Mean Boy (41 page)

Instead, I follow him down the hall. Todd is long gone in the opposite direction.

“Do you have a minute now, Sir?”

“I have a minute. I’m on my way to a meeting—you can walk with me, can you?”

“Sure,” I say. We walk. Down the stairwell—flinging loud, echoing footfalls into the air around us—and out the door. Into the quad, where the freakish warmth of an early thaw hits us.

“This is lovely,” says Sparrow, inhaling rot. “This warm spell we’re having.”

I look around at the bare trees, the yellow grass. “It’ll be depressing,” I remark, “when the cold hits again.”

“Never,” avows Sparrow. “I can’t believe that winter ever was.”

“One of the worst blizzards I ever saw,” I tell him, “was in late April, after everything had melted. Birds were back, crocuses were coming up. Knocked out the phones and electricity for weeks.”

Sparrow laughs at me. “Do stop, Lawrence,” he entreats. “You’ll have me heading straight for the English stairwell.”

That’s the Westcock euphemism for suicide.

I walk Sparrow across the quad to the Administration building without managing to make any further conversation.

“Well—here we are,” he prompts. He turns to me in front of the building’s Gothic double doors.

“How did you like the talk, Sir?” I ask, voice girlish with a strained attempt at casualness.

Sparrow’s eyes flutter behind his glasses. Often when we speak I’ve noticed I find myself wishing he’d take off his glasses. Sometimes I twitch to simply lean forward and bat them off his face.

“The talk?” repeats Sparrow.

“The lecture,” I say.

“Oh, just now, you mean! Well, I found it very interesting, Lawrence.”

Sparrow’s eyes are a dark, muddy blue, if that’s possible.
Blue murk, like the marsh from a distance on the clearest of days. And he’s shorter than me, too. I’ve never noticed that before.

“Did you,” I say. “Do you think it’s accurate? What Creighton said?”

“Mister Creighton? Oh yes, I suppose he did make some good points.”

Sparrow glances at his right wrist, which is bare. He frowns slightly, then raises his left, which sports a watch. Sparrow beams down at it like you would a newborn babe.

“Ah, I’m late,” he coos. “I must be off, Lawrence.”

All of a sudden, I’m Slaughter. I’m my cousin Wayne. That is to say, a dumb bloodlust descends and I want nothing more than to grab that bird-boned wrist of his. Sparrow is a shrimp! I could take him. I could yank his wrist behind his back, and up, up, up, until he squealed. Then might be the time to inquire why he’s been waving his Oxford bullshit under my nose these past few months—simultaneously shooing me off poetry like a fly from a pie.

“But,” I say, wringing my hands to keep them from flying out at him. “I mean … do you think that’s something I should be thinking about? What Creighton said, about not doing graduate work in Canada?”

Sparrow hauls on one of the double doors, grunting slightly with the effort. He looks like a child in a fairy tale—Jack sneaking into the giant’s castle.

“Indeed, indeed,” he tells me, nodding with vehemence. “He’s absolutely right. There’s no point doing graduate work in Canada. None at all, just as the man said. But do come see me before exams, Lawrence.”

His voice is echoing now, throughout the lobby of Administration. “We’ll talk about your course load for next year.”

The door heaves itself shut between us.

I don’t know what it is, but I go directly home after this conversation. I sit down at the typewriter without taking off my jacket or boots, type up a bunch of my new ghazals, and put them in an envelope addressed to Dermot Schofield at Ralston University. I walk to the post office and, on impulse, fork over some extra coin to send the letter express. Not just to expedite things, but because I know it will make the missive look like something official—something far too important to pass on to the lowly likes of Joanne or one of her fellow editorial barracudas.

Now it’s Friday night and I still feel hungover from Wednesday. It’s the oddest hangover so far. I haven’t felt sick. What I feel is
decelerated
, like a movie in slo-mo. Minutes drag. Walking home from campus, I noticed how the wind seemed to crawl up my body like a big, sun-stupefied lizard. I forget about my kettle, it takes so long to boil. Big Blue refuses to steep.

In particular, my thought process. I dwell. I linger. I’m not able to yank my thoughts up and away from a particular notion in my usual yo-yo-like fashion. It’s a handy skill of self-preservation, the ability to bounce one’s thoughts away from unsavoury truths like a flea escaping a looming thumb. That’s what I’ve been doing a lot of lately. Not much dwelling. Very little lingering. And now that the hangover has forced the condition on me—made measured thought compulsory—I understand why.

Because there’s this bland checklist in my head. I always make checklists when I’m studying—it’s the final step of my overall regimen, which begins with the taking of detailed notes in class that I write out over and over again in my notebooks,
gradually trimming the information of any superfluous detail, so that eventually all I have left on the page are a series of points. A list. Gleaming gems of information, polished into the perfection of a mere handful of words. Concepts, dense with meaning. Study-poems.

Because apparently my subconscious has been honing all the experiences of the past few months down into a similar kind of list, just waiting for the right moment to present it—neatly typed, in point form, unassailable—to my conscious mind.

Because it’s like this:

Furthermore:

Finally:

AT CREIGHTON’S RECEPTION
, Todd and I stand on either side of a table eating steadily from a plate heaped with cheese cubes, as though we are in competition. I use a toothpick to spear them one by one, but Todd just stands gobbling the cheese by the handful. If it
were
a competition, he’d be winning.

“Corpse of milk,” I say after a moment or two. Watching Todd has subdued my interest in the cheese somewhat.

“Whaf?” says Todd behind his hand.

“Cheese,” I say. “Joyce.”

Todd chews and swallows before replying. “Joyce,” he sneers.

“He’s an Irishman,” I say. “Catholic boy like yourself. Doesn’t he win any points there?”

“The Irish don’t even like him,” Todd says. “Most of them don’t even know who he is.”

His teeth are bright orange. I look away, around.

Creighton’s final reading was an embarrassment for all concerned, though no one has acknowledged it, and Jim and the visiting poet himself seem genuinely oblivious. Grayson Hall was cavernous in its extreme lack of audience. It’s been renovated to seat a hundred at least. There were about seventeen of us in attendance—the only locals being a smattering of granny types. Old ladies in their hats and gloves, desperate for diversion, something to nibble at their intelligences besides doilies and church. Mrs. Dacey not among them.

By the entrance, Sherrie is quietly tearing a strip off Charles Slaughter, who stands with his arms folded, staring grimly ahead like one of the Queen’s guards at Buckingham Palace. The reading was a particular embarrassment to Sherrie, because Slaughter lumbered in about halfway through and started belching her name. Her other name.

“Mittens. Mitts! Mitts, Mitts! Mittens!”
The belching tone, I could only assume, was Slaughter’s attempt at a whisper.

Creighton had stopped reading and given a baleful crinkle. A fart in church—that’s exactly what it was like.
Well, that went over like a fart in church
, my mother used to say in moments of social indecorum.

“It would seem someone’s mittens are lost,” the poet remarked. Tart, puckered lips. Another expression of my parents’ drifted to mind—my father this time:
Mouth on him like a hen’s hole
.

I hadn’t been expecting it, Dad’s voice, Dad’s words, so clear and wry—which made things worse for Sherrie when I burst out laughing. Her hands went red and she scrambled down the aisle, hunkering down, practically crawling on all fours.

Todd notices me watching the pair of them and turns to look for himself, grinning when he takes into account the pissed-off hunch to Sherrie’s shoulders. Whatever she’s been saying has finally penetrated Slaughter’s demeanour—he
glares around the room like a bouncer seeking provocation. Waiting for someone to slip up, be bad.

Todd smirks around his cheese, blowing crumbs. “Never thought I’d see a guy that big so whipped.”

“Claude didn’t even bother to come,” I note after a while.

“Claude,” says Todd, the same way he said
Joyce
. Which makes me a little jealous of Claude.

Dink-dink-dink!
A sound reaches us.
Dink-dink-dink!
Jim stands shoulder to shoulder with Creighton alongside the table where Creighton has been swapping books for cash. Every granny now has a signed copy tucked into her bag.

Dink-dink-dink!
Jim is tapping on a wine glass with a knife, so hard it makes me cringe.

“Shh!” scolds a granny, and everyone does.

“Everybody!” says Jim. “Well, now. I just wanna thank you all for coming tonight to this very special event, and I’d like you to join me in thanking Abe Creighton for a wonderful week—for having enlightened and entertained us. This guy, I think you’ll agree, this guy talks a lot about cultural resources. Well, he’s one of the richest founts we have.”

Everyone smiles and heh-hehs and then, at Jim’s instigation, we clap. It was a clumsy remark, delivered like a joke, cueing laughter as opposed to eliciting it. But Jim’s mood, Jim’s smile, is not to be denied. It’s grown a bit goofy in the last half hour or so. There is something in the air, tickling everyone’s expectations like a communal sneeze.

“Jim’s looped,” Todd mutters with approval.

“Thank you,” Creighton calls around to us, raising hands like the pope. He turns to Jim in the wake of applause and gives his shoulder a squeeze, speaking into his ear. Jim nods and signals for quiet.

“All right,” says Jim. “To hell with it. It’s a bit early to be
making this announcement, but I look around and I see I’m among friends. Good friends—some of the best I’ve ever had. It’s been a rough few months for me, as most of you are aware. But even such trying times as these—you know—it makes you realize there’s a reason for everything. You learn, under this kind of pressure, and you learn fast. I learned who my friends were, and that’s been invaluable and heartening—very heartening I’d like to say. That’s what got me through this very difficult year: your friendship.”

The grannies, who have no idea what he’s talking about, are nonetheless transfixed. When we break into applause, it’s a granny who’s initiated it.

Smiles all around. Jim’s teeth, Creighton’s teeth (yellowed, like his hair), and, a few feet away, Dekker’s teeth. Dekker knows what’s coming, I can tell. There’s not a hint of expectancy on his face, which is more relaxed than I think I’ve ever seen it in Jim’s presence.

Ruth Dekker hasn’t bothered to put in an appearance either. Ruth and Claude. They’re the only two people who can make themselves more present in their absences.

“Listen, I’m lousy at giving speeches, so I’ll get to the meat of this thing,” Jim continues once the cheers have died. It’s fortunate the lobby of Grayson Hall is more cloistered that the auditorium—the cheers possess power, conviction. I don’t like to think how mewling they would have sounded within. Creighton’s applause had come across like splatters of paint hitting the ground.