quite different from anything Stefan or I had suggested. Maybe it was a warning. Maybe Lucille didn’t realize that she knew something about Jesse Benevento’s death—but someone else did.

  And that made the situation more dangerous for her, especially if she wasn’t getting the message. Which is why I wanted to reach for the phone and the phone book to call Detective Valley. I told myself that even though he apparently hadn’t done anything about Lucille’s hate mail, he should know about this latest incident on the chance that it might be connected. Stefan had told me it wasn’t any of my business to intervene now, but how can you let a friend be threatened and not try to help?

  I hesitated. Was I really trying to help Lucille, or was I just trying to make up for my own unwillingness years before to go public with what had happened to me in grad school? I didn’t know the answer, so I couldn’t make the call. Still, I felt guilty doing nothing. Determined to unhook from all this, I took up my bibliography and a notepad and slipped off into a very familiar land, making notes with ease and excitement. I worked for about an hour, and then the doorbell rang.

  Going to answer it, I hoped it wasn’t more bad news about Lucille, or even Detective Valley and some Michiganapolis policeman come to interrogate. I got my wish, sort of. Delaney stood at our door, asking, “Can I come in?”

  I was so flummoxed by his showing up two days in a row that I couldn’t think up an excuse to say no, so I let him in. We may have been enjoying an early spring, with crocuses up by our door and the forsythia out back budding out, but right then I wished we were having a late-winter storm. One of those blinding, cruel ones mat makes everyone stay home. That way people wouldn’t even think of dropping by anywhere.

  I did not offer him water today, and he sat down without invitation, wearing the same clothes as yesterday and looking, I realized now, kind of rattled.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Not a great night last night. Someone stole my backpack in the library,” he said. “Can you believe it?” He glanced around the room almost as if it might be stashed there. This was the first time I’d truly seen Delaney at a loss, the smooth surface more than ruffled. “My wallet wasn’t in it, but everything else important was. I feel incomplete without it.”

  “Like when a woman loses her purse?”

  He peered at me to see if I was joking, but I wasn’t, and he nodded. “Like that, yeah. Then I went to this EAR grad student party, and somebody got really drunk and took a swing at me.”

  “Why?”

  “It was Bill Malatesta. Does he need a reason? He thinks he’s king of the grad students, but I won’t kowtow to him.” Somehow I felt I wasn’t getting the whole story from him, but before I could probe any further or ask why he was here, Delaney said, “Have you decided about the mystery class yet?”

  This felt so incredibly pushy I wanted to snap at him, but I held back; it would have been inappropriate, and I didn’t want to treat a graduate student as the other professors in EAR did.

  Matter-of-factly, Delaney said, “Stefan probably doesn’t want you to teach it.”

  I was stung by his insight and burst out with, “How do you know?” almost as if he had been spying on our previous conversation. It gave me the creeps.

  He shrugged, and the movement of those powerful shoulders was a strange mix of intimidating and attractive. “Stefan is a wonderful literary writer, but writers like that don’t tend to think much of mysteries as a genre.”

  This was so on-target I couldn’t disagree, yet not doing so seemed vaguely disloyal to Stefan, especially after our various reunions of the morning. And the way Delaney had dropped in and what he was saying seemed intrusive and peculiar. How had I gotten myself into this situation? Maybe I needed to hire a doorman.

  “You know, Delaney, I’m flattered that you want to TA the mystery course for me, and that’s great that you were able to get Dean Bullerschmidt to say yes to funding it, but—”

  “I know you’re up for tenure next year,” he interrupted. “You’re worried, aren’t you?”

  This was obvious enough, but so personal that I couldn’t respond.

  “And I bet Stefan’s not in the best frame of mind either.”

  That shocked me into speech. “What are you talking about?”

  He gave me a smooth shrug. “His sales figures can’t be great when trade book sales keep going down, and the audience for literary fiction is disappearing.”

  He’d been studying us, I thought, feeling chilled.

  “Actually,” I lied, “Stefan has gotten some offers from other schools, and—” I gave my version of a Gallic shrug, implying we could be gone next year. I was inventing this, but I felt agitated enough about tenure and Delaney’s pushiness to make it sound real, and I exulted inside to see that Delaney was completely taken in.

  His shoulders slumped, and he said, “Oh. I didn’t know that.” Even if he did have influence with the dean, there wasn’t anything he could do—

  Oh shit, I thought. What had I gotten myself into? If the dean heard about this and decided he would try to preempt Stefan’s move, I’d have a lot of red-faced explaining to do. But it was too late to take it back, and as Delaney dejectedly got to his feet and I followed him to the door and saw him out with a very dishonest “Thanks,” I didn’t care how shortsighted my lie was. After Stefan and I had argued about Delaney, I just didn’t want to have anything more to do with him.

  But as he headed off down the block, I saw Harry Benevento drive by in the other direction toward Polly Flockhart’s house—for some afternoon delight, no doubt. The picture of Polly taking a “late lunch” and her chair sneaking off to join her wasn’t titillating. Embarrassed at their obliviousness to appearances and gossip, I shut the door.

  10

  After a haphazard late lunch and enough research and browsing through my Wharton library to satisfy myself that I’d sufficiently laid out the first stages of my work on Summer, I decided to drive to campus and check my mail. I left Stefan a note on the kitchen table in case he got back before me.

  By the time I reached Parker it would be after 5:00 P.M. and the EAR office would be closed, so I’d be less likely to run into other faculty. I realized that this wasn’t the most positive attitude, but after that ugly departmental meeting I wasn’t eager to pretend to schmooze or even smile and nod at anyone. Not that I was very popular at the best of times, since so many faculty assumed I had no real qualifications other than being Stefan’s partner, given that he was the one SUM had wanted.

  In my first year I’d also probably been perceived as too buoyant and cheerful. I’m a gregarious guy, and it hurt me
to feel that my enthusiasm was looked at suspiciously—as if I were some prophet of technology offering free time on AOL to Luddites.

  Honestly, while I loved Michigan and loved getting to know it better, and SUM’s campus was a haven, this wasn’t the best department for me. But then I wondered if a good match would ever be possible. Whenever I’m chatting at conferences with faculty members from other universities, the truth comes out after a drink or two: Hardly any academics are happy where they are, no matter how apt the students, how generous the salary or perks, how beautiful the setting, how light the teaching load, how lavish the research budget. I don’t know if it’s academia itself that attracts misfits and malcontents, or if the overwhelming hypocrisy of that world would have turned even the Van Trapp family sullen. On days like this one I puzzled over whether I’d really want to be teaching at SUM or any place like it until retirement.

  Maybe my thoughts had moved in this direction because both Didier and Lucille had changed their lives radically in middle age. It wasn’t comfortable for me to be speculating like that on the edge of my own personal version of Here Be Dragons.

  But what were my choices? And if I tried anything else, I’d have to face my parents’ knowing smiles. They had encouraged me to do graduate work years ago but had always assumed—without saying it—that I’d take some position in my father’s small publishing house, which is no doubt why they’d paid my way through master’s and Ph.D. work. But that was the last thing I wanted. It was bad enough I had never measured up to my father’s European polish and style, that even in a tux I didn’t quite shape up. Working under him would have been unbearable. My father wasn’t a cruel man in any way, but he had the painful habit of small stinging criticisms, introduced in the same way every time by a soft, disappointed “Oh.” I’d be reading a book about the lesser-known impressionist Gustave Caillebotte and he’d say, “Oh. You find him worthwhile?”

  My mother laughed off these questions when they were directed at her. And of course Stefan never bristled; he would reply with a forthright and disarming, “Absolutely,” or even worse, hit my father with French slang and call the book “sensas” or “chouette.”