Academy Gothic

by James Tate Hill

  “Listen to you, quoting Chekhov.”

  “Paraphrasing, actually. You quoted him. To me. Three years ago.”

  Mollie rolled onto her back. I turned onto my side, getting close enough to see what I hadn’t seen in those three years. The accuracy of my memory was vindicated, but part of me always doubted its worth as a substitute for the real thing. Mollie located that part with her fingertips and smiled.

  “Ben and I are great at the day-to-day,” she said. “The passion is what eludes us. We’re more like friends, siblings even.”

  “The last I heard, you were trying to get pregnant.”

  She laid her head on my chest. A powerful sigh made it all the way to my ankles. “Thank God I haven’t. His idea, not mine.”

  “Full of ideas, that husband of yours. How’s that petition coming?”

  “He’s . . . territorial,” she said. “If Delilah gets her way, she’s going to eliminate all content-based learning. No more space classes, no more poetry. I’m not sure what she plans to do with the courses you teach.”

  “Maybe you can teach them. She let me know I wouldn’t be rehired.”

  “Oh my God. Tate, I’m so sorry. What are you going to do?”

  “I have a couple of leads,” I said.

  She kissed my cheek. “Good for you. I’ve always thought you’d be happier in a different line of work. I don’t know why you never looked into financial planning.”

  I didn’t mean job leads, but I didn’t correct her.

  “It’s the hardest thing,” she said, “to think outside the box. God knows I tried with you. But I do believe people can change. I’m more patient than that cruel girl who gritted her teeth when she read you the list of entrées on a dinner menu.”

  “In your defense,” I said, “my eyes and your patience weren’t the only mismatch.”

  She placed her hand in the center of my chest and rose up to look at me. Her wide, dark eyes were helpful in feigning eye contact.

  “As I recall, sweetheart, you had much more of a fondness for . . .” I pretended to shop for the perfect word, “things than I did. I don’t imagine another job would pay me what you’d like to be worth.”

  Mollie punctuated a long breath with a smile. “I can learn to

  live without a lot of things. Plus, I’ll get half of everything Ben and I have.”

  Her head settled again on my chest. We lay there for a long time, our shared past filling the room. I turned off the lamp on

  the nightstand.

  “I can’t stay,” Mollie said. “I’m supposed to be singing.”

  She kissed me before sliding out of bed. I turned the lamp back on. I watched as her skirt obscured what I already began to miss.

  “What did you sing?” I asked. “Better get your story straight.”

  Sitting on the bed, she kissed my forehead, nose, and chin. “I lied to you the other night, when I said I had been singing recently. It was actually the first time I had sung since college. I was planning ahead, giving myself an excuse to go out at night, somewhere I might tell my husband I was when I was actually here.”

  “Quite a plan.”

  She kissed another path up the center of my face, making my lips the last stop. “You’re worth it.” She collected the journals on the floor. “Maybe I should leave these here, prevent him from asking why I took them with me to sing.”

  “Tell him you needed the words to one of your poems. You’re going to put it to music.”

  “You’re a pretty good liar, Tate.”

  “You’re a pretty bad one.” I rolled onto my side. “Care to tell me why you’re really here?”

  Mollie dropped the journals and lay beside me, her nose pressed to mine. “Cut me a tiny bit of slack, Tate. I just cheated on my husband. I may not look like it, but I’m freaking out a little.”

  I aimed my gaze at the curtained window, focusing the lower portion of my useful vision on the yellow cover of an old Dustbowl. “Forgive me. Things have had a way of sounding untrue the last

  few days.”

  Mollie’s lips curled into a sympathetic smile. She put on her shoes and gave me a long kiss. “It’s you, Tate. It’s always been you.”

  Chapter 20

  IT WAS STILL DARK OUTSIDE WHEN I WOKE. I hit the button on my clock that announced the time in a female’s stern voice. I hit it again, hoping she would change her mind.

  I brewed a pot of Nicaragua with notes of toffee and green apple. My computer was still on from the night before. I turned on my screen reader and did my own search for info about cremation. None of the frequently asked questions addressed how and when decisions were made to cremate someone without family or a will.

  I got directions to the house of Sarah Freyman, nine miles outside city limits. I had never been to that area by foot. I wasn’t a fan of taxis. Drivers unfamiliar with my destination liked to ask me if we were there. Half the time we were not there, but all I knew was the address, which I had already given the driver.

  I checked my e-mail. Seven students wanted to know if we had class Friday. They were all dated Wednesday. I hadn’t known them to think so far ahead. I deleted the lot of them and opened the message from Islanda Purvis, subject heading “paper you assigned.” Out of the mildest guilt and a desire to finish my coffee, I opened the attached file.

  “The failing business I have chosen to write about,” the paper began, “is Parshall College, located in Grayford, North Carolina.”

  She catalogued the physical degradation of the buildings and landscape, campus crime, the volatile curriculum—her word—and the lack of extracurricular activities that might better promote a sense of community among the student body.

  “How a school that charges so much money for tuition can’t offer a decent college education, I have no idea. They sure aren’t using that money on professors. I know this because there aren’t very many of them, and the ones we do have barely do anything. For example, I know Mr. Cowlishaw won’t actually read this paper, so I’m just going to keep typing until I reach the bottom of the page, which is how he grades all of our papers, by checking to see if we reached the last line on the page.”

  “To refer to something Mr. Cowlishaw mentioned in class, something which I already knew because it’s common sense, the business world operates on the principle of supply and demand. A college education is in high demand, so Parshall College, located in Grayford, North Carolina, needs to supply a better education in order for more students to pay the insane price they charge. The more students there are, the more money the school will make from tuition. This probably isn’t going to happen, so the way I would save Parshall College, located in Grayford, North Carolina, is to beg Sarah Freyman, the richest trustee, for some of the money she probably keeps for herself instead of putting it back into this terrible school. Here are some more words so that the paragraph will end on the last line of

  the page.”

  I backed up my screen reader to the last few lines. That a student would know the name of a trustee seemed unlikely, but not impossible. That she knew the trustee’s wealth relative to other trustees seemed equally peculiar. I searched the Internet for the name Sarah Freyman with various key words that might connect her to Parshall College. Her name was not an uncommon one. On no web pages did the name appear with the word trustee or the name of the school.

  “Dear Islanda,” I replied. “Terrific work, particularly the way your words went all the way to the bottom of the page. I have a couple of questions about the source of some of your information. Call my cell phone as soon as you read this so we can resolve this urgent matter.”

  Chapter 21

  THE FORCEFUL CLACK OF A TALL, full-figured woman in heels passed in front of my door. I opened it in time to catch a whiff of her extra-virginal tailwind. “I take it you had a good time,” I called out.

  Myrsini threw her head back and let out an incongruously small laugh. She spoke with more breath than one usually finds in a natural, unaffected voice. I was
only sixty percent confident she wasn’t a man. “Pretentious assholes like that are the reason I left academia.”

  “Perhaps if you made what he makes, you could have stuck it out.”

  “Sometimes I miss it, Tate. Not the bullshit, of course. I do miss a room full of people who have paid to listen to me. Now people like ‘Big T’ over in Room 22 pay me to listen to their tedious stories about nothing and nothing and nothing.”

  “Big T?”

  “That’s what he instructed me to call him. They like nicknames, Tate. I have a short chapter on the subject in my book.” Myrsini brought her face a few inches from mine. “I’m sure there’s a secret name you’d like to be called, Tate Cowlishaw.”

  “When I think of something, I’ll let you know.” Myrsini kissed my nose. “Do that,” she whispered.

  As she pulled away, I used the cover of my mirrored sunglasses to point my pupils skyward, getting an extended view of what I was eighty percent sure was an Adam’s apple. Of all the mistakes I had made with women, this was not one of them.

  I knocked a few times on the door of Room 22. I let a minute

  pass and knocked again. A high, mechanical wheeze somewhere in the room came to a stop. The Big T said something, which I didn’t make out. I knocked again.

  Totten opened the door until the chain caught. “You are not my Greek goddess.”

  “And for that I apologize,” I said. “She asked me to tell you what wonderful company you were. Mind if I step inside for a moment?”

  The door moved a couple of inches in the wrong direction. Totten’s voice became pinched, defensive. “I can pay more if I was inappropriate.”

  “How much did you have in mind?”

  “As much as you think is fair. Please consider, however, that she did not do two-thirds of what I requested.”

  I was thinking about taking his money and splitting it with Myrsini. I was thinking of things I wished I weren’t thinking about. “Actually, I’m here on behalf of another woman you know.”

  The door opened all the way as Jefferson Totten pleaded his ignorance. The towel around his waist resembled a tight miniskirt. Above it he had cultivated a wide field of gray chest hair. I left my sunglasses on and aimed them at his torso, blocking what I didn’t wish to see, the one thing my eyes do well.

  “I don’t know what she told you, but Ms. Myrsini was the only woman I was with last night. I made a few suggestions to the contrary, but those were not to her liking.” Totten raised his arms above his head. The towel fell. “If you need to rough me up a bit, I understand. Anywhere but the face. I have an important meeting in half an hour.”

  I removed my shades, folding the stems and sliding them in my breast pocket.

  “Wait a moment. Christ on a crutch, you’re no pimp. You’re from the college.”

  Close as we stood, my peripheral vision received a brief synopsis of Myrsini’s evening. I handed him his towel. “Interim Dean Bibb sent me. She wanted to make sure you knew where the meeting was being held.”

  “Tell her I received her e-mail as well as her phone message.” He picked up the towel and threw it at the television. “Every time I talk to that woman I miss Scoot a little more.”

  “You liked working with him, did you?”

  “You’re goddamn right.” Totten faced his reflection in the mirror. The volume of his breathing and his enduring nudity made me wonder in new ways what he found so appealing about our late dean.

  “Actually, Interim Dean Bibb had to change the location of this morning’s meeting. The room where it was to be held no longer has electricity.”

  Totten faced me again and sighed. “I fear for the lovely, park-like campus of fair Parshall. Delilah Bibb has not made a positive impression, Dr. Collins.”

  “Mr. Collins,” I said, thinking it best not to correct him entirely.

  Totten sat on the bed and pulled on a pair of underwear. “I assume you will forget everything I’ve said to you in this shabby room.”

  “I have a terrible memory,” I said.

  Jefferson Totten clapped me on the back and called me a good man.

  We stepped outside. He asked what I drove, and I said my Hyundai was in the shop.

  “You need to get yourself a German car, Mr. Collins. Only the Germans understand the meaning of true luxury. Climb into my Mercedes, and allow me to make a brief argument on their behalf.”

  I told him where to make turns. Enamored as he was of his car’s accelerator, he managed to miss most of them. After running his second stop sign, I took the liberty of pointing them out as well.

  “Rules, Mr. Collins, are for people who don’t know what they’re doing. As a steward of the academy, you should be aware of that.”

  He double-parked the Mercedes across the lot from its uglier cousin, Duncan’s Volkswagen. I led us to the former computer lab on the second floor of the student center. The room looked much the same as it used to, long tables arranged in a broken square, minus the chairs and computers. Delilah was not there, as she tended not to visit the second floors of buildings without elevators.

  Totten crossed his arms over his sport coat. “This does not

  bode well.”

  I excused myself to the hallway, faked a phone call, and returned to the empty room. “She wants you back in the original location.”

  “Furley Hall, third floor?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Totten chuckled unhappily as I led him across the parking lot, past the library to Furley Hall. I bid him adieu between the second and third floors, out of earshot of Delilah’s office.

  Totten shook my hand with a delicate up and down, as if determining its weight. “It’s a shame you’re not dean, Mr. Collins. You feel like a man I could work with.”

  Half a dozen steps led him into the classroom. He closed the door behind him. I heard Delilah’s voice, but couldn’t make out any words. I took the rest of the stairs and skirted the wall where the floor protested less insistently.

  “Go ahead,” Delilah said. “I’ll be fine.”

  A pair of footsteps too light to be Jefferson Totten’s approached the door. Its hinges were on the inside, preventing me from hiding behind it when it opened. I hastened toward the elevator and pushed the button. It opened as quietly as a fifty-year-old elevator ever does, emitting slightly less noise than a city bus swerving to avoid a head-on collision. The doors hadn’t yet closed when some- one passed, stopped abruptly, and joined me inside.

  “There he is,” I said.

  “There I was,” Londell said.

  “Not sticking around for the big presentation?”

  “Apparently,” he said, “Dr. Totten prefers one-on-one interaction.”

  The doors closed. I made a correct guess of the button that kept the elevator from moving.

  “If you ask me, Cowlishaw, this is some racial shit.” Londell gave his sideways laugh that didn’t say whether or not he was joking. “Since when do you ride elevators, Cowlishaw?”

  “I’ve been getting too much exercise. How long do you think they’ll be in there?”

  “Hours, if it’s up to Delilah. You need to talk to her?”

  I pushed the button that opened the doors. “I think I’ll just listen.”

  “Hey, Cowlishaw. I saw Thayer a little while ago by the dorms. Said you and Dr. Parshall offered him a role in some sort of theater venture. Why ain’t I heard about this?”

  “It’s still in the theoretical stage,” I said.

  Londell made the terse M sound particular to sassy black maids on 70s sitcoms. “When theory becomes practice, Cowlishaw, I’ve got two words for you: comedy night.”

  “From your lips to Dr. Parshall’s hearing aid,” I said as the doors closed between us.

  Delilah was talking when I pressed my ear against the wall beside the door. “As you’ll notice in this graph, the mean aptitude of students entering Parshall College has decreased yearly. While not an excuse for the lack of progress under Dean Simkins’s leaders
hip, we are profoundly confident . . .”

  The rest of Delilah’s thoughts were swallowed by Jefferson Totten’s enormous, jungle-cat yawn.

  “Are you tired, Dr. Totten? I can get you some coffee.”

  “Not tired, Ms. Bibb. Just bored.”

  “Dr. Bakker was in charge of the graphs. Perhaps if he were here, he would be able to walk you through the data with the vim you would prefer.”

  “I doubt the walk will improve with a different escort,” said Totten.

  Delilah cleared her throat with excessive vim. “Should I begin with formative assessments?”

  There was only silence, underscored by the toes of a rodent gaining purchase in the wall. The heavier feet of Jefferson Totten slowly made their way from what must have been the back row. Each step put another crack in the tenuous dam holding back Delilah’s sniffles and sobs. Desk legs scraped the floor.

  In a voice even softer than his hands, Totten said, “I’m going to close your little computer now. No more PowerPoint, no more charts and graphs. I’ll sit in this here desk, and you can sit in your wheelchair, and you and I will have a conversation. How does that sound?”

  “It’s been a horrible week, Dr. Totten.”

  “I know it, darlin’. Take my handkerchief and dry your face.”

  “We weren’t able to locate his files. With some additional time, I’m certain we could make a far more compelling argument for our college.”

  “I’m going to go out on a limb, Dr. Bibb, and guess you did not work closely with Dean Simkins on matters of accreditation.”

  “I worked very, very closely with him on the new curriculum. Not to mention the exhaustive overhaul of the university’s learning outcomes and—”

  “Accreditation, Dr. Bibb. Matters of accreditation.”

  An unruly sob interpolated itself between her words. “I have the checklist of learning objectives and all the accompanying descriptions from the accreditation board’s website. If you could please walk me through it and offer the briefest of extensions, I

  truly am certain you would find everything at Parshall to your satisfaction.”

  The sound of paper ripping was unmistakable through the poorly insulated wall.