Blue Angel (33 page)

“Well…” Swenson's disturbed by what he hears in Betty's voice: the tone of someone with a morsel of gossip so juicy it can't be suppressed.

“Yes, Betty?” coaxes Francis Bentham.

“Well, when Professor Swenson borrowed the book, I couldn't help but notice that he was acting rather strangely.”

“Strangely how?” Bentham says.

“You know, I had the funniest feeling that he was trying to, well, not
steal
it, exactly. Just not…properly check it out.”

“Did anything Professor Swenson do give you this feeling?” asks Amelia.

“No,” says Betty. “It was just a feeling. Anyway, maybe he changed his mind, or maybe I was wrong. He gave it to me, and I checked it out for him.”

What did he do to Betty? A moment later, he knows.

“The other thing is that…Professor Swenson didn't return the book until a week or so ago.” Well, there it is. Case closed. He's guilty of the ultimate library sin, keeping a book out past its due date. Betty isn't the kindly, generous, Mother-Hubbard librarian, after all, but the retentive bad-witch librarian, longing to send you to the electric chair for that overdue fine. But wait a minute. Senior faculty can keep books forever. Stacks of overdue books and unread papers are part of every professor's office decor. So the sin must be that he'd taken it out at all. Not just any book. The priceless first edition of Angela's dirty poems.

“Thank you, Betty,” Lauren says. Betty stands and leaves, this time without the tremulous pause for a heart-to-heart with Swenson. He will never forgive her, never go into the library and pretend this hasn't happened. Not that Betty will notice, since this is most likely the end of his library-going life at Euston.

Bentham waits a few beats, then says, wearily, “And speaking of phone sex…let it be entered into the record that Professor Swenson made a call to a…900 line, a…phone-sex line. From his office telephone.”

Swenson hovers briefly on the edge of hysteria. What about his privacy? His First Amendment rights? Since when does this committee have a mandate to examine his phone bill? Well,
their
phone bill, actually.

“Next witness,” murmurs Bentham.

Carlos Ostapcek bounds down the stairs—Rocky Balboa in reverse. Jogging past, he punches Swenson's arm, a declaration of brotherly solidarity. Carlos is no Betty Hester, wimping out under pressure. Carlos is here on Swenson's side, on behalf of his coach. Touchingly, Carlos has put on a suit. He's more dressed up than Swenson, who half expects Carlos to pump his hands in the air when he finally reaches bottom. But he simply takes his seat and plunks his elbows on the table.

“Welcome, Mr. Ostapcek,” Lauren says, and the committee members mumble greetings, a process that by now they've got down to a mild mass exhalation.

“Can't say I'm happy to be here,” says Carlos, with a pointed look in Francis Bentham's direction.

“None of us are,” says Bentham. “Believe me, Carlos.” It's not lost on Carlos that the dean is calling him by his first name.

Son of a bitch, thinks Swenson. Not even he suspected just how slimy Bentham is. How else does someone get to be dean of a pretend college? This hearing's an education on the subject of his colleagues' true natures.

“Carlos,” says Lauren, “I know this is tough for you. But in the interests of the college and your fellow students, there are certain questions we need to ask. And a number of your classmates have chosen you as their spokesperson.”

This news encourages Swenson. The students—many of whom, he fears, have resented him all semester—have picked, as their representative, the one most likely to defend him. Swenson thinks of them, every one, with tenderness and regret. They're his class. They're sticking together. Swenson's been too hard on them—and himself. Clearly, he's taught them something. They've all learned together.

“I don't know about spokesperson,” says Carlos. “I just know what I know.”

“And that's all we're asking from you,” Amelia says. The aristocratic señorita patronizing the dumb little campesino.

“All right, then,” says Lauren. “Has Professor Swenson done anything in class that seemed peculiar to you or that has made you feel uncomfortable in any way?”

“No, ma'am,” says Carlos. The
ma'am
is priceless, really. All those years in reform school and the military have given Carlos the strength to hang in there and not crack under torture administered by the likes of Lauren Healy.

“Nothing at all?” prods Bentham.

“Nothing, nope,” says Carlos.

Is Swenson's teaching on trial? He's still under the misguided impression that they have convened to discuss the matter of his sexual relations with Angela Argo. The sex did not take place in the classroom, though now it occurs to Swenson that what passed between him and Angela in class was considerably more satisfying than what they finally did in her bed.

He shuts his eyes for a moment and through the darkness hears someone ask, “Did you ever notice anything unusual or surprising, anything unprofessional in Professor Swenson's behavior toward Miss Argo?” It takes him another moment to realize that the voice is Magda's. Magda doesn't sound like herself. Why does Magda want to know? Did she notice something on that very first day when she ran into Swenson and Angela walking across the quad? If so, would she please tell
him
.
He'd
like to know what she saw. Because despite everything Angela's done, Swenson longs to hear Magda say that when she saw him and Angela together, she sensed some current of…mutual attraction between them.

“Nope, can't say as I did,” says Carlos.

“And what was his attitude about her work?” Good old Magda, trying to get this back on track. Teaching. Learning. Work.

“He liked it,” Carlos says. “And I could see why. It was pretty good. Okay. She had a kind of tough workshop. But I think everyone secretly liked her stuff.”

“What
was
Miss Argo's work?” Bill says.

“A chapter from a novel,” Carlos says. “At least that's what we were told.”

“And what was the novel about?” Surely Lauren knows: the oppression of the female sex by the phallocentric male hegemony.

“Well,” says Carlos, “it was about this girl. This high school girl. And she's hatching these eggs for her science project.” Carl and Bill perk up slightly at the mention of something so tangibly, reassuringly concrete as a science project.

“And what else?” says Lauren. “Can you remember anything else?” Lauren knows what she's looking for. She's heard about the book. Who told her? Magda? Angela? Has Lauren read it? Swenson hopes she has. He hopes they all have. It will, as they themselves would say, alter the terms of the discourse.

Carlos says, “There was this part about the girl having a crush on her teacher.”

“And did any of you find it strange?” says Bentham. “Did it make any of you uneasy that Angela was writing about a student with a crush on her teacher?”

“No,” says Carlos. “Not at all. Professor Swenson taught us, like, practically the first class, that we should never assume that anything's, you know, autobiographical.”

What a good boy Carlos is! In this crowd he seems like a pillar of moral rectitude, setting everyone straight, little Jesus lecturing the elders in the temple.

“I see,” says Bentham, chastened. “Yes, I suppose that's a wise idea.”

“And besides,” adds Carlos, “half the stuff that college chicks write is about having a crush on their teacher. They've never been anywhere, done anything. What else can they write about?”

All right, Carlos. That's enough. Meg Ferguson, wherever she is, will revoke your authority to speak for her and the others.

“And Carlos…,” says Lauren, “did you and the others have any reason to suspect that Professor Swenson was involved with Miss Argo?”

“No,” says Carlos. “But we do now. And you know what? I can't see what the big deal is. Shit happens. People get attracted to other people. It's not that big a deal.”

Carlos's moral authority is slipping here. The committee's not about to be convinced that their ethical standards—the principles they're putting in all this time and energy to uphold—can be challenged by Carlos's goony common sense.

“And I assume that the class also knows by now,” presses Bentham, “that Professor Swenson may have talked Miss Argo into having sex in exchange for certain favors.”

“What favors?” asks Carlos.

“He promised to show her novel to his editor in New York. To get her novel published.”

No, sir. The class did not know this. No way. Carlos doesn't need to answer. The truth is all over his face.

This is Swenson's payback for having enforced a sadistic system in which students are required to keep silent while their hearts and souls are ritually dismembered. The committee should have offered Swenson the option, the kindness, of a gag, to prevent him from shouting out: Carlos, don't listen to them! That's not what happened. And what should he say? What
did
happen? I showed her work to my editor because it's so much better than yours, Carlos. In any case, it's no longer clear that he
has
an editor in New York, besides which he would never have suggested trading a professional introduction for sex. Not only because of his own moral scruples, values, vanity, and pride, but also because, as it turned out, he couldn't be sure that he could collect on the sexual part of the bargain.

“No,” says Carlos. “We didn't know. Gee. Let me get this straight. Sorry. I didn't mean to…” Everyone watches Carlos's perception of unfairness—Angela's gotten a special break denied the rest of the class—warring against his belief in loyalty and in not betraying his captain. Swenson wants to tell him that the real unfairness involves the distribution of talent and has nothing to do with whatever happened between him and Angela Argo. But that would hardly endear him to the committee, or to Carlos.

“That's all right, Carlos,” says Bentham. “Take a minute. Tell us, are you a writer too?”

“I hope so,” says Carlos.

“Well, it's been my impression,” says Bentham, “that writers generally have excellent memories. It's one of the tools of their trade.”

“I guess so,” Carlos says.

“Then search your memory,” says Bentham, “and tell us if anything happened in class this semester that seemed even slightly…odd or…out of the ordinary.”

Every ounce of Carlos's training and life experience is pressuring him to stand tall and not disclose anything except his name, rank, and serial number. But nothing has prepared him to resist the seduction of having the dean of his college calling him a writer and a half-dozen faculty members hanging on his every word. How can he disappoint them? How can he not offer up any scrap of information he can recall?

“There was a joke going around the class. I mean, we were getting a lot of stories about people…” Carlos shakes his head. He can't believe this. Not even in the navy did he encounter anything this wiggy. “Um, there were a lot of stories about people having sex with, you know, um, animals.”

Yes, and Carlos started it with his piece about the young voyeur, his tattletale neighbor, and the German shepherd. Let's enter that into the record.

“With
animals
?” repeats Bentham, in honeyed tones of ironic Brit disbelief.

At this, Bill the anthropologist comes—just perceptibly—to life. What interspecies intercourse is part of the secret rituals of this creative writing tribe?

“What animals?” Bill says.

Carlos shakes his head again. “Actually, sir, a chicken.”

Bentham is having fun with this. “Are you telling me, Carlos, that a student in Professor Swenson's class submitted a story in which a character—a human—had sex with a chicken?”

“A dead chicken.” Carlos can't help himself. Everyone chuckles, appalled. Bentham looks at Swenson, who shakes his head. Damned if he gets it, either. First phone sex, now animal sex. Obviously, he's been having an interesting semester.

“I see,” says Lauren. “A theme seems to be emerging.”

“What's that?” says Carlos cagily.

“Didn't you say Miss Argo's novel was about eggs?” Lauren's been trained by years of graduate school to look for patterns of metaphor. “And now chickens…?”

“No one was having sex with the eggs in Angela's novel,” says Carlos.

Not in the part you read, Swenson thinks. Another sign of how lost he is that he's proud to have read more of Angela's book than anyone else in the class or on the panel.

“You said
animals
…plural,” says Bill, the statistically conscious, quantifying voice of the social sciences. “So there were…
other
animals.”

“A cow,” Carlos says. “And a dog.”

“In the same story or in separate stories?” says Amelia.

“Separate stories,” says Carlos.

“From different students?” Carl asks.

“Yep,” Carlos concurs. “The dog was in my story, actually.” Finally, the truth.

“All this in one semester?” says Bentham.

“This semester. Yeah.”

“And you're telling the committee that, in one semester, students in Professor Swenson's class wrote fiction in which humans have sexual relations with cows and chickens and dogs.”

“
A
cow,” says Carlos. “
A
chicken.
A
dog.”

“That's remarkable,” Bentham says.

“I guess so,” says Carlos. “We used to say we'd finally figured out what got Professor Swenson's attention.”

That's
what they thought got his attention? There's been a gigantic misunderstanding about those swamps of boredom Swenson slogged through reading their wretched stories, spiced by the dread of having to figure out how to teach them without getting charged with sexual harassment, which he
is
getting charged with, so he was right to worry. What got his attention was Angela Argo's novel.