“Congratulations!” I managed.
“Thank you. Are you here by yourself?” Evan asked, noticing that both my hands were full.
“Tequila’s good company.”
Evan peered vacantly into the middle distance while Evelyn bragged on his behalf: More than five hundred people had applied for the tenure-track position at Chicago, many of them already assistant professors at other universities. Only five of them had been offered interviews, and Evan had cause to believe that he was the front-runner. On the phone, the head of the hiring committee had said that he was “very, really, very impressed” with Evan’s “precocious and lively” dissertation on moments of enlightenment in mid-twentieth-century American literature. When he heard that Evan was in a committed relationship with another graduate student — meaning Evelyn — he said Chicago might be able to find her an adjunct position. It didn’t even cross Evelyn’s mind to feel ashamed of a hanger-on posting. For Evelyn, engagement meant parasitic self-abnegation. She would henceforth derive her value entirely from her partner’s success.
“Nothing’s certain yet,” said Evan, “but I have a good feeling.”
“So do I,” said his amplifier. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed, for both of us.”
Like a film critic for a small-town rag, Evelyn resorted routinely to set phrases. She’d — famously — once described Romeo and Juliet as “a refreshingly good love story.” In response, Professor Davidoff had called her an “evolutionary cul-de-sac” — the best insult that I had ever heard.
Evan and Evelyn were happy in Evan’s success. Oh so happy.
“I wonder — just thinking out loud here — if Chicago is a safe place to live?”
“What? What are you talking about?” asked Evan.
“Lots of gangs there, so say the newspapers. High murder rate. Muggings. Drive-by shootings. You’ll need to watch yourself if this works out.”
Evelyn glared at me. She was as toothlessly protective as one of those tiny dogs that travel in purses.
“Chicago’s dangerous, sure. That’s why the university has one of the largest private security forces in the country, right up there with the Nation of Islam,” Evan said, determined to put down my rebellion swiftly. “I think they can shield me from spraying bullets while I teach. Anyway, who cares what the city’s like so long as the university in that city has a good reputation? That’s what matters for my career.”
Appropriately, the conversation turned to “our work,” and I tried hard to enter a meditative state in which the mind separates from the body, no longer registering external stimuli. I must have succeeded because the next thing I knew, Evan was saying: “Everything all right?”
“Sorry, what?”
Evelyn took the liberty of answering: “He said, how about you? What are you working on?”
I’ ll be frank, Anna: You’ve fallen behind. Find a case study. A good one. Do it right away.
Instead of prevaricating, I changed the subject, offering to pay for a round of shots. My classmates struggled to remember the proper order of operations. Lime, then salt, then liquor? Liquor, then lime, then salt? Not that it really mattered. Unlike baking a cake or solving a math problem, the sequence didn’t affect the result: drunkenness. Evelyn coughed, sending flecks of spit in my direction. I thought of her cozy in Chicago’s Hyde Park, an adjunct professor, a professor’s wife, and my stomach constricted, as if the day’s disappointments were crawling through my gastrointestinal tract. On consideration, that may have been the tequila.
The restroom — I’d never before had reason to appreciate — was intended for individual use, meaning I wouldn’t have to worry about eavesdroppers in adjacent stalls. My stomach constricted again as I touched the door handle, sticky with other people’s perspiration. A good alliterative title: Other People’s Perspiration. I removed my sweater and found a relatively un-ghastly place for it on the floor. If I had to buy a new one, so be it. Still too hot, I removed my T-shirt and then crumpled. It seemed like a fantastic idea to press my face against the porcelain toilet, the stand part that connects to the floor. I could see streaks of urine along the sides but I didn’t care. The coolness of the porcelain was more important, as refreshing as a good love story.
Toilets were amazing devices. Their beauty was, of course, universally recognized, at least since Marcel Duchamp, but enough could not be said about their practical worth. As an engine for flushing waste, toilets were arguably more important for civilization than more vaunted engines: the steam and internal combustion. They used only gravity and water. Just gravity, water, and ingenious design to keep away infection and keep at bay the rough truth of our disgusting animality.
Pre-toilet, even aristocrats had to live with their waste nearby until servants came around to remove their chamber pots. They stowed their shit and piss beneath their beds and slept on top of it. The smell during asparagus season must have been nightmarish. Whereas I, a lowly graduate student who’d fallen behind, could make my vomit disappear by applying pressure to a trip lever.
Alana catches the train from Boston to Cincinnati, snagging a window seat. Deborah sits next to her and strikes up a conversation about fur coats. It’s as good a topic as any. War. Peace. Life. Death. Fur coats. When Deborah exits the train, Eleanor takes her place. Eleanor’s topic is animal cruelty. After Eleanor, Francine talks pet insurance, and Georgina talks vegetarianism. Alana politely plays her part, never acknowledging the alphabetical chain or thematic connections, which, anyway, never amount to anything. Not only is there no climax, there is no sense of building, of anything wagered or gained. Each conversation, each story, is as meaningless and effervescent as the last. If there’s any point at all it’s to show my hand.
Sergeant Davis calls his troops together. Vietnam. They need a volunteer for a perilous mission. “I’ll do it, sir,” says Private Johnny Johnson. Sergeant Davis describes what Private Johnson has to do in extreme detail, every step of the way, to retrieve medical supplies accidentally dropped behind enemy lines. This will go on for pages and pages until the reader feels bored stiff and absolutely despises me. Private Johnson salutes his superior in a patriotic fervor. He sets out. Before he can complete step one he trips over a branch right onto a mine and gets blown up. Guts everywhere.
Strange to say Vietnam was nothing to me. Five years younger, it would have been everything. I was just old enough not to have to really care, in life or in writing. A lucky year for boys, 1938. What would the Chinese call it? Year of the … some animal just the right size to hide in a burrow while the predators get their fill.
Lewis and Don, old school friends, haven’t seen each other in years and years, stretching into decades. Too long. Far. Too. Long. Lewis recently won a prize — he’s an architect — and he can’t wait to tell Don all about it. Before Lewis gets the chance, Don starts talking about himself. He got a raise at work. His mistress is young and beautiful. His car is fast. His son is a quarterback. Banal, small-bore stuff, not nearly as significant as the prize. (The prize is a Big Deal.) Lewis is turned off. He decides not to share his accomplishment. And suddenly he feels wonderful. Elated. He doesn’t understand but what’s happened is simple enough. What he doesn’t share belongs to him alone.
I was fourteen, skipping rocks at Walden Pond. Veronica Lancet
