Cold and Pure and Very Dead (11 page)

“You’re sure?” We were standing on the bottom library step, and he set his stack of books on one of the stone pillars.

“Yes.” I did snap at him this time. “And, besides, even if we were screwing our brains out, it wouldn’t be anyone’s business but our own.”

“I know. I know.” He raised his hands defensively. “It’s just that …” He paused. It was a long pause, as pauses go, and I was about to break into his frowning abstraction when he continued abruptly. “It’s just that with the work I’m doing on this new book, I hear a bit about what goes on with contemporary writers.”

Something wasn’t being said, but I nodded anyhow. George’s new book would provide the first major overview of
fin-de-twentieth-siècle
American book history.

“I’m doing a chapter on institutional cross-influence—you know, the effect of university writing programs, writer’s retreats, conferences—on the shape of literary fiction. I’ve seen how nasty Fenton can be. At a conference at Iowa, he was having an affair with … well … with a writer whose name you would know, whose fiction has been characterized as defining the female literary voice for the past three decades. He got soused at a party, announced to the gathering that she was a ‘tight-assed little cunt,’ and jammed an ice cube down her cleavage.”

“Jeesh! And I thought academics were bad.”

“Oh, we are.” George was silent as Ralph Brooke passed us on the steps. Ralph inclined his head ponderously. We nodded in response. My companion watched the Palaver occupant until the older man was well past us. Then he said, speculatively, “I didn’t realize anyone still sold seersucker suits.”

I laughed. “Maybe he special-orders them.”

“But where do they get the fabric? I thought the world’s entire seersucker population had died out—oh, say, about 1968.” Then, without missing a beat, he dropped the facetious tone. “Do you know Brooke at all, Karen?”

“He’s new in my department, but I can’t say I know him. Why?”

“He’s such a pompous son of a bitch. He got hold of me at lunch the other day and blathered on about his salad days as a hipster in the Village with Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Delmore Schwartz. I can’t believe you guys hired him. He puts himself forward as a big expert on the Beats, but what he doesn’t know about the fifties …” He let it trail off. “Have you read any of his work?”

“Oh yes,” I replied, “during the hiring process.” I laughed, distracted from my own problems. “To me the most impressive thing about it is the name he publishes under:
Ralph W. Emerson Brooke
. Can you beat that name for scholarly credibility?”

“Rumor has it …” George drew closer. His mood seemed to have lightened. “…  that Brooke’s name had no W. in it until he published his first book. Then suddenly, magically, old Ralphie was named after the Sage of Concord:
Ralph Waldo Emerson Brooke.”

I gave him a quizzical glance. “George, what’s going on? It’s not like you to be so bitchy about a colleague.”

He looked a little shamefaced. “It’s just that, well,
Brooke’s been lobbying to get the contract for the Library of America edition of the Beat Generation writers, and I had my eye on that little project for myself.” The campus carillon chimed twice, and George hastily scooped up his books. “Gotta run, Karen. Office hours. But remember what I told you. Be careful. Jake Fenton may be a terrific writer, but sometimes I don’t think he’s much of a human being.”

E
arlene hangs out
in Emerson Hall, the administration building, and after I left the library I cut through the classroom wing on my way to her office. It was warm in the building, and professors’ voices droned out from open classroom doors. Terms such as
epistemological contingencies, cultural relativism
, and
transnational immigration patterns
faded in and out as I traversed the hallway. Harriet Person’s pedantic tones snagged my attention as I approached her classroom: … 
due to the objectification of women
, Harriet pronounced. I slowed down. My colleague was teaching Women’s Studies 101, the Intro to Women’s Studies course. Next fall when she went on sabbatical I was slated to serve as her replacement, and I needed some pointers. The prospect of teaching WS 101 intimidated me. How to deal adequately with all the complicated, contradictory, and confusing ramifications of gender—biological, sociological, cultural, economic, political—in one twelve-week course without resorting to reductive sloganizing eluded me. Harriet’s confident voice continued, and I took mental notes:
the persistent trivialization of female literary endeavors stems from a deep-seated misogyny. A fear of female sexual power …
I passed out of earshot, but not until the words
vagina dentata
crossed my ears—the dread male
image of the all-devouring female, the toothed vagina that castrates and devours. I sighed as I turned the corner. I couldn’t quite imagine myself uttering the words
toothed vagina
in front of nineteen young women and the inevitable lone male Women’s Studies major.

I climbed a flight of steps and entered Earlene’s outer office. The work-study student at the desk slid what looked like a copy of
Oblivion Falls
underneath a thick manila folder and informed me that Dean Johnson had said I should go right in. “Karen,” Earlene queried before I was halfway through the door, “what’s this I hear about you and that Jake Fenton? Did you really …?”

W
hen I got home
, there was a message from Jill on my answering machine.
Jake Fenton? Call me!

I poured myself a large glass of California merlot and took it to the green chaise in the backyard. I drank it very slowly, and stared at the leaves on the cherry tree above me. By the time I’d finished the wine, I thought I could discern a separate outline for each and every leaf. Soon the days would be too short to catch that particular transparent quality of late afternoon light. I drained the last drop of wine from the glass and rose to go inside. I walked slowly. There was a long evening ahead, and I had nothing planned.

T
he muffin
of the morning at Bread & Roses was fresh blueberry. I ordered two—one for now, one for later—and black coffee. When Sophia Warzek pushed backward through the double kitchen door transporting a tray of chocolate croissants, I changed my order immediately: one muffin and one croissant. “What else do you have back there?” I teased her. “Whatever it is, don’t bring it out until after I’m gone.”

She smiled wanly, and slid the tray into the display case. Then she frowned and touched me lightly on the hand. “Karen, look, there’s something I need to talk to you about—get your advice.” She glanced furtively around. The palest of blondes, she tended to flush without the slightest provocation, and now her cheeks turned a rosy pink. “But I can’t do it here. Can I call you?”

“Better yet, let’s have lunch. I miss you, kid!” I punched her on the shoulder. When Amanda was home from school, I always bought groceries for three; Sophia practically became a member of the family.

She made a big pretense of rubbing her arm. “Hey, Professor, that’s abuse!”

“Yeah, right. Take it to the Faculty Behavioral Standards Committee. See what they think constitutes abuse.”

The laugh didn’t reach her blue eyes. “I don’t get off work until three, Karen. That’s kind of late for lunch.”

“How about dinner?” I was suddenly worried about my young friend; I hadn’t seen her look so … so haunted … since her father had been incarcerated two years earlier. “Not tonight. I’ve got a … a thing over in New York this afternoon. How about tomorrow? At Mai Thai? Around six?”

“Sure, Karen. Thanks. See you there.” She headed back to the kitchen.

“My treat,” I called after her. The only downside of her father’s absence was that Sophia was now sole breadwinner for herself and her hapless mother.

As I turned from the register, a poster on the Bread & Roses community bulletin board caught my eye. Or, rather, it was the photo of Jake Fenton on the poster that caught my eye—that familiar flannel-shirted hero-of-the-wilderness photograph that graced all his book jackets.
READING
&
BOOK SIGNING, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 7
P.M., SMITH’S BOOKSHOP, FIELD STREET, ENFIELD, JAKE FENTON, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF
ENDURANCE, SURVIVAL, WILDERNESS, PREDATOR, DEADFALL, HUNTER
.
Hmm. Tomorrow? Sophia and I could go after dinner. Maybe. Jake might be a lousy date, but I’d bet he could put on quite a show.

Juggling my goodies—muffin, coffee, croissant bag, newspaper—I surveyed the cafe. This drizzly mid-week morning the small room was packed with students, faculty, and townspeople. Behind me, I heard a woman grouch to her companion, “I hate it when the students come back; you can’t ever get a seat in here. And it’s so noisy.” Her accent was somewhere between Boston and Britain.

“Well, it
is
right across from campus. Maybe we should try going somewhere else.”

“Yeah, but—the scones …”

In front of me on line, a tall, athletic female student
in a buzz cut said to her friend, “Really, Tiff, you should get some help. It won’t be hard to find someone to talk to around here. You can’t throw a
stick
in this town without hitting a therapist.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I know.” Tiff tightened the scrunchie that held back her sleek dark ponytail. “But … listen … I tell you what … instead of a therapist, I’m thinking of consulting a psychic.…”

Her friend shrieked, “A
psychic!
Are you bonkers?”

The place
was
noisy. I frowned.
With the students back
, I thought,
I can’t hear myself think
. Then I recalled the conversation behind me, and snorted. Was I turning into a curmudgeon?
Patience
, I admonished myself,
patience
. But I was wearing new shoes, and I’d been standing on line forever. I glanced around for distraction. Since my last visit, Bread & Roses had changed its art display. Large, brownish-pink oil paintings covered the white-stuccoed cafe walls—indeterminate close-ups of what appeared to be either human anatomical parts or root vegetables. They distracted me, but not in the way I’d hoped.

“Karen.” From a table in the corner, George Gilman beckoned me over. “I’m just off to class. You can have my table.” He gathered up teaching notes, slid them in a folder, and stuck the folder in a battered leather briefcase that looked as if it had gone through grad school with him.

“Thanks.” I set my breakfast on the round marble tabletop, and followed it with the rolled-up copy of the
Times
I’d carried clutched under my arm.

George peered at me over his half-glasses and tapped the newspaper. “There’s a story in here that I guarantee you—
you
, in particular, I mean—will find riveting.”

I smiled at him quizzically:
What?

He shook his head. “The stuff life does to people! You couldn’t possibly make it up.”

Wha-a-a-t?

He hesitated, always inclined to gab. Then he unrolled my paper and pointed. “Read this.”

I took a bite of the muffin, and glanced at the front page. George’s stubby finger indicated a one-column, bottom right, headline:
MURDER SUSPECT IDENTIFIED AS MISSING NOVELIST
.

I inhaled muffin crumbs, choked. George slapped me on the back, force-fed me water. When I’d wiped the tears from my eyes, I read the article.