The Englishman (40 page)

“What became of her?” asks Janice.

“The college kept stalling and stalling. They listened to her and they believed her, oh, yes, sir! And then they did nothing. She dropped out after her third year. Started working as a sales assistant somewhere and got married soon after. Then I went to Rice for my doctorate and lost contact with her.”

“Of course there’s no statute of limitations on rape in this state,” Annie says, spelling out what we are all thinking. “If she came forward now—”

I remember Tim’s report of Natalie’s report of an earlier case of sexual assault, but I dismiss it at once. Pillow-talk can be very unguarded, but is it credible that Hornberger told Natalie that he raped a fellow student three decades ago? I don’t think so.

It had been made very clear to us that our attendance at the opening ceremony at the new institute is required. All assistant professors have shown up, and about a quarter of the tenured faculty. Nick Hornberger, who looks older and a little sallow, is not among the triumvirate—this is not, alas, an institute for Literary Studies. But he is a deserving member of the steering committee, and there is no discernible awkwardness at all in the way the other middle-aged, dark-suited men include him in their self-congratulatory circle.

“You know who that is.”

“Some rich guy.” I don’t feel like encouraging Martha Borlind, who has been supplying me with a running commentary on the speakers.

“That’s Natalie Greco’s father. Stepfather, that is.”

Dagnabbit, but that Martha Borlind is sure worth listening to!

“What, the one standing next to Hornberger? The one that looks like Hornberger’s
brother?”

Martha and I stare as the two men shake hands and laugh at the remark made by a third.

Innocent till proven guilty, and we wouldn’t have it any other way, would we? Maybe what we just witnessed was an example of consummate professionalism. Nonetheless, it makes me feel sick to my stomach.

About a dozen speeches later we are invited to a buffet lunch, and by a stroke of misfortune I end up waiting in line with Dancey and Dolph, who can hardly bring himself to look at me. Dancey enthuses about the new directions the Arts and Humanities are taking and has several proposals as to how Dolph and I might sub-section our conference.

I inspect the potato salad for evidence of sausage.

“Dolph, what do you think?” I ask conversationally.

He launches into an enthusiastic response. “I think these are all excellent suggestions. If we could position ourselves at the forefront of research aided by the cognitive sciences—”

I cut him short. “Oh, you’re such a creep. Matthew—Professor Dancey, sir, even if the moon turns to cheese, I will not organize a conference about neuroaesthetics. Let me rephrase that. Even when all the little devils put on mittens and shawls because hell has frozen over, I will not organize a conference about neuroaesthetics, with or without young Adolph here. Have I made myself clear?”

Dancey collects himself to speak, but I interrupt him.

“And yes, sir, I do want tenure at Ardrossan. But I will not organize—see above. And now we can all be very calm in our minds and concentrate on our food.”

After this reckless but gratifying stand against bullies and hypocrites, my Homecoming Saturday continues somewhat adversely. Yvonne and I have just taken position on the Observatory garden wall to watch the Homecoming Parade when I feel that tell-tale tightening in my stomach and a vaguely painful pressure in my lower back. Four days early! Must be all that adrenaline. This is how Ardrossan messes with my body.

“Sorry, Yvonne, I forgot something upstairs. Back in a sec!”

If I don’t take that first ibuprofen quickly, it will be too late and I’ll be doubled up with pain for hours. I enter by the side entrance to Modern Languages and take their elevator up. The last time I saw the fourth-floor corridor so deserted was the night I overheard Selena and her lover in the dome. Of course this, too, is a moment convenient for an illicit rendezvous, with everyone out on the streets for the Parade. I am wearing soft-soled boots, so I am not very noisy, but I tread even more carefully and listen up the spiral stairs opposite my office. Take a few steps up, listen again. Nothing. And besides, do I
want
to know? As if I didn’t know way too much already about way too many people in this department. When all I wanted was to sit in my neat little office and write lots of articles about early modern English literature.

“What the—”

My office door springs open the moment I push my key into the lock. Crouching in front of the locked drawer in my desk is Nick Hornberger. With a screwdriver in his hand.

“
You?”
My first impulse is anger at this constant intrusion into my space, but when he gets up—two dusty patches on the knees of his suit—he is a big, heavy man with a pointy metal object in his hand. Anger is not my main response any more. I back out through the door.

“Anna.” He follows me. “Don’t overreact, okay?”

“What are you looking for in my office?” I yell at him, still retreating. “What the
fuck
do you think I am hiding in my office? What have I to do with your—
fucking mess?”

“Will you stop shouting, you little bitch!” he snarls at me.

“You must be crazy to come up here—did
you
have the lock on my door changed? And was it you all the time, with the oil and the fish?”

“The oil and the fish? What, are you—you’re raving, woman! And be quiet!
Be quiet!”

His voice is much louder than mine, which somewhat undermines his command, but I am not about to start arguing with a cornered, desperate man twice my size. At this point, I am ready to believe him capable of anything.

“Look, I understand you’re shocked.” He makes an effort at controlling himself. “You don’t understand what is really going on—how could you? You know nothing about us here at Ardrossan. So be a good girl, hand me your keys, and stand over there by the window.”

I throw him my keys and retreat to the window in the corridor, watching him.

“We talked about you yesterday.”

“At the reception? I’m not surprised.” He fiddles with my keys; it is the smallest of six. “It’s quite a fantasy, isn’t it? I bet those dried-up alumnae pretend to be all aghast. Nick Hornberger, the rapist professor.
They wish.”

My blood runs cold at this blatant brutality. Maybe he knows he is finished, maybe he knows this time he has gambled too high and lost. I really don’t know what my evil angel thinks he is doing when he whacks his spurs into my flesh.

“Nick Eagleson, the rapist football player, actually.”

The effect is all I could have hoped for. Like Lot’s wife looking back at Sodom, he seems to turn into a pillar of salt.

“So you did find it.” He stands up slowly and leans against the back wall. He is huge in the small space of my office and in the gray afternoon light. His eyes focus on me through the doorway. “Where is it? Why haven’t you handed it over?”

“Handed what over? What are you talking about?”

We both realize in the same instant that he has said too much and betrayed himself. A strange movement runs through his body, and although I can’t consciously decode it, it activates my flight instinct. On a very short distance, I have a chance.

I bolt, darting along the corridor toward the staircase, never bothering to look back. “Help! Security! Up here! Security!”

In the great hall I find them, four watchmen standing at a bar table drinking left-over coffee. It strikes me that if I shriek at them to do their damn job and catch the intruder on the fourth floor, and they rush up there and intercept Professor Nick Hornberger, I’ll have a great deal of explaining to do. Have I thought that through? His word against mine?

Suddenly there is a shout behind me, from the second-floor landing.

“Guys? Guys, up here, quick!”

They charge past me and I follow them, but instead of running up the stairs, they turn off into the professors’ hallway. It is full of security men and the half-light of an over-cast late October afternoon, so I hear before I see.

“
Shit!”
one of them shouts and kicks something along the floor. It is an empty can of spray paint. Its content—red, again—is on the walls around Hornberger’s office door in the form of stenciled poems:

THE WHOLE MOON TURNED BLOOD RED,
AND THE STARS IN THE SKY FELL TO EARTH
AS FIGS DROP FROM A FIG TREE WHEN SHAKEN
BY A STRONG WIND.

“He’ll be writing a feckin’ novel next,” says Rich Westley, whose door is two along from Hornberger’s.

“Sir, did you hear nothing?” The security chief is torn between embarrassment at his team’s incompetence and impatience at Westley’s vagueness.

“Sorry, no—sleeping off the effect of too much lunch at the new Institute for Clap-and-Trap.”

I catch a strong whiff of his liquid lunch, but no other olfactory disturbances. Unless—

My office door is closed but unlocked; the bunch of keys lies on the desk. The drawer is hanging open, but since there was nothing in it, nothing is missing. I grab an ibuprofen, swallow it with one gulp from the water fountain, and send Tim a text.

Wanna see some more graffiti? E-1.

When I get downstairs again, Tim is already there, and he has brought Bernie Cogan.

“Hi, honey. We met at the Parade, and Tim thought since I’ll hear about it in the Hearing Panel anyway, I might as well see it, too. Never a dull moment, huh?”

“You can say that again.”

“And this happened just now?”

“Was discovered just now, anyway. What do you think?”

We survey the blocks of stenciled lines.

“What’s your first impression, both of you?” Bernie asks matter-of-factly, and this is a side I have not yet seen of him.

“Red,” Tim says.

“Love,” I say. “It’s a labor of love. Cutting out—oh, look, there it is!” One of the security men has found the stencil, an extra-large sheet of carton. “Look at those letters. This must have taken forever. This is different than the hate graffiti on the fourth floor.”

“Love and hatred require equal amounts of energy,” Bernie says. “What else?”

“It’s about sex,” I say slowly. “Upstairs was about hate and sex; this is about love and sex. It’s about a girl losing her virginity.”

Rich, Tim, Bernie, and two security men stare at me.

“Trust me, boys. I’m a girl, and I read poetry.”

“Who is your favorite?” Giles asks later that day when I find him in the statue garden, where he is apparently listening in on the concert in the nearby amphitheater. He has a glass of wine, a small bowl of cheese crackers, and an apple with him—“My supper!”—and I can’t believe that he is alone and that he seems pleased to see me.

“Hermes.” I don’t need to think about that answer. “I like that he is the god of travelers, thieves, liars, and poets. I also like that he isn’t quite as brawny as the other male gods.”

Giles turns his head to look at me and smiles.

I am very happy I found him.

“How did you like your first Ardrossan Homecoming?” he asks. “Did it have enough pomp and circumstance for your taste?”