Burning Down the House

by Lev Raphael

  “Do you remember anything?” I felt frustrated; Juno was the last person I’d expect to lose her bearings, ball or otherwise.

  “I’d make a terrible witness.” She sighed and considered.

  “Noise. Shouting. Things crashing.”

  “Why didn’t you use your gun?”

  “Because I wasn’t thinking fast enough—” She started, face turning red. “That was sneaky.”

  “So you did have your gun with you. In your purse?”

  “Of course I had it in my purse,” she snapped. “Do you think I strapped it to my thigh, hoping for a shoot-out?”

  “Does Valley know you had a gun with you? Because he

  asked me about it.”

  “My gun?”

  “No. He asked if anyone I knew had brought a gun to the reception, or something like that.”

  “And you said—”

  “I said no—what else? I wasn’t going to betray you,

  don’t worry.”

  She sipped her coffee thoughtfully, accepting the tribute.

  “Why was he interested?”

  “Well, I brought it up, actually, since I thought I heard a gun go off.” A bit desperately, I asked, “Didn’t you?”

  Arched eyebrows up, Juno shook her head, looking

  perplexed.

  “Really?”

  “Nick, there was a lot of noise, all that shouting, tables falling over, broken glass… Maybe that’s what you heard.”

  “Stefan says the same thing. But then why was Valley so intrigued? It seemed like he’d been waiting for me to bring it up.”

  Juno uncrossed her legs and crossed them again, slowly, almost contemplatively, if legs can be contemplative. It wasn’t as revealing a moment as Sharon Stone had made it on film, but it was close.

  “Didn’t he raise it with you?” I wondered.

  Juno glared at me, looking as hostile and surprised as I’d once seen David Bowie look when Dick Cavett kept asking him during an interview what Mick Jagger was like.

  “And why did you go to the reception? Your book’s

  anonymous, the most recent one, isn’t it? So how could you have been on the list for a plaque?” I couldn’t recall having seen her name in the program book, and I had left mine behind when we skedaddled.

  “What if I was there to see someone?”

  “Who?”

  “It’s whom, and it’s none of your business.”

  “I want to know.”

  “Are you interrogating me?”

  “Juno, you said we had to make plans, you asked me to help you. Don’t I need information? I really think there’s something going on that involves a gun at the reception, even if nobody else does. Wait—”

  I grabbed the Tribune and quickly scanned the article, which was actually a fairly accurate description of the chaos, with colorful quotes from Summerscale, who accused the provost of incitement by “malign neglect,” and prim quotes from Merry Glinka, who expressed sorrow that “unsavory elements disrupted a beautiful tribute to SUM’s best and brightest.”

  “Revolting,” Juno said as she leaned forward to read over my shoulder, her perfume embracing me like a fog. “That woman should be shot.” Then she looked a bit embarrassed.

  “You know what I mean.” She recovered her brio. “Fired.

  Rebuked. Tormented. Exiled.”

  She reminded me just then of Serena Fisch a few years ago, quoting with creepy accuracy the lines from Conan where Schwarzenegger as the title character defines happiness this way: “To crush your enemies, drive them before you, and hear the lamentation of their women.” And just as I had felt then about Serena, I was sure that Juno was not a woman to cross.

  I read on in the Tribune. There was no mention in the article of any gunfire, just that the university was planning an investigation, and the board of trustees had issued a brief statement expressing alarm and disappointment. Amazingly, though, nobody had been hurt.

  “And no significant property damage,” I concluded.

  “Of course not. Those superannuated farts couldn’t

  throw dice, let alone each other across a room. Breaking pitchers and knocking over books—it’s pitiful, it’s a disgrace.

  You’d have to party with students to see some real

  destruction.” She sounded ready to launch into a dithyramb about flaming couches heaved into the street, an SUM student specialty that had given the campus a national black eye, so I headed her off:

  “Juno, okay, it sounds like someone is after you.

  Granted. But what if there was a lot more going on

  yesterday?”

  She finished a mildly phallic-looking cruller and reached for a napkin to blot her full and glistening lips. Even without the baked item, she was a woman who made the smallest gestures like that look hot, moving with the indolent grace of an odalisque.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked. “I can tell it’s about me.”

  “That you would have made a wonderful grande

  horizontale”—the French term for the famous courtesans of the nineteenth century.

  “True.” She said nothing, and for a moment I thought we were on the verge of flirting again. “Except I like doing it standing up. The friction’s so much better.”

  I laughed, and it broke the mood.

  “Nick, tell me what you mean by ‘a lot more.’”

  “Let’s work backward, sort of. Let’s say someone

  started the riot—and let’s forget about your being attacked—”

  “I’ll never forget it.”

  “—and look at the impact. It’s bad publicity, right?”

  She nodded. “For the university.”

  “Yes, but not just SUM. For the faculty. It makes the faculty look bad. What if the administration is planning something, like—” Then it hit me: “Like abolishing tenure.

  Other schools have done it, or want to. So, what if this is part of a plan to undermine the faculty, to get public support for taking steps against them? It could be Merry Glinka’s big move.”

  “But isn’t that just like the conspiracy theories we were talking about at dinner?”

  A bit huffily, I said, “Well, it’s not exactly crazy.”

  “Maybe so, but it’s too complicated,” Juno insisted.

  “Remember Occam’s razor? We should make the least

  assumptions and take the simplest solution. The administration here isn’t smart enough to plan anything beyond fund-raising or a parade. You’ve practically said so yourself.”

  “Then what if it’s somebody outside of the university?”

  “Why bother? This university is choking on its own

  mediocrity. The vultures can let it turn to carrion on its own.”

  “Yuck.”

  Juno held out her mug for more coffee, and I obliged.

  When I sat back down, I said, “You still haven’t told me what Valley asked you.”

  “It was nonsense, a waste of time. I gave him my

  statement, and he asked for details. I don’t have details. He’s useless and won’t get anything done, though he’s up to something strange, I feel it, too. And he didn’t believe me— I’m sure he was humoring me because he’s afraid of a sexual discrimination suit. He’s going through the motions. That’s why you and I have to take this on. Campus police! All they’re good for is handing out parking tickets and trying to intimidate hardworking faculty who are—”

  Before she could launch into an aria of defensiveness and abuse, I asked her about the Diversity Tree.

  “The what?”

  “Haven’t you read Dulcie Halligan’s e-mail?”

  “I usually don’t bother with my e-mail, it’s a waste of time—unless I get one of those invitations to visit a teen sex website.”

  “Really?”

  She grimaced. “Of course not! I was just winding you

  up. But even if I did read e-mail, I’d delete anything that sniveling bitch had to say. She’s a weasel,
a worm, a—”

  While she struggled to find another noun starting with the letter W, I gave Juno the gist of Dulcie’s message, but Juno didn’t seem to care, which was a surprise. Given Juno’s distaste for garish Christmas displays, I had expected her to be outraged by the Diversity Tree, and I had wanted her to be my ally.

  “Nick, that hardly seems important now, given

  everything else. Let that little wench have her tree. Maybe she’ll electrocute herself on it, multiculturally, of course.”

  Well, that was a start.

  “So,” she said. “Where do we begin?”

  “Begin what?” Stefan asked from the door, wearing a

  black robe over his pajama bottoms. Barefoot, tousled, he looked gorgeous. He shambled over, said, “Doughnuts, yum,”

  and kissed the top of my head as if Juno weren’t there. She was admiring his dark, high-arched feet and didn’t seem to mind being ignored. Pouring himself a cup of coffee, he repeated his question.

  “Juno wants me to help investigate.”

  “Investigate what?”

  “The attack, whoever’s calling her, the riot, what Valley is up to.” I turned to her. “That’s everything, right?”

  “Basically.”

  Stefan leaned back against a countertop, nodding, taking it all in. “You don’t need an investigator, you need a SWAT

  team.”

  “I can’t get a SWAT team,” Juno growled.

  “Really? I would have thought you could get as many

  men as you want, whenever you want.”

  Juno took it as a compliment, but I knew Stefan. When his face had that bland, helpful expression, it meant trouble.

  Abruptly, Juno said, “I won’t keep you any longer,”

  scooping up her raincoat. “Let’s talk later this morning and decide where to start.” I followed her to the door. “He’s a bit grouchy in the morning,” she threw off as I opened the door.

  “It’s very sexy.”

  Stefan was sitting on the stool Juno had just vacated.

  “The seat’s really warm,” he observed. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

  I tried a joke: “She’s a hot momma.”

  “She’s nuts. She’s invented a stalker, and now she wants you to confirm that. Does she want you to find the stalker, or whatever he is?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Does she?”

  “Sort of.”

  “You really believe somebody is after her? Even though you haven’t seen anything or heard anything yourself? Even though you have no proof?”

  “She’s not making any of this up. I can feel it.” I

  couldn’t say that I was convinced because I also felt something about Juno—though I suppose if I’d admitted it, he would have had more reason to doubt my perceptions.

  Stefan closed his eyes wearily. We were back to the

  same disagreement, his slumping posture seemed to say.

  “It’s one thing to read mysteries and even teach a course in them. But trying to solve one yourself—?”

  “So you think there is something mysterious.”

  “No, I just mean that life is life and books are books.”

  “Bullshit, Stefan, you’re a writer—what’s the difference?

  Some books are more real than anything that could happen to a person—they change you and stay with you forever. What about that night in college when you stayed up until three in the morning reading The Portrait of a Lady, and how it blew you wide open and you knew you wanted to be a writer?

  You’ve read that book five times since then, haven’t you?”

  “Seven,” he admitted.

  I, myself, had read it three times. “That book is life; at least, it’s part of your life.”

  “Okay, I made a poor argument. I’m just trying to tell you that you’re not a sleuth, you’re a professor.”

  “Tell that to the students lining up outside my office at office hours. Stefan, I’d clean up if I sold Tshirts and baseball cap souvenirs. They think I’m da bomb. So how can you say I don’t have a chance of figuring out what’s going on with Juno? I haven’t done too badly so far, have I?”

  Stefan met my challenging stare. “It’s a folie à deux if you get involved. But you’re not getting involved. You’ve been talking about how crazy life is here, and on and on about Poltergeist and Greek tragedy, throwing in everything from the sublime to sitcoms.”

  “Actually, you’re the one who was talking about Greece this week. Ancient Greece.”

  “And I’m right! How much bad publicity have you been

  part of or even responsible for? How many scandals? The dean dislikes you because you accused him of murder—yes, with my help. The president probably thinks you’re a paid agitator working for the University of Michigan to make SUM

  look bad. Your tenure committee collapsed—”

  “It wasn’t my fault!”

  “But people don’t keep lists and mark things down

  accurately, do they? You get the blame no matter who did what. And now you want to risk getting into more trouble?

  You’re not a lawyer taking a pro bono case, you’re an assistant professor who needs to get tenure. You think tearing around campus with Juno pretending you’re the Hardy Boys is going to help you in the slightest?”

  “That’s not why I would do it.”

  “Why, then?”

  “To help Juno, and because I’m curious. I know I heard some kind of gunshot.”

  “Did Juno hear one? No? She didn’t? Okay, then what

  more proof do you need if even Our Lady of Hallucinations disagrees with you?”

  “I’m sure someone fired a gun.”

  Stefan shook his head and chose a doughnut. “These are good,” he mumbled, his mouth half full. “Does Juno deliver pizza, too?”

  “You’re trying to make me laugh, to get me unhooked.”

  And he was probably a little embarrassed by his outburst.

  “Is it working?”

  “Not really. Juno’s being stalked, or at least it’s starting.

  I was stalked, so I know how it feels, and I want to help her.”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Why not?”

  He shoved a doughnut into his mouth, chewing angrily, obviously unable to make a point that would make my night of ignorance as bright as the Fourth of July. I wondered if he suspected I was attracted to Juno and wanted me to stay away from her, but hadn’t worked it out clearly enough, or even at all. It was just reverberating, the way the truth did quietly for the characters in a Henry James novel until it rushed in like a storm and nothing was ever the same again.

  I felt compelled to help Juno, but I realized it could be dangerous in too many ways.

  Stefan had some errands to run, and I went to my study to check my e-mail. On his way out he stopped in the

  doorway and said, “I hope you won’t get into anything messy with Juno.”

  I turned from the computer, worried that he might

  uncharacteristically ask me to promise not to, but all he added was, “See you later.”

  I didn’t have the courage to stop him and say that my relationship with Juno was already a mess.

  I dialed up the department’s listserv and found that there had been an overnight cascade of e-mails for and against the so-called Diversity Tree. As I leaned back and sipped what must have been my fourth cup at the computer and followed their trail, I saw what I’d seen on other lists before: the rhetorical violence people felt free to commit when they weren’t face-to-face.

  Several faculty members crudely asserted that Cash

  Jurevicius had no right to bring his grandmother into the argument, but they professed to speak for her, since they had known and worked with her. Huh?

  But did any of that mean Grace Jurevicius—who’d left

  her wonderful collection of Michigania to the department, which had turned her office into a memorial library—was Jewish
? If so, it was funny that no one had ever mentioned it, unless it was a secret and Cash was outing her and himself.

  Both Kinderhoeks slammed Cash separately for having an opinion at all (since he was only an adjunct professor) and for not being “truly part of the EAR community.”

  Community? Lynch mobs had more fellow feeling.

  Byron Summerscale attacked critics of Jurevicius for

  squashing his right to free speech, accused them of anti-Semitism, but also charged Cash with insensitivity.

  Predictably, Rusty Dominguez-St.John said that everybody should take a deep breath and try to get centered. He, in turn, was told by three professors to take a hike.

  And so on, with easily two dozen more e-mails, replies, and counter e-mails on the subject, the vitriol bubbling over like the cauldron in Macbeth. There was also a slew of e-mails with the subject line of “Reception,” but I thought I’d save those for later. Before I could even compose a reply to add my own voice to the cyber-caterwauling, the phone rang. It was Juno.

  “I’m at Parker Hall, and there’s been another threat. You have to see it.”

  “See it? See what? What happened—are you all right?”

  Juno hung up. I was dressed already, Stefan was gone, and I didn’t have classes that day, which meant no

  explanations or hassles. I grabbed a coat and my keys and made the short drive to campus, worried, but assuming from the steely note in her voice that Juno wasn’t hurt, just angry.

  At Parker, I dashed upstairs, not running into anyone, and hurried down the second-floor hallway to Juno’s office. I had never been in it before, though I’d caught glimpses. It was small but amazing: black wall-to-wall rug, black leather desk chair and accessories, and black-and-gold-striped curtains and tiebacks. The file cabinets were black, too, of course, and perhaps predictably, the only artwork was a framed poster of a gleaming, erotic Gustav Klimt.

  Juno sat at the glass-topped table she used as a desk, fine hands clasping a garish-looking note. She passed it to me without a word. It was like the ransom notes you see in movies, a white sheet of paper bearing a message composed of wildly disparate letters cut from newspapers and

  magazines, a disorienting mix of colors and type fonts. The message itself was quite simple, though: WE DONT WANT YOU

  HERE.

  I set the note back on her desk, remembering the threat I had received just last month, one that had talked about death.