Cold Rain (13 page)

When I entered his office, Dean Lintz told me Leslie Blackwell in Affirmative Action had called him Friday afternoon. Apparently, I had not only attempted to discuss the investigation with one of the witnesses, I had actually assaulted him. That was not true, I said.

I’d been arrested for assault, but the judge dropped the charges. As far as talking, I hadn’t spoken so much as a single phrase to Buddy Elder Thursday evening.

Dean Lintz sighed and shook his head sadly. He liked me, he said, but he had no choice. He was going to have to suspend me.

‘What about my classes?’

‘I’ve already instructed your chair to find replacements. We’ll need your grade book and syllabi, David.

As soon as you’ve taken care of that, I want you off campus. I have no idea if the vice president will want to bring additional disciplinary action against you for this, but I do know it’s likely you’ll be looking at additional charges once Dr Blackwell has finished her investigation.’

I was confused. ‘What kind of charges?’

Dean Lintz grimaced. ‘Sexual misconduct. According to Leslie Blackwell you’ve been having sex with one of your freshmen students in your office. I mean really, David! Couldn’t you at least have taken her off campus?’

‘Is it against the rules to have sex in our offices?’

‘Smoking in your office is against the rules, David!

Of course it’s against the rules! You know that, as well as I do! Tenure can only protect you so far. This kind of behaviour… it’s an embarrassment for the whole university.’

The dean ended our meeting on a more conciliatory note. The suspension was with pay and benefits.

I still had options. I was free to appeal any action taken against me. I was entitled to a faculty adviser and of course free to hire an attorney if I thought I needed one. ‘The thing is Affirmative Action has let too much of this kind of crap get by for too long.

Leslie Blackwell was brought in to change that, and you just happened to be her first. She needs to let everyone know there’s a new sheriff in town, David.

I tried to warn you!’

I cleared out my desk under the supervision of the department secretary. She was close to tears the whole time. I left most of my books in my office, as I had for my sabbatical. I had every intention of returning.

On the last trip to my truck, I met Buddy Elder in the hallway. He made a show of making room for me.

I had a box in my arms. He understood what it meant.

Not a word from him, of course, just the same lazy smile and sleepy brown eyes.

I CALLED MOLLY TO tell her I had been suspended and was bringing some stuff from my office out to the farm. ‘Sorry to do it,’ I said to her answering machine, ‘but I can’t unload this in Walt’s apartment.’

I hesitated at the end of my message. I wanted to tell her that Buddy Elder had delivered a copy of the diary to Leslie Blackwell Friday morning, but I realized that would not seem especially diabolical to her. I was banging a stripper in my office. Maybe the university should know about it. After several seconds of dead space on the tape, I said, ‘I’d like to see you, Molly.’

I finished by saying I loved her.

I don’t know anyone who enjoys talking to a machine. Emotional pitches are especially difficult.

You make the speech in the belief that you’re talking to a person. After you hang up you are haunted by your own words. You imagine you have said too much or that you sounded as mechanical as the machine you have spoken to. I didn’t remember the drive out to the farm. I was too busy imagining what I should have said and worrying about the words I had actually delivered. I was rolling along an empty pavement doubting everything, looking at cornfields and patches of woods here and there, and suddenly I was home.

Except it was not home. Not anymore. The horses were in the pasture. The dogs circled my legs howling and growling, a few of them even wagging their tails.

Molly leaned out the window from the third floor.

But her tone left no doubt: I was not welcome. ‘Put everything in your office,’ she called. She retreated at once. I guess she could still see me looking up at the place where she had been, because after a moment she appeared again. ‘I’m sorry about the suspension, David. I really am.’ And that was it. A couple of minutes later I heard the familiar whine of her table saw.

MY LIFE IS A RATTY piece of string stretching out behind me in silly, dull serpentine twists. There are little knots and tangles, those points in my existence I know I should have marked as sacred time, but to be honest they did not seem worth the effort. I suppose it was my natural stubbornness. People said your first is unforgettable, so I remembered them all dutifully, but I cherished nothing. My first sexual encounter had transpired with the town tramp in the backseat of my old man’s Ford Ltd. demo, an awkward and embarrassing piece of business. My first job as a man had been walking out and shaking hands with strangers and trying to convince them to buy one of my cars. My first diploma came at age eighteen, college graduation four years later.

I didn’t even put a robe on for that. I did not know what I wanted. I did not believe in much of anything.

My sole ambition in life, once I understood something about life, was to avoid becoming a man like Tubs.

Everything changed for me on the afternoon I met Molly McBride. Molly was drunk the first time I saw her. It was pouring down rain and she and her crew had landed in the bar I always went to. I remember I almost went home because of the rain that afternoon, but I didn’t keep beer in my apartment in those days.

It had been a tough day in the academy, or so I persuaded myself, and I drove over, intending to pop in for a quick one and see if anyone was around.

I saw her the moment I walked through the door.

She was laughing at something one of the men had said, bringing her glass to her lips at the same time.

Because I had stopped for no other reason than to look at her, the glass froze just as her laughter did. I knew she had caught me staring, and so with some embarrassment I turned toward the booth where I usually sat. None of my crowd was there. To avoid looking at her incessantly I dug around in my backpack for something to read. I heard her calling to me, her voice having just a bit of an edge to it, ‘Everything all right over there?’ There weren’t many people in the bar, so I couldn’t ignore her. I waved my hand and smiled at her. Everything was just fine!

One of the men said something. Molly answered him. I couldn’t make out what they said, but their laughter was all about me, I had no doubt of that. I ordered a pitcher instead of a glass because I was suddenly a lot thirstier than I had imagined. I tried to look at the text swimming before my eyes, but I was a young man and just across the room was the most radiant blonde beauty I had ever seen. After one especially long look by her, I came up out of my pretended reading and caught her at it. She looked away at once, and I called across the room, ‘Everything all right over there?’

Even in the gloomy light of the bar, I could see her smile. One of the men said something, and she laughed, making a gesture with her hand as if to say just a nice fantasy.

And it was. A pretty carpenter on a rainy afternoon.

A bored grad student wondering what he was doing with his life. We caught each other’s eye. Nothing more.

Then Beth Ruby came through the door and trudged over to my booth. She tossed her backpack on the seat and started complaining about the rain.

I looked up from my book. ‘I’ll give you a hundred dollars from my next pay check,’ I said, ‘if you’ll sit somewhere else.’

Beth Ruby looked at me curiously, then around the room. Beth was nobody’s fool. Her eyes settled on Molly. ‘Two hundred,’ she said.

I told her I didn’t have two hundred bucks, but if I had it I’d give it to her. Could she just give me a break? Beth shrugged indifferently and smiled. ‘I could, but I’m not going to. Believe me, you
and
your dick will thank me later.’

I gave up the dream. I tossed my book on the table and started talking to Beth about her total lack of sensitivity, her failure to understand that someone could fall in love at first sight. Beth and I had sparred a few rounds in the office and quite a few more over beer.

We both figured eventually something was going to happen between us, but we were both too stubborn to make the first move. As a result, we actually had a fairly decent friendship, as that kind of friendship goes.

While I was explaining to Beth that she had ruined my life out of simple greed Molly slipped into our booth. I had not seen her crossing the room, and nearly jumped out of my seat when I saw her across from me. Molly’s smile was so pretty that for a moment all I could do was blink.

‘Is he a total asshole or just the run-of-the-mill kind?’

Molly asked Beth without taking her eyes from my face. I liked her voice. It was strong and confident. I liked the way she was looking at me, too.

‘Total and complete, I’m afraid,’ Beth answered almost sadly.

I started to defend myself, but Molly wasn’t buying the verdict, not entirely anyway. ‘Kind of cute though.’

‘And doesn’t he know it?’

Molly shook her head, still not taking her eyes from me. ‘I hate that in a guy.’

‘Dumb and pretty.’

Molly laughed. ‘Beats dumb and ugly, I guess.’

Molly had practically the same build as now, though she was leaner by a few pounds. That came of being twenty-one and working twelve-to-fifteen-hour days running rooftops. She had short straight blonde hair with neat square bangs. A blush of freckles ran over the ridge of her nose.

‘What are you reading?’ she asked, taking the book up from the table and examining it for some evidence about my character. ‘
Black Spring
. What kind of book is that?’

‘I don’t have a clue,’ I said.

‘Amen,’ Beth echoed.

On any other occasion I might have rewarded Beth’s nastiness with a scowl, but I couldn’t take my eyes from Molly.

‘Why not? You were reading it?’

‘I was trying to read it. The truth is I was distracted.’

Beth rolled her eyes and grumbled something about pathetic pickup lines. ‘You two together or something?’

Molly asked.

Beth said yes. I said no.

‘We teach together,’ I said, hoping that explained it.

This, as it happened, was terrible. Being a graduate student was okay, but teaching was a suspect activity in Molly’s view. ‘If you’re going to have your nose up in the air, then at least you ought to have some cash in your pocket.’

‘Better than no money and no class,’ Beth answered testily.

‘Not by much,’ Molly snapped. I liked it that she wasn’t backing down from a pseudo-intellectual.

When she asked me what I taught I said auto mechanics. Beth said I was lying. ‘He teaches English, badly.’

Molly looked at each of us trying to decide who was lying. Then she grabbed my hand and flipped it over. ‘Auto mechanics! I bet you can’t even change a tire!’

‘In theory, I can,’ I said, ‘but usually I just change cars. It’s a hell of a lot easier.’

‘He’s a used car salesman when he’s not in school.’

‘A professional liar!’ Molly laughed at this information, but she didn’t seem especially concerned.

‘I never lie,’ I told her.

Beth scoffed at this. I was famous in the department for my tall tales and constant run of nonsense, but Molly didn’t care. She was trying to read me.

‘You any good at selling things?’

‘I’ve been at it for five summers,’ I said. ‘Every month I’ve worked for the past four, I’ve been the second-best salesman on the lot.’

‘Second-best? Who’s the best? That’s a guy I want to meet.’

‘No you don’t. He’s an evil son of a bitch with the moral fibre of the cockroach.’

‘A liar like you?’

I shook my head. ‘No, but he can use the truth like a stiletto.’

She let me touch the palm of her hand. The skin was rough, but I couldn’t get enough of the feel of her. ‘I don’t care if something’s true or not, as long as it’s plumb.’

Beth Ruby said things were getting too thick, and Molly told her no one was stopping her from leaving.

After that it was just the two of us.

Molly tells me she liked me the first time she saw me. Of course she was three hours into a smash-up and there was no competition in the bar, but I think it was more than just chance. I think she liked the fact that I worked for a living, even if it was only dirty-white-collar work. For my part, the feeling was mutual.

Unlike almost every person I met in those days, Molly knew exactly what she wanted in life and was already pursuing it. She had just had her offer on an old Victorian house accepted, and she was planning on fixing it up and selling it for a profit by spring. And what was she going to do with the profit? I asked.

‘Buy two more. I like the work,’ she said, ‘but I’ll like it a lot better once I’m my own boss.’

I did not know Molly had a daughter or that she had been on her own since she was fifteen. It wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing but that moment mattered.

Molly was different from anyone I had ever known.

She was sexy, smart, straightforward, funny, unencumbered with pretensions, and totally self-reliant.

We left the bar for ‘a demo drive’ in my pickup around ten o’clock that evening and didn’t even get out of the parking lot. In the middle of what was starting to look like the inevitable, the rope I used to disengage the clutch on the truck Tubs had sold me got in Molly’s face. She sat up, swinging at the thing and laughing, more curious than irritated. What was a piece of rope doing hanging down from the roof of my cab? Her breasts were glorious and naked, swinging over my lips. The smell of her sex was intoxicating, and I probably should have pitched a story. Anything would have worked, but the truth would take some time. The truth involved some advice a car salesman had given me that I was naturally too proud to heed.

The night was dark. The rain had stopped. My windows were steamed up. Why did I have to tell her about Tubs?