Academy Gothic

by James Tate Hill

  “Why don’t you leave things alone,” Duncan snarled.

  “Are we still talking about the copy machine, Duncan?”

  Carly’s back was pressing harder against me, not of its own volition. I turned my foot sideways to keep from moving. Carly said Duncan’s name. She sang it softly like a lullaby. His left hand hooked past her, not softly at all. The punch was rather slow, or I was fast. I grabbed his wrist and stepped sideways, holding on as I moved behind him. His wrist was small. My fingers met. His right arm swung back and forth. My knee helped him forward against the copy machine.

  “Where were you last night around nine?” I asked.

  Duncan moaned like a set of old brakes. I held his left arm in a chicken wing until his right behaved itself.

  “None of your goddamn business.”

  This wasn’t the most exculpatory answer. It was, however, the same answer he gave if you asked what he was doing for lunch. When he started crying, I backed away.

  Carly waited at my cubicle. “Do you think it was him?”

  “If so, he’d rather not say.”

  “Maybe he’d like to tell the police.”

  “Maybe the police would like to know what we were doing in Simkins’s office last night.”

  Carly sighed in my face and ducked into her own cube.

  I scanned my desk for handwritten invitations. Finding none, I put on my headphones and checked my e-mail. Four were from students, one from Delilah canceling the meeting. I selected the lot of them and pressed delete. A man who responds to e-mail is a man who receives more e-mail. The important questions tend to be asked more than once.

  From the other side of my cube came the tinny laughter of a live audience filtered through computer speakers. A comedian explained the similarities between camping and homelessness. Applause gave way to a light tapping on the metal part of my cubicle. Londell Bakker rested his chin atop the thin wall. He wasn’t easy to see, his face a shade lighter than the beige partition.

  I offered him a seat on the lawn chair beside my desk. Simkins ordered them in bulk after the last of the hand-me-down furniture from the state university disappeared.

  “So you liked the new material?” Londell asked.

  “Saturday Night Live ought to be calling in no time,” I said.

  Twice a year since age eighteen, Londell had sent a tape of his impressions to the show’s producers. He worked tirelessly on his material, polishing and revising. Thus far, his efforts had gotten him a series of postcards from Rockefeller Plaza, acknowledging receipt of his package.

  “That pocket-sized playwright,” I said. “The one who read last night. What’s his story?”

  “Thayer? He’s got a degree in theater. He became a cop for the emotional experience.”

  “Must be a great actor. He isn’t much of a cop.”

  “We all have things we’d rather be doing,” Londell said.

  “Let me know when you post last night’s set online. I’ll give you more detailed feedback.”

  Londell began a sigh and abandoned it somewhere in the middle.

  “Who knows when I’ll get the time. Bibb’s got me organizing data for the accreditation people. They’re coming tomorrow.”

  “Is that why she canceled the meeting?”

  “I don’t think so. She told me she wasn’t feeling well. Looked like she had seen a ghost.”

  “She told me she didn’t believe in ghosts. Hey, maybe you would know where I might find the Trustees’ Office.”

  Londell refolded the lawn chair and leaned it against my cubicle wall. “There is no Trustees’ Office.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I believe the whole point of being a trustee is not having to work in an office.”

  “Who are the other trustees, besides Parshall?”

  “My guess is a bunch of old white guys. Don’t quote me on that.”

  I reached for my rotary phone, whose obsolescence, like that of my refurbished desktop computer, seemed to protect it from thieves.

  I called Hoopel at The Chanticleer. He sounded no closer to puberty on his voicemail.

  “This is Tate Cowlishaw, the guy you gave some bad information. There’s no such place as the Trustees’ Office. Maybe you could do a little investigative reporting instead of cutting and pasting fabricated e-mails.”

  Carly’s head appeared above the partition separating our cubes. “Have you heard anything about a memorial service today at two? A student wants to know if classes are canceled for it.”

  Londell stood up inside his cue. “What memorial service?”

  “I noticed that in the obituary,” I said. “I figured Delilah would have you working on the program.”

  Londell loosened his tie and punched the felt-covered wall between us. “Goddamn him. Even in death, that fat bastard finds new ways to waste my time.”

  “You’ve got a PhD,” said Carly. “Why don’t you teach somewhere else?”

  Londell let out a laugh about as loud and sincere as someone in the audience on amateur night. “That’s rich, Miss Worth. Mind if I use that in my act?”

  Chapter 10

  I PUT A NOTE ON THE CHALKBOARD canceling the day’s classes in light of the memorial service. I would have canceled them anyway, but it was nice to have a reason. With no class, no meeting, and no Trustees’ Office, I walked the tree-lined mile of sidewalk to the corner of Ruffner and Spruce, where the trees gave way to cracked asphalt and failing businesses. I heard my name as I passed the office of the Gray Knight and kept walking.

  “Tate, come here,” said Jaysaree. “Sundeep has something for you.”

  “I don’t think I need anything.”

  Jaysaree grabbed my wrist and pulled me back to the office. Sundeep came around the counter. “Hold out your hand, Tate Cowlishaw.”

  My landlord placed a flat object in my hand no heavier than an empty wallet.

  “Welcome to the 1990s. Jaysaree and I have added you to our plan. Do not use too many minutes talking to your girlfriend.”

  Jaysaree threw her arms around me. “Sundeep says she will come to dinner tonight?”

  “I’m not sure that’s been decided,” I said.

  Sundeep flipped open the phone. He made me feel the buttons and quizzed me. “You will like it,” Sundeep said.

  I disagreed.

  “Your shirt will be ready this afternoon,” Jaysaree shouted as I made my way to the door.

  I walked through the parking lot behind the cars. There were only two. Much busier were the hours after work when husbands and wives met the wives and husbands to whom they were not married. They rarely left their rooms to take in the majesty of the dry cleaner and the video store that no longer rented videos. The Gogeninis never rented the rooms near mine. For these reasons, among others, I didn’t like the sound of a man’s cough before I turned the corner to my room.

  I leaned back against the graffiti. “Revolution is the opiate of the intellectual,” someone had painted in giant blue letters. Beside these words someone had written “Jesus’ dick” with an arrow pointing to an unadorned portion of wall. A light breeze carried cigarette smoke my way. The only person I knew who smoked was Duncan Musgrove, who claimed he had quit two years ago.

  Another cough came with a tail of a high, nasal voice. Duncan spoke through his nose, but his coughs were heavy with decades of disappointment and phlegm.

  I could think of no positive scenarios involving strangers waiting by my door. I took a casual step around the corner, followed by a pair of less casual ones. My visitor wore a red shirt and khakis. He was several inches shorter than me. I noticed all this as I wrapped an arm around his narrow waist and pushed him face-first into my door.

  I pulled out my new phone whose rounded corner must not have felt much like a gun because my visitor grabbed my wrist and spun around. Cell phones make a bleak sound when they hit concrete, a sound made bleaker when it precedes a set of knuckles striking one’s jaw.

  I made my own fis
t. I was a little behind in this game. He moved from side to side. I took a swing. He took two. Mine found air. His found both sides of my jaw. Something too dark and large to be his fist moved swiftly into my blind spot, my head twisting further past my shoulder than it ever had any desire to go, giving me a helpful view of the car on which I was about to land.

  “I’m not Cowlishaw,” said the visitor to whom I had spoken only on the phone.

  “That makes one of us, Hoopel.”

  “How do you know my name?” His wide, youthful cheeks got bigger in my peripheral field.

  “How do you know where I live?”

  “Mr. Cowlishaw? Why did you attack me?”

  “Technically,” I said, “you threw the first punch. If you’re eager to write my obituary, you might not want to be the cause of death. Conflict of interest, I would think.”

  Hoopel helped me to my feet. Blood rushed to my face, reminding me which parts hurt.

  “Are you going to tell me why you’re here, Hoopel?”

  “I’ve found some information. About the Trustees’ Office.”

  “I didn’t know obituary writers made house calls.”

  “I don’t want to be an obituary writer, okay?” He raised his hand—to hit me, I assumed, until I saw he was handing me my cell phone. He puffed out his little boy cheeks with a big, calming sigh. “You were right, okay? My ex-girlfriend said the same thing. I’m never going to be a reporter if I don’t take initiative.”

  I unlocked my door and invited him in. Edward hopped down from the window sill. He ran to his dish and let out a full-throated meow.

  “I’m okay, Edward. Thank you for asking.” I felt guilty for leaving him alone all night and opened a can of the good stuff. “Where did you learn to fight, Hoopel?”

  “I kickbox. I’ve never been in a fight out of the ring, though. That was pretty cool.”

  “Congratulations.” The loss dropped my record to one and one on the morning. In hindsight, my win over Duncan felt less impressive.

  I offered my guest some of the rum I had bought for eggnog last Christmas.

  “It’s eleven in the morning, Mr. Cowlishaw.”

  “Don’t be rude, Hoopel.” I unwrapped one of my daily plastic cups by the sink and poured him two fingers. For myself I ran some tap water. It was eleven in the morning.

  I sat across from him at the small table I used for stacking mail and entertaining aspiring reporters. The rum made him cough worse than his cigarettes, which he probably smoked to add years to his voice.

  “Let’s hear this information, Hoopel. People are dying for you to get back to work.”

  He set his drink on the window sill. “You might be interested to know,” he said, “that your college does not have a trustees’ office.” He savored these words more than he had my rum.

  “That doesn’t surprise me, Hoopel. Possibly because I told you that about an hour ago.”

  “But I confirmed it.”

  “Now you’re a fact checker, Hoopel. That sounds like a demotion.”

  “You’re not very nice.”

  “Says the man who kicks me in the face outside my own home.”

  Edward returned to the window and sniffed the rum. Hoopel stood up and fished in his pocket. He handed me a sheet of paper from a spiral note pad. I handed it back to him after a cursory glance.

  Hoopel sat back down. “Well?”

  “Well what?” Sooner or later he’d let me know what the note said.

  “Trusteesoffice123@hotmail.com? I don’t think this e-mail account is even affiliated with the college.” He sounded hurt that I hadn’t drawn the same conclusion.

  “Let me see that again.” I gave it another glance and slid it into my pocket.

  Hoopel handed me another sheet of paper. “Trying to find a list of trustees, I came across an obituary for Marlon Letrobe. He’s dead, of course, but his great-great-grandson was the only surviving relative. Maybe he took over as a trustee? I found a phone number with a Massachusetts area code.”

  I stored the second sheet beside the first. I might have a pocketful of nothing, but it was more than I had five minutes ago. “Anything else, Hoopel?”

  Silence lasted long enough that I assumed he had shaken his head. I went over to the metal rod I called a closet and selected a white dress shirt.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Never used to question anything, Hoopel, and now you can’t stop asking questions.” I got down my wingtips and one of my two ties, the one with stripes. “I need to see our interim dean, make sure she’s aware of that memorial service you wrote about so eloquently.”

  Chapter 11

  STAR FALLS WAS A SPRAWLING SUBURB of rolling hills easily mistaken for golf courses. Its residents were the sort who owned pianos and horses, if not quite wealthy enough to use the seasons as verbs. Delilah’s refusal to volunteer her capacious estate for last year’s holiday party had earned her a public rebuke from Dean Simkins. We held it instead in the front office of the Gray Knight after I drew the shortest straw.

  “How much do you professors make?” Hoopel asked as we pulled into Delilah’s quarter-mile driveway.

  “Less than whoever mows her lawn,” I said. “It’s family money, from what I understand.”

  I thanked him for the lift and closed the door. I hated asking for rides, but Hoopel owed me one. I had given him a sense of initiative. He rolled down the window.

  “What now, Mr. Cowlishaw?”

  I pointed to the house, another hundred feet down the circular driveway. “I’m going to go there, and you’re going to go alphabetize dead people.”

  Hoopel’s window remained down. “Give me something else to look for. I want to find things, Mr. Cowlishaw.”

  I rested my arms on his open window. “Okay. See what you can find out about Detective Rick Stashauer of the Grayford Police Department.”

  Hoopel revved the engine of what I only now noticed was a station wagon. “Yes, sir.”

  “Dig deep, Hoopel. Don’t bring me anything I could have Googled myself.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said again and reached through the window to shake my hand.

  The driveway culminated in a half-circle in front of a house I had heard Delilah describe apologetically to Londell as “plantation-style.” A birdbath on an island of bleached gravel lent the place a semi-rustic charm. A garage looked wide enough for two cars. Square bushes with bright flowers lined the sloping walkway leading to the front door. On the porch, between a pair of rocking chairs, sat a glass table under which someone had left a potted plant. The envelope on a plastic trident was unsealed. I stood between the windows and door and got out my magnifier.

  What I took to be a sunflower decorated the front of the card.

  The typed message inside read, “You are a wonderful human being.” The sender had not included a name. I returned the card to its envelope, licked the adhesive, and sealed it. I picked up the plant and rang the doorbell.

  The door opened sharply. Whoever stood before me was not Delilah, as Delilah was not in the habit of standing. “More fucking flowers? My mom doesn’t even know this many people.”

  “This one’s a plant, actually.”

  Juliet Bibb had bright orange hair like her mother, but very little of it. On closer inspection, she had a crew cut. She took the plant, pushed past me, and let it fly from the edge of the porch. The pot shattered on one of the stones around the birdbath.

  “I like it there. It adds color,” I said.

  Delilah’s only child shoved me out of the way and went back inside. I got my foot inside the door before it closed.

  “I’m here to see your mother, actually.”

  “God, why?” Juliet Bibb stopped wrestling with the door, walked down a long hallway, and slammed a door.

  “Stop slamming doors,” said Delilah in a wan voice unfamiliar, or perhaps overly familiar, with protest. She rolled into the living room from the opposite hallway. “Mr. Cowlishaw, shouldn’t you be in class?”<
br />
  “Should is a subjective word.”

  I waited for her to call me clever in that special way that meant “asshole.” Instead, she wheeled into a larger room with white sofas and an abundance of natural light. I followed, passing an upright piano and the balance of the flowers with which her daughter seemed to have a problem. We came to a stop in a small, warm room with skylights and glass walls.

  “Lovely view,” I said.

  For a long time, she said nothing. When at last she faced me, Delilah Bibb said, “What can you see, Mr. Cowlishaw?”

  People who ask this aren’t interested in the answer. They can see that for themselves. They want to know what you can’t see. I saw a brown surface with dark outlines, beyond it a green blur. “I see your wrought-iron furniture,” I said, “on the deck overlooking your manicured lawn.”

  “How do you know the furniture is wrought iron? What makes you think, since I know you can’t see it, that my lawn is manicured?”

  “I draw conclusions based on high probability.”

  “You make assumptions,” she said, opening what I had not assumed was a French door. She rolled down a little ramp onto the wooden deck.

  I followed her outside. If she was trying to get away from me, I liked my chances. I stood beside her at the table and chairs. Delilah’s cold fingers grabbed my hand and put it on the edge of the table. Next she guided my hand to the back of a chair. They were grainy with rust. Chips of paint came off on my fingers.

  “Does that feel like wrought iron, Mr. Cowlishaw?”

  I lifted the chair, no heavier than a skillet.

  “I paid sixty dollars for the set at a big-box department store. I haven’t had my lawn mowed since last August. You assume, because I have money, that I concern myself with nice things. The money, by the way, belonged to my parents. They are both dead, so now it belongs to me.”

  Delilah rolled to the edge of the deck. There was a cranking sound. Something small and white became level with her face. She rattled a bag and filled what I concluded to be a birdhouse with five seconds worth of seed.

  “And what assumptions did you make about my daughter?” Delilah asked.