"That's right."
"Moron."
"Gentlemen," said Vargina.
"Why am I here?" I said. "I thought I was fired."
"You were," said Vargina.
"You are," said Llewellyn.
"Then what's going on?"
"We have special circumstances," said Vargina.
"You have special circumstances," I said.
"Yes."
"I have not-so-special circumstances," I said.
"If you help us with our circumstances," said Vargina, "we might be able to assist you with yours."
The door opened and in walked a large man with a moist pompadour and a tight beige mustache. Dean Cooley was not a dean. He was Mediocre's chief development officer. Several groups worked under him, and he spent most of his energy on the more lucrative ones, like business, law, or medicine. His art appreciation did not reach much past the impressionistic prints from the Montreal Olympics he'd mounted on his office wall. He'd been a marine, and then some kind of salesman, had started with cars and ended up in microchips and early internet hustles. Here in the cozy halls of academe, as he had put it during our first team talk, he meant to reassess his priorities. Meanwhile he would train us maggots how to ask asks and get gives. Cooley was a hard-charger who often began his reply to basic office queries by invoking "the lessons of Borodino." He was the kind of man you could picture barking into a field phone, sending thousands to slaughter, or perhaps ordering the mass dozing of homes. People often called him War Crimes. By people, I mean Horace and I. By often, I mean twice.
"Dean," said Vargina. "This is the man we were telling you about. Milo Burke."
"Nice to meet you."
We'd met a dozen times before, at lunches, cocktail receptions. He had stood beside me while his wife explained a project she'd embarked upon in her student days, something to do with Balinese puppets and social allegory.
"I assume you are wondering why, after being terminated for cause two months ago, we've asked you to come in," Cooley began.
"A fair assumption," I said.
"What you need to understand is that the incident with Mr. Rayfield's daughter was very serious. Mr. Rayfield is still angry. You made his daughter doubt herself, artistically. He had to buy her an apartment in Copenhagen so she could heal."
"I'm sorry, sir."
"The whole debacle nearly cost us a new, working telescope for our observatory."
"I do understand that."
"But what you also need to understand is that we are not simply some heartless, money-mad, commercial enterprise. We are partly that, of course, but we are also a compassionate and, yes, money-mad place of learning. And while we're on the topic of learning, we think people can learn from their mistakes. We believe in redemption."
"As long," said Llewellyn, "as it is not tied to a particular ideology or religious tradition and promotes inclusiveness."
"Is that from the handbook, Lew?" said Dean Cooley. "Anyway, the point is, we are a family."
"A family dedicated to furthering science and the humanities in an increasingly meaning-starved culture," said Vargina.
"Well put," said Dean Cooley.
"But may I remind us all," said Llewellyn, "that here in development our task is to raise money for said furthering. We can't hug all day. We've got to get out there and work."
"Also well put. Especially these days. We need every drop of philanthropy we can get. We must fasten our lips to the spigot and suck, so to speak. Which is where you come in, Mr. Burke."
"Pardon?"
"It's an ask," said Vargina.
"A big one," said Llewellyn. "Not quite Rayfield range, but big."
"Why me?" I said.
"Good question," said Vargina.
"Yes," said Cooley. "That is the question, as the Bard might say."
"The Bard?"
"What's so funny?" said Cooley.
"Nothing, sir," I said. "I just didn't know people still used that term."
"Well, I'm a people, Burke. Am I not?"
"Of course."
"If you prick me, do I not bleed, you scat-gobbling, mother-rimming prick?"
Occasionally Dean Cooley reverted to a vocabulary more suited to his marine years, but some maintained it was only when he felt threatened, or stretched for time.
"Yes, sir," I said.
"Trust me, Milo," said Llewellyn. "Nobody wants it to be you. You were nothing but dead weight since the day you arrived. Nobody respects you and your leering got on people's nerves."
"My leering?"
Vargina shrugged, tapped her pen against her legal pad.
"Listen," said Cooley. "I don't give a slutty snow monkey's prolapsed uterus for your office politics. The point is that Burke needs to come back and complete this mission."
"Why?" I said. "Why me?"
"It's the ask," said Vargina. "The ask demands it."
"Excuse me?"
"He says he knows you. His wife is an alumnus of our extension program and they want to be donors, but when he found out you were in our office, he requested your presence. He wants to work with somebody he trusts."
"Who is this person?" I said.
"His name is Stuart. Purdy Stuart. You do know him, don't you?"
"Yes. I know him."
I said nothing more, felt now like the boy in the fairy-tale book I often read to Bernie, the polite farmer's son who stands before the cruel ogre's castle.
Each time Bernie would ask: "Daddy, why does the boy have to knock on the door? Why can't he just turn around and go home?"
Each time I'd chuckle with stagey amusement, say: "Well, kid, if he didn't open the door, we wouldn't have a story, would we?"
Odds were good I was, in the final analysis, nothing but a scat gobbler from the House of Wanker.
"I mean," I said now, "I used to know him."
"Well, that's just swell," said Cooley, rose, petted his mustache with a kind of cunnidigital ardor.
"I'm late for another meeting," he said. "Tell our contestant what he's won."
The door clicked shut behind him. It did not reverberate.
"What have I won?" I said.
"Your old job back," said Vargina. "If you make this work."
"And if I don't?"
"You'll be finished," said Llewellyn. "Forever. Do we have clarity?"
"Obscene amounts."
Llewellyn stood, stalked off. It would not be the last I saw of him, I knew. The ogres, they just lurk behind those gnarled oak doors so ubiquitous in fairy-tale carpentry, wait for gentle lads to knock. Trolls, on the other hand, they must have a paging device. Either way, the odious is ever ready.
Vargina and I sat there for a while, a new, electric awkwardness in the room.
"Can you make it happen?" said Vargina.
"When have I ever disappointed you?"
"Nearly every day that we have worked together."
"Listen," I said. "I just want to apologize."
"For what?"
"For the leering."
"The leering?"
"You know. That stuff Llewellyn said."
"Don't apologize to me. Apologize to Horace."
"Horace?"
"He's the one who reported you. But don't worry. He wasn't vindictive. He just said he didn't understand why somebody would need to be in the closet in this day and age. At least around here."
"In the closet," I said.
"But he's a kid. He doesn't know how complicated these things can get."
"No," I said. "I guess he doesn't."
Four
There is art to the ask. There is craft. There is lunch. There is also research, but Purdy did not require much. I had been following my old college friend's career for years.
Purdy had made his own money, or so he told the reporters from those magazines about fellating rich whites, those rags with names like Wealth, or Capital, or Fellating Rich Whites. This was true to a point. Purdy made his own money out of some of his father's money.
Still, he had been ahead of his time with his online music outfit. It might sound ridiculous now, but he had been one of the first to predict that people really only wanted to be alone and scratching themselves and smelling their fingers and staring at screens and firing off sequences of virulent gibberish at other deliquescing life-forms. So for us he provided new music and photographs of fabulous people making and listening to the new music, as well as little comment boxes for the lonely, finger-smelling people to comment on the looks and clothing of the fabulous people who had managed to achieve some sweaty, sparkly proximity to each other and to life as it was lived in more glamorous eras.