“Whaddya think?” I said.
The power drive on Chollo’s camera whirred in the background. The shutter clicked.
“It’s not as liberal as I’d heard,” she said.
“More repressive than we thought,” Lyndon said. “But we were naïve, you know? Repression fl ourishes in every climate.”
“Even Cambridge,” Sheila said.
“So what drew you to Professor Alderson.”
“There was a lot of buzz,” Sheila said. “You know? I mean, he’d been in the movement since it began, almost.”
“Movement?”
“The fight against imperialism, and conformity,” Lyndon said. “The struggle for personal authenticity. The man was there. He was there in the sixties. He’s been there.”
I nodded and wrote yikes! in my notebook.
“The sixties,” I said.
“He was at Kent State,” Sheila said. “When they shot those students.”
I wrote 1970? in my notebook.
“He was with SNCC,” Lyndon said. “The Weathermen, everybody.”
“A hero of the counterculture,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“Does Professor Alderson use his experience as a basis for his seminar?”
“He’ll hate it if you refer to him as Professor Alderson, ” Sheila said. “He wants to be called Perry.”
“Titles are elitist,” Lyndon said. “They reinforce an oppressive system.”
“Is there a Mrs. Alderson?” I said.
“If there were,” Lyndon said, “he would not call her Mrs., as if somehow he owned her.”
“Is there anyone with whom he is sharing his life?” I said.
“Perry shares his life with many people,” Sheila said. “I don’t think he’s ever felt any need to limit himself.”
“You folks married?” I said.
“We have committed to each other,” Lyndon said. “We need no stamp of acceptance from the state.”
“Do you fi nd that shocking?” Sheila said.
“No,” I said. “Do you happen to have a syllabus for, ah, Perry’s seminar?”
“See,” Lyndon said. “You just don’t get it. Perry, and by extension we, are no more bound by college structure than we are by governmental structure.”
I wrote no in my notebook.
“Any texts?”
“The texts are being written by events,” Sheila said.
“No textbooks? Grades?”
“The college has imposed pass/fail. But for Perry the only failure is the failure to be free.”
“So what is class like?”
“We talk about life today as it is unfolding,” Lyndon said.
“Perry helps us put it in historical perspective,” Sheila said.
“Drawing upon his own experience,” I said.
“Yes.”
“A woman was recently killed at the college,” I said. “I understand she had been dating Perry.”
“Perry had been seeing her,” Sheila said.
“Did you know her?”
“Casually,” Lyndon said.
“Police talk to you about the killing?”
“Of course,” Lyndon said. “Police. FBI. Any chance they get to bring Perry down.”
“They think Perry was involved?”
“They are trying to make it look that way,” Lyndon said.
“But he wasn’t?”
“Of course not,” Sheila said. “They just want to smear him.”
“We didn’t tell them one damned thing,” Lyndon said. “And you can print that.”
“Name, rank, and serial number.”
“Exactly,” Lyndon said.
“You say you knew the woman casually,” I said. “You ever, ah, what, go out with them?”
“Now and then for a drink after class,” Sheila said. “She was nice. She taught postfeminist literature.”
I wrote postfeminist? in my notebook.
“I’m not comfortable,” Lyndon said, “discussing this. I am not going to participate in any attempt to smear Perry.”
“Of course,” I said. “I don’t blame you a bit. Did you know she was the wife of an FBI agent?”
“Isn’t that delicious?” Sheila said. “We used to joke about it.”
“Sheila,” Lyndon said. He looked at her in a very unliberated way. “I don’t think we should discuss this any further.”
“Oh, Lyndon, don’t be such a prig,” she said.
Lyndon’s face reddened. In my notebook I wrote prig.
“I’m afraid this interview is at an end,” he said priggishly.
“Oh, Lyndon.”
“Damn it, Sheila, be quiet. The interview is over.”
I winked at Sheila.
“Free to be you and me,” I said.
33.
Iam but a poor peasant,” Chollo said. “But Señor Perry seems to be a hero of the counterculture.”
“Peasant?” I said.
“Sí.”
“You never saw a shovel in your life,” I said. “You were born here. You speak better English than the president.”
“Many people do,” Chollo said.
“Good point,” I said.
“I am simply playful,” Chollo said, “like a Guadalajara armadillo.”
“Armadillos are playful?”
“I do not know,” Chollo said.
My cell phone rang.
Susan’s voice said, “We’ve had an adventure.”
“We?”
“Hawk and Vinnie and I,” she said.
“You’re okay?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You’re home?”
“Yes.”
“I’m in Central Square,” I said. “I’ll be there shortly.”
Which I was.
Susan had a spare room and full bath on the ground fl oor across the hall from her office. She occasionally used it for conferences, or now and then when she was teaching a seminar. But mostly it was empty. Hawk and Vinnie had set up in there. Susan and Pearl were in there with them. Pearl came and jumped up on me like we’d taught her not to do, and I bent low enough for her to lap my face for a while.
“Déjà vu,” Hawk said. “Again.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The first go-round with the Gray Man, as I recall.”
“Was,” Hawk said.
Pearl tired of lapping and went back to the couch and jumped up beside Susan.
Hawk looked at Chollo.
“Chollo,” Hawk said.
“Hawk,” Chollo said.
Chollo looked at Vinnie and nodded. Vinnie nodded back. He had earphones on and was listening to an iPod.
Susan said, “Hello, Chollo.”
She had a drink. It looked like vodka on the rocks.
“Is that vodka?” I said.
“On the rocks,” she said.
I wasn’t sure I had ever seen her drink vodka on the rocks. No one else was drinking.
“In honor of your adventure?” I said.
“Want to hear about it?” she said.
She was slightly drunk, which is generally as drunk as she ever gets. She wasn’t slurring her speech or anything. It was more something about the eyes, some change in their look that I could never quite explain, but I knew it when I saw it.
“I do,” I said.
Chollo went over and leaned on the jamb of the doorway that was open to the hall. Vinnie listened to his iPod. Hawk sat on the couch beside Susan with Pearl in between them. I pulled a chair around and straddled it backward and rested my forearms on the back.
Susan sipped some vodka.
“I went to dinner with my friend Anne Roberts,” Susan said.
“At the Harvest.”
She sipped her drink. There were window bays on the two exterior walls of the room. Outside in late November, the afternoon had already begun to darken. There was something almost formal in the way we had composed ourselves around her in the bright room. Four rather tarnished knights and a beautiful lady in the center. Actually, the world being what it is, even the lady was maybe a little tarnished.
“Hawk and Vinnie came along behind,” Susan said. “I asked them to remain discreet. Ann might have been, ah, ill at ease with a couple of bodyguards.”
Pearl shifted on the couch between Hawk and Susan so that she could rest her chin on Susan’s thigh. I smiled without showing it. Pearl, at least, was untarnished.