Into the guest bedroom then. Another cramped bed. Another solitary, lonely pillow. She didn’t so much toss him on the bed as she unfolded him there, and again she disrobed. She was glistening in the moonlight that came in through the curtains. He would have come immediately, had she just touched him. It was the same routine: Elizabeth straddling him, pressing down on him, her head thrown back, those red-nailed hands cupping her tits. Too quickly Dennis felt the roil of his body. And then everything was crashing forward and she softly covered his mouth so that he could not cry out.
Later, when she was asleep, he dressed and left the room. The house was creaking, still. He went downstairs, into the dark of the living room. He made his way back the same way he had come, down the stairs and toward the kitchen, and when he turned the corner by the wood burning stove he saw it: a light. Dennis froze, crouched, tried to find another way out, another door.
And then: “Who’s there?” It was the old man’s voice.
Dennis stayed still, low to the ground, below the light. Strangely, he was calm. It must have been the calm of a soldier, the ease before battle. He did not move until he saw the man’s head peeking out at him. “What are you doing there, son?” Dean Orman asked.
“I’m trying to figure out how to escape your house, sir,” Dennis answered. He had found that the most brutal honesty worked in these situations much better than embarrassing, fantastical lies. Not that he had ever been in a situation quite like this before.
“Come in here.”
Dennis went into the kitchen. The old man was eating a sandwich in the nook. He had pulled out a bar stool and had a magazine open on the counter before him. “Know this,” he said almost dismissively, his eyes down on the magazine. “You’re not the first.”
Dennis didn’t say anything. He could only stand there, shamefully, and listen. The old man was wearing boxer shorts and a dingy T-shirt, what the Taus might call a “wife beater.” He was just an old man; he was supposed to be vulnerable, weak, maybe even halfcocked-but here he was interrogating Dennis.
“There was the boy from England,” Dean Orman said ruefully. “The soccer player. There was the kid from California that she was taken with last year. There have been lecturers and such. And now you.” He took a bite of the sandwich, licked his fingers, and turned a page in the magazine. “It’s just something we do. We agreed on it a long time ago. There is no love in this marriage. There never is at our age. My age. Do you think that those vows are still applicable?”
“I don’t…,” Dennis began.
“Of course not,” Dean Orman cut him off. “That’s absurd. You get to the point where you can’t stand the way she walks, the way she sits on the toilet, the way she mismatches your goddamned socks. This is the way of the world, son. Get used to it.” Another bite of the sandwich, another turned page. Dennis wondered if he was done, if that was all there was. But the old man went on: “Of course I have my own…debilitas. There are two young secretaries that come over on occasion, and Elizabeth watches us although she doesn’t like it. She says it’s unbecoming. What she really means, of course, is that it’s unbecoming of a man my age in the same space, in the same vicinity, as two young beauties. Ah yes. Ah well.”
Dennis went to the door. He opened it onto the night, and the sharp wind hit him in the face, chilling him to the bone. “Do you love her?” the dean asked.
“No,” said Dennis. Too quickly.
“The boy from England did. It was a messy, messy thing. Just awful. The boy crying on the couch, Elizabeth standing there breaking his heart, bringing him Kleenex like some caring mother. It was a scene. I watched it all from the balcony upstairs.” He laughed at the memory, shook his head as if to clear it from his thoughts.
“Good-bye, Dr. Orman,” Dennis said.
“Wait,” the old man called. Dennis stepped back into the kitchen. “I meant to ask you about this class. You mentioned it the other night. With Leonard.”
“Dr. Williams, yes,” said Dennis. The name was funny to him, unfitting: Leonard.
“What do you think about it?”
“It’s…different,” admitted Dennis.
“Yes, I imagine it would be. How do you like him, though, the old boy who teaches it?”
“I don’t know how to take him yet. It’s still early.”
“Let me tell you something about Leonard Williams,” the dean said. He lifted his eyes from the bar to Dennis’s face for the first time, and there was something serious about the movement, something punctuated and dire. “He is not a nice man. In fact, many of us wanted to get rid of him a few years ago when that whole fiasco began with his book.”
“His book?” Dennis asked, remembering what Orman had said at the party.
“Yes. The plagiarism thing. Messy indeed. It almost ruined us all, those of us who had been behind his hiring in the first place. Those of us who granted him tenure. It should have been the end of him, but he has loyal friends in the department, people who will swear by his genius. And he is brilliant. I don’t think there’s any doubt.”
“He plays a game in class,” Dennis said. He didn’t know why he’d said it; it was just something to placate the dean, to win the dean over to his side. Implicate Williams, cast Williams as a fool, he thought. Save yourself.
“A game?” the old man asked.
“It’s very silly. It’s-a forensics game. Like a case we have to solve.”
“Ah yes,” Orman said. “I’ve heard of it. These puzzles and games-people say he’s obsessed with them. Part of his brilliance, I guess. But that’s not the question, is it? No. Of course not. We’re all brilliant, some more than others. The question is this: what kind of representative is he for this university? And it’s been proven, time and again, that he is a dubious one at best. Oh, they think I’m just paranoid. A silly old man. Crazy. They think that I’m just too old fashioned for Williams’s teaching practices. But there’s something there. Something …off about the man.”
“I’ve felt it, too,” Dennis admitted. He wanted to go on but he was careful about what he said. It was best, his father often said of academia, not to have too many enemies.
“Dennis, I urge you-no, let’s make this a demand, considering I have so much leverage over you now. I’m going to demand that you stay away from him. If he asks you to his office, don’t go. If you see him out on campus, keep walking. Your parents wouldn’t want you to get into trouble on my watch, would they?” The old man smiled sardonically, showing his short, yellow teeth. Dennis nodded and went out into that wind, closing the door gently behind him.