Death in Eden

by Paul Heald

  Copyright © 2014 by Paul J. Heald

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Yucca Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Yucca Publishing

  Cover photo credit © Kirsty Pargeter

  ISBN: 978-1-63158-008-6

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63158-026-0

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Catharine and Gloria; Jenna and Tera

  “What was the sign that Adam and Eve had sinned?

  They covered up their nakedness. In a state of grace, clothes are unnecessary.”

  Donald Johansson

  Director of Eden Studio’s Toys in Babeland

  Contents

  I.

  PUBLISH OR PERISH

  II.

  THE IVORY TOWER

  III.

  CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

  IV.

  PORNO OR PARISH

  V.

  YOUR TAXES AT WORK

  VI.

  A HARD-BOILED DICK

  VII.

  THE HISTORIAN

  VIII.

  THE FREUDIAN

  IX.

  THE VICTIM

  X.

  THE SHOW MUST GO ON

  XI.

  HAPPENSTANCE

  XII.

  MACMILLAN AND WIFE

  XIII.

  JAILHOUSE BLUES

  XIV.

  PAGE TURNERS

  XV.

  SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

  XVI.

  MACMILLAN AND BABE

  XVII.

  SEARCH AND SEIZURE

  XVIII.

  A DAY OF PROBING

  XIX.

  JADED

  XX.

  FIFTEEN MORE MINUTES OF FAME

  XXI.

  TANGLED WEBS

  XXII.

  CAST FROM EDEN

  XXIII.

  JAILHOUSE ROCKED

  XXIV.

  MOONLIGHTING

  XXV.

  A STIFFIE

  XVI.

  EXIT STRATEGIES

  XXVII.

  A STIFF

  XXVIII.

  A STIFFED STIFFY

  XXIX.

  THE GREAT DIVIDE

  XXX.

  SEPARATION ANXIETY

  XXXI.

  A TRIP AND A DINNER DATE

  XXXII.

  A FORCEFUL CLIMAX

  XXXIII.

  THE TAIL END

  I.

  PUBLISH OR PERISH

  Professor Stanley Hopkins looked at the Greek letters emblazoned on the chest of Slouchy McBallCap and then glanced at the power cord to his laptop. How much time would he spend in jail if he garroted the tow-headed frat boy in front of the one hundred fifty students in Sociology 101? Maybe none when the jury heard that he had been asked once again why the Iraqis had nuked New York on 9/11. Instead, he counted to three, patiently explained the difference between Al Qaeda and Afghanistan, and then watched the class slowly file out of the room. Right after he got tenure, he was going to jump over the podium into their midst and pitch the electronic devices of every laptop-poker-player and Lady Gaga-re-tweeter right against cinderblock walls of the basement auditorium. That is, if he got tenure.

  He fended off a couple of questions about the exam (heaven forbid an undergrad should ask a question about the actual material) and trudged back up to his office where he found Victoria Kwon, his favorite graduate student, nervously waiting outside his front door.

  “Hi, Professor Hopkins! Did you have a chance to look at my draft?” Stanley had spent two days plowing through her doctoral dissertation, writing a detailed analysis that might help her nail the second draft in time to hit the post-doc market. This part of his job he didn’t mind at all: shepherding graduate students from a jumble of ideas and intuitions to a tight, polished, finished product. Seeing his own projects to completion was another story; that was like dancing in a minefield.

  He unlocked the door, motioned for her to take the chair across from his desk, and handed her a thick sheaf papers with a smile. “I think this is a great start.”

  A look of relief washed over her face, and the assistant professor spent the next hour praising the strengths of her history of labor relations in the early twentieth century garment industry and gently suggesting the sort of revisions and additional sources that her dissertation committee chair would want to see.

  “I wish you could be my official advisor,” she sighed as she got up. “Professor Martin is hardly ever around and he takes forever to read anything. And he doesn’t give nearly as thorough comments as you do.”

  “Until I get promoted and tenured, I can’t formally chair anyone’s committee.” As she left, he considered the two hurdles standing in the way of a permanent contract and elevated status: finishing his book on industrial sociology and not killing any undergraduates, both of which he could accomplish better by shutting his door and studying the “revise and resubmit” letter just received from a potential publisher of his research.

  A few minutes later he heard a sharp rap on his door and before he could respond, the Chair of the Sociology Department, Max Kurland, strode in and plopped down on the chair across from his desk. “Gotta second?”

  “Sure.” As usual, Kurland’s timing was unerring. Every time Stanley got his motor going, the administrator or one of his neighbors dropped by for a chat.

  Kurland gave his junior colleague a knowing wink. “I saw Vicki Kwon coming out of your office a while ago. With her body, she could always go into modeling if the grad school thing didn’t work out. Or maybe pole dancing.”

  “She is attractive,” Stanley replied warily, “and one of the best students I’ve ever had.” He was friendly with Max, but avoided talking with him about women. Before he became an administrator, the darkly handsome Kurland had the reputation of sleeping with some of his prettier students. Stanley was not above fantasizing about someone like Victoria, but he clung to the old-fashioned view that any sort of sexual relationship with a student was unethical, an opinion that his wife of ten years seconded enthusiastically.

  “I’ll have to take your word for it. I’ve never had her,” Max gave a lecherous little chortle. He stretched out his legs and studied the degrees in sociology and law framed on the wall. “I saw the Dean this morning and she was asking whether I anticipated any close tenure cases next fall.” He paused and looked at Stanley over steepled fingers. “Since your book is almost done, I told her no worries.”

  “Well,” he replied slowly, “it is, really. I just got a revision letter yesterday. The publisher is demanding one more chapter, one that focuses on a profession dominated by women.” Stanley had completed studies of lumberjacks, carnival workers, insurance adjusters, and pest control people, but his final planned chapter on hair salon workers had just been derailed by a brilliant paper from a professor at Cornell. “I just need to find a proper subject, and I’ve got it.”

  “Are your preliminary find
ings still consistent with your thesis?”

  Stanley nodded. Why wouldn’t the old sleazebag just get the hell out of his office and let him work? Kurland had no real interest in the content of the book. He just wanted to avoid the embarrassment—to himself and to the department—of seeing a struggling, young professor denied tenure. If Stanley failed to finish the book it would mean a black mark and a lot of paper work for the middle-aged department head.

  With a minimal effort to hide his impatience, Stanley explained that all groups of workers he had studied scored similar averages on the factors he was measuring: job satisfaction, self-esteem, drug use, inter-office relationships, and legal trouble related to employment. Much to his father’s disappointment, Stanley’s law degree had not led to a single billable hour, but rather to graduate school and the study of the sociology of human labor and the workplace. Instead of sucking three hundred dollars an hour from large employers, he interviewed their workers for an assistant professor’s paltry salary, a mind boggling decision discussed at every holiday meal since he had decided to stay in school.

  Max scratched his head as if he were digesting the information for the first time. “What about adding elementary school teachers? They’re still mostly women.”

  “God, I could fill a room with the existing scholarship on school teachers.”

  “Nurses?”

  “Ditto.” Stanley got up in an attempt to get Max to leave. “Don’t worry, I’m all over it.” When he was finally alone, he slumped back in his chair. Were it not for the mortgage, the car payments, and a deep-seated aversion to disappointing his wife, he would pay a final visit to Kurland’s office, hand in his keys and laptop, and leave his manuscript and the loutish undergrads far behind. The irony of his researching job satisfaction was temporarily lost from view.

  An hour later, the professor arrived home and deposited a sack of groceries and a briefcase in the kitchen. Hearing the television, he made his way to the living room and buried his nose in Angela’s soft, dark hair. He kissed her gently on the top of her head and slipped down next to her. On the screen, two grave pundits were concluding a debate on North Korea’s growing nuclear capabilities.

  “Lousy day?” Angela asked.

  “How did you guess?” He sighed as she leaned against him and told her about Max Kurland’s visit to his office. It pained him to see concern etching in her flawless skin and troubling her dark brown eyes. Her father had been a professor too, and she understood the vicissitudes of promotion and tenure. She did not suspect that he was beginning to doubt his own fitness for the academic life.

  He turned his attention to the television as she made a suggestion for the final chapter of his book. He barely heard her as he stared at the man being interviewed on the television, racking his brain for the proper reference. The interviewee was tall and wore a casual wool suit and stylish glasses highlighting an animated and intelligent face. Stanley could not quite make out what he was saying. “Turn it up!”

  “. . . hoping to make this the first major national release of a pornographic film since Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door in the early seventies,” the man explained.

  “I notice you just referred to Toys in Babeland as a pornographic film,” replied a pretty Hispanic newswoman. “Don’t most people in the industry prefer ‘adult film’?”

  “They do, Maria,” he replied, using the soft Spanish pronunciation of her name. “But that euphemism is not honest, or accurate. Let’s face it, Saving Private Ryan is very much an adult film, isn’t it? But when a director makes Saving Ryan’s Privates, I should be clear and call it pornography, no?”

  “I see,” the lovely reporter said as she stifled a giggle.

  Stanley leaned forward on the sofa. “Holy crap.” He turned with wide eyes. “That’s Donald Johansson.”

  “Who?”

  “Shh . . .” He reached over and turned up the volume.

  “. . . our nation’s brief flirtation with mainstream pornographic movies failed for several reasons. First, Linda Lovelace’s revelation that she was forced to have sex on the set of Deep Throat justifiably revolted critics and viewers alike. Nobody wants to go to a movie and feel like an accessory to rape. Also, the early movies were really boring, with poor production values, lousy scripts, and very amateur acting. Some of them look like bad documentaries on gynecology.”

  “And how is Toys in Babeland different?”

  “For one thing, our studio has a very good reputation with actresses. In fact, many of my scriptwriters and directors are women. If anyone isn’t comfortable, we stop shooting and make adjustments. It’s more time consuming to shoot with a woman’s needs in mind, but we get great performances and that draws the most talented stars to our studio. Perhaps your viewers won’t believe this, but we really try to have fun on the set, and I think it shows in the finished product.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for that, Mr. Johansson,” Maria shot back.

  “You’ve got to come see the movie, Maria. It’s a good comedy too.” He winked at her and then at the camera. “The test audiences have been rolling in the aisles!”

  “Maybe the network will ask me to do just that,” she stammered and then recovered her composure. “This is Maria Lopez, with Donald Johansson, aka Richard Ramrod, executive producer of the new ‘comedy,’ Toys in Babeland.”

  Stanley took the remote control from Angela’s and muted the sound. He stared in disbelief at the screen for a minute and shook his head. The porn mogul on the television had been a member of his fraternity in college. They had not known each other well, but there was no mistaking the commanding voice and distinctive profile of Don Johansson. In fact, the tall Californian had been one of the reasons he had quit Alpha Omicron at the end of his sophomore year.

  As a freshman at the University of Virginia, Stanley had drifted into fraternity life without really thinking about it. His friends in the dormitory were keen on “rushing,” so they went from frat house to frat house, barely able to remember the various concatenations of Greek letters swimming before their boozy eyes. His lack of eagerness proved to be a virtue in the cool eyes of the brothers of Alpha Omicron, for he was soon made a pledge and later moved into the house for his second year at college. He thought the rituals were stupid and the hazing sadistic, but the parties were great and enough of his new brothers shared his cynicism so that life was tolerable.

  When Stanley moved in, Don Johansson was a senior and notable for having the highest grade point average in the house, and the most atypical career plan: graduate studies at an Episcopal Seminary. As the underclassman with the best grades, Stanley came to the attention of the older student who made it a point to sit with him occasionally at dinner and poke fun at their compatriots who were avoiding academic probation by plagiarism or professional note-taking services. But it was not the breaking of bread with Johansson that the young professor remembered; it was the breaking of heads by the future seminarian.

  Stanley had been playing pool in the basement of the frat house with his roommate when one of the upper classmen had hurried down the stairs and asked if either of them was interested in pulling a train. The future sociologist shook his head instinctively and kept shooting, while his opponent scrambled up the stairs. He had heard the expression whispered before and knew that he had been invited to take a turn having sex with some drunk young woman. Several of his brothers had bragged of their exploits and had even suggested with a laugh that any unconscious female in the house was fair game. No one who heard the statement had contradicted his opinion. Given it was a Friday night and a party was raging above his head, anything was possible.

  He racked the balls and continued to play, rationalizing his decision to stay in the basement and ignore the warning bells going off in his head. The men involved were undoubtedly bigger than him and drunk off their asses. It wasn’t just one guy that he could reason with, but a whole fired up group. And what could he do anyway? Call the cops and get the whole frat closed down?
And who was stupid enough to pass out at a frat party anyway? This last uncharitable thought sickened him instantly, for it was surely shared by the men upstairs. But there was probably nothing going on. It was probably consensual.

  Two minutes later, that last hope was punctured by excited shouts and the sound of furniture breaking above his head. He rushed up the stairs just in time to see Don push one very drunk frat brother into a walnut trophy case and then throw a lamp at another who ducked around a bookshelf. A sobbing girl was cowering behind him as he cut a furious path toward the front door, throwing punches and shouting obscenities at the small group of young men protesting his rescue of the girl. The star of the house’s intramural football team was the last obstacle blocking his escape out of the foyer, but Don was not alone in his anger and disgust, and the way was cleared by two of his friends who wrestled the big lineman with a reverberating thump to the hardwood floor. When Don finally pushed the girl outside, the house erupted into a drunken melee of name calling and accusations of oathbreaking that took hours to subside fully. The hero of the episode never set foot in the house again, and Stanley left for good, several weeks later when the semester ended.

  The professor told the story to his wife, sparing none of the details of his own spinelessness. Angela hummed noncommittally, apparently impressed by the story of the rescue, but unwilling to ignore the stain of Johansson’s present career choice or brush aside her own husband’s shortcomings.

  “Tell me more over dinner. Let’s put the groceries away and start cooking.” She walked to the kitchen, but Stanley stayed seated for a moment, staring at a dog food commercial while an outrageous thought scurried about in his brain.