Testing Kate

by Whitney Gaskell

Now I was crawling along, trying to find the house number he’d given me, although none of the houses on the damned street appeared to be marked. Still, it was a lovely neighborhood, just off Prytania, with cobblestone sidewalks and large Greek Revival homes.

  “There it is!” I said triumphantly. The only house on the entire street with a number on the mailbox just happened to be Armstrong McKenna’s. I felt a little burst of triumph.

  “Maybe my luck is finally starting to turn,” I said aloud as I shifted the car into reverse to pull into the only curbside spot available on the street, which just happened to be located right in front of his house.

  I felt a thump, the soft resistance of my back tires hitting something.

  “What the…,” I started to say.

  And that’s when the howling began. It was an awful noise, like the scream of a banshee hell-bent on revenge. Goose bumps actually broke out over my chest and arms.

  I leapt out of the car and ran back to where the source of the screeching was coming from. There, lying on the pavement with all four of its stumpy legs waving up in the air, was the fattest basset hound I’d ever seen. The dog had limpid eyes, long ears, and a brown-and-white coat. I crouched down next to the hound, looking in vain for any obvious signs of blood or injury. But still, he might have internal injuries. I was going to have to get him some help.

  I looked a bit grimly at Armstrong McKenna’s enormous periwinkle-blue Greek Revival home. Showing up on his doorstep with an injured dog in tow—particularly one that I had just run over—was not going to make the best of first impressions. But what choice did I have? I started to reach forward, ready to pick up the basset hound, but quickly realized it wasn’t possible. This was a dog who liked his kibble, and there was no way I was going to be able to lift him, much less heave him all the way up McKenna’s front walk.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told the dog, and I ran up to McKenna’s front door. A gas lamp hung next to the door, the light already glowing, even though sunset was still hours off. I rang the bell and could hear the chimes—which, bizarrely, sounded like the first few bars of the William Tell Overture—and waited.

  The door swung open, and there was Armstrong McKenna. He was a small man—short with a slight frame—but extremely elegant. I guessed that he was in his fifties, although his thin face was youthful. His hair was streaked with gray and brushed back off his face, and he was wearing a beautiful blue broadcloth shirt—which looked, even to my uninformed eye, as though it had been hand tailored—tucked into pressed khaki chinos. He grinned at me.

  “Kate Bennett, I presume,” he drawled.

  “Yes. I…I just hit a dog. Out on the street. I think he’s going to need a vet. Could you please call someone?” The words came out of me in a great rush.

  “Who, Elvis?” he asked.

  “What?” I replied, puzzled, and then noticed the crystal glass in his hand, half full of what looked like bourbon.

  Oh, great, I thought with dismay. McKenna must be drunk. So drunk he was suggesting we call a dead rock star. Obviously, I was going to be on my own in this crisis.

  My thoughts must have been reflected in the incredulous look I was giving him, because Armstrong McKenna shook his head impatiently and gestured with his glass. “Elvis is my dog. Well. He’s a dog that lives in my house, in any event,” he said.

  My heart sank. I had just run over my prospective employer’s dog. Just when I thought this couldn’t get any worse.

  “He’s standing right behind you,” Armstrong continued.

  I whirled around. The brown-and-white hound was standing on the front walk, gazing at the stairs disconsolately with red watery eyes.

  “He hates climbing stairs. He’s always trying to talk me into lifting him up, but he’s gotten so damned fat, I can hardly budge him these days.”

  “But…but…I hit him! Or, at least, I think I did. And when he was lying on the road, he seemed like he was in a lot of pain,” I exclaimed.

  “It happens all the time,” Armstrong said. “He’s been hit at least ten times that I know of. He likes to nap in the middle of the street, the old fool. You’d think he’d have learned his lesson by now.”

  “But shouldn’t we take him to a vet and have him examined?” I asked.

  “He looks fine to me,” Armstrong said.

  Elvis had tired of waiting to be lifted up onto the porch and began slowly climbing the stairs. When he reached the top, the hound sighed heavily before passing through the front door.

  “Come on in, darlin’,” Armstrong said to me. “You’re just in time for cocktail hour.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was not yet four-thirty.

  “I’m here for the interview,” I reminded him.

  “We’ll get to that. But you can’t get to know someone properly until you’ve seen what they’re like after a few drinks,” Armstrong pronounced, and waved me into the house. “You do drink, don’t you? I can’t abide teetotalers. Or vegetarians or yoga fanatics, for that matter. You’re not any of those, are you?”

  “Um, no,” I said, wondering if this was part of the interview.

  “Thank God for that.”

  The house was large and opulent—and looked like it had been furnished by a color-blind lunatic. It was stuffed near to bursting with enormous crystal chandeliers, heavy Victorian furniture upholstered in garnet-red velvet, gilded candlesticks and tiny Limoges boxes gathering dust on every tabletop, and fussy silk draperies swathed on every window. Just two steps in the door and I immediately felt overcome by a choking claustrophobia.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Armstrong McKenna said. “It looks like a French whorehouse.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that,” I said. Actually, I imagined French whorehouses were more tasteful than this.

  “Ironic, no? A gay man living in a whorehouse? Of course, it wasn’t really ever a whorehouse, just emblematic of my dearly departed mother’s hideous taste. Although I’m not sure that makes it any better,” he said, frowning for a minute. “I just moved back in last month, so I haven’t had a chance to de-chintz and de-pouf most of it. Maybe that’s something you can help me with.”

  “Sure,” I said gamely, wondering if this meant that I had the job…and if he really expected me to know how to decorate.

  “Let’s go back to the library. It’s the only room in the house that I can sit in without becoming constipated,” Armstrong said. He crooked his arm at me in a courtly gesture. “Shall we?”

  “I’m famished. Let’s go get a nibble,” Armstrong (which he’d insisted I call him) said an hour later. He’d had two more bourbons, which didn’t seem to be affecting him at all. I’d been nursing one glass of white wine and felt a little light-headed.

  Since we’d arrived in the library and settled down on a pair of twin black leather Chesterfield sofas, Armstrong had spent most of the time regaling me with the history of the house. It had been decaying and rotted through when his parents bought it thirty years earlier, and they’d spent the next ten years—“And the lion’s share of my inheritance,” Armstrong said dryly—restoring it to its former glory.

  “I kept the house after they died, and I decided to move back to New Orleans when I retired last year,” he concluded.

  “Aren’t you going to interview me?” I finally asked.

  Armstrong looked surprised. “For what?” he asked.

  “The job. I thought you were looking for a research assistant,” I said.

  “Oh, that. The job is yours,” Armstrong said, waving his hand as though it were all a foregone conclusion. “You’re the only one who responded to my advertisement.”

  I thought of his note card, folded in the pocket of my knapsack, and felt a stab of guilt.

  “But…don’t you at least want to know my qualifications?” I said. “I majored in History as an undergrad at Cornell, and—”

  “No, that’s okay. You’ll do fine,” Armstrong said, interrupting me. “I liked you the moment I saw you. I like your fa
ce. You remind me of a young Doris Day.”

  “Um, thanks. I think,” I said. Wasn’t Doris Day the one who had her hair curled into a stiff flip and was always wearing a pillbox hat?

  “Besides, it’s not like the work is going to be particularly hard.” Armstrong made a face. “It’s just a book. I could write it in my sleep.”

  “May I ask you a question?”

  “Fire away,” Armstrong said.

  “Why was your card up at the law school? Wouldn’t you rather have a history graduate student help you?” I asked.

  Armstrong snorted. “Absolutely not. I taught at the University of Virginia for twenty-five years, and I’m sick to death of history graduate students. They’re all sanctimonious as hell.”

  “I’m not sure law students are much better,” I said. “In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re even worse.”

  “Well, that’s a risk I’m just going to have to take. Now, let’s go over to Jacques-Imo’s for a nosh. They have the most fabulous banana cream pie,” he said.

  Chapter Seven

  On Monday morning, I went straight to Hoffman’s office, planning to apologize for my outburst. I arrived a half hour before class started and stood outside the door, tentatively tapping on the frosted glass pane. I could hear him moving around—there was a distinct cough and then he took a phone call—but he ignored my knocks. And then after my last knock, he’d yelled, “Go away!”

  And so I did.

  I went to P.J.’s for an iced coffee and then waited just outside the lecture hall, planning to intercept him before class. Students streamed by me on their way in, many of them looking at me with the sort of ghoulish interest motorists pay to cars burning on the side of the road. To avoid making eye contact with anyone, I rummaged through my enormous knapsack, pretending to evaluate my supply of legal pads and Uni-Ball black pens while glancing down the hall every five seconds to see if Hoffman was on his way. I studied some of the homemade campaign posters taped to the wall, painted in block letters on large, brightly colored sheets of poster board with ARCHER DAVIES FOR 3L CLASS PRESIDENT…MAKE NO PROMISES, BREAK NO PROMISES and RACHEL KATZ FOR ETHICS COMMITTEE—VOTE EARLY, VOTE OFTEN.

  “Why are you out here?” Nick asked, appearing beside me. He was wearing jeans and a navy blue polo shirt and had his black messenger bag slung casually over one shoulder.

  “Hoffman wouldn’t see me in his office, so I’m waiting for him here,” I said.

  “Yikes,” Nick said.

  “Thanks, that makes me feel loads better.”

  “You want my advice?”

  “No,” I said. “Go away.”

  “What’s going on?” Jen asked, walking up with Addison at her side. She was eating an orange. Between dainty bites, she swept tendrils of burnished red hair back from her face.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Are you plotting to kill Hoffman?” Addison asked. “Because this morning when I was driving here, Hoffman was crossing Freret Street and he walked right in front of my car. I could have nailed him, and since he wasn’t in the crosswalk, I would have totally gotten away with it.”

  “I don’t think it works like that,” Nick said.

  “Really? I thought that if you hit someone outside a crosswalk, it’s a freebie,” Addison said. He reached over and stole an orange segment from Jen. She swatted his hand.

  “Easy, tiger,” Addison said, popping the orange into his mouth. “Anyway, that reminds me. I was talking to a Three-L the other day, and she told me that when she had Hoffman her first year, he wasn’t such an asshole.”

  “So what happened to him?” I muttered.

  “His wife died. She was hit by a drunk driver while she was out walking the dog.”

  He said it matter-of-factly, but the words cut into me, making it hard to breathe for a minute.

  “Oh, God, that’s awful,” Jen said. “When?”

  “Last year, I guess. I don’t think he was ever anyone’s favorite teacher, but from what I hear he got a lot worse after that happened,” Addison said.

  As they talked, I stared down at my plastic cup of iced coffee, bending the plastic straw back where it poked through the lid, while I digested this new detail about Hoffman. I’d previously thought that he was a one-dimensional embodiment of pure evil. But now…now it turned out that we had more in common than I’d ever imagined.

  “He’s coming,” Nick said, nodding in the direction of the stairwell.

  Hoffman had turned down the hallway and was walking toward us. His hands were in his pockets, and he was whistling tunelessly.

  “Evil approacheth,” Addison whispered. “A chill wind blows through the air, animals take cover, flowers wilt—”

  “Shhhh,” I hissed.

  “Okay, okay, we’re going. Come on, guys, let’s leave Kate to her groveling,” Nick said, and he herded Jen and Addison ahead of him into the lecture hall. Jen looked back over her shoulder and gave me what I’m sure was meant to be an encouraging smile, but it had the effect of making me feel like I was on my way to an execution. My execution.

  “Professor Hoffman,” I said. “May I talk to you for a minute?”

  Hoffman stopped whistling and looked at me without interest. For a minute I thought he might not recognize me.

  “I’m in your Crim class,” I said helpfully.

  “I know who you are, Ms. Bennett,” Hoffman said, over-pronouncing the syllables in my name, rattling them off like verbal bullets.

  “I just…I just wanted to…apologize. For what I said…for what happened in class on Friday,” I said.

  Hoffman continued to stare at me.

  “I wasn’t trying to embarrass you,” I said. And even though I was using his words, the very accusation he’d thrown at me on Friday, I knew immediately that it had been just the wrong thing to say.

  Hoffman’s lip curled with disgust, and he regarded me in much the same way I had looked at the dead cockroach I’d found on my kitchen floor that morning.

  “Embarrass me? Ms. Bennett, considering your shoddy case analysis and obvious lack of preparation for my class, I would advise you to spend more time worrying about how much you embarrass yourself with your ineptitude. In fact, I’m beginning to think that perhaps law school isn’t the right place for you. Being a student here requires a certain amount of mental discipline, a drive, the ability to process information—all of which you seem to lack,” Hoffman said coldly. And then he turned and walked past me into the classroom. The door shut behind him with a muffled thud.

  The blood rushed to the surface of my skin, and I pressed my fingers to my cheeks to cool them. I felt a little dizzy and realized that I’d been holding my breath, catching it in my chest.

  “That’s it. There’s no fucking way I’m putting up with this any longer,” I muttered under my breath.

  I marched down the hallway, up a flight of stairs, and straight into the administration offices, which were housed on the second floor of the law school. The door from the hall opened into a gray-carpeted reception room, furnished with expensive-looking cherry office furniture. Behind the reception desk sat a middle-aged woman with a soft blonde bob and bored blue eyes. She was focused on her computer screen, frowning as she typed. I marched over and stood at her desk.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I’d like to see the Assistant Dean of Students.”

  The receptionist continued to type. “I’ll be with you in one minute,” she murmured, holding up a finger and not looking at me. An unflattering shade of tangerine lipstick was smeared across her mouth.

  I waited while she continued to whack away at the keys, ignoring me as she worked. Finally, after an unreasonably long time had passed, she stopped typing, clicked the mouse a few times, and then printed something out on a laser printer behind her. She removed the papers from the printer, neatly tapped them into a stack, stapled them, and dropped them in a metal out-box sitting on the corner of her desk. Only then did she look at me and say, “May I help you?”

  I
struggled to keep my temper in check. It never pays to piss off the gatekeepers, and right now I had bigger problems than difficult receptionists.

  “I’d like to see the Assistant Dean of Students,” I repeated in as pleasant a tone as I could muster.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No.”

  “Well, let’s see.” The receptionist flipped through a desktop calendar, the kind with the long columns that allow you to schedule every minute of every day. “Hmmm. No, that won’t work. Maybe…no, that’s not going to work either. I can give you an appointment on November the twelfth,” the receptionist said, looking up at me expectantly, pencil poised over the book.

  I shook my head. “No, I need to see her today. Now, if possible.”

  The receptionist clucked her tongue and shook her head regretfully. “I’m sorry, but Ms. Sullivan doesn’t see anyone without an appointment. This time of year is quite busy, what with the new semester just starting.”

  “The semester started weeks ago! And I can’t wait more than a month to see her,” I said.

  I dropped my oversize knapsack on the receptionist’s desk, where it landed with a thud that made her jump, and began to rifle through it, until I found the orientation material Tulane had sent to me before I left Ithaca.

  “See? Here on this pamphlet, it says that if we have any problem—any problem at all—to see Teresa Sullivan, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, who—and I quote—is responsible for counseling and advising students.” I waved the pamphlet at the nonplussed receptionist. “And I am a student in need of counseling!” My voice grew high and cracked on the word “counseling.” Suddenly, to my horror, hot tears began stinging in my eyes and my hands shook uncontrollably. “I need to see her now.”

  The receptionist looked at me with complete disinterest. She shook her head firmly and opened her mouth to speak, but I held up a hand to stop her.

  “Do not tell me she can’t see me now. In fact, don’t say anything—nothing—unless the next words out of your mouth are that you’ll pick up your stupid phone and tell Dean Sullivan that there’s a student out here in need of counseling,” I hissed.