Pistol Poets

one

Morgan’s eyes flickered open, and he realized that his naked ass was touching another naked ass under the covers.

Annie.

Visiting Professor Jay Morgan sat up in bed slowly, tried to remember how he’d hung himself over. The slim girl in a fetal curl under the covers next to him, Annie Walsh, didn’t wake. A whole semester had slipped away on his one-year contract at Eastern Oklahoma University before he’d struck pay dirt.

She was nice, young and fit. Eager.

Morgan was short and soft around the middle. His black hair, sharpened into a deadly widow’s peak, was long, pulled into a tight ponytail. But he had good cheekbones, and his eyes were a haunting blue. Morgan knew how to flash those eyes at young students.

Last evening’s dark blur streaked with neon. The dance club on University Drive. Annie packed tight in denim and a black tank top, red hair shaved close. First-year master’s student, a Sharon Olds wanna-be.

Morgan found boxers on the floor, slipped into them. He crept to the kitchen, tile freezing under his bare feet, started a pot of coffee, and watched it drip itself into existence. He filled a mug, drank with his eyes closed.

The phone rang. He grabbed it quickly. “Hello.”

“Morgan? It’s Dean Whittaker. We had an eight o’clock appointment.”

“That’s Wednesday.”

“This is Wednesday.”

Morgan’s wristwatch said 8:37. “I’ll be right there.”

Morgan ran in and out of the shower, threw on black pants and a green Hawaiian shirt with a picture of flowered Elvis playing the ukulele. Brushing his teeth almost made him puke. He grabbed his pea coat, shrugged into it.

Oklahoma winter, not so much snow but plenty of ice and cold rain. How had he ended up in this redneck backwater? Oh, yeah. He needed the job. Every year a new campus, the life of a gypsy professor.

A flash of skin caught his eye as he passed through the bedroom. The girl.

He cleared his throat. “I have to go.”

Nothing.

“There’s coffee.”

More nothing.

“Lock up when you leave, okay?”

He pulled the door closed behind him, groaned his way down the sidewalk, and climbed into his twelve-year-old Buick. He pointed it toward Eastern Oklahoma University’s main campus, muttering inventive curses at Dean Whittaker in which the word cocksucker figured prominently.

Morgan stopped at the secretary’s desk on the way into the English Department. “We have any aspirin, Tina?”

“I have Motrin in my purse.”

“Okay.”

He took the bottle from her, spilled five pills into his palm, and swallowed them dry.

“There’s a girl here to see you,” Tina said.

Morgan turned, fear kicking around in his gut. He thought Annie had somehow-impossibly-raced there ahead of him, coiled to spring charges of sexual misconduct.

It was a different girl, compact, tan, round-faced, and fresh, with black plastic glasses perched on the end of her nose, brown hair wild and shaggy. She bounced out of her chair and offered her hand to Morgan. He took it and shook, squinting at her, hoping to figure out what she was, if he was supposed to know her.

“Professor Morgan, I’m Ginny Conrad.”

“Oh.” Who? The voice was silky, familiar.

“I’m supposed to do a ride-along.” The edges of Ginny’s mouth quivered, hinted at a frown. “I’m supposed to follow you around. A day in the life of a poet-for the school paper. Remember?”

“Yes, of course I remember.” No he didn’t.

Morgan rubbed his temples with his thumbs. He looked at Ginny again, tried to make himself interested. But she had too much on the hips, too fleshy around the neck and cheeks.

“This isn’t a good day, Ginny.” He didn’t have the stomach for questions right now. His head pounded.

A real frown this time from the girl, panic in the eyes. “But I have a deadline. My editor-”

Dean Whittaker leaned out of his office. “Morgan.”

“Yeah.”

Morgan left Ginny standing there, the girl flowing into his wake, “but, but, but…” like an outboard motor about to stall. Morgan pulled the dean’s office door closed and cut her off.

“Sit down,” Whittaker barked. He was a huge man with a big voice. His full black beard, barrel chest, and concrete shoulders made him look like a bear. Whittaker was also interim chair of the English Department until a search committee could find somebody permanent. Whittaker’s dissertation had been on ladies’ costuming in Elizabethan theater.

Morgan began to lower himself into the overstuffed chair across from Whittaker.

“Not there!” Whittaker yelled.

Morgan leapt aside like he’d been hit with a cattle prod. He looked into the chair to see why he shouldn’t sit.

The reason was an old man.

“I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t see-I’m just out of it today.”

The old man scowled but said nothing. His thin, nearly transparent skin clung to his skull like wet tissue paper. Bald. Small, shrunken inside a brown sweater and a pair of khaki pants pulled up almost to his armpits. A red stone the size of a doorknob on his pinkie finger.

“Take the seat by the bookcase.” Whittaker glared.

“Sorry.” Morgan squeezed between two giant bookcases. A narrow chair without armrests.

Whittaker sat, pulled at his tie, and fidgeted with a pencil.

“Morgan, this is Fred Jones. He’s very generously donated enough money to keep Prairie Music operational for the next ten years.”

“That’s extremely generous,” Morgan said. “Extremely.”

And surprising as hell. The university had slashed the budget from under the third-rate literary journal, and it looked like they might have to go from a quarterly to an annual. Or maybe even scrap the journal altogether.

“Mr. Jones is a lover of fine literature and an amateur poet himself,” Whittaker said. “He’s been working quite hard on his own project, a volume of very personal poetry.”

Whittaker was nailing Morgan to the back of his chair with his eyes, and Morgan realized he was supposed to say something about this but hadn’t a clue what it should be. He took a shot at it.

“That’s great.” He nodded, raised his eyebrows to convey deep sincerity. “Absolutely great. I wish more people would develop their creative sides.”

It was a fantastic lie. The amateur poet was a cancer. Morgan’s brief stints as an assistant editor for a number of literary journals reinforced this belief. Every day he’d arrive at the office greeted by a towering stack of hideous verse. Everyone wrote poetry. Schoolteachers and teenage girls and spotty adolescent boys who couldn’t catch a girl’s eye. Christian crusaders who dumped their message into abstract verse, old men who committed the birth of the latest grand-offspring to rhyme. Housewives who scrawled their bland, unhappy lives into greeting-card drivel and refused to believe that their lives were as ordinarily miserable as everyone else’s. They pressed on, relentless, minds clouded with the delusion that their agonies were somehow special or interesting and must therefore be shared with the world.

And the poetry came in like a flood, a tidal wave. It arrived dozens of pages at a time, folded into sweaty, smudged thirds and overstuffed into flimsy #10 envelopes that burst at the corners. It arrived as a wad of Scotch tape, or held together by string, handwritten in red pen, i’s dotted with little hearts.

“I said, what do you think of that, Morgan? Sound okay?” Whittaker eyed him, clearly annoyed.

“Uh… that might be okay,” Morgan said. He hadn’t heard a word. He was too busy picturing a group of beret-clad amateur poets being run down by a team of Clydesdales.

The old man shifted in his seat, glowered at Whittaker, spoke for the first time. “Is this guy on the dope? Don’t saddle me with no dopehead.” His voice strained like an old sedan trying to crank. A deep Northeastern accent. New York? Philadelphia? Morgan had no idea, but the old man wasn’t an Okie, that was for sure.

“You can count on Morgan, Mr. Jones. He’s rock solid.” Whittaker shot a look at Morgan that said or else.

“That’s right,” Morgan said. “I was just deep in thought, trying to figure the best way to approach the project.”

Fred Jones stood, joints creaking. “It ain’t goddamn rocket science.” He made for the door.

Whittaker and Morgan stood as well. Morgan opened the door for Jones.

Whittaker said, “Morgan and I will work out the details, Mr. Jones.”

“Don’t take forever,” Jones said without turning. “I’m only getting older.” And he was gone, shuffling out of the office and down the hall, an old man a lot bigger than his bones.

“For Christ’s sake, Morgan, you could show a little interest.” Whittaker flopped back heavy in his chair.

“I’m interested,” Morgan said. What the hell did I agree to?

“Jones doesn’t think so. You better act fascinated as hell when you see him again. It’s not like folks walk in and hand the department a big fat check all the time.”

Morgan wondered why he was going to see Jones again. He couldn’t ask. Whittaker would know he hadn’t been listening. “So how do you suggest going about, uh, the project?”

“The hell if I know. Just keep him happy. Maybe the old buzzard will put us in his will. Don’t you have a class?”

Morgan looked at his watch. He did have a class. It had started three minutes ago.

Outside the dean’s office he saw Ginny the reporter coming for him with her hand raised. Fortunately, the department was crowded with undergrads trying to get their schedules changed before the end of the drop/add period. Morgan ducked into the flow of students, pretended not to see Ginny as he scooted down the hall. He didn’t quite run. But he walked very, very fast.

“DelPrego.” Morgan looked up from the roll sheet, saw a bored youth in a T-shirt and jeans lift his hand. Hair shaggy and over his neck, dishwater strands falling over his eyes.

He went through eight grad students like that, all dripping attitude. One actually wore an ascot. A goddamn ascot! What the hell was that kid’s name? He scanned the roll. Timothy Lancaster III. Christ. Morgan made a mental note to humiliate and demean the kid soon.

He called the last name on the list. “Annie Walsh.”

Morgan marked her absent, then asked the class, “Has anyone… uh… seen Annie Walsh?” Good one, Jay. Nobody suspects a thing.

“She wasn’t in my eight o’clock class.” The kid in the white T-shirt. DelPrego.

The Lancaster kid cleared his throat. “It’s been my experience that Annie Walsh has some sort of allergic reaction to early-morning classes.”

Morgan wondered if the girl was still home in his bed. He supposed she might have a whale of a hangover.

Morgan pulled Lancaster’s poem from the bottom of the pile. “Okay, let’s start with you, Timmy.”

“Timothy, sir.”

“Eh? What?”

“I prefer Timothy to Timmy.”

The DelPrego kid snickered.

Morgan’s predatory smile didn’t touch his eyes. “Your poem’s called…” He squinted at his copy. “What is it?”

“‘The Fallible Quiescence of a Wrathful Jehovah.’ ”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s about the disparity between free will and-”

“What’s this about in line seven?” Morgan asked. “Fuzzy nut sacks…”

Lancaster’s lips moved as he counted lines. “Nut soldiers. It concerns-”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

DelPrego squirmed in his seat, bit his bottom lip. He couldn’t stand it.

Lancaster had a little sheen of sweat on his forehead. “I use rodentia to symbolize the lower societal strata-”

“Squirrels?”

Lancaster said, “It’s really a metaphor for a much broader-”

“It’s squirrels, isn’t it?” Morgan said.

“Yes, sir, but-”

“Your poem’s about squirrels, Timmy.”

DelPrego’s face had purpled, his shoulders shaking with barely controlled laughter. He stuck the heel of his hand in his mouth to stifle himself. Others in the class giggled openly.

Morgan sifted the pile of poems, moved DelPrego’s to the top.

two

Harold Jenks was one tough nigger, and everybody knew it. You had to be tough to work for Red Zach.

Jenks liked to call himself the King of East St. Louis, but that was sort of a joke too many of the neighborhood folks took seriously. More accurately, he was king of about seven square blocks between the bus station and the Missouri State Welfare Offices. But everyone knew Jenks was Red Zach’s boy. That made Jenks important.

Jenks and Spoon Oliver hung out in the alley near the bus station. They sipped beer and smoked and waited for something to happen. It was after midnight. When you worked for Red Zach, you didn’t keep regular hours.

Jenks’s boy Spoon nudged Jenks in the ribs and pointed down the alley. “Check it out.”

Some nigger coming down the alley, carrying big suitcases. Jenks watched a minute, puffed his cheap cigar, a Philly Blunt he bought at the convenience store along with a sixteen-ounce can of Bud Light in a little paper sack.

“So what?” Jenks drank his beer.

“Toll,” Spoon said.

Jenks shrugged. “Shit.”

“I say we toll him. This our alley or ain’t it?”

“We ain’t charged toll since we was sixteen,” Jenks said. “We work for Zach now.”

“I’m cash short,” Spoon said. “I say we do it.”

Jenks sighed, tossed down the cigar stub, and stamped it out. “Okay, but don’t go all crazy.”

Jenks backed up behind the Dumpster, gave the “stay down” motion to his partner Spoon on the other side of the alley. Let that nigger get closer, then we jack his ass good. Only I got to keep an eye on Spoon. He’s over the edge lately. Jenks suspected his boy had developed a coke twitch, dipping into the merchandise.

When the victim got between them, Jenks and Oliver leapt. Poor nigger dropped the bags and tried to run, but Jenks had a fistful of his jacket, and Oliver tackled his legs. They all went down in a pile.

Jenks saw the kid was about his age, maybe twenty-two. He yelled, but Jenks twisted, got on top of him. He punched down hard across his face, twice. A third time broke the kid’s lip open, and dark blood smeared down his chin. Jenks let up when he saw the blood.

Oliver stuck a knife to the sucker’s throat. “Give it up, boy.”

“Let me go,” the kid said. “Take the bags. I got money. Take it.”

“Shut up.” Jenks gut-punched the kid. He pulled the wallet out of the kid’s jacket, counted the bills. “Eighty fucking greenbacks. Shit.”

He pulled the kid up by the shirt. “All you got is eighty fucking dollars, motherfucker. Shit. Not even worth jacking your ass.”

“Please-”

“Shut up, nigger.”

“Aw, shit,” Spoon said. “We got to kill this boy.”

“Please, no, I-”

“I said shut your cunt mouth.” Jenks rapped him on the nose.

“I know this boy,” Spoon said.

Jenks shook the boy by the shirt. “You know us?”

The boy nodded.

“Who’s that?” Harold pointed at Spoon.

“Spoon Oliver.”

“Shit,” Jenks said. “Who am I?”

“Harold Jenks.”

“Who are you?”

“Sherman Ellis.”

“He live three blocks over,” Spoon said. “Pappy in prison. Momma died of the cancer last year.”

“You gonna die now, Sherman Ellis.”

“I won’t say anything. I promise.” He was shaking. Tears.

“Can’t take that chance,” Jenks said. “Nobody to cry for you anyway. All alone in the world. Say good night.” This always scared them good. Jenks had even seen a few motherfuckers piss themselves.

“W-wait,” pleaded Sherman. “I’m leaving. What if I promise I’m never c-coming back. Never returning to Missouri. That would be okay, wouldn’t it?”

“Shit,” Spoon said. “A motherfucker about to die will say any shit.”

“It’s t-true,” Sherman said. “I’ve got a scholarship to Eastern Oklahoma. Grad school.”

“Bullshit.”

“The letter’s in my pocket,” Sherman said.

Jenks pulled the letter out of Sherman’s coat pocket. It had been folded into quarters. He opened it and read by the dim light of the streetlamp.

“You gonna be a poet?” Jenks couldn’t believe it. Of all the fucked-up things.

“Please.” Sherman’s face contorted with anxiety. “I’ve worked hard. Straight A’s in high school. I worked two jobs to get through Truman State. Please, brother. Not like this.”

As Sherman talked, Jenks felt himself deflate. He let go of the kid’s shirt. This nigger was on his way out. On his way to something better. He and Spoon always said that shit about killing. Kept the suckers scared. Make them keep their mouths shut. Hell, maybe they should let the kid go, give him his damn eighty dollars back. Maybe just this once-

Spoon moved forward, stuck the knife into Sherman’s chest, slammed it down to the hilt.

“Goddamn!” Jenks fell back.

“Motherfucker,” Spoon yelled.

Sherman twitched, clawed at the knife still in his chest, arched his back, eyes open to the night sky. He worked his mouth, no words. A trickle of blood welled up over his lips, stained his teeth red.

“Nigger thinks he can give us that brother shit,” Spoon said. “Who the fuck he think he is? He think he better than us. Fucking scholarship motherfucker.”

A long, strained breath leaked out of Sherman, and he went slack. Steam floating up from his open mouth, drifting out of the alley like a soul.

“Damn.” Jenks stood, looked down at the body, and shook his head.

Spoon grabbed Sherman’s bags. “Come on, Harold. Let’s go.” Spoon jogged to the end of the alley where his Eldorado was parked.

Jenks stood a moment looking at Sherman, then followed Spoon. They put the bags in the trunk, then climbed in the front seat. Spoon started the engine, and they drove away slow without the lights on.

After three blocks, Spoon turned onto the big four-lane and switched on the lights. “I’m going to Wendy’s. You want something?”

“No.” Jenks still had Sherman’s wallet. He flipped it open, looked at Sherman’s picture. He and Jenks were both very dark, same hair, same long nose and square chin. He was only a year older than Sherman. There was a Greyhound ticket folded into the wallet. Sherman had been on his way to the bus station. “Nigger was gonna be a poet.” He hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

“Fuck that,” Spoon said. “My cousin Jimmy busts rhymes at the Starlight Lounge Thursday nights. Don’t need no bullshit college for that. You sure you don’t want a Frosty or something?” He turned into the Wendy’s drive-thru.

Jenks put the wallet in his own pocket.

“You crazy?” Spoon asked. “Toss that out.”

“I got an idea.” The way Jenks said it frightened Spoon.

“Now hold on, Harold,” Spoon said. “You know that ain’t smart, keeping something like that. Cops hang a murder on you.”

“Nigger, I said I got an idea.”

And Spoon shut up. He ordered a triple with fries and shut his mouth.

three

Professor Morgan dismissed the class, stepped foot into the hall, and immediately saw Ginny the cub reporter waiting for him at the other end. She lifted her hand to wave, and Morgan turned, fast-walked around the opposite corner. He could hear her cloppity footfalls on the tile behind him.

Morgan zigzagged a labyrinth of office corridors, past a heretofore unseen set of rest rooms, a water fountain, some kind of tutoring room.

Where the hell am I?

The sound of Ginny’s blocky shoes pursued, dogged, relentless. Hath thou slain the jabberwock? Morgan scrambled. Looked side to side.

A stairwell.

He darted up and around, into the dark, dusty reaches of the third floor. The door was nailed shut, but the stairs kept going. Dry, wooden, creaking with each step.

He climbed.

A fourth floor. A fifth.

How many floors does this goddamn building have?

Morgan shoved open the fifth-floor door and found himself in a dim hall, murky with yellow light. Faded rectangles still remained where nameplates had been pried from office doors. He walked the hall, stale and silent like a ghost town. He stopped, cocked his ear down a cross hall. Listened.

What was that? He strained to hear. Music. He walked toward it. A smell. Sickly sweet.

He recognized the album now. Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School by Warren Zevon.

Who in God’s name is up here? This floor had obviously been abandoned, light fixtures empty, no blinds on the windows, dust.

Morgan glanced behind him. He’d shaken off Ginny. He could find another stairway down and go home if he wanted to, or find his own office and hide. But the smell and the music drew him on, the nagging tickle of curiosity.

He turned down a long hall. The music came from a door at the far end, and the smell grew stronger as Morgan approached. Yellowing pages had been taped to the door: news articles, poems, Far Side and Bloom County cartoons. Also a class schedule and office hours for fall semester 1983.

Morgan lifted his fist to knock, stopped, tried the knob. It turned. He very slowly pushed open the door and went in.

The office was long and dark, the music loud. The room was thick with smoke. Bookshelves lined with assorted tomes from floor to ceiling. Near the window sat a large brown globe of the world like it had fallen there from orbit, more books stacked around it like the edges of an impact crater.

A black-and-white poster of Freud on the wall. Some wag had drawn a penis head at the tip of his cigar with a red Magic Marker.

Morgan waved at the smoke, coughed. This smoke seemed familiar. He inhaled deeply, tried to remember.

Ganja.

The music stopped abruptly, and a voice from the dark recesses of the office said, “Close the damn door.”

Morgan jumped. “What?”

“You’re letting the smoke out.”

Morgan shut the door behind him, peered into the haze. “Who is that?”

Slowly, as if from a long way off, from the other side of a Scottish moor, a reedy, bearded man, round spectacles, pointed frame draped in threadbare tweed, emerged from the smoke like he was walking out of an Arthur Conan Doyle mystery.

In his gnarled hands he held a bong the size of a clarinet.

The old man exhaled as he spoke, eyes narrowed to dreamy slits. “I’m Professor Valentine.”

Morgan’s jaw dropped. “Valentine? Tad Valentine?”

“The same.”

“I thought you’d gone on sabbatical.” Valentine was the professor Morgan had been hired to replace for a year, but it was Morgan’s understanding the old Pulitzer Prize-winning poet had rented a studio in Prague. It seemed unlikely to find the man smoking weed from a giant bong in a remote office on an abandoned floor of Albatross Hall.

Perhaps this wasn’t Valentine. Maybe it was an old derelict junkie who’d wandered in from the cold. Morgan could think of no tactful way to ask.

“Please, please. Have a seat,” Valentine said. “Make yourself at home. I haven’t had visitors since… well, I don’t suppose I’ve ever had any. Not since moving up here.”

Morgan cast about the room. No chairs. He remained standing, hands folded demurely in front of him. “Uh…”

“Want a hit?” Valentine offered him the bong.

“Oh… uh…”

“You’re not a cop, are you?” Valentine pinned Morgan with wild eyes.

“No, no, I… Um…”

Valentine frowned. “Is there something wrong with you?”

“I’m Jay Morgan.”

“Well, that’s hardly your fault, is it?” Valentine mouthed the bong like he was in love.

“No,” Morgan said. “I mean, I’m the one-year-contract professor teaching your classes. Why aren’t you in Prague?”

“Ah, Prague.” Hazy nostalgia washed over Valentine. His eyes narrowed to slits, and he looked off into the dreamy distance. “Yes, I had a glorious few months there, and this wonderful studio apartment overlooking the Charles Bridge.” He shrugged. “I got kicked out.”

“Out of the apartment?”

“Out of the Czech Republic,” Valentine said. “Some leftover Iron Curtain nonsense. All ancient history really, but these chaps evidently have a long memory.”

“Does anyone know you’re here?” Morgan asked. “Whittaker never mentioned you’d returned.” Morgan worried he was out of a job. Would the old poet want his graduate workshop back?

Valentine lunged forward, took Morgan’s elbow into his bony fist, maneuvered Morgan into the smoke. The spindly professor’s grip was iron.

“Now listen, old sport,” Valentine said. “I’d really appreciate it if you could keep my presence here on the hush-hush side. Understand?”

“No.”

They arrived at a low leather couch, and Valentine dropped Morgan at one end. Valentine perched down at the other. “It’s just that I am still officially on sabbatical.” He sucked long on the bong. “I need rest. I couldn’t stomach a mob of ghastly students and their dreadful writing.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” Valentine leaned forward, squeaking the sofa leather. Shaggy brows knotted with stress. “I can’t write anymore, Bill. My head is cluttered with student writing. Insipid, cliché, rhyming excrement.”

“My name’s not Bill.”

Valentine didn’t hear. “I sit down at my desk and nothing comes out. My pen is an impotent noodle.”

Morgan nodded, sunk into the vast, deep swallowing womb of the leather sofa. He’d just been making the same complaints. His mind drifted. If he’d had a chance to take a year off and write in Prague, he damn well would have made good use of it. He daydreamed himself to cobblestone streets. Perhaps the ganja smoke had gotten the better of him.

“I won’t tell anyone,” he told Valentine.

Valentine grinned, eyes brightening. He patted Morgan on the knee. “That’s a good fellow, Bill. I appreciate it. I really do. Let’s smoke on it, eh? Seal the deal.”

“I’d prefer a beer,” Morgan said, more a wish than an actual request.

“Certainly.” Valentine waved his hand like he was casting a spell. “In the refrigerator behind the desk.”

four

Harold Jenks crouched on the fifth-floor fire escape of the abandoned building and smoked a Philly Blunt with one hand, the other hand in the warm front pocket of his Cardinals sweatshirt. He scanned the alley below. He puffed quick and nervous, watched the smoke spiral away on the cold wind.

He was always nervous picking up a delivery from Red Zach. Anything could happen. Only two years ago, the cops had shot Jenks’s cousin in a drop just like this. Those undercover fuckers could be anywhere-on the roof, in the old buildings, disguised as homeless drunks sleeping in a Dumpster. Anywhere.

Sherman Ellis’s wallet still hung heavy in Jenks’s back pocket. Jenks sighed out a long, gray stream of smoke. He hadn’t wanted Spoon to kill that boy. His heart hadn’t been in it. Hadn’t been in a lot of things for a while now. If Spoon hadn’t been there…

Jenks had told Spoon his wild idea, but in a flash of sanity, Jenks figured it just wouldn’t work. Spoon told him he was crazy and should throw the wallet out. If he did this thing-if he was crazy enough-he’d keep it under wraps. He would tell no one. Jenks would simply slip off quiet into the night. He made Spoon swear to keep it secret.

A flutter of noise off to his right. Jenks jerked, his free hand going to the Glock at the small of his back. But it was only pigeons. Damn sky rats sawing on Jenks’s nerves.

He smoked the Blunt down to the end, flicked the glowing butt into the alley.

Then he saw Red Zach’s white limousine enter the alley. It approached slowly, parked under Jenks’s fire escape. Five men got out. Four big motherfuckers, hands deep in the pockets of expensive overcoats, stone faces, sunglasses. They spread out and kept watch.

Red Zach craned his neck, looked up at Jenks. Jenks waved. Red Zach climbed the fire escape. Jenks watched him come. Zach carried a small canvas gym bag.

Red Zach had hair the color of a fire engine. Not natural, of course. Zach was a broad-shouldered, light-skinned black man with a pencil-thin beard also dyed red. He had sharp features, a pointed nose. Story around was Zach had some white blood in him somehow.

Jenks heard Zach clanging halfway up. Red Zach wore an impressive collection of gold chains and bracelets, a brown pin-striped suit that cost more money than Jenks saw in a month.

By the time Zach reached the fifth floor he was huffing and puffing pretty good.

“You know I’d climb down,” Jenks said.

“Better up here,” Zach said. “We can see if the cops come in either side of the alley and have plenty of time to dump the stuff. Besides”-Zach grinned big, capped teeth, white-“I need the exercise once in a while.” He patted the beginnings of a slight paunch under his suit.

Zach opened the gym back and showed Jenks the contents. It was full of little clear Baggies of white powder, prepackaged for street distribution. Jenks’s job was to ferry the stuff to the bartenders and hairdressers and street pushers who distributed the stuff in his area. Jenks knew he was looking at a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of junk.

“Here you go, Harold.” Zach handed over the bag. “You know what to do with it.”

“Right.”

“You okay?”

“I’m good.”

“You don’t seem like yourself,” Zach said. “You down? Got some kind of woman trouble?” He nudged Jenks, laughed.

“I’m just tired.”

“Uh-huh. Where’s your boy Spoon today?”

“I didn’t bring him.”

“Shit, I know that. That’s why I asked where he is.”

“Went to see his sister and her kids. Going to eat Chinese with them.”

Zach leaned on the rail, looked down into the alley, then out across St. Louis. “You know I been keeping an eye on you, Harold. You’re doing good work, and I’ve noticed that. I need loyal men on my team. You keep clearheaded and put in your time, and I’ll do right by you. You know what I’m saying?”

“I know.”

“I could send one of my boys up the ladder with the stuff if I wanted, but I come up here to talk to you personal. I’m bringing you along. You hear what I’m saying?”

“I hear you.” Jenks looked up at the gangster. “You know I appreciate it, Red.”

Zach nodded, squeezed Jenks’s shoulder. “Okay. You stay cool and I’ll check you later.”

Red Zach climbed back down the ladder. Jenks watched him get back into the limo with his boys. Jenks lit another Blunt, inhaled long and slow, watched the limo glide quiet out of the alley like smoke on the wind.

Back at Jenks’s shabby apartment, he threw the gym bag on the bed, looked at it for a long time.

For two years he’d been Red Zach’s boy. He knew Red was right. If he stayed tight, he’d eventually have a fine ride, a Caddy or a BMW. He’d have fine clothes, bitches that did whatever he said simply because he was Red’s boy.

But Jenks kept seeing Ellis’s eyes when Spoon had stabbed him. In one angry motion, Spoon had taken away everything the boy was, everything he’d worked for. And Jenks was to blame too. He’d been there.

Jenks pulled his big army surplus duffel bag out from under the bed. He packed his clothes, packed everything he valued, and threw away the rest.

And he took Red Zach’s gym bag too.

Red Zach sat in the back of his limo, mute goons on either side of him. The limo cruised the decay of East St. Louis’s side streets. He had more stops to make. A big day of pimping and gangstering.

He pulled out the latest copy of Esquire from between the seat cushions. There was a clothing advertisement which featured a square-jawed black man in denim. Stonewashed. Snakeskin boots. The jacket matched the jeans, and the black man had one leg up on some rocks, a mountain view in the background with an SUV off to the side. Zach couldn’t decide if the man in denim looked rugged or like a fag.

He thought about elbowing one of his goons, showing him the ad and asking what he thought. Never mind. It was no good talking to these guys. They didn’t do talk. And Zach couldn’t risk his image anyway. These boneheads expected him to strut around in ridiculous outfits and spit out homeboy talk. Fine. He’d put on the act for the troops. Whatever.

But Zach didn’t bust his hump to clear a high six figures a year just to waste away in the hood. He had reservations in Aspen. He wanted to catch Don Giovanni before the season ended. He’d recently become a gold-level member of the St. Louis Art Museum and there was a cocktail reception at the end of the month.

He needed some new clothes.

And some new acquaintances. He was surrounded by troops and his crew, but not pals. These leg-breaking motherfuckers were useful, but not good company.

Harold Jenks was a little different. That boy had something. A quality. But Zach noticed something was off. Jenks had something on his mind. And when a brother didn’t have his mind right, things could go bad.

five

Three beers later, and Morgan left Valentine’s office, drifted back down to the inhabited floors of Albatross Hall. No sign of Ginny.

Morgan felt woozy. Beer on an empty stomach, and he still wasn’t in top shape from the night before. He needed to go home, get a bite to eat. He needed to shower again after the cloying experience of Valentine’s smoke-filled office.

On the way out of the building he heard Ginny’s high, clear voice chasing after him. “Professor Morgan!”

He ran to the parking lot, started his car, and almost smacked a coed while backing out of his space. In his rearview mirror, he saw Ginny fumble with car keys, gallop toward a half-rusted, silver Toyota. Morgan gunned the Buick, squealed the tires, and scraped pavement on his way out of the parking lot.

He tangled himself in traffic on Garth Brooks Boulevard but thought he could still see her a dozen cars back. He yanked the Buick down a side street, found himself in a maze of student slums. He came out on Old Highway 12 and made the long, slow curve back to the house he rented. Morgan kept an eye in the rearview mirror, lips curving smug and satisfied when he didn’t see Ginny’s car.

Not today, junior newshound.

Morgan shuffled back into his little house. Not even 11 A.M. and he was beat, a little nauseous, skin slick with alcohol sweat. He’d begun the semester recklessly, unprepared. He didn’t even have syllabi finished for his two undergrad classes.

Sleep. He’d sleep away the rest of the day and start fresh tomorrow. And exercise. Sit-ups. He’d start doing sit-ups. He was a wreck.

“You look like shit, Doc.”

Morgan leapt back against the door, yelped, a high-pitched bleat like a puppy or a little girl.

“Take it easy, Doc.” It was Fred Jones. He perched like a ghost in the shadowy corner of Morgan’s living room, a bony apparition in a billowy sweater, sitting in a wooden rocker but not rocking.

“You can’t just barge into a guy’s house,” Morgan said.

“Whittaker sprang the deal on you,” said Jones. “I understand that. You wasn’t ready, so I figured I’d come talk to you one-on-one.”

Morgan had almost forgotten. He’d agreed to participate in something and wasn’t sure what it was. Still, Whittaker might have wanted him to humor the old fart, but if he couldn’t escape this shit in his own home, well, something would have to be done. First thing was to toss this old bag of sticks out on his ear. He started to tell the old man to take a hike when the giant walked in from the kitchen.

“Hey, boss, you want a beer? Imported.” He was six and a half feet easy, shoulders carved of granite. His blue-stubbled chin was an anvil. Sleepy eyes. He chewed slowly, half a sandwich still in his fist. Morgan reconsidered his plan. Maybe he should politely ask what he could do for these fellows.

Jones craned his neck, looked up at the bruiser. “You know my doctor said to lay off, meathead.”

Assorted protests tumbled in Morgan’s brain. The one that came out was “That’s my beer.”

“Your cheese went bad,” the giant said. He looked mournfully at the rest of the sandwich, then finished it in one bite.

“I can’t digest dairy,” Jones said. He handed Morgan a manila folder filled with loose paper. Thick. “How long to look at those?”

The folder was heavy. Morgan opened it. Poetry. Tons of it. Handwritten in feeble, shaky scrawl. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” He felt hungover-sick and confused. His stomach boiled. Head swimming.

Those beers in my stomach. I need food. The thought of the bad cheese put him off. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

Jones leaned forward, frowned, put his gray hands on his knobby knees. “Dammit, man, are you on the dope? You can’t seem to focus on what we’re doing here. I’m getting impatient.” He pulled a handkerchief out of his shirt pocket, shook it open, and blew his nose. “By the way, you got a dead girl in your bedroom.”

“What?” Morgan felt hot in the face. His ears buzzed. He took halting steps toward his bedroom.

“Hey, Doc.” It was the giant.

“I’m not a doctor. I have an MFA from Bowling Green.” He was trying to think.

“I just wanted to tell you-”

“Don’t tell me anything. Just shut up a second.” He felt dizzy, blood pumping in his ears, mouth pasty. Did he just tell that hulk to shut up? What had happened to the girl? Annie. Was she…?

“What’s the matter with you?” asked the old man.

Had Morgan done something to her? No, some kind of misunderstanding. But he couldn’t feel his legs. Head… spinning…

The giant said, “I just thought you’d want to know that there’s this chubby girl looking in your front window.”

Morgan turned. Ginny Conrad had a hand cupped against the glass, trying to see into the dim living room.

The room tilted. Morgan’s mouth fell open, his jaw working but nothing coming out.

Darkness.

six

Morgan blinked, moaned, belched acid. His eyes focused on the giant kneeling over him.

“You fainted.”

“I didn’t faint,” Morgan said. “I’m not feeling well.”

“You look like you’re gonna barf.”

“Look, Mr.- Who are you?”

“Bob Smith.”

Morgan sat up. “Where’s Fred Jones? I want to know- Wait a fucking minute. Fred Jones and Bob Smith?”

“The boss went to get help. He says we got to smooth over some of your problems for you.”

You are one of my problems.

Morgan swallowed another belch, rubbed his head. “The dead girl.”

“And the live one.” Bob jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the rocking chair in the corner.

Ginny sat forward. “Professor Morgan, will you please tell this enormous wad of muscles that I know you?” Her chin was out, defiant. It was a good act. Morgan could hear the little tremor in her voice.

“For Christ’s sake,” Morgan said. “She’s a reporter for the university paper.”

“I know,” Bob said. “We searched her.” He looked at her, eyes narrowed. “She threw her shoes at me.”

“They took my notepad and my tape recorder,” Ginny said.

Morgan climbed to his feet, swayed a little, then headed for the bedroom. “Back in a minute.”

Ginny made a little disgusted noise. “Professor, what’s going on? This guy won’t let me leave.”

“Just shut up a minute, okay?”

He kept his eyes averted from the girl in his bed and went to the bathroom. He splashed water in his face, leaned on the sink.

He went back out and looked at Annie. Eyes closed, lips slightly apart. She could have been sleeping. Somebody’s child gently napping. Perhaps it had been a mistake. Maybe she was fine, and Morgan moved toward her as he thought this, hand outstretched to touch her cheek. If she was warm…

But he jerked his hand back. If she was cold, he wouldn’t be able to stand it. It would break him. He’d lose it. Had she still been alive earlier or not? Had she been dead when they were under the covers together?

He went back in the bathroom, closed the door, and sat on the toilet.

What in holy hell was he going to do? After that business with the provost’s daughter at UNLV two years ago, Morgan was lucky to be working at all. Another disgrace might relegate him to a community college in backwoods Mississippi for the rest of his career. He hadn’t published a collection in seven years. He hadn’t published a single poem in two. All he could do was teach. The thought of a nine-to-five job in some Dilbert office twisted his stomach again. A dead coed would seal his fate.

A knock on the bathroom door startled Morgan. “Yes?”

The old man pushed his way in, frowned down at Morgan like he was looking at a dumb little kid. He handed Morgan an empty pill bottle. “Found this on her side of the bed. Looks like she couldn’t handle her shit. You give this to her?”

“Of course not.”

She’d overdosed. Pills on top of the alcohol. Crazy. But the more Morgan thought about it, the more he wondered. He did feel pretty goddamn awful. Had she slipped him something? Last night was hazy at best, especially toward the end when they closed down the pool hall across from campus. Stix, it was called.

Oh, hell, if somebody saw me with her…

“Come on,” Jones said. “I’ve got some plastic. Let’s get her out of here.”

Morgan followed him into the bedroom.

Giant Bob turned Annie on her side, a big roll of clear plastic over his shoulder. It was an awkward arrangement. Annie’s arms flopped.

Ginny stood off to the side, eyes big, watching them wrap Annie in the plastic. “Oh my God.”

“What’s she doing in here?” Morgan’s voice had climbed two octaves. Almighty God, Morgan realized, was finally getting him. An old man with reams of tattered poetry. A fearless reporter ready to expose his scandals. Plagues upon Egypt.

“We’ll handle that later,” Jones murmured in his ear.

Bob wrapped Annie in the plastic, sealed her up with duct tape.

Ginny stood near the chair, hands clasped in front of her. “Why do you need the plastic?” Curiosity fighting anxiety.

“Routine,” Bob said.

“Would you shut up,” Jones said. “This ain’t routine. We’ve never done this before.”

“Right, boss.”

Jones nudged Morgan with a pointy elbow. “Get her feet.”

“What?”

“I can’t carry her with my back. Grab the feet.”

Morgan took Annie by her plastic-bound ankles, Bob at the other end. Morgan’s breathing went shallow. The girl was heavy. They made sure nobody was looking, then quick-walked her out to the trunk of an old Plymouth Fury. Jones explained that they’d swiped a car specifically for this errand.

Morgan turned green as he listened. Sweat on his forehead.

“There’s two shovels in the backseat,” Jones said. “There’s a peach orchard six miles south of town. Take the dirt road and bury her in the middle.”

Morgan choked. “Me?”

“For chrissakes, Doc, I can’t be involved,” Jones said. “I’m in a very delicate situation. Besides, she’s your dead girl, not mine.”

“But-”

“You’d think you’d be grateful I was fixing this up for you.”

“But-”

“Make sure you ditch the car someplace out of the way when you’re done.”

“But-”

“And don’t worry.” Jones jerked a thumb at Ginny, who watched from Morgan’s porch. “We’ll take care of the kid.” He made a trigger-pulling motion with his finger.

“No!” Morgan’s eyes bulged. “Let me worry about her.”

“Want to do it yourself, huh? Sure, put her in the same hole as the other one.” Jones slipped something cold and hard into Morgan’s hand.

Morgan looked. A little blue-metal revolver with a stubby barrel. “What the fuck’s this?” He’d wanted to sound tough and outraged, but it came out like a squeak.

“It’s a.38. You said you’d handle her.”

“Right.” Now wasn’t the time to argue. He’d take Ginny with him and figure what to do with her later. But he wasn’t going to shoot her.

Maybe himself, but not her.

Morgan waved Ginny into the Plymouth. He took the keys from Jones and climbed behind the wheel. The car’s interior reeked of stale cigarettes, and he told Ginny to roll down the window. The cold wind steadied him.

They were a mile from the peach orchard when Ginny spoke.

“They wouldn’t give me back my tape recorder, but I have my notepad.”

“This will not be a newspaper story,” Morgan said. “You must know you can’t say anything about this to anyone ever.” And how do you shut up a chatty undergrad newspaper reporter? The old man’s revolver nudged cold against his thigh in his front pocket.

“I know. It wasn’t your fault, right? I mean, you’d be fucking ruined if they found out. I mean, with a student and everything. Not that I find it offensive, but a lot of the establishment types like to maintain this artificial hierarchy.”

“Right.”

“Besides, I figure if I help you, you might be able to help me, right?”

“Maybe.”

“I asked for this assignment specifically because I wanted to speak to you,” Ginny said. “What I really want to be is a novelist.”

Maybe Morgan would shoot her after all.

He turned the Plymouth into the peach orchard. The narrow road petered out, and he found himself zigzagging among the trees. He parked in an arbitrary spot. He and Ginny took the shovels and started digging.

Morgan began sweating again, rings under his armpits, stomach queasy. His hands ached with the cold, fingers rubbing raw on the shovel’s handle. He hadn’t done anything this physical in a long time. He stopped digging, leaned on the shovel. His chest heaved, short breaths puffing out like fog. “Okay, good enough.”

“That’s way too shallow,” Ginny said.

“It’s fine.”

“I’m telling you it needs to be deeper. One good rain and up she comes. All that topsoil will wash right downhill.”

Morgan sighed. He looked at the shovel, back at the hole. They kept digging.

When Ginny was satisfied, they muscled Annie out of the trunk and dropped her facedown into the hole. Morgan thought she looked unreal in the plastic, a dime-store mannequin. He could still fish her out of the hole, unwrap her. He wasn’t too far into this yet. He could explain. Take her to the police or a hospital.

But there would be questions. What had happened? Who had she been with and where? Morgan leaned on his shovel, eyes unfocused with thought.

Ginny grabbed a shovel and started scooping in dirt.

And it was as if his hands lifted the shovel on their own, scooped the dirt. It was the heaviest thing in the world. He tossed in the dirt, and it landed on Annie’s back. The second scoop was easier, then a third, his problem returning to the earth. He wondered how long it would take him to forget he’d done this thing, that he’d crossed some line from which there would be no return.

Soon there was only the moist mound of fresh soil. Ginny flattened it down hard with the bottom of her shovel. Steam came off her.

Morgan thought about Ginny. Jones had made it clear what he wanted done, but Morgan had no intention of killing the girl. But she was a time bomb. Morgan’s hand slipped into his pocket, fist closing over the revolver’s handle.

Ginny turned, saw him watching her. “What is it?”

“Just thinking.” He let go of the gun, put his hands on his hips.

She searched his eyes, moved toward him. “I’m not going to say anything.”

“I know.”

She stood very close to Morgan, her erect nipples brushing his belly. “I want you to believe me.”

“I believe you.”

Ginny shrugged, lowered her eyes. “Maybe we can seal the deal. Some kind of show of trust.”

She unzipped his pants and reached in for him. He stiffened, and she stroked him, the cold air washing over his groin.

Morgan cleared his throat. “I think we can work something out.”

Her hands were very soft, her mouth warm.

seven

Harold Jenks got off the bus, took one look around, and said, “Fuck this.”

What the hell was he doing in this one-horse, Okie shithole? He stood with his duffel over his shoulder, took another look up and down University Boulevard hoping it would seem better this time.

It didn’t.

Pickup trucks, flannel shirts, and feed caps. Redneck city. No place for a brother like Harold Jenks. He pulled his coat tighter around him. What was it, twenty degrees? Colder? Fumbee, Oklahoma, was the asshole of the planet.

Maybe Spoon was right. Maybe his plan was insane in the head, and Jenks was just asking for an assload of trouble.

Fuck that. Jenks could pull it off. Nobody else would dare.

Jenks crossed the street to the campus. He pulled a folded wad of paper out of his back pocket and read until he saw what he needed. The administration building.

He stopped a slender white girl with blond hair in the courtyard, asked her which way to Administration. She was polite, but took a step back, eyes wary. Like you never seen a black man before. She pointed down the sidewalk to a gray, domed building.

“Thanks,” Jenks said.

The girl frowned and walked away fast.

At the main administration desk, Jenks was shuffled to the registrar. The gray-faced bureaucrat in that registrar’s office said that since he was a week late for classes, his schedule had been forwarded to the English Department.

“Where’s that?” Jenks asked.

The lady sighed, dramatic, shoulders slumped. She handed Jenks a folded map. “Albatross Hall,” she said. “Building 41 on the map.”

“Thanks.” Bitch.

He found Albatross Hall and ducked inside, stood a moment in the entrance letting himself get warm. A sign on the wall said ENGLISH DEPARTMENT and pointed him left. He followed the arrow.

The English Department office was barren of life. Jenks stood in front of the outer desk and waited in case a secretary or someone official happened along. Nobody did. He shuffled loudly, dropped his duffel bag with a heavy whuff. Nobody heard. He looked for a bell to ring, or a sign-in sheet or anything. He didn’t have a clue.

Just left of the front desk was a door marked WHITTAKER. It also said ENGLISH DEPARTMENT CHAIR and was slightly ajar. He pushed it open, looked in.

A big white guy with a heavy black beard stood wearing a woman’s hat and looking at himself in a hand mirror.

“Aw shit.” Jenks stared, scratched his head.

Whittaker glanced over his shoulder. “Who is it? Can I do something for you?” As he spoke, he turned back to the mirror, cocked the hat at a jaunty angle on his head.

“I’m-” He almost said he was Harold Jenks. “I’m Sherman Ellis.”

Whittaker put down the mirror, went to his desk, and began leafing through a stack of papers. “Ellis, Ellis, that name sounds familiar.”

“I’m supposed to be paid for,” Jenks said. “My school is free.”

“Yes.” Whittaker pulled a list from the stack. “Sherman Ellis. You have a graduate assistantship in the tutoring lab. You’re a week late.”

Jenks didn’t say anything.

“We thought maybe you’d forfeited the assistantship. We almost assigned it to someone else. The waiting list is pretty long.”

“What about the free schooling?”

Whittaker frowned, cleared his throat. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“And a place to stay,” Jenks said.

“You’ll have to take that up with graduate housing. Their waitlist is even longer. Might be a problem.”

“Hey, man. I got it right here I’m supposed to have a place to stay. For free.” He shook the letter in the air, one of the documents he’d taken off of Ellis. He’d get all up in this guy’s business about his rights and shit.

The gun in his coat pocket hung heavy. A.32 revolver with a short barrel, the serial number filed off. Spoon had given it to him, told him the little heater would be easy to hide when he was on campus. The Glock was in the duffel. Harold Jenks wasn’t planning on letting any of these white college motherfuckers get over on him.

Whittaker’s face hardened. “Nobody’s going to take away your entitlement, Mr. Ellis.” He said it through gritted teeth.

“I’ll get a lawyer.” But Jenks took a half step back. The guy was big, lady’s hat or not, and Jenks saw he was getting mad. Jenks’s hand dug into his coat pocket, closed over the butt of the pistol. He didn’t like the way the dude’s face twitched when he said entitlement.

“Here.” Whittaker handed Jenks a manila folder stuffed with paper. “You need to see Dr. Annette Grayson about your one-hour comp-rhet practicum. They’ll start you in the tutoring lab, I imagine. Pair you up with one of the veteran tutors until you learn the ropes. Your schedule’s in there as well. I’d find all of your professors soon, get syllabi, and find out what you’ve missed.”

“Right.” Jenks had no fucking idea what he was talking about.

“If you have any more questions, I suggest you talk to Professor Jay Morgan. He’s been assigned as your faculty advisor. Or ask Professor Grayson. You’ll be working closely with her too.”

“What about the place to stay? I’m supposed to have a free place to live.”

“The housing office.”

“Where’s that?”

“You have a campus map?”

“Yeah.” He handed it to Whittaker.

The dean unfolded it, squinted at the small print. “Building 9.” He gave the map back to Jenks.

“Later.” Jenks left, grabbed his duffel on the way out.

After Ellis left, Whittaker reminded himself that he was not a racist. But the sheer arrogance of these kids! Still, he’d have to tread lightly. The university was in a delicate position. He pulled the memo from his desk drawer, the one university president Lincoln Truman had sent directly concerning Sherman Ellis. He read it again.

He did not need the brief overview of the university’s checkered past, but he read it anyway. Enrollment just fifteen years ago had been over twelve thousand. But bad choices and bad administration had caused the school to fall on hard times. At its worst, enrollment had fallen to a catastrophic thirty-two hundred students. Instructors had been laid off. Crusty, tenured professors had been strongly encouraged into retirement. Funds had been slashed in every department. The football team, the fighting Buffalo Skinners, had been reduced to a Division III joke.

Indeed, the university had almost been closed altogether. There had been serious talk about turning it into a branch campus for OSU.

But superadministrator and divine savior Lincoln Truman had turned the school around. Enrollment had been up the last four years in a row, and the student body was now a healthy 6,857 students. Eastern Oklahoma University was entering a glorious new renaissance.

In only one area was the school drastically behind the rest of the nation. Diversity.

They weren’t. Diverse. At all.

Out of nearly seven thousand students only forty-one were Native American, the school’s largest minority. Twenty-three were Hispanic.

Eastern Oklahoma had only five African-American students. Now six with Sherman Ellis.

Granted, it had been hard to attract black students after the lynching. But that was nearly ten years ago. Still, Lincoln Truman had vowed to erase the university’s stained reputation as a “Klan Kollege” as one muckraking newspaper had put it.

Whittaker pulled Ellis’s file. His grades were solid. His GRE scores were through the roof. He returned the file to the cabinet.

Okay. A smart kid with a bad attitude. Whittaker had seen it before. Once Ellis realized he was among people who wanted to see him succeed, he’d ease off the tough-guy routine.

If not, well, Whittaker was known to be rather a tough cookie himself. He picked up the hand mirror again and went back to adjusting the hat.

“I’ve told you already,” said the woman at the housing office. “We didn’t think you were coming. We gave the room away to somebody else.”

“I’m supposed to get a free place.” Jenks waved the letters like a magic wand.

“But there’s simply no place we can-”

“I’m black,” Jenks said.

The woman’s shoulders slumped, and she picked up the phone.

eight

After Morgan dropped Ginny at her apartment, she thought about him all night. The next morning she found herself getting into her car, driving toward the professor’s house as if she were hypnotized. Not that Morgan mesmerized her, not completely. She was in love with the scheme developing in her head.

Ginny determined that she would weasel her way into the professor’s life whatever it took. He was the most interesting thing to happen to her in a long time.

It rained hard, the sky black with fat clouds. The slap of the windshield wipers contributed to her hypnotized feeling.

Morgan was a real writer. Just a poet, sure, but a published writer. Not like the pussy posers in her fiction-writing classes. Morgan knew publishers, editors. He could help her launch a real career, guide her past pitfalls, introduce her into the right literary circles.

She parked in front of his house, ran through the downpour to his front porch. Her knock was almost lost amid the thunder and sheets of cold rain that pelted Morgan’s tin roof. He opened the door, ushered her in, and shut it again quickly against the wind.

“I didn’t expect you,” Morgan said.

“Is it okay?” She shivered, stood dripping in his living room, shrugged out of her coat, the thin fabric of her blouse clinging to hard, thimble-sized nipples.

“You’re soaked.” Morgan found towels, brought them to her. She dried her hair.

“Your clothes.”

“I need to take them off,” she said.

“Okay.”

She peeled off the blouse in front of him, slithered out of the wet jeans.

Morgan put his arms around her, and she stood on tiptoe, forced her open mouth over his. She was eager and hungry and they tripped and tumbled into the bedroom, fell in a grabbing, rolling pile. She pulled off his pants, took him in her mouth briefly before climbing on top.

She rode him during the lightning, the flashes making her pale skin blue. His hands sank into her round softness. She was warm and deep and she covered him with herself, back arched, mouth open.

Thunder crashed. Rain fell. The storm swallowed their moans.

Morgan didn’t know what to think of her.

“I came back to tell you it will be okay,” she said.

She sprawled across the bed, trying, Morgan supposed, to spread herself over every possible square inch. A leg and an arm draped over him too.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“That I won’t say anything. I thought you might be worried. I know you and that girl-”

“I wasn’t worried.” Yes he had been. Someone would miss Annie Walsh sooner or later, come asking hard questions. And what about Ginny? Strange, soft, bouncy, eager Ginny. Was this some kind of kick for her, bury a body and bed a professor? Yeah, he knew women like that. You could find them at writers’ conferences, chasing after the latest young, hot novelist. Flavor of the month.

She nuzzled closer, ran fingers through his chest hair.

His skin got hot and sweaty where her heavy arm and leg pressed against him. He tried to squirm out from under her.

She looked up. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” He sank back into the pillow.

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No.”

“Yes you do.” She curled into a ball, sighed, rolled off the bed, and went into the living room.

“Your clothes are still wet,” he called after her.

She plucked them from the floor, squeezed. “Just a little damp.” She shrugged into her bra. “I’d better get going.”

Morgan watched her dress through the bedroom door and was certain he was supposed to stop her. She was expecting some word from him, the big callback where he asked where she was off to. He’d pull her back into bed, drag her beneath the silky, intimate prison of the sheets. It’s what she expected.

But he could not quite summon the energy. Appropriate words refused to form. He watched her button the blouse, zip jeans, slip her bare feet into squeaky leather hiking boots. And even when he heard his front door open and close, he couldn’t quite make himself tell her to stop, couldn’t think of a single thing that didn’t sound trite and placating.

He heard her engine start over the patter of rain, heard the car fade down the lane.

Thank God.

He’d been unable to resist her fleshy immediacy. This sort of thing had always been his problem.

But in the sticky, hot, awkward after-tangle of limbs and linen, he could only believe he was repeating the same sort of behavior which had landed him in this shit-pie of a situation in the first place. He did not know Ginny Conrad very well. Sure, he knew her taste and her feel and the breathless, urgent whine that squeezed out of her just before orgasm. But he didn’t know what she’d do. What was her temperament? For all Morgan knew, Ginny was a walking mouth ready to gossip away any hope he ever had of steady employment.

He swung his feet over the bed, stood with a low groan. A twinge in his lower back. Ginny had ridden him long and hard, almost shaking apart the bed frame. He was getting too old for this. And too fat. He reminded himself about joining a gym.

He grabbed his pants off the floor, and something tumbled out of the pocket, landed hard and sharp on the top of his bare foot. Cold and metal.

“Goddammit!” He hopped, gritted his teeth, rubbed the foot. “Son of a bitch.” He looked at his foot, red and swelling fast. He had the kind of skin that bruised easily purple and ugly green.

He scanned the floor to see what had bashed him.

The gun.

It lay on the hardwood floor daring him to pick it up.

He didn’t want to bend over the way his back felt, so he nudged it with a toe, metal heavy and cold. Shoved it slowly under the bed. It made a scraping noise on the wood, like a murdered tin man being dragged into the gutter. Good, leave it there. Morgan could climb under the bed for it some other time.

He stepped into his pants, foot still throbbing, back complaining. His head hurt too. Stress.

He stepped into his slippers and grabbed a green flannel shirt off the doorknob on his way to the kitchen. He found a bottle of aspirin. Empty.

“Goddammit.” He shook his head at his own stupidity, putting the aspirin bottle back empty. He always did that sort of thing, milk jugs and pie pans. It made girlfriends crazy, probably why he hadn’t lived with anyone in five years.

The phone rang.

Morgan glared at it, willed it to shut up. It rang again.

He picked it up. “Hello?”

“It’s Jones.” The old man’s voice rattled on the other end like a bad stereo speaker.

Hell and damnation. He must’ve wanted his gun back. Or maybe there’d been trouble with Annie, the body discovered, police on their way to slap him in cuffs. Morgan went chill and damp under the armpits, felt dread swell in his belly. Oh, God, that’s it, isn’t it? It was all blowing up in his face.

“You look at them poems yet?” Jones asked.

“Uh…” What?

“I don’t have formal education like you, but I want to make them good. You told me you was going to read them.”

“Yes. But I’ve only just started.” Lies. “I need more time to really go over them carefully- Mr. Jones, is everything, I mean, it’s all okay, right? You’re only calling about the poems?”

“I helped you with your little problem,” Jones said. “Should be fine. Now, I think maybe I should come over there.”

“Why?”

“We can talk about the poems.”

“No.”

“No? What do you fucking mean no?”

“I have to…” Think, Jay. “I have a function on campus. I was honestly just walking out the door.”

“Oh, bullshit. I’m coming over there right now.”

“Uh…”

“I’ll see you in a few minutes.” He hung up.

Morgan flew for the door, grabbed keys, jerked his coat off the back of a chair.

Outside, the rain still fell but only gently. Halfway to his car Morgan noticed he was still wearing slippers, water soaking through cold. He thought about going back for shoes. Screw it.

He jumped in his car, cranked it.

Fled.

Ginny drove home.

She felt confident she could make Morgan want her, could manipulate him with the right combination of tears and sex. Men were insecure, horny, ego-driven apes. Control the dick and you control the man. The tears pressed the guilt buttons.

Of course, too many tears at the wrong time could send a guy running. Owning a man was a delicate business.

She thumbed a Nine Inch Nails tape into her cassette player, pounded the steering wheel in time with the driving rhythm. She squirmed in the seat, wet clothes uncomfortable.

Maybe Morgan had hit a dry spell. His writing output had evidently slowed to nothing. Maybe the professor was all out of inspiration. But Ginny could fix that too. Like that woman who inspired Pollock in the Ed Harris movie.

Ginny rubbed lightly between her legs. Sore. Morgan had pounded her good. A slight tingle.

She hurried home, wanted to flip on her computer. She felt like writing.

nine

Harold Jenks discovered the graduate dorms were full and were going to stay that way. They wouldn’t kick anybody out just so he could move in. Jenks had thrown a shit fit.

The deputy director of student housing showed up to hush him, and Jenks called the man a racist. When the director of student housing and the vice president of student affairs showed up, he’d called them racists too.

They finally agreed to find him housing off campus and to foot the bill. At first, they’d assigned Jenks an unfurnished apartment five miles from campus. Jenks had loudly pointed out he had no furniture and no car, so they located a furnished studio four blocks from campus. The vice president had even called security to come drive Jenks to his new digs.

Looking around his new place, Jenks nodded and smiled big. These dumb rednecks were fucking pushovers. He threw his duffel on the bed. He shoved Red Zach’s gym bag underneath. He went to the room’s only window, leaned on the sill, and looked at the wet street below. The studio was warm and comfortable, over a garage in a quiet residential neighborhood.

Stealing Sherman Ellis’s life was going even more smoothly than Jenks had planned.

Jenks had a rap sheet of minor crimes as long as his arm. That sort of reputation dogged a man, pulled his life down into the mud. Jenks had tried to right himself once, get out of the ghetto life of poverty and petty crime. But he found all doors closed to him. No one believed a thug would reform. Nobody wanted an employee you couldn’t turn your back on.

So Harold Jenks decided he would simply cease to be Harold Jenks. Sherman Ellis had no family and no record. Jenks would drape himself in Ellis’s innocence, wrap himself in Ellis’s accomplishments, a cloak of safety and legitimacy.

There’d be problems, of course. He’d need to stay clean. If he got picked up even for jaywalking the whole scam would be shot to shit. He couldn’t let himself be fingerprinted. He’d already vowed never to return to East St. Louis. Too many people knew him there.

But what worried him most were the classes, the teachers. Worried? Hell, he was terrified. Jenks knew he was smart. You had to be to survive on the streets. But he was smart enough to know the difference between intelligence and education. Jenks had barely made it out of high school.

But poetry? Shit, how hard could that be?

He pulled an N.W.A. CD out of his duffel and a Walkman. He thumbed the PLAY button and slipped on the headphones, bobbing his head with the rap music and slapping his thigh to the beat. But this time he really listened, took note how the rapper bit off the words. Jenks mouthed the syllables, moved his mouth over the vowel sounds. Yeah, this was his kind of poetry. He could do this, no problem.

And they’d give him a college degree for it? White people were crazy.

He shut off the Walkman, dropped it on the bed. He’d study more later. Right now he had more immediate problems.

He took his rapidly shrinking roll of cash from his jeans pocket, counted the wrinkled bills. Jenks had exactly sixty-one dollars to his name, and that wasn’t going to do it. The minifridge was empty, and he strongly suspected he was going to need books and other supplies. Pencils and shit, notebooks.

He counted it again. Still sixty-one bucks. He checked his other pockets. Nothing.

And he hadn’t set up the deal yet to move Red Zach’s coke. Once he did that he’d be set for a while, but that wasn’t helping him now. Jenks needed operating capital. Going straight would need to be put on hold just a little longer.

Okay. He knew what to do.

He stripped out of his clothes. His body was lean, hard, three knife scars about an inch long across his belly. He pulled a pair of plain black sweatpants out of his duffel and stepped into them. He put on the matching sweatshirt. Then the black knit ski mask. He rolled the mask up above his eyes until it just looked like a watch cap.

The Glock would be a problem. A nice bit of heat, 9mm. He checked the clip. It was full, so he smacked it into the pistol. Jenks liked the metallic click when the clip snapped into place.

But it wouldn’t stay in the elastic band of the sweats. He took a half-used roll of duct tape from the duffel, ripped off a piece. He used it to tape the Glock across the small of his back. He danced around a little, hopped twice, shook his ass, but the Glock stayed put. Good.

Jenks looked at his watch. Shit. It was too early. He pulled the gun off his back and dropped it on the bed next to the Walkman.

The little twenty-four-hour convenience store he’d spotted three blocks away might still be busy, students filling up on RC Colas and MoonPies. He’d wait.

The convenience store was not the perfect target. It was too close to where he lived, but he didn’t have a ride and you can’t take a taxi to a holdup.

Also, it might not be much of a score. Last time he’d done a Quickie-Mart, he made off with only twenty-three dollars and a fistful of SlimJims.

But Jenks had to have some cash.

No matter how much Jenks had screamed and ranted and called everyone within earshot a racist, the lady at the financial aid office insisted that stipend checks were only-ONLY-disbursed on the last day of the month.

About two in the morning, Jenks figured it was time.

He taped the gun to his back again, and made sure nobody was watching when he left the garage apartment. Once, on his way to the convenience store, a set of headlights scared him into a row of low hedges.

At the convenience store, he watched through the window for ten minutes, nerving himself up and making sure the old guy behind the register was alone.

Then he pulled the Glock and went in fast.

The old man turned big eyes on Jenks in slow motion, mouth dropping open, blood draining from his face.

I can’t kill this guy, Jenks thought. Black man kill a white dude in this dumbshit, redneck town and they’ll level the place looking for him. Too many of these convenience stores had hidden cameras, and there was always the chance of some bystander seeing him no matter how careful Jenks was. But he’d need to put the fear of Jenks’s 9mm into this guy. Let him know not to twitch. Bluff him.

“Don’t move, motherfucker!” Jenks held the Glock sideways at arm’s length. “Get in that register, old man. Get out that green stuff.”

“What the hell, boy? You on the crack?”

“Don’t give me no shit. Just the money.”

“Get the hell out of here, boy. I work for a living.”

Jenks waved the gun, shoved it in the man’s face. Didn’t this old fool know what was happening? “You want to die, motherfucker?” he screamed, deep-throated, saliva flying with each word. “I’m going to put a goddamn bullet in your brain, you dumb redneck.” Back in East St. Louis, he’d be pulling this job with Spoon, and Spoon would have shot this dumb fuck by now.

Spoon had no patience for dumb white fucks.

“I mean it,” Jenks yelled. “Gimmee that money.” But he was losing his nerve, had already lost the edge of surprise he’d had when he’d exploded through the front door.

The old man’s hands dipped under the counter, came back holding a pump shotgun, barrel sawed off short. He pumped a shell in slow and firm like he was shucking corn. Swung the barrel around to Jenks, who was already diving behind a display of two-liter Dr Pepper.

The shotgun blast shook the little store, riddled the Dr Pepper with double-ought pellets. Soda fizzed, foamed, sprayed sticky across the dirty tile floor and Jenks’s back.

Jenks’s cry was a strangled, animal bleat. He belly-crawled down the first aisle, a high-pitched shriek caught in the back of his throat. He heard the old man pump the shotgun again and crossed his arms over his head. Oh, Lord, this fucker’s crazy.

The second blast shredded the candy racks. Butterfingers rained. The odor of chocolate and cordite swirled thick in the air.

“Show your ass, you son of a bitch.” The old man fired twice more.

But Jenks was already running around the end of the aisle toward the rear of the store. He fired wildly back over his shoulder, the 9mm popping away at cigarettes and beef jerky.

Jenks looked up and could see the old man still behind the counter in the store’s big, fish-eye mirror. The old dude was thumbing fresh shells into the shotgun.

Jenks ran for the door.

The old man pumped in a shell, swung the barrel in line with Jenks’s chest. Jenks hit a muddy-slick patch of Dr Pepper just as the old man squeezed the trigger. Jenks’s heels slid out from under him. He landed hard on his ass, bruised his tailbone.

The shotgun blast destroyed the newspaper display.

Jenks fast-crawled through the front doors, knocking them open with the top of his head. The doors swung closed behind him, and the old man’s next shot obliterated the glass. Jenks ducked beneath the diamond glitter shower.

He stood and ran.

The old man was shouting something after him, but Jenks didn’t try to hear. He pumped his arms and legs, ran a long way for a long time.

ten

It was Abba this time that rolled through the empty corridors of Albatross Hall’s fifth floor. The treble-sharp, crisp disco-pop of “Super Trouper.” Morgan followed the music to Valentine’s office.

He was wet and unhappy. His feet were bricks of ice.

This late in the evening, he hadn’t really expected the strange professor to be in his office. Morgan didn’t exactly know what lured him up the stairs, up through the building’s dead floors to seek the bizarre reclusive poet who haunted the vacant offices.

He approached the door, prepared to knock, but stopped when he heard voices. Several voices. Cheerful and occasionally boisterous voices all simmering on the other side of Valentine’s door.

And the door opened.

A nice-looking woman in a deep blue cocktail dress almost ran into him, stopped short, delicate hand going to the plunging V of her neckline. “Oh. Sorry, didn’t see you there.” She was small, blond, handsome, makeup only slightly too heavy

It occurred to Morgan to say, “Uh…”

“I’m just looking for the little girls’ room.” She slipped past him. “Go ahead on in.” And she glided down the hall.

Morgan stepped into the din.

Valentine’s office was crowded with people. A few looked young enough to be students. He recognized at least three professors from his own department. One bumped into him and spilled beer on his sleeve.

It was Dirk Jakes.

“Morgan! Didn’t expect to see you here, you old gypsy prof,” Jakes said. “Sorry about the spill there, chief.” Jakes dabbed at Morgan’s sleeve with the tip of his tie.

Dirk Jakes was the loudest man Morgan had ever met. A blowhard, a self-promoter, and a merciless hack. He was squat, red-haired, red-nosed, and fit poorly into expensive dark suits. He puked out three pulpy crime novels a year and made Mickey Spillane look like William Faulkner. He taught fiction writing for the university.

“What is all this?” Morgan asked.

“A party. You’ve never seen a party before?”

“Why here?”

“Valentine’s idea. All the stress builds up from the semester. Good to blow off steam.”

“The semester’s only a week old,” Morgan said.

“You don’t want the stress to build up,” Jakes told him. “Gets you all tight in the bunghole.”

“I see.”

“You’re not a tight in the bunghole type of guy, are you?” Jakes was clearly gearing up for a colossal drunk.

“I try not to be,” Morgan said.

“That’s swell, fabulous.” Jakes nodded, pushed him on into the depths of the party. “The bar’s over there someplace. Go loosen up your goddamn bunghole, for Pete’s sake.”

“Good idea.” Morgan moved into the mass of partygoers, glad for an excuse to get away from Jakes. The party writhed around him, seemed to breathe in and out like a living thing.

He tried to spot Valentine but didn’t see him.

Somebody grabbed his arm, and Morgan turned.

It was Dirk Jakes again.

“Listen, I forgot to tell you.” Jakes wouldn’t let go of his arm. “Don’t mention to anyone that Valentine’s back. Make like he’s still in Prague, you get it?”

“I get it.”

“Don’t let the cat out of the bag, eh? The old man doesn’t want the dean putting him on some goddamn bullshit committee or something, so he’s lying low, capische?”

Morgan pried his arm loose. “I won’t say a thing.”

He made his way to the little fridge where he’d found a bottle of beer his last visit, but it was empty. A curtain on the back wall was pushed aside, and he saw that the wall had been knocked through into the next office. He ducked through, found another crowd of people on the other side. They stood around a keg of beer, a stack of yellow plastic cups on a sideboard.

Morgan took a cup, poured beer. Too foamy.

“You have to tilt the cup.” The high-pitched voice belonged to a petite, raven-haired girl about twenty years old. “You have to tilt it. I know because I tend bar down at Peckerwood’s, the sports bar across town. You know it?”

Morgan shook his head. “I’m new in town.”

She took the cup out of Morgan’s hand, dumped the foam, and tilted the cup. “See, like this.” She poured the beer, smooth.

Morgan watched her pour. She was barely five feet tall, twig of a thing. Tight denim shorts, pink T-shirt a size too small. Flip-flops, toenails painted lime. She must’ve had boots around somewhere. He thought of his own freezing feet.

“You’re a student here?” Morgan asked.

She shook her head, handed Morgan his cup. “I walk Professor Valentine’s dogs.”

“He has dogs?”

“Two Irish wolfhounds. Huge, but very gentle. I keep them for him ever since the problem with his house.”

“I was looking for Valentine,” Morgan said.

“I haven’t seen him in a while.” The girl’s attention immediately whipped to a newcomer at the keg. “You have to tilt it or you’ll get foam,” she said.

Morgan drank half his beer and drifted back through the hole in the wall, where he found a couple of familiar faces, two more professors from his department.

They seemed to be in the middle of an argument, both very drunk.

“It’s a ridiculous book and you know it, Pritcher. You Irish folk have been skating on Joyce for too long. Finnegans Wake is bullshit. Everyone knows it’s bullshit. Joyce knew it was bullshit when he wrote it. Now get out of my face please, you ridiculous little tit.”

Professor Louis Reams was a lanky, storklike man. Morgan had spoken casually with him a few times and seemed to remember he’d done his dissertation on the complex prosody of Sri Lankan poetry in translation. Morgan suspected Reams had an inferiority complex from having to explain all the time just exactly what his specialty was.

He towered over the much shorter Pritcher, jabbing a finger at his face as he spoke.

Professor Larry Pritcher looked uninterested, dismissed the ranting Reams with a wave of his small, pale hand. Early in grad school, Pritcher had hitched himself to the James Joyce bandwagon and never looked back. He fully enjoyed the massive safety of James Joyce studies and relentlessly needled “fringe” scholarship as new wave, multicultural carnival acts.

“Put a cork in it, Reams,” Pritcher said. “You’re drunk.”

“You have no concept of what it’s like to follow an original thread of thought.”

“This again.”

“Fuck you with bells on.” Reams gave him the up yours gesture.

Pritcher turned to Morgan. “Can you believe this guy? I’m just trying to have a goddamn drink.”

Morgan blinked. He hadn’t expected to be drawn into it. “Well…”

“Exactly,” Pritcher said. “Nobody wants you here, Reams. You’re bringing the party down.”

Morgan noticed that the bulk of the party appeared to be pressing on unhindered.

“The hell you say?” Reams scowled. “That true, Morgan? I’m somehow some kind of party pooper?”

“I don’t think anyone wants to have an argument,” Morgan said.

“So you do think I’m a party pooper.”

“I never said-”

“Fine.” Reams finished his beer in one angry gulp, threw the empty cup on the floor. “Screw you too, Morgan. Easy for you to judge. You’re just passing through. I have to work here for Christ’s sake.”

Reams jostled his way through the crowd for the door, partygoers frowning after him.

“What a prick,” Pritcher said.

“I think he took me wrong,” Morgan said.

“He takes everything wrong. He’s just wrongheaded altogether.”

“Have you seen Valentine?” Morgan gulped beer, liked it, gulped some more.

“Not for a while.” Pritcher cleared his throat, leaned in close to Morgan, spoke low in conspiracy tones. “Look, don’t mention to anyone about Valentine’s being back. He doesn’t want-”

“I know,” Morgan said. “Mum’s the word.”

Dirk Jakes surged out of the party crowd, landed on swaying legs in front of Pritcher and Morgan. “All the goddamn broads at this party must be dykes.”

“Do tell,” Pritcher said.

“Buncha damn lesbos,” Jakes slurred. “You catch what I’m saying there, Morgo-man?” Jakes brayed laughter, yanked Morgan’s sleeve.

Beer splashed over Morgan’s cup. “Dammit. Again?”

“Jesus, sorry, Morgan.” Jakes threw himself in reverse, stumbled back to have a look where he’d spilled the beer. “What the hell? Are those slippers?”

“Forget it,” Morgan said. “You were telling us about the lesbians.”

“Yeah. Every bitch here a damn rug-muncher.”

“Striking out again, eh?” Pritcher’s lips curled into a smug grin.

Morgan thought about the woman in the blue cocktail dress, the one who’d almost plowed into him on the way into the party. He craned his neck, scanned the party for her. Nowhere. Too bad.

“That bimbo at the keg was the worst.” Jakes was still at it. “I know how to pour a fucking beer.”

The party music segued into “Folsom Prison” by Johnny Cash.

Pritcher wrinkled up his whole face like somebody had taken a dump in his cup. “Country music? You must be joking. Who’d put that on?”

Jakes looked stunned. “Are you fucking kidding?”

“What would I kid about?” Pritcher asked.

Morgan wiggled his toes within the damp slippers. They were just getting dry when Jakes had splashed the beer on them. His feet were cold and wet and he was sick of Pritcher and especially Jakes.

“It’s Johnny Cash, man.” Jakes waved his cup in the air like that explained it. “Johnny fucking Cash.”

“So?”

Jakes snorted. “You’re an idiot.”

“Okay, just forget it,” Pritcher said. “I’ve had enough of these drunks, Morgan. I’ve got to get up early anyway.”

“On a Saturday?” Morgan asked.

“I ride my bicycle in the mornings. Good night.”

Morgan waved as he left.

“What a dink,” Jakes said. “Can you imagine not liking Johnny Cash?”

Morgan didn’t say anything.

“I’m going to find some pussy,” Jakes said. “There must be some scratch at this party that isn’t lesbo.” And he was off to it again.

Morgan looked in his cup. He saw no beer and that made him unhappy. He threaded his way back to the keg.

The sports bar girl had moved on. Morgan elbowed a fat guy out of the way and refilled his cup. He wasn’t sure when he might be able to make it around to the keg again, so he threw back the beer fast and filled up again. He took his fresh beer back into the crowd.

The noise and the beer and the party were crowding out thoughts Morgan didn’t want to think. He was starting to feel good, a nice glow in his belly. He even forgot about his wet slippers.

A tap on his shoulder.

He turned and looked down into the soft eyes of the woman in the blue V-neck dress. She looked good.

“You’re Morgan?” she shouted over the music.

He smiled, nodded.

“This way.” She grabbed his elbow, pulled him along.

Morgan followed gladly.

She led him from the party, down the hall. She turned, walked, turned again, walked more, turned a few more times. The building didn’t seem big enough for this. Surely they were going in circles. Morgan couldn’t keep track, but he wasn’t trying too hard.

And he didn’t wonder too hard where he was going. It was good not to make such hard decisions for a change. He allowed himself a brief fantasy, like in Penthouse Forum. She’d take him to a secluded room, where she’d lift her skirt, tug aside her panties, and offer herself to him.

That didn’t happen.

She pushed open a door and led him into a smoky room lit by candles. A man he didn’t know sat deep in a cushy armchair. Valentine sat at the far end of a long, low sofa.

“Ah, good. It’s Professor Morgan.” Valentine puffed savagely on his bong. “Brad, this is Bill Morgan. Bill, Brad Eubanks. He’s the custodian here.”

“It’s Jay, actually.” Morgan shook the man’s hand.

“How do,” Brad said.

“I’m afraid I never got your name,” Morgan said to the woman.

“Annette Grayson.” She offered a slim hand.

Morgan shook. It was soft and cool. He let go reluctantly.

“We teach in the same department,” she said. “I manage the Writing Lab and oversee Freshman Composition. I’m surprised we haven’t run into each other before now.”

“I’m sorry it’s been so long.”

She pointed at Morgan’s beer cup. “You don’t actually want that, do you?”

“Don’t I?”

“Let me fix you something for a grown-up.”

She produced a bottle of vodka from thin air. Where had that been, between the couch cushions? Tonic next and a lime. Morgan was still reeling from the sleight of hand, when Annette pushed the vodka tonic at him. He took it, drank. Made the whole thing disappear presto chango.

Valentine was on about something, but Morgan only considered the bottom of his empty cup.

“A refill?” Annette was already pouring.

She reads minds too. Good woman.

Valentine went on about the state of poetry and academia, all the time puffing at his bong like some kind of homemade life-support system. Morgan’s cup never seemed to get empty. His face warmed, and he floated through the hazy conversation with eyelids heavy, head bobbing in eager drunken agreement with the random conversation.

The night didn’t really end. It trailed off like an ellipsis.

eleven

When Morgan awoke the next morning on the couch, he was bitterly disappointed not to find Annette Grayson underneath him. After three or four vodka tonics he’d offered subtle hints, made it clear he was interested. After a few more drinks his suggestions became more overt.

Annette had only giggled, shook her head, gently pushed him back whenever he’d tried to lean in for a kiss.

Morgan couldn’t remember when he’d lost track of the janitor or Valentine. At some point in the evening he’d simply found himself alone with the head of Composition and Rhetoric.

Morgan shifted on the couch. Something was digging mercilessly into his back. He arched, reached underneath. It was the empty vodka bottle.

He sat up. His head was appalled at the notion and began to throb. His stomach gurgled, and Morgan belched a sick blend of beer, vodka, and lime. His feet felt slick and ripe within his slippers. I must reek.

He heaved himself to his feet, stumbled out of the room. In the hall, he leaned raggedly against a wall, battled a sudden wave of nausea. Nothing came up. He swallowed hard. Belched a few more times. He looked around the empty hall.

Lost again. The fifth floor of Albatross Hall was more confusing than the minotaur’s maze. Morgan closed his eyes, hung his head as if in prayer. He listened.

The music. He’d come to count on it now. Classical this time.

He followed it to Valentine’s office, found the old man in a frayed blue robe. He was brushing his teeth. Valentine spit into a glass, wiped his mouth on a sleeve.

Valentine looked at Morgan and frowned. “Good God, Bill. You’re a wreck.”

“I slept on your couch.”

“Perfectly all right.” Valentine ushered him in. “How about some coffee?”

“That would help. Thanks.”

Valentine poured it into a mug that said Tenure means never having to say you’re sorry.

Morgan closed his eyes as he sipped. The hot coffee hit his belly, and Morgan waited. When it didn’t come back up, he drank some more. He started to feel a little better but not much.

Morgan cleared his throat. “Professor Valentine?”

“Yes?”

“Why do you live in Albatross Hall?”

“My house burned down.”

“That explains it,” Morgan said. “Are you rebuilding or hunting for a new one?”

“Neither. That’s why I’m living here.”

“I understand.” Morgan didn’t understand.

“My house burned down, let’s see, I guess it would be about six years ago. I spent all the money on this lovely girl. Young, twenty or twenty-one, I think. A little wisp of a thing. In pigtails she passed for sixteen. A clever little poet too.” Valentine sounded dangerously nostalgic. “We blew it all in Fiji. Then she left me for a Samoan pastry chef. You want a refill on that coffee?”

“No thanks,” Morgan said. “I guess I’d better get going.”

It took Morgan twenty minutes to find the stairway. He climbed down and found his way out of the building. The early morning was gray and damp. The sudden cold battered him, but helped wake him too. The world was wet. It would rain again soon.

Morgan stumbled along the sidewalk in the direction of-he hoped-his car. He didn’t bother avoiding the puddles. When he got home, he’d throw the slippers away.

And then he saw Reams crouching low along the sidewalk behind some bushes. Reams looked wild, hair tousled, bags under his eyes. His nose and cheeks were red from the weather. He was wearing the same clothing as the night before at the party.

But then again, so was Morgan.

Reams had a thick, hardcover book in his clenched hands.

Morgan was fresh out of tact. “What the fuck are you doing, Reams?”

Reams leapt from the bushes, snagged Morgan by the wrists, and pulled him down into the foliage. Morgan landed in a tangled pile with Reams.

“Shut up, Morgan,” Reams said. “You’ll give away our position.”

“Goddammit.” Morgan rolled onto his side, pushed himself onto an elbow, and shook his head. “For Christ’s sake I’m covered in mud here.” Morgan noticed the book in Reams’s white-knuckled hands was a copy of Finnegans Wake.

Reams returned to his crouch. “Quiet. Here he comes.”

Morgan squinted through the shrubs, looked down the sidewalk. A lone man on a frail bicycle, the thin wheels whirring in the quiet morning.

The rain began again.

“Reams.” Morgan tapped the jittery man on the shoulder. “Uh… Reams?”

Reams swatted Morgan’s hand away. “We’ll show the little son of a bitch what Joyce is good for.”

Morgan recognized the cyclist. It was Pritcher. He wore an obscene spandex outfit that bunched his nuts into a tight wad. Certainly he doesn’t realize how ridiculous he looks. He wouldn’t leave the house if he knew he looked like that.

Pritcher’s ten-speed was humming along at a good clip when it passed between the big fountain and Reams’s hiding place. Reams darted from his crouch, sprung himself at Pritcher’s bicycle. He flung the copy of Finnegans Wake.

It sailed, the cover opening wide, pages flapping. The book spun end over end like some awkward, epileptic wounded bird in its final tailspin.

Morgan watched, his jaw dropping, stomach tightening.

Joyce’s complex novel hit, a corner of the cover lodging in the spokes of the rear wheel. The simple machinery of the bicycle clenched, gears jamming, chain tangled. Pritcher screeched like a fruit bat and flew over the handlebars.

He sailed high and far, landing in a half splash, half crunch in the big stone fountain.

Morgan gulped. “Jesus, Reams, you killed him.”

Pritcher lay still for a long time. The rain came harder. Morgan stood next to Reams, put his hand on the professor’s shoulder. Both men prayed for Pritcher to move.

“You’d better go have a look, Morgan.”

“To hell with that,” Morgan said. “You go look. You’re the one that killed him. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I don’t know.” Reams’s voice sounded far away. “I was crazy. He just made me insane, I guess. I must’ve been out of my mind. You’ll testify, right, Morgan? I wasn’t in my right mind.”

They still watched. Pritcher still didn’t move.

“I’ll have to take responsibility,” Reams said. He stuck his chest out, lifted his chin. “I’ve killed a man, and I’m going to pay for that.”

Pritcher’s foot twitched. Loud cursing and splashing came from the fountain.

“He’s fine!” Reams said. “Run!”

Reams elbowed Morgan aside, tore off through the bushes like he was on fire, a panicked stumbling and clawing. Morgan followed. They pushed their way through to the parking lot on the other side. Morgan’s car was near.

“This way,” Morgan shouted.

Morgan didn’t bother to see if Reams followed. He ran for his car as fast as he could while digging into his front pocket for his keys. The keys were stuck, tangled in stray threads inside his pocket. Morgan ran awkwardly, tugging at the keys.

He reached the car door and jerked hard, tore the keys loose, half his pant leg ripping open down to the knees.

“Shit.”

Morgan unlocked the door, climbed inside, cranked the engine.

Reams was on the other side, hitting the passenger window with the heel of his hand. “Let me in, man. Hurry.”

Morgan flashed on an old black-and-white submarine movie. A sailor trapped on the other side of a sealed hatch, the compartment filling with seawater. He thought just for a moment about leaving him. Morgan popped the locks, let Reams in.

They drove fast, sideswiped a library book return box with a metallic crinch. Morgan flipped on the windshield wipers, found the road. Both men breathed hard.

Reams leaned back, sprawled in the passenger seat, rubbed at his eyes.

The windshield fogged over. Morgan wiped at it with a sleeve.

“I can’t believe it,” Reams said. “I thought I’d killed him. I could have fucked up my whole life. I’m up for tenure next year. You can’t get tenure if you kill a guy.”

“No. It’s not like the old days,” Morgan said.

“I really thought I’d broken his neck, Morgan. Do you know what that feels like? The thought that you’ve killed somebody?”

Morgan saw Annie Walsh’s face in his mind, saw her naked, skin slack and cold in his bed. Remembered the weight of her wrapped in the plastic. He started to speak, to say something to Reams, but his voice caught. Another memory, the shallow grave in the peach orchard.

“I hope you never have to feel like that,” Reams said.

twelve

Morgan dropped Reams off at his house then went home.

He was soaking wet. He peeled off the slippers and tossed them into the trash. He showered, thought about getting dressed, but crawled under the covers instead.

He didn’t sleep well. Annie’s corpse followed him through the world of dreams, called to him from beneath the ground. He knew somewhere a mother and father wondered why they hadn’t heard from her. Friends would talk. Other professors would wonder why she wasn’t attending class.

Morgan awoke sore, sweat slick on his forehead and under his arms. He tumbled out of bed, groaned, stood, stretched. He felt heavy and weak and unhappy. Maybe he’d try to write. Maybe a drink first. No, he needed another shower. He wanted to rinse off the nightmare sweat.

After the shower, he shuffled into the kitchen. He looked out the window and saw that the day was creeping into evening.

He made coffee, stood and watched it brew, then poured himself a mug, took it to his little desk. It was a mess, so he started cleaning and found an unfamiliar manila folder. He opened it.

It was Fred Jones’s poetry.

“Hell.”

Something caught his eye, so he kept reading. A good line here and there. He read two or three, came to one that might work with some edits. The old man had decent instincts, smooth with images. Nothing too didactic. The poems must have been in chronological order because they improved as he went along. He pulled out two near the bottom and began marking them with a green pen. As Morgan critiqued each poem, he came to a horrifying realization.

The old man was good.

His images were fresh and energetic, savagely raw and gritty without being overly gruesome. They didn’t pander. His voice was rugged, straightforward, and American.

Morgan was sick with jealousy but couldn’t pull himself away from the old man’s work. Outside it grew full dark, the weather turning sour yet again. The wind kicked up. A little rain. Morgan switched on the tiny desk lamp and kept reading.

After another hour, the wind really started to howl, so he didn’t hear when Jones walked into his house, stood over him at the desk, and put the gun to his forehead.

Morgan felt his sphincter twitch. He was going to die.

“You stupid goddamn punk.” Jones shook the pistol at him. It was an automatic with a silencer. The old man dripped, the gun glistened wet. “You said you was going to take care of the girl, and here I find she’s walking around breathing. For fuck’s sake you know what kind of position I’m in? I can’t have this dumb kid opening her yap.”

The barrel of the gun was gigantic.

And this old man was about to blow his head off. Morgan’s eyes fogged with tears, and he was ashamed to meet death so feebly. No one would come to his funeral, he thought. Not his ex-wife. He wasn’t that close to anyone in the department. He would be buried alone and forgotten like Annie Walsh.

Part of Morgan knew it was what he deserved. He was a small, sad man living a miserable little life. But he wanted to keep on living that little life.

“She won’t say anything,” Morgan said. “I know her. She won’t talk.”

“Don’t yank me off, you dumb egghead. She’s a girl. Girls can’t help blabbing their big fucking mouths all over creation.”

“Don’t kill me.”

“Shut up. Sometimes you people just don’t understand-”

He looked down at his poems spread across Morgan’s desk, plucked one from the pile with wet, bony fingers. “You wrote on these?”

Morgan nodded.

Jones looked at the changes. “Better.”

“Yes.”

Jones pulled up a chair, scooted close to Morgan, and shifted the gun to his other hand. He pointed to one of the poems where Morgan had crossed out the word is three times. “What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s a be-verb,” Morgan said. “They’re weak.”

“What do you mean?”

Morgan explained, and the old man understood.

“Are you going to kill me?” asked Morgan.

“No.”

“What about Ginny Conrad?”

“You banging her?”

“Yes.”

Jones scratched his head, exhaled. Tired. “That’s okay, then, I guess. But I’m going to keep an eye on her.”

“Thanks.”

“What about these things?” Jones meant the poems.

“They’re pretty good, Mr. Jones.”

“Okay.”

Morgan said, “How about twice a month? We’ll talk about these and whatever new ones you bring.”

“You want to help me?”

Morgan nodded. “I’d like to try.”

“Okay,” Jones said. “I’ll bring doughnuts. What do you like? You like cream-filled?”

thirteen

Harold Jenks fidgeted in his desk, looked at the other grad students who looked back at him like he was a fucking Martian.

A black Martian.

The desks were arranged in a circle, so everyone could see everyone else. He fingered the paper in front of him. His first poem. Professor Morgan had looked annoyed when Jenks had finally shown after missing the first few classes. The professor told Jenks to hand in a poem right away if he wanted to fit back into the rotation. Jenks was catching on to the routine. Half the class handed in poems one week, the other half the next week. Everybody got photocopies of all the poems. It was his job to take the poems home, read them, then come back to class and say things to help the poem be better.

It had sounded easy.

Professor Morgan shuffled into class five minutes late, sat at his desk in the circle. “Okay,” Morgan said. “Which poem will we look at first?”

Jenks’s stomach clenched. He didn’t want to be first.

“How about Belinda’s?” Morgan said.

Belinda was a tiny blond girl who was so white she was almost invisible. Jenks shifted her poem to the top of his pile. He’d read the poem five times last night. Slowly. He had no fucking idea what it was about.

Belinda sat up straight, took the gum out of her mouth, and stuck it on the end of her finger. She extended the finger, the wad of gum glistening pink, held her poem with the other fingers.

She cleared her throat and read: “This poem is called ‘Like Dust in the Wind.’ ”

Her eyes circled the room. She lowered her voice, soaked heavy with emotion. “My heart is a desert flower, blooming in season, sleeping through summer heat. Water it with your tears. Feed it kisses. Place petals on your dead eyes like pennies. Your breath is the hot desert wind, blowing only from the west.”

Belinda bit her bottom lip, looked coyly around the circle again, and settled back into her seat and waited for the commentary to begin.

Jenks decided Belinda was one sad sorry bitch.

“Thank you, Belinda,” Morgan said. “That was very moving.” He scanned the faces in the room. “Who’d like to start us off?”

Half the class looked away. Jenks made a close inspection of his fingernails.

The kid next to Jenks cleared his throat. What was his name? Timothy Lancaster. Blue blazer, penny-loafer motherfucker.

Lancaster said, “The juxtaposition of the active and the static present an interesting tension in this poem, I think.”

Jenks cocked an eye at him. Say what?

Morgan raised an eyebrow. “How do you figure?”

“It’s a basic battle of the sexes theme,” Lancaster said. “Although rather eloquently cast in nature terms. The blooming flower represents femininity, womanhood. Static and ready to receive a seed. Women have nesting instincts, roots. The wind represents the male. I think the speaker of this poem has issues with the lack of commitment males have in her life.”

Belinda glowered.

Wait. What was homeboy saying, that the flower was like symbolic of some ripe cootchie? With his pencil, Jenks circled the words desert flower and wrote the word vagina next to it. Hold on. It said her heart was the flower. Jenks crossed out what he’d written. Square one.

“Look. First thing’s first, okay?” It was Wayne DelPrego, the redneck dude who sat on the other side of Lancaster. “You can’t say ‘Dust in the Wind’ in the title. People will think of the Kansas song.”

They went on like this for about fifteen more minutes, Morgan nodding thoughtfully the whole time without saying anything significant. What the fuck? The guy was supposed to be the teacher. Was he going to explain this poem or not?

Not.

They went through two more poems. One was about a mother dying. The other one from a nerd guy with glasses thick as ashtrays. His poem seemed mostly to be about Star Trek. Most of the class hated it. They disrespected the nerd boy’s poem, and he just sat there and took it. That seemed to be what the class was about. You read your poem, then let everyone talk you down.

Fuck that.

Whenever Morgan asked the students who’d like to comment on the poetry, the professor’s eyes always landed on Jenks briefly before Jenks looked away. This wouldn’t play for long. Sooner or later Jenks would be expected to speak up.

Another grad student read his poem. Jenks had tuned out. These people were all speaking some other language. His poem didn’t sound anything like theirs.

“Mr. Ellis!”

Jenks blinked. The professor had to say Sherman Ellis’s name twice. Jenks hadn’t been listening. “Yo.”

Morgan frowned. “Yes, yo to you too. We have just enough time left to workshop your poem.”

Jenks cleared his throat and read:

Jenks was still working on his masterpiece, but he’d needed a poem quick. So he’d taken this one from a greeting card he’d seen in the grocery store. He looked at the professor for a reaction. Morgan had his nose all wrinkled up like he smelled dog shit. That couldn’t be good.

“Well, isn’t that warm and fuzzy,” Morgan said.

“It is a bit saccharine,” Lancaster said. “I’m not sure such an abundance of sentimentality concentrated in so few lines is the best strategy.”

Jenks couldn’t tell if he was being disrespected or not.

DelPrego yawned, ran a hand through his shaggy hair. “It’s crap.”

Oh, yeah. Jenks was being disrespected all right.