Extracurricular Activities (11 page)

I nodded. “That would be great.” I got into the car and gave him a little wave as we drove off. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and saw that I had a text message from Max. It read: “You have mustard on your left cheek. It's been there since the second period. xoxo”

I went to school the next day with a spring in my step. For one night, at least, I was able to forget about Ray's death and focus on something fun and pleasurable.

Every time I thought of Crawford's face, I tried to put it out of my mind. Why the hell did I feel so guilty? After all, I had a lot of lingering hurt and ire left over from the Crawford “I'm married but not really” debacle of the spring. I had very strong feelings for him—of both the love and lust variety—but the sting of not knowing about his estranged wife, who was adorable and seemingly lovely, was still painful.

I bounced into the office area, nodded a quick hello to Dottie, our crazy “never met an eyeshadow she didn't like” faculty receptionist, and went to my office. She was also dating one of Crawford's colleagues, a fireplug of a man named Charlie Moriarty, with whom she had fallen deeply and madly in love during the Miceli case. I was surrounded by women dating cops. I wondered what would have happened had I set a small fire in the office area instead of ending up with a dead girl in the trunk of my car; would everybody be dating firefighters? Or if I had caused some kind of international mail incident by sending a toxic package to my cousin Giselle in Quebec? Would letter carriers be part of all of our love lives? I went in and fell into the chair behind the desk, musing on the attraction of civil servants to single women and closed my eyes.

A soft knock at the door interrupted my thoughts. “Come in,” I said, running my hands through my hair and standing. Frank, the mailman for our division, opened the door and tossed in a packet of mail, rubber-banded and thick; it hit me mid–solar plexus and I let out a little grunt in surprise. Frank is middle-aged, suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and lives with his mother, who also works in the mailroom. He's been on campus for as long as I remember, going back to my undergraduate days. “Thanks, Frank,” I said, surprised to see him. He usually puts the mail in the boxes behind Dottie's desk.

“Dottie said that you looked like you had a late night,” he said, “so I thought I'd bring you your mail this morning.” Frank is nothing if not painfully honest, something that on most days, I appreciate. Today was not one of those days. “Do you dye your hair?” Frank is also king of the non sequitur.

I dropped the mail on my desk and put my hands back up to my head. “No.”

“You should.” He started to pull the door closed. “And don't wear red. It makes you look green.”

I looked down at my red blouse. “It's garnet!” I called to the closed door. I hastily pulled a hand mirror out of my drawer and examined my face; it didn't look green to me but maybe I wasn't getting the whole picture. My phone rang as I looked for a larger reflective surface around my office. “Dr. Bergeron.”

It was Sister Mary, my boss. She wasn't my biggest fan but she wasn't my biggest detractor, either; she was somewhere in the middle on me. I attributed this to my geeky undergraduate years at St. Thomas. “Alison.”

I suppose I had to guess why she was calling. I stalled. “Sister.”

“Alison. We are sitting in Dr. Etheridge's office awaiting your arrival.”

Awaiting my arrival. I gave up the hunt for a larger mirror and immediately went to my day planner, still turned to two days prior. I turned the page to the current day and saw in giant red letters “Staff meeting. Don't be late.” And in smaller letters “You were late to the last one.” I resisted the urge to curse and went for the always-courteous abrupt hang-up. I smoothed down my sleeveless
garnet
blouse and ran out of the office, skidding down two flights of stairs until I reached of the office Dr. Etheridge—“little Napoleon” as I liked to refer to him—where my illustrious humanities and social sciences colleagues were gathered. I ran past Fran, Etheridge's secretary, who shot me a death look, and ran into the room. With the plethora of pocket protectors jammed into short-sleeved dress shirts and knee-hi panty hose peeking out from beneath peasant skirts, it resembled a meeting of the local chapter of
Star Trek
conventioneers. In my garnet blouse, black printed skirt, and high-heeled pumps, I looked, frankly, like a hooker compared to this crew.

“Sorry I'm late,” I mumbled and slid into the only empty chair in the room, the one right beside Little Napoleon at the conference table. Sister Mary glared at me from across the table and I looked down at my hands.

“Thank you for joining us, Dr. Bergeron,” Etheridge said. “Now that you're here, perhaps we should have a moment of silence for our departed colleague, Dr. Stark. And perhaps a word from Dr. Bergeron?”

I looked around the room and all eyes were on me. Why me? I had only been married to the guy for seven years; some of these clowns had worked with him for far longer. Silence, the man said. Surely I couldn't be expected to say something about Ray?

“Alison? Would you like to say something?” Etheridge asked.

Oh, I've got a lot to say, I thought, but I shook my head instead.

“It really would be nice if you could share something about Ray,” he persisted.

Share something? How about how he made me pay off the credit cards after we divorced, and then bought a fifty-thousand-dollar car? Or how I'd learned he was catting around mere hours after we returned from our honeymoon? Or how he had managed to produce the most boring sex tape known to the world of amateur porn? I clasped my hands together and cast my eyes downward. “Dear Lord, watch over Ray as he makes his way from purgatory to heaven.” That was the best I could do.

I looked up and all eyes were still on me, except this time, instead of pity, the eyes were filled with wonder. At my prayer. Sister Mary put her hand over mine and patted it gently. “Do you really think that Ray is in purgatory, Alison?”

No, I think he's in hell. My marriage was purgatory. “I don't know, Sister. But let's hope he makes it upstairs to the big guy as soon as possible.”

If I had any doubts that Etheridge thought I was a giant buffoon, I was fairly confident at that moment that that was the case. He stared at me from behind his glasses and considered what I had said. Finally, he broke the silence and returned to the matter at hand: why we were all in the conference room together. “We were just discussing the potentially changing demographic landscape for…”

Blah, blah, blah, I thought, as I chewed on “potentially changing demographic landscape.” There was so much wrong with that phrase that I couldn't even begin to focus on what he was saying. I watched his mouth move and thought about my raging headache when in my half slumber I heard him ask, “And what do you think?”

I sat up a little straighter. “Sounds good.”

David Morlock, the history chair, caught my eye and gave his head a little shake to warn me.

“Sounds good?” Etheridge asked. “So, you're proposing that we reverse our policy?”

Whoops. The blood in my veins turned to ice as I considered my options. I had a fifty-fifty chance of getting the answer right—or wrong for that matter—so I stalled by putting my finger to my nose in a gesture of contemplation. “Hmmm…” I said. “Interesting dilemma.” I looked around the table and saw that all of my colleagues were staring at me. After a few seconds of silence, David spoke up.

“I think what Alison means is that there are two schools of thought on the issue of gay rights and that allowing a queer studies program into a Catholic school has both pros and cons,” he said. He continued talking, and after a few tense seconds, all eyes were off me and onto him, an eloquent orator and all-around good guy.

I almost fell in love with him at that moment, but being as he is sixty-seven, has terrible halitosis, and lives with four cats, I was able to keep my emotions in check. I shot him a grateful look and returned to studying my cuticles. I also said a silent Act of Contrition to make up for all of those “Morlock the Warlock” jokes that I found so hilarious during my sophomore year.

Etheridge asked me if I had collected all of the syllabi that he had requested. I felt the blood drain from my face as I realized that I hadn't. I didn't even have one.

He stared at me from behind his frameless lenses. “And when do you think you'll be getting them, Dr. Bergeron?”

“Any day now,” I proclaimed unconvincingly. Damn that Sister Calista and her cabal of ornery sisters. Now I knew why they were so resistant to giving me the information I needed; the school was thinking about offering some courses in gay and lesbian studies and they weren't having any part of that. I could save Etheridge a lot of time and tell him exactly how many gay and lesbian literary figures were included on those syllabi: none. And I could also tell him who'd be happily teaching a queer studies course if it were offered in the future: me. So, he could have saved me a heck of a lot of time and energy by just being honest with me from the get-go. Those nuns had turned on me and I would never be able to turn them back.

After an arduous forty-five minutes of debate, during which I was able to keep my mouth shut, the meeting adjourned and I slunk back to my office, no closer to understanding what decision had been made or why.

I was hungry. The hot dog from the night before was a distant memory and I needed more processed nitrates if I was going to make it through the morning. I looked at my watch and determined that I had one entire class period to spend in the cafeteria eating breakfast. I grabbed my wallet and headed out of the office area.

I stopped in at the campus bookstore to get a
New York Times
to read while I had my breakfast. It was between classes and there were more students than usual browsing the stacks of books and magazines in that section of the store.

A student in a blue and gold St. Thomas sweatshirt was bent over at the waist examining the newspaper choices on the bottom shelf of the rack. As is the case with many of my female students, this one was wearing the ubiquitous thong underwear that they found so attractive; it peeked from the waistband of her low-rider jeans. I tried not to stare but her butt crack was inches from my face, as was a huge, red heart tattoo.

Miss Blurry Tattoo Ass.

She stood and turned and I was only mildly surprised to find myself looking at Julie Anne Podowsky.

“Oh, excuse me, Dr. Bergeron. Am I in your way?”

I tried not to do a double take, instead opting for the old clear-your-throat time killer. “Oh, no. I just want to get a
Times
.”

She bent over and picked one up, handing it to me. I had on heels so I couldn't tell what the height differential was between us, but since we were eye to eye, I guessed that she had about two inches on me. A picture of her blurry, naked breasts popped into my mind and I looked away.

“I really need to talk to you,” she said.

“About your grade?” I asked, picking up a copy of
Marie Claire
and thumbing through it. I couldn't look at her; I had seen her naked. Kind of. It was uncomfortable.

She bit her lower lip. “Well, that, and maybe something else.”

I am so not going there with you, I thought. “My office hours are posted online.” She seemed like a very sweet girl, but she had forearms that would rival a lumberjack's. And having seen her thighs, I knew they were mighty powerful, too. Her demeanor didn't say “killer” to me but what did I know, really?

She nodded. “I'll find a time that works for both of us.”

I nodded. “Good enough.” I made my way to the front of the store and threw some coins on the counter to cover the cost of my paper. I walked across the bottom floor of the building without incident, crossed through the student center, and progressed down the long hallway to the commuter cafeteria. I had just reached the doors of the cafeteria, the smell from it not entirely appetizing, when I spied Crawford ambling down the hall toward me, coming from the direction of the convent. Weird, I thought; maybe he's hooked up with a nun? Based on our lack of physical contact, I guessed anything was an improvement. He looked a little shocked when he saw me and more than a little surprised; there was a slight hitch in his step like he was reconsidering his straight path toward me. Kevin was close on his heels, not exactly with Crawford, but not exactly not with him, either.

I stopped, my hand on the handle of the cafeteria door. “Well, well, well. If it isn't Detective Crawford and his ward, Father McManus. You gentlemen out fighting crime together? Where's the Batmobile?” When they didn't laugh, I explained why I was there. However, it didn't explain why Crawford was there. “I was just going in for breakfast. Care to join me?”

Kevin made a great show of looking at his watch. “I have an appointment,” he said and scurried off down the hall, his black jacket billowing out behind him, the sound of his loafers click-clacking on the tile floor like he was warming up for
Riverdance.

I looked at Crawford. “I guess that leaves you. Coffee?” I asked, and held the door open for him. He appeared to be considering his options, finally deciding to follow me in. I approached the counter and put him in charge of getting coffee. “Can you handle that?” I asked.

“I think so,” he said, and wandered off to the coffee bar. I watched him stand before the large coffee dispenser, trying to figure out what I would like and what I would take in my coffee.

“Large! Milk!” I called after him and turned my attention to Marcus, my favorite cafeteria cook, who was making omelets behind the counter. “Hi, Marcus,” I said. “Could I have two scrambled egg and bacon sandwiches on rolls, please?” I asked. I looked around. The cafeteria was sparsely populated since the second class of the day was in session, and only a few students, all plugged in to something or other—headphones, MP3 players, or cell phones—hung around the outskirts of the room. Marcus whipped up my sandwiches which I paid for and brought over to a table by the window.