Tenure Track (42 page)

He quickly tired of being treated like a child. “So in essence, it’s either reject me now, or make me go through probation for a few months and if I’m a good boy, I
might
get tenure in the fall?”

She agreed with his assessment, which only served to make him angrier. He grabbed the arms of the chair to hold himself back from throttling this woman who held so much power over him. “Do you know how much I’ve done for this school? How much I’ve given up? I lost the best relationship of my life because of loyalty to this place!”

Jane sympathized with his anger. “I know how difficult your divorce was. That’s one of the factors I’m taking into account regarding your emotional state last year. Just wait it out a few more months, until everything blows over. Then you should be fine.” She smiled at him in what was meant as a gesture of kindness, but which came across as a grin of condescension.

Lewis could feel his face flush. He had to get out of there quickly before he did or said anything that would further jeopardize his career. “Thanks!” he spewed sarcastically, bolting from the chair.

That evening, Lewis sat on his couch with Clint’s comforting muzzle resting on one leg. His hands held a black and white photograph. Mandy had never known about this picture, just as he had never known about the one of him until it hit the Internet. Both images had been captured during their beach trip.

They had been windsurfing one afternoon and returned to their room tired and a bit sore. After showering together to get the sand and salt off of their bodies, Lewis offered to give her a massage. She was going to return the favor, but fell asleep as he worked to loosen her tight muscles. Lewis gently covered the lower part of her body with a sheet, carefully draping it so that he could still see that beautiful heart tattoo. She was a magnificent sight, naked, stomach-down on the bed, with her face turned and gently resting on her folded hands. His Raphaelian angel. He got his 35 mm, already loaded with black and white film, and took several shots just to make sure one was perfect.

Looking at the photograph, he ran his fingers across the image, resting at the tattoo. How he loved that heart! It reminded him how much he loved Mandy. More than just her body, although that was lovely too. He loved her soul, her intellect, her honesty, even her friends. It was such a different feeling from what he had with Laura. He had loved his wife, but somehow romantic love was secondary to his awe of her mind. In the end, that was not enough for either one of them.

True happiness. That’s what had been missing from his marriage. Looking back through the prism of time, he could not say that he had ever been truly happy during his marriage. Not happy like those carefree days of childhood, nor the previous summer with Mandy. For a few briefs months he had recaptured his lost happiness. Even if he never experienced that feeling again, at least he knew it was possible. That memory of happiness, captured in a black and white photograph, sustained him.

Lewis was sad to see the end of July approaching. Though tired of the hot weather, he wished this summer could go on forever. He pondered how they could secretly continue to see one another. Of course, with all three of the roommates and Sheila keenly aware, that might be a difficult goal to achieve.
He could trust the notoriously tight-lipped Dr. Stevens not to say anything, but he was never sure about the household crew. As the summer wore on, he spent more and more time contemplating how to resolve this problem, but was afraid to discuss it with Mandy. They just went on pretending the summer romance would last forever.

Julie came back into town the last weekend of July. Her summer training was done, but she wanted to spend some time with her roomies before visiting her family and starting the semester. Mandy thought she was coming to see them first because she wanted to check up on Gus. Mandy and Blanca both suspected that Gus was cheating. They hardly ever saw him and he rarely spent the night at the house. When asked about his crazy schedule, he claimed to be hanging out with folks from the movie set or catching naps at the television station. The girls became alarmed about his health after he was hospitalized twice for infections. They feared that, without Julie’s calming presence, Gus might not be taking proper care of himself.

Once the nurse-in-training was home, everything seemed to revert to normal. She and Gus acted just like the happy couple they had been during the school year. On Saturday night the whole gang went out clubbing together, arriving home so late that Lewis decided to stay over. Shortly after falling asleep with one arm wrapped loosely around Mandy, they were both awakened by loud, but muffled voices. A few minutes later, they heard a soft knock on the door, which Blanca swung open without waiting for a reply. As Lewis’s eyes adjusted to the light, he saw Julie standing behind Blanca, crying softly. With a quick flick of her head, Blanca beckoned Mandy, who silently left the bed to attend to her friend.

Unable to go back to sleep, Lewis crept out of the room to see what was happening. Blanca’s door was closed, with the light on. Listening outside, he could make out the faint sound of the three females conversing. Understanding that this was a girl thing, he made his way down the hallway. Wide awake now, he figured he could kill some time with a snack or a book.

He was surprised to see Gus sitting alone in the living room, shirtless, with one flat leg of boxer shorts where his prosthesis usually sat. In the light of a small lamp his scarred flesh resembled ocean waves cresting over the skin. Lost in thought, Gus looked like a young man who could use a friend. As Lewis took a seat on the couch across the room from the rugged Marine, he silently mused on how differently men and women react to these situations. Almost through some primordial instinct, women seek solace among their own kind, healing through camaraderie. Men seek solace in isolation, preferably hiding within a cave-like dwelling similar to this darkened living room.

Gus broke the silence of the mancave, his emotions bursting forth. “Julie thinks I’m cheatin’ on her. I’m not, Dude, I swear.”

“
You don’t have to explain anything to me,” Lewis assured him, although it seemed that Gus needed to unload.

“
It’s just. . . . I dunno, Dude. It’s like, I love her, right? I really do, but sometimes I think maybe we shouldn’t be so tied down, knowwhatImsayin’?”

Lewis nodded sympathetically.

“
I mean, you ‘been married,” Gus ran on. “Tell me, how do ya know when you’ve met ‘the one,’ ya know?”

Lewis thought carefully before speaking, lest he make a bad situation worse. “I guess you just know. Of course, the person that I thought was ‘the one’ turned out not to be after all.”

“
Yeah,” Gus nodded. “That sucks, Dude. What’s that like?”

Lewis raised his chin and rubbed it thoughtfully. In the months since the end of his marriage, many people had politely expressed their condolences, but none had ever really asked that question.
What’s it like to get divorced?

After a few moments of pondering, Lewis answered, “It hurts like hell, Gus. Like a razorblade cutting through your entire life.”

“
Yeah,” the young man replied impassively. “I don’t ever wanna get divorced. When I get married, it’s gonna be for life.”

Lewis wanted to reply that everyone thinks that at his age, only to be disillusioned later, but he refrained.

Gus continued to pour his heart out. “I tell ya, Dude, and don’t ever tell nobody I said this, but after I got blowed up, for a long time I felt like half a man. I mean, I used to be really good-lookin’. But Jules, Dude, she don’t care about that. She makes me feel like a whole man, knowwhatImsayin’? I mean, sometimes I can see us together forever, havin’ a buncha kids ‘n’ shit, but then other times I look at where we’re goin’ and I think, ‘No way.’ She’s got this plan, this Navy career all worked out. Hell, if I was still in the Corps, I’d be doin’ the same thing. ‘Bet she’ll make admiral someday. But that’s not my life no more. I gotta go after other dreams. I’m meetin’ new people and seein’ things, and I just gotta go with the flow to get there, knowwhatImsayin’? I don’t wanna hold her back, but I don’t want her to hold me back neither, ya know? I love her, but we both got jobs to think about, ya know, Dude?”

Lewis nodded, as Gus rambled. “And there’s all these girls on the set, flirtin’ with me and shit. I don’t know if they really like me or if they’re just curious what it’d be like, ya know. But then I think, ‘I’m young, maybe I should be takin’ advantage of this.’ I’m not sayin’ I’ve screwed around, but I’ve had the chance, ya know? Maybe I shouldn’t be tied down to one woman. I dunno.”

Lewis was unsure how best to counsel the young man. Gus was around the same age Lewis had been when he and Laura started dating. Back then, the professor had no qualms about tying himself down to one woman. Perhaps Gus was right to avoid getting so attached to one person.

Then Gus asked, “So, like, when you and your wife split up, how’d ya know it was the right time to split?”

The professor nervously played with a loose thread on his T-shirt before deciding that, if Gus was willing to open himself up, he could too. “Well, to be honest, I didn’t know. She dumped me. Apparently it was something she’d been thinking about for a long time, but I was too dense to realize it. I knew we had problems but I guess I didn’t take them seriously enough. Her timing kind of caught me offguard, ‘cause I thought things were getting better. I guess my advice would be that, if you’re going to make a break, the kindest thing would be to just make a quick cut, not let the wound fester too long.”

Gus nodded thoughtfully. “I do love her, Dude.”

Lewis reached over and gave the young man a sympathetic punch on his scarred shoulder.

“
Hey, wanna watch a movie or somethin’, ” Gus suddenly suggested.

Their comfort level of male camaraderie surpassed, the twosome spent the rest of the time silently staring at a bad ‘80s action flick. Gus didn’t even have the energy to critique the film’s frenetic style.

Finally, the girls emerged from their cocoon. Blanca went straight to her room, while Mandy beckoned Lewis with a flick of her head and Julie walked slowly towards Gus. Just before exiting the living room, Lewis glanced back to see Julie sit down in Gus’s lap and lean her head against his.

As Mandy and Lewis crawled back into bed, he threw a protective arm around her. “Everything okay?”

“
Yeah,” she replied. “Julie and Gus had a fight. I think they’re makin’ up now.”

“
That’s good.” He debated telling her about his conversation with Gus. Instead he hugged her tightly. The two lay wide awake for about a half an hour, before Mandy turned to him with a serious face.

“
Lewis, just promise me that if you get tired of this, you won’t drag it out or go off cheatin’ with someone else. Just be honest and end it quickly, okay?”

“
I don’t have any plans to do that,” he tried to reassure her with a squeeze. Then the words fell out of his mouth. “I love you, Mandy.”

“
I love you, too, Lewis.”

They finally fell into a deep sleep, their bodies congealed like the insides of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

By morning, Gus and Julie seemed to have made up, acting as if all was normal. Lewis and Mandy also seemed to return to their previous station, each ignoring the words they had spoken to one another in the middle of the night.

August proved to be even hotter than July. Lewis and Mandy spent another weekend at the farm, taking full advantage of the pool and the privacy. He was done with nude sunbathing, however, after being unable to sit for a week due to a badly burned buttocks. On Saturday afternoon, Mandy was drawn away from the pool by her cell phone ringing from the kitchen.

Mandy ran dripping wet to answer, leaving the sliding glass doors open behind her. Lewis did not intend to eavesdrop, but his ears perked up when he heard “Hi, Daddy!” in her most chipper voice. As she started to close the door, he casually stepped inside, pretending to get a snack from the kitchen, while craning his neck to hear her side of the conversation as she walked into the living room. Her voice took on a youthful lilt, as well as a heavier twang, when talking to her father. The two exchanged friendly father-daughter chit-chat for a few moments, then moved on to discussing the eavesdropper himself.

“
Yeah, he’s here. . . . Just hangin’ out, swimmin’ ‘n’ stuff. I’m drippin’ all over the rug right now. . . . Uhm. . . . I don’t know. ‘Guess I could check. We’re headed back tomorrow. . . . Whereya playin’? . . . Yeah, I remember it. . . . Yeah. . . . Yeah. . . . What time? . . . Okay. . . . You home right now? . . . Okay, well lemme talk to him ‘bout it, okay? . . . No promises, Daddy. Lemme talk to him. . . . Okay. I’ll call you back in a bit. . . . Okay. . . . It’s gettin’ cold in here. Lemme get dressed and talk to him and I’ll call ya back. . . . Yeah, Daddy. . . Yeah. . . Love ya, too.”

As she hung up the phone, Lewis quickly grabbed a drink and some food to cover his surreptitious eavesdropping. Mandy came into the kitchen looking around like she was trying to find some invisible third person. “Hey, that was Daddy,” she said in her normal voice.

“
Mhmm,” Lewis nodded, pretending to read the ingredients label on a bottle of tea.

Mandy leaned against the refrigerator. “Uhm, listen. He kinda wants to meet you.”