The Faculty Club

by Danny Tobey

“Yes.”

  “You pulled it?”

  “We did.”

  “And . . .”

  “It was a contract dispute. A stupid old case that no one would ever look up.”

  “That’s suspicious.”

  “Everything’s suspicious when you want it to be, Jeremy. That’s the point. It never ends. I had my math friends go crazy on it. For months. No clues. No hidden codes. It’s just a case.”

  “Fine.”

  “I spent a semester on it. Nothing.”

  “I said fine.”

  “Jeremy,” Chance said, not unkindly. “You’re showing up late to a game you can’t win. I’ve been pursuing this for seven years. There are people who have tried for as long as the V and D has existed. You’re talking to a guy who believes in UFOs, but I can’t tell you what these people are really about. Do they have some amazing secret? Maybe. Are they just a bunch of deluded old rich guys desperate to beat the reaper? Could be. Or maybe they’re just satisfied ruling the free world. I don’t have a clue. Magic or not, bullshit or not, I have discovered one thing. These people take themselves seriously. They have real power. And they don’t like being fucked with.”

  “Why did you waste my time, then?”

  “Jeremy,” Miles said gently, “we told you all this to take the thrill out of it. It doesn’t lead anywhere.”

  “But the obituary—”

  “Someone’s messing with you. Don’t let them.”

  “But who?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s someone who wants to hurt them. Maybe it’s them, seeing if you’re smart enough to let it go.”

  Miles exhaled. He looked at Chance.

  “Tell him about Sammy Klein.”

  “Sammy Klein,” Chance repeated.

  He shook his head.

  “Sammy was a nice guy,” Chance said to me. “A really good guy. He got interested in the V and D. It happens. The secrecy. The lore. People are drawn to conspiracies, puzzles. Just because I publish bullshit doesn’t mean I’m stupid. Something about them rubbed Sammy the wrong way. He wouldn’t give it up. He got a lot farther than I ever did. God only knows what he knew. He was going to show them.”

  “I knew him,” Miles said. “He was in my dorm, freshman year. Quiet. Always polite to people.”

  “They found him on the beach,” Chance said. “His wallet was gone. Someone stabbed him seven times. The police called it a mugging and closed the case.”

  “Maybe it was just a mugging—”

  “Jeremy,” Miles said. He actually put his hand on my arm. “Take the Incompletes. Get straight A’s next semester. You’re going to be okay.”

  I sat there for a long time. They watched me.

  Then I spoke.

  “Did you Shepardize Creighton v. Worley?”

  “What?”

  “Jeremy,” Miles said cautiously.

  “Shepardize. That’s where you take a case and see all the later cases that cite it. Did you?”

  “No,” Chance said slowly.

  “Jeremy,” Miles said again.

  “How do you do that?” Chance said.

  I told him. We went to the computer and pulled up the case. I showed him how to Shepardize it. Miles was watching us quietly from the corner; he didn’t stop us, but I could see he wasn’t done. A few citations came up on the screen, but nothing that stood out on first glance. It felt wrong.

  I shook my head. “They wouldn’t use the computer. Too many eyes. They’d use the books.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Miles said. “If it’s in the books it’s on the computer.”

  “Not if someone changed just our book,” I said.

  That shut everyone up for a moment.

  Chance stole a guilty glance at Miles, then looked at me. His eyes had a new life in them.

  “Where?” he asked.

  Miles looked at me, shook his head.

  “The law library,” I said.

  Chance started tapping his fingers again. He started laughing. “Seven months with the math nerds, I didn’t ask a fucking lawyer.” He shook his head. He reached for the joint, sparked it back to life. He took a long drag. After a while, he closed his eyes.

  His breathing slowed. Color came back to his face.

  He laughed nervously.

  “Forget it,” he said. “Forget it.”

  He took another long drag, then said to himself, “Remember Sammy Klein.”

  Miles stood up. He was so massive, in that realm between fat and muscle; the room bowed under the authority of his size.

  “Then we’re done,” Miles said. He put his hand on my back and I stood.

  “Thank you, Chance. I know it’s not easy dragging all this up. You did a good thing tonight. Jeremy doesn’t know it yet, but he’s grateful.”

  “I know.” He nodded. “You keep me sane.”

  Miles laughed and gave him a Russian bear hug, all mass and hard claps on the back.

  Miles and I started walking. We were out the door quickly. Chance called after us. “Your article,” he said. He was holding the obituary in his hand. I’d left it on the table.

  As I stepped back in to get it, he caught my eye and mouthed:

  “One hour.”

  18

  Miles grilled me until he was satisfied I’d gotten the message.

  I thanked him and left to run an errand. Something had been bugging me ever since my failed induction into the V&D.

  I retraced my steps on the paths winding across campus. It was quiet now, except for the occasional thumping of a party from an open window above me. Here and there, couples made out in the shadows; small groups sat in the grass, talking quietly or strumming guitars.

  I followed the route we’d walked to her house, after the moonlight confession. I passed the site where the oranges had spilled. I passed the retaining wall where we sat on the ground and talked. I remembered her smile, the quiet tears.

  The house looked the same. It was a brownstone; a half-flight of steps led up to the front door. I found S. CASEY on the names by the buzzer.

  I rang the bell, and an unfamiliar girl answered the door.

  “Can I help you?” she said. She looked like an engineering student, short ponytail, no smile. She had a book on bridges under her arm.

  “I’m looking for Sarah,” I said. Suddenly it felt crazy to be here. My palms were clammy. My shirt was wet under my arms.

  “She’s still at the hospital,” the girl said.

  “She’s working?”

  “No.” The girl looked at me, puzzled. “She’s in the hospital.”

  “What? What happened?”

  The girl cocked her head.

  “I haven’t seen you before.”

  “I’m a friend of Sarah’s.”

  She looked at me suspiciously.

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Never mind. I’ll just see her there.”

  I started backing away.

  “Hey!” she called, but I was already down the steps. I half-ran to Student Health. The hospital entrance was around the side.

  It was late, and the floor was deserted. I saw two nurses at the end of the hall, watching TV in the waiting area.

  No one was manning the nurses’ station. I stole a look down the hall, then went behind the counter to the row of charts on the back wall. I found Casey, S. There was a tab marked Admission History. I went to the first page and tried to decipher the handwriting and the abbreviations.

  The opening line made the world lurch and reel under me:

  Pt is a 26 yo WF c– no significant PMH who presented to the ER tonight s/p acetaminophen OD c/w suicide attempt.

  I felt my heart drop. I checked the date on the note: four days ago. I had no idea what s/p or c/w meant, but I got the picture.

  My skin was cold and my heart was pounding in my head.

  Room 203, the chart said.

  I looked at the door. I didn’t want to move. But I had this sick feeling that my only wa
y out of this hospital was through room 203. What was my alternative? To just take off, the way you might drop a vase in a store and walk out past the clerks, leaving them to find the pile of glass on the floor? It was tempting.

  I knocked, touched my forehead against the cool door, and listened until a weak, sleepy voice said, “Come in.”

  She was on her back, a stack of pillows under her head. A yellow mirrored balloon hung halfway to the ceiling behind her. It said get well soon. There was a plastic water pitcher and two empty cups of ice cream on her bed tray. She looked pale.

  When our eyes met, it took her a second to recognize me.

  “Sarah, I am so sorry,” I managed.

  “Get out,” she said, her voice scratchy and soft.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “GET OUT.” Louder this time—it would have been a scream if her throat had been working at full strength, but as she was, it came out like a hoarse moan, and she winced as she said it. I found the door and fumbled my way out, willing myself toward the exit, head down. I left, stealing one last look at the nurses watching I Love Lucy down the hall.

  Chance was already in the library, with a baseball cap pulled over his messy curls.

  “What’s with you?” he said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Two in one day.” I brushed past him. “Let’s do this.”

  “Geez, what got into you?”

  Rage is what got into me—something about Sarah, the hospital, the V&D. I was filling with a hot, venomous anger; it had started in my toes on the way over here, and my eyes were about to go under.

  “These are not good people. They make people do bad things. Someone should do something.”

  “So now this is public service?” Chance asked, smiling. “It’s not about revenge anymore?”

  I was starting to hate this guy.

  “Why are you so interested in them?” I snapped. “Going for a Pulitzer?”

  “This is a university. It’s supposed to be open. I don’t like the idea that there are places on campus I can’t go.”

  “Are you kidding me? This whole place is one big club. You think anyone can just walk on campus and start taking classes?”

  “So?”

  “So you don’t hate clubs. You hate clubs you can’t get into.”

  “Are you calling me a hypocrite?”

  “Are you calling me a hypocrite?”

  I had a sudden vision of Miles clapping his hands: You guys are gonna love each other!

  I took a deep breath.

  “Forget it,” I said. “It’s just . . . I just saw something that rattled me.”

  “I think you’ll find,” Chance said, “the more you do this, the more that will happen. Shall we?”

  I laughed, a little embarrassed at my outburst.

  “Why not? Like I said, someone’s gotta do something.”

  “That’s what we humans do best,” Chance said, grinning. “Something.”

  I pulled the Shepard’s index, a large dusty tome, from the shelf. We found Creighton v. Worley. We pulled the volume and scanned down to the list of citing cases.

  They were identical to the ones on the Internet.

  But in the margin, someone had added a few more.

  My heart started pounding. I saw Chance’s face light up.

  “I totally underestimated you,” he said.

  I read the first case out loud.

  “Michaelson v. Mitchell.”

  “Holy shit,” Chance said.

  “What?”

  It was exciting, but I didn’t feel like we knew anything helpful yet.

  Chance said, “Those are buildings on campus.”

  I stared at him.

  “They are?”

  “Michaelson. The Michaelson Chemistry Labs. Mitchell. One of the freshman dorms.”

  “Where?”

  “We need a map,” Chance said. He was buzzing now. I saw a glimpse of the old reporter, the one who must have existed seven years and a thousand joints ago.

  We grabbed a campus map from the information booth and marked the buildings: Creighton, Worley, Michaelson, Mitchell.

  Four dots.

  “Check the rest,” he said.

  I recognized some of the names. Chance recognized all but one. Each pointed to a building on campus. My heart was racing. We charted nine points on the map.

  Chance took the pencil and drew a line connecting them. It started in one part of campus and snaked lazily—but purposefully—toward another.

  My fingers were starting to tingle.

  But it was incomplete.

  We stared at the last case.

  “Zimmer Kettle Corp. v. Industrial Steel, Inc. Hmm . . .” Chance tapped a pencil on his forehead. “Kettle is Kettle Hall. That’s easy. But Industrial Steel . . .”

  He shook his head.

  He tapped the pencil relentlessly. It was starting to drive me crazy. I was about to snatch it away when a smile spread across his face.

  Then, with the flourish of an artist drawing the final stroke of his masterpiece, Chance put one last dot on the map and circled it.

  “Industrial Steel,” he said, shaking his head with admiration.

  I looked at his dot. It fell right on our path, completing it. It landed smack in the middle of a rectangular building.

  “That’s a dorm, right?”

  “Indeed. Embry House.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Of course not. Only someone who really knew this campus would. That’s why they saved it for last. That dot,” he said, pointing to his final mark, “sits, give or take, on a famous room in Embry. The only room on campus, in fact, to allow ten people to live in one space. Party central. The waiting list is out the door. But it always seems to go to legacies. And not just any legacies—like tenth generation, ‘my ancestors were on the Mayflower’ legacies. You have to hold your liquor to live in that room.” Chance gave me a proud look. “That’s why they call it the Steel Man.”

  He beamed, either at his own cleverness or the V&D’s.

  “You think the V and D meets in a dorm room?” I asked sarcastically.

  Chance shook his head, unfazed.

  “No,” he said, smiling at me. “I think they meet below it.”

  19

  Chance and I made a pact. First, tell no one. Second, meet tomorrow night, under cover of darkness, to see where our trail might lead.

  The thrill of discovery got me home and into bed, and then reality broke through. I tried to press away thoughts of hospital rooms and half-limp balloons. But her face kept coming back to me. Her strained, scratchy voice:

  GET OUT.

  I had terrible dreams. I saw a room filled with a thousand baby angels, plump and dreamy, the kind Raphael imagined. They had slow, doll-like movements. There were shafts of light from tall windows. The angels were eating. Their chubby little hands brought spoons up and down, up and down to their mouths. When I entered, all thousand of them looked up at once and started screaming.

  I woke the next morning, sweating, raw. I felt alone and lost, sick in my stomach. I reached for the phone in the darkness and dialed.

  “Twice in one week? What is this, Christmas?”

  “Hey Dad. Is Mom there?”

  “She ran out. What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I just . . . wanted to ask her a question.”

  “Why don’t you ask me?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Try me,” he said.

  Ever since my dad’s heart attack, I was afraid to tell him that anything was less than perfect, as if whatever I said might trigger the next big one. But I needed someone. I needed help.

  “C’mon, give an old man a chance,” he said. “Let me be a dad for once.”

  I sighed. I wasn’t even sure what I’d wanted to say.

  “I think I did something really bad.”

  A pause, then:

  “Did you break the law?”

  “No.”

/>   I heard him breathe out on the other end.

  “Did you cheat in school?”

  “No.”

  “You hurt somebody?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you didn’t like them?”

  “No.”

  “Because it helped you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen to me.” I braced myself for a lecture on big shots and little guys: toughen up, grab what’s yours, take no prisoners. Instead, he said: “If you did something bad, you make it right. You hear me?”

  “Yes. Yes, sir.”

  “Then you decide who you want to be, and you be it.”

  The line was quiet for a second.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay. I will.”

  “Make me proud of you,” he said.

  The call left me dizzy; startled, like I’d been slapped across the face.

  For the first time in years, I’d heard the teacher again—the one everyone in town called on when they didn’t know what to do.

  Chance wore black from head to toe, as planned. He leaned against a tree away from the light; I could make out only the vague shadow of his form, the white eyes and pale strip of skin under the ski mask. As I got closer, his uniform came into view: cargo pants, hiking boots, backpack, hooded pullover; he looked like a real guerrilla journalist, with none of the idiot flair of my black sweatshirt and dress pants. But with two hundred dollars in my bank account and no career in sight, I wasn’t about to spend my ramen money on a new ghost-hunting wardrobe. He handed me a ski mask.

  “Thanks.”

  He rubbed black grease on his face, then pulled his mask back down. I took the tin and did the same. He looked at my feet.

  “Dress shoes?”

  I shrugged.

  “Whatever,” he said. He checked his camera, then slipped it into a black pouch on his waist. “Anything visible?” He turned in a circle.

  I said no and did the same.

  “So. We’ve got a map, thanks to you,” Chance said. “What we need now is an entry point. Thanks to me.”

  “An entry point to what?”

  Chance had been cagey about how exactly our map translated into action. I think he enjoyed this little bit of power. It wouldn’t be as simple as walking into the Steel Man, that much I knew. Chance was convinced the dorm was a placeholder, not our actual destination.

  “Every university has a story about steam tunnels that run underground and connect all the buildings,” he told me. “It just so happens that this university, being very old, actually has them. Come on.”