by Amanda Cross
I am half sick of shadows.
—TENNYSON, “The Lady of Shalott”
Two
BY the next afternoon, Octavia had the list of courses to be offered by the English department in the coming semester. Some years ago Clifton College had stopped offering course catalogs in all departments. Too expensive, Octavia had learned, and likely to be inaccurate by the time the actual semester rolled around. It was time to get the faculty straight in my mind, and the best way to do that was to win the confidence of (so I’d been told) the only person in any academic department who knows what is actually going on—as opposed to what is debated: the department’s executive secretary. These women, and they are almost always women, have faculty status and are, together with their administrative colleagues, what keeps any academic institution from sudden collapse. The titular men above them in the hierarchy come and go and spend most of their time in committees, or raising funds, or in trying to get their agendas ratified by other men in power. The women do not run the college—more’s the pity—but they keep it running. I’d learned that much from Claire Wiseman.
I spent the morning finishing up another inquiry, which had resolved itself faster than I had anticipated because the thief in question turned out to be a close relative of my client. Private settlement seemed indicated. Octavia and I made out a closing statement and sent it off.
That done, I contemplated the best way to approach the executive secretary of the English department and establish her confidence in me. I had a feeling she would answer questions; Octavia had chatted with her for a while and had told me something about Dawn Nashville. She was clearly a woman of integrity, a lonely woman whom most of the men in the office either took for granted or flirted with insincerely. She was divorced, and lived in New York City (like so many of those who work in New Jersey) with her mother, who, while neither ailing nor demanding, hardly offered the kind of attention Dawn might enjoy if it were ever offered to her.
I’ve often heard it said that nothing excites a lonely woman like an invitation. This is no doubt true of many women, but not as many as tradition would have it. That is, lonely women may like to be feted and made much of, but they would certainly, if they were as intelligent as Dawn Nashville, be suspicious of such sudden attentions.
I determined on a two-pronged strategy. First: I would ask her to have dinner with me at an elegant restaurant, not the highest on the list of those who want to be seen in the right places, but one that served good food and provided privacy with well-spaced tables. Second prong: I would be honest with her, explaining what I was after, if not altogether why, although she could gather that if she was as astute as she was reputed to be. It might take two dinners, but I thought my success depended on her liking and trusting me, above all on her finding my company enjoyable. I would not lie to her about anything, though I might defer an answer until later, in what someone told me was the manner of Sherlock Holmes with poor, obedient Watson.
The first dinner, which took place some days later, on a Friday night, which she preferred, was all I could have hoped for. I arranged it by telephone, but said I would pick her up and accompany her to the restaurant—in a taxi, not on my bike. I know that for women unaccustomed to going out at night, as I suspected she was, getting places was anxiety-inducing, if only moderately so. Also I didn’t want to put her to any expense; I surmised that with her salary and her mother’s social security and pension she was hardly awash in liquid assets.
She was waiting downstairs for me when my taxi pulled up. I had anticipated this—she was, after all, an efficient woman and a considerate one—and therefore did not ride my bike to her house, planning to reclaim it after I took her home, which would have been my natural procedure. I am a detective, and therefore intuitive, though I say so myself. Together we rode in my taxi to the restaurant, exchanging idle chatter until she could feel more comfortable. As I had hoped, she wanted to know how I became a private investigator. People always do, and in a situation like this, it’s a good way to break the ice.
“Can anyone become a private investigator? I mean, do you have to have a degree of some sort?”
“Not as far as I know. You have to have worked for another investigator, or a company of investigators, for at least three years, and you have to pass an exam. For this you have to have irrefutable identification, and your fingerprints are taken. That’s about it.”
“Do you carry a gun?” she asked, as the taxi driver moved in and out of traffic lanes to little effect. That is often among the first questions asked me.
“I have a license to carry a gun. In New York State, it is not easy to get such a license, but properly accredited private investigators are allowed to have one.”
“What about all those other people with guns— are they illegal?”
“Most of them are, particularly in the inner cities. But individuals can get a license for a gun for what is called target practice. Most of them live in rural areas, and are into a gun culture. All this, of course, applies only to concealed weapons, not to shotguns or rifles, which private eyes rarely mess with.”
She smiled, and looked her question.
“No,” I said, “I don’t have it with me. I keep it locked up; I carry it only on dangerous assignments.” I hoped the phrase didn’t sound too phony in her ears, but like most honest citizens she found the life of a detective intriguing, and full of perilous encounters.
We reached the restaurant, and were greeted by the maître d’ and seated with an adequate flourish. As it happened, I knew him, since I had had to watch one of his customers during a long evening, and occupy a table in the proper line of vision. I had of course paid handsomely for his help, and had since come a few times to dine there in a quite proper way. One thing you soon learn as a private investigator—though I didn’t bother telling this to Dawn—is that the more people you can win to your side, usually through the expression of gratitude in the form of money, the better; they form a network of individuals essential to any detective.
I urged Dawn to order a cocktail, while I had vodka on the rocks. She said she didn’t drink much, but would try a sherry. I doubted that this restaurant had sweet sherry, and didn’t want to embarrass her into having to make a choice, so I ordered medium sherry for her. She sipped it slowly, whether from the desire to make it last or from distaste I couldn’t tell, but she seemed happy.
“How did you get the name Dawn?” I asked. “It’s a lovely name.”
“Thank you,” she said. It was clearly a compliment she was used to. “My parents waited a long time for a child; when I arrived they said that for them it was a new dawn.”
“Isn’t it great to be a welcome child?”
“They might have named me Benvenuta. One of the professors told me that. Benvenuto Cellini’s father held him up when he was born and called out, ‘Welcome.’ In Italian, of course; that’s what benvenuto means. I wasn’t welcome once I had left home.”
I wanted her compliant; I wanted all she could tell me, for sooner or later, and probably sooner, it would lead to the department where she had worked for ten years. I looked at her, waiting for more if she wanted to offer it then, but she didn’t, and I didn’t ask. It doesn’t pay to waste the limited number of questions you can decently ask on an intrusive one that is also irrelevant. I urged her to have another glass of sherry, and she said she would if I had another drink too, so we did. Then we ordered. To my surprise—because she had been so diffident over the drink—she knew exactly what she wanted and requested it. I reminded myself that she was the highly efficient coordinator of a complicated department, and more interested in food than drink.
“How did you find an investigator to work for?” she asked me. “Did you know one?”
“I did. I used to be a public defender; there were a number of private investigators who worked with the lawyers, and one of them agreed to hire me.”
“You were lucky.” She looked into her glass, swirling the sherry around as though she thoug
ht it might yield an aroma. “Everything is contacts; I’ve learned that. But once you’re a secretary, that’s all people want you for. I get offered jobs as a secretary, but never as anything that would be a real step-up.”
“Perhaps they would pay more?”
“They would. But working for the college, I get the same pension and health benefits as the faculty, and I can take two courses a year free. I’ve been taking one every semester, working toward my degree. These things are worth more than money.”
“Very sensible,” I said. “But I have heard that the academic world is not easy on its administrators, particularly those in departments. That may just be gossip or jealousy from those of us struggling in the big outside world.” I had made my move; what she answered would determine the success of the evening. I’ve often had to return for another try after a conversation had dried up; it never pays to keep pushing immediately after you’re blocked.
“I’ve thought of that,” she said, polishing off her sherry with what I hoped was a sign of determination to spill her guts. I wasn’t trapping her, after all. She wasn’t the object of my queries; she was a means to an end, and I always try to reward my means somehow, if they come through, in this case by a good dinner. I smiled encouragingly as our food came.
She began on her appetizer. “Very good,” she said. “You’re right about the stresses. If you’re at all a sympathetic person, someone who tries to be helpful, you get to hear from everyone about everyone else. Not that they have the least use for your opinion, not most of them, but they have to complain to someone who knows the cast of characters; at least, that’s how I figure it. There’s so much bad feeling.”
“What is it that they get so worked up about?”
“Lots of minor things: they didn’t get the classroom or the times they wanted. I do my best, but the final decision is made by the central administration. After all, they have more than one department to consider, and only a certain number of rooms and hours. But that’s the least of it. They all differ on what should be taught and on which students should get fellowships and honors, on who should read whose senior thesis. That sort of thing. And then there’s backbiting, nasty remarks, mean ones sometimes, particularly from the men about the women faculty. We hired one young woman, and I heard the men in the office—they seem to think I and the other women on the staff are deaf—call her a . . . well, a ‘fuck bunny.’ I walked out from my space and let them know I’d heard them; they didn’t say that again. I remember when no one said a word like that, not in a college anyway.”
I nodded my agreement, wondering what Dawn’s experience in matters of crude sexual language had been. She was in her fifties; I’d looked up her statistics along with those of the rest of the faculty and staff—no big deal. Anyone who knows how to use a computer can do that. Earlier, one had to get access to a file cabinet; not much difference. She was a pretty woman, naturally so; her hair was dyed, but worn conservatively in what I call a bun but others call something fancier. Clearly efficient, she escaped, because of her age, the flirtatious attempts of many male professors. I’d learned also that the students had great affection for her—actually, Octavia had learned that. She’s very good at gathering casual information for me; I may have to make her a partner one of these days, though my impression is that she prefers to pick up information on her own account, and offer it as a surprise, rather than being sent out officially to snoop. Getting printed information is, in Octavia’s eyes, a matter requiring less talent and less challenging.
Dawn had ordered a steak and she seemed to be enjoying it. “I don’t eat red meat very often, and it’s a nice treat once in a while,” she explained. She had a tendency to explain or apologize for everything, which I didn’t try to stop: it’s a habit that serves my purposes.
“Steak is no longer fashionable,” I said, “but I think it’s a great meal. It really gives you the sense that you’ve eaten something. As you might guess from looking at me, I like to eat.”
“You have a very pretty face,” she said. You’d be amazed how many people say that to me, and to almost all fat women, meaning: If you’d thin down you’d really be attractive. They never actually spell it out; implication is all.
“I sometimes think I started putting on weight in college because of my pretty face,” I said. “I didn’t really like guys coming after me all the time.” This was quite untrue; I was a fat baby and never changed. But my aim in this conversation was to lead it where I wanted it to go; it worked.
“I know what you mean. Some of the male faculty are really horrible. The girls look up to them, and they take advantage of it, or even encourage the shy ones. Not all the faculty, but most. I try to warn the girls sometimes, and some of them are grateful; others think I’m just jealous because I’m not their age. I guess most women have to learn about life for themselves.”
I smiled and urged her to drink her wine; I’d ordered a bottle over her objections, pointing out that I like wine with my meal, and she might enjoy just sipping a little. I didn’t want to talk about sex, not unless it led to some real anger; I wanted to talk about the real splits in the department. I said, “There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask someone who could explain it to me; I don’t meet many professors in my line of business.” In fact, Kate Fansler, met only the other day, was my first professor to talk to, but I didn’t bother adding that. I’d known Claire Wiseman, of course, but in an entirely different kind of case. “What do they fight about really? Do they think what they teach is more important than what the others teach, or is it a question of politics? We keep hearing about how the conservatives think the liberals have taken over the academic world. It’s all very confusing to someone like me.”
I looked at her hopefully, and poured a tiny amount of wine into her wineglass; I didn’t want to overwhelm her or seem to be getting her drunk for nefarious purposes.
She took a sip. “I guess I’ve never really tasted good wine before,” she said. “I always hate it; it tastes sort of sour, or else sweet.”
I smiled gratefully. And waited.
“Professors are peculiar,” she said. “The older ones have tenure, which means they can’t ever be fired; you’d think that would make them secure, and they’d just go on doing whatever they got tenure for doing. But they still hate the thought that anyone might not want to hear what they have to say, or read what they write, or invite them to important conferences. The younger professors in the department, the ones without tenure, have different ideas sometimes, and it seems to me the older professors feel threatened. I don’t know any of the details except in one case.”
I smiled encouragingly and sipped my wine. It was good.
“There’s a professor in the department, one of the most famous. He’s an authority on Freud.”
“Freud? I thought it was a literature department.” I really was surprised to hear Freud mentioned, but I shouldn’t have interrupted her. “Do go on,” I urged.
“I don’t attend the committees where the full professors decide on who to give tenure to, but news always leaks out. I know what happens because either they all talk about it in my office, or one of them tells me about it, to keep on my good side, or because they all like to talk and need to talk to someone who can follow what they’re saying. Anyway, everyone in the department knows that if an assistant professor writes anything about Freud that questions anything about him, that’s the end of that younger person’s chance for tenure. He turned down a wonderful young woman because of that.”
“But surely it takes more than one old professor to turn someone down?” I really wanted to understand this stuff.
“But there’re always others who don’t like the candidate. In this case she was a woman; she taught feminist texts, and suggested that Freud had been mistaken— or so I gathered. I don’t really read all that the people in the department write; even if I could understand it, I haven’t the time.”
“It all sounds pretty petty to an outsider. Maybe all busines
ses are like that. But in most businesses, if you don’t bring in the money, you don’t get to keep the job. In a big detective firm, say, if you never solve any cases or satisfy any of the customers, you won’t last long.” I was determined to ask Kate what the point of tenure was, but it wasn’t a question I really wanted Dawn’s opinion on.
“It is petty,” she said. “They’re supposed to be dealing with great writing and eternal truths, and they act more like salesmen fighting over territory— that’s what one of the other department secretaries said, and I thought it was true.”
“Sure sounds it,” I said. I decided not to question her any more; after a time, you begin to seem a little too interested in what they’re saying, which is a good impression to avoid if you can.
Dawn went on: “The truth is, the department’s changed a lot. We get very different students than when I began working there; of course, they’re not all women anymore— Clifton used to be a women’s college—but it’s more than that. In those days, we got mostly well-off, anyway, middle-class kids, Americans, whose parents had been to college and sort of spoke the same language as the professors; I don’t just mean English,” she explained, quite unnecessarily, but I nodded understanding, “but how they look at the world and all. Today many come from other countries, and they’re interested in peculiar things— well, some of them do seem peculiar to me, though I don’t feel right in judging. ‘Queer studies,’ for instance, that’s what they call it: the study of homosexuals in literature. And the study of imperialism and colonial peoples; and, of course, feminism. They also do a lot with race, and class, and that sort of thing. Many of the older professors want the students to concentrate on the classics— Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton—and some students want to study more modern authors and the younger professors don’t see why they shouldn’t. It makes for a lot of trouble, I can tell you that, and the worst part is deciding who to hire and who to give tenure to. I try not to look back, but in the old days, there was a kind of good feeling in the department that just isn’t there anymore.”