by Jody Gehrman
Feeling what his words force me to feel.
He’s a fucking genius.
And I have the misfortune of mentoring him.
I take a long drink of wine and tap the manuscript pages into a tidy stack beside the couch. A hint of movement flits past my half-closed curtains, drawing my eye. The phantom shape melts away before I can make it out. I look around the living room. Probably just Emily out there, sniffing the garden for adventure, weaving in and out of the shadows, her paws wet with dew. Charlotte’s curled into a tabby-colored ball beside me, purring with steady, monotonous pleasure. I drink more wine, staring into the glow of my gas fireplace.
In spite of having hoped for this—a blinding, half-formed star that will drift into my workshop—I’m flustered now that it’s happened. More than flustered. Just this side of terrified. Yes, in some secret room deep inside the haphazardly constructed building of my teaching career, I’ve been saving space for The One. The Voice. The Talent. A writer with so much unrefined potential I’ll instantly abandon all my stinginess and cynicism. A writer who can bring out the best in me—as a teacher, an editor, a person. Show me an English professor who doesn’t secretly long for that student, and I’ll show you someone even more self-centered, jealous, and fucked up than me.
Yet, now that I’m holding the pages that prove it’s happened at last, I’m scared I’ll make a mess of it. I’m an archeologist who, after happily digging away for decades, has found only crumpled Coke cans and candy wrappers; now my shovel’s hit Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus, and I’ve no idea what to do. Should I use a toothbrush to unearth the treasure slowly, train myself to exhibit a painstaking patience I never cultivated? Do I hand my find over to more experienced hands?
Everyone knows genius is mercurial. What if I say the wrong thing, and he shuts down? I might make an editorial suggestion that sends him spiraling down some dark rabbit hole, obscuring his original vision. We all long to discover the next Melville, some acne-riddled Nabokov just learning to wield his power. But what do we do when fate hands us just that? There’s no instruction manual for cultivating artistic brilliance. I’ve never shown any special talent in the classroom before. Nobody has ever accused me of nurturing an emerging talent, let alone inspiring greatness.
I go to pour more wine, but the bottle’s empty.
SAM
It’s Sunday, crisp and bursting with golden October light. I’m walking through the streets of Blackwood, past the quaint plaza and the shops selling useless objets d’art and five-hundred-dollar cashmere wraps and chairs nobody wants to sit on. The motherfucking trust-funders push their babies around in strollers. They cradle unbleached coffee cups full of organic, free-trade soy lattes, and they order their toddlers to “use their words.” They are miserable, lumpy people. All the money in the world, and still they can’t manage the thinnest sheen of sex appeal.
I cradle my 7–11 coffee and stare straight ahead, walking fast. The trust-fund toddlers careen toward me, but I keep going. They almost crash into my shins on their unstable rolls of baby fat. I sidestep each one, not slowing my pace, slicing like a shark through a school of herring. Kids find me compelling. Their chubby hands reach for me in grocery stores, in parks. They sense life in me. Surrounded all day by their parents’ rotting husks, their nannies’ dead eyes, they see me and grasp for the living.
Sorry, kids. I’ve got somewhere to be.
At the edge of campus, I pause to breathe it in. Blackwood smells of apples, dead leaves, and woodsmoke. Fresh new life rubbing elbows with decay. The perfume hits me hard as I inhale. I take in the soaring spires and ivy-covered towers. It’s the quintessential small, beautiful college. They’ve filmed seven movies here, and I’ve seen every one. My whole idea of college revolves around this setting—the rows of flame-red trees, the brick lecture halls, the white-domed planetarium. It’s a sacred place, in spite of all the fucktards here. It’s sacred because it’s where I met you.
I head straight for your office. I’ve studied the janitors. I know now, at three in the afternoon, Janet’s cleaning your office. I’ve been cultivating her friendship. She’s heavy through the hips, a craggy-faced smoker with a smile full of tobacco-brown teeth. She never made it past the sixth grade, but she’s not stupid. Not by a long shot. No, Janet has the street smarts of a Compton thug and the instincts of a jungle cat. She suffers no fools.
“Hey, Janet!” I feign surprise as I swing around the corner, my backpack dangling over one shoulder in the jaunty affect students seem to favor. “Fancy meeting you here.”
She starts to smile, then stops herself, self-conscious about her teeth.
“I’m so glad you’re working.”
Her age-spotted fingers pluck at her baggy, striped shirt. “Oh, yeah? Why?”
“Because I’m doing some work for Professor Youngblood.” I study her face. “Only she forgot to make me a key.”
“I can’t let you into—”
“If you want to know the truth,” I put a hand on her arm and lean toward her, my voice dropping, “I lost it. She made it for me and I got wasted last night. God knows where it is now. At the bottom of Josh Bloom’s pool. Or worse.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Scared of getting caught?”
I nod. My face blends the right mixture of sheepish, contrite, and pathetic. I’ve practiced this look many times in a mirror. You’d be amazed how often it comes in handy.
I know Janet. She’s the underdog. She feels for someone who fucked up and might get caught. I noticed the tat on her forearm the first time I spotted her—the clock with no hands. She’s done some serious time. I’m nothing if not observant.
“You’ll be sure to lock up when you leave?”
I let my face flood with gratitude. “Would you really? Oh, Janet, you’re the best!”
“Just this once.” She winks, and I follow in her wake, which reeks of stale cigarette smoke. I smile.
* * *
It smells like you in here.
I stand in the center of the small, cramped space and inhale. Something musky and electric. Warm and red.
I sit in your chair and power up your computer. My fingers touch where yours have touched a thousand, ten thousand times before. I caress the keyboard, fondle your expensive mélange of pens poking out of a Blackwood College cup.
The sunlight streaming through the one window has a rich, buttery quality. Just beyond the glass, there’s a Japanese maple so red and vibrant it’s obscene.
I remember a line from your first novel, Pay Dirt. “She turned to the Japanese maple outside her window and tried to lose herself in its layers.” I whisper the line to myself. Maybe you sat right here when you wrote that. I whisper it again as I run my fingers over the titles lining your shelves. Nabokov, Joyce, Dickens, the Brontës. You do love your classics. There’s something so intimate about touching your books.
But I should hurry. Janet might have second thoughts; she might worry about her job, about getting caught. I need to focus.
I dig through your drawers until I find it: a tiny Moleskine notebook, midnight blue. I open it, and there they are on the first page: your passwords.
I try them on your computer, just to be sure. I won’t be greedy. What do I care about your Zappos account, your Netflix? I realize you only have two passwords for everything, though, so greedy or not, learning those grants me access to your entire online kingdom. Two passwords, and both of them so simple—too simple, Kate. I worry about you. Don’t you know about identity theft? Don’t you realize there are bad people out there who will use your innocence against you? I commit both passwords to memory and feel better. I’ll notice if anyone tries to hack you. I’m your protector, Kate. Your invisible knight.
There’s a page filled with your doodles and random words. Unable to resist, I tear it out and put it in my pocket. The passwords you might miss. This? Never.
I’m assailed with a vision of us at a party in SoHo. You have one hand on my arm; you’re laughing, a little tipsy,
telling Donna Tartt about how we met. “Can you believe he broke into my office and memorized my passwords?” At Donna’s horrified expression, you’ll laugh even harder, then press two fingers over your mouth like a naughty schoolgirl. “I realize that sounds bad, but you have to know Sam to get it—he’s protective. He knew me.” You’ll turn and kiss me on the mouth, your plush, pink lips crushing against mine, off target because of that third glass of wine. “He knows me better than I know myself.”
And fuck Donna Tartt if she doesn’t get it. Because it will be you and me against the world by then, Kate. It already is; you just don’t realize it. By the time we’re living in New York, you will know that everything I do now, I do for us. That’s all that matters.
I can hear Janet in the office next door, vacuuming. Just another quick look around for anything useful, then I’m out of here.
In one of your desk drawers, I spot it: a golden key sitting in a coffee cup. It’s stuffed all the way into the back, behind a pretty carved box containing a letter opener, a deck of playing cards, and an owner’s manual for a DVD player written entirely in Chinese. I pull it out and study it. If I know you—and I do—it’s an extra house key.
Thank god you are not methodical and careful, Kate. You are never suspicious or paranoid. You float through life like a dancer doing pirouettes straight through an army; you are the prima ballerina, so they have to part for you, they have to give way. You think that’s how it works for everyone, that the world is one great performance of Swan Lake and obstacles melt away so long as you keep dancing. It makes you vulnerable to sinister, crazy people. I’m here to guard against that now. With my street smarts and your innocence, together we have everything we need.
I pocket the key and head into the bright October day. My heart flames like the Japanese maple outside your office. I walk under it, and lose myself in its scarlet layers.
* * *
I hear a giggle and jerk around in surprise. It’s Cleavage. She’s standing there in leggings and running shoes, one hip popped out to the side. Her sweatshirt hangs askew, exposing one shiny shoulder. Does this girl ever cover up? It’s disconcerting how much she craves eyes on her tits and her perky, miniature ass.
“What are you doing?” Her voice, girlish and bright, feels like an ice pick driving into my brain.
I return to my contemplation of the Japanese maple. It occurs to me that the light has shifted inside this living kaleidoscope of reds. Maybe I’ve been staring at it for an hour. My high starts to fade. I have your sweet, golden key in my pocket, your passwords committed to memory, the musky smell of your office still thick and warm inside me. These things matter, and if I concentrate on them, the October Sunday twilight that threatens to fall any second cannot touch me.
And yet, here’s Cleavage, poised to rob me of happiness. She watches me in her stretched-out sweatshirt, her spandex leggings that might as well be painted on. Her presence pierces the taut balloon inside my heart. You can’t patch that shit. My joy leaks out, leaving me vulnerable to the heartbreaking nectarine hues of the messy autumn sunset.
“You okay?” She inches closer, watching me, her effervescent tone evaporating.
“Yeah. Fine.”
“Are you waiting for someone?” She looks around.
I start walking, fast, and she hurries to catch up. “No. Just checking out that tree.”
“That’s weird.” When I look at her she grins. “But cool.”
Her flirty eyes make me want to hit her in the face. She’s so young, so clueless and mixed up. You’d point out I’m only four years older, max, but let’s face it, Kate, you and I are old souls, and this creature, this slender Barbie doll bobbing at my side, she is young—it will take lifetimes before she’s even progressed past infancy. I can already see the lawyer she’ll marry, the babies they’ll have, the hours she’ll spend shopping at Bed Bath & Beyond, the craft room filled with row after row of colored ribbon, the tame sex she’ll have with her litigator in their tasteful, Danish modern bed. I can see the depression she’ll fall into when she realizes her children are boring and her husband’s fucking some waitress at Applebee’s, a girl not unlike the perky little thing walking beside me right now. She puts her hands into the sweatshirt’s kangaroo pouch and pulls down, exposing her tanned flesh, the deep cleft, the edge of a lacy push-up bra. She is subtle as a neon sign, and I miss you so much I ache deep in my bones.
“I read your story,” she says.
“Oh, yeah?” I hate how much I care about what she’ll say next. Even this fluffy little cum-dumpster has power over me when it comes to my writing. “And?”
“It’s amazing. Reminded me of Stephen King.”
She might as well have pulled a butcher knife from her back pocket and plunged it into my eye. I keep my expression neutral as I stare straight ahead.
“I could so go for a bowl of soup right now.” She shoots me a sideways glance. “There’s a cute little café by the plaza that makes an amazing roasted red pepper bisque. Want to come with? I hate eating alone. We could talk about your story. Maybe you can help me with mine.”
“Don’t you eat in the dining hall?” I’m stalling. I can only turn her down so many times before she’ll get ugly. I know girls like her. I’ve known them all my life. They’re drawn to me, just like babies.
She nods. “Yeah, I’ve got a meal plan, but some nights I can’t face it, you know? The greasy pizza and the vats of lasagna. The iceberg lettuce. One thing the Midwest does not do well is food, especially if you’re a vegetarian.”
“Where you from?”
“California.”
“What part?” I’m still stalling, but she seems happy enough to make small talk.
“Orange County.” She’s proud of this, I can tell. There’s a little bounce in her step when she says it.
I loathe her more than ever.
“What about you?” she asks.
“New York.” The lie is out before I can stop it. I have stood here beneath the canopy of your Japanese maple for at least an hour, seeing our future in its shifting red leaves—the mornings we’ll spend eating French pastries in bed, the afternoons in Central Park, the nights spinning through a series of parties, each one more packed with literary rock stars than the last.
“Really? That’s cool. New York City?”
I nod. She’s impressed, I can see it in her wide, brown eyes.
Fuck, I don’t need to impress her, don’t want her cheap, unearned awe. But I also don’t need to tell her the truth. The grimy suburb outside Albuquerque where I lived until I was ten with my grandparents. The series of nowhere towns Vivienne dragged me to after they died, when she could no longer fob me off, when she had to take me with her like a bag of dirty laundry you can’t wash and you can’t bring yourself to shove into a Dumpster. Someday, when we are lying in bed, sweat glazed and sated and tangled in sheets, I will tell this story to you, Kate. I can already see the tiny quotation mark creases that will appear between your brows. You will smooth my hair back, listening with that intense silence of yours, empathy and compassion shining from your blue-gray eyes. Cleavage doesn’t need to know any of this, though. She doesn’t need to know about my sordid, underprivileged childhood, even though it would get her wet. Rich girls like her always love bad boys with whorish junkie mothers and dead grandparents. She can go fuck herself.
“So? How about that soup? They also make a BLT that’s supposed to be awesome, if you’re into meat.” She’s relentless. Cloying. Pathetic. The way she says “meat,” it sounds like a dirty word.
I try very hard to force my expression into apologetic regret. “I’d love to. Really. But I have a huge test tomorrow.”
“Second time you’ve blown me off.” She looks down, then back up again. Her brown eyes search mine, dig for some scrap of approval. Behind her, the sunset is all tangerine and cotton candy.
I fondle the key in my pocket, wondering if I can make it to the hardware store before it closes. Probably not even open o
n Sundays. This little college town is nothing if not god-fearing.
We reach a fork in the path, and I shoot off to the right, picking up my pace. “See you in workshop.”
“Fine. Be that way.” She’s trying to smile, but it looks forced, tight, the way she’ll smile twenty years from now, when she knows her husband’s going off to meet his stripper girlfriend. “Just remember one thing.”
“What’s that?” I’m walking backward now, already ten feet away.
“You can run, but you can’t hide.” And now her smile loses its fake edge, and I can see she enjoys this. The chase. The game of cat and mouse.
The more I tell her no, the more she thinks I’m worth having.
KATE
After workshop on Tuesday, I pop a breath mint and try to figure out how to get Sam alone. I’ve read his story five times over the weekend, scribbled so many notes in the margins it looks like a crime scene. The class, predictably, glossed over its genius. Most of them probably read it while watching TV. The vet with the tats was the only one who indicated he appreciated its potential. No wonder Fifty Shades of Shit charged to the top of the bestseller lists. Young American sensibilities are as refined as raw sewage.
I need to tell him he’s not crazy. He’s the most talented student I’ve ever worked with; I’ll be damned if I’ll let him leave this room thinking his classmates’ lackluster response says anything about his work. Ever since I read his first sentence, I’ve agonized over how to convey the story’s brilliance. In workshop I held back. If the others think I favor him, they’ll just lash out with jealousy. Besides, I don’t want my praise going to his head. Conceit can be as dangerous to a writer as despair. Maybe more so.
It feels important to do this right. So much hangs in the balance.
I could call his name, ask him to stay after. Somehow, though, my self-consciousness won’t allow me to utter a word. I dither, organizing the workshop manuscripts, not meeting anyone’s eye. The class files out, laughing, joking, making plans. Those not caught up in the river of conversation pull out their phones and text furiously, as if to prove they are wanted elsewhere, they are loved.