A small subset of the guys looked like Gap ads in sandals, cargo pants, sweatshirts, fleece vests, sling packs, and the ubiquitous blond-tipped hair. Stefan and I were still bemused by the wave of tattooing that had hula-hooped the United States in the last decade. We still remembered it as fairly déclassé when we were kids—unless the wearer was a marine. But now there were stores like Tattoos R Us at the mall, with its own “drive-thru,” gift certificates, and coupons in the weekend supplements. An even smaller group of guys wore Bob Marley Tshirts with their dreadlocks, all wholesome and blond despite the get-up.

  The women were in what I thought of as nouveau—

  Madonna-meets-Siouxsie-and-the Banshees: multiple nose rings and piercings under or over their lips; huge clunky shoes with solid cork heels and soles; black miniskirts or dresses under see-through black blouses; spiky hair the color of black shoe polish; and bruised-corpse makeup. There were some retro-preppies thrown in for color, their pinks and yellows as startling as tulips in a coal bin.

  Yet underneath all the costuming, the borrowed attitudes, these guys and girls were still only teenagers: enthusiastic, nervous, pimply, moderately spazzed out by the start of the semester. I know they annoyed some faculty because of their general cluelessness, but they made me feel avuncular—at least at this early point. There was still time to be pissed off by the multiple-excuse students who always had a dire reason for not getting work in on time, and the students who didn’t show up but expected a B, and the ones who worked hard and were hopeless but also expected a B.

  As I headed into my office that afternoon after two good classes back to back in the morning, everyone smiled and waved or called out my name, and it was a bit of a rush to feel that popular. Inside, I realized that all my publicity as a crime magnet and ersatz crime solver had actually made it even easier to connect with my students. Their morbid curiosity made them more open to working on their writing with me and considering serious issues it brought up. I was a role model, or something hideous like that. I may have been old, but I was cool. Or: cool enough. Maybe I could have that phrase translated into Latin to put on my family coat of arms.

  The sole break in the festive mood as I chatted with one eager student after another was the occasional slamming of Summerscale’s door as he surged in and out of his closet of an office. These departures and returns always silenced whomever I was talking with and all the waiting students outside, who correctly sensed that Summerscale was not a man to laugh at. But I thought his jack-in-the-box routine was like a bad sketch on an old-time TV variety hour.

  Juno bopped in at one point, catching me between

  students. She seemed as distracted and harassed as everyone else tended to be during the first frantic days of the semester, having to fight the traffic in town and on campus, and push through the often confused but ebullient hordes of students.

  SUM had 45,000 of them. That’s a lot of guests or customers or content recipients or whatever they were supposed to be called in the latest administrative Humpty-Dumpty decree. I couldn’t always remember.

  Juno’s manner changed as soon as she spoke up. “I’d like to invite you to tea some time,” she said with real warmth.

  She was wrapped in a long leopard-print skirt that teased the top of her calves, black leather boots, and black blouse, with a leopard-print chiffon scarf knotted through her hair. She looked ready to party, not to teach, and she smelled good.

  “And will you?” I asked, leaning back to take her in better.

  She grinned. “Clever boy. Yes, let’s check our schedules and put our heads together.” She wheeled about and left me feeling mildly excited and wildly guilty. I was arranging to see Juno for, well, for what, exactly? Just tea? Would she be the crumpet? Or would I?

  It wasn’t until I drove home late that afternoon that I realized that nothing bad had happened all day; no one had broken my windshield or spiked my tires, left a dead squirrel in my mailbox, or otherwise threatened me. Was it over? Or was I being softened up for something worse?

  Even though she hadn’t been invited, Sharon insisted on coming to see “the show,” as she put it, so that Thursday evening the three of us set off for Camille Cypriani’s literary gathering, not knowing what to expect. Sharon had donned another kind of costume: a black, long-skirted Dolce and Gabbana suit with silver slingbacks.

  “You look like Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Stefan said admiringly.

  “Except Sharon has boobs and smaller feet,” I pointed out, and Sharon ruffled my hair, murmuring, “Thanks.” I asked, “It’s a great outfit, but why did you bring that?”

  “Doesn’t matter where you go, you should always have something faboo to wear.”

  Stefan was pretty faboo himself, wearing silver silk Gaultier slacks and blazer with a sleeveless black shirt. Me, I looked okay, but I wasn’t remotely in their league.

  Before we left, I’d had some time to talk to Sharon about Stefan’s clothes spending, and this time she warned me that if I raised it, I might start an argument. And she went even further. Since it wasn’t coming from an account we shared, it really wasn’t my business to bring it up. “He’s not an alcoholic, Nick, and he doesn’t need an intervention.”

  As if something not being my business had ever stopped me before. “But what’s it all about?” I had pressed.

  “Let him figure it out himself. He’s pretty aware, most of the time, right? And he’s a novelist. Maybe he’s playing a part, living some fantasy. Who knows? Why not just enjoy how hot he looks? He’s not beating on you, creating public disturbances, getting into fights or car accidents, sleeping around.”

  “True.”

  “Besides, you should be grateful—that is a man who wears clothes very, very well.”

  I couldn’t disagree with Sharon’s verdict.

  “And that cologne, yum. Coriolan is perfect on him.”

  Perfect, and expensive, even when we bought it (or he bought it) at the duty-free shop coming back from Canada.

  But I decided that from now on when I saw him come home with a Nordstrom’s shopping bag, I wouldn’t think of the credit card receipt, but picture how terrific he’d look, how many people would turn when he entered a room.

  Camille Cypriani had taken up residence in a condo in a naked new Michiganapolis development well north of campus, where the houses perched on bare little rises like fat prairie gophers surveying the landscape, and the shrubs were nonexistent or stunted. Cars lined the street outside Cypriani’s new home. Rumor had it that it was included with the endowed chair. If that was true, then I wondered why anyone in EAR would be burning my mailbox down instead of hers. A minimal teaching load, $175,000 a year, and a great place to live? It was enough to spark an academic civil war, let alone arson.

  When we arrived, there were already a few dozen people inside, including graduate students, looking adrift in all the soulless luxury. The large, spacious condo had that strange blend of authoritarianism and chic that always results from being over-decorated. Sharon calls it Mussolini Moderne. Here the palette was silver and sage, and it helped create the feel of a stage set with impersonally grouped objects, all in threes: Venetian masks, copper vases, nutcrackers, antique glass bottles, clocks, picture frames—even bonsai trees.

  There was a huge drinks table and very little to eat to soak it up. I had no idea who had been invited and who hadn’t, but there didn’t seem to be as many faculty members there as I’d expected, and more teaching assistants. Perhaps the faculty had had enough Cypriani worship for one week.

  Bizarrely, at least to me, there was a small white baby grand in the bay window and a suited pianist playing movie themes; as we arrived he finished the theme from Dr. Zhivago and headed into The Summer of ’42. The graduate students seemed to be sloshed already, with everyone else there well on the way, and a general sense of confusion reigned. What exactly were we all doing there—wasn’t it a bit late in the day for a luncheon, literary or otherwise? Were people supposed to talk about books or what? At the moment, despite the confusion, it was probably going to be another typical EAR

  event, equal parts gossip, resentment, and quiet misery— though, of course, the surroundings were far more elegant than usual, as had been the case at Dean Bullerschmidt’s house on Monday night.

  The Queen Bee herself was nowhere in sight. Cash

  Jurevicius, however, was on hand. Despite being an adjunct, he was always invited to EAR and College of Arts and Letters functions in deference to his late grandmother. He nodded at us, not even momentarily shedding his perpetual glare of dissatisfaction. I asked Stefan why Cash bothered coming to these functions when they must make him feel cheated, excluded, and humiliated.

  “Maybe that’s why,” Stefan observed quietly. “Didn’t you tell me you heard somewhere that hatred has to be fed like a fire, or it burns itself out?”

  “That’s grim,” Sharon said. “Where’s it from?”

  “Ally McBeal.”

  Sharon made as if to smack my arm, and I ducked out of reach. We snagged glasses of tonic water and lime to start with and stood back to survey the cold, imposing room.

  Sharon asked me what else I knew about Cash.

  “Why? Do you think he’s cute?”

  “Sure. And someone angry like that can go all night, even at his age. He’s got so much to prove.”

  Stefan frowned and said he wasn’t sure he wanted to know that about Cash or anyone.

  I didn’t have much to tell Sharon about Cash. I did say, though, that it was wildly ironic that people like Cash were called “gypsy scholars,” since their lives weren’t anything like the images the term conjured up. “Forget about tarantellas, colorful caravans, and tambourines. They should call them ‘mine workers’ to capture the sense of oppression. And since they get an intellectual version of black lung disease.”

  Sharon and Stefan both said, “Yuck.”

  Cash must have sensed we were discussing him, because he walked over, and I took the opportunity to ask him what was wrong with Summerscale, since I’d never really heard anything. I was fishing, of course, since the Malatestas had gossiped about him, but I wanted to know why Cash was so angry at the man.

  Grim-faced, Cash said, “He always meets his students in bars in town, rather than his office.”

  “Have you seen his new office?” I asked.

  Cash said he had, but this behavior predated the recent move to Parker. “And he can be very inappropriate in class.

  Once after he confused a student by asking him several times if he was sure he had the right answer and the student changed his mind, Summerscale yelled at him, ‘Don’t ever do that again! You might as well just hand me the Vaseline and bend over, because once you do that, your ass is mine, all mine.’”

  “You know this for a fact?”

  Cash nodded. “If Summerscale was trying to teach a lesson in not being intimidated, that was a lousy, sick way to go about it. This kind of behavior goes way back, but it’s always been hushed up.”

  The three of us were appalled, but I asked why, if Summerscale was so blatant, he hadn’t been called on this outrageousness before. Cash sneered, “Someone probably owes him a favor, or someone’s taking care of him.”

  “By dumping him in Parker’s basement?” I asked. “In a supply closet? I’m glad I don’t have that kind of patronage— I’d be outdoors in a tent by now.”

  Stefan asked, “You’re sure about the story?”

  Cash nodded fiercely. “I heard it from the honors student it happened to. A decent, quiet guy. He’d never make it up.”

  “And he didn’t complain to anyone at the Honors

  College?”

  Sharon answered that one for Stefan. “Of course he didn’t, because he was ashamed. His professor publicly humiliated him, in class—why would he make it worse by talking about it?”

  “Exactly,” Cash said, eyeing Sharon as if he’d suddenly noticed her, and I realized I hadn’t introduced them, so I did that. They made small-to-medium talk, and I heard Cash ask her how long she was going to be in town. Was he just being polite, or hitting on her? Stefan and I exchanged a glance at the thought of them dating.

  Serena Fisch arrived just then, holding herself as quietly as if her every breath gave the departmental imprimatur to this event. Stefan asked me if he could christen Cypriani with a bottle of champagne to start the semester right.

  “Cool your jets. She’s a battle-ax, not a battleship. But where is she?”

  Cypriani emerged just then from a hallway to preside over our grim festivities in a ludicrously formal black taffeta skirt and crimson cashmere twin set with a mink collar. Her entrance was so intimidating that people hung back as if she were some nauseating, bone-thumping ride at an amusement park. She surged right over to us, issuing a regal welcome, not even concerned about or interested in who Sharon was or why she was there, though Sharon turned to her with polite interest. Was it rudeness in Cypriani, booze, or bad peripheral vision?

  As Cypriani swept off, very much the grande dame, and Cash followed, Sharon confidently tagged Camille’s outfit, “Oscar de la Renta.”

  I said, “This reminds me of Bette Davis in the party scene in All About Eve. But then everything reminds me of All About Eve these days. With a touch of Jaws.”

  Sharon added, “I wish I’d had my Chanel couture to wear—that would have shown her,” before she headed to the bathroom and Stefan sloped off for a real drink. That’s when Juno—who must have been in the kitchen until then—sidled up to me in a black sheath and sheer leopard-print jacket, looking better than anything on the buffet table.

  “Seeing you and Stefan together,” she murmured,

  “always gives me a little thrill. I can’t abide the thought of two women in bed, but two hairy men—delicious.”

  “I guess we have a lot in common, then.”

  Juno laughed, and I asked her again what she thought of White Studies, perhaps because I got a charge out of seeing her angry.

  “It’ll never happen,” she assured me. “Never. Never even get off the ground.”

  I was about to ask her how she could be so certain when a creepy silence greeted Dean and Nina Bullerschmidt’s arrival. Even the piano music stopped. While the dean loitered at the door as if awaiting a trumpet fanfare or a rolled-out carpet, Nina rushed over to Cypriani to rave about her “gown.” The dean eyed everything in the room as if assessing its value, and everyone in the room as if wishing them harm.

  I turned away, wandering off into a small study to check out what Cypriani was reading. This is a bad habit of mine, and Stefan will often drag me from bookshelves at a party— but silent communion with books can often be more entertaining than talking to their owners.

  I didn’t learn much in this grandly bland little room, except that the extra-wide armchairs were very comfortable and could almost seat two people each. Aside from a newsstand’s worth of newspapers and magazines that included everything from the New York Review of Books and the Economist to the Wine Enthusiast and Travel and Leisure, the only books in sight were Cypriani’s own, in multiple copies, obviously meant to be used as gifts—or weapons?

  Surely she read something else?

  Bill and Betty Malatesta found me there, and I saw at once that the usually cool couple was very much on edge.

  They held hands— clutched was more like it—as if restraining themselves from violence. They said hi and took everything in with open envy, which disappointed me. Most graduate students learn to frame their envy as admiration, and the Malatestas had led the pack. But then their job searches had faltered and failed, and their performances had suffered.

  Bill let go Betty’s hand. “How many White Studies profs does it take to change a lightbulb?” he asked, and I was pleased he was back to this running series of jokes.

  “I’m stumped.”

  “What lightbulb? Hey, are we outa Buds?”

  I grinned. “That’s good.”

  “I’ve got a better one. How much money does it take to support an endowed chair?” He answered before I could even blink: “If you have to ask, you can’t afford one.”

  Betty chuckled like Kathy Bates in Misery, and I watched the Malatestas head off and attempt to chat up Cypriani. They might not have thought much of her, but she could have connections that could prove useful. Curious, I followed them. Betty was commenting about Toni Morrison’s new book and asked if Cypriani knew her.

  “I know everyone,” Camille snapped. “Whether I want to or not. And Toni’s a lush,” she added. Without prompting, she went on to defame every writer Betty and Bill mentioned as either a drunkard, impotent, or washed-up. Saul Bellow? “A total cunt.” She made these assertions with such sullen authority, they sounded absolutely true—but how could they be? “Salman Rushdie shouldn’t be the only one with a death threat.” Her vociferous delivery carried mad conviction and magnetized the room as everyone drew in closer to hear her slime other writers.

  Suddenly Camille launched into a bizarre anecdote. “Let me tell you about how I. B. Singer was so drunk he almost knocked me off a platform at a writer’s conference! We were in Barcelona—”

  Bill interrupted her. “This story sounds too good to be true.”

  Camille froze. “It’s not a story,” she said coldly. “I write stories, I don’t tell them. And who the hell are you, anyway?”

  It wasn’t quite the moment in a movie saloon where the villain walks through the swinging doors, but it was close, and the freaky evening seemed to be spinning out of control. Camille tromped into the kitchen, and Betty nabbed Bill and started bitching him out in a harsh whisper.

  As the crowd of gawking spectators broke into smaller groups, Juno popped up behind me and said, “Exactly which circle of hell do you think we’re in right now?”

  Startled by the reference, I looked blank.

  “Hell has to be seeing Dean Bullerschmidt every two days,” Juno continued. “Don’t you think?”

 

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