It Will Come to Me (31 page)

Ricia got up and ventured into the darkened end of the office, returning with a shallow, speckled ceramic bowl. Charles lit a cigarette and offered one to Ruth, who declined it and found herself saying, “Ben could write you a letter.” But what was she thinking? Ben couldn't write a letter for Charles.

“Ben's a good man,” said Charles. “I wouldn't put him on the spot. I'm sorry I caused him so much trouble. What happened to the chairmanship? Has he quit for good?”

“No no,” said Ruth. “He reinstated himself after Mitten-Kurz was fired.”

“Ah,” said Charles. “Good of him to stay on. Is that what he wanted?”

Ruth hesitated. “I think it was, really. He complains about losing writing time, but he has an impulse to take care of things—of people.”

“He takes care of you,” Ricia interjected. “I've noticed that. Every time I see him, he's looking for you.”

“They certainly need taking care of in that department,” said Charles. “I never saw a more bewildered bunch. I think of preschool children on an outing, all holding on to a rope. Someone needs to keep a grip on the front end.”

“So, Ruth,” said Ricia. “Have you been writing?”

“In fact I have,” said Ruth. “Just a start. Just a few pages, but it has the feeling of something that could go on.”

“Wonderful! Do you have it here? Read it aloud. Give us a reading.”

“No,” said Ruth. “I left it at home.” In truth it was there in her purse, at her feet. She'd transferred it when she stopped at Ben's office to get the flask from their suitcase, but suddenly it seemed the better part of valor not to show it off. “So,” she said, addressing Ricia, “what will you do when you get back to Providence?”

“Let's hope we do get back,” said Ricia. “Listen to the wind. It's howling, just the way they say it does.”

Charles got up and went to the window. “That old oak out there is swaying like a Balinese dancer,” he reported.

“You know, I've had the hardest time taking this hurricane seriously,” said Ruth. “I just can't get the idea into my head. It doesn't seem real.”

“It's real enough to me,” said Charles. He remained at the window, his arms crossed over his paunch. “Any possibility of calamity seems real to me.”

The flask circulated once again. “I'll miss you both,” said Ruth. “It's been so wonderful having you here. I was looking forward to getting to know you better. Actually, I feel I've known you for years, and what's it been, three weeks?”

“Ah, well,” said Ricia, reaching across the coffee table to squeeze her hand. “We'll stay in touch. You'll come visit. We'll have a party for you.”

But Ruth was too full of feeling not to go on. “The two of you,” she said. “It's as if you opened a window in a stuffy room. I can't tell you how much of a difference you've made. The years go by in circles and the only change is that I sink into myself a little more. Ben does all right. He makes progress in his work. Sometimes I think he thinks he's only treading water, but at least he has the illusion of moving forward.”

“At our age that's almost always an illusion,” said Charles.

“Charles!” said Ricia. “That's a terrible thing to say to Ruth. She's just starting a book. That's no illusion.”

“I'm not sure it's a book,” said Ruth. “And I'm not sure it's not an illusion.”

“I'm sorry,” said Charles. He returned from his post at the window and sat down again. “I'm a terrible old cynic. Or maybe not exactly a cynic. Maybe I'm a terrible old stoic. I don't quite see this notion of progress. Not past youth. It only breeds discontent. You seem so discontented, Ruth, but from my point of view there's much to be said for the life here. I wouldn't mind sticking around, though I know Ricia would. There are some very kind and admirable people here. There are old attachments and loyalties. You need a protected place for bonds like those to form. You need to get out of the wind and rain …” He gestured at the window. “I think I could content myself with life here. Of course that's just my own view. I suppose I'm looking back at Paradise after the expulsion.”

“Yes you are,” said Ricia. “You exactly are. You couldn't tolerate Paradise any more than I could. Any more than Ruth can. Some archangel would get on your nerves and you'd be shoving him off a cloud.”

Charles shrugged and smiled. He shook the flask. “I believe we've killed this,” he said.

Ricia got to her feet. “I've got a very nice bottle of pinot noir in my desk drawer. Somebody left it in my mailbox last week, along with a manuscript. What I don't have is a corkscrew.”

“Ah,” said Charles, tilting to one side to dig a hand into his pants pocket. “Never fear, my dears. I've got my Swiss army knife.”

Just then they were startled by a tattoo of sharp raps on the door. Charles rose. “Who's there?” he demanded. “Joel Bachman,” came the answer in a cracked adolescent voice. “We're doing a head count. How many people in there? Do I smell smoke?”

T
he Margolis era,” Ben was saying. “Sounds good to me. Sounds like progress.” He and Josh were walking down the dimly lit third-floor hall toward Ben's office.

“You understand it's only interim. They'll have to do a national search next year, but in the meantime I'll have a chance to get a few things done.”

“Yes,” said Ben. “Eliminate committees. Cut back on university service. Reduce teaching loads. Actually …” He stopped and turned to Josh, who was four inches taller than he and twenty-five years his junior. “Actually, there's something quite serious I'd like to ask you. Could you get Dolores back? Do you think you could arrange that?”

“I don't see why not,” said Josh. “All in a day's work for a benevolent despot.”

“It wouldn't be seen as some kind of cronyism?”

“I don't think so. She had no business stealing Dolores in the first place. People like to see the natural order of things restored.” Ben switched on the outer-office light and they found themselves in the midst of Hayley's fairyland. He hadn't really taken account, he realized, of its advances over the last week. The walls were a montage of overlapping fairy posters and the ceiling was swarming; not a square inch had been left unsparkling or untwinkling or untwirling. “Good Christ,” said Josh. “It's an infestation. I'd
heard about this, but it's worse than I thought. You should have talked to me: I think there's some bylaw about defacing university property you could have appealed to. How did you stand it?”

The only possible answer was to reach up and detach a fairy from the ceiling. Josh did the same, and soon they were systematically dismantling the display. It was quick, pleasant work, but when it was done the fairies lay strewn across the carpet like battle casualties. That wouldn't do, so they gathered them up in handfuls and dropped them into a cardboard box Ben found in the utility closet. “Close it up,” said Josh. “It makes me think of those mass-grave photographs. You know: ‘Having no natural defenses against the diseases of civilization, the fairies were decimated.’ “

Ben went into his office and rifled through the suitcase. “Sorry,” he called. “No scotch. Ruth got here first.” When he came back into the outer office, Josh was standing at the rain-spattered great window. “Look,” he said. “See those headlights, way across the green? What is that? Some kind of amphibious Coast Guard vehicle?” Ben joined him, standing back a little; branches were tapping on the glass, and the wind was making it rattle ominously in its casing. “See? It's coming overland. It's headed straight toward us,” said Josh. “It's crossing the access road.” Ben could see the vehicle now; its headlights flaring and dipping. It looked like a small tank, and it was being driven with reckless, jerky abandon, jouncing over curbs and brick sidewalks and flattening plantings. “Oh yeah,” said Josh. “That's Dreddle's Hummer. He's out riding the storm. Whoa! He's just as crazy as they say he is. I bet he's got his quail-hunting posse with him.”

“How long do you think he'll last?” said Ben. “As president, I mean.”

“The average these days seems to be about six years, but I
doubt he'll make three. I don't think the trustees expect him to stay longer than that. He'll raise a lot of money and he'll build some buildings and he'll be gone.”

But now the lights in the office were flickering. The room was suddenly dark, and so, Ben could see, was the hall. The building's background hum had gone silent, and when Josh said, “Well, that was inevitable,” his voice startled them both with its volume and intimacy. They stood at the window, watching as the taillights of the Hummer bounced out of view.

“The backup generator should be kicking in,” said Josh. So it did, and the lights went on for a few seconds. Then it, too, failed, and the lights went out again.

Charles was reading from
Beowulf
, one arm draped around Ricia, the other around Ruth. He paused to refresh himself from the half-finished bottle of pinot noir, then continued:

When the lights went out the first time, he drew Ruth and Ricia closer. “Well, ladies,” he chortled, “we are advantageously placed, are we not?”

“Power failure,” said Ricia. “I love it! I'm such a Luddite.”

The lamp flickered and went back on just long enough for Charles to say, “Ah, too bad!”

I
n darkness, people come together. A few minutes after the lights went out for the second time, the Lola humanities community began the process of reconstituting itself It ventured out of offices and seminar rooms and trickled through hallways and down the central staircase, flashlight beams wavering along the carpet, adults laughing softly, small children lamenting loudly, dogs whining in inquiry, adolescents complaining in plangent adolescent voices. At the head of the stairs a quorum of flashlights convened to throw a dancing, uncertain light on the problem of the darkened stairwell. Ruth looked down to see the anxious uplifted face of a little girl. “It's fun. Isn't it fun, Mom?” she asked. “It's
lots
of fun, honey,” said the mother. “Don't let go of my hand.”

Standing at the foot of the stairs, Barbara Bachman was distributing lighted candles, long white tapered ones. (Had she actually thought to bring them along, Ruth wondered. If so, what else: inflatable rafts?) Holding these aloft, parties of people launched into the lobby, and soon the great high-ceilinged space was filling up with softly illuminated faces, making a bobbing clockwise progress. Ruth was reminded of those Chinese ceremonies where lanterns are set afloat on rivers at night. She'd lost Ricia and Charles somewhere on the way down the stairs. Just as well, she thought; she'd hate to be remembered as a clinger.

B
en and Josh had parted ways when Josh caught sight of his wife and small son in the second-floor hallway. Now Ben was doing a solo turn around the lobby, moving against the current
of the crowd. It was hard to judge distances in this watery light, hard to recognize people, difficult also to avoid them. He hadn't gotten far when the long patrician face of Bruce Federman hovered into view. “Hey, Ben,” he called out in his ringing voice, fumbling to find and shake Ben's hand. “Great to see you. Sorry about the circumstances. This
would have
to happen the minute we get back!”

“How was Spain?” asked Ben. In a way, he was glad to encounter Federman. The evening had begun to feel like a dream, one of those swarming formless ones that drone on like an Indian raga. Federman's presence was a powerful dream-solvent; for him there was no world but the waking one of tenure decisions and racquetball and faculty-club lunches. “Fabulous,” was the answer. “We were living on the beach. Very primitive. The food, the wine. So cheap, so good. Sissy says I've got a little gut. By the way, I know you've been waiting for my pages for the anthology. I got sidetracked in Spain, but I'm home now and it goes to the top of the agenda.”

Ben nodded, and the lights went back on. The crowd ceased its slow circular movement and everyone stood in place, blinking. A moment passed. A few finger-in-mouth whistles could be heard above a growing murmur. “Hoo-ray?” some Bachman called out, a little tentatively.

“Well!” said Federman. “Maybe we'll get home yet. Have you seen Sissy? She was over with Dorothy Dixon, trying to calm her down.” Dorothy Dixon was the nervous widow of a former chair of the department. Sissy was an old-style faculty wife of the Southern variety, always in the know about illnesses and family troubles, always the first to make a call or bring a casserole. Ruth could be very tiresome on the subject of Sissy Federman. Where
was
Ruth? He looked around. There she was, only a few feet away, her back turned.

Taking his leave, Federman leaned in conspiratorially In a tone he might have used to disparage a job candidate with an inflated reputation he remarked, “I really don't see this Heather living up to her billing. She's been over land too long; I doubt she's even a two.”

Just then the windows rattled. A loud, splintering, cracking noise followed. The lights went out and the crowd gasped as a limb from the live oak in the courtyard catapulted through a window. The room was full of the shriek of the storm and the cascading tinkle of breaking glass.