Campus confidential, p.28
Campus Confidential, page 28
“Yeah, I wouldn’t trust me either,” he said. “But seriously, Rowena, listen. I have no doubt you hate me. I hate me too right now. But my offer’s still on the table. Do you need a place for next semester? Or have you gotten something lined up?”
“No,” I said grudgingly. “I mean, I don’t have anything lined up for certain. But I was just invited to apply for a position this spring. The search committee for a tenure-track position I interviewed for but didn’t get invited me to apply for a temporary position for the spring.”
“Really? Where?”
“UNC-Charlotte. Their satellite campus in Matthews.”
“Who’s the head of the search committee?”
“Um...Brent something?”
“Brent Whittaker? Teaches French?”
“I think so. Why? Do you know him?”
“We were good friends in grad school, and we still keep in touch. Let me give him a call. Do you have his number?”
I stared at him, too full of suspicion and a mulish desire to be contrary to respond.
“Just a minute.” He got out his phone, scrolled through the contacts list, and said, “Here we go. Hope he’s up already—he never was a morning person. Hello? Brent, is that you? It’s Erik. Oh, I’m doing okay, how about you? How’s life in the 704 treating you?” He laughed. “The Dirty Dirty South agrees with you, does it? Great. Listen, I have a question. Are you doing a search for a Russian instructor right now? For the spring? You are? Fabulous. Because I think one of my current instructors has applied for it, or is planning to. Yeah, unfortunately we could only bring her in on a one-semester appointment; you know how it is. I wish we could keep her, but...yeah, maybe we’ll loan her out to you for a semester or two, then bring her back. Her name? Rowena Halley. Graduated last year from Indiana. Uh-huh. Absolutely. No, we’re all very impressed with her work. All the students love her. Even Madison. Yeah, she even managed to get Madison a little bit under control. I know, right? Madison...she’s doing okay. You know how it is. Recommendation? Be happy to. I’ll get it to you this afternoon. Okay, thanks Brent. Take care, man.”
He hung up and looked over at me. “Brent said he’s looking forward to your application. I promised him a personal letter of recommendation from me. And I mean it. I’ll send it to him this afternoon. And I’ll give you a general one. Do you have an Interfolio account?”
“Um. Yes.”
“Of course you do. Send me a request and I’ll upload it right away.”
“Um. I guess.”
“Oh, come on Rowena. What do you really want? Spit it out!”
“I want to get a job on my own merits, not through blat. Dirty connections,” I clarified.
He laughed, but without a lot of humor. “Don’t you know? That’s how everything is done. What did you call it? Blat? Leave it to the Russians to have a one-syllable word for the concept. But it holds just as true here in the land of the free and the home of the brave as it does over there. Well, maybe not just as true, but that’s also the way things work here, when it comes right down to it.”
“I know,” I said.
“And you will be getting a job on your own merits. I’m not doing this because, I don’t know, you’re blackmailing me. I’m doing this because by all accounts you really are a good instructor and a promising researcher, and Christ you’re brave. And you used that bravery to save my daughter’s life, when you didn’t have to. She’s a good kid, you know—”
“She’s not,” I interrupted. “I was a good kid. Even my brother was a good kid, in his own supremely irritating and rebellious way. But Madison is a poor little drug-addicted rich girl who’s been given everything she could get except the chance to be a good kid.”
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “You’re probably right. Fuck. Where did we go so wrong? We really did want the best for her, you know.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But all kids, even almost-grownup kids, need large amounts of their parents’ undivided attention, and smart kids who like adventure and excitement and travel to Russia and programing their own video games don’t always do so well in safe, highly structured environments. The more you try to keep them out of trouble, the more they take drugs and hack into other people’s emails and generally wreak havoc. They need a little chaos and danger, and if you take it all away from them, they’ll create it themselves.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s just...I’m not arguing with you, Rowena. You’re absolutely right. But...you know how it is. I’m not saying things were quite so tough when I was dissertating and on the market, but things were pretty damn tough. They don’t just hand out PhDs like candy, and jobs even less. So I was all caught up in that, and Brenda—Madison’s mother—she was angry that I was working so much and earning so little, while she was stuck at home with a toddler she’d had mainly because I thought...well, I wanted her, I really did, but I also thought it would be good for my career. They prefer single, childless women and married men with children because we’re the most desperate and the easiest to control, you know that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know that. Poor Madison.”
“Yeah. Poor Madison. None of it was her fault. And then I defended and got a job, and I still didn’t have enough money to support a family, and I realized administration was the way to go if that’s what I needed, so that’s the way I went. Only somehow I lost Brenda and Madison along the way.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “That must be tough.”
He looked like he wanted to roll his eyes at me, but stopped himself. “You are good,” he said. “The sympathy almost sounds real.”
“It is real.”
“You’re even better than I thought, then. So here I am, Provost before I’m fifty. But Provost at a university that belongs to the mob, body and soul.
“That must be tough too.”
He shrugged. “No one to blame but myself. And I don’t know if it’s any tougher than anywhere else. It’s all a snake pit, Rowena. Only in this case, the snakes have real fangs. But I figure: hey, at least taxpayer money is ending up at the university eventually. I mean, the upstanding citizens of New Jersey who spend their hard-earned dollars at the casinos and brothels and crack houses we have in such abundance are getting some return on investment. They’re paying for their kids to go to college, whether they know it or not.” He gave me a sideways look. “You probably think that sounds like bullshit. You probably think that nothing good can come from dirty soil.”
“No,” I said. “Moscow State University was built by gulag labor. Slaves, and of a very grim sort. They say you can still find inscriptions they left on the walls of the main building. And now it’s a beautiful campus and Russia has the highest per-capita rate of college graduates in the world and students come from all over the world to study there, including from African countries that the West has been exploiting and oppressing for centuries. Sometimes things work out in funny ways, and while I don’t believe the ends justify the means, I’ve spent enough time in Russia to be okay with graft and corruption. That’s the only way it functions: you know; if everyone suddenly became law-abiding the entire country would grind to a halt within days. And we’re not that different, just like you said. Rules aren’t always meant to be followed. Sometimes they’re just there to show what fine fellows we are, while we slip cash back and forth under the table with our left hands to keep things from crashing down around us.”
“Wow. I actually don’t know what to say to that. I think you may be even more cynical than me, Rowena.”
“Yeah, but I’m a wimp,” I said. “I can never hold my nose long enough to actually make a living under those circumstances.”
“You’re not a wimp. And maybe you can find somewhere where the stink isn’t so bad. You should, Rowena, you really should! You really could have a fine future ahead of you. Not only that, but we need you, Rowena. I mean, academia needs you. Not just because we’re desperately searching for women to fill those corner-office positions, even as we drive them out with our ticking tenure clocks, to show that we practice what we preach, but because maybe you really could effect some kind of meaningful change.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I’m not going to get rid of corruption in Jersey,” he said. “But maybe a few of Jersey’s youth will learn to love Goethe, Keats, and Pushkin, and become better people because of it. And all paid for with mob dollars.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t actually disagree.”
“So you’ll take the money then?”
“Is it mob money?”
“It’s from my personal account. I don’t take personal kickbacks. So it’s as clean as your paycheck.”
“That clean, huh?”
“Yeah, that clean. Please take it, Rowena. Otherwise I’ll feel terrible.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Good. I mean, thanks, Rowena. I really mean that. Let me know if you need anything. I really mean that too.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let me know how Madison does, okay? Here.” I wrote my personal email on the back of an old envelope. “My email. My permanent email, I mean. Tell her to write to me if she wants to.”
“She will. I’m sure of it. Well.” He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. “That didn’t go so bad, did it? Now to face Alex.”
“I’m sure he’ll be very polite to you.”
“I’m sure. That’s not the same thing as being pleasant, though. Good luck, Rowena. I hope to hear from you again soon.”
“Sure,” I said, and showed him the door.
50
Alex showed up the next morning, as I was trying, with an extreme lack of enthusiasm, to do some packing.
“Packing already?” he asked as soon as he stepped in. “Can’t wait to get rid of us?”
“It’s not that,” I said. “It’s that I might have a job. For the spring. I have an interview tomorrow. And in any case my lease runs out at the end of the month.”
“An interview! That’s great. So do I, actually. Also tomorrow. For a job I’m pretty much guaranteed to get.”
“What! That’s fantastic.”
He made a face. “I guess. It’s at Temple. Where my dad used to work. And it’s because our favorite Provost made a few calls.”
“Yeah, mine too, kind of.”
“Well. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right?”
“I guess,” I said. “Do you want to help me pack?”
“I love packing!”
“It’s a good thing you’re a professor of a critical need language,” I said. “Because you’ll never make a living on the stage with acting like that.”
“Okay, I hate packing, but I’ll help anyway. It will be good training for when I move to Philly.”
“So you’re not planning to live with your parents next semester?”
“Fuck no! I mean, I could. They’re closer to Philly than they are to New Brunswick. But this is a lectureship with a massive, incredible, $42,000 a year salary, which after I make my monthly loan payments will just about rent me a couch in some skanky apartment near the university, so that’s what I’m doing. But I will have to pack up and move at least some of my stuff down there.” He surveyed my apartment. “Not as much as you, because my parents have perfectly good rooms for storing junk in, so they might as well get some use, but enough to be a headache.”
“I know. Oh my God! I have the interview tomorrow, and if I do get the job, I’ll have to find an apartment down in Charlotte, pack up everything here, have it shipped down there, unpack it—and like as not I’ll have to do it all again next semester.” I banged my head against the kitchen cabinet a couple of times.
“Hey. Hey, don’t be like that.” Alex put his hand against the side of my head, so that if I tried to bang it against the cabinet again, his hand would take the blow.
“I know. Don’t give in to despair, yada yada yada, ladidadida. I just hate moving, you know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean.” He stepped closer and put his arms around me. He was quivering with that pent-up energy he always had, at least when he was standing next to me. “I’m really tempted to ask you to fuck me right now,” he said into my ear. “But I’m not going to, because I’m afraid you might say yes, and then we’d have sex on this nasty counter, and it would be lousy because we’d both be thinking about our interviews tomorrow and maybe other lovers past, and it would ruin what could be a beautiful friendship.”
“I think you’re right,” I said.
“So.” He released me and stepped back. “Rain check, maybe? Even though I don’t look like Richard Gere?”
“Richard Gere is overrated,” I said. “Real heroes help with packing.”
“We do, don’t we?” he said with a grin.
We pulled out the boxes I had broken down and stored away at the beginning of the semester, and taped them back into box shape—I was well trained in having a good supply of packing tape with me at all times. Then we started wrapping up dishes in dish towels and napkins and putting them in the boxes. It all went well until we ran out of packing material and energy, and there was still half the dishes left to go.
“How do I have so much stuff?” I demanded.
“I don’t know. How do you have so many dishes? I have precisely one bowl, one fork, and one spoon.”
“Yeah, but you don’t cook.”
“True.”
“And people keep giving me stuff because I’m a girl and I like to cook and everyone knows that and tries to be kind and helpful by giving me presents of cast-off cookware. Which is nice, until I have to pack it up and haul it around the country with me.”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “I know this sucks. But it will get better.”
“Really?”
“No. I’m just shitting with you. It’s probably going to keep sucking for a long time, maybe forever. But it’s what we do.”
“Why?” I demanded plaintively. “Why are we doing this?”
“You know why, Rowena,” he said with a smile. “Because we’re saving the world. Two campuses at a time.”
THE END
DEAR READER! THANK you very much for reading Campus Confidential. Want to find out what happens next? Book 2 in the series, Permanent Position, is out now.
And if you’d like to keep in touch, get regular updates and offers, AND get a free book, click here to get your copy of the prequel novella Foreign Exchange and sign up for my newsletter (but only if you want to!).
Also by the Author
The Doctor Rowena Halley Series
Foreign Exchange (Free!)
Campus Confidential
Permanent Position
Summer Session
Trigger Warning
Honor Court
About the Author
Sid Stark lives a life very similar to her characters’, only with more grading and fewer exciting chase scenes. She did once get held up in Heathrow on suspicion of being a Russian criminal traveling on an American passport, though, which was fun. She loves to hear from her readers, and can be reached by email at sidstark@sidstarkauthor.com, at her website at https://sidstarkauthor.com/, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SidStarkAuthor/, and Twitter at @SidStarkAuthor.
Don't miss out!
Click the button below and you can sign up to receive emails whenever Sid Stark publishes a new book. There's no charge and no obligation.
https://books2read.com/r/B-A-NVEK-HGLFB
Connecting independent readers to independent writers.
Also by Sid Stark
Doctor Rowena Halley
Campus Confidential: An Academic Thriller
Permanent Position: An Academic Thriller
Summer Session: An Academic Thriller
Trigger Warning: An Academic Thriller
Honor Court: An Academic Thriller
Total Immersion: An Academic Thriller
Doctor Rowena Halley Boxed Sets
The Doctor Rowena Halley Series Books 1-4: Four Dark Comedy Mysteries
Sid Stark, Campus Confidential
