The Cursed Canoe

by Frankie Bow

  “Molly, you’re so creative, let’s have you come up first.”

  Pat nudged me gently. “Molly. They’re calling you up for the role play.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “NOW WE NEED SOMEONE to play the Prospective Student,” the Student Retention Officer announced.

  Pat’s hand shot up.

  Pat, the Student Retention Officer and I sat in a semicircle in front of the room.

  The Student Retention Officer, playing the Parent of the Prospective Student, went first.

  “Good afternoon, Professor Barda. Thank you for meeting with us. My son...”

  She turned to Pat to give him the opportunity to introduce himself.

  “My name is Carlo Ponzi,” said Pat. “Nice to meet you.”

  “My son Carlo is interested in the School of Business,” the Student Retention Officer explained to me. “What can you tell us about it?”

  I could have told her our college is called the College of Commerce, not the School of Business, but I realized it didn’t matter. Usually it annoyed me when someone from the Student Retention Office got our name wrong, but not today. She meant well, after all. I realized I was feeling charitable toward the Student Retention Office.

  It was a strange sensation.

  I recited the College of Commerce’s standard spiel to Pat: “We offer an innovative curriculum,” I said, making sure to speak loudly enough to reach the distant back row. “Students benefit from practical real-world experience, with opportunities such as the Mercedes Yamashiro Sustainability Fellowship and the James Hisashi Tanaka Scholarship for students planning to go into the hospitality business—”

  “I want to learn how to package up subprime mortgages and sell them as triple-A-rated bonds,” Pat declared, getting into the spirit of the role play.

  The Student Retention Officer added, “We’ve loved visiting your island, but it’s very different from our home. I know moving will be an adjustment for my son Carlo.”

  She beamed at her “son” slouched in the chair with his arms crossed, his gangly legs and filthy black work boots sticking out in front of him. The long, unpaved driveway that leads to Pat’s remote, mountainside house is mud most of the time. Normally Pat’s mucky shoes annoy me. Why can’t he just rinse them off with a hose or something, I wonder? But today I realized Pat’s neglected shoes were a marker of his evolved consciousness, his focus on the things in life that genuinely matter. I was so lucky Pat was my friend!

  “Before we make our decision,” said the Student Retention Officer, “can you help us to understand, Professor Barda, what we can expect? Maybe you can tell us, what do you enjoy about living here?”

  I thought about my time in graduate school, before I moved out to Hawaii. Freeway shootings, summer fires raging across the dry desert, the entertainment industry so pervasive you could walk into any coffee shop and ask a random person, “How is your screenplay going?” And they’d answer, “Almost finished.”

  Life in Mahina was blissfully uneventful by comparison. No one had any grandiose ambitions, and everyone knew all your business. People put up with you anyway because, hey, it’s an island and we’re going to have to run into each other again, so we might as well all get along.

  I had come to accept that fact of life, although I have to admit the complete loss of privacy had taken some getting used to. People seemed to know what was going on in my life almost before I did. For example, the first time I broke up with Stephen Park—

  “Molly? I mean, Professor Barda?”

  “Oh! What I like about living here.” The picture clicked into focus. I knew exactly what I should say. I took a deep breath and beamed at the audience.

  “There are so many things to love about living here: No gangs. No freeway shootings. No freeway, in fact.”

  The Student Retention Officer nodded encouragingly.

  I looked directly into her eyes. So blue! Flecks of cobalt-blue mascara were sprinkled across the top of her cheeks.

  “No freeway,” I repeated. “No snakes. No clowns.”

  It was true. I’ve never seen any of those things here. Freeways, gangs, snakes, clowns. I saw a transient flicker of confusion on the face of the Student Retention Officer. I took that as a signal I needed to elaborate further.

  “Well, there’s that one little blind snake,” I admitted, “But it doesn’t count. It’s more of a worm, really.” I waved my hand dismissively. Out in the audience, Emma clapped her hand over her face. She gets all picky and literal about things like how worms and snakes aren’t the same thing, supposedly. She didn’t have the advantage of my more holistic perspective. Science can only take you so far.

  “But clowns!” I exclaimed. “Absolutely not. We don’t allow them here.”

  “She’s right.” Pat nodded gravely. “You have to be careful. You let clowns in, and it changes the whole ecosystem. The next thing you know your island is getting overrun by bears on tiny bicycles.”

  I thought it was callous of Pat to pile on like that. It struck me that perhaps we were being unfair to clowns. Hating clowns is so common it’s a cliché, exactly like hating that band, I forgot their name but you probably know them as the band everyone hates, and maybe the members of the band don’t care, but I’ll bet the clowns do. How many are there, I wondered? Enough to populate a small country, probably. A nation of rainbow-wigged, bulb-nosed despair. Tears stung my eyes.

  “I don’t want to talk about clowns anymore,” I stammered, my voice cracking. “I’ve made my decision.”

  I extended my hand to Pat, preparing to welcome him to the James Hisashi Tanaka College of Commerce. I smiled and nodded magnanimously to the Student Retention Officer. And I opened my mouth to speak.

  “I am well groomed,” I announced. “And my hair is attractively styled.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  EMMA, PAT AND I SAT quietly around one of the Maritime Club’s plastic outdoor tables. I was so obviously miserable even Pat was reluctant to rib me. Emma sipped her beer thoughtfully. Pat nursed a cup of coffee. I had a cup of coffee too, but I wasn’t drinking it. Instead, I cupped my hands around it to feel the warmth. I was starting to feel the throbbing behind one eye that prefigures one of those screaming headaches where I feel like my eyeballs are going to pop out of my skull and shoot across the room.

  Pat finally spoke. “I don’t think it was a mistake, Molly.” He sounded a little defensive. “I think it’s good you went in to see someone about your anxiety. You can’t keep having these panic attacks and not do anything about it.”

  “We’re not blaming you, Pat,” Emma assured him. “It’s just that Molly should have tried the medication over the weekend or something, so she’d know how she reacted to it.”

  “I shouldn’t have taken it after the wine,” I said.

  “The wine probably didn’t help,” Emma agreed.

  “When we were about to walk up to the Student Retention Office, though, I thought my heart was going to explode. I had to do something. And you know, the medication did feel like it was working. I don’t know how it looked from the outside, but from my perspective? It was magical.”

  I let my head slump down onto my folded arms.

  “Now I’m never going to get tenure,” I mumbled into the tabletop

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Pat tried to reassure me. “That’s the nicest you’ve ever been to Linda. She might put in a good word for you.”

  “Linda?” I picked my head up. “I thought Linda was the blonde one with the long sleeved muumuus.”

  “Different Linda,” Emma said. “This Linda is the one who was leading the discussion today. The one you were doing the role play with. You actually were smiling at her. The whole time.”

  “Instead of cursing her in Sicilian and spitting on the ground,” Pat added.

  “So, what, then? Are you saying I should stay medicated at all times? Because it gives me a completely different personality? One that’s clearly superior to my actual personality?”

>   Pat and Emma were quiet for a few moments. Finally Pat said,

  “I think it’s wearing off.”

  “Did you ever read the package insert?” Emma asked.

  “No. The doctor told me to look it up online. I can do it now.”

  I pulled out my phone and found the drug information with a simple search. I expanded the tiny font so that only a few words showed on the screen at a time.

  “Unusual risk-taking behavior,” I read. “Decreased inhibitions. No fear of danger.”

  I glanced at Pat. He nodded approvingly and, I thought, a little smugly.

  “Sounds like exactly what the doctor ordered.”

  “Actually, Pat, you’re supposed to call the doctor if those things happen to you. Oh, and look at these.”

  I scrolled down and read through the list of possible side effects.

  I handed Pat my phone.

  “What’s this?”

  “The side effects. Read it. You know what? I don’t think I should take these anymore. Maybe I can just rely on my supportive friends to help me deal with the stress in my life. Right?”

  “Well, you’re not going to get all of these at once.” Pat slid my phone back over to me.

  By this time, my head was throbbing in earnest. I reached into my water glass, pulled out a handful of ice cubes, wrapped them in a napkin and pressed the whole thing against my forehead. It helped a little.

  “How did your other meetings go?” Pat asked.

  Emma shook her head. “I can’t believe you went to more meetings after that. I’m so glad I’m not a department chair.”

  “I think they went okay I had to talk Hanson Harrison down. One of his students from last semester is filing a lawsuit against him for giving him a C-minus. Then after Hanson, I had a meeting with that other poor kid. The one I had to remove from Larry’s class.”

  “Phone Boy,” Pat said.

  “Yes. Him. So you know how the Student Retention Office has been pressuring me to give him priority seating in class. I told them no, the class is already full.”

  “Why was this kid getting special treatment?” Emma asked.

  “My guess is he’s from out of state, so he pays the higher tuition.”

  “Right,” Pat said. “We never want to lose a customer.”

  “Especially not when Daddy’s a rich doctor,” Emma said.

  “So he wanted to get readmitted?” Pat asked.

  “No. Not exactly. He didn’t say anything about the class, in fact. He gave me a long speech about how our government has been complicit in terrorist attacks, how the moon landing was faked and there are all of these videos online that prove it, and he was going to email me the links because I absolutely had to know about this. But of course he had to be careful what he put in his email because there were certain people, the bad lizard people, who have infiltrated the ranks of our administration.”

  “Sounds plausible to me,” Pat said. “At least the last part about the administration being staffed by lizard people.”

  “Were you still high on your meds when you talked to him?” Emma asked.

  “No, thanks for asking. I’m telling you exactly what happened. And there’s more. Somehow he segued into how social networking was funded by the CIA and the military and there are already facial recognition systems set up in public places, and we’re all probably being watched right now.”

  “Not on our campus,” Emma scoffed. “Facial recognition systems? They can’t even keep our overhead projectors working.”

  “I wonder how much of the kid’s paranoid rant is true,” Pat mused. “Maybe he’s onto something, and the knowledge drove him mad.”

  “And then he told me my necklace was super cool and he couldn’t stop looking at it. Should I be worried?”

  Pat shrugged “He’s probably planning to kill you, steal your necklace, and go strangle Larry with it. Was there anything else about the facial recognition? That sounds kind of interesting.”

  “I think I’m going to talk to the SRO about him again,” I said. “Maybe the lizard people thing will be enough to get him referred to counseling. Anyway, yeah, the perfect end to a perfect workday. Top that.”

  “I got nothing,” said Emma. “The SRO meeting was pretty much the highlight of my year.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Pat said. “I found out more about those high paying library jobs. Namely, how high-paying they actually are.”

  Pat told us a number, and Emma and I gasped as if we had each been punched in the stomach.

  “So why did I bother to get a Ph.D.?” Emma said.

  “Seriously,” I agreed. “I wonder if any of them want to trade with me.”

  “I’d put in my application tomorrow,” Pat said, “If those jobs weren’t reserved for our graduates. Someone obviously set this up to make our graduates’ employment numbers look good.”

  “I guess I’m okay with the idea of subsidized employment, in principle,” I said. “We’re taking care of our own.”

  “I’d sure like to get paid that much for shelving books,” Emma said.

  “Yeah, me too. Anyway, this was fun, but I think I’m ready to wrap it up. I need to rest up for class tomorrow.”

  My head was pounding. More than anything else, I wanted to be home, lying down in the dark with a real ice bag on my head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  EVEN AFTER COMING HOME from the Maritime Club, heading straight to bed, and sleeping for twelve hours, I was feeling the aftereffects of Doctor Spinner’s anxiety pills. They were not pleasant. My only desire for the moment was to sit, calm and undisturbed, in my dim little office with the blinds drawn, with a few moments to myself before class.

  A jaunty knock shattered the quiet. It felt like the sound waves were making my brain bob up and down in my cerebral fluid like a cork. Was that physically possible? I’d have to ask Emma.

  I trudged over to my door and opened it.

  “Oh. Hi, Sherry.” I tried to muster an enthusiastic tone. “Come in.”

  I held the door open and stepped aside.

  “Hey, Dr. B! It’s super dark in your office. Ya want me to turn the light on?”

  “No! Uh, no thank you.”

  Sherry seated herself in the visitor chair. I stepped carefully around my desk and lowered myself slowly onto my yoga ball.

  “I don’t care for the artificial light,” I said. “I prefer the natural daylight.” I gestured at the tiny slivers of sunlight filtering through my tightly closed blinds.

  “So Dr. B, we love the idea of doing something technical for our business plan. I’ve been working on something I think is gonna be pretty great. I just had some questions about the assignment.”

  Sherry’s bright enthusiasm made me feel like someone was shining a klieg light in my face. I longed to be back in my bed with a blanket pulled over my head. As fleeing my office was not a realistic option, I rested my head in my hands in a pose that I hoped looked thoughtful, rather than hung-over.

  “Terrific,” I whispered. “I’m glad your group is getting started on this.”

  “I don’t want to say too much yet, but I think you’re gonna like it. Glenn’s been helping. That’s cool, right? I was gonna ask you about it, actually. Glenn’s not doing the work for me or anything. He’s helping me out with some of the details. Giving me advice and stuff.”

  “You may interview experts for your business plan, as long as you’re doing your own work. It’s in the assignment guidelines. Did you say Glenn is helping you?”

  “Yeah. He’s a doll.”

  “So what is his area of expertise?”

  “He’s real good with electronics,” she said.

  “Glenn? Your Glenn?”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s awesome at that stuff. You should see how he set up our TV. He got two different game consoles and the cable box hooked up, and he got it all working on one remote.”

  “Impressive,” I said.

  “It works perfect. I mean, as long as you don’t need to c
hange the volume.”

  “Well, that’s better than I could do,” I conceded.

  “He’s good at computers, too.”

  “That’s wonderful. He sounds like a real Renaissance man.” I pressed my hands to the sides of my head to still the throbbing. Why did Sherry have to be so chatty this morning?

  “Yeah! He knows all about sharing and privacy settings, like how you can put up a post but make sure only your friends can see it? Oh, that reminds me. I just sent you a friend request. Anyway, Glenn left town for some work thing, and he might be gone for a while, so I dunno what I’m gonna do.”

  “About your business plan?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah, that too,” she laughed.

  “How can I help?”

  “I got some ideas, but I feel like I need to learn more. I was hoping you had some recommended reading for me.”

  “You’ll want to get a general idea of what products are already out there, and where the unmet needs are.” I recommended a couple of established technology blogs and a computer security podcast I listen to when I’m having trouble sleeping. I didn’t tell Sherry the part about sleeping, of course.

  “Oh. And Sherry. I just remembered. Here’s something else you may want to look up. Facial recognition software? Have a look at the technology. It might inspire some ideas.”

  She reached into her purse for a pen and I glimpsed an open pack of cigarettes. “Facial recognition. Lemme write it down. Sounds cool. Oh, you think you could wear sunglasses to confuse the facial recognition software? Like the ones you’re wearing? Hey, how come you’re wearing sunglasses? Oh, don’t tell me. Hangover, right? Listen, I’m not judging, I’ve been there.”

  “Factors that confuse the facial recognition software. Good. Your group can investigate that too.” I nodded cautiously, lest I set my brain banging around inside my skull again.

  “Oh yeah, I gotta bunch of ideas. I don’t know which one is gonna work out. Dr. B, I gotta tell you, I’m loving this class. It’s like, opening a whole new world for me. I never thought of myself as a businesswoman, but now I feel like yeah, I could be one.”