Tart (7 page)

“Okay,” I say agreeably. “So phone the police.”

Her spidery eyebrows arch halfway to her hairline, but she shuts up.

“Now then,” I say. “Anyone care to review what we've covered so far?”

Tuft of Indigo raises her hand. “Yes?” I smile. “Go ahead.”

“You were just telling us how the losers who went running to Westby were never going to make it.”

 

By four o'clock I've got a screaming headache. I know I should go to the health club I picked out in the yellow pages and get a membership, then swim laps and end the day deliciously sweating to death in the steam room, but any activity involving human interaction sounds positively impossible. I can't bear the thought of nodding politely while some beefy guy in spandex shows me how the treadmill works. Medea's the only living creature I can deal with right now. I'm so sick of smiling and saying, “Nice to meet you,” and forgetting everyone's names and standing in front of rooms filled with hot, grumpy, sticky people. Oh, man. I just want silence and the cool, fizzy comfort of a vodka tonic.

All day I've gotten the distinct impression that I'm the straggly little mutt among purebred poodles. Most of the other professors are approximately twice my age and are making gallant attempts to take me seriously. I think most of them were fighting the urge to pat my head. My students, it would seem, are undergoing a more delicate process of suspicion tempered by a desire to please. I'll need to perfect a few clever teacherly tricks to get through the week—like learning to dash off cryptic, alarmingly intelligent phrases on the blackboard, or how to lean casually against the podium without sending it smashing to the floor like I did today.

On my way home, I drive past the Owl Club, and there's Clay's bike parked at the curb. No, Claudia. Do not…

I pull over to the curb, park and, taking a deep breath, head for the bar, where Clay is seated.

“Hi,” I say, climbing up on the stool beside him. “Didn't know you were a regular.”

He smiles. God, that yummy, crooked grin. If only I could capture that look in a bottle, dab a little behind my knees when I need a pick-me-up. “Don't go spreading that around town.” He checks to make sure the bartender's not listening, then leans in closer. “The regulars here spend holidays on the psych ward.”

“Then I'm in good company,” I say. “After today, electric shock sounds soothing.”

“That's right. First day at school, wasn't it?”

“Yeah.” I'm a little surprised. “How did you know?”

He shrugs, downs a swig of beer. “I just do,” he says. Weird. “I bet you blew them all away. If I'd had teachers like you, I never would have dropped out.”

“Ha.”

“What does that mean?” He catches the bartender's eye. “Mikey, can we have a vodka tonic over here? Actually, make that a double Absolut tonic with extra lime. And another Heineken.” He turns back to me. “Seriously, I bet you're fantastic in the classroom.”

“You want to know a secret?” He nods. I drop to a whisper. “Dude. I have no fucking idea what I'm doing.”

He laughs. It's a big, full-bodied laugh that puts me at ease with its generosity. It's the kind of laugh you want to hear every day. “You see? Any prof who's willing to admit that is already a thousand times cooler than most.”

 

It's 3:00 a.m. and Clay Parker is branding the pale, smooth skin of my inner thighs with a crisscrossing trail of kisses. His lips are hot, and I imagine, a little drunkenly, that I'll awake with tiny, mouth-shaped burns in the morning. Everything before this moment is a blur: C. BLOOM on my office door, the stick-insect woman in pink glasses, me balancing precariously on a stool at the Owl Club, drinking Absolut from a lipstick-smudged highball. It all dissolves like swirls of smoke, leaving only Clay's hands pressing my knees wide, his head bending again and again with each kiss in a
series of slow, reverent bows, like a holy man in the midst of prayer.

The room spins slightly as headlights slice through the blinds and dance across the walls in a dizzy web of moving shadows. I'd like to stay here forever, trapped in the heat of our bodies, encased in this dark room, the occasional rumble of a passing car our only reminder that we're not the last human beings on earth. Clay hovers over me, tastes my mouth like he's sampling a rare, exotic fruit. Every kiss, every touch, is infused with the concentration of a blind man. He's studying me. His hands are mapping out my curves, his fingers memorizing the places where my bones jut out, where little dips form shadows, where the flesh is swollen and ripe.

“Please,” I say into his ear, cupping his hips and pulling him toward me. “I want you inside me.” But he hesitates, lingering, denying us both. Then he works his way back down my body, and I lose myself in the moist world he opens with his tongue: a shuddering explosion of water-muted colors, like fireworks set off on the ocean floor.

O
nce, when I was very altered on Texas slammers and Mexican weed, I wrote the
Tart Manifesto.
I was twenty-two and in love with myself which, apart from being intensely obnoxious for others, isn't a bad state. I didn't save it; the three pages of largely illegible, drool-stained rantings were way too incriminating. But I do remember the first line:
The dedicated Tart always seizes the day: never put off sex or dessert.

Not exactly something I'd silkscreen on a T-shirt, but at the time it seemed profound.

This philosophy started taking shape back in high school, when it seemed the rest of the world was in on a secret I'd been excluded from. At sixteen, I was tired of go-nowhere make-out sessions and decided to trade in my virginity for something of real value: experience. My cousin Rosemarie was almost two years younger than me, but she'd had sex twice already in the back of her boyfriend's rusty old Cadillac, so I was in a hurry to catch up. She said it wasn't anything like the movies made it out to be—there was no slow-mo, no searing-hot sound track. According to her, it
was all propaganda. “Once you do it, you'll wonder what the big deal is,” she'd said. “I was still waiting for it to get good, and then it was over.”

Rosemarie was right about most things, but I needed to find out for myself. I checked out candidates for months. I wanted someone who'd know what he was doing, but would also be discreet, and not go bragging about it to the Neanderthals in the locker room. Not that I minded people knowing, necessarily; I just wanted to do the telling. I hated the thought of unworthy punks taking my rite of passage and turning it into their poorly scripted jerk-off fantasies.

I decided on Enzo Belluomini, the Italian exchange student. His skin was a little pockmarked with acne, but other than that he was a lovely candidate. He had espresso-dark eyes, wore the most fantastic, Euro-chic sweaters, and when he was tired he often slipped into Italian, as if his brain were a radio station picking up a distant frequency. I chose him because I wasn't in the slightest danger of falling in love, and he was grateful without being sloppy or sentimental. It worked out well; he did, as luck would have it, know quite a lot about sex—at least the mechanics of it. He'd been seduced by his sister-in-law back in Rome, and they'd been indulging themselves while his brother was away on business for several years. That was why his parents were so eager to send him abroad; if the brother ever found out, it was likely there'd be bloodshed. This story excited me more than a little, and I'd have him narrate the whole tale again, in Italian, while we made it in my father's basement. Even now, hearing Italian or finding myself in the dank, cement-and-boxes smell of someone's basement gets me aroused.

But in general, Rose was right—sex wasn't the all-powerful, magical drug we'd imagined. It was, like anything else, something you had to get good at. You had to learn what made your pulse quicken, and then you had to figure out a way to communicate that, usually without words, so you didn't insult the guy or kill the mood, or come off as pushy.
It was a complicated, subtle language, and even after fourteen years of practice, I wasn't sure of my fluency.

Except with Clay, sex is something else. It's not about guarding his pride, or mine, or sending secret messages. I don't lie there wondering how my body measures up to the airbrushed porn of his fantasies. The two nights I've spent with him have taught me more than all my years of one-night stands combined. With Clay Parker, I don't have anything to prove; it's not an audition, or a performance. It's effortless. I feel his hands on me, his mouth searching my body, and then I'm far above the earth, looking down at the small, remote world, and it's not vertigo that makes me gasp, but joy.

 

Monday, week two: I'm having a bout of morning confidence. The caffeine buzz is coming along nicely, and I'm wearing my new sky-blue skirt with a cute T-shirt and adorable patent-leather shoes. Over the weekend I broke out the credit card long enough to score a couple of passably decent outfits. I usually avoid credit cards—the massive debt of my early twenties saddled me with a real phobia—but I've got a grown-up job now, so I deserve a little indulgence.

Turning the corner toward my office, clutching a Java House mocha in one hand and half a bagel in the other, I see something that makes me stop so abruptly a splash of mocha leaps right through the tiny hole in the plastic lid and onto my white T-shirt. I stifle the “shit” that springs to my lips and scurry back around the corner. Leaning my back against the wall, I fight the urge to hyperventilate.

It's okay,
I tell myself.
He hasn't seen you.

I peek around the corner with all the stealth I can manage, considering that I'm also scrubbing at the spot on my T-shirt with a napkin while balancing the bagel on top of my mocha. There he is: navy-blue uniform, billy club dangling ominously from a holster, scary crew cut with Nazi origins.

I close my eyes and the bus explodes again. The taste of hot gasoline fills my mouth.

Oh, Jesus, let him go away.
What's Westby going to think if she walks down the hall right now and sees an officer of the law pounding on my door? Surely she'd politely inquire if she can be of assistance? Surely he'd reply that he's looking for C. Bloom, car thief, arsonist and cat abuser?

Why am I worrying about Westby? Forget about my
job
or
reputation,
we're talking about my freedom to shower without ten mustached lady cons sizing up my tits.

Maybe I should turn myself in. Don't they lessen the sentence? I'll march down the hallway, dissolve into tears and confess all. Maybe if I offer him a blow job he'll tell his superiors I'm dead.

I nearly drop my coffee when a staticky squawking sound fills the hallway. I peek again and see Scary Cop is gripping his walkie-talkie thingamajigger and striding quickly in my direction. Jesus! Heart racing, I shove against the nearest door and pull it shut behind me. I'm so intent on concealment I turn and trip over a desk, sending my bagel in an arcing trajectory through the air. It lands, cream cheese down, at the foot of a podium.

My relief at having escaped the strong arm of the law is so intense that only when I hear the laughter do I realize I'm standing in a large lecture hall. My eyes dart furtively from the sea of faces to the podium to the person behind it: Ruth Westby.

She clears her throat as I retrieve the bagel. There's a large ring of cream cheese now on the carpet, which I try desperately to remove, first covertly with the sole of my shoe, then down on my knees with my damp napkin.

“Rehearsing a bit of physical comedy, Ms. Bloom?” Westby asks dryly.

“Um…yeah…heh, heh…as usual,” I stammer. The stain's still evident, and I look from it to her apologetically.

“Don't worry about it,” she says.

As I make my exit, I can't decide if her neutral tone was masking laughter or horror. Probably both.

 

Before I know what's happened, it's the third week of school, and my initial panic has given way to a more relaxed sense of general terror. When I'm not dodging the police or enduring the snickers of witnesses to the Flying Bagel Incident, I'm faced with the daunting task of resurrecting the cold corpse of a play-development program. My first mission: find a student-written play worthy of the stage. The good news: I'm determined to put on a stellar debut. The bad news: I have no idea how to actually do this.

I learn more details about my predecessor, a guy named Harlan Wolfe; he was fantastically charismatic and a total fake. Midway through spring quarter, when his official transcripts had still failed to materialize, they realized that his claim to fame—serving for ten years as artistic director of a huge avant-garde theater program in Berlin—was the product of his overactive, coke-addled imagination. He never even graduated from high school. The Festival of New Works he was feverishly directing had to be halted in its tracks; the students were understandably crushed.

Most of this I learn from Mare, the dancer I met the first day. She's been very friendly and supportive these three weeks, which surprises me a little; she's the sort of woman I always want in my corner, but never seem to attract. I'm usually a magnet for the manic-depressive types. Mare's low, husky voice full of wisdom and philosophical musings is the opposite of all the shrill, edgy girls I've hung out with over the years. She's got these eyes that just do not belong in this century—striking, black, haunting. There's a sadness to her, but she keeps that tucked away. Mostly what people see is the huge, joyful grin and the brown hands that are always in motion, as if she wants to sculpt whatever she's telling you out of air and sunlight.

It's Wednesday, which means Thursday is just around the corner, and Friday I don't teach, so Thursday's really Friday, if you see what I mean. This puts me in a vaguely celebra
tory mood; I settle in after my morning class to sip coffee and read my e-mails. There's always an insufferable pileup of stupid, pointless mass mailings about unions and new babies and pleas to save the women of Uzbekistan. The first week I read each of these obediently, but by now I delete recklessly until something catches my interest. Oh, God, here's one; it's from Westby, and the subject heading looks ominous.

 

TO: Claudia Bloom

FROM: Ruth Westby

SUBJECT: Evaluating Your Teaching

 

I sit there for a torturous minute, just staring at the subject heading like a rabbit hypnotized by the shotgun barrel; what could this mean? Has she been brooding over the Ralene Tippets incident or the cream cheese fiasco? Or maybe they've decided I'm not qualified, after all, like poor Harlan Wolfe. They got a call from my sophomore history teacher at Calistoga High, who felt a moral obligation to confess about finding me with Roddy Talbot in the home ec room. No, it's not that, it's even more serious; Scary Cop's called her. “You see, Ms. Bloom, it says right here in the college hand-book, ‘Faculty members will be summarily dismissed if they steal a boyfriend's bus, drive it cross-country, and incinerate it.'”

Come on, Bloom, just read the damn thing.

Evaluating Your Teaching.

Always hated that word,
Evaluate.
Sounds so stiff and steely, like something only computers can accomplish; though where would be the fun in that? People add the guilt trips and the condescension that makes the whole process so much more human and grotesque.

Read it.

Oh, wait, look, here's an e-mail from Ziv. I'll open his first, just to see—well, he might be in crisis, after all. One can't
always
put career before friendship, right? Then you end up a lonely old woman feeding pigeons half your jam sandwich and rambling on to yourself about the time you got the Teacher of the Year award.

 

TO: Claudia Bloom

FROM: Ziv Ackerman

SUBJECT: Oh Yeah.

Bloomie, my darling, I just have to tell you: roomie's name is Attila. I'm not kidding. He's hilarious, in a very deadpan, slightly stupid way, and you know I hate people who are smarter than me (present company excepted) so we get along swimmingly. When he tells people he's from Transylvania, and they respond with the inevitable Texan vampire cracks, he reassures them solemnly that the people of his country only drink the blood of animals, not humans, and only occasionally, for health reasons. The funny part is, he's not kidding. It's a good thing you took Medea with you.

So it's working out quite well, so far. Of course, you know that you're the princess of all roommates and that a hundred thousand Jude Law look-alikes could never replace you in a million years.

How about you? How's this married sex machine you so alluringly alluded to? And murderous wife? Sounds very cozy. And please, write immediately to clarify about the yurt. The OED said something about nomadic tribes of Mongolia. Surely you haven't taken up with a married nomadic Mongolian, have you?

 

“Want to get a bite to eat?” I look up and see Mare leaning against the doorway. She's wearing her usual threadbare leotard and wide-legged cotton sweats. I don't know how dancers manage to make such ratty old things look so sexy. Ever since
Flashdance
I've longed for that sort of grace, but on me it all looks insufferably frumpy.

“I'd love to,” I say, springing up from my chair. “I'm famished.”

Well, what? I can't starve myself, can I?
Westby's hateful e-mail will still be here when I get back; if she
is
firing me, I may not have an appetite for days, so it's essential that I fuel up on carbs now.

As we're walking the tree-lined trail to Porter College, I let the beauty of the afternoon take my mind off my imminent unemployment for a few minutes. UC Santa Cruz has a campus that inspires dreamy forgetfulness. It's huge, nestled at the top of a hill, and most of it's wild. There are acres of redwoods, wispy eucalyptus groves, yawning meadows of summer-blond grass where the hippies had legendary nude picnics “back in the day.” There are amazing views of the ocean at every turn—vistas that make you catch your breath and shake your head. We round the corner and are confronted with an in-your-face panorama of the Pacific. It's like a Monet: a million dots, variations of blue, green, gray and white. A cluster of darkish rain clouds is moving our way, dragging a voluptuous shadow across the water.

Inspired by a quick, bracing wind on my face, I take a deep breath and study Mare's profile. “Suppose you got an e-mail from Westby with the heading ‘Evaluating Your Teaching'…what'd be your first reaction?”

“Exhaustion. I hate those things. After you get tenure, you only have to do it like every six years or something, but in the beginning they put you through the wringer.”