by Neil Plakcy
“What makes a nice Jewish boy like you interested in Friar Lake?”
“The monks and friars have moved on, and Eastern is buying the property. President Babson wants to create a conference center out there, and he wants me to run it.”
“Full-time gig?”
“Yup.”
He raised his palm and we high-fived. “Santos will be happy.” Rick worked out at the same gym as my parole officer, and I knew they had talked about me once or twice. “Steady job, something to keep you busy.”
“I’m still figuring it out. My boss told me my job with the capital campaign was being phased out, and I thought I was SOL. I was freaking out for an hour or two, until Babson gave me the news.” I picked up my smoothie. “He pretty much came right out and said he knew about my criminal record. Which makes it kind of surprising he’s willing to trust me.”
“Didn’t you have to disclose it when you first applied there?”
“Yeah, but that was just an adjunct job. The chair of the English department was my professor when I was in school, and I was embarrassed to tell him. When I filled out the application for the part-time job I checked the box that I’d been convicted of a felony, and I wrote a few sentences of explanation. But I doubt he ever saw that form—it was just a personnel thing.”
“What about when you switched to the full-time job?”
“When Mike MacCormac offered me the job, I told him that I was on parole for a computer offense back in California, and he waved his hand like it made no difference to him. Since I was already on the college payroll by then, the only forms I had to fill out were to transfer from part-time to full-time status.”
“How do you think Babson knew, then?”
“He knows everything that goes on at that campus. He must never sleep.”
“Better keep your nose clean then,” Rick said. “You screw up, you won’t just have me and Santos to deal with. You’ll have President Nose-in-your-Business, too.”
“Yeah, thanks. Just what I need right now – a little extra pressure.” Of course there was also my own internal desire to snoop around in computer databases where I didn’t belong. I had justified my activities over the last year because I was trying to find evidence to identify some very bad people. But I knew I had a compulsion and it was tough to resist.
We sipped our drinks, and Rochester snoozed by my feet.
“So,” Rick said after a minute or two, “I had a date on Saturday night.”
“Stop the presses,” I said. Rick was a serial dater; I hadn’t known him to get involved in a relationship since his ex-wife left him for a fireman a couple of years before.
“Not a first date,” he said. “It was like our third or fourth.”
“Anybody I know?”
He nodded. “You met her once. Paula Madden.”
“The crazy shoe lady who’s obsessed with her little dachshund?”
“Hey.”
“Sorry. I meant to say, that attractive blonde who runs the shoe store at the mall? The one with the adorable little dog?”
“You don’t have to lay it on that thick.” Rick slurped some more lemonade. “The dog is kind of a problem. She takes him everywhere.”
Lili and I had met Paula when we were investigating the death of the woman who had bred her doxy, Lush. Since then I knew Lili had been back to Paula’s store a few times to buy shoes.
“So?” I asked. “You like dogs.”
“Yeah, but I don’t carry Rascal around with me in a little shoulder bag. Or feed him from my plate at dinner. Or call him my little cuddly-wuddly.”
“Hey, I don’t know what you do with him when no one else is around. But I can’t see you carrying him.” Rascal was as big as Rochester, which put him in the 70-80 pound range. “But you must like her, if you’ve gone out with her a couple of times.”
“She’s lots of fun, when she’s not obsessing about the dog,” he said. “You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but she’s not a girly girl at all. She loves football and country-western line dancing.”
“Don’t tell me she dances with the dog,” I said.
“Thank god, no. She says country music makes him drowsy, so she leaves him in her bag and he sleeps.”
“You know what happens when you play a country song backwards,” I said.
“You get your truck back, your dog back and your girl back,” he said, standing up. “I know all the same jokes you do.”
My phone buzzed again. Great. I was due in yet another meeting – something called the College Connection. I couldn’t remember what it was but I was due in the auditorium in Granger Hall, which housed communications and performing arts.
I rousted Rochester from his slumber. He still didn’t look one hundred percent, but I hoped if he slept the afternoon away he’d be better by dinner time. I gave him some fresh water when we got back to my office, and after he drank he slumped to the floor and rolled on his side. “Take a nap, boy,” I said, as if he needed prodding to do that. I hoped he wouldn’t make a mess. And who knows, maybe while I was gone he’d come up with a slate of courses that would make Friar Lake a huge success.
Right. Rochester was a smart dog—too smart to get caught up in human problems.
4 – Connections
I had to scramble to make it across campus to Granger Hall, and with the sun back out the air was hot and heavy. As I walked and sweated I grumbled about the proliferation of meetings in academic environments. At least in the corporate world, there were deadlines and profit projections to meet; in academia, meetings seemed to spawn more meetings, with little progress. I hadn’t bothered to investigate the meeting request from President Babson—attendance wasn’t optional at meetings he called anyway. I clicked “attend” in the right box on the email and sent in the response, then forgot all about it.
As I approached Granger Hall, I ran into Jackie Conrad from the biology department. I’d gone to her for help earlier in the spring about a kind of poison that had been used in the murder of a dog breeder, and enjoyed her company. “You know anything about this meeting?” I asked, as I held open the big glass door for her.
She was a tall, broad-shouldered blonde, a former veterinarian who taught anatomy and physiology classes at Eastern. She was wearing her white lab coat, which I figured meant she’d just come from a lab.
“You didn’t read the attachment?” she asked.
“There was an attachment? To what, the meeting request?”
“Yup. It was about some non-profit that exposes inner-city teenagers to college life. Our beloved president signed Eastern up to participate this summer. We’re getting our first group at the beginning of next week.”
We ran into a few other faculty members and all of us trooped into the auditorium together. I was surprised there were only about thirty people in the room, a mix that leaned heavily toward administrators. Jackie was one of about a dozen professors there—the other couple hundred must have been on summer break, or too savvy to click “accept” on an unknown meeting request.
Babson was up on the stage next to a video screen, talking to a tech from the IT department who had a laptop open in front of him.
Jackie opened her shoulder bag and held up a small stuffed animal that looked like a plush gray crab with a starfish attached on a long, nobby cord. Rochester would destroy it in about sixty seconds.
“I recognize that,” I said. “It’s a brain cell.”
She held it up to her head like an earring and wiggled it so the starfish part bobbed up and down. “We can all use a few extra brain cells during the summer term, don’t you think?”
“You bet. How come you’re not taking some time off?”
“Two teenaged kids who need college educations. Sometimes I think they could use a few extra brain cells, too.” She looked over at me. “How are things in the fund-raising department?”
“The capital campaign’s moving along. But then, so am I.” I told her about the move to Friar Lake.
“Sounds
impressive,” she said.
“Scary is more like it. I didn’t apply for the job—just got moved over there like a chess piece on a board.”
Babson stepped up to the microphone and introduced a video supplied by the group coming to Eastern, the College Connection. It began with a couple of menacing inner-city shots—burned out buildings, graffiti, trashed cars and discarded needles. Then the scene shifted to a bucolic college campus, much like Eastern’s. A group of teenagers, mostly African-American and Hispanic, stepped off a bus as if they were entering a foreign country. Over the next few minutes, we watched them reading, sitting in classes, playing pick-up volleyball games and exploring farms and forests.
By the end of the video, these kids, who had started out looking like gang-bangers, had been transformed into contemporary college students. It was a pat video, yet it had an undeniable power.
“Did we somehow sign up to participate in this project?” I whispered to Jackie.
“If you responded to the meeting request, you did.”
I slumped back in the plush armchair. I was always complaining about people who didn’t read emails, who blindly hit “reply to all” and committed other electronic sins. And here I was, as guilty as the rest of them.
Babson stepped up to the podium after the video finished. He cued the geek in the orchestra pit to begin showing a series of PowerPoint slides, as he sketched out what the group of CC kids would experience at Eastern. They were going to read the first book in the Hunger Games trilogy, and watch the movie. Then they would meet in small seminars with faculty members to discuss issues in that professor’s discipline.
“Professor Conrad has already volunteered to lead a discussion on genetic modification,” Babson said, pointing toward Jackie. I immediately sat up in my seat next to her, not wanting Babson to see me slouch. “Professor Shelton will teach a seminar on the totalitarian regimes of the past and present.”
He looked out at the rest of us. “I hope you will all consider how you can connect your own disciplines to the material in the novels. I’m pleased that so many of our administrators have volunteered to lead sections. Many of you have graduate degrees, and I look forward to seeing what you can contribute.”
The rest of the program would include social events, explorations of the area around Leighville, and a series of college-themed movies, including Love Story, Legally Blonde, Wonder Boys and A Beautiful Mind.
“Babson could have picked Animal House,” I whispered to Jackie.
“I think these kids will be wild enough without the incentive.”
Babson let us go a few minutes later, with the promise of many emails to follow.
“What am I supposed to talk about?” I asked Jackie as we walked out. “I haven’t read the book or seen the movie. And I have this whole other project to work on.”
“You teach English, don’t you? As an adjunct?”
“I have. I don’t know if I will be in the fall.” I doubted I’d have the time to teach even one section as I was trying to set up Friar Lake.
“It’s a book, Steve. Surely you can find something to talk about.”
I should have been excited about the College Connection; it was an interesting experiment, a chance to engage with students other than the traditional ones at Eastern, and maybe have a real impact on a teenager’s life. But I was overwhelmed—first the assignment to Friar Lake, and now this. And I realized I hadn’t told Lili about my new job yet. I knew she’d be happy for me, even though it meant I’d be relocating away from the campus and we’d lose the opportunity for casual get-togethers.
When I checked my mail slot at Fields Hall, I found a copy of The Hunger Games there. Even though I loved to read, the idea of having a book assigned didn’t sit well with me. “Great, homework,” I said, picking it up. I started to wonder why people would go to academic seminars at a place like Friar Lake—who wanted assigned reading as a grown-up?
When I got back to my office Rochester was sprawled across the tongue-and-groove oak floor, sleeping. I tiptoed to my desk and went back to the report on Friar Lake.
The more I read, the more scared I got. The property needed a lot of work to make it suitable for the kind of continuing education classes Babson wanted to offer. The large open yard between the religious and secular portions of the complex would be landscaped for relaxation, with sculptures and cozy areas for one-on-one meetings or small outdoor classes when the weather was fine.
I didn’t know a thing about construction. My father used to joke that I didn’t know which end of the screwdriver you hammer the nails with. I had always preferred to read or watch TV or play kickball and “Mother, May I?” in the street with my friends instead of hanging around in his basement workshop learning about the intricacies of table saws and drill presses. When he did coax me into helping him it was always for simple jobs, like sorting nails or sanding rough wood.
Rochester woke up, looked at me, and groaned.
“Oh, no, you’re not going to hurl again, are you?” I jumped up and opened the French doors that led to the garden outside my office. He made a deep belching noise and opened his mouth wide, but nothing came out. Then he yawned and went back to sleep.
I closed the doors, shutting out the hot air that was already flooding in, and went back to my desk. I was still reading the report when Mike knocked on my door frame. A former college wrestler, he was thick-set and muscular, with dark hair and a heavy five o’clock shadow.
“You spoke to Babson?” he asked.
“Yup. “
Mike walked over and scratched Rochester behind his ears, then sat down across from me.
“You could have told me Babson had a new job for me,” I said. “I thought I was getting canned.”
“You know how he gets if someone steals his thunder. What’s the job?”
I sketched the plan out for him. “It’s huge. I’ve been reading the feasibility study he commissioned and I still don’t have a handle on it. He wants me to move out there once the renovation work starts. Can I keep this office until then?”
“Nobody else needs this office for now. And you’ll have to figure out a transition plan to shift your work away, and that’ll take you a while.”
I nodded. “I’ll set up a meeting with Ruta del Camion at the News Bureau and start passing over my files and bringing her up to speed on my work in progress.”
Mike stood up. “Let me know if you need anything.” He leaned over to shake my hand. “Congratulations and good luck.”
“Thanks.”
I was glad I could keep my office for a while, because I wasn’t eager to relocate off campus. I had started feeling comfortable here—I knew where I could walk Rochester, where all the good lunches were down in Leighville, and I liked being able to meet Lili for coffee in the middle of the day. I made a note to check how far Friar Lake was from the campus. Would I be able to move back and forth easily?
Rochester groaned again, and rolled over. It was already past lunch time, and the morning’s smoothie and croissant felt like ancient history. I didn’t want to leave him alone again, but I needed something to eat and a cup of coffee, and I wanted to talk to Lili.
I dialed her office number. “Hey, sweetie, I need a huge favor,” I said. I explained about Rochester’s illness. “Can you pick up some lunch for us and bring it over here? I don’t want to leave him here for too long. And I have some news to share. Good, I think.”
“I’ve been jonesing for a roast beef hoagie from Demetrio’s,” she said, mentioning a sandwich shop in Leighville famous among undergraduates for its low prices and large portions.
“You fly, I’ll buy,” I said. “Make it two, and let’s split a bottle of Black Cherry Wishniak.” That was my favorite soda, a Philadelphia invention that Demetrio’s stocked in tall glass bottles.
“You got it. I’ll be at your office in a half hour or so.”
Lili and I had developed a nice groove, where she knew without being told the way I liked my sandwich�
��on a long white submarine roll, with lettuce, tomato and Russian dressing, with a small bag of salt and vinegar potato chips.
I roused Rochester and took him outside. Then back in my office I poured fresh water into his bowl and gave him a rawhide to chew. He looked expectantly at the jar of treats on my desk, but I shook my head. “Not til your stomach calms down, bud,” I said.
I sat on the floor next to him and rubbed his belly, and he stretched, his front legs raised above his head, his back ones almost vertical. The skin of his belly was taut, covered with a layer of fine golden hair. “Things are changing, boy,” I said, stroking the soft hair of his head and neck. “Daddy’s got a new job. I don’t know anything about it, and I’m feeling kind of scared. So I’m depending on you to be here for me, all right? You’ve got to feel better and keep on giving me all your puppy love.”
When I was younger, I had a sense of entitlement that came from growing up in a stable home where I was praised and encouraged. My parents told me I could do anything I set my mind to, so whenever I had a setback I had the sense that things would work out fine in the end.
Going to prison had changed that mindset. At forty-five, I wondered how many fresh starts I had left in me, and I’d seen what happened to men who had been hit with one too many body blows. I no longer had my parents as a fallback, and I worried that if I got sick, or laid off, or suffered some other defeat, I might not be able to bounce back.
I leaned down and buried my head in Rochester’s flank, mumbling “puppy love” again and again.
5 – Slipping and Sliding
Rochester belched again, then yawned and went back to sleep, and I returned to the report. When Lili walked in, the big dog jumped up and threw himself at her as if there was nothing wrong with him. I was just as glad to see her as he was, and I stood up to kiss her, with the dog trying to nuzzle his way between us.
She pulled away and handed me the paper bag with our lunch, then turned to the dog. “What’s the matter, boy? You not feeling well?” she asked, chucking him under the chin. “You look fine.”