CHAPTER 30
“What are you doing here, Knight?” snapped Dagenhart.
He had waited only for McBride to take a step away from Thomas’s side before closing on him like a mastiff. His bloodhound face was flushed and his wet eyes were hard and bright.
“I’m a tourist,” said Thomas. “Just here to take in the sights . . .”
“You’re a liar,” said Dagenhart, his voice close to a snarl. “First Chicago, now here. Why? What are you up to, and what was all that nonsense about”—he lowered his voice—“Love’s Labour’s Won?”
“Just a bit of fun,” said Thomas. “Petersohn was annoying me so ...”
“You’re a damned liar,” said Dagenhart again. “And an amateur. Stay out of things you don’t understand, Knight. Go back to your schoolroom.”
He said it as one might say gutter, or prison.
“I’ll stay till I’m ready to leave,” said Thomas.
“You couldn’t cut it as a student, Thomas, remember?” said Dagenhart, pressing in so that their noses almost touched. Despite his age, he was a big, imposing presence. “You can pretend you opted out as some kind of protest,” he said, “but the truth is you just couldn’t do it. Now you are trying to prove that you are somehow better than the rest of us, better than the profession that rejected you. You can’t. You aren’t.”
Then he turned on his heel, his laptop bag swinging, and strode away, barging past an elderly woman who spilled her tea and peered after him with a wounded look. Thomas flushed with sudden anger and embarrassment, scanned the crowd quickly to see if anyone had seen, and as he did so, shrugged painfully out of the sling and looked for a trash can.
Over in the corner, still the center of attention, was Petersohn, whose eyes returned to the group as Thomas met them. And over by the door from the ladies’ room, moving slowly in his direction and looking more thoughtful and less amused than usual, was Julia McBride. Thomas wasn’t sure she’d seen, but she accelerated as she found his eyes on her, and her smile broadened.
“Having fun?” she said, pleased with herself.
“Not particularly.”
“At an academic conference?” she said with mock amazement. “Let me introduce you to another of my graduate students.”
She turned, beckoning, and a mousy-looking girl with wide, astonished brown eyes hustled over with quick, embarrassed steps.
“This is Angela Sorenson,” said Julia. “One of the best and brightest.”
“Hi,” said Angela, waving self-parodically. “Do you really think Love’s Labour’s Won will be found?”
“It’s at the Birthplace,” said Thomas, rallying but still red-faced. He had to tear his eyes away from the door where Dagenhart had stormed out. “Slipped down the back of the couch. You’d think someone would clean that place out once a century, wouldn’t you.”
Angela looked unsure.
“Mr. Knight is teasing,” said Julia, “which is very naughty of him.”
The graduate student smiled and nodded to show she got the joke.
“Still,” she said. “It would be exciting, wouldn’t it? To find a lost Shakespeare play, I mean.”
“Someone certainly thinks so,” said Thomas, considering the sling he had bunched up in his left hand.
As the girl’s face blanked again, Julia made a playful, dismissive noise and waved his comment away.
“What school are you at?” said Angela, filling the silence.
“Evanston Township,” he said, defiantly misunderstanding.
“Oh,” she said, uncertain. “I don’t know that one.”
He took a breath and relented.
“I’m afraid I never made it out of graduate school,” said Thomas. “Made a tactical withdrawal ABD. I teach high school now.”
“Right,” said the student, relieved. “That must be so rewarding.”
“Must it?” said Thomas. “Yes, I suppose it must. Sorry. Yes, it is. It dignifies being a failed academic.”
“Oh, come now, Thomas,” Julia inserted. “There are plenty of failed academics who are also quite successful academics, if you see what I mean. Depends what you mean by success. And I’m sure no one thinks that you couldn’t hack it.”
“Randall Dagenhart thinks exactly that,” said Thomas. “He just said so.”
“He’s just a grumpy old man who knows the profession is starting to pass him by.”
“Maybe, but he’s probably right about me. I quit because I knew I couldn’t do it.”
“I don’t believe that for a second . . . ,” she began.
“That’s because you don’t know anything about me,” Thomas returned, his irritation getting the better of him. “You’ve never seen my writing, heard me teach, and you sure as hell have no idea what I was going to write my doctoral dissertation on because I couldn’t figure that out myself. You don’t know me at all, Julia.”
Angela flushed and looked away.
“Well now,” said Julia, switching gears and smiling her feline smile, “that we can fix.”
“I think I’m going to go,” said Thomas.
She turned to look full at him then, and her face was unnervingly frank and appraising, as if she was deciding what to do or say next. Angela was forgotten. It was Thomas’s turn to look away.
“Okay,” said Julia. “You have a local phone number?”
He faltered.
“I’m just . . . I’m going to go,” he said again. “Thanks for getting me in. To the lecture, I mean.”
“Anytime,” she said. She smiled once, a tiny crinkling of one side of her mouth. “See you next time.”
Thomas made for the front door. He was almost out when a voice behind him called.
“Thomas?”
He turned. There was a man hovering a few yards away. He was pale and earnest looking, perhaps a few years Thomas’s junior. It took only a moment before full recognition dawned.
“Taylor?” said Thomas. “No way!”
“It’s been a while,” said Taylor.
“A decade?”
“Something like.”
“What are you doing here?” said Thomas.
“Other than watching you throw grenades in conferences?”
“God, you were in there?” said Thomas. “Sorry. I just . . .”
“Wanted to screw with that smug son of a bitch,” Taylor completed. “Good for you.”
Taylor Bradley had been in graduate school at BU with Thomas. They had even shared a cramped office on Bay State Road for a semester or two, and had grown acquainted while complaining about the students in their freshman composition classes. Later they had both been in a Renaissance drama seminar together. Thomas hadn’t thought of him in years.
“You still at BU?” he said.
“God, no,” said Bradley. “I got a job.”
“Doing what?”
For a moment Bradley looked confused.
“I finished,” he said. The utterance seemed to embarrass him or, more likely, he feared it embarrassed Thomas. “I mean, I got my dissertation done and went on the job market. Took me a couple of shots but I got a position.”
“Tenure track?”
“Yep,” said Bradley, unable to keep the pride from his voice. “I think they assumed I was related to A.C. Small college, heavy teaching load, but still . . .”
“That’s fantastic,” said Thomas, taking his hand and shaking it.
“Listen,” he said, as if the idea had just struck him, “how long are you in town? I need to get back in there, but maybe we could get a drink or something?”
“Sure,” said Thomas. “That would be great. Tonight?”
“I’m going to see a matinee of King Lear at the Courtyard, but we could get together after.”
“Sounds good. Where?”
“The Dirty Duck,” said Bradley. “Say, six?”
“So long as I have time to get the bus back to my B and B.”
“You’re staying in town?”
“In Kenilworth.�
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Bradley looked quizzical, but Thomas just shook his head and smiled: Don’t ask . . .
“See you later,” he said.
Thomas walked away wondering about them all, wondering most about Randall Dagenhart, who had been, he supposed, as much a mentor to him as Thomas had been to David Escolme, wondering also about the old professor’s bitter outburst and what might have motivated it. As he passed a trash can in the hall, he tossed the balled-up sling away.
CHAPTER 31
“Hi, Kumi,” said Thomas.
He had found a public phone booth and was using a phone card he’d bought at a newsstand in the high street. The time difference to Japan was actually more manageable from the U.K., and he figured that—given the absurd hours she put in—she would have just gotten home from work. He wanted to talk to her about his days in graduate school, about Dagenhart’s accusation that he had never had what it took . . .
“Tom?” she said.
Then it started. She was angry and upset. Where the hell had he been? She had called his school when he hadn’t phoned, and the principal had told her he’d been shot! She hadn’t believed it at first. She just knew he would have called her. There must have been some mistake. But Peter had insisted, and then she had reached the hospital and they said Thomas had been shot but that he was okay now and had discharged himself. So she had called his house a thousand times, left a thousand messages, and nothing. Had she even crossed his mind or was he too busy solving mysteries . . . ?
“And now you call me like nothing has happened and tell me you’re in England . . . !?”
“Sorry,” he said. “I kind of lost track of time.”
But that wasn’t going to cut it. She said he was selfish. That she had thought they were past this, but that he clearly wasn’t thinking about her or what she might be going through . . .
He couldn’t think of anything to say, couldn’t even really remember why he hadn’t told her about the shooting.
The call lasted two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, and Thomas emerged into the too-bright afternoon light as if he had been holding his breath. Or his tongue. She had a right to be upset and indignant, but there was a fury in her voice he couldn’t fathom, a hurt deeper than the things she had said.
... what she might be going through . . .
What did that mean? He wondered if there was something she hadn’t said, something beyond her concern for him. After all, the hospital had told her he was okay. She was probably just feeling humiliated that he hadn’t kept her informed, but still, it was not like her . . .
“I didn’t want to worry you,” he had said.
“Nice going, Tom,” she said, with the kind of sarcasm her Japanese colleagues found baffling. “Another study in your communicative genius.”
And she had hung up on him.
He couldn’t really blame her. It might have been better if he’d anticipated her knowing about the shooting, but the truth was that he had had no intention of mentioning it when he called her, so he’d been doubly unprepared. By the end, he had suspected she was biting back tears. The idea bothered him. Kumi did not cry easily.
He wandered down to the canal and watched the narrow boats going through the lock, wondering whether to call her back, but decided to leave it for another day. Right now she wouldn’t answer, or would eat up his phone card with long angry silences.
Let her be mad, he thought. She has a right to be. Call tomorrow and talk properly.
He wasn’t sure about the strategy, but once the decision was made, he didn’t reevaluate it. Even so, her anger bothered him.
Maybe there’s something else. Something she didn’t say.
“I’ll call her tomorrow,” he said aloud.
He fished in his wallet for Polinski’s card and called the Evanston Police Department. It took a moment for the lieutenant to get on the line, and she was cool with him.
“How long do you plan to be out of the country?” she said.
“I’m not sure. I’m still not a suspect, right?”
She seemed to consider that for a second, before saying that he wasn’t, that they didn’t have a suspect yet, and—in answer to his question—that the half brick that had killed Daniella Blackstone had revealed nothing conclusive.
“What about you?” she said. “You doing okay, not getting shot?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Not making much headway.”
“On what?” she said, suspicious again.
“Oh, you know,” said Thomas, backpedaling. “Research. Work stuff.”
“Don’t interfere in police matters, Mr. Knight.”
“Right,” he said.
“But if you find anything useful . . . ,” she added.
“I’ll let you know,” he said.
Since he had learned nothing so far, it was an easy—if dispiriting—promise to make.
CHAPTER 32
Thomas spent the afternoon seeing the sights, or some of them. The town was thick with tourists, and though it was quaint, something about its carefully preserved medieval and Renaissance buildings felt almost implausibly picturesque, so that he thought he’d wandered into some kind of theme park. Shakespeare’s birthplace was a picture-postcard timbered house with an exquisite garden almost too perfectly right for the man who penned A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and As You Like It. Inside was a useful exhibition, and helpful people in every room were keen to inform about the market town Stratford had been, the living conditions in the house itself, its structural alterations over time, and—of course—the kind of environment that had shaped its most famous resident. No one wore faux-Elizabethan costume, quoted Shakespeare, or—thank God—affected to actually be four-hundred-year-old residents of the town, quipping about modern technology and scattering for-sooth s at the end of every other sentence. In other words, it was not nearly as bad as he had feared, so Thomas was at a loss to see why he felt so unmoved by the place. Perhaps it was the throng of tourists, many of whom would know less about Shakespeare than they did neuroscience. Perhaps it was that air of Colonial Williamsburg—everything a bit too cute and studied—history made shiny, like something you might find in a snow globe. Or perhaps it was that he preferred his history and culture like he preferred his religion: private, and reflective, the still, silent air echoing with uncertainties. More likely it was a residual grumpiness for which he was blaming the town when it was really more to do with his failed call to Kumi.
Down by the Memorial Theatre—currently half demolished and framed with scaffolding and plastic sheets that flapped in the breeze—he ate fish and chips with a dollop of luminous green stuff they said were “mushy peas.” He tasted it cautiously and liked it. He was eating his well-vinegared chips and looking across the Stratford to Birmingham Canal when he became aware of a huddle of tourists to his left, gathered around a smiling elderly man in a worn gray suit that looked like it was made of felt. He was small and balding, but he had a big voice and Thomas could hear isolated phrases: “Love me? Why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured. They say I will bear myself proudly: happy are they that can hear their detractions and can put them to mending . . .”
One of the tourists shouted “Romeo!” but the old man continued as if he had not heard her. Another shouted “Petruchio,” but with the same result.
“Benedick,” Thomas whispered to himself.
“. . . and wise but for loving me; by my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly . . .”
“What’s his name from Much Ado?” said a large woman in a flowered dress. “Benedick!”
The old man bowed low, and there was a little scattered cheering, but by the time he had straightened up, he had started again.
“Look what is done cannot be now amended,” he said. “Men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes, which after hours gives leisure to repent . . .”
Some of the crowd stayed, but many had had enough of the game and drifted away. Others replaced them,
and Thomas stood and started walking over as someone called “Lady Macbeth.” Again the old man continued as if he had not heard her.
“If I have killed the issue of your womb,” the old man was intoning, “to quicken your increase I will beget mine issue of your blood upon your daughter.”
“Richard the Third,” said Thomas.
Some in the crowd turned toward him, and the old man’s eyes briefly met his, but then he was bowing, and straightening, and starting again.
“What’s he that wishes so?” he demanded. “My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin. If we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss, and if to live . . .”
“Henry the Fifth,” said Thomas.
Again the old man bowed, and again he came up talking.
“Anon he finds him striking too short at Greeks . . .”
Thomas nodded and smiled, and turned away. Some of the tourists watched him, impressed, and Thomas felt absurdly pleased with himself.
See, said a voice in his head. Dagenhart was right. You’re trying to prove that leaving grad school was a choice, not a failure, that you’re better than all of them.
That’s not true.
That’s why you want to be the one producing Love’s Labour’s Won out of your hat like some Vegas magician. So they’ll applaud and say you are The Best Among Them . . .
Not true. Surely not.
He kept walking. Behind him he could still hear the constant stream of the old man’s quotations as he walked across the green. For some reason, the sound bothered him.
The church where Shakespeare was buried was more to his taste, if only because the aura of sanctity about the place shut everyone up. He did what he always liked to do in such places, sitting alone and absorbing the weight of age and seriousness from the carved tombs and airy vaulted chancel. Outside he wandered among the graves through heavy, ancient trees, feeling like a mote on the breezes of time and mortality.
What Time Devours Page 13