Mac’s needles flashed. She was studying me out of her soft brown eyes, a maternal smile fixed at the corners of her lips.
I told him — told them—that I had. “It would be, well,” I said, “an honor. And I want to say how much, that is — that you can be so generous to a young man, a student, who, uh—”
“Good,” Prok said, in his honeyed tones, “very good. We’ll see about increasing your hours, then, and as soon as the semester is out, you’ll come on with me full-time. Salary to continue as current. And of course we’ll be working together in the garden as well.”
The evening went on in that vein — a congratulatory vein, in a relaxed and amiable atmosphere — until Mac excused herself and Prok and I were left alone. I had no qualms about the work he was offering — it was important, exciting, noble even — and I was deeply grateful to have been offered steady employment at a time when the global situation was anything but settled, yet I did have one reservation. Or rather scruple, I suppose I should say. I didn’t feel right about what I’d done in the office behind his back. Here he was, going out of his way to make something of me, to invest in me and my future in the most concrete way, and I had let him down, cheated him, betrayed his trust in me. He was talking about the school in Indianapolis — the Porter School, it was called — describing some of the details of the more intriguing histories, especially of two of the male faculty, who were hiding their extensive H-histories from the administration and the community too, when I interrupted him.
“Professor Kinsey,” I said. “Prok. Listen, I, well, I must tell you something.”
He stopped what he was doing — his long nimble fingers arrested on the fringe of the making rug — to focus his gaze on me. “Yes,” he said. “What is it, Milk?”
There seemed to be a ringing in my ears, some sort of tocsin repeating itself there, and I must have raised my voice to be heard over it. “I have a confession to make.”
For once, Prok had nothing to say. He receded into his interview mode, all ears.
“Well, I — when you were away I broke the code. The secondary code, that is. I–I’m afraid I went through your desk.”
His first response was disbelief. “Impossible,” he said.
I held his gaze unflinchingly, the bells ringing in my ears, his eyes fading in and out of focus till they were like twin blue planets floating in the ether. “I looked up only two histories, that’s all, and I know it’s unforgivable but I just couldn’t help myself …”
One word only: “Whose?”
Something flew at the window then, beating toward the light of the lamp, a bat, I suppose, or a bird disoriented in the shadows of the fallen night. There was a dull thump of wings against the glass, and then it was gone. “Yours,” I said, the voice strangled in my throat. “And Mac’s.”
He let me dangle a moment, then said, “You broke the code?”
“Yes,” I murmured.
“I never imagined anyone could break my code, even if they did somehow get access to it. You realize I’ll now have to devise a new one?”
“Yes.”
“And that it will have to be infinitely more complex?”
I said nothing, thinking of the work it would entail, the waste of his irretrievable time, my own idle curiosity and how I’d set back the project before I’d even had a chance to contribute to it. I was angry with myself. And ashamed.
Prok got up, crossed to the mantel and spent a moment rearranging the framed photos there. I studied him from the rear, the long tapering range of him, the narrowed shoulders, the bristle of hair. He went next to the window, peered out into the darkness, then came back across the room and settled on the sofa before reaching up to flick off the lamp. Shadows stole out to enclose the room, the only light emanating from a lamp in the hallway. “So,” he said finally, “you know my history, then? But here”—patting the place beside him on the sofa—“come here and sit.”
I obeyed. I got up from the chair and eased in beside him on the sofa.
He put his arm round my shoulder then and drew me to him so that our faces were no more than six inches apart. “You shouldn’t have pried, John,” he whispered. “Shouldn’t have. But I tell you one thing, it was good of you to confess.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Demonstrates character. You realize that, don’t you?” He gave my shoulder a fraternal squeeze. “You’re a fine young man, John, and I appreciate your candor, I do.”
And then something strange happened, the last thing I would have expected under the circumstances — he kissed me. Leaned in, closed his eyes and kissed me. Some period of time passed during which neither of us spoke, then he took me by the hand and led me up the stairs to the spare room in the attic, and I remember a Ping-Pong table there, children’s things, a fishing rod, an old sewing machine — and a bed. I didn’t go home that night, not until very late.
4
Iris was taking a Shakespeare course that semester in the same building where I was sitting in on Professor Ellis’s Modern British Poetry. I didn’t realize it at the time because I hadn’t yet got around to contacting her, though I’d meant to, so it was something of a surprise to run into her in the corridor one afternoon. As I remember it, the day was dismal, hanging like lint in the windows, the linoleum slick with wet, the whole world giving off a reek of mold and ferment. Rain had fallen steadily for the past week and there was more in the forecast. I was thinking nothing, umbrella, notebook and poetry text tucked under one arm, dripping hat in the other, making my desultory way through the mob of students in the corridor. Perhaps I was dreaming. Perhaps that was it.
She was on me before I could prepare myself, right there in front of me, two sets of shoulders parting, a girl in a yellow mackintosh grinning and ducking out of the way, somebody calling out something. Iris. There she was. We both pulled up short. “Hi,” she said, and her smile was an education in itself.
“Yes,” I said, “hi.”
Her eyes seemed to drain all the available light out of the corridor, and there was nothing I could do but stare into them, fascinated. She seemed to have done something to her hair too, or maybe it was just wet. What was she wearing? A sweater six sizes too big for her, woolen skirt, ankle socks, saddle shoes. “You have Ellis this period?”
“Modern British,” I said. “Poetry, that is. But listen, I never — did you get my note?”
She gave me a quizzical look.
“You know, that day — when we were supposed to go to the play? I left the tickets, and you know, a note, with the girl at the desk. The RA. I just wondered if you, well, if you got them.”
Two streams of students were making their way round us as we stood there like posts in the dank hallway. There was a buzz of talk, I saw Professor Ellis at the far end of the corridor, a hundred pairs of shoes squealed on the wet linoleum. “Please, John,” she said, her mouth drawn down to nothing, a slash, a telltale crack in the porcelain shell of her shining, martyred face, “not here. This isn’t the place.”
I just stared at her, mortified. An overwhelming sense of guilt and loss, of a doomed and inextricable culpability, began to drum at the taut skin of me, and, yes, the back of my neck went cold and the hair prickled on my scalp. “At least hear me out,” I said.
“You want to talk? All right. Fine. I’d be interested to hear what you have to say, I really would.” Her face was bled of color now, and she held herself absolutely rigid. “Four o’clock,” she said, her voice struggling for the right tone, “at Webster’s. You can’t miss me. I’ll be the girl at the back table, sitting all by herself.”