Fitger finished his wine. As alluring as she made the evening sound, he said, he wasn’t convinced that he should attend. He had plenty of other work—he pointed toward the open door of his office—that still had to get done.
Marie Eland refilled their cups. “And what is this very important work?”
He ended up trailing behind her as she walked to his desk.
“Student papers?” She picked up the stack of undergraduate essays. “No. These go in your briefcase, to read later at home. You are printing out e-mails? No.” She stuffed the essays into his satchel and dumped a handful of memos into the recycling bin. “You should read nothing unless it tells you ‘confidential’ or ‘urgent.’ This? This is nothing; no.” She swept his pencil stubs and two of the department’s “miscellaneous” files into the trash. “Your desk should send to everyone who sees it the message: All is well; I am in control.”
His mind pleasantly thawing, Fitger sat back and allowed her to rearrange. He asked about the health and status of Marie Eland’s department: Consolidated Languages. (“Yes. Ugly. Like a corporation title,” she said.) Were they also pressed for basic resources?
She tossed some more paper into the bin. “I used to teach literature,” she said. “Céline, de Beauvoir, Duras, Robbe-Grillet…” She snapped her fingers. “But it is only the introductory languages now. If we did not hold on to our courses in medical Spanish, we would be finished.” She stood back from his desk. “Much better. Now I think you are ready to go to the party.”
She pushed the cork into the wine and handed the bottle to Fitger, who, having forgotten about his teeth and his gums, as well as his decision to avoid any festivity sponsored by Econ, locked the office and followed her upstairs.
* * *
—
Lincoln Young stationed himself inside the Econ Department’s new reception room, facing the entrance—a strategic vantage point that allowed him to see the university’s elite as they filed in. He had infiltrated the celebration via the usual method: by wearing a black long-sleeved shirt ($1.29 at Goodwill) with the name FRANK above the breast pocket. One of a collection of similar shirts, it gave him a feeling of confidence he otherwise lacked, while simultaneously allowing him to pass for a waiter—a job which would have afforded him an hourly salary larger than what he earned as Cassovan’s research assistant, with his PhD.
From the start of his graduate studies career, Lincoln had drawn up a weekly schedule of campus events that were likely to involve complimentary food: the business school, a prime provider, spared no expense; the social sciences could often be counted on for sandwiches; the arts and humanities usually furnished nothing other than crackers and lemonade. At first, this culinary surfing was a source of shame and a necessity: Lincoln was $86,000 in debt; he estimated an ability to pay off his student loans about a week before his own funeral. For almost two years he had benefitted from the larder of his roommate (Lincoln rented a bedroom—technically a closet—in Xiaowen’s apartment); but Xiaowen had taken to locking his food in two sizeable coolers, which had impressed upon Lincoln the need to shake off his embarrassment and adopt the guise of a waiter. It actually felt good, though, to graze at least once a week at the university’s table, usurping foodstuffs presumably purchased with tuition dollars but reserved for VIPs. It was politically subversive, an act of resistance. He was striking a blow against the regime.
At present, at the Econ reception, he was involved in dual acts of subterfuge: eating, and scouting out a potential piece of journalism he’d been trying to pitch to one of the student editors of the Campus Scribe. The editor had expressed a mild interest in an article about food waste at Payne—particularly about money lavished on donors during private events. Aware that an exposé might result in a reduction of his own food supply, Lincoln was nonetheless optimistic. The Scribe didn’t pay, but it provided bylines, and Lincoln needed something to add to his paltry CV.
He collected a few plates and cups, trying to keep a distance from the legitimate waitstaff, whose members—in some new catering fashion statement—were wearing white instead of black. He quickly snapped a clandestine photo: a pyramid of mini-quiche and a platter of salmon, denuded of all but a desolate eyeball and a ladder of bones. Pretending to tidy the buffet, he ate some stuffed mushrooms and tucked several pastries (he dressed in layers) into his shirt. He swiped an additional pastry for Xiaowen, which he would leave on the kitchen counter with fifteen dollars toward his rent. Xiaowen, a lowly undergrad when they met, was now completing a PhD in computer science, and Lincoln had spent countless hours trying to persuade him that they should collaborate on a project: a fan fiction video game based on an eleventh-century Arabic poem—which Lincoln would adapt and enhance by having the poem’s protagonist travel through time, developing an S and M relationship with the heroine of a Japanese comic book. Lincoln knew there was money to be made in genre amalgamations, but Xiaowen, on track to earn a six-figure salary before his twenty-fifth birthday, would not yet commit.
But what was this? Sashaying into the room with a bottle of wine in his hand, here was Jason T. Fitger, local literary SOB and unexceptional novelist—and, of course, English Department chair. Lincoln had taken a class with him, years ago—a creative writing class for which Fitger, unbelievably, had given him a final grade of B, based on a sketch of the Arabic poem–comic book concept, under way even then. Why was Fitger here when everyone knew—based on his irate letters to the editor of the Scribe the year before—that he detested Econ? And who was the woman in the tight black dress? Could Lincoln possibly snap a few potentially compromising photos and—
Shit-on-a-brick: Fitger was headed toward him and toward the buffet. Would he recognize Lincoln, frozen now by the tray of bruschetta, a bulge of chocolate croissant in his shirt?
Apparently not. Fitger looked through him and asked, though he was standing next to a sizeable stack of white dinnerware, if Lincoln knew where he might find a plate.
Humiliated (though dressed like a waiter, he didn’t want to be treated like one), Lincoln gave him a plate. Fitger’s eyes were glassy, which was intriguing—was he high? There was a smile on his face that he seemed to have borrowed from someone else.
Lincoln watched him unwrap a fork and spoon, nested together in a linen napkin. Fitger held the silverware up for inspection. “No knives.” He laughed, opening his mouth to emit a belated gust of sound.
* * *
—
In an alcove at one end of Econ’s new reception room, a group of department chairs, Fitger included, had gathered in a gloomy, unsocialized cluster. Fitger had long wondered whether the primary qualification for chairing a department was a lack of attractiveness, and this hypothesis now seemed to have been confirmed. With a nod, he acknowledged Louisa Hatch, Biology, who sported remnants of lunch, and probably breakfast, tobogganing down the front of her dress; Dmitri Gusev, Classics, with his set of cauliflower ears; and the narcoleptic chair of Health Sciences, Marshall Scanlon, who even during his waking moments resembled a homunculus in a baggy brown suit.
But, breaking the trend, here came Marie Eland, striding toward him with two stemmed glasses from the bar. Gusev, with the air of a street thief, tried and failed to intercept one of them, then turned to Fitger and asked for his opinion of the reception room.
Privately thinking that Gusev’s ears looked like pieces of dried fruit unevenly affixed to the sides of his head, Fitger said he wouldn’t have used the term “reception room.” It was more of a banquet hall or a titan’s dream; he imagined a boar roasting on a spit at either end.
Marie Eland smiled and lightly trod on his foot. Was that an accident or a signal? Was there something he was supposed to know about Gusev? Having stocked his plate with dentally approved soft foods, Fitger ate a mini-quiche—delicious—which he washed down with wine. Fran’s Percocet had definitely done its job: he felt as if his head were floating several feet
above him, like a helium balloon attached by a slender string.
Someone dimmed the lights, quelling the burble of conversation. Louisa Hatch, a dollop of onion dip on one nipple, announced the start of the speeches. Was Fitger looking forward to hearing from the dean?
Who would look forward to hearing from Hinckler? His speeches were generally reminiscent of a pair of tennis shoes thumping around in a dryer. But if the dean was on duty, it was possible, even likely, Fitger thought, that Janet was with him. Hinckler certainly would have invited her. She had a sixth sense about social cues, and would immediately understand when “Allow me to introduce” was shorthand for Help me talk this tightwad out of some cash.
Fitger knocked back his wine and put another mini-quiche in his mouth. He scanned the audience—no sign of Janet so far—while the dean stepped to the podium and breathed into the mic. Hinckler had settled on the topic of “the Payne community.” Unbelievable, Fitger thought, that a person could speak for fifteen minutes without saying a thing. “Community” was one of a number of terms he abhorred. The snowblowing community. The tax evasion community. The argyle sweater community. Unsteadily, he raised himself on tiptoes to examine the crowd, which was—apart from the faculty—very well-heeled: jewels on the women, virile pinky rings and hair plugs on the men. He tried to straighten his tie, then realized he had forgotten to wear one. Janet would have insisted that he wear a tie.
The dean exhausted his storehouse of platitudes and ceded the mic to Bill Fixx, one of Econ’s multimillionaire donors, who aw-shucksed his way through an acknowledgment of the money he had already unloaded on Roland’s department, entirely without expectations, of course (though he had recommended a few changes in favor of the free enterprise system). Gusev, of the cauliflower ears, made a satisfyingly obscene gesture.
“Now we will hear from your good friend Professor Gladwell,” Marie Eland said, refilling his wine. “This is why we are here.”
Fitger watched Roland step to the podium. A single vigorous nod, and a screen descended as if from the heavens behind him. Soon he was lifting his arm to summon PowerPoint images with the air of Moses splitting the sea.
Marshall Scanlon, the narcoleptic, had fallen into a doze with his head against Fitger’s shoulder.
“Do you know what they call him?” Marie Eland asked. “The Gladiator. Can you not imagine him with the breastplate? The silvery greaves? He will be in his chariot later, cracking his whip around campus.”
Roland began with a series of genial anecdotes about the “annus horribilis” of the Willard Hall renovation, during which his faculty and their six-figure salaries had suffered an uncomfortable removal from the premises. Then, slowly and one by one, he introduced the “dramatis personae”: a chorus line of architects, designers, university VIPs, and millionaires.
“A touch of dyslexia,” Louisa Hatch said. “That’s why he pronounces the names in that ponderous way.”
“What’s with the Latin, though?” Fitger asked, as the light-fingered Gusev lifted a lemon bar from his plate.
“It tells you how learned he is.” Marie Eland put a cigarette in her mouth: every building on campus was nonsmoking. “And it is also a message: Hannibal ad portas. Don’t worry; I will translate for you when he speaks.”
Fitger blinked. His vision was blurring, and his skin had begun to feel strange—as if every hair on his body were standing at attention and getting ready to belt out a song. Was that Janet, on the opposite side of the podium?
“First he is telling us how very powerful he is,” Marie Eland said. “He wants us to be his tiny friends so that he can crush us.”
“Did you hear him use the word ‘quality’?” Louisa Hatch asked. She shared a rumor about Roland bathing once a week in red wine.
Fitger was trying to disentangle himself from Scanlon, who was snoring gently against his shoulder. Perhaps he should have taken only one of Fran’s Percocets?
“Quality is everyone’s favorite new word.” Marie Eland tried to light her cigarette from a battery-operated votive candle. “Look at his colorful pie-shapes and pretty pictures. These are intended to distract us. He is saying, ‘I am not here to fuck around.’ ”
Gusev whispered something to Hatch, who now wore onion dip on both nipples. “Are you certain?” Hatch asked.
Gusev was certain. It was going to move forward.
“What’s going to move forward?” Fitger asked.
Scanlon woke with a snort and said, “QUAP!”
There was a round of applause, Roland ceding the mic to one of the donors, an elderly woman whose adenoidal speech reminded Fitger of water leaking from a soiled rag.
He asked if QUAP was the mythical beast of a committee that the faculty had been threatened with for years. It couldn’t be that much of a danger, could it?
Gusev suggested that he familiarize himself with the Stalinist purges.
Marie Eland touched Fitger’s chin, gently turning his head an inch to the right. “Over there,” she said. “There is your danger. Your gladiatorial friend has the dean in his pocket.”
On the opposite side of the room, Roland Gladwell and Philip Hinckler, eager smiles on both of their faces, had sandwiched between them a woman whose emerald necklace trickled into the crevasse of her décolletage.
Fitger pointed out that he had his own reasons for not being particularly fond of the dean, but Hinckler was, after all, a musician and a professor of music. He would hardly endorse an annihilative program capable of sweeping through the arts and humanities and—
“Their friend is watching you,” Marie Eland said, wiping a fragment of quiche from his lip.
To Phil Hinckler’s left, looking directly but expressionlessly at Fitger, was Janet Matthias, his ex.
* * *
—
Janet had agreed to attend the reception only because Phil had promised to take her to dinner immediately after (a reward for services rendered; she was so good with the non-university civilians) at Le Creuset. She had changed into the dark blue dress she kept in her office for these sorts of occasions, met Phil on the second floor of Willard, and allowed him to steer her, via several rudder-like fingers at the small of her back, into the glittering crowd.
During the previous weekend Phil had surprised her by suggesting that they consider combining their households. Perhaps not yet (he must have noticed the astonishment on her face); but they had been together now for eight months, and it was something he had begun to think about, and he hoped they could keep it in mind. Phil’s sons spent most of their time at their mother’s, and Janet (who had seen but not met them) would, he assured her, hit it off with the two uncommunicative teens very well. If she wasn’t ready yet for this next step, that was fine too; he understood. But he wanted her to know that she made him feel good, and their relationship was, well, comfortable, for lack of a better word. He couldn’t help thinking about how comfortable it would be if he could come home to her every day. Janet began to wonder whether he thought of her as a couch, or a convenient spot in a parking garage.
Of course that was unfair. Unlike some people she had been married to or involved with, Phil was generous, he was solicitous…Had they really been going out for eight months? She had meant to tell him about that fornicatory misstep back in August, but either it had felt like a minor breach (she and Jay had shared a bed for a dozen years) or she had lost track of the amount of time she had spent with Phil. Maybe she should move in with him. She took stock of the Econ partygoers. Almost everyone was paired up—including (apparently) Jay, who was canoodling with a bony little creature in black on the other side of the room. It was time to go. Having momentarily misplaced Phil, Janet found him at the buffet, a plate of mini-quiche and shrimp in his hand.
“You must have forgotten,” she said. “We’re going out.” She took the plate away from him and gave it to a waiter—FRANK, according to the em
broidered lettering on his shirt—who ate the shrimp before setting the plate on a tray.
“I need five more minutes—maybe ten,” Phil said, his cheek bulging with food. He had to finish making the rounds. Did Janet want to come with him? He nodded in the direction of “Big Bill” Fixx, a corporate kingpin known for his opposition to clean air and water.
“A nice offer, but no,” Janet said. She would meet him in eight minutes—a compromise—in the hall. At the seven-minute mark (Janet had a gift for keeping time), someone lurched out of the conference room in her direction.
It was Fitger, not Phil.
Though her ex-husband often looked disheveled, in need of a lint brush and a comb, there was now a Quasimodo quality to his posture, Janet thought, his shoulders canted to the left as if he were dragging a ball and chain in his wake. “Good work,” she said. “The chair of English, getting drunk at a university function.”
“I’m not drunk.” He waggled his index finger in front of her. “I’ve been drugged.”
“Who would bother to drug you? The woman who was feeding and petting you, in the corner? I wonder if that little dress she was wearing comes in her size.”
“No. It was Fran,” he said. “Fran gave me dugs. Drugs.”
Two women emerged from the restroom, briefly stared at them, and moved on.
Janet started to walk away, but Fitger circled her wrist with his fingers—a familiar and therefore intimate gesture. Everyone at the party was talking about her boyfriend, he said, Phil’s name cropping up in relation to QUAP. What could she tell him? Janet was known for keeping one if not both ears pressed close to the ground; she played tennis with a vice provost and slept with a dean. Of course she had slept with a department chair, too—speaking of which, Fitger hoped she hadn’t told Hinckler about their nostalgic little conclave in August, because he needed to squeeze some money and a few work-a-day privileges out of—
The Shakespeare Requirement Page 10