Burning Down the House

by Lev Raphael

  your record.”

  “I have a record? I’ve never been arrested, how can I have a record?”

  Valley left, having scored his points, and Stefan closed the door after him. I noted that the room was still redolent of Juno’s perfume, and so did Stefan as he breathed it in.

  “Hurricane Juno strikes again.” He laughed almost

  appreciatively.

  “Don’t laugh at her,” I said. “Didn’t you hear what she said? Someone tried to kill her.”

  “Nick—it was a mob scene, that’s all. People get hurt without anyone intending to do it.”

  “What about those bruises?”

  “They don’t prove anything. She fell, she could have

  been stepped on.”

  “She said she was pushed—there’s a difference.”

  “The room was dark—”

  “But there was some light coming in from the hall,” I said.

  “Then why didn’t she see who did it? Is she hiding his identity? I don’t think so. It’s all bullshit.” Case closed, Stefan’s expression said.

  “Come on, why would she make up a story like that?

  And don’t tell me it’s because she wants attention. Juno gets attention just by walking into a room. You know that. Hell, she can be down the hall, and you’d hear the heels and smell the perfume. She doesn’t have to invent crank phone calls or a stalker.”

  Stefan was thinking hard. “Juno claims she has a gun, right? What if she used it at the reception, or it went off by accident, and the attack is a cover story?”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “And what was she doing at the reception anyway? Her

  book was published under another name—she’s only told a few people it was her.” Juno had written an unlikely

  pseudonymous bestseller, part Western, part Egyptian epic, and all trash (which she freely admitted): The Pharaoh’s Last Stand. “So if it wasn’t because she was getting a plaque, why was she there? To cause trouble? Or get into it?”

  “Come on, Stefan.”

  “Juno gives loose cannons a bad name,” he said, his

  recurring suspicion of her welling up even stronger. “I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

  Well, he had me there. We’d just seen her abuse

  Detective Valley. And though it was less fiery, how about flirting with a gay man in a pool, having him over to dinner, and talking about well-hung men? She was the poster girl for over-the-top.

  But Stefan wasn’t thinking about Juno anymore, because he said, “Did you notice how Valley never answered your question—about whether anyone was hurt? Maybe no one

  was, maybe there wasn’t a gun, and he was trying to trick us somehow. There’s no reason to trust him either.”

  “Come on, he’s not smart enough to be Columbo.”

  “But he is shabby enough.”

  “Granted. And how do we know he actually works for

  the campus police? He’s never shown us an ID, not that we asked. But seriously, he just showed up and said who he was, and we’ve always taken it on faith.”

  “So have the other cops on campus.”

  “Good point.”

  “You know what we need?” I said. “Let’s forget about

  all this. Let’s go home and open a really good bottle of wine tonight and make a blowout meal. Like that oregano-crusted roast leg of lamb with lemon, the one we made for your dad and Minnie last year, the one with potatoes and onions? We could pick up the lamb on the way. And we still have two bottles of that amazing Australian Grand Shiraz. Let’s drink them both up. I’ll even wear my tux for you.”

  We went right home and ended up ordering a large

  pepperoni pizza from our favorite place, drank a bottle of Valpolicella, and fell on each other afterward in bed like Byron’s Assyrian army that “came down like the wolf on the fold.”

  I woke up in the middle of the night, my mind drifting through the afternoon’s carnival. SUM was more and more starting to stand for State University of Maniacs. I grinned, remembering Juno’s outrageousness, even though I was worried about her safety, and gloomily imagined tomorrow’s headlines in the Michiganapolis Tribune.

  I didn’t want to read in case that woke Stefan up, so I headed down to my study and booted up to check my e-mail.

  I expected to see some with subject headings about the reception-turned-Guernica, but there were none.

  The first e-mail I saw was from Dulcie Halligan, EAR’s grim office manager, who was a lot like Barbara Bush without the pearls and the smile (and the smirking sons). Dulcie carried herself with a wounded, disappointed air that alone would have made it clear she felt superior to everyone in EAR, if she never spoke a word. But in case you were too dim to read her signals, she was ever quick to announce that she had graduated from SUM cum laude when she felt she was being dissed by the faculty, which was basically all the time.

  Her defensiveness and sense of entitlement meant she

  was perfectly in tune with the quiet hysteria in our

  department, where professors knew all too well that the university didn’t value what they did because they were so badly underpaid compared to other departments.

  Perhaps Dulcie took EAR’s low status personally, and

  that’s why she was rude to faculty, though I had emerged from the crowd of people she quietly loathed. Besides my being faculty, untenured, Jewish, gay, and from New York, Dulcie had an extra reason not to like me: I had made the mistake of talking back to her that semester. It had popped out even though I had always known the worst thing you could do was alienate support staff, since they were usually overworked and treated poorly.

  So when I saw Dulcie’s e-mail in the middle of the night, I was predisposed to scowl—at her, and at myself.

  The subject line read “Diversity Tree,” and I had no idea what that meant (was it like a phone tree?), so I had to find out:

  You’ll notice that there’s going to be a darling artificial tree on the counter in our main office. I’ve brought it in as a Diversity Tree for the holiday season and I

  welcome everyone to adorn it with ornaments

  reflecting their faith persuasions so that we can

  celebrate the diversity that is at the heart of us all.

  I reread her post, imagining Dana Carvey’s Church Lady saying, “Well, isn’t that special?” and wincing again at “faith persuasions,” but I still didn’t understand what was going on.

  The department policy was no official recognition of the holidays—that is, Christmas—so wasn’t this a violation of some kind? Or didn’t the policy apply to the secretarial staff?

  If it did, why was Dulcie taking this initiative now?

  I checked the time the message was sent: after five. I wondered what other people in the department thought about her post, and just then I heard the ping of incoming mail and the Netscape envelope icon appeared at the bottom right of my screen. The new message also had the subject “Diversity Tree,” and it was from Cash Jurevicius.

  It read: “I feel so incredibly assaulted by Dulcie’s e-mail that I have to come out.” That line threw me until I read on: “One of my grandparents was Jewish, and I have always felt a kinship with the Jewish people. But while I feel it’s important to recognize difference, I don’t think the office is a place to do that. I believe my grandmother would have agreed.”

  Cash’s late grandmother Grace had been chair of the old Department of English and American Studies at a time when the university was expanding and SUM had been a less

  contentious place to teach. Invoking her name wasn’t just rhetoric, I had learned in my years at SUM: she was respected and even loved and often held up as an example of what academics should be like, but had ceased to be. Since her day, the field had been infested with criticism, which had become, as the essayist Fred Busch put it, “a living blanket of flies on the body of literature.”

  But did Cash mean Grace Jurevicius had been Jewish?
<
br />   Or was it a different grandparent he was talking about?

  From the doorway, Stefan said, “Aren’t you tired after everything you’ve been through? Don’t you want to come back to bed?”

  I waved him over, punched up Dulcie’s e-mail. He leaned down to the screen, read it, glanced at me. “Is there more?”

  I pulled up Cash’s e-mail.

  “Huh,” was Stefan’s response. “I wonder which

  grandparent he means.”

  “Yeah. Me, too. And why he’s never mentioned it to us.”

  “Well, it’s not like we’re the Jewish welcome wagon or we’re recruiting people for one of those home prayer groups,”

  Stefan said.

  “A chavurah.”

  “Right. It’s none of our business.”

  “It is now.”

  Stefan settled onto the edge of my desk, looking as

  dreamily casual and handsome in blue silk pajama bottoms, with the books and files around him, as a guy in an

  Abercrombie and Fitch ad. See—I was doing it again,

  perceiving him as a figure, not a person. But maybe that was unavoidable in such an image-conscious culture? I sighed at his beautiful dark high-arched feet.

  “Does it bother you?” he asked. “The tree.”

  “It’s against departmental policy, isn’t it? There haven’t been any Christmas decorations the last few years.”

  He waved that away. “Since when have you been so

  rigid? EAR policies drive you nuts.”

  “I guess it does bother me, then. Christmas gets on my nerves. It’s everywhere. Shoved down your throat. Walk around the neighborhood—people don’t just have Christmas lights, they have flags and banners and gnomes and

  metalwork reindeer, and you can’t escape it.”

  “Why should you have to?”

  “Look. I can’t screen things out the way you do. I’m not an introvert.”

  He frowned at the sharpness of my tone, and I

  apologized. I knew that was too simplistic a response, and I think I was snapping at him because I felt guilty about my attraction to Juno. Great. My confusion about her was already leaking into our relationship.

  Stefan asked, “Are you worried about Juno?”

  “No! Why should I be worried about Juno?”

  He paused. “You believe her story about being attacked, so—”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  He frowned. “What did you think I meant?”

  “You’re right. It was the attack, and what’s happened to me, and— Hey, is there any pizza left? I’m starving.”

  5

  JUNO arrived unexpectedly Friday morning with a box of doughnuts. She trooped up the driveway just after 7:00 A.M.

  when I was picking up the morning paper from our front steps. She waved with her free hand. She hadn’t called first, but I suppose that was a blessing, since it would have woken up Stefan, who would not have been pleased with the news of her imminent visitation.

  I confess I thought my face might be turning a little red while she approached, and to disguise that, I looked down as I unrolled the newspaper for a quick check of the headline: “SUM PROVOST ASSAULTED AT VIOLENT RALLY.”

  Violent, yes, but assaulted? By brownies? And why call it a rally? It was a reception. Didn’t the Michiganapolis Tribune’s writers and copy editors know the difference?

  Perhaps not, since the Tribune had run a headline a few years back announcing that “Gandhi Ancestor Visits Governor.” Not that you could fault them, I suppose; Stefan complained that he was finding subject/verb agreement errors and incorrect vocabulary choices (like “aside” instead of “beside” or “dignities” instead of “dignitaries”) in the New York Times.

  Juno shoved the doughnut box at me and strode through the open doorway down the hall into the kitchen, heels clacking like maracas. I was glad to see her—there were some questions I needed to ask. I closed the door and followed to find her peeling off her calf-length raincoat, revealing a shiny black dress with thick leopard-print cuffs that looked almost like a sculpture.

  “Is that dress vinyl?” I set the box of doughnuts down on the kitchen island, ditto the newspaper, saving that for later.

  Juno whirled for me. “No, darling. Rubber.”

  “Does it bounce?”

  “That depends on who’s playing with it. I bought it the last time I was in London, at the Sam Jones boutique. I’m sure your cousin Sharon’s been there. You told me she adored London. How is she doing?”

  “Recovering. It’s going to be very slow.”

  Juno nodded sympathetically. “Honestly, Nick, it’ll be worse than you think. It was for my sister. I don’t mean to depress you, but you should be realistic. If she’d like my sister’s phone number or e-mail, let me know.”

  Well, score one for Juno. Serena had insulted me when I mentioned Sharon yesterday afternoon, but Juno had brought her up unprompted. I suppose that was as good as any other reason to vote for Juno as EAR chair—perhaps a better reason, maybe even the best. Stefan would probably maintain that she was only pretending to be concerned, but even faked concern showed a kinder heart than Serena’s rude question.

  And maybe Juno was a strong enough personality not to be brutalized by power the way Serena had been so quickly.

  Oh, hell, that was stupid. Look how Juno had threatened me when I had dinner at her house. As chair of EAR she would probably run amok like some depraved Roman

  empress. Of course, there was something to be said for that: at least the common folk would get bread and circuses.

  While Juno opened the box and surveyed the doughnuts

  as if she hadn’t picked them herself but was confronting a slightly suspect gift, I was glad that I was showered, shaved, and dressed, and that Stefan was still asleep. I felt alert and ready, and he would have definitely resented Juno’s intrusion, which was more than physical. The strong aroma of roasted coffee was giving way to her perfume, which filled the kitchen.

  I was also pleased that Juno was wearing that outrageous black rubber dress because it turned me off completely, despite looking very good on her. I associate rubber clothing with English kinkiness and pasty-faced, flat-chested, skinny-armed men with teeth like battered tombstones. If Juno always wore rubber, it might cure me of my confusing sexual attraction to her.

  Brandishing what looked like a coconut creme, Juno sat on a stool at the island (her dress creaking a bit) and explained the box: “People are always eating doughnuts on American television when they’re in trouble—like the Brits drink strong tea.”

  “It works for me, Juno. But are we in trouble?”

  She glanced around. “I did wonder, though, if you might be whipping up a nightingale frittata or some such delight.”

  “You can’t get good nightingales this time of year.”

  “Too true.”

  “And you’re a bit of a gourmet chef yourself, aren’t you, judging by that foie gras festival?”

  “I can fake it,” she said. “Now, pour some coffee so we can make our plans.” She crossed her legs tightly, her posture as regal as if she were holding court, and I thought of the way Edith Wharton liked describing how impressive people sat: they “throned.” It fit Juno as well as her rubber dress.

  I brought her a mug of Jamaican Blue Mountain and after pouring one for myself, asked, “Plans for what? Are we throwing a party?”

  “Nick—do you think that ridiculous melee yesterday was spontaneous? Of course not! It was planned—it was a

  cover.”

  This was really bizarre—Stefan had used the same word to describe Juno’s report of being attacked. That’s what SUM

  had done to us—made us see everything as a sham, a facade.

  And in the middle of that realization, with the fragrance of the coffee seeming to tease every molecule of sugar from the doughnut box, I couldn’t help wondering what life would be like having breakfast with Juno more often.

  Noisy, to start w
ith. And exciting. Like a performance of Carmina Burana.

  What was wrong with me? I’d been having great sex

  with Stefan lately, and still my mind was straying to a fantasy life with Juno. So much for the rubber dress as—shall we say —a psychological prophylactic.

  “Nick, I’m sure it was a cover,” she repeated.

  I asked her what she meant.

  “It had nothing to do with that miserable Merry Glinka— God, what a name!—or that mouthy Byron Summerswitch.”

  “Summerscale.”

  “If you say so. But here’s how I see it: the whole fracas was set up to camouflage the attack on me. Merry Glinka wasn’t the target— I was.”

  I chomped into a delicious frosted chocolate doughnut, chewed a bit, and considered my reply. With faculty so demoralized on campus, and Merry Glinka having been hired so swiftly and in a closed meeting of the board of trustees, there was certainly a lot of brush for a forest fire. Anyone wanting to cause trouble could have done so without much incitement. “But that’s pretty elaborate, isn’t it? Staging a riot to get at one person?”

  “No, it’s simple. It’s bloody elegant. It’s perfect. Even you’re skeptical.” She delicately brushed some crumbs from one slender French-manicured hand onto the island’s gray-blue polished granite. She was fastidious and crude—I loved the mix.

  “I didn’t say that I don’t believe it—it’s possible.”

  “But unlikely? That’s the reason why it has to be true.”

  I thought of Oscar Wilde’s Jack saying to Ernest: “Now produce your explanation, and pray make it improbable.”

  “Then who did it?”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be plying you with

  doughnuts, now, would I?”

  “You didn’t see anything? It wasn’t pitch-dark. There was light out in the hallway, wasn’t there, even if it was getting dark outside?”

  I expected her to lash back and say she wasn’t a bat, but instead she put her head down in a completely

  uncharacteristic posture of embarrassment. “I panicked.

  When I went down, when I was pushed, I closed my eyes.

  Squeezed them shut. Like a little girl,” she said disgustedly.

  “Hoping it’ll all go away.” Chin high now, she said, “I was scared.”