Fall Semester (4 page)

“Are you unhappy here, Dr. Vashal?”

“What?!” Malcolm felt like she’d kicked his legs from under him. It was so unexpected, such a transgression. His heart began to drum in his chest, and he feared he had blanched in front of her. And the fact that such a woman, such a small and withered, tobacco-stained little toad could touch his panic set him ablaze. His hands shook as he spoke.

“I want to elevate my students, Dr. Sheridan.” He enunciated every syllable evenly though rage threatened to choke him. “And if I seem exasperated or unhappy when I am prevented from reaching that end, no one should be surprised. We should all feel so.”

Dorothy dropped her shoulders, looking resigned.

“Malcolm, I want you to protect your students’ identities if you critique in front of the class.”

“Fine.” He bit off the word.

“I hope we won’t have to revisit this subject,” she said, leaning back in her chair, effectively dismissing him. Malcolm hated the condescending words. He rose without giving her the courtesy of a reply and put a hand on the doorknob when she sandbagged him again.

“Oh, Malcolm, before you go,” her tone had grown suddenly congenial. “I was wondering if you’d be working on any translations this year.”

He quailed and gripped the knob for support. This time the anger wasn’t there to save him. He knew the color had drained from his face.

“I’m…,” he coughed and cleared his throat. “I’m looking into some subsidiary rights for a piece. I should know something soon.”

Dorothy put on a leathery smile.

“Good. Let me know how it’s going.”

Malcolm could only nod. He left her office and the department annex without running, but with as much speed as he could inconspicuously manage. He headed for the corridor on the east side of the building, and slammed his office door behind him.

He was out of breath, panting, and Malcolm braced his arms against the desk and tried to bring his respiration back to normal.

He hadn’t lied, exactly. He did have to secure subsidiary rights before he took the risk of investing his time into a translation. And it was true that he had found one over the summer that held interest for him, a haunting collection of poems written by a nun in Antigua. But he’d done nothing yet, nothing really. He’d sketched out a rough translation of one of the shorter poems, but it was unpolished, just a draft. He couldn’t yet call his agent to get the wheels moving. As the sweat on Malcolm’s forehead began to cool in the blast from the A/C vent, he understood that he must do it. He would have to go back to the little book and find two or three poems. Dorothy wasn’t casually inquiring. She was warning him that the university had been very patient. And maybe she was saying that he could be well liked and unproductive, or despised and successful, but not both detested and stagnant.

But that was what he was. Malcolm felt himself about to wretch. He reached for his garbage can and dry heaved once before clamping his jaw shut and breathing deeply through his nose.

It was Thursday afternoon, and the Labor Day weekend lay before him. Surely, he could translate two or three poems then?
Yes
. Malcolm told himself.
Yes, it will be easy
.

That was a lie. Translating a poem was about as easy as tearing down a house and using the debris to rebuild it to look new. If he couldn’t do it…? If he couldn’t do even one…?

Somewhere, a voice within him begged him to take the 6mm to his safety deposit box at Iberia Bank. If he did that today, right now, it would be there for four whole days, and he wouldn’t even be able to get his hands on it until Tuesday. And by Tuesday, come what may, the crisis would have passed. The long weekend would be over, and if he failed, he would have more time to think of something else.

But by the time he left campus, it was nearing 5 o’clock, and the drive-through tellers would be the only service available at the bank.

Malcolm got home and went for the liquor cabinet before moving any deeper into his two-bedroom house. He told himself that mixing a cocktail that actually required more than one ingredient wasn’t the same as belting down some booze for courage—that ice, a shaker, and an ounce measurer indicated class, a work of art, not an act of desperation.

He pulled the Scotch and Cointreau down from the cabinet and grabbed the plastic lime and bottle of club soda from the fridge. He loaded his shaker with ice, an ounce and a half of Scotch, and equal parts of Cointreau and juice.

The shaker went frosty in his hands, and the ritual of it, the order of it made him feel more collected, more capable. He strained the mix over an old-fashioned glass filled with ice and topped it off with the soda. He used a bar spoon to give it a stir and enjoyed the satisfaction of the act before bringing it to his lips. A High Voltage. He smiled as the drink went down, the lime juice and Cointreau citric sweetness reassuring him, the soda fizz proving that he needn’t feel afraid. He swirled the ice in his glass as he went through the house turning on the lights. Ricardo met him in the living room and snaked between his legs, tail high and eager for dinner.

“In a minute, Ricardo.” Feeding the cat. Finishing the drink. Two things that would happen after he put the gun in his car. Drink half. Take down the gun. Unload it. Put the gun in the car. Come back inside. Find the poetry book. Put it on the desk. Feed the cat. Finish the drink.

This was something he could do. He took two more swallows of his cocktail, raised it up to the light in the living room and saw that it was, indeed, half-empty. Malcolm set it down on the coffee table and walked to the hall. He noticed that his hands shook when he reached for the doorknob and wondered if he should have taken the drink with him. He opened the door to the smell of cedar and fabric softener. The handle of the AMT 6mm and the box of rounds were just visible on the top shelf. Malcolm pulled the string and the bare bulb sprang on, showing the pale green box of Sierra bullets with the “Precision Tradition” logo on each side. He looked at the handle of the gun.

Malcolm was right handed, so he made himself reach for the gun with his left hand. It felt awkward, heavy. He set it down on the linen shelf, atop the flannel sheets he almost never used. He grabbed the box of shells and put them next to the gun.

Malcolm told himself to hurry, just to empty the damn thing and get outside, but he knew that then he’d have to find the book.

And if he couldn’t write them? And what made him think that he could? What made him think that he could have the insight to translate the poetry of a Jesuit nun who had given her life to God. Given her life to sweat in an airless schoolhouse in Guatemala so orphaned children had something better than prostitution and abject poverty for their futures? What made him think he could capture her piety, her terrible sense of gratitude, the breath of the poetry that had reached in and stilled his own breath upon his first reading? How could he communicate all of that in English for clueless Americans? He would surely fail.

His air conditioner cycled off then, and the house fell as silent as the inside of a tissue box.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to call it quits now? Wouldn’t it be easier instead of going through the motions, knowing, ultimately, it wouldn’t be any good?

Malcolm picked up the gun. The safety was set. He almost giggled at the irony. Why should someone like him bother to set it? He fingered the safety, wondering if resolve would come if he released it.

Just as he was about to, Malcolm felt the bump of Ricardo’s nose against his calf. He looked down at his feet as the cat walked figure-eights between them, purring as though to flatter Malcolm into feeding him.

“Ah, yes. That’s still on my to-do list, isn’t it?”

As Malcolm unloaded the gun and set each bullet back in the box, he noted that his sense of calm before Ricardo’s interruption should have been a source of concern.

“Well, that’s why we’re taking it to the bank, isn’t it?” He said it aloud and then told himself he was crazy.

Once the gun was unloaded, he didn’t waste any time getting away from the bullets. He slammed the closet door shut and bolted outside with the gun. In the driveway he opened the trunk of this Honda Accord and set down the piece. There in the trunk it looked like something from
The Soprano’s
, so he took the coil of jumper cables he kept behind a cargo net and dumped them on top of the gun. He closed the trunk and walked back to his front porch.

It was approaching six, but the sun was just going over the trees, and his street was more sunlight than shadows. A few blocks down St. Patrick, he could see some children on bikes and an old lady walking her dachshund, but no one on his end of the street was outside. A little too late, he hoped none of the neighbors had seen him run outside with a gun in his hand.

He went back inside and faced the next item on his list: find Sister Alejandro’s book,
La Fuente de Piedra.
The Stone Fountain. This would not be a difficult task. Most of the books he’d read over the summer were still piled on the daybed in the study.

The daybed was his favorite spot for reading because it was set facing a wall of three windows that overlooked his backyard. He kept these free of treatments because the trees and ligustrums provided privacy from his backdoor neighbors and the light there was always good—diffused through green leaves almost all year. When Ricardo wasn’t outside, squirrels and mockingbirds bravely gathered at the two feeders on the live oak, and twice a year Malcolm could watch the daily gorgings of three or four red-throated hummingbirds who drank from the feeder he’d set not four feet from the windows.

Malcolm realized that the hummingbirds would be back in a few weeks. If only he could find his way clear through the translations. The thought of working at his desk—really producing something—or even better, sitting on the daybed with his laptop, looking to the hummingbirds and their manic metabolisms as he wrote—seemed the stuff of the most intangible fantasy.

He found the book in the second pile he’d searched. On the cover was a black and white photograph of an ancient fountain in the middle of a square. Malcolm knew it was in Antigua, but the fountain itself reminded him of Hawthorne’s description of Beatrice’s in “Rappaccini’s Daughter.”

The book was thicker than he remembered. He decided to leave it unopened for the night, setting it in the middle of his desk to await Labor Day weekend.

Malcolm returned to the front of the house to feed Ricardo and drain his now watered-down High Voltage.

Chapter 4

Malcolm

M
alcolm planned to stop at the bank on his way to school, but as he turned onto West Congress St., he started to wonder—too late—about getting the gun inside. He wouldn’t be able to carry a handgun into the bank without causing a scene—or worse. Malcolm immediately regretted not storing the AMT in a box or bag, but he had nothing in his car that would do.

He turned down Cajundome Boulevard and headed toward campus. He could find a box in his office and run the errand later.

Malcolm passed the “Firearm Free Zone” sign as he pulled into the parking lot at H. L. Griffin Hall.

“Great. I’m breaking a federal law.” He made a mental note not to try to box up the gun before leaving campus.

Before his 9 a.m. class (the one sophomore level course that was free of complaints thus far), Malcolm sat down at his office desk and stared at the list of contacts in his phone. He considered jotting down Madeleine Percy’s number so that it would be staring up at him on Tuesday. Madeleine had been his agent since his first publication six years before when he was an untenured assistant professor at Jacksonville University. At 29, he was one year out of the University of Miami’s graduate school, and already young Dr. Vashal had a book with his name on it. In those days, he could hear the tattoo of
tenure-track
in the rhythm of his steps.

Madeleine Percy had represented him in his bid for subsidiary rights to a collection of short stories. The writer, a 30-year-old native of Mexico City had woven a theme of emigration to the U.S. into four tales, all about Mexican teens. Luis Miguellez had been skeptical about handing the rights over to an American, but Madeleine had been charming, persistent. She had emphasized her connections in Houston and Santa Fe who could offer publishing and marketing and take his collection of adolescent hope and hopelessness to an international audience.

In the end, what convinced Miguellez stemmed from Madeleine’s suggestion that he talk to Malcolm himself. A conference call between the writer and his agent and Madeleine and Malcolm was scheduled, but Madeleine let Malcolm do the talking, tell Miguellez why he’d chosen the book, what he thought American readers and especially Mexican American readers needed to see in the grim lives of Miguellez’s lost teens. The writer had consented, and the deal was made.
Stray Dogs
by Luis Miguellez, translated by Malcolm Vashal, Ph. D., could be found in a few bookstores in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California that year. The book had only one printing in the U.S., but reviews in
The San Antonio Express-News
and the
Houston Chronicle
were enough to allow the printing to turn a modest profit. As for Malcolm, it was more than he could hope for as a man under 30. And it was enough for Madeleine Percy to secure his trust.

Malcolm stared at Madeleine’s office number.
Stray Dogs
had, in many ways, determined the direction of his life. A job. A move. A marriage. Malcolm did not shrug away the certainty that fell on him like a cloak, that threatened to smother him: that it was a damn fool thing to trust something that felt good.

He left for class. No one burst into tears. No one called him names. No one stormed out of the classroom. Considering Malcolm’s dread about the weekend with
La Fuente de Piedra
, this was notable.

All three of his classes finished with unremarkable progress, and Malcolm prepared himself for the trip to the bank. A box. He still needed to find the right box. Leaving his last class, Malcolm headed across the second floor of Griffin to the department office. Suzy Ryers, the department secretary, would have something.

When he stepped in, he found himself glancing to the left to Dorothy’s office. To his relief, the door was closed. As usual, the department office was crowded. The one copy machine was always in demand, and the contraption had a habit of seizing up mid-job at least once a week.

He found Suzy crouching before the machine, peering into its blackened innards to find the offending jam. A new T.A. stood behind her, looking both culpable and desperate, clutching several pages to her chest. Malcolm sighed.

The T.A. glanced at him, eyes wide.

“You don’t need the copier, do you?” she asked.

“No.” Malcolm waited for Suzy to acknowledge him, but like every departmental secretary he ever knew, she would rather act like a horse with blinders. If she made eye-contact, she might actually have to do two things at once.

You know I’m standing here. Ask me what I want.

Malcolm waited. Sighed. Folded his arms across his chest. Suzy stuck one hand inside the copier, used the other to turn the bright blue crank. Malcolm could see that she had toner up to her elbow. The T.A. looked at the office door, seeming to envision escape.

“Suzy…?” he tried.

The secretary grimaced, reaching further. Malcolm heard paper tearing. She ignored him.

“Suzy.”

She sagged then, shoulders slumping and arm still hidden in the machine. She faced him with a glare.

“Yes, Dr. Vashal?”

“Can you tell me where I can find a box? About the size of a… of a phone book?”

Behind her wall-eyed glasses, she arched her brows at him.

“Could you give me one second? And I’ll be
happy
to help you.” She sounded anything but happy, but went back to the copier full-strength, able to ignore him again.

Malcolm stifled another sigh, eyed the half-wall that formed a corral around Suzy’s domain. None of the secretary’s student aids were anywhere to be seen. He glanced at his watch. 3:15. Of course, they would have left at three. He dared not cross the swinging corral gate to hunt for a box. Malcolm looked from her desk back to Suzy again, but he scanned the area for any sign of a box. Nothing.

“Come on!” Suzy demanded the copier. Malcolm looked back to see her tug-of-warring against a shred of paper. It came free in her hands, and the secretary smiled with triumph. With bovine lurching, she stood up and slammed shut the copier façade, resetting the machine. The suffering T.A. took a tentative step forward.

“Is it ready?” she chanced. Suzy touched the START key, and the copier whirred to life.

Suzy walked past Malcolm to the corral.

“Do you need it for the meeting?” she asked, without glancing his way.

Malcolm frowned.

“What meeting?”

Suzy turned and eyed him over the top of her glasses.

“The creative writing division meeting. At 3:30.” She tapped a memo that lay on the counter in front of him for emphasis.

Creative Writing Divisional Meeting

(C.W. faculty and grad students)

Friday, Sept. 4 @ 3:30

Rm 530 Griffin

(Pizza and beer to follow at Bisbano’s.)

Fuck!

As a translator, Malcolm qualified as a member of the creative writing faculty. They met with the grad students two Fridays a month. He’d forgotten, and it would be impossible to skip the first meeting of the year.

Malcolm was still staring at the notice when Suzy handed him an empty envelope box.

“Will this do?”

The meeting. The bank. The gun.

Fuck.

Malcolm felt a sweat wash over him.

“Yeah,” he muttered, grabbing the box and heading back to his office. He had five minutes to contemplate.

There was no way out of it; he could not miss the meeting. Degree committees would be discussed, the reading series planned; the first full meeting was ripe opportunity to seed out grads who were interested in an independent study in translations. Plans even for spring would be made. He had to be there.

Malcolm stood before his desk and held the box in his fingertips
.

But the gun.

Keeping it in the trunk of his car might not be enough. It would be easy—oh so very easy—to walk out and get it if
La Fuente de Piedra
crumbled in his hands.

He placed the box on his desk. He wondered which choice was less wise: keep the gun in his custody or violate federal law and carry his weapon up to his office for the weekend.

The threat of federal prosecution seemed, at that moment, meek and vaporous compared to the weight of
La Fuente de Piedra.
After the meeting, he would go down to his car, place the gun in the box, and leave it, blessedly, in his office.

Resolved, Malcolm checked his watch and rushed up to the fifth floor.

Room 530 was a glorified snack room, the favorite campus hang-out of the T.A.s, and perpetually, unceasingly, smoke-filled.

So much for a Tobacco-Free Louisiana
.

Malcolm silently cursed Dorothy, dragged a chair from one of the interior tables to the doorway, and propped open the door to allow whatever fresh air found its way to the fifth floor some invitation. A few students had eyed his noisy furniture rearranging, but most were listening to Avery Cohen outline the requirements for the reading series.

Malcolm scanned the room, noting that most of the other C.W. faculty members had turned up. He felt relieved that his arrival must have been noted. The two truly successful writers on the faculty, crime novelist Richard Davidson and playwright Johanna Barclay, weren’t seen at these events, were rarely seen at all.

But with success comes sinecure.

Malcolm sighed.

Helene Coulter glared at him impatiently from the next table. He refocused his attention on Avery, who was now asking if the reading series should move from Café Cottage to Barnes & Noble.

“We’d get a lot more publicity and community attention at the bookstore,” she began, cautiously. “But they have certain restrictions.”

A collective groan went round.

“Only G-rated material? Is that it?” asked Jess Dalton, a Ph. D. candidate who had started his own edgy short-story zine,
Shat.

Avery looked guilty.

“Well,…not quite G, but something like that.”

This began the inevitable debate. What was the point of a creative writing program that did not support creativity? What was the point of a reading series if there was no reliable, community audience? Malcolm read the faces of the other professors there, none of them commenting until directly asked. Gus Russo tried to look patient, encouraging. Larry MacIntosh could scarcely conceal his opinion and kept folding and unfolding his arms, pitching his chair back and forth. Sharon St. Marks kept her smiling eyes wide as though amazed with the discussion. Rainey, that old fart, was day-dreaming.
What
could
he be thinking of?
There was no doubt in any of their minds. The only answer was to go with the bookstore. The publicity alone made a little restraint worthwhile. With an entryway billboard spotlighting readers each week and advertisements in the paper and the store’s local webpage, the grad students would have to be insane to go with anything else. But it was their decision, ultimately, and so the faculty, as a whole, kept quiet.

As the arguments continued, the girl sitting next to Helene left her seat and moved to the doorway near Malcolm. It was the French-braid girl from the faculty party. Karen.

No, Maren.

Malcolm remembered. He watched her lean her back against the doorsill and pull her dark braid over her shoulder. She caught his eye.

“Too much smoke,” she whispered and smiled.

“Too much hot air,” he replied. She smiled again and was about to say something else when Avery’s voice rose above the clamor, beseeching the faculty.

“Dr. Russo, Dr. St. Marks, what do you think?” Her eyes were pleading, and each professor relaxed a little to have this chance to speak and bring an end to the matter.

Russo was diplomatic.

“Go with Barnes & Noble. If the publicity turns out not to be worth it, we can change venues down the road.”

“It will be worth it,” Dr. St. Marks piped in. “You won’t have to change venues.”

“Dr. Vashal,” Jess Dalton turned to Malcolm. “What do you think?” At first Malcolm was surprised to be asked before MacIntosh. He hadn’t read in three semesters. But then he understood Dalton’s motives. Malcolm was one of the few faculty members who secretly applauded the irreverent commentary that made up
Shat.
Dalton must have sensed his support.

Malcolm ached suddenly to shame the boy, to tell him that people would not always find him cute and amusing, that sooner or later he would have to play the game.

“Barnes & Noble. It’s the only choice. If you can’t write with a few restrictions, you can’t write at all.” Malcolm watched the student’s handsome face steel itself. The room grew quiet. “But you can. And no one’s telling you not to bring a few issues of
Shat
with you.”

Dalton and others laughed. Avery called for a vote. Dalton nodded to Malcolm in appraisal and then shifted his gaze up to Maren who still stood in the doorway.

Malcolm looked from the brash, handsome upstart to the lithe, serene beauty across from him. He wanted to roll his eyes.

Oh, you’d just love to, wouldn’t you, Dalton?

With the reading issue resolved, the meeting seemed to lose momentum. It was Friday afternoon, and it was too hot for softball, a favorite pre-Bisbano’s pastime for English grads. This would mean that the drinking could commence at once.

“Maren, are you coming?” Helene asked as students and professors left their seats and gathered papers, glasses, cigarettes. Malcolm glanced at the girl in question, aware that Dalton was watching her, too.

“Yeah, for a little while.” She looked him in the eye. “What about you, Dr. Vashal?”

Malcolm wasn’t sure who was more stunned, Helene and Dalton or himself. Their combined horror almost made him want to go. But he had other matters to attend to.

“Not this time,” Malcolm declined with a nod towards Maren. “It’s going to be a working weekend for me.” He regretted the words as soon as they had left his lips.

“Aah, what have you got on the burner, Malcolm?” Rainey crowded the doorway with his approach, amusement dancing on his loaf of a face. “Another article or a manuscript at last?”