Death by Dissertation (2 page)

A few seconds later we all heard the slamming door of Whitelock’s office just down the hall. Heads together and whispering, Selena and the oddly familiar stranger walked out together. Dan trailed forlornly in their wake.

“What gives with Charlie and Whitelock?” I asked Maggie, trying to ignore Rob. “I wasn’t paying any attention to what Charlie was saying, so what’s going on?”

“Andy Carpenter,” Maggie said, grinning at me, “how could you not have been listening to one of Charlie’s magnificent orations on Frankish history?”

“It’s all Dan’s fault," I retorted. “He destroyed whatever powers of concentration I might have had, with that paper on medieval Frankish horseshit, or whatever it was.”

Rob snorted. “It was horseshit, all right.”

“It’s exactly the kind of academic research that makes the Republicans in Congress want to cut funding for higher education,” I said.

“I think even the Democrats would have trouble justifying this,” Maggie laughed.

“I suppose,” Rob said with a sly smile, “Whitelock is so politically neutered— or do I mean neutral?—that it doesn’t matter to him.”

It pained me to have to agree, so I just ignored him. I asked my question about Charlie’s paper again. “What about it made Whitelock so angry, Maggie?”

“As well as I could follow Charlie,” she replied, “I think he was trying to show that Whitelock was misguided, at best, in that article he wrote a few years ago on kingship in Merovingian Gaul.”

For the life of me, I couldn’t remember what the professor had said about kingship in Merovingian Gaul, though I had waded through the article twice the previous month, trying to make sense of it. Whitelock’s prose was no better than Charlie’s.

Rob sighed. “I don’t know why, but Charlie seems to have it in for Whitelock lately. I mean, today he practically called the guy a fool in front of all of us. How does he expect to get the man to direct his dissertation?”

“Well, he’s your roommate!” I said rudely. “If you don’t know, then how the heck should any of us know?”

Charlie had been in the program for a year longer than we had, though he and Rob had known each other in their undergraduate days. Having Rob in the same program with me was bad enough, but when he moved in next door with Charlie at the start of school, I was almost ready to head back to Mississippi and trash my dream of getting a Ph.D. in history.

“I don’t know exactly what Charlie is doing,” Rob answered, with heavy patience. “You might have noticed, Charlie doesn’t listen to anyone. He follows his own drummer.”

Rob was right about that. Charlie wouldn’t be beaten into submission by Julian Whitelock. Charlie came from a wealthy family, and our professor respected nothing so much as money.

“Well,” I said, standing up, “no doubt, Charlie will come out the better. Some people have a talent for treating other people like shit and walking away clean.” I looked straight at Rob as I said it.

He stood so quickly, his chair overturned and fell with a loud bang. “And some people can’t seem to do anything but act like jerks all the time, no matter—” He stopped in mid-sentence and looked at me with a weary expression, his anger cooling suddenly. “Oh, just forget it.” He grabbed his backpack and stalked out.

Maggie frowned at me. “Are you happy with yourself now?” The ice in her tone would have chilled the Sahara. “You finally got a reaction out of him, after taunting him for two months. Was it what you wanted?”

I looked at her defiantly. “You don’t know him the way I do. He has a temper like you wouldn’t believe.”

“You’re right, Andy,” Maggie observed as she stood up. “I don’t know Rob all that well, but I do know you. And I think you’re acting like a jerk, whatever he may have done in the past.”

That really stung, and I had nothing to say as I followed Maggie out of the seminar room. I was about to offer a conciliatory remark, but as we neared Whitelock’s office, we could hear raised voices inside.

Abruptly Whitelock’s door opened, and a smiling Charlie appeared. “You’ll see whose ass is in a bind, believe me,” he said before pulling the door shut with an emphatic click.

Then Charlie saw us, and, not a bit bothered that we had overheard him, his grin widened. “Somebody’s going to murder that bastard one of these days.” He marched off down the hall, laughing to himself.

Chapter Two

The disagreement with Maggie left me feeling out of sorts. I didn’t want to admit that she was right, because I had been deliberately baiting Rob to see how he would react. I didn’t want to examine my motives, because I’d have to think more about how I really felt. Not something I was ready to get into.

As Maggie and I walked down the stairs one flight to the floor where our carrels were located, she didn’t seem to want to talk about Charlie’s nasty comment. I retrieved what I wanted from my carrel, right next to Maggie’s, and bade her good-bye. She nodded in response and settled down in her own carrel, busying herself with a book. I wandered off, knowing that by the next time I saw her, a thaw would have set in.

On the way home I decided to make a couple of stops. The first was at a trendy deli on Montrose where all the yuppies, guppies, and buppies gathered to eat. At four in the afternoon, the place wasn’t busy, and I was able to get my sandwich and potato salad without having to wait as long as usual. I stuck my food on the floorboard, out of the sun, and swung the car on down Montrose toward Westheimer and my second stop.

On a graduate student’s budget, I had to take my entertainment where I could find it. Sometimes I felt like I spent my entire life in two places: my apartment and the library. Every great once in a while, I splurged and went to a movie. Occasionally I visited Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, when admission was free, or the Menil Collection, where they just asked for donations. Bookstore crawls were the best, though. I often lusted over books I couldn’t afford, but wandering through a bookstore was a good, free way to break the monotony of my daily routine.

I found a parking place alongside the building that housed Houston’s biggest gay and lesbian bookstore. I hadn’t been by since the semester started, and I was in the mood to browse. Not to mention the fact that there were always some good-looking guys cruising the shelves. I wasn’t in the market, but I sure didn’t mind surveying the produce.

A quick glance through the magazines convinced me I hadn’t missed much in the previous two months. No interesting fellow browsers, either. I moved on to check out the nonfiction section, with the same results.

Maggie’s birthday was coming up, though, and I decided I could find her an appropriate card here, one with a scantily clad hunk and a suggestive message inside. Naturally I had to look at all the possible choices before I found just the right one.

At the checkout counter, I smiled pleasantly at the clerk as I paid for the card. Just behind him sprawled the counter where you could order various caffeinated beverages and good, fattening things to eat. Dan Erickson stood there, his back to me, fastening an apron around himself.

I absentmindedly accepted my change from the clerk while I watched Dan, who was engrossed in taking an order from a couple of older men. They cast appreciative glances at his blond good looks.

When did Dan start working here?
I wondered. The pooh-bahs in the history department frowned upon part-time jobs because graduate students were supposed to concentrate on their intellectual work, not physical labor. Things like food and rent had to be paid, though, and Dan wasn’t the first grad student to need a job while finishing a degree.

More to the point, however, why was he working in a gay and lesbian bookstore? He was, as far as I knew, straight, and this seemed like an unusual environment for a straight man to choose for employment.

I wandered around to the other counter and got in line behind the two flirtatious customers. I stood with my head slightly turned, and Dan focused his attention on the men in front of me. He still hadn’t spotted me. Their supply of banter exhausted, the guys took their coffee and cake and retreated to a nearby table.

I stepped up to the counter. “Hi, Dan.”

His eyes widened when he saw his waiting customer.

“Fancy meeting you here,” I said. “Are you joining my team?”

“Andy!” he said, staring at me. He expelled a breath. “I guess I should have figured on running into you here sooner or later.” He hesitated, glancing over his shoulder. “Look, can I talk to you for a minute? If you want something, let me treat, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, curious about what Dan wanted to confide. Besides, I could stand a bribe. I ordered a latte and a piece of cheesecake, one of my weaknesses.

“I’ll join you in a minute,” he said, and I found a table in the corner.

While I nibbled on my cheesecake and sipped my latte, Dan helped a couple of women who had wandered up to the counter. Once he had filled their order, he conferred briefly with a manager-looking guy in a bright purple shirt, which showed off a highly buffed physique. Dan gestured in my direction, and I affected not to notice while the manager stared at me. He nodded, and Dan patted him on the arm. I wouldn’t have minded trading places with Dan right about then. Maybe he would introduce me. I smiled at the thought.

Dan pulled out the chair across from me and sat down. “I don’t have long,” he said, “but I thought I ought to explain what I’m doing here.”

I wiped my mouth with my napkin and sat back in my chair, watching his earnest face.
Why the sudden need to unburden himself to me?
I wondered.

This happened to me all the time on airplanes. I invariably had a seatmate who decided, for whatever reason, that I was Ann Landers or Dear Abby incarnate, and I ended up hearing all about the lives of people I’d never met before and, frankly, never wanted to see again. I guess I looked too much like a big, cuddly teddy bear (or so I’d been told). Maybe it I shaved half my head, got my nose pierced, and dyed my beard blue, people would leave me alone.

“You don’t owe me any explanations.” I nobly tried to ignore my rampant curiosity. “Though I do appreciate the snack.”

Dan waved that away, and I settled in to listen. “I know you must think it weird,” he laughed self-consciously, “to find me working in a gay bookstore.”

“Just because you work here doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gay,” I answered.

“Exactly!” He smiled in relief. “I mean, they prefer to have gay staff here, and I don’t guess it hurts to let them think I am, right?”

I set my cup of latte down with a bit of a thump. “Look, how you represent yourself to these people doesn’t concern me in the slightest. That’s between you and your conscience.” I did find the notion irritating, but he could be inside the closet, behind the wallpaper, and just couldn’t admit to himself why he really wanted to work here.

“I know, I know,” Dan said hurriedly. “It’s just that I needed the job, and this seemed like a good place.” He hunched his shoulders and leaned closer. “I mean, it’s not like any of the history department faculty will wander in anytime soon, right?”

“Probably not, unless some of them are hiding something,” I said pointedly, though Dan seemed not to catch my meaning. “Are you worried they’ll give you a hard time over having a job?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “They know that I’m teaching part-time at H.C.C.”— Houston Community College—“but that’s acceptable, since it means I’m getting teaching experience. But I’ve only got a couple of classes this semester, and I needed some extra money.”

“Dan, you can work as many jobs as you like, and I couldn’t care less.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “It’s just that my younger brother is in college now,” he continued, “and money is tight back home. I’m the eldest, and my mother needs all the help she can get.”

I remembered hearing that his father had skipped out when he was pretty young. Dan grew up in a rough neighborhood in Boston, and he worked hard to get to graduate school. I could sympathize, since I’d paid my own way to the luxurious life of advanced education.

“Dan, I don’t think anyone in the department would begrudge you anything; we don’t all have trust funds and rich parents to fall back on.”

He grinned. “You got that right!”

I sighed inwardly. He was quite attractive. Maybe he needed some help getting out from behind the wallpaper?

“We can’t all be Charlie Harper,” I said, and Dan’s face immediately clouded.

“No,” he said shortly. “And I wouldn’t want to be, even for all that money.”

“By the way,” I said, changing the subject, “that sure was an... urn, unusual paper you presented this afternoon.”

He grimaced. “Julian insisted. I’m incredibly busy getting ready for my dissertation, not to mention my interview with Harvard.”

I nodded. We all knew that Dan was up for a postdoctoral fellowship. He managed to work it into the conversation whenever possible. “How’s that going?” I asked, willing to be polite as I remembered why Dan wasn’t as attractive as I had been thinking. “Isn’t that coming up soon?”

“Yeah, I have about two more weeks, and then I'm off to Harvard.”

“Any idea what the competition’s like?” I asked, before he could launch into all the details I’d heard several times before. “Do you know who the other candidates are? Frankly, I’m surprised that Selena Bradbury hasn’t applied.”

He frowned. “I’m pretty sure she applied, but I don’t know if she’s made the short list. I haven’t heard who else has been selected for an interview, though Julian did hint to me that I might find myself competing with at least one more of his students. I guess he was talking about Selena.”

“Could be,” I agreed. If the contest was between Dan and the Ice Queen, he probably had an edge because of his gender, but Selena was pretty formidable academically, and she might be just what the guys at Harvard wanted. “Good luck, Dan.”

“Thanks, Andy,” he said, standing up. “Thanks for letting me explain,” he added. “I guess I’d better get back to work.”

“Well, don’t overdo it,” I cautioned. I couldn’t help myself sometimes. There may have been more to this Ann Landers thing than I was willing to admit.