Cow Country

DAY

And so the semester began. The following Monday came bright and early with the students arriving at the guard shack carrying their book bags and their bookmarks and their book lists — several even carried books — ready and eager for the rigors and rewards of accredited learning. Along the main promenade young men rode bicycles to class. Co-eds in mini-skirts gathered in groups of three or four. Lettermen from the school’s basketball team lumbered down the promenade like light-colored giraffes on the Sahel. Over by the fountains aspiring jugglers tossed horseshoes into the air one after another, then caught them just as quickly — while on the main lawn Arts majors lounged unsuspectingly on the grass and cheerleaders did life-affirming cartwheels and a trio of guitarists sang songs of protest under the sycamore. After the lethargy of summer the entire campus was newly energized, bustling with vitality, and even more dazzling than it had been just a week before: with green grass and resplendent flowers and clean flowing water. With hedges of lilac and alternating rows of olive and tamarind. Dutifully the birds chirped and fluttered. The pelicans loafed along the banks of the lagoons. The sun cast its rays over the verdure. Ducks quacked. Even the bull at the center of the largest lagoon was shooting his water so high over the loins of his heifer that the traveling mist could be felt on your skin no matter where you stood on campus — as if the virility of the water itself were somehow tied to the resurgent life force now present. Like a spring after a heavy rain, the students of Cow Eye Community College had bubbled up from some eternal subterranean source to resume their rightful place in the world; fresh and well-rested, they were now ready to continue their educational journey across time and space, from ignorance to awareness, from wonder to familiarity, from the dusty heat on the other side of the guard shack all the way to the controlled comfort of formal classroom instruction on this side.

And what they now found at the end of such a long dry summer was a campus in perfect harmony with its surroundings. Green lawns beautifully cut. Oleanders blooming. Azaleas trimmed. Sidewalks that sauntered in perfect equidistance between the social sciences on one side and the natural sciences on the other. The library had been successfully renovated in time for the first day of classes, as had the re-envisioned Dimwiddle Student Union with its modernistic teal carpet and 22-inch color television set. The bookstore bustled. The cafeteria buzzed. After a flurry of last-minute maintenance, the blackboards in the classrooms were now as dark and as shiny as wet stone; floors were polished to a sheen; desks stood glossy and clean and aligned in perfect rows like states on the American flag. In front of the administration building where Old Glory itself flew, the tri-colored flag now waved in proud majesty, the thirty-four stars sparkling like little pearls of enlightenment against the sky. Throughout the campus it was clear that a new beginning had begun — an epoch of boundless opportunity and unencumbered metaphor set free from the tyranny of dust and drought.

And when the students had locked up their bicycles and gone inside the air-conditioned buildings, and when they had made their way into the classrooms that would be their wellspring for the rest of the semester, an inspiring sight greeted them: at the head of the room busily preparing were those very faculty members who would soon come to embody their learning at Cow Eye Community College. Standing before the blackboard, these tenured professionals wore knowledgeable smiles and pressed slacks and pink blouses unbuttoned ever so slightly at the top; happily they beamed behind their desks with hearts full of fervor and minds overflowing with the specialized knowledge to be imparted. Lesson plans were typed out. Syllabi were stapled. Shoulder-length gloves had been ordered by the crate. Even the sticks of chalk jutting out of their cardboard containers were as long and as white as they ever would be, like individual beacons on a hill. Attendance rosters were fresh and exotic, each unfamiliar name still brimming with hope and potential and the equality of unfulfilled possibility that is so inherent in new beginnings. In fact, there was nothing about this day that did not suggest — no, insist! — that this would indeed be the greatest, most awe-inspiring, most mouth-watering and scream-inducing academic semester in the ample, and heretofore accredited, history of Cow Eye Community College.

From my office window I couldn’t help remarking on the transformation taking place below.

“It’s so exciting!” I said to Bessie.

“Yes,” she said without looking up from her typewriter. “I suppose it is.”

“After the impossibly long night, we’re at last witnessing the incarnation of day!”

“Sure, Charlie. Look, I’ve got a lot of work to do….”

Later that morning I met Raul in the hallway outside our offices, and once again I couldn’t contain my excitement:

“Just look, Raul!” I effused. “The new semester has begun. It’s all around us!”

“Yes it is,” he responded. “Yes it has. Like the eternal wheel of life. Or like the tumult surrounding the Topeka constitution.”

“Bleeding Kansas?”

“Yes, and the rise of popular sovereignty.”

“Precisely! The sidewalks are full. The parking lot is full. My goodness, even the bicycle racks are filled to their capacity!”

“Yeah, and so are the tables at the cafeteria. You’d better have your lunch early if you want a seat!”

And so I did.

“Can you believe it?” I remarked to Will Smithcoate when I sat down with my tray. Will had been reading the paper at his usual place in the corner of the lunchroom with his canteen of bourbon and a lit cigar. Amid the packed cafeteria, he was occupying an entire vacant table and seemed happy to have me for the company. “Mr. Smithcoate, just look how incredible it all is! After so much desiccation and anticipation the long-awaited semester is finally upon us!”

Will lowered his newspaper.

“Keep it in your pants there, Charlie. Enlightenment is a marathon not a sprint. A journey, not a destination.”

He was right. And so I grinned at my own ebullience and took a drink of tea.

“It’s like my wife used to say,” he continued. “She’d tell me, William, you’ve really got to slow down. A woman’s body is a glass of fine wine, not a cup of water to be guzzled with your heart medication. My wife had a vagina made of butter, you know….”

I nodded. (Will Smithcoate wasn’t supposed to be my faculty mentor: in fact, he’d been assigned to Nan Stallings originally. But after being stood up by Will three separate times the week before, Nan had asked me to switch mentors; and having just suffered through a painfully silent lunch with Alan Long River, the speech teacher who no longer speaks, I’d gratefully agreed. “Are you nuts?” said Bessie when she found out. “You’ll get the worse of that exchange for sure!” But I just smiled and reasoned it away: “He can’t be that bad, can he?”)

“So, Mr. Smithcoate,” I said, “what do you think about the re-emergence of all these students here in this cafeteria?” I’d bitten off a piece of bread and was chewing it distractedly. “I mean, just look at all these fresh faces at the beginning of their academic journey! The beaming smiles. The nervous anticipation. The untrammeled optimism!”

“Depressing, isn’t it?”

“Depressing?”

“It’s just so depressingly sad.”

“I don’t understand? Why would optimism be depressing? Why would our students’ beaming smiles be sad?”

“These poor students sincerely believe they’re timeless and eternal. In their youthful vigor they’re still convinced that they reside at the center of the universe. The world is their oyster. The future is their pussycat. Each of them believes in the sanctity of a very special destiny. They still have dreams. They still have plans to be pilots and dancers and nurses and lawyers and novelists and doctors and apothecaries and professors and…”

“Absolutely! That’s the beauty of an accredited community college…!”

“Except that they won’t be any of these things.”

“They won’t?”

“Of course not. They aren’t going to be pilots any more than you or I will ever fly a plane: in the end, they’re more likely to become mechanics of some sort. And they won’t be nurses, they’ll be secretaries. They won’t be doctors, they’ll be orderlies. They won’t be writers, they’ll be teachers. Or journalists. They won’t be masters of their own destiny but slaves to other people’s innovations. It’s remotely possible they’ll be happily married, but far more likely they’ll be twice- or thrice-divorced. And no matter how hard they try they definitely won’t be tenured professors at an ivy-walled college.”

“No?”

“Nope. Zero chance of that happening. At best they’ll be educational administrators….”

I laughed.

“But Mr. Smithcoate,” I said. “Somebody has to become the pilots of the world. And the nurses. And the writers. Somebody has to be at the front of the line when they’re handing out tenure. Why shouldn’t it be our students? Why shouldn’t it be Cow Eye’s own who successfully conquer the world with a whip in one hand and a folding aluminum beach chair in the other?”

Will shook his head.

“Charlie, did you know that only fifty percent of our students even make it to their second year of college?”

“That many?”

“Yes. And of those, only fifty percent go on to attain their degree.”

“That few?”

“Yes. And of those that graduate — you know, the fifty percent of the fifty percent — only fifty percent of those will be able to find jobs in their desired fields.”

“Okay….”

“And of those that find jobs in their fields, only fifty percent can expect to find some form of employment here in Cow Eye….”

“I’m noticing a pattern…?”

“Right. Merna put this data together a few months before she dropped her marbles. So if you drill down deeper, the numbers say that of those who do make it past their first year of college and then go on to graduate and then find a job in their degree field and then are able to work here in Cow Eye — of these, only fifty percent ever earn enough from their job to make both ends of the rope meet up. From this group fifty percent pay taxes religiously. Fifty percent of the tax payers actually vote in national elections. And of those who vote, only fifty percent go to church at least once a month.”

“Well, that’s not surprising!”

“Sure. But from here it gets even bleaker. You see, only fifty percent of those who attend church on a regular basis ever attempt to read a novel into their mid-twenties; only fifty percent of those who bother to read a novel bother to read a novel of any merit; only fifty percent of these ambitious readers actually finish the meritorious novel they’ve attempted; and only fifty percent of those who finish such a novel from beginning to end genuinely like the book they’ve just spent their valuable time finishing. And so by the time we get to this point in the data the numbers are so small — greater than zero, I would imagine, but just barely — that it makes no sense to go on. Trust me, Charlie, religion in America is doomed. As is meaningful literature. After all, how can the great novel stand a chance in a place like Cow Eye where the likelihood of finding an educated, well-remunerated, God-fearing, tax-paying, grateful reader of meaningful fiction is so small as to be almost infinitesimal? With so few students making it through this pipeline of civic virtues, is it any wonder that our accreditors are questioning our ability to achieve our institutional mission? And is it any wonder, given our students’ poor prospects, that so few of them can be expected to ever reach the ultimate heights of cosmic orgasm during their lifetime?”

Will shook his head at his own line of questioning:

“Kinda makes you wonder what the hell we’re all doing here, doesn’t it?”

“Kind of,” I admitted. “But what about the English faculty? Don’t they represent our last and greatest hope?”

“English faculty? Who has time for cosmic enlightenment when all your days are spent enlightening others! Charlie, in thirty years I’ve never seen so much greenery and lushness on our campus as there is now. With its manicured lawns. And our rhododendrons. And the pelicans loafing on the sand. It’s as if we’ve chosen to amass all this moisture and verdure for its own sake….”

Will shook his head again and took a long drink from his bourbon.

A few minutes later an administrative secretary came up to our table with a paper in her hand. “Hi, Mr. Smithcoate,” she said. And then: “Hey, Charlie. Would you mind signing this petition?”

“What’s it for?” I answered.

“It’s a petition against all these new electric typewriters. We want to keep the manual ones. Would you sign?”

“Sure,” I said and signed the petition.

The woman thanked me.

“Oh and congratulations!” she added. “You and Bessie are the talk of the copy room.”

“We are?”

“Yes, you are. The two of you are quite the unexpected couple. And it was sweet of you to cover her trembling shoulders with your sarong…”

When the woman had moved on to the next table, Will sighed deeply.

“Progress,” he muttered. “Not much you can do about it, I suppose. Electric typewriters. Mimeograph machines. Hell, I remember when my wife got her first vacuum cleaner. For a couple weeks she was the only one on the block with such a newfangled slice of modernity. She preened in front of the other housewives like she was Hatshepsut. But then the luster quickly wore off. The belt broke and had to be thrown away. It didn’t take long for the damn thing to become a symbol of male oppression. So where’s that old vacuum cleaner now, I ask you?”

“In the dustbin of history.”

“Right.”

“On the trash heap of technology.”

“Quite right.”

“Buried somewhere in the shallow muck of the Cow Eye River.”

“Exactly. And it ain’t never coming back to the surface. So why did we need it in the first place? Why were we so quick to expedite the demise of history for the glamour and convenience of a vacuum cleaner that has since come and gone? There’s got to be an instructive lesson for humanity in there somewhere…!”

I laughed. We ate some more and Will made some progress on his cigar, and a few minutes later another woman came up with a paper in her hand. She introduced herself as the new secretary for the economics department.

“Would you like to sign this petition?” she asked us.

“I don’t sign petitions,” Will explained. “I don’t believe in positive change.”

“I might be willing to sign your petition,” I said. “What’s it for?”

“It calls for more electric typewriters on campus. We’re tired of the manual ones.”

“We?”

“Yes. We.”

“And this is something you favor in economic terms?”

“Of course. Those old typewriters are un-American. They’re inconvenient and inefficient. So would you sign?”

“Sure,” I said and signed the petition.

Raul laughed when I told him.

“So you signed both petitions?” he said. “Even though they were opposed to each other? Even though they were advocating opposite ideals?” The two of us were walking down the esplanade toward this week’s professional development session on adapting one’s teaching methods to accommodate the diverse learning styles of diverse students.

“Yes. I signed them both.”

“And what did you achieve by doing that? I mean, all you’ve done is contradict yourself. You’ve neutralized your own actions. You’ve moved one step up the number line only to take one step back. In other words, you’ve returned to zero. Your objectives, whatever they may be, are in conflict rather than alignment. Your rationale is illogical and puzzling. Geez, Charlie, help me out here…!”

“Well, Raul, it would have been rude for me to turn down the first request. And it would’ve been even ruder to refuse the second. So I honored them both. Now with my help each petition is just as likely to be successful as its opposite. And in this way I’ve endeared myself to both of the administrative secretaries. You see, my equation is perfectly balanced!”

“You may be dear to them now. But that’ll only last until each finds out that you signed the other’s petition. Once they learn that you didn’t commit to them entirely, you won’t be so much loved…as liked.”

“There are worse things!”

“Sure. But is this your ultimate goal in life? Is that your reason for being on this earth? To be liked? Don’t you ever want to be loved?”

“It would be nice, yes.”

Raul shook his head.

“Then you’d better pick something to commit to. You’d better start choosing one thing instead of both. Trust me: that’s what women want. They want a lover who’s unequivocal. A man who knows exactly who he is and is comfortable with it. They want alignment. And purposefulness. You can’t just be from some unnamed locale anymore, Charlie. If you’re going to be from Barcelona, then by God you’d better be from Barcelona entirely!”

“Even if you’re not from Barcelona?”

“Absolutely! Otherwise, you’ll never really be from any place at all. Your aura will be cinereous. Your CV will be undistinguished. And you’ll never be truly loved: you’ll only be respected….or tolerated. Or, god forbid…liked…!”

Bessie splashed some dish soap on the plate that she was rinsing and began scrubbing it with a sponge.

“Yeah, well, I think we’ve moved beyond like,” she said. “In fact, we moved beyond like quite a while ago. And you can tell Raul I said that.”

“Said what?”

“You can tell him that I said I’m in love with you.”

“Did you say that?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Just now.”

“You did?”

“Sure. Why not?”

I blushed.

“That was easy enough!”

“Absolutely. I mean, I think it’s only fair given that we’ve had sex every night for the past week. I think now I can rightfully declare that I am in love with you. It’s probably the least I can do. And it’s definitely the least I can say.”

“But is that even possible?” I asked. “Sure, we’ve been intimately involved over the last week or so — and I’m not ungrateful for that. But we’ve really only known each other less than a month. It’s only been a little longer than that since I arrived at the makeshift bus shelter outside of town. And it’s only been a few short weeks since you started coming to my apartment after work.”

“Of course it’s possible. Why wouldn’t love be possible? That pendulum is still swinging back and forth in your office, right?”

“It is….”

“And it’s still making the same click-clacking sound, right?”

“Yes!”

“So there you go. And besides, what’s time got to do with any of this? I’ve had a thousand loves so far. And all one thousand have been in vain. But I’ve never given up. And I never will. So, no, I’m not ashamed to say it to you now. I’m not averse to saying that I’m in love with you.”

“But it just sounds so unconvincing when you say it like that! When you say it so explicitly. So directly. It just sounds so anticlimactic….”

“Charlie, I’ve said it a thousand times to a thousand other men and I’ll say it to you now: I’m in love with you. I’m in love …I’m in love with you …!”

“Okay …!”

“I’m in love with you, Charlie!”

“Stop! Okay, I get it…!

Bessie laughed.

“Don’t forget, I’m a woman. And if there’s one thing we women learn from living in Cow Eye, it’s how to be in love.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“I see. And you’re welcome to express your point of view, of course — that’s a cornerstone of our great country. But it’s not. I mean, for me, I can’t….you know, for a man, love isn’t something that….”

“Oh, stop blubbering, Charlie. I’m not expecting you to reciprocate. I know better — I’m from Cow Eye, remember — and I know a thing or two about words. So just stop right there. I’d rather you say nothing at all than utter some useless bullshit you don’t really mean.”

“Bullshit?”

“Yes, bullshit.”

“And then what happened?” Dr. Felch asked.

“And then she finished washing the dishes as if nothing had changed!”

“That’s Bessie for you!” Dr. Felch was holding his notes for the Christmas party and laughing. Then he leaned over and expectorated a stream of wintergreen tobacco into his spittoon. “She’s a Presa Canario, Charlie. I told you: she’s tough as lead. You’ll see…”

“You’re scaring me, Mr. Felch.”

“Just keep everything in perspective and don’t forget what I’ve been telling you all along. Things don’t tend to end well with her.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Of course I can. If you really want to know….”

“I should probably know at some point. And I probably will at some point. So I might as well hear it from you now, as I sit here uncomfortably on this hard plastic chair in your office.”

Dr. Felch spat another stream into the spittoon.

“Okay then….”

And here he explained how each of Bessie’s relationships had begun with so much promise only to end in ignominy. Beginning as far back as Timmy from the guard shack, Dr. Felch told me of my new lover’s unplanned pregnancy, her miscarriage, her overnight stay in the county jail for terroristic threatening, her verbal abuse, her veiled accusations, her overt insinuations, her threats unfulfilled, her threats fulfilled, the romantic rival she beat up, the ex-husband she impelled to hard alcohol, the windshield she busted with a brick, the ex-boyfriend (and father of her youngest child) whose thigh she scarred with a branding iron, the psychological warfare, the enmity, the time she drove her truck over Buck’s foot while he was reaching in to take the key out of her ignition during an argument, the smell of burning hair, the flesh under her fingernails, the squealing tires on asphalt….

“Asphalt?”

“Yes, asphalt.”

“Now you’re really scaring me…!”

“Charlie, I told you not to get involved with her.”

“You did. But I didn’t believe you. Everything happened so quickly between us. It all seemed so organic and inevitable. Like water seeking its own level. In comparison, this other stuff can’t possibly be true….”

“Trust me, it is.”

“I do trust you. And yet I’d like to get a second opinion if you don’t mind….”

I took a drink of tea.

“So can you give me a second opinion?” I asked.

“Sure,” Will nodded. “It’s all true. Is that helpful?” Will was holding his cigar between his fingers and as he spoke he took a grand puff, exhaling the smoke in a huge cloud which rose slowly above his head and obscured the NO SMOKING sign posted right above him — the sign that had been posted for him — on the cafeteria wall. Then he shook his head and said, “But lost in all of this is the worst incident of all. You see, he conveniently neglected to mention what she did to her third husband — you know, the one she’d rather not talk about….”

“What happened to him?”

“She tried to emasculate him.”

“What?!”

“In his sleep. Before daybreak. And she damn near succeeded, too.”

“That can’t be! She was just at my apartment last night. She fixed stew and washed all the dishes afterwards. She told me she loved me. I can’t believe all this, Mr. Smithcoate, I really can’t!”

“She didn’t exactly say she loved you. She said she was in love with you. There’s a meaningful difference, you know.”

“For sure. But I still can’t believe it’s true. I still can’t believe all this….”

“They’re right, Charlie,” Rusty said as he pointed at a copy of the arrest record that he’d found in his archives at the museum. “I’m afraid it’s true on every account.” (After so many invitations, I’d finally taken Rusty up on his offer to visit the museum, and after browsing indifferently through the various standing exhibits — old photos of the Cow Eye Ranch, an antique branding iron, a mounted Holstein in full taxidermic serenity — I’d worked up the courage to ask about the alleged incident with Bessie.) “She got some community service for that one. Her uncle was the judge or it might’ve been much worse. But yes, she’s known around town for that ill-fated emasculation.”

“It’s just strange that Dr. Felch didn’t mention this incident with all the others. You’d think it would be right up there on the list. If not at the very top!”

“It probably still pains him to bring it up. And that’s why he’d rather not talk about it. It’s also why he prefers not to talk about his fourth wife at all.”

“I don’t get it? What would his ex-wife have to do with anything?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Didn’t know what?”

“That they were married?”

“Who?”

“Bill and Bessie. He was her third husband and she was his fourth wife. Neither likes to talk about it. In fact, they were happily married for several years until she found out he was having an affair with a woman who was barely thirty. Their marriage had been reinvigorating up to that point. But everything comes to an end. And theirs ended in near-emasculation. I thought you knew….”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, now you do.”

“I do.”

“And now you know.”

“Acutely…”

“So now do you believe me, Charlie?”

“I guess I have no other choice!”

Dr. Felch smiled.

“I mean, she’s great — don’t get me wrong. A wonderful person. And a devoted mother. The two of us have made amends since then and we get along great now. I couldn’t ask for a better secretary. And despite what the prosecution said, I don’t think she really intended to emasculate me that night — I’d prefer to think that it was more a symbolic gesture in the grand scheme of things. But I’m just saying. You might want to have a Plan B prepared just in case….”

Dr. Felch expelled another stream of tobacco:

“…and soon.”

Hearing this, I rolled over onto my side.

“So what do you think?” I said, posing the question directly to Bessie after we’d just made love for the first time. We were lying amid the bed sheets, which were still moist from our efforts. “What do you think my Plan B should be?”

“You’re already thinking about Plan B?”

“Not actively. But, you know, as an option just in case. Sure, it seems like things are going well enough on the one hand. But on the other hand, you can never really tell how things will turn out….”

“There is no Plan B, Charlie. Or rather there is. But you would need to leave Cow Eye forever. So let’s not talk about that. Let’s enjoy Plan A while we still can….”

And with that she kissed the place below my second chakra where the kundalini had already begun to subside.

*

As the weeks passed I settled into the groove of my new semester, and in time I began to find my Circadian rhythm: mornings were spent in my office reviewing accreditation documents, attending classroom observations, and strategizing with Dr. Felch on ways to ensure that the Christmas party would actually be held this year. Lunches usually found me in the cafeteria with Will Smithcoate, who always sat at the same vacant table under the NO SMOKING sign, his lit cigar in hand, and who seemed to relish his status as my faculty mentor for the academic year. After lunch I’d walk back to my office for more committee meetings and other college minutiae. And from there I would head home for long evenings spent alone with my television and my half-read books — at the top of the pile was The Anyman’s Guide to Love and the Community College — and with the loud noises coming through the wall separating me from the irrepressible math faculty.

“I thought you said it would die down?” I asked Gwen after a few weeks had come and gone without any noticeable decrease in the festivities across the wall. The thumping was just as loud. The wails and screams just as ecstatic — or painful. It was late afternoon when we met up, Gwen had just attended a professional development workshop called Mission Possible: Reducing the Performance Gap for Students Who Can’t Read, Write, or Count, and the two of us were heading toward the cafeteria in lockstep.

“Well, they are quite young. And they’re still highly frisky,” she said. “But we all just look the other way because they’re so good at what they do.”

“You mean they’re good at mathematics?”

“No. They’re good at teaching mathematics. And the students adore them. They’re critical to our institutional mission.”

“You mean, the students, obviously?”

“No, the math teachers. You can’t pay taxes religiously without learning math. And you can’t learn math without teachers. Such are the realities of life. So you just need to be patient. Give the situation some time.”

“I’d love to. But I feel like I haven’t slept since I got here. Sometimes I can barely keep my eyes open during meetings. My job performance is starting to suffer. It’s like I’m losing control of my surroundings. Things are speeding up and my perception can’t keep pace. It’s as if there’s no break in my consciousness. Everything’s just blending from one thing into the next.”

“I hear you,” said Raul. “The semester is definitely escalating. Time is moving faster and faster. That’s the way the semester flows. That’s the way life flows. But don’t let it rush by you completely. Don’t let it overwhelm you.”

“I’m doing my best to keep up. And to stay alert through it all. But I really need some sleep!”

“There’ll be plenty of time for sleep once the semester ends. After the mission statement has been revised and the self-study has been submitted to our accreditors ahead of their visit next spring. After December eleventh has come and gone and the Christmas party has been triumphantly held. Just get through the semester as best you can, Charlie. And know that sleep, as it always tends to do, will win out in the end.”

“I’m trying, Raul. Believe me, I’m trying! But I’m so tired I can’t even focus on becoming something entirely — let alone what I’m supposed to be doing as Special Projects Coordinator. The classroom observations. The focus groups. The professional development sessions. With so much to think about I’m even starting to lose sight of my ultimate goal — not to mention my measurable performance objectives….”

Raul laughed.

“You need to put them into an easily understood visual representation. Look, you can diagram it like this….”

Raul turned over a flyer for a survey he was working on and, on its back, drew the following diagram:

“Thanks, Raul,” I said.

“My pleasure,” he answered. “You can keep that by the way….”

A couple times a week — while her mother stayed home with the boys — Bessie would come to my place for dinner, parking her truck right under my window and making her way up the flight of stairs where she’d rap on my front door with rugged knuckles. I’d let her in and we’d have dinner at my kitchen table and then we’d move on to other things. Afterwards she’d go home. In this way we got to know each other as man and woman — as hopeful divorcees — and in this way she and I crossed that mystical threshold separating what is imagined from what is merely known. (“Okay,” she’d told me within minutes of stepping into my apartment for the first time. “Now I’ll have sex with you….”)

Dinners with Bessie always proceeded according to plan. By five-fifteen she was in my apartment. By six, dinner was on the table. At exactly seven she’d call her house to check on the kids. By seven-thirty we had cleaned up the dishes, and by nine or nine-fifteen — nine-thirty at the latest — she was packing up her things and heading home. This continued from week to week, and as the semester wore on it became clear that she and I had very quickly gone from being mutually receptive to being simply in love. Over dinner we talked about people we knew at work. During dishes she shared the highs and lows of secretarial servitude. Later, amid the moistness of our sheets, the two of us spoke of the dreams that she still managed to have and that I had not yet abandoned: hers to move beyond gravel; mine to become something — anything — entirely. In time she came to store personal items at my apartment: a change of clothes in my closet, an extra-long sleep shirt in my drawer, mysterious toiletries in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom; and as we settled into this familiar routine I gradually came to see — infrequently at first but then with greater and greater urgency — faint glimpses into the darker side of her personality.

“Are you sure you should just park below my window like that?” I asked her one night over dinner. “Won’t people start jumping to conclusions about us? Won’t they start talking?”

“Why even think about that? Or are you afraid of what they might say?”

“It’s not that. It’s just….”

Bessie was looking at me expectantly.

“…It’s just, how would it look to an outsider? You and I work together. And you have young children. Not to mention all your ex-lovers that I see around campus on a daily basis. What might they be thinking?”

“First of all, leave my kids out of this. Secondly, this is Cow Eye. We are a rural community college in the middle of nowhere. In the midst of a drought for the ages. There’s nothing that people might assume about our relationship that they’re not already assuming. And believe me, they are talking.”

“Already?”

“Oh yeah. The girls in the copy room know more about you and me than you and I know about ourselves. The whole campus knows about the night we spent together at the river. And how we stayed on the sandy bank until everyone else was gone. And how we held hands on the way back to my truck. And how we then drove out to the clearing by the highway. They know all of this and more.”

“Do they know about the crickets?”

“Of course.”

“And the moonlight coming in through your windshield?”

“Most certainly.”

“And the gear shift between us in the front seat?”

“Absolutely.”

“And the eternal distance separating the slight bulge in my corduroys…”

(Bessie raised her eyebrows.)

“…from your tender words of encouragement?”

“No doubt about that!”

“And what about the…you know…the rivulets…?”

“I hope not,” she said. “Though I wouldn’t be surprised. Cow Eye is nothing if not intuitive.”

“Please don’t think that I’m self-conscious about you and me, Bessie, or that I’m highly cognizant of the fact that, you know, you’ve been divorced three separate times. It’s not that at all. It’s more that, well, our campus is so small. And I wouldn’t want our relationship to become the fodder for prurient small-college interest.”

Bessie laughed.

“Don’t worry about that. For every formally recognized relationship at Cow Eye there are hundreds that dwell in the shadows. If you think what we’re doing is worthy of prurient interest then you should know what the others are up to…!”

And here she told me about the campus’s many sexual idiosyncrasies and romances of regional acclaim. How the instructor of world religions had been caught having sex with the young ethics teacher in a store room. And the two married business faculty who’d been conducting an extra-marital liaison for years. There was the tenured chemistry teacher reprimanded multiple times for exposing himself to nursing students during labs. And the art historian whose Saab had played host to more passion than Little Round Top. There was the macroeconomist with the hairy back. And Marsha Greenbaum who was insatiable. And the two homosexuals in the art department. And the cross-dressing horticulturist from West Virginia. And the Nevada-born brothel owner turned grant writer. And the Bolshevik prone to free love. And Timmy at the guard shack. And the security guard with the Polaroid camera. All of which did not even include the creative writing instructor with his female students; the Schlocksteins, whose marriage was as open as a Nebraska corn field; and the post-tantric Luke Quittles and Ethel Newtown, who had moved in together and were engaged in a raucous love affair over the mournful objections of Ethel’s hapless husband Stan. (“Compared to faculty at your local community college,” I had recently read, “the untenured residents of Sodom and Gomorrah were tepid and discreet!”) And all of this did not even account for the mathematics faculty whose infamous math orgies had by now risen to a strident pitch on the other side of my apartment wall.

“When is it all going to end?!” I found myself crying out in exasperation to anyone who would listen. “The semester is more than a month gone, the noises are never-ending, and I really need to get some sleep! When will it end?!”

“Right before mid-terms,” Raul projected.

“In its own time,” said Gwen.

“When history itself becomes obsolete,” Will ventured.

“I see. Well if it’s going to take that long, then what am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

“Approach it philosophically,” said Gwen.

“You need to confront them on your terms,” said Rusty.

“Make a written plan,” said Raul. “Then execute it.”

“But how can I be philosophical without sleep? And how can I be confrontational when I’ve never been good at conflict? Of course, I’d love to come up with a plan of some sort, but aren’t there already too many untenable plans for improvement at our struggling college as it is?”

Will laughed.

“Actually, there’s nothing you can do about it,” he explained. “Trust your mentor on this one, Charlie: there’s no arguing with mathematics. Historically, it’s been a special point of pride for that discipline to be cold and consistent and unbowed by the whims of human emotion. It’s like my wife used to say during the long winter nights. She’d say, William, if you don’t take your fingers out of my crack right this second, there’s going to be hell to pay. She was like that in her later years….”

“Mr. Smithcoate?”

“But then she’d just laugh and pull back the sheets….”

“Will?”

“And she’d take my palm and put it on her naked stomach…”

“Will!”

“And she’d hold it there….”

“And then?”

“Well and then,” Rusty concluded, “Bill left Bessie for his latest thirty-year old — the current one — and they’ve been together ever since. For Bessie it was the latest devastating betrayal. For Bill it’s been somewhat of a triumph over life. But we’ll just have to see how long it lasts….”

“And how long will it last?” I asked.

Dr. Felch shrugged his shoulders:

“It’s very hard to say,” he said. “Probably until they get all that youthful vigor out of their system. Until the math hormones settle down. They say Archimedes enjoyed the favors of aspiring geometricians well into his seventies. So you’re probably looking at a few more years of breaking glass at least….”

“But I can’t wait that long for their math-love to die down. I need my sleep now. The fate of our college depends on it!”

“Hang in there, Charlie…”

And so I did my best to block out the clamor on the other side of the wall and to focus on what Bessie was telling me over the tripe stew that she had made for dinner.

“Given all that’s happening on campus,” she was saying, “I wouldn’t worry about what anyone is saying about us. Compared to the glamour of faculty romance, you and I are as noteworthy as two married librarians discussing literary reviews on a public bench.”

I nodded and took a bite of her tripe.

“That’s reassuring, I suppose. But, Bessie, what do your children think about all this? You know, about you and me? Don’t they wonder where you are on alternate weeknights?”

“Why would they wonder anything?”

“I don’t know. It just seems like they would have some curiosity about where their mother is. And who she’s with. Wouldn’t they?”

“No, they wouldn’t. And they shouldn’t. Not yet anyway. There’s a time and a place for curiosity. And there’s a time and a place for conflict. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay? Now isn’t exactly the time for either.”

And so Bessie changed the subject.

“How’s the stew?” she asked.

“It’s delicious,” I said. “Sumptuous, actually.”

“I’m glad you like it. My father used to make this for me when I was little. When he was still alive….”

Bessie grew quiet.

And I nodded and swallowed another bite.

*

“But what are they saying about us?” I asked Ethel at the firing range one afternoon. She and I had taken out our guns but had yet to put on our ear muffs or our protective eye wear.

“What is who saying?” Ethel answered.

“You know, people. Around campus. The professoriate. Our peers. You would be the one to know, Ethel, since as a journalist you should be attuned to such things.”

“Of course there is a lot that’s being said. And, yes, some of it is about you and Bessie. There’s also quite a bit being said about Luke and I.”

“I can imagine. Like what?”

“Well, they say that the two of us are shameless and mindless and heartless. They say we’re ruining my husband Stan both as a husband and as a man and that our passions will lead to his untimely demise. They say that food and journalism lead to literary indigestion.”

“I see.”

“They even imply that if we’re not careful our relationship might jeopardize our respective applications for tenure.”

“Ouch. I’m sorry to hear that. I can only imagine what they’re saying about Bessie and me? Should I even ask?”

“You can. But are you sure you want to know? Because not all of it is nice.”

“Yes I do.”

“Okay,” she said. And then: “Here, hold my pistol, will you…?”

And here Ethel recounted the most frequently repeated version of my relationship with Bessie. How she and I were known to have consummated our relationship on the banks of the Cow Eye River. And how, after brushing off the sand, the two of us had made our way back to her truck to warm up. And how from there we’d driven to a field where the moon trickled down upon us like a mother’s love for her two sons. And how, after taking full advantage of Bessie’s drunken stupor, I’d covered her up with the sarong pilfered opportunistically from Marsha Greenbaum’s studio.

“The orange one,” Ethel clarified. “Though in other iterations your sarong is more of an off-magenta.”

“There are others?”

“Yes.”

“A lot of them?”

“Quite a few.”

“For example?”

“Well, for example, it’s also been intimated that upon returning to your lonely apartment after visiting the edge of the universe where Bessie’s children reside, you finally began to experience the perils of night and day.”

“Right,” said Raul. “And that the distance that night between your trembling hands and Bessie’s receptive nipples was far greater than the distance that can be vanquished by an arrow in flight.”

“And,” said Gwen, “that the pendulum in your office is a metaphorical attempt to reconcile your alternating apexes of love and its opposite. Of logic and intuition. Of memory and imagination. Of Plan A and Plan B.”

Dr. Felch listened to all this and after spitting yet again into his spittoon, he agreed with what had already been expressed, then added: “They even surmise that the two of you are heading toward something ominous, Charlie. Like a kayaker upstream of a rocky falls. Or like our rural college as it drifts headlong into the oncoming wrath of its institutional accreditors.”

“They’re saying all this?”

“Yes, they are. And then of course there are the rivulets….”

“Rivulets!”

“Yes, about how you came to find relief amid the moisture of Bessie’s oral reassurances.”

“Right. And how the two of you have since become so entwined that you even eat tripe together!”

“And that the gear shift halfway between the two of you that night will always be a bit closer to other people than it is to you, Charlie. And that it will be like this due to your reluctance to commit to anything entirely.”

“They’ve said all this?”

“Oh, yes. And more. Much more…!”

To all of this I could only listen in amazement.

“So is it true?” Ethel asked.

I shook my head decisively. But then, after a moment’s thought, I nodded just as decisively.

“About half of it is true,” I said. “Maybe two-thirds if you count the part about the pendulum. But, Ethel, it’s less the truth of the matter I’m concerned about than its perception. I mean, how is all of this being viewed? How is the relationship between Bessie and me being interpreted?”

“It’s Bessie and I, Charlie….”

“Right. Sorry. So what are they saying about Bessie and I? How is our relationship being perceived by our fellow colleagues around campus?”

Ethel stopped to consider my question. Then she said:

“Quite extensively. Though reasonably well, all things considered. Of course there are some reservations among certain departments….”

And here Ethel told me how the administrative secretaries had given us their full blessing, while the maintenance department disapproved. To the mathematics faculty there was a certain beauty in two unloved people finding love, just as there is something transcendent in two negative numbers somehow coming together to bring about a positive product. To the young ethics instructor — the one who’d been discovered in the store room bent over a dusty box of Christmas decorations — my relationship with Bessie was not professionally advisable in any way and in fact compromised both parties’ ability to contribute meaningfully to the college’s institutional mission. To the homosexuals in the art department we were bourgeois; in the opinion of the financial aid office we were harmless if indiscreet; while among the animal science faculty there was much discussion about our respective ages, the likelihood of parturition at such a late stage of life, and whether there might be a need for artificial insemination at some point. The librarians cringed at the very notion. The cafeteria workers cheered. And the English faculty of the college — none of whom had yet received a single response from a reliable literary agent — simply ignored our dalliance altogether.

“It’s as if we’re not even worthy of fine literature,” I shrugged.

“That’s okay,” said Bessie. “It’s been years since I read a good book anyway. Hell, it’s been years since I’ve read any book….”

I handed her my copy of Cute Cats of the World.

“Try this,” I said. “And let me know if you like it. Because, believe me, there’s plenty more where that came from….”

“Thanks,” said Bessie. And then: “But do you really care about any of this?”

“That you don’t read books? Well, sort of. I mean, it does tend to be, you know, an important milestone in the history of human enlightenment….”

“No, not that. The chatter. The interdepartmental banter. The conversations in the copy room. The lunchtime gossip. Do you really care that they’re saying these things about you? About me and you? That they’re saying these things about us?”

“Of course I do.”

“Why?”

“Because it trivializes our story. Instead of it being open to broader contextualization, it’s been reduced to a single mundane narrative. Like the explanation of an advanced mathematical concept so that it may become easy and more accessible. Or like the survey course that provides watered-down understandings of complex phenomena so that bored undergraduates can get their credits efficiently and move on.”

“And is that a bad thing?” Raul objected. He was standing next to the water fountain outside my office holding a waxed paper cup; he’d just leaned over to take a drink and tiny beads of water still clung to the fringes of his goatee as he spoke. “After all, there is great beauty in simplicity, Charlie. There is beauty in complexity that has been made accessible. And in understandings that have been conveyed more efficiently. In this lies the very essence of teaching, I’d say — and in teaching at a community college in particular. Such is the lofty goal of mathematical inquiry itself.”

“But Raul,” I said, “is this goal really so lofty? Wouldn’t you agree that the greater beauty lies in those things that are too complex to understand? Too ambiguous to be taught?”

“Charlie?”

“Wouldn’t you agree that the idea that boasts an infinite number of unverifiable interpretations is far more intriguing than the one with a single outcome that can be replicated over and over? That the capricious animal brimming with life is more beautiful than its counterpart that has been skinned and tanned and expertly embalmed? And in this way wouldn’t you agree that the realm of mathematics is but a mausoleum for once-living ideas? Like the Cow Eye museum with its colorless photographs and preserved Holstein. And that if mathematics is this very museum with its static displays of dead artifacts — its dusty shelves filled with the skeletons of resolved mysteries — then there has to be something that is its opposite? For everything has an opposite. And if so, what is it that can possibly be such an opposite? Could it be philosophy? Or music? Or art? Or might it not be something even grander, like poetry? For doesn’t poetry tend to bustle with life like a living zoo of unruly vertebrates, each kicking and splashing in puddles of imperfect excrement? Yes, poetry is a zoo, Raul! Poetry is a zoo of screaming animals. And mathematics is the quiet and distinguished museum where the animals’ corpses are kept for posterity…!”

“Which, metaphorically speaking, would make the poet…?”

“…A hapless zookeeper!”

“And the mathematician?”

“A skilled hunter….”

“And an instructor of mathematics?”

“The taxidermist!”

Raul laughed.

“And the data analyst, Charlie? In your metaphor the institutional researcher is…?”

“The taxidermist’s faithful lab technician!”

At this Raul stopped smiling.

“Well, you’re welcome to believe whatever you want,” Raul muttered. “That too is a cornerstone of our great nation. But in this case, I’d say you’re overreaching. It’s probably best for everyone involved if you just stick to educational administration!”

I laughed and took another drink of tea.

Outside the window of the cafeteria the sun was setting at a different angle than it had just yesterday. I had begun to raise yet another question for the general discussion, but found myself stopping in mid-idea. An urgent thought had suddenly struck me: How was I doing on time? Was it late morning? Or early afternoon? Was it already early fall? Or was it still late summer? Could it be that while I was sitting here the seasons had moved from the dissolution of late autumn to the emanation of early winter? From the semester’s incarnation to its fast-approaching dissolution? Relentlessly, the days had come and gone and the weeks had carried me out of one meeting and straight to another: down the esplanade and past the bookstore, from my office to the cafeteria, from the balmy comfort of Dr. Felch’s spittoon to the cold confines of my apartment adjoining the math faculty. Since the first day of classes I’d attended meeting after meeting to envision the Christmas party; I’d facilitated grueling planning sessions to review the college’s mission statement; I’d conducted countless classroom observations and written innumerable reports and served on hiring committees where we’d picked through flawless curricula vitae and nodded respectfully at the polished responses of award-winning applicants over the phone. I’d helped organize a non-credit class for laid-off ranch workers and volunteered to help a small group of students start a campus club called Future Educational Administrators of America. Together with Raul, I’d attended professional development sessions on student learning styles and performing CPR and maintaining sexually appropriate relations with co-workers and how to build a strong tenure dossier and understanding the special needs of special populations and recognizing alternatives to bloated scrota and strategies for working effectively with impossible colleagues and where to hide during a campus massacre and how to reduce workplace anxiety using best practices in yoga and the economic and pedagogical benefits of Kuhblasen and how to invest a life’s legacy in an interest-bearing retirement plan and approaches to dealing with students of indeterminate culture and, just last week, a gravely important session on detecting the earliest warning signs of a female colleague who is teetering on the precipice of self-destruction. (In less than a semester I’d managed to develop my professional capacity in all this!) And in a desperate attempt to reconcile our divided faculty — to arrive at a plan that might bring the campus’s disparate factions closer together in time for the Christmas party on December eleventh, or at least by the accrediting team’s scheduled visit in March — I’d organized a series of high-stakes focus groups to be held throughout the semester.

“Focus groups?” Raul inquired. “And how are those going?”

“Not well. I can’t even get everyone into the same room! I mean, you thought castrating a calf was a challenge?! You thought getting his buy-in was hard? That’s how it’s been for me trying to organize our faculty. It’s like trying to herd cats into a corral. I’ve tried everything. And I’m not sure what more I can do at this point.”

“You need to design a survey. Send out it out to all faculty and staff. Ask them for their opinions on what makes a focus group truly outstanding. Encourage them to be forthright and tell them you will take their suggestions to heart. Then use their complicity in the survey to create support for the focus group itself. Remember, no educational endeavor is complete without a survey. Geez, Charlie, this is Educational Administration 101!”

“But do you think they’ll respond to a survey like that?”

“Of course! The great thing about faculty is that they have opinions on everything. That’s one thing you’ll never have to worry about! You just need to give them the proper egress to let it all out.”

And so I did.

And until this moment it had all seemed purposeful enough. But now, as I looked up from the ongoing discussion, I realized that time was in fact flowing by me quicker than my ability to comprehend. The weeks of the semester had come and gone and here I was back in the cafeteria yet again with Will Smithcoate. Here I was amid the moist sheets interlocked with Bessie, with Ethel’s pistol still in my hand, the sound of the pendulum in my ear, and the smell of wintergreen tobacco filling my lungs. Here I was creating my surveys, administering them, then tallying their results on separate index cards. Here I was standing patiently in the college bookstore, or in the buffet line at the cafeteria, or with Rusty in the Cow Eye Museum among the dusty exhibits — the old newspapers, the cattle bells, the colorless photographs of the Indian village with its once-vibrant people whose civilization was now submerged — while time continued to pass ever so insistently by me. The days, the hours, the weeks were overtaking me like the rising waters accumulating over the dry ground of an entire way of life. And despite my formal training, and despite my Master’s degree in Educational Administration with its focus on struggling community colleges — and despite the new loafers I’d just purchased from the latest Sears Roebuck catalog — it was all I could do to keep up with Gwen on her long walk down the esplanade to the cafeteria; with Bessie’s rigorous affections in bed; with the unrelenting impositions of the accrediting body and its plans to visit Cow Eye in mid-March; and with Will and his self-destructive consumption of cigars and bourbon at the empty cafeteria table below the NO SMOKING sign.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Time, Charlie?”

“Yes. Can any of you tell me what time it is?”

“You mean the year? Or the month? Or do you mean the day of the week?”

“No, I mean the specific hour and the specific minute of this very specific day. Can you tell me the exact time right now?”

Will checked his gold pocket watch.

Raul consulted the digital calculator on his wrist.

Rusty glanced over at the clepsydra next to the museum entrance.

And Bessie, tucking the sheets under her arms, simply rolled over groggily to look at the alarm clock on the nightstand next to my bed.

“What time is it?” I pleaded with them all.

“It’s almost two, Charlie,” they responded.

“Two?”

“Yes.”

“Two o’clock?!”

“Yes, two.”

I recoiled.

“Dammit!” I muttered. “I can’t believe it’s already two o’clock! I’ve still got my class observations to conduct — the final ones for this semester — and it looks like I’m already late to them both…!”

And without finishing my tea I jumped up out of bed, threw on a shirt and some corduroys, and ran out of the cafeteria down the long esplanade to the room overlooking the largest fountain where the public speaking class was being held.

*

(…)

To the great lover there is no such thing as time. For what is time when you are in love? Within the lover’s embrace time stands still. Or rather it flows differently: like the sweeping currents around a submerged rock; or like the uneven flow of an academic semester — gently at first, then with greater and greater urgency — mercilessly downstream toward the precipice of exam week, toward the impending crescendo of a shuddering orgasm. Secure in the arms of a lover, time is but a nuisance to be reckoned with in the abstract — like a doctor’s routine rectal examination that has been put off until it is too late or like the insistent knocking of a student oblivious to the office hours so clearly posted on the door. Understand the flow of water from a higher place to a place that is lower and you will understand the flow of time from past to future, the trajectory of history from hope to obsolescence, the great movement of moisture from ignorance to indifference and then ultimately into the awaiting delta of love. Just as the body tenses before orgasm, so too does the progress of time shudder and release, expanding and contracting like the impetuous love muscles of the human body. Controlling these muscles has been the abiding accomplishment of all great lovers — just as it has always been the fancy of man to subjugate the shuddering convulsions of time.

The realms over which man has been able to exert his influence range from the essential to the arbitrary; seemingly there is no process of nature that has withstood the interventions of human whim. Convenience being the aim, the ambitious mind of man has smoothed away the vicissitudes of life and made living more inevitable. He has domesticated the compliant bovine and propagated arugula in planter beds. Water that used to be gathered at great distances now flows through elaborate infrastructure to within a few feet of his thirst, as if it were the water itself that were the goal rather than the faithful act of its acquisition.

While nature knows balance, man — to his detriment — does not. Even when the severities of life are cruel and incomprehensible, the natural world has a way of bringing things back into accord. Floods and fires and droughts will happen, but nature makes sure they do not happen indefinitely. Only man strives for perfection in the absolute; and only he can create miseries that do not go away, consequences that have no naturally occurring remedy. Here the insatiable urge to accelerate the timeless trajectories of his world has led him further and further astray. The pursuit of empty conveniences has encouraged him to second-guess the very foods he eats, the air he breathes, the water he drinks. His reckless pursuit of efficiency has led him to dam free-flowing waters and forever alter the paths of rivers. He has severed the ties between peoples and their historical homelands and encouraged the deaths of some languages so that others might be better understood, if not lovingly spoken, by a greater number of people. In the name of more efficient communication, he has often accelerated the demise of language. And in the name of creating better living conditions he has unwittingly endangered the facility that life once had to regenerate itself.

But one thing that man cannot control is the very flow of time. For time flows of its own accord. And try as you may, you cannot expedite the rhythms of nature. The sun has been shown to rise when it rises and the sea will be prone to ebb and flow in its own time; these are the laws of eternal day and these are the laws of enduring moisture and they will outlast the most tenacious among us. For the laws of love will surely outlast the laws of man. Just as celestial time will survive the earthly semester. And the river will outlive the dam. And sleep, as it always tends to do, will win out over everything else in the end.

(…)

*

By the time I reached the creative writing classroom the workshop was already well under way. The eight students were seated around a long conference table, and as the pretty young author stood reading her own story aloud to the group — never raising her eyes above the typewritten manuscript, barely raising her voice above the drone of the air conditioning unit — the other seven students sat with their own copies in front of them, listening intently. Seeing me enter the room, the creative writing teacher motioned toward the long conference table and I hastened to take the last remaining seat at the opposite end directly facing him.

“That’s Charlie,” the teacher said, pointing across the table. “You know, the one I told you about last week — who is a lot of different things but none of them entirely. He’s here to observe my mesmerizing teaching style. So he’ll be sitting in on our workshop today. Please don’t feel threatened or intimidated by him while he listens to the discussion of your stories — in fact, he is just an educational administrator and therefore has no ties to the creative process whatsoever. Feel free to treat him as you would any other intrusive bureaucrat and representative of institutional hierarchy and oppression. Or just do what I’m planning to do: ignore him as if he weren’t here at all….” The teacher passed down a copy of the manuscript so I could follow the discussion. Then he turned to the pretty young girl who’d been reading from her manuscript when I walked in: “Sorry, Maude. Please continue….”

The girl looked back down at her manuscript and continued reading.

The workshop was being held in a small classroom with a single blackboard that by now was chalky and gray from a half-semester of use. The pieces of chalk that had once been beacons on a hill were now mere stubs the size of a scarcely flickering candle. The air conditioning made everything in the room seem dry and cold and brittle, like the chill left by barren prose.

As Maude read her story I paid special attention to her peers around the table. Despite being aspiring writers themselves, none seemed all that interested in the story being read; here and there they would nod or yawn or titter at an unexpected turn of phrase when it popped up in Maude’s recitation: The sweat on Alison’s eye brow, Maude would read, was dry and salty, like the tear of a very sad policeman. And then: Hearing this, Tiffany snapped her gum and declared, “Yeah, well my cousin dated a mulatto once!” The teacher himself was a thin man with curly hair and a self-assured air about him — exactly the kind of person that impressionable people admire. His voice was confident and dynamic, as if he’d surely written a shelf worth of bestselling novels — or even a single meaningful one — though neither happened to be the case. Yet there was something in his mannerisms that caused one to want to watch him — and I could now see how it was this trait that might have helped make him such a popular and mesmerizing figure among his students.

Maude read quickly and purposefully and when she had reached the end of her story, the teacher paused for several long moments as if to pay proper respect to what had just been pronounced. Then he looked up from the manuscript:

“Well,” he said. And then again: “Well. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Maude, for reading your story to us. It’s always helpful to hear a creative work being read by its author. I think the oral experience, so to speak, gives the story’s readers so much more insight into the intentions of the work. I feel like I know your story more intimately now. I feel like I know you more intimately. So thank you.”

Maude smiled shyly.

The teacher winked back at her, then continued:

“So now that we’ve heard this story from the lips of its young author, let’s begin our discussion by telling her what we liked about it, shall we? What did you think worked well in Maude’s story? What were its strengths? What is it about this story that makes it a meaningful contribution to the vast corpus of existing literature?”

The quiet in the room was penetrating and uncomfortable. Nobody ventured an answer. The teacher waited. But still nobody spoke up.

“Come on, now!” said the teacher. “Let’s be giving. Remember, we’ll be discussing each of your stories soon enough…!”

There was another lengthy — and even more awkward — silence as not a single peer volunteered to start the discussion. Finally, a young man in pince-nez glasses and a black turtleneck sweater spoke up.

“Well,” he said, pushing his glasses onto his nose, “I thought the title was fantastic.”

A murmur of agreement traveled around the table. Maude blushed.

“Your title really encapsulated the essence of the story and set the stage for what was to follow. Good job, Maude!”

“Yes,” said a newly emboldened student sitting across from him. “And I loved the way you used creative pagination to highlight your story. The extra-wide margins and blank space around your text really accentuated the prose and allowed it to shine.”

“That’s right!” said a girl who was sitting next to Maude and appeared to be from the same cheerleading squad. “And the way you used ultra-realistic dialogue was just, like, super impressive. I mean, like, I could almost hear these voices speaking to me. It was as if, like, I were, you know, right there with the two main characters at, um, that laundromat…”

“Me too!” added another student. “And your description of the damp clothes tumbling in the dryer was just spectacular. It really gave me the sense that the dryer really was going around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around….”

“Yeah!” another student agreed, rather emphatically: “And around!”

To all this, the mesmerizing teacher nodded his approval. Then he said:

“Okay. So I think we can all agree that there is much to like in Maude’s story. But what about the characters? Did you find them convincing? Could you identify with them? Did the main characters appeal to you? Were they well-rounded and multi-dimensional? Did they resonate with your sensibilities? Did you see glimpses of yourself in their decisions? A vision of your future in their struggles? Did they spark vague reminiscences of previous lives lived?”

“Oh, yes!” said the students.

“They did?”

“Yes. Very much so.”

The teacher waited for an elaboration. But none came. Beyond the window of the classroom some far-off pelicans could be heard to loaf. The sun was still shining over the verdure. A duck quacked. Finally, the teacher broke the silence:

“Outstanding. I’m glad we can agree on that.” The man looked down at his notes. “So now that we’ve discussed the story’s many strengths, let’s talk about a few of the things that Maude might want to consider as she works on future drafts. These are what we now tend to call the opportunities that the story presents. And please notice that I didn’t refer to these ‘opportunities’ as weaknesses. Because, of course, we do not mean to say that anything Maude has written here is weak — which is to say, it is not better or worse than any other thing that any other creative being has ever composed. In sharing our thoughts with Maude, therefore, we simply reaffirm that we have our own opinions on her writing and that, for Maude as a writer, hearing these opinions may be helpful in guiding her to perfect her work. But she, of course, is undoubtedly within her inalienable right to take these opinions to heart — or to disregard them — as she sees fit. In the end, the result will pretty much be the same either way. Right?”

The students nodded.

“Great. So what say you all? What comments would you like to make about the opportunities that Maude’s story presents? How might it be improved for the benefit of future generations?”

“Well!” a voice spoke up, rather too suddenly and immediately. The surprised students looked over to see that it was Maude herself who was answering the question. “I have to admit that I wrote this late last night and I didn’t have much time for editing. So that explains some of the misspellings. And of course I think I definitely could’ve done a better job with the sock-folding scene….”

“Maude!”

The teacher had raised his finger in reproach.

“Maude!” he chastised. “You’re violating the cardinal rule of literary workshopping! You mustn’t speak when spoken about! Remember, your writing needs to stand on its own. You will not be there in bed with the reader while he reads your work — or at least it’s not very likely that you will happen to be in bed with that reader. So whatever grand intentions you have for the story should be evident in the text itself. You’ve had your chance to choose the words that your reader will be lying in bed with. So now you must sit silently and anonymously, with your knees pressed together under the table like they currently are, or splayed ever so slightly like they were just a few moments ago, and you must take the verbal undressing that is sure to follow. And of course you must take this undressing silently and hungrily like the mature woman that you have clearly been for some time now…”

Maude apologized and looked back down at her manuscript as if she were guilty of a fatal sin, the first deadly sin of workshopping.

From there the discussion moved on.

“For me,” said one of Maude’s fellow students, “I just really felt like the relationship between the narrator and the homeless man in the laundromat wasn’t convincing. I thought their dialogues were contrived and the sex scene definitely left me somewhat unfulfilled and wishing that the author had a broader range of intimate experience to draw from — something more lofty than the bottom bunk of the fraternity house where I happened to see her last night.”

The students around the table nodded their agreement.

“I mean, I would want the scene between the two main characters to exhibit a little more — oh, how should I put it? — romance, I guess you might call it.”

“Okay. You are a romantic. Duly noted. Anyone else?”

The young man with the pince-nez raised his hand earnestly.

“I just want to say that I really loved this story. I really did. In fact I think it’s fantastic. An excellent piece of writing. A master of the genre. If there is such a genre as ‘laundromat fiction’ — and I am now convinced that there should be! — this piece would definitely be taking it in new directions. But, on the other hand, if I were compelled to nitpick, to scrutinize the text for things to improve, then I would say that many of the lessons we’ve learned in this class over the past few months are appropriate here. Many of the things you’ve taught us in your inimitable and truly mesmerizing style — the useful guidelines, the proscriptive formulations and constitutional conventions, the tidy truisms — most of these are quite applicable to this story that Maude wrote late last night after her brief stay in the fraternity house and that she just spent the last twenty-seven minutes of our lives reading to us.”

“Can you be more specific?” the teacher prompted.

“Well, it was more like twenty-seven and a half minutes. Almost twenty-eight….”

“No, I meant the opportunities. Can you be more specific about the opportunities that this story presents?”

The young man in the pince-nez cleared his throat. Then he said:

“Of course. I mean, let’s start with her characters. They’re largely one-dimensional and flat. Even cartoonish. They have no ambitions and their motivations are hard to follow or to sympathize with. Stylistically, her characters do not speak with their own unique voices but with something of a common voice that is not so much their own… as Maude’s — and this makes it almost impossible to distinguish them from each other. Throughout the text her paragraphs are long and dense. Plot lines are short and jagged. Promises are made but not kept. Confusion reigns. This is not altogether effective, because as you’ve stressed to us many times during the past few months, the writer must not baffle his reader. He must take appropriate steps to help the uninitiated reader along, like a cattle dog herding bovines to a predetermined destination. Plot should therefore be straightforward and transparent. Motivations should be logical and reasoned. Unnecessary words should be trimmed so that the text reads as a lean and muscular morsel of efficient prose with very little marbling. I remember how you once told us that if a sentence contains ten words but can be written with nine….then we should use eight instead. You’ve told us that we should not use unwarranted punctuation, such as exclamation marks, that detracts from the text — that the dialogue itself should be expressive enough to do its own exclaiming. How true! Along the way, you’ve given us so many clear and compelling rules for producing good writing that it’s almost inconceivable that we would ever emit anything less. You’ve told us that contemporary fiction should be realistic and understated — not showy — and that our writing should not attract undue attention to itself. You’ve reminded us that dialogue should be feasible. That we should constantly ask ourselves: ‘Do people really talk like this?’ And that for this reason we should limit the spoken pronouncements of our characters to the guttural utterances and monosyllabic interjections of precocious third-graders. You’ve told us that there is no place in contemporary fiction for philosophy — that our own ideas and personal agendas should be excised, like the scrotum from a three-month-old calf. And of course you’ve frequently stipulated that we should always — how did you put it? — oh wait, let me check my notes here — oh yes, you say that we should….show rather than tell. This, you say, is because a nude body that is shown will always be more sensual and arousing than that same body described by your frat brother after the party. You’ve reminded us of the age-old advice: if a gun is introduced in the beginning of a story, it absolutely must be fired by the end; otherwise the gun should not be there at all. But most important, and this I’ll always remember, dear teacher, and it’s something I’ll always be grateful to you for: over the course of this very long semester you’ve repeatedly stressed the importance of conflict in our lives. At the center of any good story, you’ve taught us, there must be a clearly defined conflict. Or to quote you directly: ‘Conflict is the moisture that brings life to the parched, arid soil of the most barren imagination!’….That’s beautiful, by god, just beautiful…!”

The instructor was listening with raptness at the recapitulation of his ideas. The young man paused to push up his glasses which had slid back down the bridge of his nose. Then he continued:

“…You see, professor, all of these issues can be found in Maude’s story. And so the opportunities for her as an author are truly great, I’m afraid….”

From here the discussion proceeded around the table as each student offered specific advice on how Maude might make her story more timeless and compelling. How she should do more showing and less telling. How she might correct some of the careless spelling that made it such a bumpy read. How the wool sock that was introduced in the beginning of the story simply must be more utilized by the time the story concludes. How the scenes should be more vividly drawn. How her characters should have more at stake during their sex. And of course, how she might want to tone down the controversial pro-miscegenation editorializing while ratcheting up the true conflict of the story.

“And what is the conflict of this story?” the teacher prompted.

“For me,” one student responded after flipping through his copy, “the main conflict is between the girl and the negroid. Can they find true happiness in that laundromat despite the swirling prejudices of their society.”

“While for me,” another responded, “it’s whether the clothes will get completely dry before the coin-operated cycle runs out.”

“It’s a story of redemption,” offered a third.

“An exploration of our deepest fears,” said a fourth.

“The literary junction where past meets present.”

“Man versus machine.”

“Hope against all odds.”

“Eternity versus temporality.”

“I think the conflict begins on page eight when she pulls up her skirt ever so seductively above her navel,” the young man sitting to my right finally concluded, “and ends on page thirteen when she pulls that same skirt back down.”

“Are we warm here?” asked the teacher.

“Yes!” said Maude. “You’ve put your fingers on the spot!”

“Great,” said the instructor. “So it looks like you all get A’s for your astute observations and analysis.”

A round of congratulatory handshakes and back-patting made its way around the table. The instructor waited for it to die down. Then he continued:

“Now to everything you’ve just said, I’d like to add that Maude has really done a fantastic job with this story. In fact, I truly believe that with a little elbow grease — and a particular focus on the sex scene in the laundromat between the homeless negroid and the cute undergraduate in the pink cheerleading outfit — this story might be considered something that is very close to being publishable.”

The students around the table gasped.

“Publishable?!” said Maude.

“Yes, publishable. Which is certainly the highest praise that can be lavished upon a piece of workshopped fiction. Your story is not quite there yet, Maude. But it’s very close. You’re very close indeed. Just a few short breaths away, really. A few well-timed movements in the right direction. You’re on the verge of something truly toe-curling. But we just need to work on that one scene. So please see me after class and we can talk more about it….”

At this Bessie threw her fork down.

“Bastard!”

The hamburger patty on her plate was dry and only half-eaten.

“That son of a bitch better not touch her! That’s my niece, Charlie. And if he even comes close to her I’ll have his balls on a platter!”

“Maude’s your niece?”

“My brother’s daughter. I’ve been babysitting her since she was in diapers. I’ve watched her grow up every summer during family gatherings at the river. She’s like my own flesh and blood. I drove her to her first day of kindergarten. I taught her to swim. I was there when she had her first period. Hell, who do you think bought her the very first pack of rubbers she ever used?! And now this aspiring writer — what’s he ever written, anyway? — now this guy wants her to apply some elbow grease? Over my dead body she will! He must think we’re some sort of birthright for him. That just because she’s from Cow Eye, Maude is another prop for his trophy case. He probably believes that it’s an honest trade: her sacred triangle for his professorial allure. As if the cheap adulation of his students weren’t enough…!”

It took Bessie several minutes to calm down. And when she finally did I popped open another can of beer for her with a promise that I would include her concerns in my evaluation of the class.

“What good is that going to do?”

“Maybe nothing. But at least it’ll let the administration know that there’s a real concern that the mesmerizing creative writing instructor — who, incidentally, is up for tenure very soon — is using his position of authority to inappropriately encourage unrealistic literary ambitions and unwarranted notions of self-worth among his students. And that he’s doing this not so much to support our institutional mission as to stroke his own inflated and throbbing sense of personal entitlement.”

“You can do whatever you like. Write your little report. Sign it. Submit it to the place where things like that go. That’s all fine and good. But we have our own ways of dealing with people like that….”

“We?”

“Yes, we.”

And without elaborating, Bessie stabbed her fork into the hamburger on her plate and with a single slice of her knife cut off a bite-sized piece.

*

The following Monday the creative writing instructor stomped up the stairs of the administration building, past Bessie’s desk where she was busy typing, and without even the courtesy of a knock, stormed right into my office.

“Does this belong to you?” he said and threw a Ziploc bag on my desk. The bag held a grisly mess — a swirl of hair and blood and meat — and smelled rank and rotten.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about….”

“Don’t give me that. This was in my mailbox. Somebody left it there over the weekend….”

“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about…!”

The creative writing teacher glared at me with an eye betraying hateful intentions. Curling his face in an aggrieved scowl, he growled through his teeth:

“It’s not my fault you’re divorced. And it’s not my fault I’m a mesmerizing teacher of creative writing while you’ve made the decision to settle for a life of educational administration. Obviously, if I were in your shoes I’d be just as jealous of my talent as you are. But that doesn’t make this right.”

“Make what right?”

“You know damn well, what.”

“No, I don’t!”

“Stay away from me, you freak.”

The instructor had turned to leave. But then, whirling around suddenly, he looked across my desk and, pointing a long finger in my direction, he said this:

“Don’t even fuck with me, buddy — I’m from Colorado!”

Then he turned and left.

For a few seconds I watched his shadow disappear out into the hallway. Then I took up the Ziploc with the bloated scrotum, sealed it where it was leaking, and threw the whole mess into a trash can outside my office.

“Raul,” I said the following morning at the water fountain. “I think I need some help.”

“With the focus group? You mean you’re still struggling to get everyone in the room together?”

“No, I think I finally have that resolved — the session’s scheduled for tomorrow. And thanks for the tip with the surveys: it really worked! But, no, I actually need to ask you for some advice about Bessie. You see, she’s started to display a violent streak that’s beginning to worry me. Remember how I told you about her past? Well, it seems to be coming to fruition….”

Here I told Raul about the incident with the creative writing teacher. And about the disagreements Bessie and I had started to have in my apartment. And how I once found her fingering a very sharp knife in my kitchen after a particularly contentious fight.

“You’re still fighting? What was it this time?”

“She found out I signed the petition in favor of the electric typewriters. I guess she felt betrayed. Raul, I think this is going to end badly.”

Raul bit his lip as if considering an especially challenging problem of predictive analytics. Then he shook his head.

“Try not to think about it now, Charlie,” he said. “After all, the likelihood of any two people meeting and finding each other in this world is so infinitesimal to begin with as to be unworthy of much consternation should it come to an inglorious end. Dissolution is the starting and ending point of all things. No matter the road you choose, it inevitably leads to asphalt.”

“Asphalt?”

“Yes, asphalt. So just enjoy what you can of your experience and leave the rest for later. And besides, I just heard the Christmas party is in serious doubt — that both Gwen and Rusty are boycotting it — so that’s where your energies should be going.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“In the copy room. And if it comes from the secretaries making copies then you know it has to be true. And if it’s true then you’ve got much bigger things to worry about than whether Bessie really was thinking of you as she fingered that very sharp knife….”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “Thanks, Raul.”

“Don’t mention it.”

And he left with his waxed paper cup.

Looking up at the clock above the water cooler, I could see that it was already a little past two o’clock. Suddenly it occurred to me that I’d lost track of time yet again. I was late for my next class observation. Again. How many times would I make this same mistake? How many times could I find myself locked into this unending wheel of time?

And with that I gathered up my notes and hurried downstairs and out onto the esplanade.

*

“And so,” Rusty was saying when I walked into his animal science class later that afternoon, “this is a grave misperception. In fact, a cow does not actually have four stomachs, but rather a single stomach with four compartments….” Seeing me, Rusty stopped to look up from his lecture and I apologized for being late and quickly took my seat in the back of the lecture hall; the students in front had looked over at me when I walked in but then, disinterestedly, turned right back to their notes. “That’s right,” Rusty continued when I’d settled in. “The ruminal stomach has four compartments that allow the bovine to turn foraged food into usable energy. These four compartments correspond roughly to the phases of material and intellectual digestion and so we’ll be learning about them today. Take careful notes because, to answer your question before you can even ask it…. yes, this will be on the test…!”

Here Rusty taped a laminated poster onto the blackboard at the front of the room:

“Now if you look at this chart you will see that the first compartment of the ruminal stomach is the rumen….”

(Instinctively, I began taking notes. I had even written “rumen” on my notepad before crossing it out and writing over it with the date, the time, the course number, and “Stokes: Lecture on ruminant digestion system.”)

Rusty continued:

“The rumen is the first and largest compartment of the cow’s stomach where the rough food enters. When a cow chews grass or hay it sends the material down through the esophagus to the rumen practically untouched. Not a lot of chewing happens initially. And so here the ingested feed begins to be digested through a process of microbial fermentation that begins to break down the food. At this stage, the raw food product is still in fairly large pieces and is not ready for full absorption into the bovine’s system. In a practical sense, this stage of the digestive process is analogous to the very first consideration of an innovative idea. Just as the indiscriminate human animal forages among the vast prairieland of ideas, the simple grazing cow ingests the rich grasses and hard fibrous straw in equal amounts. She may also occasionally ingest other less useful objects like nails or wire or even random metals from farm equipment or other man-made novelties that have been informed by a high concentration of ingenuity. And so, after a minimum of chewing, the useful material is passed down for further digestion. And it is here in the rumen where the raw product is first broken down and, without much additional absorption, is brought forward to the next step in the process, which is the digestion that happens in the reticulum….”

Rusty slapped his yardstick against the chart where the reticulum was drawn.

“….Now the reticulum is sometimes called the bonnet or the honeycomb and its function is to take what has passed through the rumen and to break it down further. This is where the cud is formed, also called the bolus. Here the partially digested food is compacted into small parcels and sent back up through the rumen to the mouth. This allows the cow to chew and re-chew the food that it has consumed. Like the review committee that considers a proposed innovation and sends it back to its proposer for further elaboration, the reticulum will give the bovine the opportunity to once again process the cud and to break it down even more. The twice-chewed material can then be further broken down and sent back to the reticulum for additional consideration and this process of chewing and re-chewing can be repeated many times over and over: back and forth between mouth and stomach, proposer and reviewer, idealist and pragmatist. The reticulum is also where foreign objects that the cow has managed to swallow are often caught, and where they stay for the rest of the cow’s life…”

Rusty stopped.

“Any of you like tripe?” he asked.

Almost all the students raised their hands.

“This is what you’re eating! We call it tripe, but actually it should be called reticulum stew….”

The students laughed.

“…The contractions of the rumen and reticulum help the flow of finer food particles into the next chamber of the stomach, which is called the omasum….”

Rusty pointed his ruler at the omasum in his chart:

“…The omasum,” he explained, “is the next compartment. It is sometimes called the bible and it functions as a filter to the final compartment. It is made of lots of leafy folds and resembles a book….”

Here a hand went up.

“Yes?” Rusty said.

“Dr. Stokes?” a student was asking. “Did you say the omasum resembles a book and that it’s called the bible?”

“That’s right.”

“Is that a coincidence?”

“Of course not. There is nothing in nature that is mere coincidence. In fact it’s called that because it resembles the pages of a book. A well-received volume of poetry, perhaps. Or the Holy Book. Imagine thumbing through the pages looking for a certain quotation from Luke. Or trying desperately to find an American poet in a comprehensive anthology of world literature. That’s what’s happening in the cow’s stomach on a regular basis. The folds are designed so that the smaller particles can move on through, while anything that’s too large gets sent back to the reticulum to go through the process again….”

“Again?”

“Yes, again. You seem surprised by that? I suppose you thought it would be easy to get an innovation approved at a community college? That any new idea is worthy on its own merits? Well, clearly that is not the case. And so if the material is not ready for digestion it will be sent back again. But if the food has been sufficiently broken down, then it can move on to the next, and final, chamber called the abomasum. This is the last compartment and is also known as the ‘true stomach’ because it functions similarly to other mammals’ stomachs, including those of humans. Acid and stomach enzymes break down the food more completely and send it through to the small intestine.”

“And then?”

“Well, and then from the abomasum it goes to the small intestine and from there it goes as nutrients to the bloodstream or out as urine or feces. The whole process takes quite a long time and yet it is as ruthless as the triumphant forward march of progress. But keep in mind that out of the original food that is consumed, only a very small percentage actually benefits the cow. The rest remains in the omasum, or is expectorated as urine or as the cow pies that are left behind by the bovine and that our animal science department donates to the math faculty every March.”

“So are you saying this is a bad thing?” a skeptical student asked. The boy was sitting in the front row and taking vigorous notes.

“No it’s not bad, per se. Because if the math teachers weren’t throwing these cow pies, they would have to find some other pies to worship….”

“No, not that, Dr. Stokes. I’m talking about what you said earlier. About the consumption of ideas. Are you saying the cow shouldn’t eat fresh grass just because only a small percentage of what it eats is actually turned into beneficial nutrients that are absorbed into the blood? Are you implying that greener pastures are irrelevant to the development of humankind? That the story of civilization is not the story of exodus and discovery? And if so, are you saying that tenured faculty don’t have an obligation to propose innovative ideas just because they work at a community college?”

“Of course not,” said Rusty. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. The cow needs to eat. And it will eat. The human mind needs to innovate. And it will innovate. These are no less realities of life than the need that math people have to throw pies on March fourteenth. These are understandable. But never forget that it’s our job as educated citizens of the world — and it will be your duty as college-educated animal science students — to ensure that during this noble act of foraging the cow is forced to swallow as few nails as possible. And that during this noble act of math worship — that during the messy act of pie-throwing — innocent bystanders get hit with no more shit than is appropriate.”

“And how much is appropriate?”

“That,” said Rusty, “is a question best left for our institutional researcher….”

The boy shook his head and jotted something down in his notebook.

Rusty put his ruler on the desk in front of him.

“And that,” he concluded, “is how a cow’s stomach works. And so to review….today you’ve learned how the food that a cow eats travels from the trough in the corner of the corral to the cow’s mouth through the esophagus to the reticulorumen — then back and forth many times — and finally down through the omasum and the abomasum through the small intestine, the large intestine, and out through the rectum….”

“Rectum!”

A juvenile titter arose around the room.

“And then?”

“And then it sits on the ground in the form of cow pies that are collected and thrown by the math faculty every March fourteenth….”

“And then?”

“And then at least one mention of this activity is included in their tenure dossier. The faculty are given tenure so that they may continue the teaching of their beloved subject to aspiring undergraduates. The undergraduates then use this teaching to successfully pass their math classes, get their degrees, graduate, and move on into the broader world to become god-fearing, tax-paying citizens, often in other states of the union that are far, far away from Cow Eye Junction. In this way, our town loses its soul by losing its young people — and in this way the diaspora of learning is perpetuated over the millennia. And to think, it all starts in the four timeless chambers of the cow’s simple stomach…!”

“And then, Dr. Stokes?!”

“And then?”

“Yes, and then…?”

“Well, and then she would take my palm and put it on her stomach where the scar was…”

“Scar?”

“It was a difficult surgery, Charlie. She was never the same after that….”

I nodded.

That night I asked Bessie what it all meant.

“You mean the passage of nutrients from the rumen to the abomasum? Or do you mean the role of the ruminant’s stomach in the voracious cycle of human innovation?”

“Neither. I mean Will’s wife. He talks about her all the time. How long ago did she pass away?”

“About the same time I moved to my current position. So about two years ago.”

“It seems like he misses her a lot.”

“He does.”

I took another bite of stew.

“It’s sad,” I said.

“It always is,” she agreed. “But it’s also inevitable. They were married thirty-eight years, you know.”

I nodded again.

“Have you ever loved anyone like that?” I asked.

“Never.”

“Do you think you ever will?”

“I doubt it.” Bessie stopped to consider my question more deeply. Then she said: “Actually, no. Not that much….”

“At least you’re honest,” I concluded. “At least you know your limits.”

And without appetite, I took a final bite of tripe, wiped my mouth with a napkin, and returned to my office to write up my evaluation for the public speaking class I’d just observed.

*

When I came back to the cafeteria the next day, Will Smithcoate was still sitting at his table as if he hadn’t moved. The same cloud of smoke was above his head partially obscuring the NO SMOKING sign.

“Hi, Mr. Smithcoate. Have you been here since yesterday?”

“You could stay that. Although a truer estimate would be that I’ve been here for the last thirty years.”

Will blew out another cloud of smoke to take the place of the first.

“Thirty years is a long time,” I said.

“It is. And yet whether it’s thirty years or five years — they’re both less than thirty-eight.”

I nodded.

“And you, Charlie? How were your class observations? You seem even more tired than you did yesterday at lunchtime.”

“That’s because I am. I haven’t slept since the semester began. And I’m getting more and more tired with each passing day.”

“I can see that….”

“I’m losing my ability to concentrate.”

“That’s what I’m hearing.”

“The observation of the creative writing class went fine enough. The public speaking class was interesting to see. And Rusty, as usual, was on fire with his theories on rumination. But last night turned out to be a particularly bad night for me.”

“Worse than usual?”

“Oh yes. Last night the math faculty really outdid themselves. It must have been some sort of mathematical holiday. You know, one of those dates on the calendar that correspond to a sacred number. It must have been something exceptional because they pulled out all the stops.”

And here I told Will how the math faculty had kept me up all night to the clamor of cracking whips and bedsprings heaving and what sounded like the roar of a live mountain lion.

“It’s like they never stop!” I exclaimed.

“That’s not surprising,” Will said. “Among large felines, math is the most tenacious by far. You can’t wait for it to become satiated. Or to develop a conscience. It doesn’t have one.”

“Perhaps. But last night I’d finally had enough. For the first time since I moved into the apartment I decided to do something about it.”

“Good for you, Charlie!”

“Yeah. But it didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped. You see, it all began like it usually does….after Bessie left my apartment, I took my usual lonely shower and was reading in bed when the noises started up. Softly at first, then louder and louder. And not just a dull steady rumble this time but the kind that leaves you helplessly waiting for the next crash or roar or cackle. The next tumult of heaving bed springs. The next caterwaul. I’d been waiting in the darkness of my apartment for the sound to die down to a normal level. I waited through an entire chapter of my book. But it finally got so bad that I couldn’t fall asleep even with my ear plugs in. And when I looked up at my clock — it was past two in the morning — and the noise still hadn’t died down — in fact it seemed to be increasing — I decided to approach them.”

“You approached the math teachers?”

“Yes.”

“You mean you chose conflict over conciliation?”

“Yes.”

“At last?”

“Yes.”

“And you did it entirely?”

“Sort of….”

Putting on my beige pants and a collared shirt, I stepped out into the hallway. The music was pounding. The hallway was cold and the floor felt like a glacier under my naked feet. From inside the neighboring apartment the sounds of screaming laughter could be heard over the thumping music and breaking dishes and what sounded like the unrestrained trumpeting of a lioness protecting her young. I took a deep breath and knocked on the door. When there was no answer I knocked again, this time more insistently, repeatedly pounding on the door: over and over and over again until the bones in my palm were bruised and the skin was red. Until my breath was short and my face was flushed. Finally, the lock on the door clicked. The knob turned. The door opened slightly. A thin sliver of a young woman’s face — a quarter of it perhaps — was peering out at me. Through the narrowly opened door she looked out at me and I in at her. The crack was as wide as the spine of a contemporary novel: a single eye peering out. I had readied myself to be confrontational, but before either of us could utter a word, an unseen voice called out to the woman from behind the door.

“Who is it?” a man’s voice asked.

“It’s our Special Projects Coordinator…”

“What does he want?”

The woman peered out at me.

“I don’t know. But he looks crazed…!”

“It’s late….tell him he should come back at a respectable time…!”

The woman surveyed me suspiciously:

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m Charlie,” I gasped. “I live next door.”

“I know. We’ve seen you come and go. You’re the new Special Projects Coordinator.”

“Yes.”

“The one struggling to organize the Christmas party.”

“Yes.”

“And failing to bring our divided faculty together.”

“That’s correct.”

“You’re a lot of different things but none of them entirely.”

“Right.”

“And you’re having a furtive romance with the secretary who drives the truck.”

“I….well…I suppose you could say that, yes….”

“I hope you’re not here for my survey because I already turned it in.”

“Huh?”

“My survey about the focus group. I turned it in to the division secretary a few days ago.”

“Oh, yes, thank you. But I’m not here for that. I’m here because….”

The woman was still peering through the crack in the door.

“Look, can you open the door a bit….it’s hard to have a conversation with you like this….”

The woman paused and then opened the door a bit wider. Now I could see twice as much of her face — a full half of it — through the crack in the door.

“Better?” she said.

“One hundred percent,” I said. And then: “Listen, I like mathematics as much as anyone. But it’s just that….” (After so much anticipation — how many months had I imagined and planned for this moment of conflict? — and now here I was stuttering and stumbling over my words!) “…It’s just that, you know, we’re already more than halfway through the semester and time seems to be pushing me unrelentingly toward a tragic resolution….”

“Time?”

“Yes, time.”

“You’re knocking on my door at two in the morning to talk about time?”

“I’m sorry. Would a different hour be more convenient?”

The woman paused to consider my words. Then suddenly she flung open the door. The door opened wide and for a brief second I caught a glimpse of a dominion that I’d only imagined and heard about and pined for from the other side of my wall. Looking past her shoulders, I saw a gilded realm of steaming baths and marble walkways and a pool where half-naked women in togas dangled grapes above the open mouth of the college’s male algebra teacher. Elephants and lions lay next to fragrant flowers and a bubbling waterfall while a toucan fluttered across the room. Next to a large gold throne a Siamese cat lay at the feet of a travertine statue of Euclid. The woman stepped through the opened doorway then reached behind to pull the door after her.

“Hey, where’re you going?!” the calculus teacher’s voice called to her from inside.

“Into the hallway,” she said. “To talk with our Special Projects Coordinator.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“It’s okay,” she answered. “He looks harmless. But if I’m not back in five minutes, call campus security…!”

The woman stepped out into the common area and closed the door firmly behind her. She was wearing a white t-shirt and pink socks; her auburn hair was pulled back in a pony tail. It was clear that the only thing separating her from this cold October night was the t-shirt itself, probably just thrown on, and as she stepped out into the hallway I could see the peaks of her nipples jutting out beneath the shirt’s light fabric.

“Yes?” she said. “It’s two in the morning. We happened to be in the middle of something transcendent when you knocked. This better be important….”

“It is,” I said. “It’s very important. You see, the fate of our institution is in my hands. But I haven’t slept since the beginning of the semester. And my hands have begun to tremble. I’ve tried my best to get some sleep but your ecstasy is just too strident. Time is moving too quickly. Believe me, I’m not generally one for conflict but I’ve finally decided that I can’t take it anymore, that I have to do something….”

“Conflict, did you say?”

“Yes, conflict.”

“And what issue do you have with conflict?”

“Nothing really. I have the deepest admiration for those who are good at it. But it’s just never been my strong suit.”

“That’s a shame. Conflict is an important fact of life.”

“I’m sure.”

“Conflict is the foundation on which our great country was built.”

“Perhaps, but….”

“Conflict is what gives the world its grist. It is the catalyst for change and innovation. It is the stimulant of progress. All intellectual discoveries come at the crossroads of conflicting beliefs and ways of being.”

“Granted. But conciliation can be timely as well.”

“Not in the least. Conciliation is for humanists. Conflict will always win out in the end. Or would you care to disagree with me?”

“Not necessarily. I’m really not here to disagree with anyone. I’m just terribly tired at the moment because it’s already past two o’clock in the morning and I haven’t had a single convincing night of sleep since the semester began. I’ve tried to get a few moments of sleep in my office. In the library. Even under the sycamore. But to no avail. The pendulum, the study groups, the songs of protest — they all keep me up. So do you think you could please turn down your music? And curtail the shrieking? And temper the earsplitting screams of ecstasy?”

“Of course not.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“But isn’t there a way that maybe we could, you know, come to some sort of compromise?”

“Such as?”

“Like maybe you could be considerate during certain times of the night while remaining oblivious during the rest? Or maybe you could limit your math saturnalia to a few nights of the week only? Maybe you could find a level of ecstasy that falls somewhere between perfect noise and perfect sound? Something we could both live with and that I could, you know, fall asleep with?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“Because conflict and conciliation are incompatible. Or rather they can be compatible but only as long as the conciliatory consistently bend to the whims of the confrontational.”

“Are you saying the two can’t co-exist side by side?”

“Correct.”

“Even if separated by a thin wall?”

“Right.”

“Well, if that’s the case then maybe you’d be willing to allow for multiple points of view on the issue of time?”

“Not likely.”

“Space?”

“Nope.”

“Would you assent to putting carpet on the floors to deaden the sound of falling dishes?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Or perhaps you might allow that there are things in this world that cannot be understood mathematically? Things that cannot be categorized and explained and repeated? Truths that defy data? Maybe you could permit into your heart a little bit of doubt? The possibility of imperfection? The admissibility of paradox. Might you not want to demur just a little on one of these things? Huh, do you think you could? Just a little, maybe? Huh …?”

“Um, no. And please stop looking at my nipples. It’s making me uncomfortable….”

“I’m sorry….”

“Do I have to put on a bulky sweater in your presence?”

“That won’t be necessary…!”

“There’s professional development for men like you, you know….”

“Look, it wasn’t intentional! It’s just that, well, how am I possibly going to get through this semester?! We’re already past mid-terms and I’m still struggling to keep my eyes open during endless committee meetings. I’m still struggling to stay awake through the mind-numbing drafts of our self-study!”

“Your eyes seem plenty open right now, mister…!”

“And I’m sorry for it. And I’ve retreated from it. There’s no need for sweaters, I assure you. Or lawyers. My eyes just have this wide-open crazed appearance because I’ve been anticipating this confrontation with you for some time. And I’ve just spent ten consecutive minutes pounding on your door. But now that the moment’s arrived, well, it wasn’t quite what I thought it would be. Your nipples are charming and unexpected. As are the smooth thighs protruding from under your shirt. But it’s a long semester. And the fate of our institution is…”

“Listen,” the young woman interrupted, “if you want to be conciliatory then you need to start by conceding that conflict is inevitable. Can you at least agree with me on that?”

“Of course.”

“Unequivocally?”

“Okay.”

“And can you acknowledge that history favors those who prefer conflict?”

“Yes.”

“Good. So what’s the problem?”

“The problem? Well, the problem is….”

Here I stopped.

Dr. Felch had expectorated into his spittoon and was now looking at me gravely.

“The damn problem, Charlie, is that we’ve got less than three weeks until the end of the semester and the self-study isn’t even finished. The Christmas party is hanging by a thread. Rumor is that Gwen and Rusty are threatening to boycott the event outright. And the two groups of faculty are still at each other’s throats. You’ve done nothing to bring all these disparate elements together. I thought you were going to do a focus group or something? I thought you were going to do a survey?”

“I was. And I am. To be honest, I haven’t finished with the focus groups yet — the last and most important of them is tomorrow. But I did conduct the surveys.”

“That’s something at least. So what did they tell you?”

“Unfortunately, not much. Half of the respondents felt that the focus group they’d attended was useful and productive while the other half thought it was a waste of time.”

“You conducted a survey to assess the outcomes of a focus group?”

“Right. And I also conducted a focus group to guide the development of the survey. Raul’s been very adamant that no educational endeavor should be attempted without first conducting a focus group or a survey of some kind. You know, to get some qualitative data to supplement the kind that is meaningful. Ideally both should be conducted. Which is exactly what I’m doing. I’m committed to doing both!”

“Well, it’s becoming clearer by the day that all your qualitative data-collecting hasn’t brought us any closer to the resurrection of our Christmas party. Or to solving the cultural divide on campus. Not to mention the self-study report, which is due the day after tomorrow and still isn’t close to being complete. You’ve done quite a bit of talking up to this point, Charlie. But now we need some forward motion. Time is ticking as loudly and relentlessly as that pendulum in your office. In fact, it’s even louder! You need to make this all work out. And I’m tired of hearing your excuses about not being able to sleep. Napoleon suffered from insomnia during key points in his life yet somehow managed to conquer quite a bit of Europe. Figure it out, Charlie. And soon. The fate of our institution depends on it.”

“Ouch!” said Bessie.

“Ouch is right,” I said. “Ethel even suggested it could compromise her and Luke’s respective applications for tenure!”

“And then what did she say?” Bessie prodded. “What did she say after that?”

“Who? Ethel?”

“No, the math teacher in the hallway? I’m assuming you were affected by seeing her in nothing but a t-shirt and socks?”

“It was surprising, yes.”

“And did you like what you were seeing?”

“It was very late. I was cold there in the hallway. And we only had five minutes before her colleagues would be calling campus security. But yes.”

“And what did they look like?”

“Her colleagues?”

“No, Charlie, her nipples. You know, in comparison with mine?”

“Well, I didn’t see them, per se. But what I saw of them was definitely rigid and uncompromising.”

“Unlike mine, you mean to say?”

“Yes. Hers were mathematical. Yours are more flexible and forgiving….”

I reached out for her to prove my point, but Bessie slapped away my hand.

“You’d better stop while you’re ahead…!”

I laughed.

“And then what did she say?” Will asked. “What did she say after that?”

“You mean Bessie after she slapped away my hand?”

“To hell with Bessie! What did the sexy math teacher in the white t-shirt have to say about conflict? You cut her off in mid-sentence!”

“Oh, right. Well she said — and I’m paraphrasing her, obviously — she basically said that in the eternal struggle between conflict and conciliation, conflict will always win out. History rewards the confrontational over the conciliatory. Aggression above acquiescence. The quiet voice will always be drowned out by the voice that is more insistent. The meek have no chance against the strong. Just as the humanities themselves are defenseless against the continual onslaught of science and technology and math. She said a lot of other things as well — surprisingly, we ended up talking for quite a while there in the hallway before the calculus teacher finally came out to get her — but in the end she went right back into her apartment and slammed the door.”

“With no concessions on the noise level?”

“Nope. In fact the music got even louder.”

“So your stab at conflict was fruitless?”

“Yes. As was my attempt at conciliation.”

“And that’s why you didn’t sleep at all last night?”

“Right.”

“And that’s why you look so tired today?”

“Yes.”

“Well, she’s right of course. History does reward confrontation. And the humanities are doomed. But history also tends to punish confrontation as well. Conciliation cannot exist without conflict. But neither can conflict exist without conciliation. So hopefully there’s some consolation for you in that….”

“I suppose there is,” I said and handed Ethel back her gun.

“Easy with that…!” she said, carefully taking the gun from me and pointing it down to the ground. In front of us, on the other side of a thick glass partition, a pair of animal science instructors were shooting at their targets. Ethel took the gun and set it on the bench between us.

“How’s their shooting?” I asked.

“These two are pretty good!” she commented. Ethel had warned me that she was raised with guns and was comfortable with them: as a girl she had even won several awards for her shooting. “That makes me an award-winning markswoman. And you, Charlie?”

“Nothing of the sort. Actually, all of this is still quite new to me. Awards. Guns. Conflict. Tripe stew. They’re all as strange and foreign to me as that Esperanto class I observed this morning.”

“Just remember to treat your weapon as if it were always loaded. Because it probably is. And just when you least expect it…!”

Her words sounded ominous. Gently, I set my own gun on the bench next to hers. Ethel took out her protective goggles and put them on top of her head. Then she took a string of ear plugs and dangled it around her neck.

“Shooting is like journalism,” she said as we sat watching the two instructors shoot at their targets in turn: first one, then the other. “Which is to say, there’s definitely a right way to go about it….and a wrong way. If you get everything right it can be the most exhilarating feeling in life. But if you get something wrong, the results can be disastrous.”

“Like accreditation!”

“Exactly. Now watch how the woman on the left is holding her revolver. If you notice, she’s got her arm straight and tensed. That’s not going to work out well for her. She’s trying too hard and her body is too rigid. She’s going to really feel it tomorrow….”

I watched the woman fire at her target, the gun kicking back with each shot.

“….Now if you look at the man on the right….the one with the flintlock….he’s doing it right. He’s got his knees slightly bent, his elbows slightly flexed, weight a bit forward. He fires. The gun comes back. He resets. And he’s ready to fire again….”

As Ethel and I watched the two instructors firing at their respective targets on the other side of the glass partition — the woman’s target a cut-out of an onrushing welfare recipient; the man’s a silhouette of an unsuspecting buffalo — Ethel told me about the many struggles she was having in her journalism classes: sadly, the transition from practicing journalist to instructor of journalism was not an easy one for her and she was still grappling mightily with the change.

“Teaching journalism is to practicing journalism,” she sighed, “as describing sex is to having it.”

I laughed.

By now my ears had grown accustomed to the muted sounds of small-arms fire coming through the glass partition. Ethel was still wound up from her semester of teaching and seemed especially eager to start her shooting. But as she waited for the two shooters to wrap up their session — the buffalo, in particular, looked tattered and generally condemned to his fate — she turned to me instead:

“So speaking of vicarious sex, how’s the college’s self-study coming?”

“You’re asking me about the self-study…here? With live gunfire all around?”

“Of course. Our college is like that buffalo, Charlie. If this self-study report gets botched, our fates will all be hanging by the same threads as that target over there. Our economic future will be no more secure than that bullet-riddled welfare recipient’s. The entire community may lose its only institution of higher learning, its only window to the outside world, its last chance to instill a more global approach to having first-person sex. Everybody agrees that you’re the one person on campus who holds the hopes of our college — of our entire community, for that matter — in his hands. So how’s the process treating you?”

“It hasn’t been kind, honestly. The draft is due tomorrow and I still haven’t received all the write-ups for the different sections. Rusty still needs to get me his portion to include the precise number of cows inseminated since the last report — as well as the percentage that actually gave birth. I also need updated figures from the fiscal office on the exact operational costs for the swimming pool, the rates of use among faculty and students, and the impact that their swimming has had on our graduates’ ability to become god-fearing, tax-paying citizens of the United States of America. And then of course there’s the section that I’ve been trying to get from Sam Middleton — you know, the English teacher and inveterate lover of medieval poetry. I’ve been hounding him since the beginning of the semester. But every time he turns in something to me, it’s in verse.”

“You mean, poetry?”

“Yes. It’s driving me nuts. He’s supposed to write the section on the college’s commitment to assessing the effectiveness of its own assessment mechanisms. It’s not a hard section, Ethel, it’s really not. Raul even devised this great planning and assessment flowchart to help him visualize the assessment cycle….”

I took out Raul’s chart from my pocket and unfolded it for Ethel to see:

“Raul designed this for you?”

“Yes, he loves charts.”

“And graphs.”

“And diagrams…”

“And figures….”

“And focus groups…!”

“And surveys!”

“Yes, he loves surveys more than life itself.”

“Right. But what about teaching?”

“Huh?”

“Where does actual teaching fit into all this?”

“That’s in a different chart….”

Ethel nodded.

“So, anyway,” I continued, “thanks to Raul I had this convenient flowchart and I even took the time to personally deliver it to Sam Middleton in his office. And what do you think he sent me back?”

“Another write-up in verse?”

“Exactly! An aubade. With allusions to medieval assessment practices. Here…I have it in my pocket as well….”

I took out the paper and laid it on top of Raul’s chart:

Above the gurgling cauldron of night,

Comes a hint of such ominous glow,

Bestowing its terrible light,

Upon all the assessed things below.

Ethel whistled at what she was reading:

“Boy, that’s a tough one. I mean, it might be somewhat amusing if the entire fate of our college didn’t depend on it. What do you think he’s trying to say with this? He must be trying to make an ideological statement of some sort, right?”

“Clearly. And that’s fine. But institutional accreditation is not the place for the expression of one’s own values. It’s not the place for intellectual integrity or unwavering personal convictions. It’s not a forum for your true beliefs to be laid bare. It’s not the proper venue for idealistic notions of propriety or even for pragmatic conceptions of justice. And please don’t use the accreditation process as a forum to stand up and scream at the top of your lungs: ‘Look, world! I’m a free-thinking self-respecting human being with heightened moral sensibilities!’ The accreditors just want to know how we assess our assessments, right?….so just answer the damn question!”

“Well, good luck with that…!”

By now the two animal science instructors were done with their shooting. They had already removed the ammunition and were packing away their things into separate duffel bags.

“Looks like we’re up!” Ethel said and pulled her ear muffs down over her ears.

*

A little after three o’clock that afternoon I stormed into Sam Middleton’s office.

“Look,” I said. “The self-study was due yesterday and if it weren’t for you the damn document would have been finished on time. I’ve been going back and forth with you since the semester began….and after everything you’ve put me through, now you have the nerve to give me this…?!”

I threw the palimpsest on Sam Middleton’s desk.

“Don’t like it?” he asked.

“It’s in verse!”

“Not a fan of poetry, I take it?”

“No, I’m not. Not when it comes to accreditation and the fate of our college. Look, there’s a time and a place for everything. And the time and place for poetry, I’m very sorry to say, was about forty years ago. I’m sure this is not news to you. So how about you come up with an actual write-up that spares our accreditors all this verse? How about you just perform your core function as tenured community college instructor of English — the job we’re paying you to do! — and write this damn section detailing our college’s process for assessing itself?! How about you give me some fucking barren prose for a change!”

Sam Middleton looked at me with a poet’s inquisitiveness.

“Charlie! Are you in your right mind? I can’t believe you’re talking to me like this!”

“Am I in my right mind?!”

“Yes, are you sane? You look totally out of control honestly. Your eyes are glazed and you’re sweating profusely….and when’s the last time you cut your hair?”

I stopped. Inside his office the space heater was quietly blowing warmed air from under his desk. The fountains had been turned off for the winter. The ducks no longer quacked.

I shook my head.

“Sorry, Sam,” I said and rubbed my eyes which must have been as dry and as red as they looked. “It’s just that we’re already into finals week, the semester is almost finished, and the Christmas party is dangling by the thinnest of threads. This self-study is hovering over me like a descending mist. I need to finish it off. I need to get it done before my meeting with Dr. Felch this afternoon to present my recommendations for the Christmas party. You see, we’ve heard rumblings that both Gwen and Rusty are planning to boycott the whole thing — and if they go they’ll take everybody else with them. The very premise of the Christmas party as a unifying event will be doomed. I’m trying to head that off. But everything’s crumbling around me. So can you just work with me here? Can you just give me something I can use?”

Sam paused for a few seconds. Then he said:

“Look, Charlie.” Here he took the palimpsest I’d thrown on his desk and flipped it over. “I am not going to compromise my principles at the behest of our accreditors. And I’m not going to apologize for sticking to my aesthetic guns. Sorry.”

I let out an exasperated groan.

“But I will do my part. Will blank verse work for you?”

I shook my head at his stubbornness. But then I said:

“At this point, Sam, yes. I mean, it’s better than nothing, I guess. Just please, please, please…can you put it in paragraph form!”

Sam agreed. I thanked him.

“You can drop off your draft at the cafeteria when you’re done,” I said. “That’s where I’ve been spending most of my time lately anyway. And if you miss me just give it to Will Smithcoate. He’s always there at the corner table. And he’ll make sure I get it.”

Sam nodded.

I thanked him again and left.

*

(…)

When a cute cat wants to mate she will begin the process by letting the nearest potential suitors know of her intentions. This might be as overt as emitting a shrill caterwaul that calls to mind the guttural shrieks of math faculty in heat — or it might be as subtle and imperceptible as the playful rolling or rubbing that indicates her receptiveness. Sensing her demeanor, the male cat will begin to circle around her. Insistently, he will look for harbingers of sweet relent. A verbal sign. A slight brush against the side of his body. A seductive twitch of her feline femininity. It may take several tense moments of hissing and growling for the male to become sufficiently emboldened. But when the moment strikes, it will strike with the force of life itself: at once he will pounce onto the she-cat’s back, biting into her neck and mounting her with the ruthlessness of a suitor possessed. These are not pretty scenes to behold, nor attractive sounds to hear. Quickly the act will be over and each party will be free to go their respective ways. Upon first insemination, the female may increase her chances of conception by repeating this ritual with many other suitors….

(…)

*

“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” I told Raul when I happened to meet him in the men’s bathroom down the hall from my office. The two of us were standing behind our respective urinals at a proper and professional distance, and as we delivered our dossiers, we spoke sideways across the vacant urinal in between. “I just don’t know, Raul, it’s like I’ve lost my patience with humanity….not to mention the humanities. Last week I yelled at Sam Middleton in his office. A few days ago I snapped at Timmy at the guard shack on my way back from the museum. And last night Bessie and I had a really bad argument in bed that was mostly my fault. Okay, it was entirely my fault.”

“Your fault?

“Yes.”

“Entirely?”

“Yes, entirely. But not in the good way. It’s like my skin is wearing thinner and thinner over time and sooner or later it’s just going to stretch so thin that it bursts open. I feel like the seams of my soul are getting stretched tighter and tighter each day and before I know it they’ll be stretched to the point that the whole thing will just crack open and all the blood will spill out.”

“There’s blood in your soul?”

“So to speak.”

“That would be gruesome, Charlie.”

“See what I mean? Even my metaphors have become desperate and confused…!”

“I can appreciate that. But the reality is you are not handling the rigors of Cow Eye very well. Lack of sleep isn’t helping you, but there’s more to it than that. You see, you’re at that age when the entire weight of your life is coming to critical mass. Your net worth as a human being is directly connected to the college’s self-study document. Your success as a sentient being depends wholly on your ability to pull off the Christmas party. And after a pair of unsuccessful marriages, let’s face it, both of which were primarily your fault, you’re searching for something — anything — that you can be successful at entirely. This is all very understandable. But it’s a lot to keep inside.”

“Maybe you’re right, Raul. Maybe it’s all weighing on me. I guess I haven’t been very successful in achieving any of my goals so far.”

“As Special Projects Coordinator?”

“Those too. But no, I’m talking about in general. In life….”

“You mean finding the moisture in all things? And loving the unloved?”

“Right. And experiencing both day and night. I feel like I’m failing miserably on all accounts.”

Raul pulled the handle above the urinal and walked over to the sink. As the water ran into the basin he splashed some soap onto his hands and proceeded to wash them meticulously — carefully lathering each soapy digit.

“Clearly you need some sleep,” he was saying as he leaned his tall frame over the sink. “There’s no question about that. Look, here’s something I can do. How about you stay at my apartment over the weekend? I’ll be at a friend’s place both days — she lives off-campus — so you can use it if you like.”

I had joined him in front of the bathroom mirrors. Now Raul was combing through his hair with a wet comb. His part was perfect, like aisles of a congressional floor; his hair as black as the edge of the universe. I washed my hands and dried them on a long cloth hanging from the dispenser by the door.

“I appreciate the offer,” I said. “But I think I just need to get a little sleep on my own. I think I’ll just go back to my office and close the door and see if I can take some kind of nap under the clacking presence of the pendulum. I think I can afford to do it now that I just turned in the self-study this morning.”

“Middleton came through?”

“Yes, he did. A week late but he finally got me a write-up with no overt rhyming scheme. And so I’m thinking that just locking myself in my office might be a simple way to get a little bit of sleep at last.”

“Good luck with that….” said Raul. “I know your pendulum is an incessant reminder of competing priorities. If it doesn’t work out, just let me know before I leave today and I’ll give you the key to my place. Like I say, my apartment’s yours if you want it.…”

I thanked him again. He left and I followed him out of the bathroom and headed back into my office, locked the door, turned off the light and stretched out on the carpeted floor. In the darkness above me I could hear the low drone of the heating unit and the ticking of the pendulum, just as loud and just as steady as the day I’d first started it into motion. The drone and the ticking and the darkness worked their magic. My eyes closed heavily. My thoughts receded. Everything dissolved into silence. Within minutes I was asleep.

*

Except that, no, I wasn’t.

On the other side of my apartment wall the banging and crashing of mathematical inquiry had only gotten louder — so loud and so unyielding that it had somehow managed to wake me before I could even fall asleep.

How much longer could this go on?! How much further into the future would the sound continue? By now I desperately needed to close my eyes against this unbroken chain of events, this pitiless progression of linear history, this preamble to endless dissolution. But once again there was no sleep to be found. Instead, I grabbed the book on top of the pile next to my bed. Like a faithful friend, it lay quiet and attentive and eager to be of assistance. And once again I began reading.

* * *

THE FOCUS GROUP

“Charlie!” a voice was shouting through my door. “Charlie, are you in there?!”

Dazed, I looked up from the floor of my office. In the darkness, the sound of insistent pounding was all around me, bouncing off itself like gunshots in an enclosed space.

“Are you in there, Charlie?!”

I stared through the darkness at the sound coming in. Was I here? Of course I was here! Where else would I be…?!

“Charlie!” Bessie was shouting. “What are you doing in there? Open this door right now…!”

Heavily, I raised myself from the carpeted floor and stumbled through the dark to open the door of the office: an overwhelming light came flooding in.

“Charlie?! What are you doing in here?”

I squinted my eyes against the light:

“I’m just having a little nap,” I said. “You know, since I can’t seem to fall asleep at home. Why are you asking? And what time is it anyway?”

“It’s almost two. Raul told me you might be in here. You didn’t forget about the focus group, did you?”

“What focus group? Of course I didn’t forget about the focus group. Why do you think I would forget about the focus group? I’m a trained professional with a Master’s degree in Educational Administration including a special emphasis in struggling community colleges. I spent a lot of time getting that degree and it’s not like such impressive distinctions are awarded for forgetting about focus groups. So, no, I did not forget the focus group. But it’s just that….you know, could you remind me again what focus group it was that I’ve been so careful not to forget…?”

“What focus group?! My god, Charlie, you’re asking me what focus group?”

“Yes, which focus group are you referring to?”

“The focus group, Charlie! The one you’ve been trying for months to organize. The one that required endless strategic meetings and countless machinations just to get everyone in the same room for. Come on, it’s starting in five minutes. Everything’s set up and the participants are waiting in the conference room down the hall. They’re all waiting for your leadership and facilitation. And there’s already some tension building between the two sides of the table. So let’s go!”

Suddenly, I realized that the focus group Bessie was talking about really was the one I’d been trying for many months to organize. The mother of all focus groups, Raul had called it. The focus group to end all focus groups! After months of meticulous planning, everything was ready to go: the room was reserved; the demographic questionnaires had been designed; the seating had been carefully pre-determined. To help me with the session, Bessie had agreed to look past our most recent argument at my apartment and to act as my assistant facilitator. After so many months it was all finally ready to take place. Dr. Felch would be anxiously awaiting the results. The fate of our college would depend on it.

“Right!” I said, my mind racing forward. “Let me get myself together and I’ll meet you in the room…!”

Bessie left and I grabbed my notebook and a pen. In the bathroom I splashed water on my face. Staring into the mirror, I looked suspiciously at an unkempt educational administrator with long hair, scraggly beard and uneven mustache. The administrator’s eyes were bloodshot and there were deep black pockets of age in the sockets above his cheekbones. His clothes were wrinkled and worn. Desperately, I splashed more water on my face, then gargled another handful and spat it out. Buttoning my shirt and tucking it into my slacks, I took a deep breath. Quickly I headed out into the hallway toward the room where the session would be held.

*

“The mistake is to think of this as merely a focus group,” Raul had told me earlier in the semester when I’d asked him for some guidance on the upcoming session. We were sitting in an air-conditioned classroom waiting for that week’s professional development workshop on the Do’s and Dont’s of effective sexual relations with co-workers; though Raul and I were equally interested in the topic, the two of us were here for different reasons: I had come mostly for the Dont’s, while Raul had come exclusively for the Do’s. “No, you shouldn’t think of your session as just a simple focus group,” he explained. “To be a successful focus group leader you need to treat the occasion as something more. Much more. In fact, you have to look at this as an opportunity to peer into the very soul of humanity. Each human being has personal and intellectual longings that reside very deep within the confines of a conflicted temperament. To the outside world each of us projects a certain persona that is agreeable and straightforward, like the superficial gloss of an overly polished curriculum vitae; yet deep inside us is a genuine human being longing to be expressed. How else do you explain the skydiving accountants? The librarians riding motorcycles? The tenure-track mountain climbers and the long-tenured spelunkers? The business instructors who spend their summer vacations whitewater rafting and scuba diving and writing poems about bullfighting? All of them long for the articulation of a deeper human self that has been suppressed and overshadowed by their reliably professional self. They long to proclaim the latent true self over the polished projected persona that appears in their tenure dossier. The disparity between these two competing selves, I would say, is the root of educated man’s deepest anxieties. It is up to the great facilitator to understand this and to harness it. An inspired focus group leader, you see, will be able to tap into that reserve of unarticulated humanity, to draw it out like prunes from a package so as to give it expression.”

“Sounds wonderful, I guess. But how do you go about doing that exactly?”

Raul paused. Then he laughed:

“Charlie! You might as well be asking me for the secret of earthly being! If only I knew that, my friend, I would be the greatest institutional researcher in the history of humanity. And I would be even more efficient with the ladies! Unfortunately, there are no easy secrets. Focus group facilitation requires years and years of experience. It requires diligent attendance at national and regional conferences. An ongoing commitment to professional development. It requires a deep spiritual connection to higher powers that can’t be taught or learned. It requires inspiration and intuition and divine guidance. There are no shortcuts, I’m afraid.”

“None at all?”

“Nope. But there are some basic guidelines that you should be familiar with. Here, start with this….”

Raul handed me a copy of The Anyman’s Guide to Conducting Focus Groups.

“This should be a good resource to get you going….”

I took the book, which was very glossy and showed a picture of an active focus group session on its cover: one participant appeared to be espousing his opinion while a tableful of deferential listeners huddled around him. The book was professionally edited and efficiently written and from it I learned that a good focus group should elicit opinions and points of view that would not otherwise be expressed — that a well-run session is like a symphony comprised of many diverse parts coming together to create a harmonious whole. And that the facilitator is the conductor who guides the musicians through the complex movements toward a final resounding conclusion; and while the conductor himself does not play a musical instrument, he is ultimately responsible for the tenor of the music that is produced.

The book went on to give tips for selecting group participants, on scheduling the session itself, and how to facilitate the discussion successfully. One chapter even classified the different types of personalities that I would be likely to encounter: the featured soloist, who would tend to be the most vocal participant but who, if not reined in, might end up dominating the discussion; the lead oboe, who could be counted on for earthy and workmanlike pronouncements (it is from the lead oboe that many of my most valuable conclusions would come); the piccolo player, whose light-hearted trilling served to punctuate the general discussion with goodwill and humor (this participant was good for maintaining healthy group dynamics); and the triangle player, the quiet listener in the background who might sit through the entire discussion without speaking but whose sudden contributions could also be perfectly timed and profoundly moving. Each of these types could be found in any given focus group just as they could be heard in any professional orchestra (and just as they could be seen in the great symphony of life.) At times these competing performers might want to drown each other out, yet all were vital and necessary to ensure a robust and well-rounded discussion, a full-bodied orchestral performance, and a diverse and constructively democratic society.

The key to running a good session, the book went on to say, was to never give up control. Listen boldly. Guide the discussion with confidence. Show the members of the group that you are the conductor. Never let them lose sight of your wand. Never reveal your weakness. Keep the discussion within the meter and tempo of your desired topic questions at all times.

When I told Raul what I’d read, he laughed.

“That’s all true,” he said. “But there’s also a certain amount of sensuality in a properly conducted focus group.”

“Coming from you, Raul, that doesn’t surprise me!”

“A well-run focus group, you see, is like a romantic dinner with a beautiful woman. The conversation should be so revealing, so profound and penetrating, that it brings both to the verge of physical orgasm.”

“Only to the verge?”

“Actual orgasm can’t come until the written report is submitted. But the dinner itself should take both sides of the table to within a single breath of the most heightened orgasmic resolution.”

“That’s a high standard to aspire to.”

“Yet it’s not impossible.”

“I’ll do my best,” I promised.

And gathering all my remaining strength into a single moment of supremely exuded confidence, I burst through the door into the conference room where the focus group was being held.

*

“Hi, everyone!” I said when I walked into the room. “Thank you all for coming! I trust you’ve had some snacks…? Golly, Shirley, that arugula you’re sampling looks fabulous…!”

The participants had taken their assigned seats around the conference table and as I spoke they looked up at me from their paper plates.

“Wow, it’s almost two o’clock! Time sure does move differently when you haven’t slept in months, doesn’t it? Please give me a few more minutes to set up and then we’ll get started….”

Settling in at the head of the rectangular conference table, I leaned over to Bessie, who was sitting to my side and who would be taking the notes for the session.

“Are we ready to go?” I whispered.

“Yes.”

“Did you pass out all the forms?”

“Yes.”

“And the number-two pencils?”

“Of course!”

“After we’re done, we’ll go to my office for a quick debrief, okay?”

“Sure.”

“All right then, let’s start…!”

And here I cleared my throat, took a long drink of water from my styrofoam cup, and began my introduction to the focus group that would go so far to determine the fate of our rural educational institution, the future of our nation-building efforts, and my own personal legacy here at Cow Eye Community College.

*

“First of all,” I said. “I want to thank you all for taking the time to be here today for this focus group. I realize it’s a huge sacrifice to give up an entire afternoon like this. I also realize you could be doing other things that are far more meaningful, and so I just want you to know how much we appreciate your participation, your dedication, your patience, your candor, your tolerance, your firstborn male, your favorite lung, your time, your courage, and your personal and professional expertise accumulated over the many years that you have been on this earth. Please know that all responses will be anonymous. Bessie will be recording them in her notes and they will be included in a report that will be carefully handwritten by myself and passed on for further consideration. Do you have any questions before we begin?”

“Yes,” said one of the new people. “How long will this take?”

“About four hours,” I responded. “Or as long as it needs to take.”

“Whichever is shorter?”

“Um, no. Whichever is longer.”

“We were kind of hoping we might finish a bit sooner than that,” said one of the locals at the table, “because we’ve got to get home to our families for a dinner consisting almost exclusively of meat.”

“Right,” said the new people. “And we’ve planned a frivolous social event involving public nudity and organically grown vegetables!”

“Well, if everything goes as planned you’ll both be out of here in time. So let’s jump right in, shall we?”

The two groups nodded.

“Great. Now before we get to our questions, I just want to go over some ground rules for today’s session. These ground rules will help ensure that we have a productive and inspiring discussion — and that the results can be used to help our struggling community college recognize and overcome some of the issues that it’s currently facing, especially those that are edging us ever closer to the precipice of institutional ruin. By now each of you should have completed the consent and waiver form. I trust you all were able to complete this form without any problem?”

The participants nodded.

“And you made sure to fill out both sides?”

Everybody nodded again.

“Splendid! Thank you for being true professionals. And thank you, Bessie, for administering those forms in my absence — especially as there was no conceivable way I could have managed such a feat while lying flat and semi-conscious on the shag carpet in my office!”

Bessie shrugged her shoulders.

I continued:

“Now in addition to the aforementioned consent form you also should have filled out the Demographic Questionnaire that was in your packets. Did you all have a chance to fill that out…?” And here I held up the comprehensive questionnaire that Raul had designed specifically for this focus group.

“So did you all have a chance to fill this out?”

Everyone mumbled their agreement.

“Both sides?”

Everyone nodded.

“Perfect. With those two things complete, I think we’re ready to move purposefully into the next part of our discussion, specifically….”

I stopped. By now my hand was already sore from writing my report. Checking Bessie’s notes, I made sure that I was transcribing it all correctly: the part about the consent forms, the demographic questionnaire, the section where I informed both groups that everything would be kept confidential. Then I stopped to shake out my fingers, which were already cramping from so much writing. Looking up from the handwritten page, I noticed that Dr. Felch had popped his head in the doorway to check on my progress.

“How’s the report coming?” he said. “Almost done?”

“I’m working on it right now,” I answered. “I should have it ready for you in a bit.”

“Great,” he said. “Make sure you let me know when it’s finished. I want to go over the results as soon as they’re ready. Because, as I’m sure you are well aware, the fate of our institution depends on it.”

“Yes, I’ve heard.”

Again I stretched my hand, opening and closing my fingers to soothe the muscles.

Then I grabbed my pencil and started up again:

“As you all know by now,” I continued, “our college has been torn apart by a deep cultural division between rival factions on campus. This division has caused a severe rift that has not gone unnoticed by our administration, our faculty, our donors, our groundskeepers, our students, our pelicans, the flies that hover over the trash cans behind the cafeteria, our adjuncts, and — worst of all — our institutional accreditors. Each of you has been invited here today because you are associated with one of the two competing factions on campus. As such, your opinion is valuable in helping us understand the causes of this divide, the root of conflict in general, as well as the prospects for resolving such things in time for our accrediting team visit in mid-March. Any questions so far?”

“No,” said the locals.

“Yes,” said one of the new people. “Do you have any more arugula?”

“Of course, please help yourself to whatever’s in that bowl over there.”

Marsha Greenbaum immediately got up from the table and made her way over to the snack trays.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t mention it. And please help yourself to the beef jerky as well. Are there any other questions?”

“Yes, I have one….” Here I looked up to see that the unfamiliar voice belonged to the college’s tenured negroid. I had never heard him speak before. The man looked puzzled and distressed. Scratching his head, he said, “I do happen to have a question about all this.”

“Yes?”

“I understand that you’re interested in gauging the two competing sentiments on campus. And that this will provide a diverse range of input for the report that you will be handwriting as soon as our session is over and you have concluded your debrief with Bessie. That’s fine. But can you explain why I’m here? I personally don’t belong to either faction on campus and haven’t been included in much of anything up to this point. I rarely speak. I’m forced to sit by myself at campus-wide events where I’m given barely three-fifths of a very narrow chair — or sometimes no chair at all. And now, all of a sudden, I’m invited to this all-important focus group?”

“That’s correct.”

“It doesn’t make any sense. Why am I being included now?”

“That’s a good question. And an indicative one.”

“Thus my query…”

“On a personal level, I’m genuinely sorry that you’ve been made to feel excluded up to this point. I’m sure it’s a simple oversight on the part of American historians. But I’m also certain that it will gradually improve with time. As for today’s session, to be honest, you’ve been invited here at the very last moment to ensure that this focus group is demographically representative.”

“Representative of what?”

“Of the slow shift in Cow Eye’s ethnic composition.”

“It’s shifting?”

“Oh yes. Ever so incrementally. But ever so surely. In fact, I just heard that the store next to the makeshift bus shelter is now owned by Asian immigrants.”

“You’re still referring to them as Asians?”

“Of course. Though that too is tenuous….”

“So I’m a token then?”

“That’s not the exact word I would use….”

“No really, what you’re saying is that I’m just here to add a little diversity to your report, right? Some credibility to a discussion that might otherwise lack it? I’ve been invited to contribute a little color to your conversation? A little tint to your talks? A little soul toward a more soulful soliloquy?”

“Again, that’s not how I would have expressed it. But yes, if you insist….”

“Well, fine. I can deal with that. We’re used to it.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. Tokenism is a necessary evil, I suppose. Just as integration is a burden that is far better than its alternative. But let’s just be honest about it all from the outset, shall we?”

“Sure,” I said. “I can live with that if you can. And thanks for the clarification.” Then I said: “Anybody else have any concerns?”

I glanced around the room but no hands went up.

“None? Great. So as I was saying, the seven of you are here today to share your opinions in a safe and respectful setting. But in order to more clearly delineate the divisions on our campus, and to provide a sturdy physical barrier in the event that things should turn violent, the three of you representing the local faction on campus have been seated on one side of this heavy conference table, while the three of you representing the newer faction — from this point on let’s respectfully refer to you as the neophytes — have been seated on the opposite side. Meanwhile, directly across from Bessie and me at the far end of this rectangular table — seated by himself because he belongs to neither faction — is our college’s only tenured negroid, who, it is hoped, will represent a voice of reason and objectivity during our discussion. Please know that we will be limiting the scope of our questioning to just a few targeted issues that are of existential importance to our college. I’ll be presenting a series of pinpoint questions which you will be asked to discuss as a group. Please be honest in your responses because this will be your final chance to express the inner longings of your soul before our mission statement is revised and our accreditors arrive for their visit in mid-March. (Remember, it is death and regional accreditation that waits for no man!) Through it all, I will be serving as the conductor of this great orchestra, expertly guiding the discussion from one movement to the next but not contributing to the euphony myself — though I may pose reflective follow-ups from time to time. Any further questions about what we’ll be doing today?”

“No,” said the locals.

“Not at the moment,” said the neophytes. “But we’ll let you know if anything does arise.”

“Fantastic. So let’s move to our first item, shall we…?”

“Let’s!” they agreed.

And so I checked my notes. Then I said:

“Okay, your first task is a simple warm-up exercise to get us into the flow of the discussion. It is intended to create goodwill and a sense of ease among the seven of you. The exercise is non-controversial and open-ended and goes like this….”

Hearing her cue, Bessie walked over to the tripod that held the flipchart and threw the large page over the back so the first question could be seen:

ICE BREAKER: If you could visit one place in the world, where would you go? Explain.

I pointed at the flipchart.

“As you can see, our first topic is innocuous, asking simply that you choose a destination of the world that you would most like to visit. Any locale. This could be a setting you’ve already been to. Or it could be someplace you’ve heard beautiful things about. The Arc de Triomphe perhaps? The Egyptian pyramids at dusk? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, it can be presumed, are lovely this time of year. In short, for the purpose of your response the world really is your pussycat. So don’t hold back. Now, is there any final confusion that needs to be cleared up before we begin?”

“No.”

“None?”

“No.”

“So who wants to go first? Who can we get to break the ice that has accumulated in this room? The ice that has been advancing like glaciers during the Pleistocene and that has settled over the beautiful yet desiccated campus of our beloved Cow Eye Community College?”

“I’ll go first….” said the long-time gunsmithing instructor and acolyte of Rusty Stokes. The man was sitting on the locals’ side of the table and in Rusty’s absence had assumed the musical instrument that Rusty would have otherwise played: like a featured soloist he was already taking on the vacated role of first-chair violin. “I can answer this question,” he said. “For I am something of a renowned world traveler, having visited every state on the American flag during my lifetime. And having experienced all forty states with my own eyes, I think I have a good frame of reference for judging the scenic beauty of the world’s most exotic locales. And with this vast experience I can tell you that if there were any place in the world worthy of my visit — which is to say, if I could choose among the most beautiful destinations on this broad and beautiful earth — I would have to choose North Dakota without a doubt. And not just once, mind you, but consistently and repeatedly. If I could, you see, I would visit this most glorious state over and over and over again.”

“You would repeatedly visit North Dakota?”

“Yes, North Dakota and only North Dakota. Having traveled there on separate occasions I can tell you that there is no other haven of comparable beauty. For North Dakota is surely among the most spectacular places on the face of the earth. It is arguably the grandest, the best, the most sublime travel destination to behold. Unarguably, it is the most magnificent state in our young and aggressively expanding country.”

The man paused to allow the gravity of his words to sink in. Then he continued:

“Among its peers North Dakota is a virtual oasis of beauty and splendor. It is the epitome of America itself. Driving through its vast highway system, you can admire the majesty of the wide-open spaces and windswept fields. The rugged simplicity of America’s inner soul emanating outward like rays of hope that caress the world. The pure splendor of its legendary wilderness. North Dakota, with its prairies wide and free, the fairest state from sea to sea, how I pledge myself to thee!”

The man continued in this vein for some time until, suddenly, a voice across the table interrupted him. It was the female Esperanto teacher and she seemed more than a little agitated.

“Oh please!” she said. “Are you saying that you’ve really traveled to all forty states of the union?”

“Yes. I’ve been to every single one.”

“And after visiting all forty-one states of our vast continental heritage you honestly believe that the grandest of them all is North Dakota?”

“Of course.”

“Well, clearly you know nothing of beauty. Because any cretin can see that the most stunning example of earthly beauty — the most elegant and scenic place in the world — would not be a place like North Dakota…” — here the woman made a smirking and dismissive sound — “….Despite your claims to being well-traveled, clearly your boundaries as a connoisseur of geographic magnificence are exceedingly limited. Because it is generally accepted that the most beautiful spot on earth is not North Dakota. Au contraire, mia amiko! In fact it is South Dakota…!”

At this the man recoiled:

“What kind of crap is this?!” he hissed. “Was that French…?”

Undeterred, the woman continued:

“South Dakota, it goes without saying, is home of the Badlands and Rushmore’s ageless shrine, Black Hills and prairies, farmland and sunshine. Hail, South Dakota! The state we love the best! Compared to South Dakota, my English-only friend, I’m afraid your beloved North Dakota is but a large and toothless shit hole!”

“Look, you fucking cunt…!”

“Fiaĉulo!”

“Bitch whore!”

“Ŝovinisto!”

“Hey!” I interrupted. “Hey, both of you! Sit down! Settle down, please!”

The two had stood up from the table and were glaring across the empty space at each other. I continued:

“Please take your seats! Both of you!”

The two sat down, slowly and reluctantly.

“That’s better! Now, I know you’re both passionate about this issue — and that’s fine. But let’s not get carried away here. I mean, I think we can all agree that both North Dakota and South Dakota are quite beautiful and praiseworthy places in their own rights. North Dakota has sweet winds and green fields, and South Dakota has health and wealth and beauty. Obviously, both of these are very rare qualities indeed. Can we just agree on this? For the purpose of our discussion today can we just agree to love both sides of the Seventh Standard Parallel?”

The two instructors muttered a grudging consent.

“In fact,” I said, “if I’m not mistaken these two glorious states were once a single territory. But somewhere along the way some sort of conflict happened — doesn’t it always?! — and somehow they got divided….”

“A terrible injustice of history,” said the gunsmithing instructor.

“The world’s never been the same since!” lamented the Esperantist.

“…Be that as it may, I would like to suggest that we move beyond this historical and, yes, tragic consequence of divisiveness. The quartzite border that divides them now is real and true and tangible. But it is also as arbitrary — mere cattle-scratching posts along the highway, really — as any other border contrived by man to separate two things from each other. And so I would like to suggest that we pay proper tribute to the respective beauty of both North and South Dakota. And that, having paid this tribute, we move on in our discussion…!”

As I related the jagged outcomes of my ice-breaker question, Will Smithcoate laughed heartily. He had bitten off the tip of a cigar and was preparing to light it under the auspices of the NO SMOKING sign. It was a late afternoon by then, and being very deep into the semester there was only a smattering of students still in the cafeteria. In the far corner, a cluster of aspiring nurses looked to be reviewing for late-semester exams. Scattered around the rest of the cafeteria, other students simply talked or laughed or sat idly with friends whose arrows were still in mid-flight.

“Well,” said Will, “it sounds like you managed to strike a nerve with those two instructors sitting on opposite sides of the table.”

“You can say that again! Geez, who could have predicted that they would be so passionate about an ice-breaker question?!”

“There’s some history between the two, obviously.”

“Really?”

“Sure,” said Bessie. “Rumor is that they had a brief affair a few years back.”

“And since then they’ve served on various committees that have nullified each other’s proposals,” said Dr. Felch.

“The Esperanto teacher is pretty much a bitch all the way around,” Rusty stated.

“And that arrogant gunsmithing instructor should have been ground into bone meal several decades ago,” Gwen added.

Will acknowledged all of this. Then he lit his cigar and said, “Of course it seems sort of trivial to us. Other people’s conflicts and allegiances generally do. But it can sure be damned important to them!”

“I’m finding that out!”

“I mean what’s the big deal, right? South Dakota. North Dakota. Bull Run. Kashmir. Jerusalem. The thirty-eighth parallel. Zonchio. Cutting my toenails at the dinner table.”

“Toenails?”

“My wife really hated that! But you know what? These things all tend to work themselves out in the end. People come and go. Passions come and go. Conflicts come and go. The important thing is to keep everything in perspective, Charlie. And besides, why are they even arguing about it? Everyone knows that North Dakota is the most beautiful state….”

Back in my apartment, Bessie pulled the bed sheet over her naked hips and leaned back into a pillow that she’d propped up against my headboard. Serene and unabashed, she sat smoking a cigarette, her pendulous breasts hanging like heavy fruit over the folds of her stomach.

“Your mistake was to start the discussion with Rusty’s acolyte,” she said and flicked the ash from her cigarette into an old beer can on my nightstand. “I mean, why would you begin an orchestral movement with the featured violinist? Why not build up to it? Why not allow the supporting instruments to shine during the opening sonata?”

It was a Saturday afternoon and Bessie’s boys were visiting their respective fathers for the weekend. The two of us had decided to use the occasion for an extended retreat, locking ourselves in my apartment with nothing but a weekend’s worth of food, a week’s worth of beer, and a semester’s worth of pent-up desire. It was agreed that these two days would be key for us — make-or-break was how the secretaries in the copy room referred to it; do-or die, was what the groundskeepers were saying — as hopeful divorcees: the petty arguments had to stop, we’d both resolved, and perhaps a few days spent together in the throes of unbridled passion and candid discussion of our future life together would help us work through some of the differences. The getaway had been in the planning for weeks; yet by the time the weekend finally came, the focus group report was still unfinished ahead of my meeting with Dr. Felch on Monday morning. And so, in between the sex, I’d sit at my desk in my boxer shorts handwriting the report while Bessie lay stretched out on my bed, naked under the sheets, peering absentmindedly at the color television and coaxing me through the vagaries of her handwritten notes.

“You should have started with the librarian,” she chided. “Or at least with the ethics teacher. Either would have been less jarring.”

“Yeah, well, a person lives and learns,” I said. “Obviously, it was my first high-stakes focus group and I was still very naïve. I was uninitiated. I was still idealistic about the two rival factions on campus. How they work. How they oppose. How they defer and deflect and collude. I used to think, just get the two groups in the same room to talk through their dissensions: that’s all they need. Yeah, right! My artlessness seems pretty funny to me now!”

Bessie’s knees were splayed wide under the thin bed sheet. And as she smoked she would open and close her knees absentmindedly, erecting and collapsing a pitched tent over the verdant valley in between.

“So do you think the ethics teacher is cute?” she said as she blew out a mouthful of smoke.

Surprised, I looked up from my report. Bessie had thrown her knees wide apart, stretching the bed sheet taut between them.

“You mean the girl from the focus group? The one on the receiving end of the world religions instructor in the store room?”

“Yeah. She’s young and vivacious. I could see how men might like her….”

“She’s attractive, yes.”

“Very attractive?”

“Yes. I would say so. But not nearly as attractive as the math teacher in the t-shirt!”

At this Bessie snapped her legs shut. Then she said:

“How about the new secretary in the economics department? The one whose petition you signed?”

“She’s attractive.”

“And the adjunct in Business?”

“Yes.”

“And the sociology professor?”

“Yes.”

“And what about Marsha?” she asked. “Do you think Marsha Greenbaum has a certain air of sexuality about her? Do you find her irresistible in an esoteric yet conspicuously meatless sort of way?”

“Definitely not!” I said. “Although, on second thought, there’s nothing some strong wine and a diaphanous sarong can’t cure…!”

“But I imagine the scabies are something of a turn-off, no?”

“You could say that. But more so is her refusal to acknowledge the temporality of time….” Increasingly exasperated, I looked down at the blank page on my desk. “Look, Bessie, this discussion we’re having is fitting and all. But I’ve really got to get back to my report! This thing’s due Monday morning and it’s already Saturday afternoon!”

“It’s not even two o’clock, Charlie. You’ve still got most of today and all of tomorrow. We won’t be having too many more chances like this, you know. After this weekend, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll be able to spend this sort of uninterrupted time together. So why can’t we just enjoy the moment? Why don’t we try a little harder to enjoy Plan A while we still can?”

Slowly, Bessie spread her knees apart under the sheets.

“I wouldn’t mind, Bess. But I’ve already enjoyed quite a few moments with you so far this morning. And what I really need right now is to get back to my report. The fate of our college depends on it, you know…?”

Bessie grunted and snapped her legs together, the tent collapsing entirely between her knees; then she rolled over onto her side to stare blankly at the game show on the television. From my desk I could see the supple contour of her exposed back, the spine curving from the base of her neck and disappearing into the sheets around her hips.

“Let me just get through this next part,” I pleaded, “and I’ll be back with you in a moment….”

Bessie grunted at the television without looking back at me.

“It’ll just be a few more minutes…” I promised.

And with that I moved on in the discussion:

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you for your answers — they’ve been duly recorded. It is interesting to note that exactly three of you, if given the chance to visit any place in the world, would choose North Dakota — while the other three across the table, if given the very same chance, would venture in a different direction entirely. Which is to say that each of you would travel all the way to South Dakota….”

In my report I drew the following table:

World Locale

# Respondents

%

North Dakota

3

42.9%

South Dakota

3

42.9%

Montana

1

14.3%

TOTAL

7

100.1 %

Then I continued:

“….So now that we’ve broken the ice with that first question, let’s continue the relentless forward movement of our discussion by asking the next question that we need to consider….”

Bessie flipped over the large paper on the flipchart to reveal the next page:

QUESTION: Please discuss the current cultural divide on campus. What can be done to improve the climate at Cow Eye in time for our accreditation visit in March?

“Now this question is really important. As you know, our accreditors are coming next semester and they will be observing the workings of our campus. We have made claims that our climate here at Cow Eye is….what was the word we used, Bessie…?”

“Bucolic.”

“Right. Bucolic. We’ve claimed that our campus is bucolic; however, we all know that this is far from the truth. In fact, there are deep cultural divisions on campus that jeopardize the idyllic serenity of our rural college. Entire standing committees have disbanded. Legal teams have been assembled. Lawsuits have been settled out of court. Several promising faculty have even thrown up their hands and left Cow Eye altogether. Since the beginning of the semester more than one hundred and forty bloated scrotums have been left in faculty mailboxes like so many routine notices for professional development opportunities. It’s all very distressing and counter-productive — not to mention, somewhat disorienting for the calves. And surely it is not an entirely propitious state of affairs for an institution like ours that is desperately seeking reaffirmation of its accreditation. In short, we need to resolve this issue. And fast. So now the question for you to consider is this: what can be done to improve the cultural chasm on campus?”

I looked around the table slowly, trying to make eye contact with someone. But no one would oblige.

“It’s okay,” I coaxed. “Remember, everything you say today will be confidential.”

Still nobody spoke up.

“Please?” I pleaded.

Nothing.

“Will you speak up for the sake of our campus?”

Again nothing.

“For our community?”

Nothing.

“For the students? Hey, everything we do is ultimately for the success of our students, right!”

Again no answer.

“Well, maybe you don’t have solutions just quite yet. Maybe that’s impracticable at this point. But can we at least talk about the problem itself? Can we at least discuss, openly and candidly, the source of our great cultural divide? Can we begin to name the problem, if not its cause?”

Again nothing.

“Please?!” I pleaded.

Yet again no answer.

In the silent room, the drone of the air condition was all that could be heard. And in that silent drone I waited helplessly for an answer that would not come.

Finally, it was Will Smithcoate who broke the wordless silence.

“What you should have done,” Will was saying over his cigar, “is ask the man at the far end of the table to begin the discussion. That would have gotten the ball rolling!”

“The negroid?”

“Absolutely! You should have asked him to share his experiences at Cow Eye. He’s not affiliated with either group. And despite his reticence, he’s got a wealth of experience and perspective to share. He has a compelling story to tell, you know, if only someone would bother to listen. If only you would just give him a chance to express it.”

And so, desperate to begin the discussion, and increasingly exhausted from lack of sleep, I did just that:

“How about you, professor?” I asked and pointed my trembling conductor’s wand to the man at the far end of the table directly across from me. “Would you care to be the first to answer this question that I’ve just posed?”

“Me?”

“Yes. Would you be willing to shed some light on the current cultural climate on campus? Could you tell us what it’s been like for you? And how you have been able to navigate the sad state of affairs among our divided faculty?”

The man looked across the long table at Bessie and me. Cautiously, he looked over to his left at the locals occupying their side of the table, then to his right at the side of the table where the neophytes were sitting.

“You’d like me to share my experiences at Cow Eye?”

“If you could.”

“You mean as the college’s only tenured negroid?”

“Yes. Because I’ve heard that yours is a viewpoint worth listening to. And you do certainly have a unique frame of reference, sitting there as you are right now between the two groups to your left and right. So maybe you can help us get this difficult discussion started? Please?”

“It’s complicated. But, okay. I can try to do that. I mean, I certainly appreciate the opportunity to express myself after the passage of so much time. It’s not every day I’m afforded a platform like this. So I guess I should say a few things on the topic….”

The man paused to gather his thoughts. Then he began to answer my question about his experiences at Cow Eye and how we might go about improving the cultural climate at our struggling community college.

*

“You see,” he said, “when I first came to Cow Eye it wasn’t exactly of my own volition: in fact, circumstances conspired to bring me here. I mean, what are the chances of someone like me, with a background like mine, ending up so far away from my home in a remote place like Cow Eye Junction? Out of all the places in the world I could have ended up? Of all the world’s locales? Cow Eye! Are you kidding me?! No, it definitely wasn’t something I would have chosen for myself. In truth, my journey here was arbitrary and perilous taking me from my birthplace in Washington State all the way across the rivers and valleys of our vast country to the barren desiccation of Cow Eye Junction. It was a bumpy ride, believe me, first in the back of a covered wagon, then in the confined quarters of a freight train, and then finally in a reeking bus that delivered me across the empty fields and past the decaying buffalo corpses and the abandoned ghost towns along the mining faults of the old prairies. Along the way I witnessed a five-year-old girl walking past one public school after another, an octoroon in handcuffs, a woman with an umbrella trudging home from work in the rain. No, there was nothing about my trek from the place of my origin to the hallowed grounds of Cow Eye — from oral history and slave narratives to my master’s dissertation in African-American Studies — that came easily. But I was one of the few who lived to tell the tale — the fifty percent of the fifty percent, you might call me; or rather, the one percent of the one percent! — and at the end of such a long and perilous journey through our treacherous system of public education — and after receiving my PhD from an accredited research institution — I arrived at the makeshift bus shelter on the edge of town.”

“Just like the rest of us arrived into that same bus shelter!”

“Right. Except that you can bet my back hurt quite a bit more from the journey.”

(At this a few people at the table — for the first time — seemed to nod ever so slightly in agreement.)

“Let me guess,” I said. “After arriving at the makeshift bus shelter, you sat and waited for your slow ride to campus? You were told, just like the rest of us were once told, to wait at the shelter for someone to pick you up? And after a suitable stay next to the old railroad track and the busted telephone booth and the flyer for an upcoming ragtime concert, Dr. Felch drove up in his truck to pick you up?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“He didn’t?”

“No. But that’s okay. I’m used to it. We’re used to it. Nobody picked me up that day. And so from the very back row of the bus I made my way out into the glare of early August, and from there I left the comfort of the makeshift bus shelter and walked past the general store where the harmonica was still playing, out onto the highway and through the town of Cow Eye Junction, past rolling fields of cotton and tobacco, past the Cow Eye Ranch in its heyday, past the cows and the horses and the painted slogans, past the museum and the jail and the post office with its flag at full mast — all thirteen stripes and twenty-eight stars drooping lifelessly in the dead air like a body bound to a tree — and eventually I crossed yet another waterless canal and stepped over the railroad tracks along the dirt road that led to the main entrance of the college. It was dusty and hot and by the time I finally got to that moment in time and space I was thirsty and tired and frail. I was emaciated. And so, fighting back my travails, I came to the very edge of the campus. And what do you think I saw as I approached the gate that would lead me into the campus itself? What do you think I saw first as I made my way toward the entrance to this new world that would become my future for generations to follow?”

“You saw the sign welcoming you to Cow Eye Community College! The wooden sign reminding us that our rural college is the place…Where Minds Meet!”

“I suppose I may have seen that sign on my way. But no — in truth, the first thing I encountered as I came to the college was the heavy wooden arm barring my entrance. And then next to the arm: Timmy. He was stepping out of his guard shack to confront me.”

“Timmy confronted you?”

“Yes. Back then I didn’t know his name. And he certainly didn’t know mine. So I smiled to him and I said, ‘Hi there, sir.’ But he just held up his hand and said, ‘Do you need something?’ Apologetically, I told him that I was here to teach classes at the college, that I had been hired sight unseen after a single phone interview, that my CV was spotless, that I was in fact the new tenure-track instructor in African-American studies and that I was here to enter the campus in the same way that my tenured brethren had been entering the public discourse for so many years before me. ‘You don’t look like tenure-track faculty….’ he said to me. (It was not the first time I’d had to deal with this sort of thing.) But I just swallowed the affront. And when I showed him my course schedule and a recent picture ID, he became convinced of my intentions and raised the wooden arm to let me in….”

“So you entered Cow Eye Community College on foot then?”

“Right. And as I made my way down the long esplanade leading to the faculty housing complex, I passed an escort of police holding back the jeering crowds. On one side of the esplanade was a row of national guardsmen with bayonets and truncheons, and on the other side was a line of federal troops and demonstrators wielding placards and banners and chanting slogans in my direction. It was a different era back then, you see, and back then everyone still naively believed that separate really could be equal. That all-out war was an appropriate answer to most things. Back then the world was pure and innocent and it still seemed that vacuum cleaners really did mean progress, that enlightened self-interest could be enlightened, and that nuclear power truly would be the wave of the future. And yet here they were, all these students and faculty alike, protesting the war that was still ongoing, reviling the proposed nuclear power plant to be erected near the Cow Eye River where the Indian Village used to be….”

The man stopped.

“I’m sorry….” he said, apologetically. “Am I dominating the discussion?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “That would be highly ironic. Please continue. I appreciate that you’ve rescued my focus group. Besides, it’s only a little after two. And like I said earlier, we’ll be here as long as we need to be….”

The man looked around the table at his peers — they just shrugged their shoulders in resignation — and then continued:

“Right. So the college in those days was a very different place. Back then, you have to remember, there weren’t so many Dimwiddle projects. The campus was small and economically isolated. There was no swimming pool. There were no pelicans. The war, it was hoped, would change all that. And the proposed nuclear reactor would bring more power to our campus than we could ever hope to harness otherwise. Despite the risks — and what risks could there be, really? — nuclear power, we were learning, truly was the wave of the future. It was cheap. Safe. And of course, highly efficient! Yet on one side of the esplanade stood those who favored the war and the power plant, while on the other side were those who did not. Just like your seating arrangement today, Charlie, the two opposing sentiments stood on opposite sides of the narrow walkway: the locals on one side and the neophytes on the other. And there I was walking down the middle with my suitcase in one hand and an armful of textbooks pressed firmly against my chest.”

“And how did you manage? How did you fit in with the two factions on either side of the esplanade?”

“I didn’t fit in at all! Being a neophyte among neophytes, I just walked the gauntlet to my apartment where I unpacked my belongings and prepared my notes for the next week’s classes. That first afternoon in my apartment in faculty housing, I looked out onto the campus to see throngs of marchers heading in opposite directions: one group peacefully filing along the sidewalks in silent protest; the other moving loudly and ominously. One was staging a sit-in with music and poetry; the other was burning cars and smashing windows of the administration building. One group favored states’ rights and nuclear proliferation and the latest war of attrition; the other advocated bitterly against those very things. That night I barely slept amid the chaos: the sounds of gunfire and sirens, the acrid smell of smoke from burning tires, the clicking of boots on cobblestone as the campus police hunted the stragglers, and then, a few minutes later, the screams of demonstrators being dragged from one part of campus to another. It was a restless few nights, to say the least. And so to answer your question, that was my first experience here. Needless to say, my introduction to the peculiar institution that is Cow Eye Community College was one of conflict and opposition. It was the pungent smells of revolution and reactionism. The gore of that most ancient battlefield where tradition clashes with innovation. Where compliance meets recalcitrance. All of this was my story of Cow Eye then. And it is the story of Cow Eye now….”

The tenured professor seemed to be choking up as he spoke and I looked compassionately at him to encourage his words:

“But that was in the beginning when you just got here,” I said. “Haven’t things changed for you since then?”

“Not really.”

“Even after manumission?”

“Yes, even after manumission.”

“Even after you received tenure?”

“Even after tenure ….”

And here the man grew wistful.

“…But you know what really hurts?”

We shook our heads.

“What really hurts is that I’ve devoted my entire life to teaching. I’ve given up my own dreams so that I might live vicariously through the dreams of my students. I’ve severed any roots that might have connected me to my own place of origin just so I could be an educator here at Cow Eye Community College. And after all this sacrifice — after all that sweat and effort over the years — do you know how I’m referred to around campus? Do you know how my colleagues — my very own colleagues! — refer to me?”

“No….”

“To them I am not a dedicated academician. A scholar. A man. Or even a simple human being. Do you know what they all call me?”

“I could venture a guess….”

“To my peers I am nothing more than…a tenured negroid!”

A collective gasp went up around the table.

The man shook his head:

“Do you know how hurtful that is? Do you know how that makes me feel to hear that? To be known as that, and nothing more than that? To be a niche in someone’s market segment? To be an afterthought for somebody else’s demographic validity? To be a token banjo amid the great symphony of life?”

Here I felt a twinge of guilt.

“Speaking on behalf of the group,” I said, “I would like to apologize to you for that. I can see how we might very well have been overly set in our ways. Will you accept a collective apology from us all?”

“Yes,” said the man. “If it’s sincere.”

I looked around the room.

“Are we sincere, gang?” I asked.

The group nodded.

“So will you accept our collective apology?”

“Yes.”

“Splendid,” I said. “I am relieved.”

I had started to move on, but here the sociology instructor raised her hand for the first time.

“So, professor,” she asked, “what do you want to be called then? If you could have your druthers? If you could choose your own term of reference to separate you from the rest of us here at this table, what would you prefer to be called?”

The instructor paused as if considering this for the first time.

“Clearly the word negroid has to be put to pasture. Its usefulness has long since come and gone — like the old pull tabs from those beer cans we used to peel off and discard. Or like the older generation itself with its ways of speaking and seeing the world, its subculture of recollection, its antiquated vernacular, and the fading institutions that it holds dear.”

“So what then?”

“I’m not sure.”

“There has to be something….”

“I’m sure there is.”

“Could we just call you colored?”

“….colored?”

“Yes, professor. Like a book of line drawings that have been lovingly filled in by a toddler at our early childhood center. Would it be appropriate to refer to you as colored from this point forward?”

“It will take some getting used to….”

“Please try.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said.

“Great,” I said.

I thanked the man and we moved on.

*

Listening to the colored man speak about his challenges finding his place amid the deep divisions at Cow Eye, I’d noticed that several other participants seemed to be nodding their heads in agreement. And sensing my opportunity to build upon the man’s courageous opening, I looked at the other participants around the table and then addressed one of them in particular:

“Did you have a similar experience with divisiveness at Cow Eye?” I pointed to a man sitting on the neophyte’s side of the table. “I ask because you seemed to be nodding in agreement while the colored man shared his story….”

“Yes,” said the recently hired eugenics professor. “In fact I did have a very similar experience. Except that I’m a pure-blooded caucasoid, which, of course, is not insignificant. It is an important distinction obviously — especially here at Cow Eye. But does it mean that I can’t share common experiences with a colored person? Should it mean that we cannot harbor the same hopes and burdens? The same dreams unfulfilled? No! Just because I am an able-bodied well-educated upper-middle-class right-handed heterosexual protestant male caucasoid with a clear path to tenure, it doesn’t mean that I can’t experience the same worldly oppressions and personal anguish as anyone else.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Of course not. And I have. I am as much a victim of our turbulent history as anyone else. Though for me these struggles have been on an institutional level.”

Around the table the man’s peers were listening with new tolerance to his words. He continued:

“You see, I was hired to develop and expand the eugenics program on campus, to infuse elements of this promising scientific theory across the various academic disciplines. To work collaboratively with my peers for the long-term betterment of our students. It is a noble goal of course, yet I am having the damnedest time gaining any traction. Sadly, with the exception of the animal sciences and a few forward-thinking individuals in the automotive department, I have encountered virtually no willingness among faculty to incorporate eugenics into their curriculum.”

“Why do you think that is?” I asked.

“I don’t know. They just don’t seem to get it. It’s like they’re just so willing to sacrifice cultural progress on the altar of long-held tradition…!”

“I know the feeling!” said the Esperanto teacher. “Believe me, I know exactly what you mean!”

“You do?”

“Absolutely. Because I’m having the exact same problem! Though of course my academic discipline is not as scientific as yours and leans more toward the humanities. If water is the language of life — as it surely is — then I would argue that acquired languages are just as surely its pasteurized milk. Just imagine how great it would be for everyone at Cow Eye to drink milk! To speak a common language! To have a universal tongue that might lap up the moisture that is inherent in our shared soul. Especially since English doesn’t seem to be working out for us in that regard. So it’s time to try something more effective, right? Why not a second language that we can all agree on? Why not a language that lends itself to efficient communication? That’s my mission in life! Unfortunately, the stonewalling from my peers has been totally uncalled for….”

And here, and at great length, the woman spoke about the challenges she’d faced implementing her Esperanto classes on campus. Fighting back tears, she related how she had met resistance at every step of the way: the reactionary curriculum committee; a divided administration; indifferent students; a science department that did not understand the importance of the softer disciplines; monolingual English faculty who were ruthlessly territorial and undermining and who seemed to feel that a universally spoken language would somehow threaten English’s de facto hegemony in that role — and, by extension, their own claims to previously deeded intellectual terrain.

“It’s like they don’t understand the importance of what I’m trying to do!” she sobbed. “It’s as if they have no appreciation for the thing I’ve devoted my entire life to…!”

Here the homosexual from the art department placed his hand on the woman’s shoulder empathetically. “It’s okay,” he said. “You’re not the only one who hurts…!”

And here the man spoke about his own struggles as a homosexual in Cow Eye Junction. How he and a fellow artist had been accosted outside the Champs d’Elysees after a jazz concert one night. And how their once-secret relationship had been revealed by an ill-timed janitress searching for her broom in a storage closet. And how even the most basic funding for art education was becoming increasingly hard to find. How art instruction itself was being phased out of the public schools in favor of more functionally pragmatic subjects. And how, despite all this, he and his lover still dreamed of a church wedding someday.

“We’d rather be Catholics,” he explained.

I nodded.

Bessie scribbled on her note pad.

The tide, it seemed, was turning as the participants, one after another, now shared their burdens. Softly, the music teacher spoke about the atonality of her life in Cow Eye Junction. The world religions instructor lamented the polytheism of campus politics. The anarchist in the philosophy department railed against the Dimwiddles with their unconscionable profiteering and self-serving commercialization of honest violence. The economics professor — the one whose recently published article warning against a graduated income tax had gone largely ignored — spoke about the pitfalls of grade inflation and how it was undermining the work ethic of his students. The mesmerizing creative writing instructor, meanwhile, criticized the incestuous publishing industry and its proliferation of genetically homozygous literature. The ethics teacher lamented the creeping erosion of personal privacies. The cross-dressing horticulturalist spoke to great effect about the difficulties of finding his dress size in the shops of Cow Eye Junction. And the philosophy instructor — who by now had received a record number of bloated scrotums — bemoaned the short-sightedness of the latest Supreme Court decision. And through it all, Alan Long River, the college’s longtime professor of public speaking, sat quiet and dignified, his concert triangle dangling from his wrist, next to the gunsmithing instructor with the squeaky violin.

At long last the large glacier was beginning to melt, a flood of cold water pouring out of the participants’ souls and spilling onto the tile floor of the conference room where their musical instruments had once been left in waiting. The culinary instructor. The art historian. The associate dean of instruction. The lecturer in developmental English. The ESL coordinator. Rolling up their pant legs and cradling their instruments like musicians on a sinking luxury liner, all seven stoically articulated the deep divisions on campus that made life in general — and life as a professional educator at Cow Eye Community College, in particular — so difficult. So untenable. So desiccated.

“Great,” I said. “At last it’s starting to come out!”

The sound of restrained sobbing could be heard around the room. The catharsis had begun. The opening sonata was complete.

“So what do we do about it?” I asked now that the participants had begun the discussion of our cultural chasm on campus. “You’ve spoken of the problems. The divisions. The divisiveness. The cacophony. The dysfunctional committees. The atonality. The bloated scrota. The Supreme Court decisions. You’ve articulated it all so eloquently. So now that it’s clear we have a real problem, how can we begin to change it? Or can we?”

Looking around the table, I let the words sink in:

“What is the answer to our great cultural divide?” I repeated. “Or is there one?”

*

“Wonderful question!” said Raul. “That’s exactly the question our accreditors want us to answer! And don’t worry at all that it took a little discomfort to get the discussion going. That’s to be expected. Remember, at best these are virtual strangers in that room together. At worst they are mortal enemies. The air-conditioning is chilling. The conference table is rectangular with sharp edges. The temperature-controlled ambience is artificial and contrived. And of course you haven’t slept for months and that crazed look in your eyes doesn’t exactly encourage forthcoming discussion. It’s only natural that there would be some hesitation among participants.”

“Thanks, Raul. That’s reassuring to hear.”

“Take it from me, Charlie. You’ve done about as well as you could under the circumstances. If anything, the problem that you should be worrying about now is the locals at the table. Ever since the opening statement by Rusty’s acolyte, they’ve been relatively quiet. They seem to be brooding. And that’s a real concern. Remember, Dr. Felch told you not to take them for granted. They’ve grown accustomed to being overlooked. So you’d better go back for them. Otherwise, you’re not going to get at the root of the conflict. Your discussion will only touch upon one side of the esplanade. And that would be a shame. Especially since you’ve worked so hard to get them both in the same room!”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “But how do I do that?”

Suddenly, I felt a cold hand on my naked stomach. Bessie had snuck up from behind and thrown her arms around me in a heavy hug. From my chair I could smell the shampoo from her shower and feel the skin of her breasts pressed up against me, her chin on my shoulder and her unpinned hair hanging down across my chest. She was kissing me on the back of my neck and rubbing her cheek against mine from behind.

“Ready for a break?” she cooed and slid her hand into my boxers.

“Not yet!” I said. “I’m still writing…!”

Bessie pressed tighter.

“You said you’d be ready a few minutes ago…a few minutes ago. And by now it’s been a lot more than that. It’s already well after two. Take a break, will you?!”

I kissed her lightly on the cheek.

“I can’t at the moment. I’d love to but I just can’t. I have to include the locals’ perspective in my report. I have to write that down before I take them for granted by carelessly moving on.”

Bessie moved her hand along the inside of my thigh.

“Life is short….” she said.

“Stop!” I protested.

But she did not stop. Still rubbing against me from behind, she whispered into my ear.

“It’s time, Charlie.”

“Time for what?”

“I told them both….”

“Told them what?”

“About you.”

“Who?”

“My boys. I told them about you and me. About us. About you. I told them you might come over to visit. So they’re expecting it…”

“Great,” I said.

“I’ve told them a lot about you.”

“Fine.”

“The time is right, Charlie. They’re ready to meet the man I’m hopelessly in love with.”

“Will do. Just not in the immediate future though….”

“Not this weekend of course. But how about you come over sometime the following week?”

“That may work. Though now that I think of it, I have a lot to do that week too.”

“Or the week after?”

“We’ll do that for sure. But right now I can’t think about things like that. Right now I just want to finish this part of my report before I forget. It’ll only take a few more minutes. Just let me finish and then I’ll be as receptive as you are…!”

Bessie withdrew her hand from my boxers and threw herself back onto the bed, the springs groaning and her legs bouncing wide open as she fell.

“You and that damned report!” she muttered. Bessie did not bother to cover herself, and as she lay there on the bed the indecency of her pose grew with each accumulating moment. “To hell with that report already! Lives are being lived while you’re writing that stupid report. Just think how many amazing things are happening in the tangible world while you’re stuck at that desk! How much fun other people are having while you’re sitting here with that pen and paper…!”

“I’m sure they’re all having a great time. And good for them. But the fate of our college hinges on what I end up writing in this report. So it is kind of important….”

“Yeah, whatever. You educational administrators are all the same.”

“Say what you will,” I countered. “But your jobs depend on people like us. Your destinies derive from people who write your reports. The fate of our world itself depends on its educational administrators!”

Bessie rolled her eyes.

I laughed and started to turn away. But then, skimming over her sprawling nudity, I shook my finger:

“…And cover up, will you! I can’t get any work done with you all laid bare like that…!”

With thumb and forefinger Bessie grabbed the very corner of the bed sheet and tugged it just enough to cover the tip of her navel.

“Better?” she said.

“Infinitely. That part of your nakedness was really distracting me. Now let me get back to work…!”

Raul laughed and checked the time on his calculator wristwatch: there were still a few minutes left before we had to go back inside.

“I guess there really is something to be said about avoiding relations with co-workers!” he admitted. Raul and I were on a five-minute break in the middle of this week’s professional development session and the two of us were milling around with the group outside the room. The female presenter had spent the first half of her session on the dont’s of intra-collegiate romance: the jealousy, the rumors, the inability to separate private time from work time as everything bleeds together like a grand piano whose sostenuto pedal won’t release; and, of course, how once relations have gone horribly wrong the entire mess will tend to spill over into the workplace like raw sewage leaking into a river, or into a swimming pool, or into the concert hall where your symphony is being performed. Hearing all this, Raul seemed to grow pensive: “It sort of makes you think twice about having a liaison with a colleague, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose it does. But it’s too late to think about that now. And besides, what sort of options do we have, Raul? It’s not like we can just go to the local bars looking for women. It’s not like the remoteness and desiccation of the surrounding area exactly encourage a burgeoning social scene for educational administrators and institutional researchers. And it’s not like I can just tell her, Hey Bess, you know, I think we’ve made a mistake….I think this thing really isn’t working out for either of us….”

“That’s true. But there has to be some sort of compromise. There has to be a way to reconcile the two. There has to be some way that we can…”

Suddenly, a gunshot rang out in the room. Instinctively I ducked into a crouch from the noise.

When I looked up, my ears were still ringing from the blast.

“What the hell was that?!” I exclaimed.

“That,” said Ethel proudly, “was a Ruger Blackhawk in thirty carbine.”

I massaged the lobes of my ears.

“Is it always so loud?”

“Pretty much.” Ethel was caressing the shiny revolver with both hands. “Come on now, Charlie, be alert. Don’t act like you didn’t know that was coming. Lately your mind seems to be wandering off. But this is no place for that. You have to stay focused on what you’re doing. This is a shooting range, not a library. These bullets we’re firing are real, unlike those in your self-study. The consequences of this reality can be truly tragic. And for godsakes, boy, put on your ear protection!”

Still shocked, I put the plugs into my ears and then pulled the sound-resistant muffs over them as a double buffer. Then I grabbed my own gun from where it had been sitting on the bench, and taking my stance just as she’d shown me, I aimed my pistol at the target. The firing lanes were long and at the far end of mine I could just make out the distant target that had been selected for me: a silhouette of an accreditor holding a clipboard with the visiting team’s response to our most recent self-study report. The target was just close enough that I could still imagine the seething commentary with its high-handed tone and terse pronouncements and general insistence on using the Latin plural for scrotum. In my delirium the stationary silhouette seemed to be closing in, advancing on me with a deep and insidious menace. Grasping the pistol tightly, I cocked back the hammer and stared into the distance at the approaching specter of regional accreditation. At the onrushing shadow of childless irrelevance and a life of dull professionalism. Of CV-building. Of unchallenged innovation and efficiency for its own sake. Of a world where conflict really is paramount and vacuum cleaners still mean progress and where the comforts of taxidermy really are more valued than the unvanquished screams of a mother cow who has been separated from her three-month-old calf. Exhausted and confused, I looked at all of this and saw none of it. Or rather, I looked for any of it, and saw it all.

Slowly, I began to squeeze the trigger.

*

Bessie had just stood up to flip over the large paper on the tripod, when I motioned for her to stop.

“Wait a second, Bess….”

Bessie looked back at me in surprise.

“Sorry,” I said to the group. “But before we go any further I’d like to ask our gunsmithing instructor here a question. To this point, we’ve heard a lot from the neophytes at this table, but not so much from the other side. So can you tell me, as a local person yourself, what your experience has been? To complement what we’ve already heard from the people who are from the countless other places in this world that are not Cow Eye Junction. They have been vocal and eager to share, as always. But what’s your perspective on the matter?”

“You’re asking me to talk about the cultural divide between locals and neophytes?” said the gunsmithing instructor.

“Yes,” I said. “What has your experience been during your career here at Cow Eye? As someone both born and raised in the area, what is your take on the internecine conflict that has come to paralyze our campus?”

The instructor looked at his peers sitting on the nearer side of the table, then at the neophytes sitting across from him. Then he shook his head.

“I have nothing to say on this matter.”

“But how can that be? I’m offering you a chance to vocalize your side of the table….”

“No comment.”

“None?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nope.”

“But why?” I asked Rusty at the museum. “Why won’t any of the locals give their opinion in a formal setting? I hear them expressing it all the time when nobody’s taking notes. And boy do they ever! At the neighboring tables in the cafeteria. Or among the secretaries in the copy room. I know it’s out there. So why are they so reluctant to express their side of the story in the safe and temperature-controlled setting of our focus group?”

Rusty was sorting through some old photos that had been dropped off by a family that was leaving Cow Eye forever. The family had wanted their legacy to remain in good hands so they’d donated it to the museum; as he spoke Rusty looked wistfully at the photographs, thumbing through them one by one, seemingly more interested in the soft tones of sepia than in the outcomes of my focus group.

“They don’t trust you, Charlie.”

“Don’t trust me?”

Rusty set down the stack of photographs on a glass display case: at the top was a grainy profile of a severe-looking man on horseback with a coiled rope dangling over his knees. Rusty wiped a piece of dust off the print. Then he said, “You can’t be completely trusted, Charlie. Sure, your grandparents were from here originally. But they moved away, didn’t they? And yes you came to our barbecue and ate the meat we offered you. Yes you drank quite a bit of our beer. You listened to our stories of bygone days. You shared a moment with us, I suppose. All of this is true. Yet you’re still known among the locals as the only attendee who came late. You’re the only one who missed our poignant remembrance for Merna.”

“It figures,” I said.

“What does?”

“Gwen once told me the same thing about the neophytes. She explained that I was known among those attendees as the one who came to their watery get-together only to leave early. That I’m known as the only one who left prematurely before experiencing any sort of orgasm. In other words, my plan completely backfired. I came too late to join one side of the cultural chasm but left too early from the other to be a part of it as well. I tried to make it to both places but in reality I guess I really went to neither. I can’t win.”

“Exactly. Plans can be helpful. But sometimes it helps to be a thing entirely. Sincerely. To do what’s right — not just what makes sense. To commit to one thing at the expense of another. To favor either the manual typewriter or the electric one — rather than both of them at the same time. Building bridges is great, but so is standing on the firm ground of one side or the other. This is the challenge you’re facing, Charlie. And I don’t envy you. Although, I must say, you’re still the best person to conduct this high-stakes focus group. Because even though you arrived at the river later than you should have, you did come to our barbecue.”

“Right,” said Gwen. “And even though you left the yoga studio earlier than was socially acceptable — and without your pants, if I remember correctly — you did take the time to come to our watery get-together in the first place.”

“But that still doesn’t explain why the locals don’t want to share their side of the story….”

“We already have!” said Rusty. “It’s in our traditions. It’s in our predispositions. It’s in the words we choose and the voice we use to articulate it. But no one takes the time to hear us. Meanwhile, do you know how many times we’ve been surveyed? How many goddamn focus groups we’ve had to sit through? Do you know how many times educated people have tried to come up with a better way to understand us? As if we were specimens in a zoo? Charlie, do you have any idea how often they’ve tried to have us mounted and stuffed? But why does it always have to be like this? Why can’t they just listen to the words we’re speaking while we’re still around to speak them…?”

“Well, I imagine it’s hard, you know. From the other side of the table you locals just seem set in your ways. Anti-progress. Reactionary. It just seems like you don’t want change because it’s not your kind of change.”

“Look here,” said Rusty, “when all these new people first started coming to Cow Eye we went out of our way to be hospitable. We welcomed them into our homes and offered them everything we had. We gave them meat. We took them to watch football games at the local high school on Friday nights. We invited them to accept Jesus Christ as their Ultimate Redeemer. In short, we treated them as we ourselves would have wanted to be treated. And do you know what their reaction to all this was? Do you know what they did to us in return?”

“No….”

“They spat it all back into our face! Tripe?! To hell with your tripe! Cattle? To hell with your cattle! Trucks? To hell with your damn trucks — you should all drive fuel-efficient cars instead. And why have a barbecue when you can make fondue? Why hunt local game when you can watch far-flung celebrities on television? Why be religious when you can be spiritual instead? Honestly, these people could care less about whether we even exist or not. All they care about are their parties and their orgasms and their arugula. We are nothing but an annoyance. A nuisance. A mere inconvenience to be remembered from time to time as necessity dictates. Charlie, to those people all we are is ambience….”

For the first time since we’d met up, Gwen stopped her brisk walk along the path toward the cafeteria. By now we’d passed more than half the campus and were standing outside the faculty laundromat. From the outset of our ambulatory discussion I’d been struggling to keep up with her purposeful stride, which made this sudden stop of hers even more startling. Gwen seemed furious at what she’d just heard.

“So he says they were hospitable? That we were welcomed with open arms? Are you kidding me? Football? Meat? Trucks? That’s all fine and good. But ask him about the last Christmas Committee meeting I attended. Ask him about that meeting, Charlie…!”

“What meeting?”

“The last time he and I served on the Christmas Committee together.”

“The two of you were on the Christmas Committee? At the same time?!”

“Of course,” said Rusty. Now he had moved on from his archives and was standing next to the mounted heifer and stroking its withers as if it were alive. “My god, she’s still bitter about that?”

“I guess so,” I said. “She suggested that I ask you about it.”

“I’m sure she would love that. But she needs to get over it. She needs to move on.”

“Move on from what?”

“From what happened.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Nothing?!” said Gwen.

“Yes,” said Rusty. “Nothing happened.”

“That’s bullshit!” said Gwen.

“She’s full of shit herself!” said Rusty.

I stopped. At last it seemed that I was getting to the heart of something important. And so I looked at both of them.

“Well, can you tell me the story then?” I asked. “Can you tell me the story of how nothing happened? Can you tell me the long story of how nothing happened and how that nothing somehow turned into something…?”

The two looked back at me doubtfully: Rusty was standing next to his heifer; Gwen and I still stood in the middle of the long esplanade leading to the cafeteria, students streaming past us on their way to class.

“Can you tell me what really happened at that fateful Christmas Committee meeting?” I repeated. “Because something either did or did not happen. And it may have been seminal. So I’d be interested to hear about it either way.”

“It’s a long story….” they warned.

“It usually is ….”

“…And an ugly one,” they said.

“They often are!”

“It is not easy to tell a story about nothing.”

“That may be so. But there is certainly honor in the attempt….”

The two rivals paused, as if they would head back to their respective academic paths. But then they each stopped. And then, as if the stirrings of humanity were rumbling somewhere inside them, each began to tell the story of the Christmas Committee meeting that they had attended.

“As history would have it,” they said, “it all came down to the menu. That’s where it all went awry….”

“The fate of our educational institution, of our entire community, went awry because of a menu?”

“Yes, it was the menu that we were discussing that day. The menu for the Christmas party….”

*

And here they told me how they had both been assigned to the Food and Beverage sub-committee and that they’d met in the same conference room where my focus group was currently hanging in the balance. In great detail they described how they sat on opposite sides of the rectangular conference table and how, after taking their seats, they’d gotten down to the business of finalizing the food and drinks for that year’s Christmas party.

“It was late in the day,” said Gwen.

“And late in the semester,” said Rusty. “A little after two and I had a final exam to give at three.”

“It was late so I offered to share my ideas first. ‘Shall I go first?’ I said. ‘Or should you?’ It was still a matter of courtesy back then.”

“Of course I’ll go first,” said Rusty. “Because I’ve been here longer than you. Which is to say my professional and personal attributes are known, my contributions to the college and our community are documented. My family has lived here for generations. My ancestors are buried in the dusty fields of the Cow Eye Cemetery — unlike yours, who are buried god knows where. In fact I can take you to the graves of my grandparents within a matter of minutes, while you have chosen to leave yours to their own devices, scattered around the country like wind-blown chaff. And for this reason it is only fitting that I present my ideas first. Of course, I don’t think she liked that one bit….”

“Of course I didn’t like that one bit! And why would I? Why should his contributions deserve more precedence than mine? Sure, my ancestors were not from Cow Eye. Sure my grandparents were buried in various places far, far away. But it’s not like my life began upon arriving into the makeshift bus shelter! Yet that’s how I was being made to feel. It was all very insulting. But these were the days when we didn’t dwell on things like this. When we were still running barefoot and pregnant in the kitchens of academic discourse.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. And so I told him he could present his ideas before mine. ‘Be my guest….’ I said and let him speak first.”

“Let me? Who is she to let me speak! I spoke first because this has been the natural order of things since the time of first dust. And this order transcends any whims that she might have. And so I looked at her and said, ‘First of all, I don’t believe that we should be reinventing any wheels. If the wheel is circular enough to roll, then ride it by all means. If the river flows, float upon it. In my notebook here I’ve jotted down the menu that we’ve been using for many years now. It consists almost exclusively of meat and it has served us well over the centuries. I would suggest that we begin, and end, with that.’ And I handed her my notebook.”

“With meat?”

“Yes.”

“Exclusively?”

“And entirely.”

“I took the notebook from him and sure enough it had listed every beef dish that there could possibly be. Every part of the cow. Every method of preparation. Beef ball and hamburger and meatloaf and veal and corned beef and steak and jerky and pot roast. And I looked at this list respectfully and then I said, ‘Well, meat is fine and all. But there is a broader world out there and this broader world boasts vegetables of all imaginary types. There are carrots and celery and asparagus and sprouts and soy and rutabaga and beets and broccoli and cauliflower and spinach and beans and corn and…’”

“Corn is good!”

“…and arugula….”

Here he stopped.

“Arugula? What the hell is arugula?”

“Charlie, he didn’t even know what arugula was! And so I explained it to him and he said….”

“Why the hell would we want arugula at a Christmas party?”

“‘Because of what it represents,’ I told him.”

“And what, pray tell, does it represent?”

“It represents the future of humanity. The inevitable forward motion from carnivorous beginnings to a higher plane of herbal transcendence. It is the inexorable evolution of our yearnings from primal inklings to a more refined and self-aware desire for subtle things.”

“That’s a crock of shit.”

“No, it is not a crock of shit. It is our shared destiny.”

“No, honey, it is not. Vegetables are vegetables, and nothing more. And meat, my dear, is meat. And your desire to move from one to the other speaks more about your own selfish goals to innovate for its own sake. To live longer for its own sake. To achieve continuous improvement at the expense of a humble appreciation of what you already have.”

“So what are you suggesting then? Are you proposing a world governed only by meat? Rather than one that recognizes the complexity of its full vegetative diversity?”

“And what choice are we left with? In the dietary chain of human evolution, you people are arugula and we are tenderloin. Yet there are only so many steps in the chain to feed an infinite number of mouths. And so before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s make sure our Christmas party doesn’t forget to celebrate the ageless glories of beef and steak and hamburger and meatloaf and veal and jerky and pot roast….”

“And fruitcake!”

“Fruitcake?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Bessie. “Have you had it?”

“Of course.”

“And do you like it?”

“I’m not so sure,” I answered. “Do you mean metaphorically or literally?”

“Literally. Why would anyone want to bake a metaphorical fruitcake? No, Charlie, I’m speaking about literal fruitcake…do you like it?”

“It’s okay. Not my favorite. But it’s okay. Why?”

“My mom wanted to make one. You know, for when you come over. To celebrate the occasion.”

“Fine. Fruitcake is fine. And I’m sure I’ll find your mother’s fruitcake quite fine when I come over to meet your children someday. But what time should I be there? What time were you thinking to schedule that?”

“I’ve already reminded you many times….”

“Yes, but could you tell me yet again so I don’t forget? I seem to be forgetting a lot of things lately…”

“Two o’clock.”

“Oh yes, two. Of course it would be at two. Two o’clock someday for sure…”

Bessie laughed and snapped the elastic on my shorts.

“Enough report-writing!” she said and lay back on the bed, pulling me on top of her as she fell. It was not an unprecedented position for me to be in, and from my vantage point I once again surveyed the waters moving below. The flow of moisture from one place to another. The gradual damming and sudden release of the wetness that flows and has always flowed. The water that outlasts even the strongest and most restrictive dam.

When our slaking was complete the two of us lay under the covers until she at last fell asleep on the other pillow. By now it was early morning and with so little time remaining until Monday I skulked back to my desk to continue my report. Picking up my pencil, I wrote about the two-hour discussion of the college’s institutional mission statement; and what the participants liked about our current statement and what they felt should be changed. Sharpening my pencil to an even finer point I detailed how the two sides were finally able to agree on a new formulation — if not for the sake of harmony or collegiality, then at the very least for the sake of appearances in the self-study. In a footnote, I noted with some optimism that Rusty and Gwen once occupied the very same table where my focus group was being held, that it had once been possible for them to remain in the same room at the same time; but with equal regret I acknowledged that their divisiveness now seemed to be present in all things at the college — including my focus group. When all of this was done I stretched the fingers of my cramped hand again and with the darkness of night still outside my window, I wrote about the final question that still needed to be asked before the focus group could be considered complete. Tired, frantic, my eyes dimming from the effort, I pulled the lamp above my paper and wrote and wrote and wrote….

*

And when I looked up from my report Dr. Felch had again popped his head in my doorway.

“Is it done yet?” he asked. “You were supposed to get that report to me last week. It’s already this week and I still haven’t seen it.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t finished it yet.”

“Is it even close?”

“Um, not really. If I could just have a little more time….”

“I’ve already given you two extensions. How long do you need now?”

“A week maybe. Or more.”

“I’ll give you till Monday.”

“But that’s too soon! It’s already Friday. It’s Friday afternoon and Monday’s less than three days away. The weekend begins tomorrow. You see, sir, Bessie and I had plans to spend these next few days locked in my apartment with a weekend’s worth of food, a week’s worth of beer, and a semester’s worth of…”

“Charlie! You have until Monday. And that’s final. Dammit, the fate of our institution depends on it.”

At the cafeteria, Will did his best to cheer me up.

“Don’t worry, there, Charlie boy. Not everyone’s cut out to be an educational administrator.”

“Thanks a lot.”

Will took another drag on his cigar. Then he said:

“It’s like my wife used to say in the beginning. She’d say, Smithcoate, don’t worry about it. There are other ways. Not every academician is destined to be a great lover. Or vice versa. It takes all kinds in our world. So just pick one thing and be great at it…!”

“She’d say that to you?”

“Yes. She used to say a lot of things. But don’t worry: it all comes with time…like anything else. You see, Charlie, you’re allowing things to come too close to that heart of yours. Don’t take yourself so seriously. That report you’re writing — you know, the one that will supposedly determine the fate of our entire institution — well, it probably will. And yet six and a half years from now who’s gonna give a damn? No one will care whether you wrote it or not. Why? Because it’s only meaningful in the negative. If you screw it up and we lose our accreditation, then everyone will be up in arms. But if you simply do your job well, nobody will care! Such is the true heroism of the educational administrator. And such is the heroism of educational administration in general. Like so many other things in this world, Charlie, it’s just one of those things that comes and goes, quietly and unremarkably, and for this very reason, heroically.”

I nodded.

“And besides,” said Nan, “everyone’s saying your Christmas party is in serious jeopardy. That Rusty and Gwen aren’t coming. You might want to spend some time on that before it’s too late. Before December eleventh comes and goes without a semester-culminating party for the second year in a row. You want to be able to put this on your curriculum vitae, right?”

“She’s got a point,” said Raul. “And don’t take this the wrong way, but the latest draft you just gave me to proofread….that draft of your report? My goodness, was it muddled. I could barely get through it!”

“It was that bad?”

“It was unreadable!”

The words had come like arrows from a thousand different directions. Then, after flagging me down in the copy room, one of the administrative secretaries added yet another projectile to the enfilade:

“Not to skewer you when you’re already down,” she said, “but, gosh Charlie, have you taken a look at yourself in the mirror lately? It’s scary to see what you’ve become…!”

Listening to all this, I took some time to consider their words. Of course each of them was right. In their own ways each of them was always right. But what now? Now that I’d moved halfway across a vast country in search of a legacy to leave, what were my options now? On a scale of one to ten — with ten being a piece of bronze statuary and one being a traveling mist — my lasting contribution to the world was surely nothing greater than a reliable three-and-a-half — a four, perhaps, if my self-study proved successful — yet another plaster monument to contemporary mediocrity.

“So what should I do?” I asked. “I agree with everything you’ve all just said. It all makes perfect sense. But what can I do about it?”

“You should let it all go,” said Will. “Don’t take any of it to heart.”

“If you want to clean up that report,” Raul prompted, “you should use an outline to organize your content. Plan it meticulously. Diagram it. Use the envisioning process to give your ideas greater structure so your writing can flow more logically.”

“Learn to delegate.”

“Refrain from semi-colons.”

“Hold a focus group.”

“Use a planner.”

“Bring them toys that boys their age would like. Bring her mom a carnation.”

“Use a double-edged razor.”

“Don’t overlook the colored man.”

“And don’t forget to ask the participants for their opinions on the Christmas party. Because their buy-in will be key.”

I nodded.

“But most of all, you really need to get some sleep. When’s the last time you had a good night’s sleep, Charlie?”

“It’s been months.”

“So sleep.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It is. Sleep!”

“But how do I do that? It’s not like the math faculty are getting any quieter. It’s not like they’re losing their passion for mathematics….”

“Here take some of these….”

“Pills?”

“Yes. Take them twice a day with food.”

“But I don’t even eat twice a day! I’m lucky if I have time to eat once!”

“Then take them on an empty stomach. But take them.”

“This will help me sleep?”

“Yes, it will,” said Gwen.

Rusty shook his head.

“No, they won’t,” he objected.

“Gwen’s pills won’t help?”

“Of course not. They’re a waste of time because it’s not sleep that you need, it’s staying awake. What good is sleep when you need to be awake to write your report?”

“That makes sense.”

“Of course it does. Here, try these pills instead….”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome!” they said.

I held out my hand and the two placed their respective pills into my palm.

“But do you think these pills you’ve given me will work?” I asked them. “Do you think they’ll help me stay awake? Do you think they’ll help me fall asleep? Can you promise they’ll allow me to sleep and stay awake, respectively? Or at least, to do these things concurrently?”

“Of course they will!” they said.

And so I took both pills, guzzling each down with a palmful of water from the bathroom sink.

“Fine,” said the secretary. “Hopefully those pills will help. Now as to your hygiene issue, well as to that, you might want to start by getting a decent shave and a haircut. And maybe you should try washing those corduroys every once in a while. After all, you’re an educational administrator, for god’s sake, not an adjunct.…”

“Right!”

And so I made my way back to the bathroom down the hall where I washed my face again. And straightened up my collar. And tucked in my dress shirt. Back in my office I grabbed a pair of scissors and wedging the small plastic trash can between my knees I leaned over it and began to trim my beard. The hairs fell into the can and as I snipped I saw them curling into little clumps at the bottom. In the background of the quiet room the pendulum continued its ticking. And even further in the background from that was the feint sound of a repeated knocking at my door.

*

(…)

When Love knocks you must always be quick to answer. For Love rarely knocks as insistently the second time.

(…)

*

“Charlie!” said Bessie as she walked into my office without knocking. “What are you doing in here? We’re all waiting for you in the conference room. Both sides of the table are getting antsy. You said it would only be a ten-minute break. But it’s already been thirty-five. The participants have consumed all the arugula and most of the jerky and it’s starting to get ugly in there. They’re licking the bowl. Why are you in here?”

“I’m just, you know, trying to collect my thoughts. Everything’s happening so quickly and I feel like it’s spiraling out of control. I can’t keep up. I’m getting overwhelmed. I feel like I’m letting everyone down. And so I just came in here to shut the door for a few minutes to try to regain my composure. To try to make sense of it all.”

“That’s fine. But you need to get back to the focus group…”

“I know that — I do. I know that very well. I’ll be right there….”

“They’re getting tired of waiting….”

Bessie motioned toward the conference room, then, unexpectedly, she undid the knot at her waist and let her towel drop to the floor.

“And I’m tired of waiting too!” she said.

“But….”

“It’s now or never…”

“But we’ve already…!”

“My heart does not reveal itself any more than this. My body does not get any barer….”

“I’ll be right there,” I said. “But let me finish this last part…”

I looked down at my report.

“….You’re taking me for granted, Charlie.”

And so I looked back up:

“No, I’m not. I just need to get through the last few questions….”

Bessie shook her head. Reaching over my shoulder she grabbed the book I’d laid on my desk.

“You’re not done with this book yet?”

“Hey, give me that…!”

“Why? What are you reading about now?”

“Nothing. Give it back…!”

Bessie opened the book where the bookmark stuck out and read the title of the chapter I was currently reading:

“Chapter Thirty-Five….” she read, demonstratively and dramatically, as if she were a thespian. Still bared and unabashed, she continued theatrically: “….Knowing When Your Semester Really is Over….And How to End It With Grace….”

On the word grace, she did a heavy pirouette.

“Give me that!”

But she did not. Holding the book at arm’s length, she began to read:

(…)

Like all things in nature, the feelings of sexual attraction that a faculty member may feel for other representatives of the profession will tend to subside over time. This is as natural as the sad end to any once-joyful and promising endeavor. Just as the semesters of our youth end incrementally, in stages that come and go undetected, so too does our romantic affection tend to wane with the seasons. The outset of this journey will surely be marked by the pure hope and optimism of a new beginning: the raw nerves upon entering a new classroom for the first time; the elation of the first probing discussion at an ethnic restaurant. Soon, and indiscernibly, comes the inevitable settling that happens: the waning excitement, the classes skipped, meetings missed, birthdays and other events forgotten. Liberties are inevitably taken as familiarity and complacency set in. And as these semesters pass, the youthful dreams of grandeur fade into the disillusionment of reality. The myths of the first date exposed. The lies uncovered. The flaccid decision-making. The toenail clippings. The bloated curriculum vitae. All of it will tend to come together at the end of our life’s semester like a struggling student facing the onrushing specter of exam week.

For any student, the decision to withdraw from a class is not an easy one to make. Neither is it easy for tenured faculty to withdraw from a relationship that once held so much promise. And yet the premature withdrawal is clearly the safer option. Withdraw too late and there may be severe repercussions. Withdraw too early and you may deny yourself the rewards of your initial efforts. Like so many things in life, therefore, this too is all about the timing. And so the decision is not an easy one indeed. Newly bewildered, the degree-seeking student may be left to continue blindly on with the purposeful movements that have brought her to this point in time and space, while the faculty member who has given up any claims to love will be left to withdraw his affections before the consequences of his efforts are allowed to become too great. But when? This is the question that has confused the world’s greatest lovers and given birth to the bulk of our humanity. For neither ‘why’ nor ‘how’ can flummox the great lover like the eternal question: when?

(…)

“So what does this shit mean, Charlie?”

“It doesn’t mean anything….”

“Doesn’t it?”

“No.”

“Well, shouldn’t it?”

“No, it shouldn’t.”

“And yet there has to be a larger meaning in all this,” she said. Sliding her hands down my boxers, she repeated: “There has to be something more than this!”

“I’m sorry, Bess!” I said and grabbing her by the wrist I took her hand out of my boxers. “This whole thing is all wrong. It’s not how I’d planned it. This weekend. The semester. None of it.”

Bessie grunted. Then, with a sudden motion, she kicked away the towel that had dropped to the floor around her ankles. Now she was even more revealed than ever. Her breasts full and supple. Her wet hair undone around her shoulders.

“Love me,” Bessie said. “While my waters are still flowing.”

I moved to speak. But before I could, a woman’s voice interrupted:

“No!” Bessie objected. “You’ve got to get back to the conference room! They’re all waiting for you!”

And so, struggling to keep it all straight, I stepped out of my boxers and headed back down the hallway toward the conference room with my scissors still in hand.

*

“Oh my god!” shrieked the ethics teacher when I walked into the conference room. “What happened to your beard? It looks like you cut it with a steak knife.”

“Or an emasculator,” added the nursing instructor. “Here, let me get you a napkin for those cuts…!”

“No time for that!” I objected. “We’re almost done with our session, ladies and gentlemen, and there’s only a little more to go!” Casting my wand toward the flipchart I proceeded to call the symphony back into session. “Let’s move on to the next great question, shall we? Hey, Bessie…!”

Bessie flipped over the large paper to reveal the next page:

QUESTION: Please describe your ideal Christmas party.

“Very well,” I said. “So as you can see, the next question concerns a very important issue on our campus. For many years Cow Eye Community College has had a Christmas party and it was a unifying event….” With a grand flourish I gestured with my wand to indicate that our discussion was now in vigorous session.

“Jesus Christ, watch out with those scissors…!” someone shrieked and ducked.

I continued:

“….Our Christmas party has historically been a unifying event, but recently it has become something else entirely. Recently, you see, it has been taken out of context and has been used as an instrument in the battle between our two competing factions on campus. It has been co-opted. It has been bent over and molested like an F-1 student taking a creative writing class thousands of miles from her homeland. And so we would like to rescue her — to save her dignity before it is too late. But to do this we need to start from the beginning.”

“Which beginning?”

“The beginning.”

“You mean the very beginning? Before she left her country for the shining promise of Cow Eye Junction?”

“Yes, that beginning. So please forget anything that you have ever known about Christmas. Please cast aside any previous preconceptions or prejudices about what a Christmas party should be. What it should look like. What is or is not possible. Let’s start the slow redemption of our campus from the very beginning, shall we? Let’s begin the restoration of our Christmas party from scratch by answering this simple question in its most broad and open-ended form….”

The participants were staring back at me with blank expressions.

“…Yes!” I said. “Let’s do that very thing. Let’s throw all else aside and simply answer the question that Bessie has just revealed by flipping over the large sheet of paper. Bessie, can you read it again, please…?”

“They can read for themselves, Charlie…”

“Yes, I know that. They are educators. But could you just repeat it out loud for emphasis…?”

Bessie rolled her eyes. Then she cleared her throat and said:

“Describe….your ideal….Christmas party….”

I paused.

“Right. So now you’ve all heard it multiple times. Please describe your ideal Christmas party. Pretty fucking straightforward, wouldn’t you say? So would somebody like to begin this discussion?”

I paused again. I had already prepared myself to plead for a volunteer. But this time the response came immediately:

“For me,” said the ethics teacher, “the ideal Christmas party would be more — oh, what’s the word? — inclusive. Yes, it would be inclusive. Which means the occasion would have to go beyond what it has traditionally been, to become something that it has never been, something that anyone could enjoy. With some creative envisioning and a little hard work it could be welcoming and inviting no matter where a person came from — whether they hail from Cow Eye Junction itself…or the larger Diahwa Valley Basin…or Idaho…or even someplace as exotic and ineffable as California! A beautiful Christmas party, you see, would be friendly and all-embracing — two metaphorical arms opening wide to welcome the tired and huddled masses into our cafeteria. It would celebrate our unity. Our oneness. It would cast aside the differences that separate us as human beings while glorifying these differences at the same time. It would explore our diversity and differentness, the amazing heterogeneity of the world in all its complexity, yet do so in a unifying and harmonious way. The Jew. The Gentile. The Muslim. The Sikh. Rich and poor. Black and White. Atheist or god-fearing. Agnostics. All of them should feel welcome to attend our Christmas party at Cow Eye Community College because they should feel that it is a part of them. That this Christmas party is their Christmas party. That it belongs to them all. For this is the true spirit of Christmas, right?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I am just an untenured facilitator. But thank you for your comments. You’ve given us much to think about.” Turning to Bessie, I asked: “Are you getting all this?”

“Of course,” she said.

Then the art historian spoke up:

“For me,” she said, “the party would not just be a simple party. We’ve all been to countless examples of those, right? You come. You sit. You sing Christmas carols in different keys at the same time. You drink eggnog. You exchange gifts. You kiss inebriated co-workers under the mistletoe. You engage in a litany of carefully orchestrated merriment in the name of Christmas. Then you return home. And the outcome? There isn’t any! And so it becomes a wasted opportunity. No, our party should be much more than just another party. It should be a celebration of life. It should feature the many glories of our school and faculty. Ideally, it would be a showcase of our college’s achievements. Its accomplishments. Its departments. From the social sciences to the actual sciences. From the humanities to the trades. It should feature all of our individual talents. In this way it would be a true commemoration of our humanity. It would reaffirm our status as living breathing feeling beings. It would bring us together as guardians of the universe. It would tell the world that we are not just mere educators at a small rural community college. We are citizens of the world! We are human beings, damn it! We are people! The people!!”

To this I nodded:

“I believe that can be arranged. Anything else?”

“Yes,” said the music teacher. “An ideal Christmas party would involve not just the faculty and staff of the college but everyone who makes up the rich fabric of our college. It would be open to students — who are the core of our mission, after all. And it would feature their talents. An ideal celebration would involve the entire campus, everyone from the dean of instruction to the groundskeepers. From the president of the college to its financial aid workers. From the woman with the hair net to the security guard with the Polaroid camera. Liberty and justice for all. And I do mean all!”

“Even the adjuncts?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far….”

On the locals’ side of the table the gunsmithing instructor was preparing to speak. Seizing the first available pause, he said:

“Well!” At the impressive sound of his own voice, the gunsmithing instructor looked around the table significantly. Then he elaborated: “Well! This is all fine and good. Diversity is fine and good. Love is fine and good. Hell, Jesus Christ himself was pretty damn fine and good. But we should not lose sight of one thing. In trying to diversify our Christmas experience we should not cast aside the essence of what makes Cow Eye unique. We should ensure that our Christmas party reflects the unique local culture of our region. We should organize our party in such a way as to encourage each and every participant to ‘love and respect the culture of Cow Eye’….”

I looked over at Bessie, who was dutifully transcribing everything.

“Your ideas have been noted. And appreciated. Is there anything else you’d like to add? Is there something else that we may have missed that you would like to see in our Christmas party?”

“Yes,” they said.

“There is?”

“Yes,” they said again.

“What?” I asked. “I mean, what specifically? You see it is late in the afternoon and our session is coming to a close. Now is the time to bare your souls. Remember, this will be your last chance. From here Bessie and I will go to my office for a quick but memorable debrief. And from there I will immediately set about writing the report that will be included as appendices in the self-study and that will be used to guide our plans for the Christmas party. So what specifically would you like to see incorporated into these plans? What can you suggest that will make this the most memorable and successful — the most unifying — Christmas party ever?”

And so, breathlessly, they began to give their suggestions. Over the next few hours I noted their very specific ideas for re-envisioning our Christmas party for the betterment of Cow Eye Community College and the long-term success of our students:

“I think we should serve even more beer!”

“And wine!”

“And definitely hard liquor!”

“Make sure there are more vegetables.”

“But less arugula!”

“Offer beef.”

“But no meat!

“Have line dancing.”

“And massages.”

“And yoga.”

“Don’t forget caroling!”

“Peace and harmony.”

“Mistletoe.”

“Innovation.”

“Tradition.”

“Ethnic diversity.”

“Orgasm.”

“Castration.”

“Fishing.”

“Flags of the world.”

“Smoking.”

“Tender anal sex.”

“Hand guns.”

“Fruitcake.”

“A truck show!”

“Let’s make it clothing-optional this year!”

“Esperanto.”

“Anglicanism.”

“Love!”

“Love?”

“Yes, love!”

*

And so it was that I teased out their deepest desires like prunes from a package. And it was in this way that I learned what our faculty and staff truly wanted from their ideal Christmas experience. Like anyone else, they wanted the same tangible outcome from this campus-wide event that they wanted from life itself: to be both entertained and enlightened; to be guided yet deferred to; to be nurtured yet revered; to be innocent and hopeful yet infinitely wise to the ways of the world. Which is to say they wanted nothing of the sort. Neither love nor hate. Neither beer nor wine. Neither eggnog nor its opposite.

“Meat,” they urged.

“But not meat.”

“Arugula,” they insisted.

“But not arugula.”

“Fun.”

“But meaningful.”

“Better roads.”

“But lower taxes.”

“Tradition.”

“But innovation.”

“Inspiring.”

“But realistic!”

“Funny.”

“But not frivolous.”

“Romantic.”

“But sincere.”

“Intelligent.”

“But free from arrogance or didacticism.”

I listened carefully. Bessie took detailed notes. And as I took it all in I nodded at each conflicting comment that would guide my envisioning of the Christmas party. And when they had finished their answering, and when we had wrapped up our focus group, I collected their evaluations and looking up from my conductor’s stand I placed my wand conclusively on the conference table in front of me:

“Thank you very much,” I said. “Everything you’ve just articulated has been duly noted. It will be transcribed and collated and surely incorporated into our plans for our upcoming Christmas party.”

“All of it?”

“Without exception.” I waited for my words to resonate on a deeper level. It was clear that so many years at Cow Eye had taught my colleagues not to trust such promises. But now as I looked around the room I thought I could see the entrenched looks of desiccation and despair slowly turning to ones of verdant optimism. The flicker of that most human desire to believe in something unbelievable was starting to emerge. Quietly, I made a mental note of the change. Then I said:

“So having gone through this elaborate process of earning your complicity, can we expect to see you at our Christmas party on December eleventh? Your presence is crucial to the success of our party. And it is vital to my own attempt to leave a legacy of some sort….” By now the participants were anxious to exit the conference room and seemed to be in a funk. (Many were already late for their evening plans; several were grumbling about the lengthiness of the session: “Four hours, my ass!” one muttered.) “….If I can somehow manage to work all of your suggestions into our upcoming Christmas party — if I can bring all these disparate elements together — would you be so good as to honor us with your presence?”

I expected a resounding and grateful assent; instead I got this:

“Perhaps,” they all answered. “Though it is still too early to say. Allegiance, you know, is only skin-deep. So we’ll have to get back to you on that….”

“We?” I asked once again.

And once again they responded:

“Yes, Charlie. We.”

And so I turned to Rusty. And then to Gwen. And after thanking them for their respective pills, I proffered the same question to each of them that I’d posed to my focus group:

“Will the two of you be attending our Christmas party?” I asked. “Because if each of you comes then the rest of your colleagues — both sides of the very wide conference table — will be sure to follow. You hold my fate in your hands, my legacy. In your hands is the fate of our college as a whole. And its legacy. An entwined legacy is in both of your hands, like the love vine that wraps ever so lovingly around the cherry tree. So will you come?”

Again their answer was equivocal:

“It depends,” they said.

“On what?”

“On quite a bit.”

“Such as?”

“The menu, for one. I will come if there are no vegetables.”

“And I will attend if there is no meat.”

“None at all?”

“Right.”

“And that is non-negotiable for you both?”

“Yes.”

“So neither of you is coming then?”

“It seems that way.”

“And in this regard you’re both in full and total agreement?”

“Yes.”

When I broke the news to Dr. Felch, he seemed to take it in stride, though with a certain sadness and resignation. We were sitting in the empty cafeteria where the party was due to be held later that week. It was already early December yet not a single light had been strung. No tree had been set up. No tinsel was in place. Using a match to light up a cigarette — his sixteenth — Dr. Felch threw his boots up on a cafeteria table and took a long and significant pull of the nicotine.

“I probably should have known it would end like this,” he said. “In smoke. In ignominy. I should have recognized that it would be too much. That I was asking too much of you given the state of our divided faculty.”

“It’s not over yet, Mr. Felch. We can still pull this off…!”

“How can it not be over? It’s December tenth, for Christ’s sake. The party was supposed to be tomorrow. And nothing’s ready. Nobody’s coming. That much is clear. So how can it not be over?”

“I have a plan. I mean not at the moment, I don’t. But I will have a plan. I’ll come up with a plan to make it all work out.”

“And when can I hear this plan of yours?”

“What time is it now?”

Dr. Felch checked his watch:

“It’s two o’clock, Charlie.”

“Two o’clock?”

“Yes, two o’clock. Just meet us there on the gravel between the two old trucks on blocks. We’ll be waiting for you….”

“We?”

“Yes, the four of us will be waiting for you at the end of my gravel driveway at two o’clock.”

“Right,” I said and pulled up my boxers. “Two o’clock. I’ll be there for sure.” Then I looked at Dr. Felch and said: “On Monday morning I’ll present my plan to you. I’ll present it right after the focus group report that I’m supposed to have for you at that time. Bessie will not be happy. But I’ll just have to take more time to work on it this weekend. And I’ll present them both to you on Monday morning.”

“Monday morning, you say?”

“Yes, Monday morning.”

“So we’ll see you at two o’clock then?” she said for the final time.

“Of course,” I said. “At two o’clock. I’m looking forward to the fruitcake!”

Tentatively, I took another handful of the pills I’d been given — equal amounts of Rusty’s and Gwen’s — and washed them down with a glassful of water. Checking my watch, I stumbled out of my office toward the cafeteria.

* * *

THE PLAN

“So what exactly is your plan?” said Raul one afternoon late in the semester. “Now that the decision has been made to cancel the Christmas party?” He and I were standing outside a professional development lecture on increasing our personal and professional serving capacity.

“The party hasn’t been canceled, Raul. Cancellation would imply defeat. It’s merely been postponed. Until further notice….”

“Okay. So what’s your plan now that the annual Christmas party has been postponed until further notice. And for the second year in a row, I might add?”

“My plan is simple….” Here I pulled out the two vials from my shirt pocket. “First, I will take a few more of these pills that Gwen and Rusty have given me….”

“Gwen and Rusty gave you pills?”

“Yes. One to fall asleep. And the other to stay awake.”

“Do they work?”

“No, they do not. Not yet. Or at least not entirely. So far each seems to be working and also not working at the same time. Perhaps because I have not yet taken enough of either one. Perhaps because I have not committed to them entirely — it’s hard to say. So to be safe I will take them both. And in very large quantities. To increase their efficiency I will take twice as many as prescribed and I will take them thrice as often. I will wash them down with water from the tap. Then I will spend the entire weekend finishing up my focus group report. And when that’s done I’ll use the remaining time during the weekend to develop a comprehensive proposal for the Christmas party.”

“What about Bessie? I thought you two had something planned for this weekend? Something you’d been planning for several months? Something involving a few days’ worth of food, a week’s worth of beer, and a semester’s worth of pent-up desire? I thought this was some sort of last-gasp attempt to salvage your relationship?”

“It was. But now I need to re-envision my priorities. I’ve been professionally remiss up to this point. Negligent to some extent. Bordering, I’m afraid, on unprofessionalism. I’ve allowed myself to be distracted by inconsequential things. But that needs to change. From now on I will need to stay supremely focused. And that begins with getting my priorities straight.”

“At Bessie’s expense….”

“That might be one way to look at it. But the other way is that I’ve been spending far too much time at my apartment with her and not nearly enough time at my lonely desk with my plans for the Christmas party. So this will be a way to make my amends. To bring it all back into balance.”

“Fair enough. But how are you going to represent this visually?”

“Huh?”

“Now that you’ve decided to realign your priorities, how are you planning to represent these changes in a form that is visually stimulating? You really should put everything down on paper so you’ll have something tangible to commit to entirely. Here, try this….”

Raul took out a pen and began drawing. After a few minutes he handed me the following diagram to illustrate my shifting priorities:

“That’s very helpful,” I admitted. “Can I keep it?”

“For now. But I’ll need it back eventually….”

I folded the paper and put it in my pocket with the others.

“So as I was saying…I will use this weekend with Bessie not just to write my focus group report but also to create a plan for the Christmas party. And the plan for the party will incorporate feedback from each of the faculty who attended my high-stakes focus group. My plan will honor every constructive comment that was given, as well as honoring those helpful comments that are not so constructive. It will incorporate every suggestion. Every whim. Every stray thought that might enter the mind of a certificated human being. Every inclination. Every pent-up longing. Every caprice. Every institutional yearning. Every yen. Every intellectual craving. Every flight of fancy. Every aching impulse. My plan, Raul, will address every desire of an academic or personal nature regardless of its intrinsic measurability or merit….”

“Even the Truck Show?”

“Yes.”

“And hard liquor?”

“Yes.”

“How about flags from different parts of the world?”

“Yes.”

“And tender anal sex?”

“Of course.”

“Are you inviting the adjuncts?”

“Even that is a remote possibility. You see, all of these things will certainly need to be included in the plan. And on Monday I will meet Dr. Felch in his office to present my proposal for a new kind of Christmas party that incorporates all of these disparate elements.”

“So it sounds like your plan for the party consists of….creating a plan?”

“Yes. I am an educational administrator. It’s what I do: I plan. And I write reports. And in the rare moments when I am doing neither of these — which is to say somewhere in the very middle of it all, between planning and reporting, if circumstances happen to permit — I will spend a tiny sliver of my time (no more than a Mercury dime, really) doing actual work, which is to say, implementing the plans that I have devised and that I will one day sit in a quiet room writing urgent reports on.”

“I see. Well, the important thing is you finally have a plan.”

“I do. I have a plan. Or more specifically, I have a plan for a plan. But enough about me. How about you, Raul? It’s the holiday season. Christmas is fast approaching. As an ardent Catholic and former resident of Barcelona in a previous incarnation, what are your plans for the break?”

“I’m finally going to Texas!” At this Raul laughed and shook my hand before heading off for his winter vacation. “That bastion of Lone-Star Catholicism,” he said. Then looking over his shoulder, he added: “I’ll be gone for a month and won’t be back until after the semester starts. So wish me luck…!”

And I did.

*

December eleventh passed quietly. For the second year in a row the holiday season rose and fell without the yuletide glow of a campus-wide Christmas party. On December tenth a flyer was distributed to the mailboxes of all faculty and staff announcing that the party would be postponed. On December eleventh the cases of beer that had been moved into the cafeteria for the occasion were moved back out. And on December twelfth, exactly as scheduled, the semester itself ended. Unceremoniously. Abruptly. Within hours the campus had emptied out like a dam whose walls have failed it. The depleted students poured past Timmy at the guard shack clutching their book bags and their bookmarks and their book lists — none of them bothered to carry books anymore — followed by their instructors, who exited through the gate on their own semi-annual exodus from verdure to desiccation. The business office closed. The library grew quiet. Even the Dimwiddle Student Union, with its worn teal carpet and flickering 22-inch color television set, shuttered its doors for the break. For the first time since the sun first rose on this long semester there were no jugglers to do their juggling. No cheerleaders performing cartwheels. No bicyclists. No students singing protest under the sycamore. The parking lots emptied out. The bicycles sat unattended. Even the timeless sounds of paperwork getting done — the hammering of staplers, the clacking of typewriters, the thumping of rubber stamps — quickly faded into oblivion as the administrative workers took their holiday leave between semesters.

By now the days had grown shorter and darker until the sunlight could not get any shorter or any darker. The wind through the campus blew cold and dreary. The leaves on the deciduous trees turned brown and barren; and then they too were gone.

All around the town of Cow Eye Junction, meanwhile, Christmas was arriving. Shiny garlands had been wrapped around the lamp posts. Bells jingled. Christmas music played on the AM radio station. In the town square between the mayor’s office and the county jail, a resplendent fir tree had been erected complete with an angel perched on top. Even the eclectic establishments at the Purlieus were getting into the season as shops took to selling scented candles in green and red colors, the opium dens strung Christmas lights outside their windows, and the various massage parlors offered holiday-themed discovery sessions complete with young women dressed as Santa’s helpers. And through it all, the pendulum in my office continued to tick, the metal orbs swinging back then forth like the incessant sway of oscillating priorities.

Back in my apartment, I could only look up from my report at the harsh sounds on the other side of my apartment wall: the pounding, the music, the crashing dishes and heaving bedsprings and the roar of what sounded like a housecat being strangled incrementally. All of it continued even as the tumult of accredited learning came to rest and the Christmas break began. It was familiar and expected. Yet amid the quiet of a deserted campus the sounds beyond the wall seemed to have grown even louder and more insistent. As if they would never end. As if mathematics itself would not relent. Now it seemed that the incredible clamor of youthful passions might continue on and on — the restless emanation extending so far into perpetuity that it might never recognize the beginning of its incipient dissolution or even the final limitations of its own incarnation. In the fading light of the semester it seemed that the sound of youthful ecstasy really would last and last forever.

Except, of course, that it can’t.

Just as unexpectedly as it had begun, the sound from the neighboring apartment unexpectedly died away. Less than twenty-four hours after the semester ended, the refrains of mathematical discovery dissolved into nothing. The screaming stopped. The music ceased. No animals were trumpeting. No lions roared. No caterwauling. Nary a housecat. Everything was quiet. Not a single breath of noise could be heard to emanate from the other side of the wall. Pure silence had finally arrived, and in utter astonishment I found this silence enveloping me for the first time since the early days of the semester when the innocence of unsuspecting sleep was so cruelly disrupted by my neighbors’ clamorous return from North Carolina. Now I could rejoice. And rest. Eminently alone, I could celebrate the quiet and the calm at the same time. The peace that had emerged from the discord. The hope that comes out of despair. The silence from sound. Belatedly, I could enjoy the conciliation that emanates from conflict, the sleep that must surely come at the end of extended wakefulness. Yes, it had been a trying few months; but it had also been strangely gratifying and well worth the wait because now, at long last, I would be able to sleep it all away.

*

Except that now I couldn’t.

Unaccustomed to the emptiness of quiet, I found myself even more awake than before, my anticipation aroused, my senses fresh and aware. New silence, it turns out, can be even more conspicuous than familiar noise. And so I sat on the edge of my bed, unable to focus on any thought, waiting amid the unfamiliar silence for the next sound to occur. For an explosion that never came. For the triumphant mammalian ejaculation that never resounded. And the more these sounds didn’t come, the more I expected them to come. The quieter their absence, the louder their presence in my own mind. Alone amid perfect silence — after so much sound and tumult — I found myself noticing the great irony of troubled sleep: the more you need it, the less it comes.

I couldn’t sleep!

Impotent and exhausted, I paced in the still apartment. Then I took two more pills and washed them down with lukewarm water from the tap. My hands trembling even more from this new lack of sleep, I grabbed the book that lay on my nightstand.

*

“Are you kidding me?” said Bessie. “After all this time, now you tell me about this plan? Now you tell me about your plan to draft a proposal for a plan? I’ve been waiting two days for you to finish that damn focus group report! And now that it’s done you tell me you’re going to spend the rest of our short weekend developing your ideas for a Christmas party? Are you kidding me?”

“I’m sorry, Bess….” I reached out to her again; but again she slapped away my hand. “Look, I’m sorry but I’ve got to do this. I’m not as young as I used to be. And my legacy depends on it. I’ve got to make this Christmas party happen. It’s important….”

“It’s not important.”

“It is important….”

“It’s just a party!”

“No, it’s not. It’s much more. It’s a gathering of the senses. It’s a metaphor for life itself. It’s a symbol of my short time on this earth. This party is a chance to make a meaningful contribution to humanity. And so it has quite simply come to represent my hopes and dreams and wishes. It will be my statement to the world. My message for posterity. My legacy. And that’s why it’s so important.”

“It’s more important than our weekend?”

“Yes.”

“More important than us?

“Well, yes.”

“Than me?”

“Yes.”

“Would you care to explain?”

“Don’t take it personally, Bess, it’s just that there are hundreds of people whose fates depend on this party. Faculty. Staff. Students. Accreditors. The maggots behind the cafeteria. Hell, there are people who are not even born yet who will enjoy the fruits of my efforts, whose children will one day be suckled on the nectar of accredited learning. Wouldn’t you agree that just in terms of sheer numbers all of them taken as a whole are more important than a single individual? Wouldn’t you have to acknowledge that all of this together is of far greater significance than a single one of you…?”

“Quantitatively?”

“Yes. Numerically speaking wouldn’t you agree that….”

“No. I wouldn’t, actually. Because I am not your fucking institutional researcher. And I do not desire to be an integer on your, or anybody else’s, number line of real and imagined numbers.”

“Bess…!”

“Or is that what you’re thinking?”

“Bess?”

“Would you prefer that I remain just another piece of comparative data for you?”

“Bessie!”

“A statistical footnote? A chart containing verifiable evidence? A mere bullet — the fourth or fifth in a long list, perhaps — in your bulleted list of priorities?”

“Of course not…!”

Bessie was putting on her clothes.

“Yeah, well, you do what you want, Charlie. Enjoy your report. Enjoy your plan. I’ll see you when you’ve ceased to be an educational administrator and are ready to become a human being….”

Bessie left, slamming the door behind her. Yet again I was left with my lamp and my report. And once again I was left with an unfinished plan. And so, in the new solitude of falling day, I sat down to continue my writing.

*

Dr. Felch was cleaning out his spittoon when I came into his office on Monday morning.

“Just a second,” he said. Carefully, he tilted the urn and dumped the contents into a plastic wastepaper basket. It was already late autumn, the fluids were flowing slowly, and this took some time. I waited patiently. Finally, Dr. Felch looked up at me:

“So how was your weekend?” As he spoke he gazed over at me from the still-inverted spittoon. “I heard it was something of a do-or-die for you and Bess….”

“It was fine,” I said. “It was okay.”

“No adventures?”

“A few, yes. I completely ruined our weekend together. And my hand is still cramped from trying to put down so many different ideas in handwritten form. My eyes are still blurry from the dim lighting. Or maybe it’s from the pills — it’s hard to say. In any case, I did what I could.”

“It’s God’s work, Charlie. And please know that the world appreciates it.” Dr. Felch banged the spittoon against the inside of the trashcan. A large glob of contents plopped out. Then he said: “Is the report ready?”

“Of course….”

I slid the outcomes of the focus group across his desk.

“Good. And your plan for the Christmas party?”

“It’s ready too.”

“Well then…” said Dr. Felch. “Let’s hear what you’ve come up with…!”

Dr. Felch set the emptied spittoon on the floor next to his desk. The spittoon was fashioned from brass and sparkled against the weak rays of sun coming in through the window. I followed a patch of light that had been thrown onto one wall and was glimmering there: a reflection in the shape of a crescent moon. Then I cleared my throat and began to propose my plan to resurrect our fallen Christmas party and, in so doing, to rescue our struggling community college from the precipice of institutional ruin.

*

“First,” I said, “I will need a strong financial commitment from the college. It will not be a trivial sum, Dr. Felch, so I’m hoping you can tap into the Dimwiddle endowment. Our accreditation is at stake. The very fate of our institution depends on it. We’re under siege. The enemy is attacking us with high-powered artillery. It’s a bloody, all-out battle for our very survival. The Dimwiddles should be able to identify with this metaphor, shouldn’t they?”

“How much do you need?”

When I told him the amount, Dr. Felch whistled:

“That much!”

“Yes. In cash.”

“That is definitely not a trivial amount!”

“It’s not. But trust me, it will be money well spent.”

“I can’t promise the Dimwiddles will go for it. And it’s not like we have that sort of money just lying around. And in cash no less. Anyway, I’ll see what I can do…”

“Great. Now as to the plan itself….”

Dr. Felch had put a pinch of tobacco in his lip and for the first time since I’d arrived into the makeshift bus shelter it seemed I had captivated his full attention — that he wasn’t half-engaged in a parallel activity of some sort. My voice was calm. My demeanor was steady. Somehow my exhaustion had coalesced into purposefulness. And as I sat in his office, the smell of wintergreen filling my nostrils, I moved aggressively toward my rhetorical destination:

“….First of all, we need to re-envision the timing of our event. We have obviously missed the chance to hold the party on December eleventh during the traditional holiday season. The semester ends the day after that. Everyone will be leaving for the break. So we will need to postpone the Christmas party to another date.”

“Not cancel it?”

“No. Postpone it. Until mid-March.”

“March?!”

“Yes. Let me explain….”

Dr. Felch was still looking at me skeptically. I elaborated:

“You see, sir, our accreditors are due to visit the campus in mid-March during the traditional accreditation season. Which means we can schedule the Christmas party during their visit. This will serve three purposes: first, it will act as direct evidence that we’ve followed through on our plan to hold this Christmas party — the accreditors can experience it with their own eyes — which is something we’ve already mentioned in our self-study as an example of how we foster unity of purpose via morale-building events. Second, the party can become a sort of symbol for all that is life-affirming in the world: the coming of eternal spring, the promise of re-emerging life, the birth and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and, most importantly, the re-affirmation of our college’s regional accreditation. In other words, we can honor all of these glorious incarnations in one fell swoop! Third — and perhaps most importantly from the standpoint of institutional viability — is that having the party during the March visit of our accreditors will raise the stakes of the party itself: faculty will be more likely to attend if they know that their livelihood is somehow dependent on it.”

Dr. Felch smiled at the thought.

“…You see,” I continued, “…if the fate of our faculty depends on the fate of our college….and the fate of our college depends on its accreditation….and our accreditation can be made to depend on the Christmas party, well then, it stands to reason that the fate of our individual faculty members depends on their collective attendance at our Christmas party! It is all very logical. Look, I even have a visual representation that Raul helped me come up with….”

And here I unfolded the paper and held it up so Dr. Felch could see:

Dr. Felch nodded at the concept:

“Hmmm….interesting idea. A Christmas party in March. With accreditors….”

“Yes. And eggnog. I mean, why not? Why are such things always held in December? Why can’t we think outside the box every once in a while? Let’s not be afraid to innovate a little. Let us not be fearful of change. And besides, we’ve got nothing to lose by trying, right?”

“Okay, what else are you proposing?”

“All right. So we will schedule our party for mid-March when our accreditors are on campus. But instead of it being a single two-hour event as it has been in the past, this time we will hold it over several days. In fact, we’ll have an entire week’s worth of Christmas events taking place in honor of the accreditors’ visit. A Christmas week. It will be a coordinated series of activities that we will intricately plan and meticulously implement. And of course we will christen the whole thing with a catchy name along the lines of The Cow Eye International Festival of Tolerance and Goodwill…or The Semi-Annual Christmas Week Gala and Extravaganza….or some other captivating conceit like that. (Sorry, Mr. Felch, it’s been a hectic weekend and I haven’t quite thought through all these details yet….) In any case, having our celebration over an entire week in March will give us more time to impress our accreditors, to unify our faculty, and to build gradually toward the ultimate culmination of events at the Christmas party itself on Friday, March twentieth….”

I had expected a rousing expression of encouragement from Dr. Felch. But instead he said nothing. He seemed lost in thought. Then he motioned for me to continue, which I did:

“Of course, you and I both know that certain community college faculty have an unfortunate tendency toward insouciance. They pride themselves on thinking for themselves — on doing everything their own way — on exercising their critical-thinking skills despite the obvious consequences to intra-faculty harmony. And so these individuals will have to be enticed to action using more subtle devices than altruism or professional duty alone.”

“It’s good you understand that.”

“I do. And so I will make sure to appeal to them on many levels. I will appeal to their self-interest. I will appeal to their incessant need for personal and intellectual gratification. Their constant need to be revered. Their ingrained longing for adulation, the need for deferential attention and attentive deference, the human frailty that draws them to the head of a classroom filled with impressionable learners. Their need for an admiring audience, you see, will be our saving grace because it can be harnessed for the purpose of our party!”

“Which is to say?”

“Which is to say we will hold a talent contest!”

“At the Christmas party?”

“Yes! And after that we will present our faculty with awards.”

“For what?”

“Well for being, say, Most Improved Teacher. Or Educator of the Moment. Or maybe we can give a Student’s Choice award for mesmerizing instruction. In short, we will honor them with flattery and recognition….”

Dr. Felch shook his head. I continued:

“….But most importantly, we will listen. We will listen respectfully to what they have said. And we will defer to their better judgment. In other words, I will make a point to incorporate every single comment made during the focus group that they attended. Every whim they’ve expressed. Every caprice. Every pent-up desire and longing of a repressed soul. Every suggestion. Every concern. If you approve my plan, Dr. Felch, this will be a Christmas party that is of the people, by the people, for the people. A party that emphasizes the pursuit of happiness in all its contrasting guises. It will be a melting pot of rugged individualism and inspired egalitarianism and enlightened self-interest — all mixed together like ingredients in a hearty stew….”

I paused to savor the comparison. Then I continued:

“Trust me, Dr. Felch, I am committed to getting one-hundred percent participation at this Christmas party. Every single faculty and staff of our college should be in that cafeteria on March twentieth for our Christmas party.”

“You’re dreaming, Charlie. It’s a small room. And we’ve never had one-hundred percent attendance for a Christmas party. Ever. Not even when things were going well on campus. Not even when our demographics were homogenous. Not even when we brought in the world-famous hypnotist to perform next to the Yule tree.”

“That may be so. But we’re going to have it this year! If it’s the last thing I do as a living, breathing, self-respecting educational administrator, I am going to bring both sides of your divided faculty and staff into that cafeteria to attend that godforsaken Christmas party….”

“You are?”

“Yes, I am.”

*

And so over the next few hours I shared my plans to entice our faculty and staff to attend the Christmas party. In breathless tones I detailed how I would use the specter of failed accreditation to compel the conscientious; the promise of tenure to attract the careerists; and an elaborate awards ceremony to entice the CV-centric. I explained how I would emphasize the value of Christmas itself to court the religious, and the prospect of unity and togetherness to attract the spiritual. To bring in the locals I would adhere to culture and tradition, while to the neophytes I would offer a series of innovations as sweeping as they were arbitrary. One by one by one, I shared with Dr. Felch my ideas for attracting my colleagues to our party. The atheists. The anti-socials. The agnostics. Somehow I would lure both Jew and Gentile into the small cafeteria. Vegetarian and anti-vegetarian. Friend and foe. Specialist and generalist. Sunni and Shiite. The poet. The empiricist. The agoraphobe. The dreamer. The cliometrician. Sam Middleton. All of them would come to our Christmas party in March where they would be treated to a truly inspiring, a genuinely sensational, an eminently toe-curling and earth-shattering Christmas yuletide experience that would demonstrate once and for all the amazing….

“Are you done?”

“Huh?”

“Are you done, Charlie?”

In my reverie I had lost track of time. I had misplaced my train of thought. With the back of my hand I wiped away the spittle that had accumulated at the corners of my mouth:

“Yes,” I said. “I’m done.”

Dr. Felch handed me a handkerchief.

“I appreciate your enthusiasm here, Charlie. And I admire your ambition. But let me ask you a question that cuts to the heart of the matter….”

“Yes, sir!”

“….Sure, you can get all these people there. It seems you have a plan for that. And plans, of course, are crucial to our profession. But what about Rusty? And what about Gwen? If you don’t get them to come, their acolytes will pull out as well. But those two are as tough as they are tenured and they won’t be easily swayed toward your festivities. Hell, Rusty’s an old friend of mine, and even I can’t persuade him to make peace with the inevitable. Gwen is about as non-denominational as they come — and she is even more anti-Rusty than that — and just as obdurate in her ways. The likelihood of getting those two together into such a small segment of time and space for something of this magnitude, something this divisive — this decisive — is not great. So what’s your plan to accomplish this? What’s your plan for them, Charlie?”

At this I said, “Dr. Felch, I thought you might ask me this. And so I’ll answer as honestly as I can. Which is to say…to be perfectly honest, I don’t have a plan for them. At least not yet.”

“No plan?!”

“No.”

“And you call yourself an educational administrator?”

“Well, I don’t have a plan. But I do have a plan to formulate a plan.”

“A plan for a plan?”

“Yes!”

And here I acknowledged that I had no plan to get Rusty and Gwen to come to our Christmas party. But that somewhere between vegetarianism and anti-vegetarianism there must surely be a menu that could appeal to them both.

“No, sir, I don’t have a plan quite yet,” I concluded. “But I do have every intention of working on these two diametrical antitheses to get them both to come.”

“How?”

“Like this….” And running down the esplanade I called out to Gwen from behind:

“Wait!” I yelled. “Hey, Gwen, wait a second…!”

Gwen stopped to look back at me, surprised.

“Gwen, wait a minute please. May I rejoin you on your inexorable walk down this very long esplanade?”

“You already have, I suppose. Just keep up the pace because I’m running late….”

I agreed, joining her progression in lockstep. Then I turned to Rusty, who was now standing next to the clepsydra outside his museum and packing away his things for the day.

“Can I catch a ride back to campus?” I asked him.

“You still haven’t bought a truck of your own?” he answered. “Or at least a car?”

“No,” I said. “It’s too politicized a decision. So can I get a ride back to campus in the meantime?”

“Okay, but don’t expect me to drive very fast….”

“No, of course not…!”

Rusty opened the door of his truck and I climbed in.

At last I was sitting in Rusty’s new Dodge. And walking down the Esplanade with Gwen. Now I was waving my conductor’s wand over the dissolution left in the wake of my high-stakes focus group. And once again I was holding my pistol and aiming it at the silhouette of onrushing events in the distance.

“Are you ever going to pull that trigger?” Ethel asked. “Or are you just going to stand there aiming into the distance like that?”

It was a valid question. In response I took closer aim at my far-away target and once again began to squeeze the cold metal of the trigger.

*

In time the Christmas break began in earnest and I rallied my strength around developing a plan for the Christmas party in March. When my strength failed, I took pills. And when my pills failed I took even more pills. When they ran out I caught a ride with Marsha Greenbaum to the Purlieus where I bought several more vials from the long-haired man under the resplendent bough of holly. Colors ran together. Days ran together. Events ran together. Word after word ran together, and still in the very background of it all there was the clacking of my pendulum, the quiet of my apartment, and somewhere off in the distance a very light knocking at my door.

Alone in my apartment, I lay with the book that I had first taken up so many months ago. “When Love knocks,” it was telling me, “make sure you answer the door.” Throughout the night I made my way headlong through the onrushing pages until, by early morning, I had finished the chapters on disappointment and disillusionment. Then denial and delusion. Later that night, after yet another day at the office, I finished the chapters on divorce and death, respectively. And then, at last, I turned the page to discover that there were no more pages to discover: I’d finished the book from cover to cover. Suddenly it was over. After a long semester of intensive reading, I’d finally completed The Anyman’s Guide to Love and the Community College. Satisfied, I set the book down on the side of my bed.

“Congratulations, Charlie!” Will said when I told him of my accomplishment. It was a few days after New Year’s and the campus was still a ghost town. In fact, only he and I had stayed throughout the break: every morning I’d come in to work on my plans for the Christmas party; and every day he’d come to sit with his newspaper, his flask of bourbon and his cigar. It was a late afternoon and his Oldsmobile Starfire was parked outside, lengthwise, across three separate stalls; he’d let me into the cafeteria with the key he’d tucked into his coat pocket many years ago. “I’m not even supposed to have this key,” he explained. “But the janitress is a former student of mine who made me a copy. She once dreamt of being a professional historian. But it didn’t work out for her. So now when she sees me she looks the other way….”

Flicking on the lights of the cafeteria, Will walked over to his regular seat at the table under the NO SMOKING sign and pulling out his canteen of bourbon and a new cigar, sat down heavily on the chair. “Congratulations on finishing your book,” he said. As he spoke, his words were slurred, his eyes bloodshot and tired. In the dim light of the empty cafeteria he seemed to be aging with each passing day, as if he’d gained a year of life in the last three weeks, or five since the beginning of the semester. It was as if he were aging exponentially before my eyes. “Nowadays finishing a book of any kind is no small accomplishment.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“In fact this seems like the type of momentous occasion we should be drinking to. You’re open to bourbon, aren’t you?”

I laughed.

“You could say that….”

Will passed his canteen to me, and I took a small drink.

“That’s all?” he protested. “Don’t insult me!”

And so I took another drink.

Will laughed.

“That’s more like it! Here have another…!”

I took a third.

“So now what?” he asked when he’d taken the flask back from me. “What’s left for Mr. Charlie now that he’s finally finished his book?”

“I don’t know. I’ve spent so much time with it that I almost hate to see it end. It’s like a friend of mine has passed away. A secret friend. A friend that can always be trusted to be there. And now it’s gone.”

“I hear you, Charlie.”

Will grew somber. Then he said:

“Charlie, believe me when I tell you this: almost all of it comes and goes. People. The years. The pages in your book. Life itself. And when it’s all said and done, what you’re left with are those few things that actually stay and stay forever. The words. The water. Literature and love. Those are our only legacies. The rest, though it may look pretty on your curriculum vitae, is nothing more than polished bullshit.”

“Bullshit?”

“Yes, bullshit.”

Will was looking at me with the same sad drunken eyes.

“It’s only these things that matter in the end,” he said, “because it’s only those things that stay forever….”

I nodded and we drank.

When I returned to my empty apartment later that night, the building was dark and quiet: my fellow faculty had long deserted the campus for their homes and their families and I was the only one left. The parking lot was abandoned. The corridors were still. After several days of quietude, I had begun to notice how silent everything had become, and that this silence was beginning to grow on me. The stillness and darkness were more illuminating than any light of motion could ever be. How tranquil it all was. How peaceful! For the first time since I’d come to Cow Eye, my mind began to relax. Sleep had found me at last.

Except that…

Just as my eyes began to close I felt an almost imperceptible noise. Behind the drone of the heating unit. Above the sound of the wind rustling outside my window. Under it all was the quietest of knocking at my door. A knocking so soft that it might not be knocking at all. Should I even bother to check? Or should I wait for it to pass? Who might it be at this lingering hour, at this late date, amid the quiet of our intersession? Amid the tranquility before the storm? Who could possibly be knocking on my door at this tender time of the very long night?

Cautiously, I got up from the bed and made my way to the door where the uncertain knocking could still be heard. Unlatching the chain, I opened the door.

In the dark of the hallway there was nothing to be seen, only the black of poorly lit emptiness and its shadows. But then in the faint light spilling out from my apartment, I saw a woman leaning against the wall. She had wrapped her arms around herself and was sobbing. Her chest was heaving. It was the math teacher.

“Can I come in?” she said.

I paused with the door’s edge still in my hand.

“Of course,” I answered and opened the door. “Please do….”

The woman walked into the apartment. Her hair was disheveled. Her clothes were unkempt. She looked tired and haggard, as if she hadn’t slept for some time. Without makeup she did not look nearly as glamorous as she’d seemed from afar — as she’d always appeared on her passings in and out of her apartment.

“Sure, please do come in,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting guests….”

The woman sat down on the edge of my couch.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. “It’s just that. Well, I needed to be with someone. Anyone. And you’re the only person I know who keeps the same hours we keep….”

She looked up at me.

“You’re the only one who stays up as late as I do….”

“Sure,” I said. “I understand. We’re between semesters and there’s no one else in the building. I’m the only one here. Would you like some tea?”

The woman thanked me. I set a pot of water on the stove.

“Can I use your shower?” she said.

“My shower?”

“Yes. Mine is filled with memories.”

“Of course. No problem. The shower is over there. Next to the closet.”

“It would have to be. Your apartment is just like mine, only its exact opposite.”

“Oh, right….the other side of the wall….”

“Do you have any clothes I can change into?”

“No, I don’t. Just….Oh, wait, yes I do! Here you can use these…!”

I handed her the overnight clothes that Bessie stored at my apartment.

The math teacher took the oversized t-shirt and held it at arm’s length in front of her.

“You don’t have anything smaller?”

“Sorry, they’re the only women’s clothes I have. I do have some argyle sweaters if you’d like….”

The woman took Bessie’s clothes into my bathroom and while the shower ran I prepared the cups for tea and set them on the table. When she came out she was wearing the long t-shirt but holding the pair of shorts and the cotton panties I’d given her. The woman’s hair was wet and her make-up had been washed off from the shower. Her eyes were still visibly red from crying.

“Here…” she said and handed me the shorts and panties. “I just couldn’t bring myself to wear them….”

I walked back into my bedroom and tucked the clothes back into my dresser where Bessie kept them. And when I returned the woman was already sitting at my kitchen table.

“Thank you,” she said when I set the steaming tea cup in front of her. She was sitting with her legs crossed and the end of the t-shirt tucked in between her thighs.

“Don’t mention it,” I said. And then: “I don’t mean to pry. And you don’t have to answer me of course. But I feel I have to ask…. are you okay?”

The woman shook her head.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Sure,” I said. “That’s fine with me.”

“It’s just that, well, he’s got a doctorate. And I’ve only got a master’s degree….”

“I don’t understand?”

“No, of course you wouldn’t. You’re an administrator.”

“Would you like to explain?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’m willing to listen.”

“I really don’t want to talk about it…”

“Right,” I said. “I understand completely.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate your understanding….”

The woman took a drink of tea. Then, without warning, and in extravagant detail, she told me about the things she didn’t want to talk about. About her fight with the calculus teacher. How the two had just finished having the most amazing sex, but then, still lying in each other’s arms, they’d drifted to the topic of course assignments for the upcoming semester. Who would get the early morning sections. And who would get the schedule that allowed for the longer weekend. And who would get the upper-level classes that were so coveted. And it was this discussion that had turned into a serious disagreement.

“Why do I always have to teach the morning classes?” she sobbed. “Why can’t I teach calculus every once in a while?”

And here she spoke about the proliferation of their argument and how, to justify his own teaching of the higher things in life, he’d casually implied that his own level of knowledge was more conducive than hers. That his teaching methodologies were more appropriate for upper-division students and higher-level curriculum. That his style was far more current for articulating the ineffable.

“He pooh-poohed my pedagogy!” she sobbed.

I nodded sympathetically. Not knowing what to do, I shifted my chair closer to hers and put an arm around her heaving shoulders.

“It’s okay,” I said, trying to comfort her. “There are other math teachers in the lecturer pool…”

But she was inconsolable.

That night the woman slept on my couch under covers that I laid across her, and all through that December night I could only lie in my bed restless and unable to sleep. And when I left the following morning for my office she was still asleep under the covers. Through the cafeteria window I saw Will sitting at his table. I knocked on the glass. Will looked up from his newspaper then walked over to let me in.

“There’s a math teacher sleeping on my couch,” I said when I’d taken my customary seat across from him at the corner table. Though it was early afternoon — almost lunch time — no cafeteria workers were present. No food was being served during the break. The room was abandoned, all the chairs stacked on top of the tables, and the two of us simply sat across the table from each other, like old lovers, in lieu of any other company we might have had.

“The math teacher’s sleeping on your couch?”

“Yes.”

“The pretty one from your hallway?”

“Yes.”

“In the t-shirt?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a dog, Charlie…!”

“No, no, no. It’s not like that. She came over last night. She had a fight with the calculus teacher. She was inconsolable. I did my best to comfort her. And then she fell asleep. She was still sleeping when I left.”

“So now what are you planning to do? What’s your plan now that you have a young math teacher sleeping on your couch?”

“I don’t know. It’s a bit unexpected. Any advice?”

Will thought for no more than an instant. Then he said:

“Congress that cow!”

“I’m sorry…?”

“If opportunity knocks, Charlie boy, you gotta open that back door! Otherwise, you never know what you might end up regretting. It’s like my wife used to say — she’d say, Smithcoate, you sonofabitch, the best damn thing that ever happened to our marriage was that girl from the supermarket….”

“Mr. Smithcoate?”

“That’s right, Charlie. That girl from the supermarket saved our marriage! And that’s coming from the woman I spent thirty-eight years of monogamy with.”

Around us the cafeteria was silent and forlorn. Will was still nursing his canteen and his cigar. Beyond the window his powder-blue Oldsmobile could still be seen parked sideways in the lot straddling the three closest parking stalls, the handicapped space included. I’d expected Will to elaborate about his wife’s statement of salvation. But he did not. He just took a long drink from his canteen and sucked in another drag from his cigar. Finally, I spoke up:

“Mr. Smithcoate,” I said. “Can I ask you a question?”

Will wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

“Is it about history?”

“Somewhat.”

“Well, I’m on vacation. See me after the break when I have my notes….”

I laughed and shook my head.

“Don’t worry — it’s not like that. Actually, my question is partly about history, but mostly not about history too. You see, I was just wondering if you could tell me a thing or two about your wife. You talk about her an awful lot, Mr. Smithcoate, but only from time to time and in bits and pieces. In truth, you’ve never really told me much about her. And I was just curious, you know, to learn a little more. I was just wondering if you could tell me something more about your wife and what she was like before she passed away?”

Will took a drink from his flask. Then he said:

“Hmmm. My wife. There’s not much to say, really. I mean what can you say about a person you spent thirty-eight years of your life with? What would you say, Charlie?”

“I can’t even imagine….”

“Well let me tell you…there’s not much you can say. Thirty-eight years is a damned long time. That’s incontrovertible. But some things defy words. So let’s not even try, okay? No, instead let me tell you about something else. Let me tell you about something that can be articulated in words. Let me tell you about that girl from the supermarket…!”

And here Will told me in descriptive detail about the woman from the supermarket who had captivated his imagination somewhere along the middle of his marriage. How the two had met innocently, next to a shopping cart, and how they had developed an ongoing relationship that lasted several years. And how when his wife learned of it sometime later — he himself had found the occasion to tell her — it changed everything between them.

“It was like night and day,” he said. “And that moment of repentance was the twilight.”

In sumptuous detail Will Smithcoate told me of the things that he and the girl from the supermarket did during their years together. And how, when he finally decided to break it off, it was the hardest day of his life.

“Or at least the second hardest,” he said. “Yes, it was probably the second hardest day of my life. But the second hardest by far.”

Attentively, I listened to his tale of requited love and reclaimed marriage. In time his voice trailed off and he took another drink from his canteen. It was clear he had reached the end of his reminiscence.

“So can I ask you another question then, Mr. Smithcoate?”

“If you must….”

“Why are you here all the time? In this cafeteria? At this table? It seems like you’re always in this same spot. That you spend most of your time here under that futile NO SMOKING sign. But why is that? Don’t you ever want to go home?”

Will offered up a laugh. But it was not the good kind. Among laughter that is heard there is good laughter and there is the other kind — and it was this other kind that Will had just offered up.

“What’s a home, Charlie? You’ve asked a simple question. But to have an intelligent discussion we should be precise with our definitions, right? We should make sure we’re talking about the same thing here….”

“A home?”

“Yes. Can you tell me what a home is?”

“A home is…a home is where you live.”

“And?”

“And sleep. It is where you live and sleep.”

“Good. And…?”

“Well, and read books. A home is the place where you can live and sleep and read non-fiction when the ambient noise is so great that sleep is out of the question.”

“And so your home is your apartment in faculty housing?”

“It is now, yes.”

“That’s your home?”

“Yes.”

“Because you live there?”

“Yes.”

“No, Charlie. That is not a home. A home is more than that. Much more. Sure, you live in Cow Eye Junction at the moment. But Cow Eye Junction is not your home. Marsha Greenbaum lives in that closet at her studio since moving to Cow Eye, but that closet is not her home. I reside in a two-story house where my wife and I used to live. But that was many years ago, and things do tend to change. I’m here in this dark cafeteria, you see, because I no longer have a home to go to.”

“You’re homeless?”

“No, I’m not homeless — I’m tenured, for god’s sake. But I don’t have a home. Not anymore. And I haven’t had one for almost two years now.” Outside the windows of the cafeteria the shortest of days was coming to an end. The longest night was beginning. Will had reached the end of his canteen. “Dammit,” he said. And then: “Everyone just loves a supermarket, don’t they? Supermarkets are vast. And impressive. They are beautiful and bountiful and come in quite handy when you need something like a specialty item that is exotic or hard to find. But a supermarket is not a home.”

I thought I understood what he was saying. Or at least what he was trying to say. And so I changed the subject one final time.

“Mr. Smithcoate,” I said. “Can you now tell me something about history? I know it’s your vacation and all….but can you tell me how history itself works? I’ve often wondered about it. And it seems that you would be the perfect one to clarify it for me. Sitting here in this deserted cafeteria. The light fading outside those windows. The academic year having reached its very midpoint. The semester having reached the end of its incarnation — or if you prefer, the beginning of its dissolution. Mr. Smithcoate, can you please tell me about…history?”

Will did not immediately answer. Across the table he was regarding me with unconcealed skepticism. And in the low drone of the cafeteria the wheels of time could be heard to grind in the background next to the ice maker. It was a moment I would long remember. With all my being I waited for his response.

*

That afternoon I came home to find the math teacher sitting at my kitchen table reading the first chapter of The Anyman’s Guide to Love and the Community College.

“I hope it’s okay I’m still here,” she said, setting the book on the table. “My apartment is just so lonely nowadays. I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of staying?”

“Sure,” I said. “Staying is a good thing. And liberty is always preferable to its alternative….”

“I tried to make myself useful. While you were gone I organized your bedroom.”

“You did?”

“And ironed your shirts.”

“Thanks!”

“And I rearranged those women’s toiletries in your bathroom.”

“What?”

“They were out of order. I hope that’s okay?”

“Out of order…?”

“If not, you can just move them back to where they were….”

The woman stood up from the table.

“Tea?” she said.

“Please….” I said, and then: “Thank you….”

The woman poured some tea that she had boiled, then set my cup on the table in front of me.

“How was your day?”

“It was fine. I’m an educational administrator. All my days are equally fine.”

The woman nodded as if she were considering an exotic and far-off idea. Then she lowered her cup into its saucer with a clink.

“I have a confession to make,” she said. “And it involves you. You see, I was wrong to think what I used to think. I was very wrong about you.”

“You were?”

“Yes. I always saw you as an educational administrator. And I just assumed that because that’s what you were….well, you know — that it was all you were. But now I see that things are more nuanced than that….”

“They are?”

“Yes. Life is more complicated than it appears. Now I see that you can be much more. That educational administration does not have to be the exact opposite of classroom enlightenment. That the two can come together rather beautifully, like the intersection of two sets. That conciliation can be just as arousing as conflict….”

The woman ran the back of her fingers lightly over my cheek.

“Now, if you were to shave off that beard you would be something different altogether.”

“I would?”

“Shall we try?”

The woman led me into the bathroom and I took out my shaving supplies and fumbled with them, and while I lathered my face and sharpened my razor on a leather strop she sat on my toilet seat with the lid closed watching my reflection in the mirror.

“There’s a patch under your right jaw….” she would say.

And I would find it with my fingers and shave it away.

“I love to watch a man shave,” she remarked.

And I obliged the predilection as best I could.

When I was done I turned around to face her. She stood up from the toilet seat.

“Beautiful!” she said. And then: “We should do this more often!”

Slowly she ran her hand over my newly shaven skin. Her hand was cool and soft; it was very young and very smooth.

“Can I ask you a question?” she said.

“Of course,” I said.

“Do you like mathematics?”

I cleared my throat.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s, um, necessary….”

“Yes, but do you like it?”

“I suppose you could say that I do. I mean, yes, I do. I like math.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I’ve heard that you don’t like math. And that’s a shame.”

“I’m not sure who told you that, but it wouldn’t be entirely correct. As recently as elementary school, in fact, math was one of my favorite subjects. Math, social studies, reading — I liked them all….”

“And now?”

“Well now I prefer social studies. Though math does possess a certain taxidermic appeal…”

“So you’re open to it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Because I adore math….”

Here the woman lifted the front of my dress shirt out of my pants.

“Math is erogenous….” she purred. “Mathematics is ecstasy itself….”

“Yes…” I said. “I’m beginning to see that more clearly….”

“Math is the probing glans in our quest for inner knowledge. It is the pulsating clitoris of the intellect….”

Now she was undoing my belt.

“Without math there would be neither love nor logic. There would be no foreplay. No process for quantifying the tremulous approach to orgasm.”

“Yes…” I said.

“Do you agree?”

“Yes.”

“You do?”

“Yes!”

From there she led me to my bedroom.

“I made your bed,” she said and pointed to the neatly folded covers. “It’s been waiting for you since morning.”

“I see.”

“I’ve been waiting for you since morning.”

“You have!”

“I hope you don’t mind….”

“Not at all.”

“Please understand that I’ve done this many times before.”

“Apparently.”

“It’s a talent I have.”

“I can tell.”

“Can you appreciate it?”

“Without a doubt. Everything is so taut and firm….”

“My father was a soldier. He could bounce a dime.”

“That would be impressive.”

“Would you like to see?”

“Of course.”

“See?”

“Yes.”

“Impressed?”

“Very.”

“Me too.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad.”

“That’s good.”

“Is that your triangle I feel?”

“Among other things.”

“One must always be open to new sensations.”

“Yes.”

“Including math.”

“Yes!”

“I think I can see myself growing to love mathematics.”

“It’s never too late, you know.”

“Might I be a late bloomer?”

“Some blooms grow more than others.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“I’ll try.”

“Try harder.”

“I am.”

“No, not like that. Like this…!”

“Like that?”

“Yes.”

“I think I’m getting it….”

“Your equation is still very linear.”

“Thank you!”

“You’re welcome. But let’s try something more advanced, shall we?”

“Advanced?”

“Yes, let’s not be content with the familiar. Have you experienced a derivative?”

“A what?”

“Or the beauty of the integral?”

“Not recently.”

“Let me reveal it to you….”

“Okay….”

“I will reveal it slowly and revealingly….”

“Yes….”

“So that you can see it….”

“Yes….”

“…in all its glory….”

“I think I see it….”

“Is it beautiful?”

“Yes!”

“Does it work for you?”

“It works. But my equation has never had to do that before….”

“Never?”

“Well not in a long time anyway.”

“How long?”

“I don’t remember. Freshman year of college, I think.”

“Well now it can!”

“It’s amazing…”

“Don’t stop.”

“Okay.”

“The end is in sight.”

“Okay.”

“We’re close.”

“Good.”

“And you?”

“Somewhat.”

“Let’s enjoy it together.”

“I’ll try.”

“I can slow down if you want.”

“No don’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“But what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“That sound.”

“What sound?”

“That sound coming from your nightstand. Next to the alarm clock. What is it?”

In the quiet of my apartment the phone was ringing loud and out of sorts.

“The phone.”

“Don’t answer it!”

“Of course.”

“It will stop.”

“I know.”

“We’re close….”

“Right.”

After several minutes the very loud phone grew silent, only to ring again just as loudly.

“The phone again….”

“Let it ring.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s almost two.”

“Two?”

“Yes, two.”

“Two o’clock?”

“Yes, it’s two o’clock!”

“Exactly or approximately?”

“Approximately. It is approximately two o’clock!”

“Would that be a.m. or p.m.?”

“My god, Charlie, is it so important? Now?!”

“Sorry but I’m an educational administrator. These things matter to me.”

“Now?!”

“No, I guess not….”

“Then let the damn phone ring!”

And so I let it ring.

Then she said, “As you can see, we’ve now moved on to a higher level.”

And I said, “Yes, I’ve noticed.”

“Can you feel the change in velocity?”

“Is that what I’m feeling?”

“There are words for such things.”

“I like it just the same.”

“Does it surprise you?”

“It does.”

“Does it overwhelm you?”

“A bit. This is all so new for me.”

“I think you’re getting the feel for it.”

“I’m definitely trying.”

“And that excites me….”

“I’m glad.”

“As a professional…”

“Very glad.”

“…And a woman.”

“At the same time?”

“Yes. But especially as a professional….”

The phone rang yet again. It was just as loud. But this time I had to stop.

“This may be important,” I said.

“Not now!” she growled. “We’re close!”

And so I let it ring. And ring. And ring. And ring. And ring. And ring. And ring. And when it rang again I didn’t bother to listen. There were other things to see. And other sounds to hear. The sights and smells were immediate. Math was in the air. And we were very close.

“I’m very close,” she said.

And she was close — except that, well, she wasn’t. The phone rang yet again and yet again we waited. And waited. And waited. And once again it stopped. But now, impatiently, she reached across the bed to cleave the handset from its base.

“I’m close,” she said, annoyed. And then, by way of explanation: “Very very close.”

“Very close?” I asked.

“Very very very close…!”

“Okay,” I said at last. And over tea I asked: “Is this what math can be? Is it always like this for you?”

“Every time,” she said, and then: “Though after calculus it gets even better…!”

*

And so I came to spend my intersession alternating between the undulating priorities of mathematics and history: in the day with Will in the cafeteria; and in the evenings with the math teacher in my apartment. What had promised to be a cold and lonely time suddenly became one of hot adventure. And just as she had promised, I came to love the feel of math. For hours at a time. Through all the iterations of day and night and in all conceivable positions. Tables upturned. Bedsprings creaking. Across the open faces of textbooks, the glossy pages sticking to our sweaty backs. On the kitchen table. Up against the wall. Straddling the sink. Deeper and deeper into the cold winter nights the two of us explored each other’s disciplines so that in time they came together in the great calculus of love, the everlasting light of literature, that oldest and greatest of faiths known as history.

“History?”

“Yes, history.”

At this Will’s eyes focused entirely on me. It was clear that the bourbon had done its duty and that he was no longer pretending to resist it. But hearing this word so unexpectedly, he perked up.

“So you want to know about history, Charlie?”

“Yes.”

“Even though it’s January?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s getting late, Mr. Smithcoate. The winter break is almost over and the students will soon be returning. The faculty will be returning once again from desiccation to verdure. Outside our window it is getting very late. The longest night has passed and now we are heading toward the equinox. So can you tell me please what you know about the meaning of history?”

Will looked up from his canteen and said:

“I know quite a lot of course. In fact, I know far too much. For it is my livelihood and my fate. I am a product of history as well as its factor. I am its child and it is mine. Like my wife used to remind me, she’d say: Smithcoate, it was not in our cards to have children — sadly, progeny of that sort were not in your divine plan — but it’s okay, you can have other kinds of children. And so my students are my descendents and I will live through them. My teachings are my children. My words are my legacy. Even these discarded butts from my cigars are my faithful offspring. Every act I take is an act of procreation. Every consequence is a child. I have a thousand million children out there in this world somewhere, yet not a single one to take me to that doctor’s appointment I missed last month. But the narrative is becoming more complex, Charlie. The stories we used to tell, well, we’re not going to be able to tell them very much longer. So let’s not linger on the past. No, let’s not talk about the things that come and go. As a student of history I’d much rather talk about the future.”

“The future?”

“Of course. The future, you see, is but the past in disguise. It is a promise rather than its premise. It is the beautiful plan versus the ugliness of its implementation. Perfection as opposed to reality. The idea transcending its compromise. It is the whisper. The dream. The desire fulfilled. It is the cafeteria at the end of the long esplanade. The delta where all rivers merge. The eternal premonition of ecstasy rather than the fleeting orgasm itself. The future is our history. Just as your apartment is a perfect reflection of the math teacher’s, only in absolute reverse — so too is the future nothing but the story of our history, only as its unseen opposite: the sounds on the other side of the wall. Despite what we may think it to be, my friend, the future is less a consequence of our past than the past is the consequence of our future. So let us talk about that, shall we…?”

“By all means….” I said.

And so, speaking through the bourbon and across the table and over his newspaper and under the rising smoke from his cigar, Will Smithcoate told me about the future.

“The future is not what you think it will be. And it never is. It is the intact calf hiding amid a dusty corral. A submerged stone in the great river of time. It is the unexpected abrasion of asphalt against human skin. The future comes more relentlessly than an Oldsmobile speeding down the highway. More arbitrarily than seven billion arrows shot through time and space. It is as expeditious as an onrushing welfare recipient, more decisive than a trigger that has been inadvertently pulled. The future is all of these things — and yet it never truly comes. It is always off in the distance, one step ahead of you no matter how quick your gait, like an ambitious colleague on the esplanade. In some cultures it is the spirit that is always behind your left shoulder and that skips away as you turn to look at it. It might be there for others to discover, but never there for you. No matter the efforts you exert, you can never transcend the future. No matter how hard you try….”

Will had paused and it seemed that he might stop. To encourage him, I said:

“But, Mr. Smithcoate! What do you see in our future? It is Sunday now and the faculty will be coming back to our campus first thing tomorrow morning. The parking lots will start to fill up. The library will once again bustle. All of this is familiar and predictable. They are known. But what else do you see in store for us? Aside from yet another semester of accredited learning? Aside from the triumphant success of our upcoming Christmas party? Aside from all this what more can you tell us about the future that lies ever so slightly beyond our grasp?”

At this Will took a final drag on his cigar. And though I didn’t know it then, his words would stay with me until my own final dissolution. Exhaling the smoke into eternity he said:

“Our future, Charlie, is only as bright as that incandescent bulb illuminating this dim cafeteria. And like that bulb our future will be lived in a world of dull efficiency. In the future efficacy will be the currency of life. It will take the place of our humanity. For there will come a day when we will move faster and grow taller and live longer and know more — and without much reflection we will come to consider these things accomplishments. We will be able to conquer faraway concepts without ever understanding the inner turbulences of our own hearts. We will scale mountains that have never been reached and devise technologies that have never been imagined. We will come to worship our innovations as deities. And innovation will become our creed. And efficiency will be our god. Progress will be our prayer. But the words of our prayers will no longer have sound. Our humanity will be traded for the spoils of novelty. And our souls will be sacrificed upon the altar of continuous improvement. In the future, Charlie, we will all be regionally accredited….”

In the back room an ice machine could be heard to start up. Will looked over at the sound, then back at me:

“But that does not change the essential truths of the world. It does not change the nature of our souls. For there are things that are ineffably high. And these things resist the impositions of man. Time is the only master I will ever recognize. And water is the only thing that can make me believe. Water is my guide. And words are my salvation. And God, in all His mercy and judgment, will be our final Accreditor waiting for us at the gate….”

*

“Did you forget something, Charlie?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You heard me, Charlie. Did you forget something?”

Bessie was standing in my office doorway. She did not look happy. And yet she did not look angry either. In our months together I had often seen her livid. I had seen her fierce. She had been scorned and bitter in my presence. And I had witnessed her sound and her fury, all her flaws and prejudices and vulnerabilities come boiling to the surface. I had seen her lash out in response. And I had cowered before her fits of temper. I had seen all of this and more. But I had never seen her like this. Unlike those other times, now she was simply calm, reconciled, distant. Something was very wrong. And though I couldn’t have known what it was, it was clear that something important had changed. And that it was irretrievable. And that it was not for the better.

“Am I forgetting something?” I answered. “Not that I know of. Why are you asking?”

Bessie looked at me coldly.

“You did. You forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

Bessie shook her head.

“I can’t believe you forgot….”

“Forgot what?!”

“Never mind,” she said. “Let’s just get this debrief over with….”

“Right,” I said. “So where were we?”

“Where were we?”

“Yes, where are we at?”

“We’re in your office, Charlie. You’ve just conducted your high-stakes focus group and we’re standing in your office. If you listen carefully you can still hear the pendulum clacking in the background. On your desk is a stack of dusty papers. You are currently sitting at your desk holding two bottles of pills. I am standing in this doorway. This is where we are at, Charlie…”

“That’s not what I meant. What I meant, Bessie, is where are we at historically? Because a good debrief should give a quick overview of what has just happened. It should present an efficient history of what has just taken place, its outcomes and its meaning. An effective debrief should give plans for next steps. It should leave the faithful concert-goers streaming toward the exits with a song of love in their hearts. This is what a good debrief should do, Bessie. I know this for a fact because I read it once in a book that Raul gave me….”

Bessie stared at me with an icy expression. Her voice was calm. Her demeanor was reserved. She had her hands sunk deep into the pockets of her raincoat. Looking at me, she said:

“Well, let me help you out with that. You want to talk about history? Allow me to do the honors. You see, your history begins a few months ago with your arrival into the makeshift bus shelter and that visit to the bar where my friends first met you. They told me all about you, Charlie. And they warned me to stay away. He’s not from here, they said, and doesn’t seem to want to be. He seems aloof and distant, as if he’s too good for Cow Eye. As if he’s above it all….”

“Bessie, what are you talking about? I’ve never claimed to be above anything. Where are you going with this?”

“You wanted a song of love, right?”

“Yes….”

“And you asked me to stay afterwards, right?”

“Yes…”

“You wanted to finish everything off with a debrief, right? Well now let’s do our debrief….”

“But….”

“Right. So that was how your history began, Charlie. In the makeshift bus shelter. In late August. And please don’t think that anything that might have happened before you got here is relevant in any way. Because it’s not. Not for us. Your story begins the moment you arrived into Cow Eye Junction — the instant you stepped off that bus — and not a moment earlier….”

“Bessie?”

“So that’s the beginning of your history. Now our history begins a few days later. You see, our history begins with you knocking incessantly on my ex-husband’s office door a little after eight and then sitting in a hard plastic chair outside his office. While you waited you thumbed through magazines, pretending not to notice me. Yet over my typewriter I could see you watching my every movement. The deep v-neck in my blouse. The way my eyelashes fluttered. The shapely contours of my shoulders. The way my bangs fell across my face. Your eyes were hungry, Charlie. Your glance was furtive. Your demeanor was that of a divorcee on the prowl. From there I led you to convocation where I introduced you to the mysteries of life at Cow Eye. The personalities. The alignments. I helped you see things as they are, to distinguish night from day. We talked a bit and you implied that you were honestly interested in loving the things that are unloved. You invited me to lunch. Though I was content with my manual typewriter, you persisted. I acquiesced. Holding my lunch tray I revealed to you what love could have been for me. You told me how you castrated a calf. I was impressed. We agreed to meet outside Marsha’s studio and I made sure to come on time. But you weren’t there. I wandered up and down the boardwalk and eventually I found you half-naked at the edge of the universe. We drove to the party by the river. We drank beer. The moon shone down on us like a mother’s only love. I directed you to a clearing. You pissed in my mouth. I invited you to meet my children. You spent our entire weekend together writing a focus group report and developing a plan to develop a plan for a Christmas party. You stopped shaving. You stopped bathing. Your clothes are rumpled. Your beard grew long. You’ve taken to taking pills: one pill after another even though neither of them is helping you stay awake…even though neither is helping you sleep. We talked. We fucked. I washed your dishes. Two o’clock came and went. We waited. Then waited some more. And now here we are in this office with this pendulum ticking and your face newly shaven. Honestly, your history is not a very interesting one, Charlie. Although your face, I have to admit, does look nice. In fact, it is as smooth and as shiny as I have ever seen it….”

Here Bessie stopped. Suddenly, she reached across the desk toward my pendulum. The metal orb from the other side swung down with a final resounding clack. And then the orbs were still. The pendulum had come to rest against her fingers. The sound was gone forever.

“So that’s about where we are, Charlie,” she said. “Or to use your own terminology, that’s where you and I are at. But this is not only our history I’ve just recounted, it is our future as well. The undulations are coming to an end. Our incarnation is running out. If things had happened a little differently, you see, love could have been a Sunday outing at the river, just the four of us. But it’s pointless to talk about that sort of thing now. And as to ‘next steps’ — well, I don’t believe that will be necessary anymore….”

Bessie had turned to leave but then she stopped and turned back around to me.

“Oh yeah….” she said. “One more thing. My mother wanted me to give this to you. She made me promise that I would. So, here you go….”

Bessie reached into her pocket and pulled out something that was small and dark and heavy. Tossing the wrapped piece of fruit cake onto my desk, she turned and walked away.

* * *

FINAL PREPARATIONS

With less fanfare than its predecessor, the spring session started in mid-January and before you could even shudder, the semester was in full academic swing. The bicycles returned. The library bustled. The flag in front of the administration building snapped in the cold winter wind — all thirteen stripes and forty-four stars. Students once again filled the long esplanade on their way from one discipline to another. And all across the campus of Cow Eye Community College one could once again find solace in the reassuring sound of paperwork getting done. By now the self-study was a bound and submitted memory. The focus group report, as Raul had predicted, was turned in with a shuddering gasp of ecstasy. My plan for the Christmas party had quickly moved from immaculate conception to imperfect implementation: by now all that remained was the finalization of an infinite number of details. Sitting at my desk, I worked meticulously to finalize those details. Were the cases of bourbon ordered? Were the vendors paid? Had the student leaders rehearsed the scripts that they had been given? Each of these questions required a series of actions on my part; each action brought about a series of new questions in its own right; and each of these questions led, in turn, to countless other questions and actions that also needed to be answered and acted upon.

When I finally looked up from all this, Raul was standing in my doorway.

“Charlie!” he said.

“Raul! You’re back!”

“This is self-evident. Did you miss me?”

“Of course. You look great. How was your vacation? How was Texas?”

“It was wonderful. It’s an absolutely amazing place. Inspiring and sublime. Not unlike the Barri Gòtic in late summer. Here, I got you these….”

Raul held up a pair of snake-skin boots.

“For me?” I said and took the boots.

“I hope they fit you.”

“I’m sure they will. Are those leather chaps for me too?”

He nodded and smiled. I shook his hand. We hugged.

“I’m glad you’re back!” I said. “Sorry I didn’t think to get you anything for Christmas. It’s been an unexpectedly busy time for me here on campus! I’ve been so preoccupied. I mean, it’s like the world itself is a changed place. It may even feel like you’re returning to a totally different world altogether, Raul.”

“It’s only been a month….”

“Yeah, but so much has happened since you left! You’ll be amazed to hear it. So much, in fact, that I don’t even know where to start….”

“Whoa, slow down there! I just stopped by to say hello. And to drop off the boots. And the chaps.”

“Right! It’s just that I’ve got so much to tell you, Raul. So many interesting things have taken place. But everything is happening so quickly I don’t even know where to start….”

“How about you start from the beginning…?”

“Right! The beginning. Good idea. Have a seat over here on this chair, Raul, and let me tell you from the very beginning everything that’s happened since you left. You see, as soon as you left for Texas the first thing I did was grab these two vials out of my pocket and take a pill from each….”

“You’re still consuming those pills that Rusty and Gwen gave you last semester?”

“Yes!”

“Have they started to work?”

“Yes!”

“They have?”

“Yes!”

“You mean they’re actually working?”

“Yes!”

“Which one? The pill to fall asleep? Or the one to stay awake?”

“Both! They’re both working exactly as prescribed. This pill right here keeps me from ever falling asleep….while this one here keeps me from ever being fully awake. And so, thanks to these two amazing pills, I have been able to remain in a constant state of pseudo-sleep and semi-wakefulness. Say what you want about modern inventions, Raul — lament the dangers of wanton technology if you must — but these two pills are really something else! Easy to swallow. Not expensive. Eminently more palatable than their alternatives. And together they have bolstered my resolve and helped me amble through the intersession on my way toward the arrival of our institutional accreditors and the culmination of our Christmas Week festivities in the cafeteria…!”

“So life is good?”

“Life is great!”

“Well, then tell me what else has happened after you took all those pills….”

“An awful lot, Raul! So much that it’s incredible! You see, I finished my focus group session and wrote my report and Bessie reached her hand into my boxers and Dr. Felch cleaned out his spittoon. Then Bessie and I had a quick debrief and she gave me some fruitcake her mother made for me and after that I came home to my lonely apartment but it wasn’t as lonely as I’d thought and so I made tea and shaved my jaw and began an intensive exploration of calculus. It’s quite surprising, Raul, but since you left I’ve come to truly love mathematics! And that is no small miracle: in fact, I love it even more now than when I was in elementary school — and that’s saying something because in elementary school I had a lovely teacher who wore floral dresses that left her knees exposed for all to see! She had a habit of sitting at her desk and throwing one leg over the other ever so revealingly — just like this — and we’d all catch a fleeting glimpse of the skin on her upper thigh. But that was a long time ago. And now it’s rare that women wear floral dresses. But….what was I talking about?”

“Your newfound love of mathematics.”

“Oh right. So, um, yes, I’ve been learning calculus in my apartment on a nightly basis — sprawled across the floor, on the table, up against the wall — and it’s been an eye-opening experience, Raul. It’s been truly edifying. But that’s not all I’ve been doing. On a daily basis I’ve been spending my afternoons with Will Smithcoate in the cafeteria listening to his remembrances about the future. He’s somewhat skeptical about us ever being able to reach it. But I think we’re almost there….I really do. I think it’s almost upon us…”

“What is?”

“The future! It may seem hopelessly far away at times but I think we’ve almost arrived. It’ll be here any moment. Just listen….maybe you can hear it coming…?”

Raul paused to listen.

“I don’t hear anything….”

“You have to be patient.”

“I’m an institutional researcher, Charlie. Patience is my virtue.”

“Right. Do you hear it now?”

Raul cupped his hand around his ear and held it there for a few moments. Hearing nothing, he said:

“No. I don’t. The future’s nowhere to be heard, I’m afraid.” And then, as if noticing the extreme silence: “Hey, what happened to your pendulum?”

“My what?”

“Your pendulum….it’s not swinging….”

“Oh that. Bessie stopped it with her hand. But that’s okay, I don’t take it personally. Time, I’ve learned, is one of those things that stays and stays forever. Like water. And love. And our universal affection for mindless novelty….”

“It appears you’ve had an eventful intersession, Charlie. It seems your break has been truly prolific.”

“It has! And best of all, I’m finally starting to feel comfortable with the increasing rate of changing realities. It was all so overwhelming in the beginning. But I’ve somehow survived it all. I’ve settled into a groove. Everything’s happening as fast and as relentlessly as ever. But I think I’m finally learning to navigate it all…!”

“Thanks to those pills…”

“Right!”

Here I used Dr. Felch’s handkerchief to wipe the spittle from my mouth yet again. Then I continued:

“…You know, since you left, Raul, I’ve reached several professional milestones. For one, I’ve been able to finish the book I started so long ago: you can congratulate me on finishing The Anyman’s Guide to Love and the Community College.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks. And I’ve learned to aim a pistol. Ethel’s been showing me. I’ve become quite an expert.”

“Have you learned how to fire it too?”

“Not yet. So far I haven’t been able to commit to that entirely. But I’m sure I’ll be ready to pull the trigger someday….”

“One can hope.”

“And, Raul, did you notice? I shaved! And I’ve combed my hair!”

“I see that. Well done. And I also see that your collar is starched and your corduroys are pressed.”

“The math teacher did that for me!”

“That was thoughtful of her. Is that all?”

“Oh no! Not even close. In fact she’s done quite a bit more than that. She’s multi-talented…!”

In ecstatic tones, I listed each of the things the math teacher had done for me over the preceding weeks. The list was quite extensive and took a few minutes to relate. Raul waited patiently for me to finish. Then he said:

“That’s not what I meant, Charlie. What I meant was….did anything else happen while I was gone?”

“Oh, right. Indeed it has, Raul! For example, not long after you left for Texas I received a bloated scrotum in my faculty mailbox. It seemed improbable. Impossible. Even unjustified. But Dr. Felch explained that this too counts as a professional milestone here at Cow Eye. That it is an important rite of passage. And that an administrator who never earns a single bloated scrotum during an entire lifetime of educational administration is the administrator who has never really administered. Because such a person has never ventured to do anything truly meaningful in this world.”

“I haven’t received any….”

“Oh, that’s right. But don’t worry — I’m sure you will someday. I mean, not to brag, but I’ve already received my third….”

“Three?”

“Yes. The first came right after Bessie stopped my pendulum. The second came when I announced that the Christmas party was being rescheduled for March and that it would be rechristened. And the third I got after I was forced to cast the deciding vote in favor of revising our college’s mission statement. In short, it’s been a historic time for me….”

“Glad to hear it.”

“But that’s not all, Raul. I’m sure you’ll be interested to hear all the strange and interesting things that have happened to our college as it moves toward reaffirming its status as an accredited institution of higher learning. For example, did you know that yet another star has been added to the flag in front of the administration building?”

“Already? How many are we at now?”

“Forty-five!”

“That many?”

“Yes. The college has begun to look outward. It’s become a veritable beehive of activity since you left. In fact, a new apiary has just been built out past the frontier where the vacant lot used to be. And they just added a new wing onto the Dimwiddle Center as part of a new era of reconstruction. They’ve re-paved the parking lot and made the classrooms safer for learning by installing the latest in flame-retardant asbestos. The swimming pool has a new filtration system. There are whiteboards in the classrooms with dry-erase markers….so no more need for chalk! Everything is newer and bolder and quite a bit more complicated and interesting. Since you’ve been gone we’ve revised our mission statement and repealed Prohibition and the carp have spawned in the lagoons and the ducks have started quacking and the moon has become our bitch and the creative writing teacher received his tenure with flying colors — despite my cautionary report — and the ethics teacher had an abortion and Ethel placed a restraining order on Luke after he forced her to play the role of a submissive F-1 student during extreme sexual play. Meanwhile, you may be interested to know that the college has hired three mongoloids and one colored man…”

“You mean a negro?”

“….Right. A negro and three mongoloids….”

“You mean Orientals?”

“….Correct. Three Orientals and a negro….”

“You mean a black man?”

“….Exactly. A black man and three Orientals….”

“You mean Asians?”

“….Right. Three Asians and one black man….”

“You mean after all this time they finally hired an African-American?”

“….Um, yes. Isn’t that what I said? Since you left for Texas our college has successfully hired three Asian-Americans, a Jew, a Catholic, two left-handed homosexuals, a Whig, a woman with a severe allergy to wheat, and a promising person of color who holds a degree in electrical engineering. You’ll surely see them around campus. Oh, and we’re also looking to hire a new instructor to teach political science….”

“What about Nan?”

“She bailed.”

“After a single semester! How can that be?”

“No one knows. Her students showed up on the first day of instruction but she was gone. She never came back from the break, I guess. They say she found another teaching position in an urban college on the east coast. She’d been applying secretly throughout the fall. Dr. Felch is now scrambling to hire an adjunct to cover her classes. And to take her place longer-term we’re hiring an award-winning applicant from central Wyoming….”

“They have awards in Wyoming?!”

“Oh, yes. They’re everywhere nowadays.”

“So we’re hiring from that far away?”

“It couldn’t be helped. The applicant from Cow Eye had a mispelling in his CV. And the applicant from California, after being offered the job sight unseen, turned the position down without even visiting.”

“I see. So what else is new? Aside from all this turnover?”

“A lot, Raul. An awful lot…!”

And here I told him of my efforts to align our Christmas Week festivities with the five-day visit of our accreditors. How I was making genuine progress. How despite the challenges — and there were many — I’d been able to rally the campus around the yuletide activities. The agenda for the week was complete. The invitations were printed. The campus was being mowed and polished in preparation for the team’s visit. Faculty had agreed to take the accreditors around individually as part of my Adopt-an-Accreditor program, with several even hosting break-out sessions in their classes. Special projects and events would be happening around campus during their stay, and the students were invited to the festivities. The talents of individual faculty and staff would be showcased. During the party itself there would be beer on tap as always; but this year there would also be wine and mixed drinks and Margaritas and bourbon and scotch and any number of other hard liquors and liqueurs. There would be marijuana and Anglicanism and a bowl full of multi-colored barbiturates — and of course there would be caroling and hashish and frequent opportunities to engage in tender anal sex. There would be a vintage truck show on Monday. A yoga demonstration on Tuesday. A rodeo on Wednesday. A sitar performance and cow-blowing demonstration on Thursday. And on Friday, March twentieth, after a series of exciting accreditation-related activities taking place earlier in the day — exact times and locations to be enthusiastically announced — we would throw open the doors of the cafeteria to the long-awaited Christmas party itself, or, as I had proposed to call it: The Cow Eye Community College Springtime Masquerade and Accreditative Festival of Christmas Unity. It was generally agreed that this would be the grandest Christmas celebration ever. It would be the most remarkable accreditation visit in the history of our college. Excitement was gradually building around the event. Logistics were being resolved. This time I had made sure that the visiting team would be picked up at the makeshift bus shelter and transported to campus in style. Upon their arrival they would be given souvenirs and assailed with favorable impressions and feted with data. They would be wined and dined and taken to witness showcase projects around campus. They would be treated like royalty during their stay. And immediately after the Christmas party, flush from an afternoon of eggnog and continuous improvement, they would conduct their exit interview before heading back toward the makeshift bus shelter. There was little margin for error in all this, so every individual detail had to be intricately and carefully pre-determined. I hadn’t slept at all since the break due to my days of endless planning and my nights of endless discovery with the math teacher at my apartment. But it was all working out. Even though I was exhausted, my legacy was taking shape. At last I had found my rhythm as Special Projects Coordinator at Cow Eye Community College. All of this had happened during the few short weeks since Raul had left for his vacation in Texas.

“So it sounds like your plan is coming together then?”

“Yes it is. At long last!”

“Glad to hear it. You’ve worked hard. You deserve the glory.”

“Thank you, Raul!”

“But Charlie?”

“Yes.”

“When’s the last time you talked to her?”

“The math teacher? I just talked to her this morning! Right before leaving for work! She was straightening the covers on my bed….”

“To hell with the math teacher. I’m asking about Bessie. When’s the last time you talked to Bessie?”

“Bessie?”

“Yes, you remember her, right?”

“Of course. But I haven’t really talked to her since she stopped my metal orbs from swinging. Since we had that disastrous debrief in my office.”

“So you haven’t talked with her about Plan B then?”

“No we haven’t. I didn’t have a chance. And now we’re not on speaking terms.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I know how much you wanted to love something that was unloved. And at your age you may not get another chance. Love doesn’t always think to knock twice — especially on the door of a dusty second-floor apartment in faculty housing. I’m sorry it didn’t work out between the two of you.”

“It’s okay. I’ve thought about it from time to time since then. And I’ve been able to console myself that it just wasn’t meant to be. That some things in our world just aren’t meant to be. Like the future. And discovering what love actually is. But that’s okay. I’m an educational administrator — it’s a choice I’ve made. And besides, it’s not like I don’t have a young math teacher waiting for me in my evenings! And it’s not like Bessie hasn’t been through this kind of thing before — you know, a thousand other times with a thousand other men….”

Raul shook his head disapprovingly.

“She’s a human being, Charlie, not an adjunct. She deserves more than to be discarded once she’s ceased to be useful to you. She deserves more from you than that. Remember, she was the one who rescued you from the edge of the universe. And she invited you to her house for fruitcake. She asked you to meet her children. It took a lot for her to do that. You need to talk to her. It’s the right thing to do.”

I stopped to consider his words. As usual he was right.

“You’re absolutely correct, of course. But how? She doesn’t even look up from her electric typewriter when I walk by.”

“Her what?”

“You didn’t hear? They replaced all the manual typewriters with the electric kind. With carriage return and correction ribbon. Needless to say, the secretaries are going through a difficult period of transition. Even the new hire in the economics department is increasingly disillusioned….”

“We’re not talking about those other secretaries now, Charlie. We’re talking about Bessie.”

“Right. Bessie. We haven’t been on speaking terms since she gave me the fruitcake. And when I walk by her desk she doesn’t even look up from her typing. I’ve tried several times, but it’s like I’m not even there. So I don’t know how I would go about talking to her…”

“Maybe you can find an opportunity at the Christmas party? The event will be held in the cafeteria, right?”

“Right.”

“And she’ll be attending, right?”

“Right.”

“So you’ll both be in the same room together, right?”

“Right.”

“That is to say, in the same segment of time and space?”

“Yes.”

“And there will be alcohol in large quantities, right?”

“Right.”

“And marijuana?”

“Yes.”

“And barbiturates?”

“Bowls of them.”

“And meat?”

“Piled to the ceiling!”

“And vegetables?”

“Of every imaginable color and complexion!”

“Well, there you go. That’s your chance! Catch her at the food line and talk to her then!”

I nodded.

Raul shrugged.

“Anyway, Charlie, I’ll see what I can do to help things along.”

“Thanks, Raul.”

“What are friends for? But hey, other than that, how are your preparations coming…?”

As Raul and I reviewed my plans for the party, I noticed how the weather outside seemed to be changing yet again. The sun had begun to set at a different angle: now it was less oblique. The birds were once again chirping. The ducks began to quack even louder than before. The cold air of late February had turned into the cold air of early March. Soon the fountains would be switched back on. Spring was clearly on its way. In no time at all the accreditors would be arriving.

“Oh and Raul…” I said. “Did you hear what happened to Will?”

“No, what?”

“He had an apoplexy of some sort. It happened the day before all our teaching faculty came back to campus. Right there in the cafeteria under the NO SMOKING sign. I’d just been talking to him that very night. We talked about history. And the future. And supermarkets. When I left he was fine — slurring his words a bit, maybe — but no more than normal. He might have already had some sort of mild occlusion that I didn’t notice. After I left he must have passed out. One of his former students found him face down in a puddle of drool the next morning. She had wanted to be a historian once, but instead she wiped up the moisture and called an ambulance. He had been there like that all night.”

“That’s terrible! Is it serious?”

“I don’t know. They took him to the local clinic to check him out. The next day he was back at his table in the cafeteria. He says the doctor told him no smoking or drinking from here on out — that there’s an increased risk of recurrence and the next time it could be much worse. But of course he’s not heeding anyone’s advice. He’s still sitting there every day at his table with his newspaper and his bourbon and his cigars….”

“That sounds like Will….” Raul shook his head. “….And what about Rusty and Gwen? Do you have them on board for your party?”

“Not quite. They’re almost there though. Almost on board. After an inordinate amount of persuasion they’re so close to attending the party that I can taste the meat and vegetables on their lips, respectfully. But they’re not through the cafeteria doors yet. In fact, there’s a little final convincing that I still need to do. So if you’ll excuse me….”

And here I stopped. Unexpectedly — even for myself — I grabbed Gwen by the arm and spun her around to face me. The esplanade was crowded and bustling during the few minutes between classes, and the students were streaming past us in both directions on their way from one to the next. Judging by Gwen’s reaction, she was not accustomed to male colleagues grabbing her by the arm and spinning her around like this.

“Charlie, did you just…?”

I released her arm.

“I’m sorry, Gwen, but I really needed to get your attention. Before it was too late….”

“Don’t you ever!”

I brushed off the arm where my fingers had left reddish indentations on her skin.

“I’m sorry. But it’s just that this Christmas party is….”

“Don’t you ever grab me like that! I am not your slave girl! Nor am I your concubine. I am not a domesticated ungulate. I don’t care who you are. Or who you think you are. And I don’t care if the fate of our college is in your hands. Don’t you ever grab us like that…!”

“Us?”

“Yes us!”

“I’m sorry, Gwen. I really am. It’s just that everything’s happening so quickly and the Christmas party is coming and you walk really fast and I’m struggling to keep up and rumors are rampant in the copy room and I really need the two of you to attend the upcoming Christmas party….”

Rusty looked at me drolly.

“Rumors?”

“Yes, that neither of you is coming.”

“And you believe them?”

“Yes.

“And so you want both of us to come?”

“Yes.”

“And by the both of us you mean me and Gwen?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Both of you together…!”

Rusty and I were in his Dodge and though we were making slow progress back toward the campus it was clear that my time with him was running out. If I could not convince him to come to the Christmas party by the time we passed Timmy at the guard shack, all would be lost to fate: Rusty’s participation, any chance at faculty unity, our party, the college’s accreditation, my very legacy here at Cow Eye.

“My position is as clear as day,” said Rusty. “I will not go to that party unless the menu consists of meat without vegetables.”

Gwen shook her head in complete agreement.

“And I will only go,” she said, “if there is a wide assortment of vegetables…and no meats.”

“Deal!” I said.

“Huh?” they said.

“You have a deal! You win. I agree. I give up. I concede. It will be as you’ve said. I will do it exactly as you want.”

“You mean there will be meat without vegetables?”

“And vegetables without meat?”

“Yes!”

“There will be night without day? And day without night?”

“Yes! That’s exactly what there will be. There will be both of those things without the other. Just please come, okay? Please promise me that you will find it in your heart to come to the cafeteria for the Christmas party on March twentieth…!”

Without answering, Rusty hopped over the train tracks and turned his Dodge toward the sign welcoming us to Cow Eye Community College.

“You see that sign?” he said.

“Of course,” I answered.

“Well there was a time not too long ago when it said something else altogether. Before all these bright people with new ideas came along, we were just a simple vocational school. And back then the sign itself was simpler. WELCOME TO COW EYE COMMUNITY COLLEGE, our handcrafted sign used to say, and then, in much smaller letters: Where Ends Meet….”

I nodded.

“I guess things do tend to change,” I said.

Rusty shrugged his shoulders in resignation.

“So are you coming?” I asked.

“I suppose so,” he said. “I suppose I might as well come.”

“You will?”

“Yes.”

I thanked him and offered my hand; he took it in a firm handshake. Then I turned to Gwen:

“And you?” I asked.

“I guess,” she said.

“You’ll come?”

“Yes.”

“And would you be willing to host a special break-out session for our accreditors?”

“On logic?”

“And its opposite.”

“I suppose Stokes is doing his customary demonstration of artificial insemination?”

“Yes. I’ve even ordered the shoulder-length gloves….”

“Then I guess I should do my state-of-the-art presentation on logic. You know, for symmetry’s sake….”

Having agreed on that, the two of us continued our brisk walk down the esplanade. On either side of the walkway the trees were only now springing to life. The pelicans were loafing on the banks of the lagoons. The sun shone brightly. The cold air of early March had given way to the warmer air of mid-March. Ducks quacked.

“It really is a beautiful campus,” I observed.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “It’s lovely.”

“It would be a shame if our college got shut down, wouldn’t it, Gwen?”

“It would.”

“Do you think there’s a chance that might ever happen?”

“It’s possible.”

“But isn’t it unfathomable?”

“It is. And yet a lot of good things have come to less glorious ends. And all good things must come to an end at some point. Unfortunately, you can’t choose how things end. You can’t choose your own dissolution, Charlie. And you can’t choose whether it’s glorious or not.”

Gwen was right.

Without speaking any further, the two of us headed down the final stretch of the esplanade toward the cafeteria up ahead.

*

“So are we ready?” asked Dr. Felch. He had spat into his spittoon and was furtively smoking a cigarette at the same time — his seventeenth — and looking nervous.

“I believe so, sir.”

“The accreditors will be arriving in a few minutes.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got my hospitality crew out at the bus shelter to meet them.”

“Are their accommodations settled?”

“Absolutely. They’ll be staying in faculty housing with a view of the fountains.”

“Have the units been cleaned?”

“Yes.”

“Has all the food for the party been ordered?”

“Yes.”

“And the drinks delivered?”

“Yes. Crates of bourbon and vodka.”

“It’s all paid for?”

“Yes. With the roll of twenties you gave me.”

“And the lawns are mowed?”

“Of course.”

“And the floors waxed? And the hedges trimmed? And the pelicans fed?”

“Yes, Dr. Felch we’ve done all that! And we’ve scheduled the fountains to be turned on for the first time since late autumn. We’ve decorated the entire campus with Christmas regalia. The sycamore has been wrapped in tinsel. The esplanade has been lined with artificial snowmen. A large wreath of laurel has been draped over the front of the administration building next to the flag pole where a nativity scene has been set up under the thirteen stripes and forty-six stars. The shipment of shoulder-length gloves arrived yesterday. And the bathrooms have been scrubbed. All the recently installed asbestos has been removed. There are trash bins in every room. Dr. Felch, I’ve stayed up almost every night over the last month making these arrangements. It hasn’t been easy. But thanks in large part to these amazing pills right here….” — I lifted the vials out of my pocket — “….it’s all going according to plan. My hard work is paying off. My lack of sleep is bearing fruit. My pill-taking is reaping its just rewards. Everything is going swimmingly, Dr. Felch. So don’t worry!”

“But what about Rusty and Gwen? Are they on board with the party?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure this time?”

“Of course.”

“Shouldn’t you double-check just in case?”

“It can’t hurt….”

And so I looked across the bench seat of Rusty’s Dodge:

“Are you sure you’re on board, Mr. Stokes?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“And you, Gwen? Are you on board too?”

“Yes. I’m on board. But I’m also quite hungry….”

“Great, we’re almost there….”

And when we had reached the end of the esplanade I glanced over at Will’s Oldsmobile Starfire still parked sideways next to the cafeteria. And here I opened the glass door for Gwen to enter.

“Please….” I said.

“You first…” she insisted.

“No you….” I offered.

“No, Charlie, you! Those other days are over!”

“Oh, right,” I said and threw my duffel bag over my shoulder. “I almost forgot.”

Tired and hungry from the exertions of our long walk through time and space, the two of us entered the cafeteria where the Christmas party was already underway.

* * *

ACCREDITATION WEEK

By the time I walked into the cafeteria on March twentieth, the majority of Christmas Week activities had been carried out with aplomb. On Sunday the accreditors arrived into the makeshift bus shelter where they were greeted by a welcoming committee of faculty and staff from the college’s many academic departments and disciplines. They were also met by the Cow Eye Jazz Band, three community business leaders, a cheerleading team from the local high school, its first-string quarterback, the mayor of Cow Eye Junction — who also happened to be our part-time welding instructor — and twelve jittery but earnest representatives from student government. From there the accreditors were loaded into special covered wagons attached to horses that wheeled them from the bus shelter, along the highway, through the town of Cow Eye Junction, past the grazing cows and the waterless ditches and the rusted farm equipment toward the campus of Cow Eye Community College. Each accreditor had been assigned to a student leader and each student leader had been given a script to read, and as the wagons passed the various milestones along the way — the post office, the jailhouse, the red-brick mayoralty building — pulling off the highway every so often to allow the cars behind them to pass, the team leaders recited the script that had been so carefully prepared in advance: “If you look to the left of our Conestoga,” they would read, “you can still see the long fence and decaying remnants of the once-great Cow Eye Ranch. The ranch was previously world-famous and the old-timers of the area still aver that in its heyday it fed half the country. It is a local landmark and a sign of uncertain times. The ranch struggled for many years to survive amidst a sea of change but, sadly, it has since been closed for good….”

“Closed?” asked the accreditors incredulously.

“Yes,” answered the student leaders. “Predictably and finally.”

The town had been informed of the accreditors’ arrival weeks in advance and so, along the route, residents of the area who supported the college’s application for accreditation — many of whom had either attended the college themselves in better times or who currently had children or other relatives still aspiring to accredited degrees — hailed the convoy with cheers and placards and exuberant waving and applause. Like bystanders along a marathon, the townsfolk jogged beside the wagons with cups of water that the accreditors leaned out to accept, drank thirstily with a single hand, then threw back onto the asphalt of the highway to be collected. When the three covered wagons reached the campus, Timmy stepped out to greet them wearing a pin-striped suit recycled from his three most recent weddings and a top hat with matching paisley tie. “Welcome to Cow Eye!” he said and bowed, and as he did, the hat tumbled off his head. The accreditors laughed good-naturedly at the display and the horse-drawn wagons moved past the guard shack and onto campus.

Looking out the window of my office, I noted the clopping of the horses and watched as the convoy made its way down the central thoroughfare past the three lagoons with their bronze statuary and dormant fountains, past the central mall and the sycamore and the students juggling their diminishing career prospects on the grass.

After arriving at faculty housing each member of the accrediting team received a campus map, a number-two pencil with Cow Eye’s institutional motto carved into it, and a bio-degradable bag of welcome goodies prepared by our executive secretaries: a porcelain cow figurine, a bag of beef jerky, two stainless steel orbs representing the sowed seeds of European civilization, and a copy of the Baghavad Gita lovingly translated a few years back by our very own Esperanto instructor. The accreditors looked tired after their arrival. We agreed to meet in the cafeteria the following morning for the opening address to faculty and staff.

Back in my office I’d set up a command headquarters of sorts, and it was from here that I received reports and updates from the student leaders, from Timmy at the guard shack, from the animal science faculty who had been charged with hitching the horses, and from the administrative secretaries who were positioned strategically around campus like a thousand points of light. Stopping by my office, each had received a two-way radio and instructions to notify me immediately if any issues happened to arise. “The fate of our college depends on these next five days,” I reminded them and we shook hands like aviators before an important mission. Timmy, in particular, seemed inspired by the challenge; an entire generation had come and gone since he last figured prominently as the first-string quarterback for the local high school team, and now his competitive instincts were bubbling over. “Let’s show these motherfuckers what Cow Eye is all about!” he gushed, and I shuddered at the thought.

The next morning, a Monday, the entire team of accreditors gathered in the cafeteria to meet our campus community over juice and donuts and some very awkward mingling. When that was done the formal portion of the morning session started. A table had been set up at the front of the cafeteria with a single microphone that could be passed back and forth as the team members, sitting behind the long table like disciples at the Last Supper, addressed the campus for the first time. “Is this thing on?” said Dr. Felch into the microphone by way of introduction.

“Yes,” we sighed. “It’s on.”

Having thus introduced himself to the accreditors, Dr. Felch welcomed the group with a brief speech about educational excellence and collegiality, and then held out the microphone to the team chair, who took it with a firm hand. The woman was in her mid-fifties and dressed in a plaid business suit and a pair of glasses that hung from a string around her neck. As she spoke she had the habit of either placing the glasses onto the tip of her nose, or taking them back off, to emphasize a point of particular importance. Her air was dignified and poised. Her coiffure was grayish. Her manner was reserved and cultivated. If outward appearances could be believed — and aren’t they always? — then it was only right that she should be the chair of this visiting team.

“Thank you for such an extravagant welcome,” the woman began, speaking into the microphone confidently and elegantly as if she had done this very thing many times before, as if the public address system were a natural extension of her voice — a logical extension of her soul. “On behalf of the visiting team I want to thank you for hosting us this week. I’m sure I speak for the others when I say that your students are truly blessed to be able to pursue their educational goals at such a stunningly beautiful campus as this….”

The faculty and staff in attendance — those who had taken the time to show up — applauded her sentiment.

“In fact I wish my own campus were this attractive,” she added. “It might help with our retention rates….”

At the allusion to retention rates a vein of nervous laughter arose around the cafeteria.

“But in all sincerity, I’m here this morning to thank you for hosting us and to explain what you can expect during this upcoming week while we are here visiting your campus. But before we do that, I think it would be prudent to first introduce ourselves to you individually so that you can see who we are as human beings. As you will note, we are a diverse group and I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that we are not oppressors or tyrants. We are not some amorphous alien invaders coming to your campus to inflict a form of grave institutional harm upon you. We are neither fascists nor communists. Neither neo-liberal nor strict constructionists. We do not have a political agenda. We are simply professional educators who have chosen to be here as willing participants in the accreditation process. In fact on a scale of one-to-ten with ten being a lioness protecting her young and one being a nun before Vespers, we are probably somewhere around a two-point-five.” Here the woman pushed her glasses back onto her nose. “As team chair, then, I suppose I should introduce myself to you first….”

The woman cleared her throat as people do before talking in public about lofty concepts. Then she said:

“As Dr. Felch mentioned, I am the chair of this visiting team. I am also an award-winning educator and president of a community college located in a picturesque town in the beautiful state of Utah. You may be surprised to learn that my school is a small college much like yours, and so as its president I know very well what you’re probably feeling as you go through this accreditation process. How daunting it can be. How sapping of resources. How emasculating. I’m sure there were times when you wished the whole process would just go away forever. That you could simply run and hide from it. That you could just focus on the job that you were hired to do, rather than spending hour upon irretrievable hour on this onerous and tiresome burden that has been thrust upon you and that you undertake half-heartedly and with barely concealed malice in your hearts. But as professional educators you know that this is not an option. And so I commend you on your efforts. And your resolve. And your commitment to your institution. I also congratulate you on the grace and dignity you’ve brought to your role as quietly suffering professionals. At my college we recently went through this ordeal ourselves only to receive a very discouraging result. And so having gone through this process — and having been poked and prodded and otherwise adjudicated by a visiting team of like-minded peers — I welcome the opportunity to visit your campus in this same capacity, to view the process from the other side of the microphone if you will, so that I might be able to impose upon your college the same arbitrary and stifling requirements, the same external value judgments, the same mid-career misery and institutional angst that has been imposed upon ours….”

The woman paused. Around the cafeteria there was a discernible feeling of discomfort. Then the woman said:

“That was an attempt at humor, folks. It won’t hurt my feelings if you laugh….”

A self-conscious laughter arose around the cafeteria only to die out just as self-consciously.

“…But I jest. In truth, I am a firm believer in the accreditation process as a vehicle for self-reflection and continuous improvement. This is my fourth team visit — and second as team chair — and I’m ecstatic to be here. Before this trip to Cow Eye I had never even been to your great state and might otherwise not have come if not for an auspicious quirk of fate. In fact, I was originally assigned to visit a thriving community college in Oklahoma last year, but the commission ultimately decided to send me to Cow Eye instead — the idea being that my professional expertise and physical grace might be better served at your college where things are rather more dicey. And so I’m very happy to be able to visit all of you on your stunningly beautiful campus and I’m happy that my venture from desiccation to verdure is happening now, which is to say later rather than sooner….”

After a brief but somewhat more enthusiastic applause the woman held up her hand:

“….Of course this is not to imply that you do not have some serious work to do. Over the past few months we’ve been reading your self-study report and making detailed notes. We’ve written comments in the margins. We’ve highlighted figures that seem to contradict each other. One of our team members, who happens to be an award-winning poet and a well-respected professor emeritus, has even taken to diagramming the iambs in certain passages concerning your college’s assessment plans….”

At this, a gasp went up around the cafeteria. But the woman seemed not to take notice:

“…. Needless to say, the accreditation process has not been kind to your college as of late. And so there are many deficiencies that you should have addressed. We will be checking to see if you have addressed those deficiencies. We will be verifying what you wrote in your self-study versus what we see actually happening on campus. Have you implemented the ambitious plans you said you’d implement? Have you been true to your word? Is your campus really as bucolic as you claim? Are your faculty members united behind the mission of your college? Are vegetarians and non-vegetarians given equal access to the resources that are available? In short, we will be looking to see whether you really are upholding those high standards of educational accountability that you profess to be upholding in the institutional motto that is carved into those number-two pencils….” Here the woman stopped to remove her glasses from her nose. “Oh, and I have a loving husband and three wonderful children currently attending prestigious four-year colleges in various urban centers around the country.” Embarrassed, the woman quickly turned to the woman sitting next to her. “But enough about me,” she said. “Let’s introduce you to the rest of the team…!”

Here the woman passed the microphone around so that each of the other members of the team — all eleven of them — could introduce themselves. There was the librarian from a vocational college in Jamestown. And the institutional researcher from Walla Walla. And a tutoring coordinator from Albuquerque. Two members of the team were upper administrators. Three were tenured faculty. One had a patch on his eye. Another seemed to lisp. One was vaguely European. One had a tattoo around her ankle. A majority were demonstratively agnostic. A minority were nearing retirement. Each was an expert in a field of competence. All were award-winning. And every last one was thoroughly and expertly engaged in institutional improvement. In turn, they recited their names, their titles, their campus affiliations, and their own particular affection for the accreditation process. The last person to accept the microphone was a petite woman whose wispy voice seemed somewhat incapable of traveling through the extension cord and out the speakers that had been set up around the room facing the audience.

“My name is Sally,” she said, though a fist-year student might have spoken the name with more conviction. “I am from California….” At the side of the table Dr. Felch gave a wide smile and an emphatic thumbs-up. “I’m very glad to be here, even though I am the youngest and least-experienced member on the team. I enjoy reading and horseback riding. I have two housecats and a tattoo on my ankle. As a young unmarried career-minded professional, I’m excited to learn more about your campus, especially as it pertains to tantric yoga, artificial insemination, and fiscal accountability….”

When each member of the team had been introduced, the team chair was once again handed the microphone, which she accepted gracefully:

“So as you can see, your college is in expert and caring hands!”

Here the team chair placed her glasses back on the tip of her nose.

“Now for a few logistical notes about our visit….”

As the woman spoke, I took a long look around the cafeteria, which despite the importance of the occasion was barely half-full. Would the accreditors be impressed by this turnout? Or would they see the room as half-empty? And how would this same cafeteria look once our local professoriate — all one hundred percent — had been herded through its doors for the Christmas party? Where would the food table go? The punch bowl? The disco strobe? Would there be enough room for the talent show? For the Christmas tree? The decorations? Would the available wall space be sufficient to accommodate the various flags of the world? Would all this inclusiveness fit into such a confined segment of time and space? And why were Rusty and Gwen glaring at each other across the half-empty room with such obvious and unconcealed hostility? Would they honor their respective commitments to attend the party even if the other came as well? And where was Will Smithcoate at this very moment? Surprisingly, he wasn’t at his customary table under the NO SMOKING sign. But why? Had somebody discouraged him from attending this opportunity to meet our accreditors? If so, why the concern? What might he have said about our future, about our history, that could jeopardize our college’s accreditation? And what, when all was said and done — when the blood had dried and the detritus had settled and the Ziploc bag had been rinsed to be used once again — was the metaphorical significance of the calf that we had castrated in the middle of the dusty corral? What exactly were the seeds that we had planted? The blood that we had spilt? The pills that I had taken one after the other? And how would I find more of them now that they had each run out and their respective vials were empty? These were the burning questions that consumed me as I sat in the cafeteria listening to the team chair explaining the logistics of her team’s accrediting visit.

“…And so….” she was saying, “….at the end of our sojourn this week we will be sharing our initial findings with you before we leave on Friday. However, please understand that our recommendations are not final and that anything we write will need to be reviewed by the accrediting body as a whole. In the meantime, we look forward to seeing the learning that is taking place at your college and to meeting with you during this week — to visiting your classrooms and speaking with your students and attending your social activities — as a way of formally assessing the effectiveness of your institution. We recognize the time it’s taken you to organize a special week of activities around our visit and would like to commend you, Dr. Felch, for all that you’ve done in organizing our accommodations. I know there were some unforgivable problems with logistics the last time we came, but this time around everything has been really fantastic….”

Dr. Felch acknowledged the accolade with a modest wave, then quickly pointed to me.

“Charlie?” he said. “Stand up, Charlie, so we can recognize your efforts….”

I stood up.

“That’s Charlie,” said Dr. Felch. “Our Special Projects Coordinator. The individual most responsible for what you will be experiencing this week….”

A polite applause greeted me. Grabbing the handkerchief from my shirt pocket, I wiped another dab of spittle from my mouth. Then I sat back down.

“….Fellow educators of Cow Eye….” the woman continued. “Please know that we’ve read your new mission statement and find it compelling. We see that you are making great strides to address your deficiencies and we know that you take your duties as professional educators seriously. We especially like that you’ve chosen a local theme for this week, one that celebrates the unique culture of the Cow Eye region. The ride into campus was quite unexpected and, I should say, rather enjoyable. We also understand that there will be a culminating event on Friday the twentieth, and we look forward to that as well. Finally, I just want to say that you should not let the fact that we are deciding the fate of your college — the fate of your entire community perhaps — influence how you perceive our visit. Although you will be seeing us around campus over the next five days — and we may stop you to ask some hard questions along the way — please treat us as you would any other visitor to your campus. Act naturally. Be sincere. Treat our time here as if it were any other week in the storied history of Cow Eye Community College.”

The woman paused. Then she said:

“Oh….and I almost forgot….” — at this the woman removed the glasses from her nose and looked out at the audience importantly — “….Merry Christmas!”

Everyone laughed.

After a few final questions from the audience, the accreditors packed up their things and headed off to begin their accrediting.

*

That was on Monday morning. On Monday afternoon the vintage truck show was held in the large parking lot next to the planetarium. On Tuesday Marsha Greenbaum conducted a yoga demonstration where the accreditors were taught to breathe into each other’s nostrils and to arch their backs like skeptical felines. The one-on-one accreditation interviews began later that morning and from my office I received updates on those that had already been conducted. As the news trickled in over the two-way radio, it became apparent that the accreditors had read our self-study thoroughly and were not pulling any punches. One woman had grilled our fiscal officer on the exorbitant cost of the chlorine used for the swimming pool; another wanted to know why there were so many dead carp floating at the feet of the cowboy with the lariat; a third asked why, if satisfaction really was higher among faculty and staff since the construction of the archery range and indoor gun facility, we had just lost yet another award-winning employee — our recently hired political science instructor — after a single fruitless semester; and then there was the graying gentleman who, after sitting through a lecture on moral relativism, had put a heavy hand on our ethics teacher’s shoulder and reassured her in father-like tones that the world itself would not end if Cow Eye were to lose its accreditation — that a professional with her credentials could expect to find a position at any community college in the country. Sam Middleton, meanwhile, had been introduced to the professor emeritus and the two had headed to his office for their own interview where in a special closed-door session the two poets — one tenured and award-winning, the other righteous and intransigent — would be discussing the diverse and student-centered ways that our college assesses its own assessment processes.

“Would you mind if I were to be present for that discussion?” I offered the professor emeritus, hoping to quell any possible dust-ups between him and Middleton.

“No,” he said, rather coldly. “This is a topic for he and I only. No offense to you, my friend, but this will be a disquisition of creative minds. Silence versus sound. Rhythm versus rhyme. Mano a mano. If I have any questions about educational administration I’ll let you know….” The man rolled up his sleeves and set out for Sam Middleton’s office.

On Wednesday morning the rodeo was held to repeated oohs and ahhs, and later that afternoon the accreditors invited the campus to a mid-week forum where the team fielded questions from the audience on issues pertaining to institutional peer-review. One by one, the team members gave their respective views on the process itself, on the demise of intellectual integrity and critical thinking, on the latest five-to-four Supreme Court decision affecting higher education, and on the declining role of the humanities in world affairs and of the classics in particular. When this was done an older student finishing up the sixth year of his two-year degree asked the accreditors to explain their respective positions on love.

“Positions?” the team chair responded, suddenly flustered.

“Yes, positions. What is the position of your body as it pertains to love? In other words, can you please tell us, by the standards you are applying to us this week, what love actually is?”

To which the team chair responded:

“The question itself is perfidious. We are a single accrediting body which, as you know, consists of many individuals. And so it is surely not in our purview to tell your campus in any definitive way what love is. However, it is entirely within our scope to tell you what it will need to be. That is, what it will need to be if you wish for your college to achieve reaffirmation of its regional accreditation….”

Passing the microphone from one side of the dais to the next, the accreditors shared their diverse opinions on love, and from them we learned that love will need to be both transparent and accessible; that it will need to be aligned with the overarching purpose for the college’s being; that it will need to be data-based and continually improving; and that if it is to have any chance of surviving the test of time, it will need to be measurable, replicable, scalable and incontrovertibly objective.

“So it shouldn’t be aspirational then?” Gwen asked.

“No,” they said. “It will need to be immediately observable.”

“And I guess it ain’t the sort of thing that’s subject to personal interpretation?” asked Rusty.

“Absolutely not!” they insisted. “True love will need to be unequivocal!”

On Wednesday evening the campus was treated to the ceremonial opening of the thematic fountains, the pent-up water bursting skyward to the sounds of symphonic music and the cracking of a special fireworks display. Afterwards, an outdoor picnic was held next to the Appaloosa with flood lights illuminating the grounds and students from the culinary program circulating with trays of hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. Later that night, long after the resplendent display was over and the soiree had dispersed, I noticed two shadowy figures in the distance holding hands by the lagoon where the bull was still mounting his heifer. In the play of darkness and moonlight the two hand-holders looked like tiny figurines amid the majestic fountain.

“Who’s that over there?” I asked an administrative secretary who had stayed to help me clean up.

“I’m not sure,” she answered.

“Is it a man and a woman? Or two men?”

“I don’t know,” said the secretary. “It’s getting harder and harder to tell nowadays. But it appears that at least one of them is an accreditor…!”

That night I came home expecting to find my apartment warm and well-lit. After a long day of accreditation activities, I was reveling in a strange and sudden elation that had arisen from my newfound sense of omnipotence. The exhilaration of creative problem-resolution; the arousal after a challenge surmounted; witnessing the muse of educational administration lying disrobed in all her glory; the exultation that comes from standing at the very precipice of personal and institutional calamity, looking over the brink, and then pulling back just in time — all of this had caused my blood to pump even faster than the many pills I was taking. The adrenaline was coursing through my body like the lifeline of virility itself. Now more than ever I found myself looking forward to a hot cup of tea and a lesson or two (perhaps three if stamina allowed!) in intermediate calculus.

But this time my apartment was completely dark. And silent. I flicked the light on and called out through the apartment. But the apartment was just as empty. And just as quiet. A leaky faucet was dripping somewhere in the background. The Anyman’s Guide to Love and the Community College sat forlornly on the kitchen table. Nothing moved.

And that’s when I began to notice the sounds coming from the other side of the apartment. First a light thumping. Then the faint sound of bedsprings creaking. These were the timeless rhythms of love. The music of immoderate passion. Across the wall I could hear the familiar purring of a cat being gently stroked. My heart sank. I boiled a pot of tea. Then waited. I tried to reread my favorite chapter from Love and the Community College, the chapter on defloration, but I could not concentrate on the words.

When the tumult had finally died down I stepped into the cold hallway and standing in front of the adjacent door began to knock softly. After a few moments the door opened slightly once more. A single eye peered out.

“It’s you?” said the math teacher.

“You’re there?” I answered. “Where the memories are?”

“Of course I’m here. This is my apartment. Where else would I be?”

“Well, I thought you might be waiting for me in my kitchen. I just assumed you would be at my table in your t-shirt and socks, with a cup of tea, the way you have been every evening since we first….”

“It’s over, Charlie.”

“What?”

“Sorry, but this just can’t work.”

“It can’t?”

“There’s no future in it. I am a math teacher. You are an educational administrator. We speak different languages. Mine is the lingua franca of scholarly enlightenment. Yours is the specialized jargon of dull utility.”

“Yes, but couldn’t the two be reconciled somehow? Couldn’t there be some sort of equilibrium? Some sort of…compromise?”

“No. It simply won’t work.”

“But why not? Everything seemed to be working fine until now! I mean — I don’t want to brag — but it worked three times last night alone!”

“You caught me in a moment of weakness. But I’m better now.”

“But I….”

“Bye, Charlie….”

The woman opened the door slightly to hold out her hand through the crack. I accepted the soft fingers in a final feeble handshake.

Just as suddenly as she’d once appeared, the woman closed the apartment door and went back inside to the mysterious realm of mathematics and the awaiting arms of the calculus teacher.

*

That was on Wednesday night. By Thursday morning the threads of my elaborate plan were starting to fray at the edges. The first call came from Timmy at the guard shack, who informed me that the arm of the wooden gate was stuck shut and a long line of cars — including several accreditors who had driven off-campus for breakfast — was backed up all the way out to the railroad tracks. By the time I had dispatched a team of motorized carts to transport the accreditors to their various appointments — apologizing profusely for the inconvenience — I was already being called to the administration building where a disturbance had erupted among an unruly group of adjuncts over the issue of taxation without representation. The group was demanding a minimum wage, an eight-hour work day and expanded access to inclusion in the literary canon. They also wanted safer working conditions, bimetallism, and universal suffrage. Theirs was a cross of gold, they said, and they were tired of bearing it: and if their concerns were not addressed they were prepared to follow through with a crippling work stoppage. “Can we deal with all this next week?” I pleaded. “I mean, after the accreditors are gone!” The adjuncts were not pleased but eventually agreed, and having achieved their reluctant consent I headed over to the chemistry lab to replace a broken beaker; then to the public speaking classroom where a speechless accreditor was trying to make sense of Long River’s laconic approach to teaching; then to the music room to return the conductor’s wand I’d borrowed the previous semester. From there I rushed back to the creative writing workshop to explain to an irate accreditor why the newly tenured — and suddenly less mesmerizing — creative writing instructor had neglected to show up for his class. Ten students were sitting around the conference table with pliant minds and malleable manuscripts but with no instructor to shepherd them over the hills and dales. The accreditor expressed shock at the lack of professionalism and demanded to know how such a thing could happen at an accredited institution of higher learning. Bemoaning the lost opportunity, the woman further questioned the viability of teaching such a thing as creative writing at all.

“It is not for me to speak to that,” I said. “But what I can say is that our creative writing teacher has been sufficiently instructive during his time here to achieve both tenure and acclaim. He has won at least one award for his teaching — and several more for his unpublished writing. He has been truly mesmerizing up to this point and is proving to be a genuine asset to our college.”

“Yeah, well, it’s far easier to be a shining beacon for a little while,” said the woman, “than a lesser light that burns for posterity. In any case, this is all very disappointing. I have just lost the next forty-five minutes of my highly regimented life. So now what should I do with the time?”

“In lieu of an actual class observation,” I suggested, “perhaps you could interview the students who are sitting around this conference table?”

The woman was regarding me skeptically.

“I’m quite sure,” I continued, “that our students will have nothing but glowing endorsements of their creative writing classes here at Cow Eye. And I’m sure they will be happy to tell you all the amazing things they’ve learned from such a mesmerizing, if inexplicably absent, creative writing instructor. I am also certain that the responses you receive from the students around this table will be universally similar in their appreciation of the amazing opportunity for personal growth and intellectual fulfillment that has been afforded them as a result of their educational experiences at our regionally accredited institution. Isn’t that right, kids…?”

At this the surprised students nodded their consensus.

The woman agreed with my suggestion and I quickly left her alone with the students, closing the door softly behind me as I left.

*

But the challenges did not end there. Within minutes of each other I received word of a small cooking fire in the cafeteria; that a disgruntled student had protested a grade by spray-painting a nasty slogan on the side of the administration building (“Cow Eye Community College….Where FASCISTS Meet!”); that a pelican had mauled an unsuspecting accreditor and had to be trounced on the spot; and that a former female employee of Cow Eye had shown up with her lawyer at Dr. Felch’s vestibule to serve him with an ultimatum in a lawsuit that she was intending to file. By mid-morning my mind was being pulled in a thousand conflicting directions at once, and in response to each of these emerging trajectories I had already traveled up and down the esplanade many times over.

“Where are you headed now?” a passerby would ask.

“To the animal sciences building,” I would answer, “to deliver this shipment of shoulder-length gloves.”

A little after ten that morning, just as I was heading to my office to catch my breath from all this, I received a distressed call over the two-way radio nestled in the vest of my windbreaker.

“We have a serious situation at the cafeteria, Charlie,” the voice said, and then ominously: “Over!”

When I reached the end of the esplanade I saw a crowd gathered around an ambulance with its flashing lights still on. A bustle of medical personnel were loading a stretcher into its back. The Esperanto teacher was standing with the crowd and when I asked her what was happening she pointed at the back of the ambulance where the stretcher had been placed.

“It’s Will Smithcoate,” she said. “It looks like he had another incident. They’re taking him to a hospital in the city.”

“That far?”

“They have no choice. There’s no place in the vicinity that has the most up-to-date medical equipment.”

After a few minutes on the sidewalk the ambulance shut its door and sped off.

“It’s terrible,” I told Raul later that morning when I stopped by his office. “Will has no children. And no wife since his wife died. He’s spent his life scattering the seed of knowledge to be spread throughout the world — to be disseminated far into the abstract future — yet there is nobody to take care of him now, in the very real present, during his time of greatest need. He’ll be there in that hospital all alone, Raul.”

“Such is life, Charlie. Such are the choices we make. Those were the choices he made.”

“But I feel partly responsible. Maybe I should have noticed the drawl in his speech that first time in the cafeteria. Or maybe I could have done more to dissuade him from his reliance on cigars and bourbon. Perhaps if I had done something differently — something in its entirety — I could have kept this from happening! Maybe he wouldn’t be in that ambulance right now if I had!”

“Maybe. But that’s beside the point at this juncture. What can be done in the here and now? That’s the question we should be asking.”

“You’re right of course. I should be weighing constructive solutions. I should be proactive. Any ideas come to mind?”

Raul thought for a moment. Then he said:

“How about visiting him at the hospital?”

The thought hadn’t occurred to me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t even know which city he’s been taken to. But I do like the premise of a journey. It’s better than sitting here waiting for the next call from the head of maintenance. It’s a lot better than waiting helplessly for the slow build-up to the Christmas party. Would you come with me?”

Raul laughed.

“Sure,” he said, and then as if it were a simple afterthought: “Can I bring a lady friend?”

I shook my head.

“Do you ever think of anything else?”

Raul looked sheepish.

“In private moments I also fantasize about sinusoids….”

I rolled my eyes. Back in my office, I called the hospital for information and when I had the necessary details I stopped by Raul’s office once again to explain my plan.

“Your plan?” he asked.

“Yes. My plan to visit Will in the hospital in the city.”

“Okay….”

“So meet me at the cafeteria tonight at eleven,” I said. “It’s six hours to the city where the hospital is, so we should get there just in time for visiting hours. I’ll procure a car for our journey. We’ll drive by darkness of night and be back here by noon tomorrow to help set up for the Christmas party. It’ll be an experience to remember. Oh, and to answer your question, Raul: yes, you can bring your lady friend….”

We shook hands and agreed to meet at the cafeteria that night at eleven: me, Raul, and his latest lady friend.

*

By the middle of that morning — the Thursday before our Christmas party — the accreditation visit had clearly moved well past its emanation and was now heading toward the apogee of its incarnation. Faculty were hosting the visiting team members in their classes. Adopt-an-Accreditor activities were being carried out religiously and with a vengeance — or, as the atheist in the philosophy department wryly put it, with a religious vengeance. The secretaries were sending regular updates by two-way radio. Student leaders were busily and eagerly doing their part. Within hours the untimely graffiti had been painted over. The broken toilets were fixed. Ducks quacked once again. Despite the earlier problems, the entire weight of history seemed to be moving purposefully toward the culminating Christmas party the following day.

By three o’clock all the accreditors’ interviews had been conducted and their classroom visits completed. At six, dinner was served by the culinary students. By eight, the Faculty-Student-Accreditor Dance-A-Thon had wound down, and by eight-fifteen the lights in the cafeteria were turned back on — the attendees blinking at the new light — and the set-up crew for the following day’s activities began their mobilization: with ladders and stepstools and rolls of duct tape the team was busily stringing up the decorations for the Christmas party.

By ten-thirty the lights and tinsel were mostly strewn; a disco strobe had been dangled from the center of the cafeteria; tables and chairs were arranged in long rows. And by ten-forty-five the cafeteria had emptied out and was quiet and dark once again. A few minutes before eleven I stood outside the entrance waiting for Raul, who arrived punctually as always and, as promised, with his “lady friend” in tow.

“I trust you know each other?” Raul winked and pointed at the two of us.

“Hi Bess,” I said.

“Fuck you, Charlie.”

“Bess, look….”

“Just shut up, Charlie. I’m only here because Raul asked me to come. And I do want to visit Will in his moment of need. I’m not here to have any probing discussions with you.”

Bessie turned and walked away. When she was out of earshot Raul looked over at me apologetically.

“I hope I didn’t overstep here…. I was just trying to help out. I figured you might like the opportunity to talk things through with her. That this might be your last chance — you know, before the Christmas party. I probably should have told you up front, Charlie. But I thought you might call the whole thing off if you knew she was coming….”

“Right,” I said. “It’s okay. These are the choices we make. These are the choices I’ve made. I guess we’ll just see how it goes….”

And so at exactly eleven-fifteen, having not slept at all in more than seventy-two hours and having not slept soundly in more than seven months, I closed the cafeteria door behind me. From there the three of us walked in darkness to the parking lot in back of the cafeteria where I opened the heavy door of Will’s Oldsmobile Starfire, sat behind the wheel, pulled the key from the dark place under the seat where he always left it, and starting up the car with a loud roar of the V-8 engine, guided the lumbering behemoth out onto the main thoroughfare of the college, past Timmy at the guard shack, over the railroad tracks, and out onto the highway leading along the edge of Cow Eye Junction. The Oldsmobile was large and powerful and as we headed out to the highway — the three of us sharing the crowded bench seat (Raul on the passenger side and Bessie between the two of us with her ankles on either side of the floor hump) — I stepped onto the heavy gas accelerator, gradually gathering momentum until the pedal was firmly against the floor and the burly car was speeding headlong into the night: past the jail and the post office and the pawn shop selling old musical instruments and beloved family heirlooms, past the darkened remnants of the Cow Eye Ranch and in the general direction of the distant city where Will Smithcoate had been taken. When we reached the mile marker announcing the exit for the Purlieus I slowed down for the first time, then turned off onto the exit.

“Why are you turning?” Bessie objected.

“I need some gas….”

The convenience store where I’d stopped was the only one at the Purlieus, and while Raul went inside to buy some mints, I pumped the gas and Bessie stood a good ten feet away from the car, her foot up on a curb, with an unlit cigarette in one hand and a disposable lighter in the other. She did not acknowledge me. She did not speak. She did not even look in my direction. Off in the distance the sounds of crickets could be heard. The fumes from the premium gas were intoxicating. Yet despite the late hour the moon itself was childless.

“Look, Bess…” I said when the pump finally clicked off; I flicked the lever down and set the handle back in its cradle. “All I can tell you is….”

Bessie raised her palm up to my face.

“Let it go, Charlie.”

Then she lowered it back down.

“Bess, I’m really sorry how things turned out. It’s just…”

“Shut up, Charlie. It’s not worth it. Life is short. And I’ve moved on.”

“You have?”

“If you need to know, I’m in love again.”

“So soon?”

“Yes. It took longer than usual, but I’ve recently gotten back with an old friend. He’s an admirer from high school who used to write me love letters in colored pencil but who now works for the phone company. He’d be number one thousand and two, in case anyone’s counting.”

“You mean you’re not devastated by our break-up? You’re not completely crushed?”

“Of course not. Why would I be? I’ve had a thousand and one loves in my life. And they’ve all ended in ignominy: all one thousand and one. It’s how it’s always been with me. And it’s how it is right now. But what should I do? Should I stop allowing myself to be vulnerable? Should I dissuade myself from being in love? Should I cease to care about the higher things in life — about that other kind of happiness — just because I know it’s not going to work out for me? And that it never will?”

“It’ll work out, Bess. Everything will work out for you someday….”

“No, Charlie, it won’t. And I know that just as well as you do. I’m from Cow Eye Junction after all — and if there’s one thing that being from Cow Eye teaches you it’s how to accept what is in lieu of what so easily could have been. And that the two are not so different from each other really. In any case, that is all water under the bridge now. And besides….he likes children.”

“Who?”

“My new love. He’s great with kids. He has three of his own.”

“So we’re good then, you and me?”

“I wouldn’t exactly say that. I’ve still got a fucking half-eaten fruitcake in my freezer thanks to you. But yes, we’re good enough for now. Good enough, in any case, to sit together on the bench seat of this 1966 Oldsmobile Starfire. Good enough to make our way through the entrails of endless darkness toward the city to visit Will.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank you, Bess,” I said.

“Forget it, Charlie,” she answered.

At that moment Raul came out with a bag of snacks. As usual, his timing was enlightened.

“Are we ready to go?”

“I think so,” I said. “There’s just one final stop I need to make before we head out onto the highway and into the depths of this impossibly dark night….”

Raul offered me a mint and I accepted. It was wintergreen. I started up the Starfire with a roar.

*

At the corner of the Purlieus where the withered holly still hung, I found the person I’d been seeking. The man was wearing the same collared coat he always wore. He stood over the same battered suitcase he always stood over. And in the light of the lamp post he wore the same dull expression that he always seemed to wear. But this time there was a problem.

“I’ve only got the one vial,” he said. “I’m out of the other….”

“But I need them in equal amounts!”

“I’ve only got this one here.”

“But….”

“Do you want it or not?”

“Of course I do. But I want the other one too.”

“Well, I don’t have the other one. I only have this one.”

“One without the other?”

“Yes. Do you want it?”

“No!” I said and stormed away. Back at the car, I slammed the heavy door behind me and sat for several moments gripping the steering wheel in frustration. Then, meekly, I got back out. The man was right where I’d left him.

“Are you sure you don’t have both?” I asked. “Somewhere in that large suitcase there has to be the other vial too?”

“No, I only have the one. Do you want it or not?”

Under the flickering light of the lamp post I pondered this new dilemma. On the one hand, the two pills had been working their magic in tandem; this was well-known. What was also unequivocal was that while taking one after the other I had always taken them in equal measure: one tablet, say, from the vial with the black label and then, after a fistful of tap water, another from the vial with the label of white. And though I’d begun taking them in a moment of supreme darkness and indecision, the consequences since that time had been like day and night. With the help of the opposite-colored vials, I’d been able to avoid both utter sleep and utter wakefulness. In this state of heightened irresolution I’d been able to finish off the self-study and to finish it off in prose that was almost exclusively barren. Under the influence of opposite pharmaceutical imperatives, I’d managed to handwrite the focus group report in a single fitful weekend and to turn it in the following day with an orgasmic shudder. I’d shaved off my beard and stayed up until the early hours to finish The Anyman’s Guide to Love and the Community College. Since taking these two pills one after the other I’d melted a glacier and conquered a continent and successfully conducted a symphony of many moving parts; I’d navigated the roiling rapids of sleep deprivation and overseen the arrival of our accreditors in covered wagons. I’d traveled far beyond my field of expertise to the gilded realm on the other side of the railroad tracks where, despite my lack of sleep — or because of it? — I had come to love mathematics in ways that I would not have thought physically possible; at last recognizing the power of the derivative, the incredible elegance of the integral, I’d learned calculus over many nights and many months, on top of countless textbooks and sprawled across the cold kitchen table and pressed up against the sweaty….

“Look, do you want this vial or not?” the man interrupted my thoughts.

“I’m sorry?”

“The pills. You’d better grab the vial now if you want it. It’s the last one. And you’re not the only person in this town who works in educational administration.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take it. I’ll buy the whole damn thing. Which is to say, I’ll take that final vial of pills that will either keep me absolutely awake or make me fall absolutely asleep. I’ll take the one vial, and the one vial only, and I’ll take it without its perfect compliment. Without its diametrical opposite….”

I paid the man from Dr. Felch’s roll of twenties, got back into the car, and from there I drove the Starfire out onto the open highway leading to the city.

“He only had one vial,” I muttered to Raul and Bessie when we were back at full speed.

“Which one?” they asked. “The one to fall asleep… or the one to stay awake?”

This was certainly a valid question for my passengers to pose: in all, there were still more than three hundred miles of open road ahead of us — the asphalt stretching so far beyond the headlights that it seemed to extend into infinity. Beyond that, only the night could be seen.

“I’m not exactly sure,” I answered. “I didn’t think to ask. All I know is that the man only had one without the other. And now I have a single vial of pills without its opposite. I’ve put it in my pocket. And I will be consuming it alone and in its entirety. Like it or not, I will be committing to this one vial absolutely. At long last, you see, I will be committing to something entirely — which very likely means I will soon become something entirely. Which, as you should very well know by now, is somewhat unprecedented….”

Ahead of me the asphalt highway stretched into the darkness. The three of us held on as the Oldsmobile took us further and further away from the desiccation of Cow Eye Junction and deeper and deeper into the deepest reaches of endless night. Up ahead, the faint smell of moisture could already be felt.

“Pull the trigger, Charlie,” I could still hear Ethel’s voice imploring me, her words little more than a whisper.

And so I did. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.

* * *