The Faculty Club

19

Chance and I made a pact. First, tell no one. Second, meet tomorrow night, under cover of darkness, to see where our trail might lead.

The thrill of discovery got me home and into bed, and then reality broke through. I tried to press away thoughts of hospital rooms and half-limp balloons. But her face kept coming back to me. Her strained, scratchy voice:

GET OUT.

I had terrible dreams. I saw a room filled with a thousand baby angels, plump and dreamy, the kind Raphael imagined. They had slow, doll-like movements. There were shafts of light from tall windows. The angels were eating. Their chubby little hands brought spoons up and down, up and down to their mouths. When I entered, all thousand of them looked up at once and started screaming.

I woke the next morning, sweating, raw. I felt alone and lost, sick in my stomach. I reached for the phone in the darkness and dialed.

“Twice in one week? What is this, Christmas?”

“Hey Dad. Is Mom there?”

“She ran out. What’s up?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I just… wanted to ask her a question.”

“Why don’t you ask me?”

There was a long pause.

“Try me,” he said.

Ever since my dad’s heart attack, I was afraid to tell him that anything was less than perfect, as if whatever I said might trigger the next big one. But I needed someone. I needed help.

“C’mon, give an old man a chance,” he said. “Let me be a dad for once.”

I sighed. I wasn’t even sure what I’d wanted to say.

“I think I did something really bad.”

A pause, then:

“Did you break the law?”

“No.”

I heard him breathe out on the other end.

“Did you cheat in school?”

“No.”

“You hurt somebody?”

“Yes.”

“Because you didn’t like them?”

“No.”

“Because it helped you.”

“Yes.”

“Listen to me.” I braced myself for a lecture on big shots and little guys: toughen up, grab what’s yours, take no prisoners. Instead, he said: “If you did something bad, you make it right. You hear me?”

“Yes. Yes, sir.”

“Then you decide who you want to be, and you be it.”

The line was quiet for a second.

“Okay?”

“Okay. I will.”

“Make me proud of you,” he said.

The call left me dizzy; startled, like I’d been slapped across the face.

For the first time in years, I’d heard the teacher again-the one everyone in town called on when they didn’t know what to do.

Chance wore black from head to toe, as planned. He leaned against a tree away from the light; I could make out only the vague shadow of his form, the white eyes and pale strip of skin under the ski mask. As I got closer, his uniform came into view: cargo pants, hiking boots, backpack, hooded pullover; he looked like a real guerrilla journalist, with none of the idiot flair of my black sweatshirt and dress pants. But with two hundred dollars in my bank account and no career in sight, I wasn’t about to spend my ramen money on a new ghost-hunting wardrobe. He handed me a ski mask.

“Thanks.”

He rubbed black grease on his face, then pulled his mask back down. I took the tin and did the same. He looked at my feet.

“Dress shoes?”

I shrugged.

“Whatever,” he said. He checked his camera, then slipped it into a black pouch on his waist. “Anything visible?” He turned in a circle.

I said no and did the same.

“So. We’ve got a map, thanks to you,” Chance said. “What we need now is an entry point. Thanks to me.”

“An entry point to what?”

Chance had been cagey about how exactly our map translated into action. I think he enjoyed this little bit of power. It wouldn’t be as simple as walking into the Steel Man, that much I knew. Chance was convinced the dorm was a placeholder, not our actual destination.

“Every university has a story about steam tunnels that run underground and connect all the buildings,” he told me. “It just so happens that this university, being very old, actually has them. Come on.”

We walked along the wall in the shadow of a large administrative building. We were in the industrial part of the campus, a world away from student life. It was after midnight and eerily silent.

“The only official mention of them involves a bit of campus lore. When George Wallace came to speak in favor of segregation, the students were ready to murder him. Police had to smuggle him out through the tunnels. It got written up in the paper, fifty years ago.”

We came into view of a giant, thrumming building bathed in yellow light, with two vents on the roof, each nearly twenty feet wide. It gave off a clean, electric smell, but the vents released colossal, almost volcanic plumes of white smoke that pulsed and swirled up into the clouded sky. It looked like a factory whose chief product was gloom.

“I had a resident poetry tutor in my house, freshman year, this real old guy. He swore the FBI chased an Austrian spy into the library back in World War Two. They searched for hours. Finally they figured he must’ve found a way into the steam tunnels. Or so the old guy said. I think he just wanted someone to eat with.”

“Is that smoke?” I asked, looking at the white plumes.

“Water vapor. This is the hydroelectric plant. There’s the physical plant. And that,” he said, pointing to a run-down side building with weathered blinds, “is the plant manager’s office.” He paused and looked at me. “In about five minutes, you’ll be guilty of trespassing, breaking and entering, and my favorite, ‘conduct unbecoming to a student.’ All grounds for expulsion. Last chance.”

I smiled. “ ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.’”

“Preaching to the choir, my friend,” Chance said, and we started toward the back of the building. He took a pair of cutters from his pack and went to work on the hanging lock. Then we were past the chain-link fence and into the gravel and grass of the plant yard. There were numerous metal boxes in the grass, all padlocked as well.

It was so quiet. Every step we took crunched.

I started to question the wisdom of the endeavor. Was it too late? Could I turn around now and run out the gate, throw the ski mask in a ditch, wipe the makeup off, and blend back into the Saturday night flow of the main quad?

Chance pulled on my sleeve.

“Keep moving. We’re too exposed out here.”

We snuck toward the door.

Chance attacked the lock with a set of picks from a leather pouch. If only my mom could see me now. What nice friends you’ve made!

There was a window a few feet away.

“Screw it. I was never good at this.”

Chance pocketed the tools and picked up a rock.

“Chance, no,” I whispered, but it was too late. He smashed the window. A jingling crash echoed through the empty yard, breaking the silence. I looked around, didn’t see anyone. He used the rock to clear away the sharp edges, then looked back at me, poised to climb inside.

“We have to go fast now,” he said. “Once we’re in the tunnels, it’s vast. We’ll be fine.”

I followed him into the window. We came into an office, then into a cinder-block hallway painted white. Chance was moving fast in no particular direction, glancing in doorways. He started cursing.

“Help me out, goddamn it.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Something going down. I don’t know. A manhole. A stairway.”

I found a room with a concrete floor and bare bulb. There was a hatch on the ground; it looked like a misplaced attic door.

“Here,” I called.

I tried to pull it open, but it was too heavy.

Chance knelt beside me. We pulled together on the chain, and the hatch lifted. We pulled it to the point of no return, and it fell backward with a crash.

“Jesus Christ, Jeremy,” he hissed.

“Come on,” I said. I started climbing down the ladder.

I looked up and saw two figures behind Chance. He was stepping down onto the ladder and they pulled him up and back. His eyes went wide.

“What the fuck,” he cried and fell backward. I looked down. I could just drop. I didn’t know how far it was. But Chance had the map. He had the flashlights in his pack. I didn’t know where to go.

Just drop!

A hand came down and grabbed my sweatshirt. I clawed at the arm. Another hand got around my neck and yanked up hard. I lost my breath.

I went up and fell over on my back.

I hit the floor hard.

A man was standing over me. He prodded me with his foot.

“Get back against the wall.”

I took in the uniform and breathed a sigh of relief. Campus police. Miles wrote me about them his freshman year. He had a roommate who was a local kid from a nearby blue-collar town. One night, this roommate went out for old time’s sake with a high school friend. They got drunk and decided to steal license plates. The city police caught them. Miles’s roommate was handed over to campus police. No police report. No record of the event. No consequences. The roommate’s friend spent the night in jail and had to appear in court the next day. I let myself relax a little.

“Take the masks off,” the cop near me said.

I hesitated, then pulled off my ski mask.

The other cop was standing over Chance, sizing him up.

“Start talking,” he said.

“Please, officer,” Chance sputtered. “It’s supposed to be a prank. We’re pledging a fraternity. They told us to get into the steam tunnels and steal a plate from the professors’ dining hall. Tell ’em, Mike.” Chance looked at me. His eyes were perfect imitations of the wide-eyed stare of a scared freshman.

The officer turned to me.

I gave Chance my angriest look.

“You weren’t supposed to tell. They said not to tell anyone, even if we got caught.”

“Please…” Chance sounded downright miserable. “I want to go to law school. This could ruin me forever. Oh God, my parents. I knew I shouldn’t have pledged.”

The second officer looked at me.

“What fraternity?”

“We’re not supposed to say,” I mumbled.

He leaned over me and poked his finger at my chest.

“You should worry about yourself right now.”

I shook my head. I aimed for deeply conflicted.

Chance blurted out, “Sigma Chi.”

“Jesus, Ryan,” I said.

The cop standing over me was the angrier of the two.

“They broke a window,” he said, fingering his nightstick.

“Were you guys in a fraternity?” I asked.

The cops looked at me like I was insane.

“I don’t mean any disrespect,” I said. “It’s just, if you were in a fraternity, you know how much pressure it is to get in. Maybe you had to do some pretty crazy stuff when you were pledges.”

A moment passed.

“Well,” the cop near Chance said, looking at my clothes, “you do look pretty stupid.”

“Yeah. My first time in commando gear.”

“Whad’ya say, John? This could just be some townie kids snooping around, threw a rock through the window?”

The cop near me nodded, thinking.

“Disappear,” he said finally. “If I see you again, I might have to take a stick to your head. Got it?” He pulled me up roughly and started laughing. He slapped me on the back. “Get out of here. And stay out of trouble.”

They were both laughing now. I felt like I wanted to vomit. Chance and I kept mumbling thank you as we worked our way to the door. We were almost there.

“Say,” the calm officer said casually, “what’s in there?”

He gave Chance’s side pouch a little tap with his baton.

Chance winced, involuntarily.

“Just my camera,” he said, still moving toward the door.

The cop gave the pouch another tap, harder this time.

“Can I see it?” he said.

The other cop was circling calmly around, between us and the door.

“Sure,” Chance said. He opened the pouch and tilted it toward the officer.

“Why don’t you take it out,” the cop said.

Chance exhaled. He took the camera out.

The cop took it and turned it around in his hands.

“Pretty nice camera,” he said.

“Big, too,” the other cop said from behind us. “Not one of those little pocket ones you see the kids with.”

“True,” the first cop said, cocking his head. “Not one of those camera phones either. That’s what I notice these days.”

“Can I see it?” the cop between us and the door asked.

“Sure,” Chance said quietly. He passed it over.

“Wow, this is a real camera. It’s got lenses and everything.”

The cop in front of us said pleasantly, “You a photographer, son?”

“It’s just a hobby.”

“That’s good. My son’s hobby is being an asshole. Still, though…”

“Why bring such a nice camera on a prank, I wonder…” the other cop finished.

Chance mumbled something about taking a picture in the dining hall.

“Huh,” the cop said.

“Say, Officer Peters,” the man behind us said. “If I’m not mistaken, this is one of those James Bond cameras, good in the dark and so forth.”

“Huh,” the officer said again.

Ever so slightly, I saw Chance rise up on the balls of his feet. I felt voltage building in my arms and legs.

The officer reached back into Chance’s bag. His hand came out holding a piece of paper.

My heart sank as I realized it was our map.

Chance started to say something, but the cop raised his hand. He unfolded the paper. His eyes scanned the page. The corner of his mouth flickered.

I felt a body close behind me.

The cop looked up. His face was still a mask of pleasantness, but all the warmth had drained from the eyes, the smile.

“What were you boys looking for down there, exactly?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

There was a moment of perfect stillness.

Chance ran.

There was a crack as the cop behind us rammed Chance into the wall. The camera fell and slid along the floor. The other cop went for me. I saw a baton rise up in the air above Chance. Without thinking I jumped toward it and knocked them apart. Chance leapt up and ran blindly into the other officer. “Go,” he yelled.

I ran out the door and down the hall. The hole of the window came closer and I jumped, hit the ground outside, and tumbled over the rocky grass. I saw Chance pass me and keep running. Back on my feet I ran through the gate and didn’t stop, didn’t even think, took off in the opposite direction from Chance and ran until the gloom factory was out of sight behind me. I kept running across the far edge of the campus, on service roads and then through the woods of the west side, looping around to the edge of the river. When I couldn’t run anymore I walked, cutting a winding path through the woods until I was sure no one was following me. I rubbed the black off my eyes with my sweatshirt and threw it into the river. Now I was in a gray long-sleeved T-shirt and black pants. I still looked like an idiot, but now it was the kind of idiot who just stumbled drunk out of a club. I cut toward the middle of the campus. I passed an upper-class dorm and heard a party upstairs. I went to the party and blended into the anonymous shoulder-to-shoulder crowd in the small room, purple and red lights, loud bass, everyone jumping to the music, the smell of orange juice and liquor saturating the air. I stole a green coat from the pile in the bedroom by the door. Now I was an alcohol-soaked, green-coated student blending into the throngs of Saturday night revelers on the main campus. I wound my way to the quiet side street of my dorm. No one followed me. I waited in the hallway around the first corner for ten minutes. No one came in the door after me. I got to my room, locked the door behind me, switched off the lights. I checked the lock on every window. I doubled-checked the lock on my door. Remembering the invitations placed on my bed, I moved my chair to the door and wedged it at an angle under the knob, the feet digging into the floor.

I sat on the floor below the window and peeked out the blinds. No one on the street below. No one in the yard beyond.

I looked at the poster of Albert Einstein on my wall. What are you smirking at? I asked him.

I was safe.

In the plant, my face had black paint smeared all over it. And no one had followed me home.

They didn’t know who I was.

This was my warning. This was my rock bottom, my chance at salvation. Done. Finished. Take the Incompletes. Work hard, get straight A’s in the spring.

A normal career. A normal life. No fame. No glory. No secrets. No power.

That was fine.

I could be a person again.