Hummingbird

  The emcee was standing over in the wings. I’d replaced him at the podium.

  Fainting would have been the logical thing to do, but I remained painfully conscious under the audience’s collective gaze, my legs having lost half their muscle tone. The auditorium was packed. I looked over at the emcee and he made a frantic encouraging motion. I gripped the podium and leaned into the microphone.

  “Hello.”

  My voice reverberated through the auditorium. The spotlight stabbed at my eyes. A copy of The Pole rested on the podium in front of me. Clearly, I was meant to read from it. “Okay,” I muttered, thumbing through the book, or trying to thumb through it, as some prankster had glued the pages together. A quiet rage poured into my head as I struggled to pry the book open. I glared out at the crowd and they stared back at me without expression. I was about to hurl the book into their midst, when a familiar face came into focus in the front row. She wore eyeglasses, and her long red hair had been cut in a short, angular style, but I would have recognized her anywhere. The book in my hands cracked open. I looked down in surprise, then back up at Jasmine. She gave me an encouraging smile. I took a shaky breath and started to read.

  There had been no good reason for Jeremy to weigh in on the Banister scandal.

  The line was so unfamiliar that I read on with genuine curiosity.

  He didn’t know Ted Banister. They taught at different schools. Jeremy had nothing to gain by offering his point of view. But he had, and the moment he did, the dozens of apathetic young faces before him filled with interest. “To be clear,” he said, walking it back a little, wondering how he’d segued from Madame Bovary to this, “Professor Banister’s actions ought to be investigated. There’s no doubt about that. But I can’t help wondering if his suspension was a tad premature.”

  At the back of the room, a hand shot into the air. Jeremy’s diaphragm clenched. He paced behind the lectern, eyes sliding over the athletic blonde owner of the hand. “There are multiple sides to every story,” he hurried on. “In life as in literature, there are reliable and unreliable narrators. At the moment, we have one perspective. I think we’d do well to reserve our judgment until all the facts have been gathered—”

  The girl’s hand was still in the air, waving now. Jeremy threw a look at the empty spot where Madeline would usually be sitting. It had been nearly a week since he’d seen her. She hadn’t responded to any of his recent texts. He was starting to feel desperate.

  “These are dangerous times,” he said, making eye contact with a few of the male students. “When the word of one individual can destroy a life, we should all be very concerned. A mere allegation—”

  “Serious allegation,” the blonde girl interrupted, no longer content to wait.

  Jeremy looked at her. “I’m sorry?”

  “It’s a serious allegation. Not a mere allegation.”

  “Of course it’s serious,” Jeremy said. “I never disputed that.”

  “You could have picked any adjective. If someone was accused of murder, would you say they were mere allegations?”

  “Perhaps not,” he admitted. “But professional misconduct and murder are two very different things.”

  “Sexual misconduct,” the girl corrected him.

  “Yes, well. That is the allegation …”

  Dark mutters rolled through the classroom.

  “It isn’t just one,” a thin brunette in the front row said. “Three other students have come forward.”

  “Four victims,” the first girl agreed.

  Victims? From what Jeremy had read (and he’d been following the story closely), the professor had been involved in a consensual affair with one of his students. Inappropriate? Perhaps. But hardly criminal. As for the suggestive comments he’d been accused of making to students behind closed doors, it wasn’t as if anyone had been physically hurt.

  “I read that he’d been doing it for years,” a third girl said. “The school administration had received multiple complaints and no one did a thing.”

  Several other girls nodded in solidarity. Jeremy felt himself losing control of the room. With Madeline in the picture, it was hard not to take all this personally. Of the hundreds (if not thousands) of students he’d taught in his career, she was the only one he’d ever slept with. It wasn’t as if he’d gone looking for her. He hadn’t known she’d be dancing at the Tiger Bomb that first night. He didn’t force her to have a drink with him, or to come back to his apartment. It was true that she’d hesitated when he kissed her. And she could have been a little more enthusiastic in bed, but there had been no refusal, no insistence (or request even) that he stop. She’d called him the next day. She returned to his apartment on multiple occasions without coercion. From a legal standpoint, he was in the clear.

  So why wasn’t Madeline there?

  “Bare minimum,” one of the male students said—not the sort you’d expect: muscled and dim-looking, with a ballcap and football jersey—“dude should lose his job.”

  “And if the relationship with the student was consensual?” Jeremy shot back, realizing his mistake the moment the attention of the class swung back his way. In the silence that followed, only two sets of coordinates mattered, his spot at the lectern, and Madeline’s empty seat. They knew. Every one of them knew what had been going on. He raised a hand in defense, although no actual accusation had been levelled. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I don’t mean to sound old-fashioned. But human relationships are complicated … I think we all need to take a step back and—”

  A gunshot rang out in the auditorium.

  I jumped and ducked behind the podium. No one else reacted. The audience members appeared perfectly calm. One of the other authors in the wings made an apologetic face and stooped to pick up a thick hardcover book. Meanwhile, someone in the audience started to clap, having evidently decided that I’d finished reading. The applause spread through the room, mounting to a polite level. In the spot where Jasmine had been just moments before, an old woman sat, pointedly not clapping. I ran my eyes over the audience, looking for some familiar face to hold onto.

  The emcee emerged from the wings to thank me with what felt like an ironic bow, keeping me where I was with a firm hand on the shoulder. “Brief,” he observed drily, “but suspenseful … Well! Before we let you go, let’s see if there are any questions from the audience, shall we?”

  The house lights went up a notch, revealing two or three raised hands, and an undergrad waded into the crowd with a microphone. I clutched my book, wishing I could have read more, unsettled by the tone of the writing, how unsympathetic the professor had been. Hardly the leading man I’d envisioned.

  A girl with perfectly braided hair took the microphone and cleared her throat. “So … I picked your book up on a recommendation from a friend, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. To be honest, it reads like an apologia for male chauvinism. Your professor spends half the book trying to convince us that he’s not so bad, and the other half feeling sorry for himself after his life falls apart. As if he didn’t bring it all on himself. And as I’m reading, I can’t help wondering what you want us to feel. I mean, where do you stand on all this? Do you sympathize with the professor?”

  I made a floundering gesture. Whatever the book had become, I hadn’t set out to make any kind of political statement when I started writing it. I’d just been trying to reach Jasmine.

  “It’s … complicated,” was all I could think to say.

  “Actually, it’s not. Either you identify with the professor or you don’t.”

  The emcee’s hand remained firm on my shoulder. I lowered my head, waiting for the next bullet to come. “If I might respond?” a faint voice called from elsewhere in the auditorium. I looked up with gratitude, as the undergrad carried the microphone over to a middle-aged woman in a red blazer. “Thank you. I don’t mean to hijack the question, but I wanted to offer something of a counterpoint … Now I can’t speak to how deep an affinity the author may or may not have
with his protagonist, but I thought the choice you presented him with was rather unfair. It presumes the professor to be either a hero or villain, allowing no room for nuance. I regard him as something of an endangered species. An educated man of a certain generation who should know better but doesn’t. But why doesn’t he know better? That’s an important question. You’ll never know the answer if you don’t spend some time unpacking his psyche.”

  The first girl wanted to speak again and the undergrad jogged over for her rebuttal.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I have no interest in the professor’s psyche. Or any other part of him. There’s a time and a place for complexity. A book written long after the Holocaust might have the luxury of humanizing Nazi soldiers. But a book written during the holocaust? It has the moral obligation to focus on the victims.”

  “But don’t you see we can do both things?” the older woman protested when the microphone reached her again. “We can support the girl and regard the professor with circumspection. How else can we ever truly hope to understand?”

  “You’re wrong,” the first girl said. “When you look at the professor, you lose sight of the girl. It’s as simple as that. And the girl is screaming.”

  The older woman shook her head and sat down, apparently concluding that any further debate was pointless.

  “A spirited discussion!” the emcee observed, leaning into my microphone. “Well, I think we have time for one more, if … Yes, back there. The gentleman in the black shirt.”

  The undergrad travelled up the stairs to an overweight man with a bushy white beard and a heavy metal T-shirt. He scratched his belly and peered down at the stage. “I’m just wondering if you’re familiar with the tool known as emasculators. Veterinarians use them to castrate large animals. They resemble an oversized set of pliers, and they have a unique function … After the scrotum’s been sliced open, they clamp the emasculators behind the young bull’s testicles to sever the blood supply while crushing the spermatic cord.” He squeezed a fist in the air to demonstrate. “At this point, the testicles can be safely removed. It isn’t for the squeamish. There’s some blood, but the pressure prevents hemorrhaging …”

  “Excuse me,” the emcee said. “I fail to see how this relates—”

  “If you’ll let me finish.” The man glared over his shaggy beard. “Now the levels of pain for the bull are debatable. A local anesthetic is generally applied. But one thing is certain. The bull’s temperament is irrevocably altered by the procedure. He grows smaller, more docile, more predictable, easier to manage, more … cowlike, as it were. Of course, the bull is not a cow. In addition to obvious anatomical differences, the animal would never be accepted by the other cows as an equal. But neither is the bull truly a bull anymore. Farmers understand this and give the animals an entirely new designation. They call them steers. And what, you may ask, is the function of a steer? To be eaten. That is all. To have any utility, the animal must die. One can’t help but wonder if—”

  “I’m sorry,” the emcee said, “but we’re running short on time. I’m afraid we’re going to have to move on to our next author.”

  “Now hold on just a second …”

  After a brief tug-of-war, the undergrad reclaimed the microphone, and the emcee removed his hand from my shoulder. The bearded man kept talking, shouting what sounded like “Resist!” from the back of the auditorium, until two forbidding young men in dark-rimmed spectacles went over to physically remove him from the room.

  I followed my own path out of the auditorium, plodding over to the wings, where, on the small muted television, men in suits were wandering around in a daze, as if they’d lost something important. I retraced my steps to the foyer, where I found the organizer setting out refreshments and the students who’d removed the bearded man, looking grim. The bearded man was nowhere to be seen. The organizer impatiently directed me to a long signing table where a small pile of books awaited each author, along with a bottle of water and a cheap-looking pen. The young men paced around me like prison guards. Muffled applause drifted out of the auditorium. After a very long time, the side door burst open and the remaining authors bounded out, grinning like loveable criminals in a heist movie. They took their spots without acknowledging me, while the crowd filed through the main doors. Kim appeared and headed straight for the signing table, her lipstick framing a dangerous-looking smile. “Darling!”

  “I need to leave,” I said, quietly but urgently.

  She glanced at the authors flanking me, then threw back her head and laughed. “You’re so funny. Well, I’m going to go mingle. See you in a bit …” She strode off in the direction of the refreshment table. The authors on either side of me leaned ever so slightly away, as if from an offensive smell. People had begun to line up at the signing table. I was just considering how to make my escape, when I saw Jasmine again on the far side of the room, smiling faintly and looking around with interest. The crowd opened and closed behind her, bringing her inexorably closer to the signing table until she stood directly in front of me—my first novel, the one she’d been reading the night I followed her onto the bus, in her hand. She set the book down on the table and smiled, pleasant but distant, as she might have smiled at a cashier at the bank.

  “Angela,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  It was the first time I’d heard her speak. I’d seen every inch of her body. She’d written the most explicit things imaginable to me. But up to that moment, her voice had been a mystery. She sounded older than I’d expected, more educated, her A’s betraying a slight mid-Atlantic accent.

  “My name,” she said. “For the inscription.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  I’d always assumed that Jasmine was a stage name, but it had suited her. She didn’t look anything like an Angela. I opened her book, distracted by the scent of something coconut-y drifting across the table.

  “Do you—” My voice failed me and I cleared my throat. “Want me to say anything in particular?

  I watched her closely for a sign, some acknowledgment that we’d met before.

  She shook her head. “To Angela is fine.”

  It occurred to me that she might not have even read my latest book, a book I’d written specifically for her. Given the degree to which it had been sabotaged, that could have been a stroke of luck. My pen hovered over the page. I was just working up the nerve to ask for her last name when Kim came galloping back over to the table with an incredulous look. “Angie?”

  Jasmine turned to her with a smile that I would have murdered to have put there. “Kimmie?”

  They squealed. They hugged.

  “Oh my God!”

  “I know!”

  “Where have you—”

  “Don’t ask.”

  I sat with a strained smile, waiting to be introduced, but Kim seemed to have forgotten she even knew me. The friends linked arms and wandered over to the refreshment table, happily chatting. Kimmie and Angie. The whole thing felt strangely orchestrated, designed to cause me pain.

  The authors on either side of me were busily signing books. Still holding Jasmine’s copy of my first novel, I opened the front cover and wrote two words: To Jasmine. I underlined her stage name twice, then slammed the book on the table and headed for the exit. My vision blurred. My legs felt like they’d been hollowed out and filled with cement.

  “Felix!”

  The voice sounded so much like my father’s that I froze, but the man coming at me through the crowd was more heavyset than Dad and closer to my own age, his neat goatee framing a wide, confident smile. David, my agent. He grabbed my hand and pumped it, radiating a minty, boozy smell. “What did I say? I told you you’d do fine, didn’t I?”

  I responded with a feeble shrug.

  “Quite the interrogation they gave you up there,” he chuckled. “They really come out of the woodwork for these things … So, where are you off to? Not leaving already, I hope?”

  “I’m not feeling well …”


  “Really! Well, before you go I have something I need to talk to you about.”

  Kim and Jasmine were huddled over by the coffee urn, laughing uproariously at some shared reminiscence. Kim met my eye across the room and leaned over to say something in Jasmine’s ear.

  I stepped towards the exit. “I really have to …”

  “This’ll only take a minute,” David said, ratcheting his smile up a notch.

  “Hel-lo,” Kim said brightly, having left Jasmine to come eavesdrop on our conversation. Through a gap in the crowd, I could see Jasmine going back to the signing table to collect her book. Kim slipped her hand into the crook of my elbow, while David sucked his teeth for a moment.

  “So …” he said, “it isn’t that your book isn’t doing well. It’s doing fine, as far as it goes. But the people upstairs had hoped it would do …” He bounced his hands in the air, as if weighing a pumpkin. “Better. I’ve been told that you’re not getting enough exposure. This reading’s a good start, but they want more. Interviews. Festivals. Now I know how you feel about doing publicity …”

  Jasmine had nearly reached my vacant spot at the signing table.

  “Let go,” I muttered to Kim, unable to move with her hand locked to my elbow.

  “There are ways of dealing with these things,” David continued. “Mindful meditation. Deep breathing. Pharmaceuticals.”

  I pried at Kim’s fingers. “Let. Go.”

  Across the room, Jasmine picked up her book and turned to the inscription.

  “Would you fucking let go already?” I shouted, jerking my arm free. The room went quiet. Kim stared at me with an oddly vacant expression, like a doll on a shelf. I put my eyes on the floor and headed for the nearest exit, not daring to look at Jasmine, or anyone else. No one tried to stop me. No one said a word as I reached the front doors and pushed out into the warm, dark evening. Orange halogens illuminated the empty street. The bearded bull expert was sitting on the grass. “Spare some change?” he asked. I backed away from him, power-walking down the sidewalk, then breaking into a run. The wind caught my tie and carried it over my shoulder. I passed the library and my old dorm building, sprinting now, past students in backpacks, leaving them to watch after me and wonder if they themselves had cause to panic in the face of this most ominous of sights: a well-dressed man running for his life.