Second Chance (3 page)

They parted ways, and he went off with the delighted North Carolinians.

Bishou hit up the Student Union for some soda and a slice of pizza, which she ate thoughtfully. She looked at her watch.
Just 5:30,
she thought,
EVU Administration is winding down for the day. I’ll walk toward the administration building and let that be my coin toss.

She walked across the campus, toward the administration building, which housed the president’s office. She met President Lanthier coming out the front door, still putting his arm in one of his topcoat sleeves. The coin had been tossed, and it came up heads.

“President Lanthier? Can you spare me just a moment? I’m sorry. It won’t take long.”

He stopped, then smiled at her. “Bishou Howard. How is our finest doctoral candidate doing?”

She smiled back at him. “Still hard at work and loving it, sir. Thanks for asking.” Bishou grew more serious. “I wanted to ask you about the World Tobacco Conference, though.”

He brightened. “How’s it going? Well, I hope.”

“Yes, very well. It’s an extremely good conference. They’re really getting into the topics, and I think that bodes well for future conferences, really. I think they like it here a lot.”

“I am so glad to hear that,” said the President heartily. “It’s a high-profile event that gives us some very good publicity. It allows us to participate in the community, yet use our conference center and existing resources as well. Thank you for agreeing to help out Mr. Dessant, too. The World Tobacco Conference will have an even greater appeal if we can offer it regardless of nationality or language.”

“I totally agree, sir. But I did want to ask you one question, before we move on.”

“And that is?” he asked with a smile.

“Do you know what Mr. Dessant was in prison for?”

The President froze. He did not speak for a long moment. Then, in a very low tone, he murmured, “So that’s what it was.”

“You didn’t know either,” she said.

“I knew he had to get a special visa, and I had to report to the state police that he had arrived here safely,” the President replied. “Frankly, that worried me a little. I hadn’t realized I’d been so transparent.”

“You weren’t, sir,” Bishou lied. “I just noticed Mr. Dessant’s odd little mannerisms, and I wondered.”

“I don’t know. I presume some kind of white-collar crime, as they call it, because otherwise they wouldn’t let him out of the country — that is, out of French jurisdiction.”

“No, sir,” said Bishou. “He has calluses. He’s been at hard labor.”

“Jesus God,” said the President of the University. “No one ever told me that.”

Bishou motioned to one of the nearby benches. They both sat.

“First,” she said in the same low voice, “I want to promise you I won’t make waves. I just wanted to know for myself. It’d be easier to tutor him if I knew exactly what I was up against.”

The President sighed. “Bishou, I don’t know.”

She smiled at him. “Dr. Lanthier, I grew up in academia, you forget. This is like talking to my uncle.” Uncles were younger than dads. Actually, though, Bishou had no uncles. It was from her dad’s reactions that she knew the President was not telling the whole truth.

Lanthier smiled, and looked almost sheepish. Almost. “Truth is, I don’t know, Bishou. What I do know,” he looked for an expressive enough term, “is that, whatever happened, people over there are well-disposed toward him.”

“Who contacted us, the American or the French Embassy?”

“Both of them,” Lanthier said seriously. “I’ve got old school chums in both. He’s got tremendous support. I would go on, Bishou, as if you didn’t know any of this and it didn’t matter. After all, the conference will be over in two weeks, and Mr. Dessant will go back to Réunion Island. None of us will ever see him again. And excuse me for saying something harsh and politically incorrect, but I’m going to say it anyway, and if a third person claims I said it, I’ll lie like Ananias: Don’t develop a crush on him, a handsome romantic Frenchman with a dark past, and blow off this dissertation. I’ve put my ass on the line for you, our third-ever woman doctoral candidate.”

Bishou chuckled. “Never crossed my mind, sir. That dissertation is the most important thing in my life, and now you know it, too. And my family would come after me with weapons if I screwed it up — excuse me, sir.”

President Lanthier laughed. “Your thesis is Passion in Literature,” he reminded her.

“Researching it, not living it,” she reminded him.

The president patted her hand, sounding relieved. “With incoming freshmen, we know what we’re getting. With two-week conferences, we don’t. At least they’re not living on campus, they’re all at the local hotels, so it’s not our security issue. We feed their minds and bodies and send them elsewhere to sleep.”

“And Mr. Dessant really has a pretty good grasp of English, and the Texans and North Carolinians like him,” she added. “Some good networking going on there.”

“I am so grateful you think like an academician, Bishou Howard,” the President sighed, clasping her hand. “Thank you. Now I must run — I’m late for a dinner meeting.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir.”

“But I’m glad we had this chance to talk. This should remain confidential. Let’s keep it just as low-key as we can, shall we?”

• • •

Dr. Roth, sitting in Bishou’s decrepit armchair, whistled and took another sip of cheap Chardonnay. Of course Bishou told her advisor what the university president had said — that was only academic self-preservation.

“D’you like him, though? Dessant, I mean? Does he strike you as a decent guy?”

“Yes,” said Bishou thoughtfully, “he does. And, at bottom, Lanthier really does give good advice — keep your pecker in your pocket, even if you’re a girl.”

“Lanthier probably wasn’t aware that your brother is a Sergeant Major in the Marines, though,” Roth observed wryly.

“Nor is he aware of it yet. I was polite,” Bishou replied. She sniffed the aromatic bouquet of the Chardonnay — it wasn’t that bad. “I said literally what I told you I said. Besides, Bat’s out of it. He left the Marines after his hitch in Southeast Asia. Someone has to stay at home to take care of our brothers. Our parents can’t cope with raising two boys. Bat can.”

“And you’re down here in Virginia.” Roth shook his head. “What happens after the doctorate?”

“I look for work. Wherever it is. If it’s close enough for the boys, I take one or both of them as well. That’s the deal. Bat did Marines, I do doctorate, we make sure Andy and Gerry are taken care of. They’re only eleven and thirteen years old. Our parents aren’t gaga, Dr. Roth, far from it — but, to put it nicely, sometimes they have unrealistic expectations from life. Mom’s already in a wheelchair, too.”

“You and Bat are the real parents.”

She nodded. “It’s always been that way. We’re used to checkbook balancing, oil changes, insurance papers, house painting, road trips, all that jazz.” She smiled. “Our family is very labor-intensive, but it’s fun.”

“I’ll take your word for it. So what about Louis Dessant?”

“I’m dreadfully curious, Dr. Roth. And I do feel that I could instruct him better if I knew where he was coming from. But at the same time — do you think I’m just giving in to feminine curiosity?”

“Hell, no,” said Roth. “Now I’m wondering, too.”

“Maybe there are some ways to find out that aren’t quite as — direct — as just coming out and asking Mr. Dessant,” Bishou said. “I’ve got the feeling this is not a topic he wants to discuss.”

“Well, no wonder. But if you invite him out to dinner and start pumping him, every gossip on campus is going to talk about you, believe me. You know what this community can be like.”

“I’ll watch it,” said Bishou. “I’ll do my research under the table.”

“I think it would be wise,” said Dr. Roth.

Bishou taught her 8:00 Intro to World Literature class. By 9:00, having lectured to three hundred freshmen, she was most definitely ready for coffee. She went to the student union, got her coffee, and checked her student mailbox. She saw a note from the interlibrary loan librarian, asking her to pick up some material she had requested. There would be a fee of $25, not the usual $3.

“That’s where my money goes,” she sighed, checking her wallet before she headed to the library.

An anemic young man at the interlibrary loan desk jumped up when he saw her coming. “Miss Howard, I’ve got those things for you.”

“Thanks. What was the fee about?”

“I teletyped a request to have materials express-mailed from Paris.” The cutting edge of high-tech; he was obviously proud of their work. “You’re lucky the Humanities Department absorbed part of the cost.”

“Yes, I am, thank God.” She gave him the $25.00, and waited patiently for a receipt. After all, she would have to do her taxes later. Undergraduates without encumbrances never thought of these things.

He handed her a large, flat envelope. “
Crimes de Passion Modernes
.” His accent was horrible. “Pictures and everything.”

“Really?” She opened the envelope.

“Really. Dissertation guidelines are being changed to accommodate facsimiles. They’re a literal reprint of the pages in question, and they’re going to be allowed in dissertations in a year or two — talks are underway.” He grinned. “Probably too late for you, but not the next candidate.”

“Too true. Something always changes.”

The young man — a sophomore, maybe — nodded sagely. “Immutable text of dissertations, changed by time and technology. Oh, well. Hope it helps.”

Bishou thanked him, and walked back out into the sunshine. She pulled out the sheets from the envelope, and froze.

Louis Dessant’s picture stared up at her.

She made it to a bench before her knees gave way and read the article, slowly and incredulously. It was in French, from a major newspaper, but a feature story rather than a news article — a summary of a theme. It was dated three years ago. And yes, as the librarian had said, the title was Modern Crimes of Passion.

The caption below Louis’s head-and-shoulders photo translated as, “The notorious Louis Dessant, of the Dessant Cigarette dynasty, was released from prison after the French government received clamorous support for him from the entire newly developed Overseas Department of La Réunion.”

She delved further into the article, looking for Louis’s name, and found it at last. “Duped into an unwitting marriage with a beautiful confidence artist, Louis Dessant murdered the private detective who pursued them throughout France. Dessant later found that his false wife had killed the mail-order bride he had actually arranged to marry on Réunion Island, and taken her place. By then, he was so deeply in love with the false Madame Dessant that he was willing to die for her, and nearly did so, allowing himself to be slowly poisoned to death in an alpine hideout.
Mme.
Celie Dessant (real name, Carola Christina Alese) put a gun to her head and committed suicide before her shocked husband, rather than allow the police to take her. She left him alone to face bereavement, arrest, betrayal, and a sentence of hard labor.”

“Good God.” Bishou’s hands shook so badly she could hardly return the papers to the envelope.

She sat in the bright, warm sunshine, feeling so cold she shivered. Deeply in love. Murder. Poison. Suicide. Well, that was passion, wasn’t it? That was what she was doing her thesis on — observing it, not living it. This was one hell of an observation.

She thought again of Dr. Roth, President Lanthier, even Bat.
All right,
she promised them silently,
I’m an academic and I’ll behave like one, don’t worry. Louis Dessant is just an interesting advisee, for two weeks only, and then he’ll be gone.
Even as she said this to herself, she felt a twinge of unhappiness. She massaged her hands and feet to make the cold and numbness go away. The shock had been physical. Nothing had hit her that hard in years.

Bishou took a deep breath.
Get used to it
, she told herself.
The rest of your life is going to be like this. If you’re going to be a woman professor, Howard, expect to be alone.

As Jean-Baptiste Howard, “Bat” her brother, had warned her, you just slogged through the traumatic times until you came out the other side. In the meantime, though, you tried to be fair to everyone else, and not let your outlook spoil their lives. Like they did for their younger brothers, who didn’t remember a time when their parents weren’t the victims of paralysis or dementia.

She stood. All right, she could do that. Louis Dessant was probably in America, a place he’d never been, for a change of scene. The least she could do was make sure it was a good experience.
Back into the academic shell,
she told herself.
Let’s go.

They had already reached the morning coffee break when she stepped inside the Medlin Conference Center. Men sat everywhere, in the searing bright sunshine, talking and drinking coffee. She didn’t see Dessant among the men outside, not on the grass or benches or planters. Then she thought,
No, he likes things more structured
, and headed for the little coffee shop in the next building.

He was alone, at a tiny table, his head resting on one hand, reading notes. He had a cup of coffee and nothing else. She thought he looked tired and discouraged.

“Monsieur Dessant?”

He looked up at her, surprised, and rose from his seat. “Mademoiselle Howard! I did not think you were coming.”

“I’m sorry.” Bishou sat down in the opposite seat. “I had to teach, then I had to run some errands. I hadn’t meant to leave you by yourself. It’s my fault.”

“Oh, no, no. I expect too much.” He switched from English to French as he sat down. “The first speaker was on medical and legal issues, and we have not progressed so far in France. I found it very tedious. I was just trying to find highlights to describe this to Etien when I return, in case we find ourselves with similar legal issues in the future. But I doubt it very much. I cannot imagine it happening to us.”

“It’s good to be prepared, though, just in case it does.”