“Why the bizarre name?”

  “Well, I think it was settled by New Englanders who wanted to remember the sea.”

  “I suppose Neptune’s better than Cod or Mackerel.”

  “And better than Hell, Michigan. Or Climax.”

  Sharon signaled her disbelief by pouncing on the chaotic assortment of goodies the neighbors had brought by. We took some food to the sun room, where she admired the roses of Sharon that were still in bloom near the deck. We had the purple ones as well as the pale pink ones with red inside.

  “Roses of Nick just wouldn’t sound the same, would they?” I asked. I told her about the White Studies initiative.

  “You think it’ll happen?”

  I shrugged. “It may not get support on campus, but parts of Michigan are very conservative—right-wing churches, the Klan, Michigan Militia. So you never know.”

  “Don’t get into it, okay? I don’t want you studying the semiotics of home fries.”

  I promised, and we sat back in silence a while.

  Sharon smiled and breathed in. “I love being here.”

  “It’s a great house.”

  “It’s not the house. It’s you. It’s you and Stefan. I wish I had someone who loved me as much as he loves you.”

  “But I love you.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I know you do, and it’s one of the things that’s been keeping me sane. But— Even when Stefan’s depressed, he still looks at you— Oh, I don’t know how to describe it. He enjoys you, he appreciates you, but it’s more than that. There’s a kind of force field around you two, between you.”

  I was a little embarrassed, but I enjoyed hearing Sharon’s assessment. Why wouldn’t I?

  “Some people are together for fifteen years and you sense fatigue or resignation, but with you guys, it’s more a sense of pleasure or comfort. Ease.”

  “That’s me,” I said. “I’m an emotional pair of fuzzy slippers.”

  Sharon ignored that. “And because you have each other, I’m sure Stefan’s going to straighten up and fly right.

  Eventually. Maybe even being worried about what might happen to me is good for him. But if you want me to, I’ll talk to Stefan by myself, and see how he’s doing.”

  “Thanks.” I leaned over and kissed her.

  “You know, I think I’ve dealt with aging pretty well. I haven’t gone berserk with plastic surgery like plenty of ex-models I could tell you about. But imagining I could be disfigured, that one whole side of my face could never move again—”

  I understood. Sharon was a woman used to being

  admired, even in her forties, and the thought that people might stare at her because there was something wrong with her face had to be disorienting.

  “It worries me, too,” I said. “That you won’t want to be close to me, that you’ll be ashamed or something.”

  “Sweetie, I promise: even if I come out looking like Quasimodo, I’ll still want you around.”

  “That’s because you’ll need help with those church bells.”

  She smiled, and in this atmosphere of complete honesty, I said, “I have something terrible to confide to you, something I’m really ashamed of. I haven’t even mentioned it to Stefan.”

  “You’re having an affair? Don’t look at me like that, Nick. It wouldn’t shock me. You’re good-looking, you’re middle-aged, Stefan’s been moody and distant, even though he adores you.” She shrugged. “It’s human nature. I would understand.”

  “This is worse.”

  “Worse? What could be worse?”

  Shamefacedly, I told her all about Juno Dromgoole, about my very sudden and startling attraction to her, how I had thought it was just an enjoyment of her theatricality, but after our time in the pool and having lunch together, after the fantasies and the dreams, it was clearly more.

  Sharon asked, “You’re sure it’s sexual? I mean, you’re not just interested in trying on her clothes, are you?”

  “No. I’m not a transvestite. I’ve never been. You know that.”

  “Easy—”

  “I want to screw her,” I wailed, astonishing myself with the ferocity of this desire not just for Juno but for a woman.

  Sharon lost it, laughing and hugging herself and me. “Oh, Nick, I always thought you were pretty straight, with a nice respectable lover and steady employment, and your belief that one student at a time, you’d make America safe for literacy.

  But I guess you’re just straighter than either one of us realized, huh? Though I suppose there’s something kind of gay about wanting to sleep with anyone who has Tina Turner hair. Unless you’re exaggerating. Is Juno really that wild-looking?”

  I assured her that Juno was very caliente.

  “And you really want to have sex with her? You’re sure?

  You fantasize about it? What kind? SWAT team sex—in and out? Or romantic, leave ’em trembling sex?”

  “I can’t have both?”

  She pretended to consider that. Then, “So what are you hoping for? What do you expect?”

  “I don’t know—it’s not like I’m Hart Crane finally bedding a woman after hundreds of men. I can’t imagine I’m going to feel ‘healed, original now, and pure’ like he did.”

  “Only a poet would feel that about anything.”

  “Sharon, Sharon, what should I do?”

  “Don’t tell her best friend and hope she’ll pass it on, whatever you do—this isn’t junior high. Around your department that’s the kind of thing that would get somebody murdered. Not that anything’s going to happen unless Juno wants it to. Like that Lene Lovich song, remember? ‘I call all the shots, baby I say when.’”

  “Should I tell Stefan what’s going on?”

  “Not now, not ever. This isn’t Jimmy Carter confessing to Playboy he has lust in his heart, this is really serious, and Stefan doesn’t need any more uncertainty in his life right now.

  Neither do I, honey—please don’t have too much of an identity crisis right now. Stefan needs you, I need you. You can’t go running off to some motel with a heart-shaped vibrating bed.”

  “You think I don’t know that? I just don’t understand this: it’s always the other way. A straight man discovers he’s attracted to another man. That’s how the story always goes. I do not want to be a trendsetter!”

  “But it’s not that unusual. You hear a lot about lesbians suddenly being attracted to men late in life.”

  “I’m not a transvestite, I’m not a lesbian.”

  “It was an analogy. Sorry. So you’ve never—?”

  “Of course not. I would have told you. And I’ve never even thought about it much. I notice women, of course I do, when they’re pretty, or stylish, or carry themselves well.”

  “Thank you.” She bowed her head. “Maybe it’s always been more than that, since you came out so young. Maybe you just thought it wasn’t sexual. But whatever, this is all a bit too exciting for me right now. I need to lie down some.”

  We headed upstairs with her bags. Sharon hadn’t been able to get the neurosurgeon she needed at SUM’s medical school to squeeze her in until the following Monday, so she wasn’t in any rush. I let her unpack and settle in.

  I drove back to campus, having forgotten to check my mail when I brought Sharon over, and I entered Parker a bit nervously, given everything that had been happening lately.

  As if to confirm my fears, there was a note in my mailbox from Serena Fisch, asking to see me right away.

  9

  I ENTERED Serena’s new office—the inner EAR suite—with trepidation, like an errant schoolboy. While Serena—one of the lost Andrews Sisters—always had a certain harsh charm, as acting chair she had become more aloof than before. Gone was her edgy, fiery Madeline Kahn in Frankenstein chic—she had cooled and hardened. It was as if there were some kind of administrative spell people fell under when they assumed positions of power. Even the way they looked at others changed: de haut en bas. Since her elevation to acting chair, I’d felt a small sense of loss because she seemed unwilling to fraternize with lowly humans.

  However, in one way Serena had stayed completely

  herself. She had banished the spartan look of Coral Greathouse’s office. Serena had hung lavishly framed Pre-Raphaelite exhibition posters and prints on the walls, put down an oriental rug, and covered tacky chairs with colorful throws or camouflaged them with vivid pillows, giving the room a rich and somewhat disarming glow. It was clear that she meant to stay.

  “Come in, come in,” she said when I knocked. “You know, Nick,” she said as soon as I sat down, “I’ll need to appoint someone new to your tenure review committee, since I can no longer serve on it.”

  Her tone and the stiff, watchful way she held herself made me want to say, “Godfatha, out of the respect that I show to you and your family—” but I stifled the rogue impulse.

  Serena prompted me with, “Any suggestions?”

  I couldn’t believe she would consider my choice, or that this was even an appropriate conversation, but all I could think of saying was the truth: that I was dim enough not to have realized before that moment that a change needed to be made. Serena’s news was a blow, because I had counted on her support and seniority on the committee, and there weren’t that many people who liked me in EAR. My former officemate Lucille Mochtar did, but she was away for the semester. Still, if Serena was chair when my application moved out of the committee, that would be good, I thought, however unsure I was about her being the right person for the job.

  “Can I get back to you?”

  “Whatever you say,” she replied with unbelievable graciousness. “I’m amenable to waiting to hear from you.”

  I realized this smoothness must be connected to the inevitable election for permanent chair, even though Juno hadn’t publicly announced she would run. Serena wanted me on her side, no matter how it all played out.

  “So, what did you think about yesterday’s unveiling?”

  she asked, and it took me a moment to realize she was referring to the president’s idea for a new program, though I couldn’t tell whether she was for or against. I played it safe.

  “The task force is bound to be controversial.”

  “All new ideas are,” Serena said calmly. Did she support it or not? I wasn’t sure, and I felt like I was dangling from a ledge there. Serena didn’t give anything away about her stand, but simply concluded with a cheerful, “We’ll just have to see what happens.” She was as blithe as some contemptuous eighteenth-century French countess tossing coins out of her carriage to peasants, the kind of woman they would have torn from her coach and ripped to shreds if given a chance.

  “You know, Nick, I wish there were a better solution to your housing problem than putting you in the basement. Is there anything you need to be more comfortable?”

  I was not used to being treated so well by an

  administrator, and I was tongue-tied—but not for long.

  “An air conditioner would be great,” I blurted.

  “Why not?” Serena made a note on a Post-it pad and nodded.

  Outside in the hall I was met by Iris and Carter, who pounced as if they’d been waiting for me. “It’s monstrous— disgusting,” they said, ranting about White Studies and how they had to fight it before it turned the college and EAR into a joke.

  That was a rearguard action, I thought, if ever there was one. Iris and Carter wore the greedy, pinched faces of mean little kids spreading misinformation about sex. They obviously wanted to whip me into a similar frenzy, but if the Whiteness Studies idea took off, as stupid as some people thought it may be—and the department supported it fully—then my

  opposition could be a problem.

  “I’ve got a headache,” I said unimaginatively, and fled to the basement, suddenly smiling when I remembered the advice in Scream: “Don’t run upstairs.”

  In my office to briefly do some paperwork, I half expected to be waylaid by Byron Summerscale or Cash Jurevicius. But it was Juno who arrived at my door in a cloud of perfume, which suited her as well as Jove’s shower of gold did him. She had her hair back in a fat ponytail under a black velvet baseball cap with velvet leopard print edging the bill, and wore a black jumpsuit with a leopard-print scarf around her neck and a pirate’s chest’s worth of gold bracelets on each arm.

  “Holy shit,” she said, checking out my office. “This is truly, really and truly, a fucking Black Hole of Calcutta. And I mean that sincerely. But it’s not as dismal as what passes for a brain in President Littleturd. Could you believe him last night?” She settled into the comfortable chair I had for students, making herself so much at home I expected her to ask for a drink.

  “You think White Studies is a bad idea?”

  Juno erupted. “Hel-lo? It’s not even a fucking idea! It’s a trend, it’s a twitch, it’s toe jam! ‘Customer demand’? What students would want to study being white unless they were racists or Nazis? Why don’t they just sell the whole fucking school to the skinheads, if that’s what they’re after? Most students can’t even write a decent essay, and now they’re going to be studying the semiotics of mayonnaise?!”

  I didn’t want to reveal what I thought, and hated having to temporize. “Well, some respectable academics find merit in the idea of Whiteness Studies.”

  “Spare me! There’s no such thing as a respectable academic. They’re all conspirators, maniacs, or whores.”

  “Which are you?”

  Juno roared with laughter, as she always did when I twitted her. “A bit of all three, I suppose.” Then she shuddered. “All night at that ghastly Stephen King reception I kept picturing our loathsome dean in the nude. He’s so hideously fat I’m sure he’s got one of those penises that just looks like a tiny mushroom bobbing on a sea of flesh. How could he and Nina possibly have sex? How would he even know if he had a woody?”

  The image disgusted me, and I must have made a face, because Juno said, “Surely I’m not shocking you? Is that possible?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, what could shock someone like you—haven’t you done it all?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re joking, aren’t you? No golden showers? No fisting? No bondage? No S&M? Group sex? Barebacking?

  Well, surely you at least have some piercings I didn’t get to see in the pool.” She gestured to the area of my crotch. I tried hard not to cross my legs. When I shook my head, Juno asked dismally, “I suppose you don’t even have a single tattoo? No? Darling, please tell me what the good of being queer is, if you and Stefan are going to be as boring as butter and mate for life like some squalid little pair of doves?”

  “Why do people assume that just because I live with a man, I’m—”

  “— interesting? It does tend to go with the territory,”

  Juno observed tartly. “In most cases, that is. Oh, I’m sorry,”

  she said. “I’ve offended you, haven’t I? Can you forgive me?”

  I nodded.

  “Shall we make plans to swim at the Club later this week? I really do think I can help you with your stroke. You need to reach more with your left arm. I was studying you.”

  She seemed eager for me to say yes, but embarrassed by her attention, I just said that I would call, and Juno left.

  I sat there listening to her heels fade down the hallway, drowning in her perfume and politics. If Juno was adamantly against White Studies, did that mean Serena would automatically take the other side? She’d have to anyway, as an administrator, since the idea must have approval from the provost, who oversaw all expenditures, and the dean, given that the new department or program would probably be housed in Arts and Letters.

  I pondered this. The dean and Coral Greathouse were rivals, so what if something more byzantine was going on?

  What if Bullerschmidt was actually opposed to Littleterry’s plan, but was keeping mum in the hope that when the controversy erupted on campus—as it surely would—and the idea was crushed, Coral Greathouse would be publicly dished and might even have to resign? Everyone knew that Littleterry was just chosen as a feel-good figurehead, and that the dim-witted ex-coach was generally ruled by whoever was SUM’s provost. Still, could Coral Greathouse really be the power behind this throne?

  And what was up with Juno wanting to help me with my stroke? Which stroke did she have in mind? Had I been imagining her flirtatiousness?

  Just as I was about to wrap up and leave, Sharon walked in with an enormous pot of silk hydrangeas, which she set down on my desk as happily as a cat bringing its master a bird. “This place needs more life,” she announced. “But there’s not enough sunlight, so a real plant wouldn’t survive an afternoon—” I sat there beaming while Sharon explained that on our drive from the airport, she remembered passing a store near campus that sold silk floral arrangements. She called it when she got up from her brief nap, and then took a cab over.

  I hugged her, and we spent way too much time figuring out where to place the pot for maximum effect. “All this redecorating,” she said when it was back on my desk. “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “Absatootly.” I took her to Les Deux, a new bistro-type restaurant in town run by twin brothers who had graduated from SUM’s nationally known School of Hotel and Restaurant Management and subsequently also studied cooking in Paris.

  It had recently become Stefan’s and my favorite place for lunch and dinner, and the owners had joked about putting a plaque up on “our” booth.

  I could only tell the slim and vivacious brothers apart because Scott, the chef, wore a blue denim chef’s jacket, while Eric, the manager, didn’t. Eric greeted us effusively as always, I introduced Sharon, and we were soon feasting on moules and frites and a bottle of muscadet Sharon insisted on ordering. Though located in one of Michiganapolis’s ubiquitous strip malls, Les Deux was a warm, dark place with the feel of Quebec City, if not actually of Paris.

  “This is lovely, so much better than the other strip malls with fast food. I know the country’s turning into one big strip mall, but you do seem to have more than your fair share. And two Mongolian Barbecues? It’s bizarre. I don’t understand the concept. Genghis Khan, rape, pillaging, that’s what Mongolians are known for. Not their cuisine. When’s the last time you bought a book of Best Dishes of the Golden Horde?”

 

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