Noah's Turn (16 page)

“Who has heard of it?”

There were some chuckles.

“We've heard of it and none have read it. That's okay. It's long, and the last half is pretty tedious. Does anyone know anything about it?”

“Raskolnikov kills his landlady for no reason,” said one student.

“For no reason?” Noah replied.

“I don't know. I didn't read it,” the student replied and got a pretty good laugh.

“There's something to your ‘no reason' reason,” Noah said, “but since we haven't read it, I don't think there's any reason to pursue this. Does anyone have any thoughts about public broadcasting?” No reaction. “Nothing?”

“I think it's a good idea,” said one of the girls in a flat tone, as if she had been asked whether she liked white cats more than black cats.

“Good how?” Noah asked. The student was momentarily lost. Noah helped her out. “Can you expand on your remark, ‘I think it's a good idea'?”

“They do shows about the environment.” She didn't feel the need to go beyond this insight.

It had been twenty years since Noah had attended a university class and he didn't remember his fellow students being this blasé about their own ignorance.

“Okay, now that we've covered the environment and
Crime and Punishment
, let's talk about why public broadcasting is important.” He looked at The Hobson Girl and could see that he was losing her along with the rest of the class. This was not going to be a fruitful direction, and he wanted to get out of the class with some dignity. He looked around the room as sweat began to collect under his arms. The picture of his murderous attack on their
teacher flashed in front of his eyes. He was exhausted by this relentless vision. He wanted to fight back. Murder was one of man's defining traits, one of those anthropological features that separated him from other primates. He had simply carried out a human act. And he wanted someone else to share his burden, if only for an hour. So he took it out on the class.

“The popular culture is fucked,” he said, “and you eat it up like pigs at a trough.” A few heads rose from their resting position. “I don't think you assholes get it. I'm sorry to call you assholes, but that's the way I see you. Why are you all here? You think this is a creative writing course, but not one of you in the last thirty-five minutes has shown me a hint of creativity. Not even a good put-down. I've had better conversations with twenty-dollar hookers and at least walked away with a blowjob. All I get here is mindless arrogance, as if you know what the fuck is really going on out there.” A number of students stood and walked out. Noah ignored them and kept going. The Hobson Girl sat. “But the truth is—and I won't get into the concept of ‘truth' with you because that would be like discussing quantum mechanics with a class of ballroom dancers—but the truth is you're all privileged brats who have seen nothing in life and whose parents
are paying to support your self-indulgent delusion that you have something to write about.” A few more stood and left. “My guess is—and this is only a guess, I could be wrong—that none of you have sweet fuck-all to say about anything. Any comments?”

The Hobson Girl's face showed nothing. The rest who were left, the same.

“I think the class is over,” Noah said.

As they filed out, Noah stopped The Hobson Girl.

“Ms. Hobson, could you wait a minute?”

“I have another class next period.”

“This won't take long.” She stopped at the door. “You didn't walk out with the others.” She didn't respond. “Patrick thought you were very talented. I'm developing a TV series, a political satire, and would be interested in some input from the demographic the network is targeting and you seem to fall into that range.”

“I should get going.”

“Would you consider working for a while as a creative consultant?”

“A what?” she asked with that sharp, incredulous tone that only a twenty-year-old smart-ass girl could muster.

“You're the demographic. Don't take it personally,” Noah said with a grin. “At this point of development it
could mean anything from comments on story ideas and characters to reading scripts and giving notes. You don't have to know anything about the business but you do have to have an opinion, which I suspect you have about many things. I'd have to run it by the producers who would pay you, but I think they'd like the idea.”

“This is kinda weird. I have to go.”

“Why don't you think about it? I'll talk to my producer and you and I can talk later.”

The Hobson Girl took a breath then puffed out her cheeks. She wasn't accustomed to this kind of pressure. Privileged girls aren't used to pressure. “Okay,” she said and turned and walked out. Noah had made a promise he couldn't necessarily keep. But he'd play it a day at a time, which was the strategic pattern his life had fallen into anyway. He sat in the empty classroom for a few minutes and wondered what he was after with Mary Hobson. Were his instincts just male reflex, or was there something in her that genuinely interested him? Was he still in competition with the dead Patrick McEwen? Was this McEwen's way of haunting him? In the past he might have sided with the conventional wisdom regarding student/professor relations, but any ethical measurement of his recent action was so far off
the charts that sleeping with Mary Hobson would be like getting a moral parking ticket. He wanted to grab her bare ass with both hands and press her nude body into his. Was this a worthwhile ambition? Was it worth the risk and potential collateral damage? Where did this struggle, which had been going on since the dawn of man, fit in the progress of human history? Marx had said that the progress of history was manifest in the struggle between the classes. Noah thought that his struggle for sex may not move history but perhaps it was the only meaningful struggle he, as an individual, could undertake.

Noah stood, gathered his things, left the classroom and walked down the hall to the wide glass-walled staircase that led from the second to the first floor. As he walked down two male students flew by him two steps at a time, backpacks stuffed with books swinging from one hand. Each jumped the last five steps onto the landing, made a hard left and flew down the last flight of stairs, making the same leap at the bottom onto the polished stone main floor. Seeing this, Noah realized that the
students in the class he just finished were no different from these two. They were kids. They weren't young indulged adults; they were kids being asked to act like adults. Some probably thought that they were being asked to be Raymond Carver or James Joyce. Noah thought he would have had the same expectation at that age sitting in that class and listening all year to imperious speeches from a Patrick McEwen. Why should they know anything about anything? They still wanted to jump the last five steps, and Noah felt like a fool and a pretentious bully for his closing outrage.

He walked out of the building into the sun and passed one of the female students from the class talking to two other girls he didn't recognize. When he passed she glanced at him and kept talking quietly, and it was clear that she was telling the others what had happened in the room and that Noah was the guest lecturer. He kept going as if he didn't notice them and could feel three sets of eyes focused on his back. Were they only talking about his performance, or were they speculating as well that perhaps he was the one who had killed McEwen? He picked up his pace and didn't feel any relief from this paranoid question until he had turned a corner and was out of sight. As he walked down a residential street that
bordered the downtown campus, Noah looked down at the sidewalk and thought how it was the same as the sidewalk on the street where he was born and raised. There were about four feet between the lines that separated cement sections, and he remembered how well he knew each crack and flaw and variation no matter how slight on every inch of sidewalk on his entire block. And he was thinking how kids spend most of their time looking down at the ground when the memory of McEwen's body again exploded in his mind like a stroke. McEwen, not yet dead but slumped forward onto his desk, his collapsing heart rhythmically spewing blood from the wound in his neck as life drained from him. What Noah couldn't grasp was how these two memories, the sidewalk from his youth and McEwen's dying body, could coexist in one mind. He felt as if another person had invaded his body. He started to sweat and found it hard to swallow. This was yet another one of the creepy feelings to reach out from nowhere since the murder and grab him by the neck. He picked up his pace and turned onto the closest commercial strip, went into a bar and ordered a cold pint and a double vodka. He downed both in about two minutes, ordered another pint and began to calm down. He grinned at the bartender. “It was a rough day.”

“Happens to everyone.”

“Not quite,” Noah thought. He sat at the bar and got quite drunk and wondered how many guys kill their bosses or colleagues at work and stop for a drink on the way home. Not many. However, it would make for an interesting social order, he thought. He imagined a planet amongst the infinite number of planets in the infinite expanse of the universe that is exactly like earth except in one way: people murder their bosses.

“Hi, honey, I'm home.”

“How was your day?”

“I killed my boss. You remember Jeff Morgan. I cut off his head.”

“Something had to give in that whole situation, sweetheart. You did what you had to do.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you start the BBQ?”

“I wouldn't mind a drink first.”

“I'm sure it's been a hard day. You can pour me one too.”

Noah drank himself into a stupor and still ordered another double vodka. Before filling the order the bartender asked if he was driving. Noah shook his head.

“Don't even have a licence. Got a carbon footprint
smaller than Janet Jackson's right nipple.” Drunk guy talk.

The bartender poured his drink but didn't want to engage Noah in conversation. He seemed to be having a nice time talking to two women who looked like regulars. Noah looked at the women, who may at one time have been attractive but now were trying too hard to hold on to it. They had adopted the style of those who had slid to the bottom of middle age, and the style announced, “I'll fuck you in a second but it comes with a two-bedroom condo.” This was a type who used to make him shudder. “There but for the grace of God sleeps Noah Douglas.” But now, in his so-called new circumstance, they didn't seem like a bad bet. What if he simply turned right rather than left at the fork in the road and ended up being served dinner at the apartment of the blonde on the last stool? Lamb with small potatoes and a salad of radicchio and fennel, a movie with Meryl Streep and an invitation to stay the night. Things could be worse. He could disappear into that world and very likely no one would find him. He could forget about news regarding the McEwen incident because, he guessed, this woman didn't watch much news. He was certain that she would love trips
to Europe, and he might even be able to talk her into moving permanently to a Greek island. They could set up in a small village that had all the amenities: a butcher, a baker, a small market, a café for morning coffee and a number of bars for evening obliteration. And they could fuck. All he needed was the money. It was in the family and just out of arm's reach. But who knows. If he shook the family tree hard enough, something just might fall out. As the bartender poured him his “one last vodka,” Noah leaned to him and nodding in the direction of the women, asked, “Are they regulars?”

“Pretty much.”

“I think I recognize one from my junior high school but I'm too nervous to talk to her.” Noah wanted to cover up whatever perverse intentions he might have revealed. However, the bartender seemed to be a veteran of excuses and evasions and paid no attention to Noah's comment.

“I'm finishing up now. Can you get the tab?”

“No problem. I've had enough anyway. Too much for me. You're a good bartender. I liked how you asked if I was driving. Very smart. Maybe I'll come back.”

“It's a good place.”

Noah finished his drink, paid with a generous tip and left the bar.