Needless to say, by Thursday all I wanted was for the week to be over, especially after I spilled coffee on my stomach walking to campus and had to go around all day with a shirt that made me look like I worked in a prison cafeteria. I got to my office already out of sorts, threw my stuff on my desk, and checked my e-mail, only to find that the afternoon’s faculty meeting, which I was going to have been able to miss because I had to supervise a lecture across campus, had been moved to Friday afternoon, so everyone was delighted that I’d be able to make it after all.
Which brings me to high point number two. Hands on my desk, I pushed myself back onto the two back legs of my chair in frustration, without thinking about it, then immediately froze, remembering that the last time I’d done so, the desk had scudded off its literary magazine stack and almost taken my computer to the floor with it. That time, though, all four of the desk’s legs stayed firmly on the floor. Confused, I looked at it more closely and realized that the literary magazines I’d shimmed the legs with were gone, and it was resting solidly on new legs.
And I knew it could only have come from one place.
I called Rex.
“This is Rex Vale.”
“Rex, this is Daniel.”
“Daniel, hi.” His voice warmed when he said my name.
“I, um, I—did you fix my desk?”
“Yeah, well. Couldn’t have your whole office collapsing.” He paused. “And you said you didn’t want me to put in a work order, so….”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “It’s great. I just… you didn’t have to do that. I wasn’t expecting….” I didn’t know what to say. No one had ever done anything like that for me before. “Thank you,” I said, pleased to hear that I sounded genuine and not pathetically emotional. “Really, thank you. I’m sorry. I guess I should’ve started with that.”
“Okay, now, don’t worry. You’re welcome.”
There was a pause, but it didn’t feel nearly as awkward as the ones during our last conversation, which was heartening.
“Listen,” Rex said. “They say it’s going to get real cold on Saturday, maybe storm, so I just want to make sure you still want to come. To my place, I mean.”
“Yeah, of course I do,” I say. “I mean, this is Michigan, right? I knew it had to get cold at some point.”
“All right, then,” Rex said. “Good-bye.”
Then he hung up before I could ask for directions.
“AND YOU’RE all right with that, Daniel?” Bernard Ness is saying.
“Um, I’m sorry, Bernard, what was that?” I say. Clearly I’ve been nodding along with the meeting as I thought about Rex.
“You’re all right with heading the committee?” Crap. Way to not repeat yourself at all, Bernard.
“Yep, yep, sounds good,” I hear myself saying since I can’t think of any way to admit I’ve been zoning out.
“Wonderful,” Bernard says, and ends the meeting as I sit there, dazed.
I gather my things and make a beeline for my office to get my jacket. All I want is to go home, take a shower, and listen to music with a bottle of wine. I’m slipping on my jacket when Jay Santiago pushes my door open. Jay is maybe ten years older than me, in his early forties, and seems like a nice guy, though I don’t know him well.
“The first-year personal essay committee,” he says.
“Huh?”
“The committee Bernard stuck you on while you were staring out the window. It’s for first-year students’ personal essays. You pick a first place, second place, third place, and two runner-up essays and then they read them at an end of the year open house while their parents drink wine out of plastic cups, eat pepper jack cheese cubes, and brag about their kids to anyone who’ll listen.”
“Whoa, grim,” I say. But it could be worse. I actually like reading students’ creative writing. It’s kind of cool to see who they are outside the classroom, what they think is important on their own time.
“Yeah, I did it last year, so if you need any pointers, just let me know.”
“Will do,” I say. “Thanks, Jay.” He nods good-bye.
I WALK the long way home—well, it’s two blocks longer—so I can pick up some wine and get a pizza since I have nothing edible in my house. As I walk out of the store with my box of wine, though, there’s shouting coming from behind the store. It’s kind of a park, I guess, a patch of grass and a bench and a few trees.
Two guys are messing with a kid sitting on the bench. He’s maybe sixteen or seventeen, with longish, light brown hair and checkerboard Vans. You could ID him as a skater kid from thirty paces even if his feet weren’t currently resting on a skateboard. I can’t really see his face, but he’s skinny, and definitely smaller than the guys messing with him. They might be the same age, but they’re of the polo-shirt-and-boat-shoes variety, with lingering summer tans and muscles honed by football and fathers who expect certain things from them. I know the type.