Moo (27 page)

The thing about these guys was that they had no secrets. Their high opinions of themselves, and their sense of entitlement to things like sexual favors, nice clothes, good cars, and a future in which everything would go their way, were fully on display. What you saw was what you got, and she did not believe, as some of the other girls said, that the boys at the parties were separate from some sober incarnation of the same boys. The boys at the parties were being who they wanted to be, and while at one time she had harbored illusions about who they were, and while she had lost some of her enthusiasm for them, she still didn’t doubt that their world was where she was headed. Now she just thought that forewarned was forearmed.

Bob, though, was full of secrets. The plain face with the great body constituted one secret. The sexual inexperience with the big dick constituted another. The way he wrote letters to girls all the time was mysterious (she hadn’t quite brought herself to rifling his things to see what they wrote back to him—that guy Gary was always in the apartment, working at his computer). The way he disappeared five
times a day, including every night at eleven, no matter what they were doing, supposedly to do his work-study job, was one of these mysteries, though not, in the end, the biggest one. The biggest one was how, in contrast to the Theta Chi, the TKE, the DKE, and the Sigma Chi, he had developed a personality of his own, while they seemed to partake of a group personality, which, admittedly, varied slightly by fraternity—Thetas studied a little more, Sigmas preferred Miller to Bud, TKE was a real animal house, and DKEs were especially resentful if you didn’t go along with their sexual plans.

During that week when all the roommates had hid out together (thank God that weirdness was over and she was back on track), she’d tried not seeing Bob at all. Mary said, “Why don’t you just admit that he’s a nice guy and go with it?”

Sherri said, “I knew ten guys in my high school that were just like him.”

Keri said, “It’s been a couple of months. Don’t you think if you liked him, you’d know it by now?”

They hadn’t seen what a crisis this was for her, because they didn’t understand the seriousness of undergraduate corporate life, Diane thought. The fast track, for a girl, was more like a high wire. You had to take every step with care, and you also knew there were going to be sacrifices. In the end, though, she hadn’t been able to go on not seeing him, and had decided to pursue a more creative management strategy. When he stood up from his statistics problems and came around the table to give her a kiss, she said, “Don’t distract me.”

His feelings were hurt. He went back to his own side of the desk. His section was two chapters behind hers. When he struggled, she sometimes helped, as a way of pulling him onto the fast track with her, but not tonight. Her plan was that when tonight he closed his books, kissed her, and headed off across the campus, he would be so wrapped up in perplexed depression that he wouldn’t even raise his eyes from the contemplation of his shoes.

Yes, it was ruthless, but even aside from the fact that ruthlessness in general was a quality to be cultivated, he had brought this upon himself with his secrecy about wherever it was he went five times a day. She glanced at her watch. Ten-thirty. She focused on Rules of Apposition. Almost immediately (when you were determined to succeed, even the time reading grammar rules tended to fly), Bob stood up and pulled on his jacket. He came around the table. Diane saw that her books were sitting on his hat, so she pulled it out and
handed it to him, also handing him a smile. He looked a little more depressed than she had planned, maybe a little too much on the it’s-not-worth-the-grief side. She reached into his coat sleeve, which was too long because he was always forgetting gloves and hunching his fists up into his sleeves for warmth, and gave his big, muscular, and incredibly sexy hand a squeeze. She felt the squeeze in her own viscera—God, if he knew, if
anyone
knew, how exposed and embarrassed she would be!

“Well, good night,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come back and walk you to Dubuque House? I hate you walking across campus alone.”

“Sherri and Keri are up on the fourth floor. We’ll be okay. I’ll see you tomorrow. Come over to the house for breakfast after your early class. It’s Muffin Day.” One place where he had her was this no sex on Sundays, Tuesdays, or Thursdays, because he hated to go to his statistics class (7:30 a.m.) in a state of exhausted tristesse (that was not what he called it). He nodded, then turned and slumped across the atrium and out of the library into the night. She had positioned them at a table by the east windows, so she watched until he rounded Lorman Hall, and she was on her feet, into her jacket, her gloves, and her own hat at once. Keri, who had been alerted earlier, had agreed to pick up her books on her way out of the library.

The campus walks were well lit, but as soon as she rounded Lorman Hall herself, Diane saw that Bob wasn’t sticking to the walks. She had to stop and sweep the area for signs of him (why hadn’t she surreptitiously stuck a piece of fluorescent tape across the back of his jacket? He would never have noticed), losing precious steps while she tried to pick dark movement out of the dark trees planted everywhere. There he was. She ran through the frosty grass, soaking her shoes but making up time, then halted behind a tree, gazing again. It was true that she did not feel safe, especially in these darker spots—those axe murder rumors, said her anthropology professor, were just migrating legends, perennials on every campus since the beginning of higher education, but they were potent all the same. It could be that she had thrown Bob into such a revery that he wouldn’t even hear her dying screams—

There he was again, heading for Davis Hall, but no, he passed that one, too. She scurried to keep him in her sights. He was darling from behind—bowlegged, small-assed, broad-shouldered, his walk a little shambly and a little springy, and if Sherri knew ten like him, then
what was she doing dating some of the graceless clods and squirrelly yahoos that she kept bringing back to the room like trophy heads?

He slowed, probably to look at that garden, he was a sucker for that stuff, and Diane almost got too close, but that turned out okay, too, because then, when he went beside the loading dock of that dark building behind the garden and unlocked the door and threw it open, she was just close enough that with a burst of silent speed, she could grab it before it latched and hold it while his footsteps receded down the echoing hall. She’d have bet everything in her checking account ($611.37, minus a $1.05 service charge) that he had no sense of her pursuit. She stood and held the door. As he walked away, he turned on the lights, his trail of bread crumbs. She waited. At last there was the ringing sound of a heavy metallic door, then silence. She slipped inside and let the door she had been holding latch behind her.

Pursuit had made her hungry for him, no doubt about it. Though she knew he had no idea she was following him, it still seemed that he was getting away from her, and she was having second thoughts, probably inevitable and not ones she should pay a lot of attention to, about how she treated him, how she
was
, which was often irritable and cool, withholding of her time and her patience and all promises about even the most immediate future. She knew he thought she might sever relations at any moment—without prior experience he had no way of valuing the one thing she offered freely and even gladly—sex. Her own prior experience told her that her response was right out of a male fantasy, and exactly the sort of response those TKEs, DKEs, Sigmas, and Thetas thought they were entitled to and never got. But Bob was a little afraid of it. That put her at a disadvantage. And being at a disadvantage was against her personal rules of business.

So she made her sneakers quiet on the concrete floor. Lights led her, with only two wrong turns, to a large metallic door, newer than the others in the building, and sealed all around with dark gray rubber: that would be the door. The handle turned. The sealers sucked a little as they released, and before she even had a peep inside, a strong, acrid hog smell poured out of the opening, and, in spite of herself, she said, “Yuck.”

But softly. When she could see inside, she saw that Bob hadn’t heard her, though the hog had. It was lying on its side, trotters toward the door, its head lifted, its eyes dark and curious, its ears perked. Bob was inside the pen, picking up straw with a pitchfork and throwing it
into a wheelbarrow. Diane paused for a moment, then said, cheerily, “Well, I caught you!”

Bob whirled around.

“You refused to tell me. I don’t think that was very nice.”

He didn’t look pleased.

“You didn’t have to make such a mystery of things. Lots of people have unpleasant work-study jobs.”

“How about if I talk to you later. I’ve got stuff to do.”

Diane closed the door behind her and walked over to the pen. She said, “What’s its name?”

Earl, breaking his nighttime routine of many months, heaved to his feet and moved toward the far end of the pen.

Diane said, “God, that’s a big animal! How much does it weigh?”

“Almost six hundred pounds. His name is Earl. Earl Butz.”

“He’s really white, isn’t he? I mean, really white. I thought pigs were pink or something.”

“He’s a Landrace. They’re white. He’s a very fastidious hog. Lots of times they are. Anyway, you’re making him nervous. Your voice is too shrill.”

That wasn’t the half of it, in Earl’s opinion. Lifelong solitude had made Earl an especially sensitive hog. An inborn preference for calm had blossomed, absent the hurly-burly of other porcine companions, into a decided disinclination toward any noise or disruption whatsoever. Diane carried disruption on her person. Her actions were quick and harsh, her voice was shrill, her very being was excitable. Earl was as sensitive to body language as any animal. It seemed important to him to put as much distance between himself and her as possible. And he didn’t want to look at her, either. He looked at the wall in preference, and also let down a pointed stream of urine. Diane said, “Yuck,” just as if an intelligent animal like Earl couldn’t hear and understand her distaste. He grunted.

“See,” said Bob. “He’s acting very weird.”

“God, he’s so fat. I mean, look at the rolls!”

“You don’t have to insult him.”

“I don’t have to insult a pig?” She laughed. That, Earl did not like at all. The most mirth he had ever heard was a deep guffaw from Dr. Bo Jones or a chuckle from Bob. He twitched his tail and grunted again.

“Hey, Diane. PLEASE go out and wait for me. You’re making him nervous, and I’m annoyed that you followed me without asking.
That’s probably bothering him, too. He’s a valuable hog. He’s my responsibility. I’ll be finished in ten minutes.”

“Well, I’m just leaving.” She turned and walked toward the door. As she put her hand on the handle, he said, “Don’t cross the campus. Just wait.”

“I can’t stand that protective shit!” She opened the door and let it slam behind her.

Earl turned and walked across his pen, then turned again, and walked back in the other direction. He felt in his own tissues that he didn’t have the vitality to throw off this disturbance. Bob finished picking out his pen, then wheeled the barrow away, coming back with more straw. Earl stared at him. He saw that Bob gave him some extra straw. Then Bob picked up the scratching stick. But Earl didn’t go over to the fence. He didn’t want to. All he wanted to do was stand there staring, like a dumb animal. Besides, the shooting pains he tried so hard to avoid were starting in his forelegs. He sighed.

Bob sighed. After a few minutes, when Earl still refused to move, he stood the scratching stick against the wall, said, “Okay, Earl, I’ll leave you alone.” Then he turned out the light and went out. Earl stood there in the dark. It occurred to him to visit his feed trough, what he would normally do when he found himself on his feet, but for the first time in his life, he didn’t feel like it.

She was sitting on the loading dock when he came out, and she wormed her hand into his as they started across the campus, but all he said between Old Meats and Dubuque House was “He really is fat, isn’t he?”

Diane didn’t reply. It was possible, she felt, that she had made a mistake that she was going to regret. What that felt like was a thick, seeping coldness in her limbs. But that was not what she THOUGHT. What she THOUGHT was that the exigencies of competition often required bold action, and if Bob truly understood that, then he would feel admiration rather than annoyance.

M
RS
. L
ORAINE
W
ALKER DID NOT
normally eat in the commons. She preferred to bring something leftover and delicious from the previous night’s meal, but there weren’t always leftovers, especially if the previous night’s meal had been especially delicious. Eating in the commons, she thought, was a good punishment for gluttony. You didn’t have to choose the taco bar (odd-tasting tortilla shells, blackened ground meat that had been steaming for hours, orange cheese, white tomatoes) in order to regret eating there. You could regret any entrée at all.

She went through the line, speaking in a friendly way to Marly Hellmich, who didn’t seem to have quit her job yet, and choosing the broccoli quiche, the scalloped potatoes, and a soft roll. There were a lot of people she knew here, another reason to avoid the place. She had found it a wise policy over the years to cultivate her personal mystery.

All of the tables were occupied, and she found that she had to join some blond woman in a corner of the nonsmoking section. The blond woman turned out to be Alison Thomas, Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek’s secretary. Mrs. Walker sat down with more enthusiasm.

“Hi, Mrs. Walker,” said Alison Thomas, in her what-did-I-do-wrong-now-I’m-sorry voice.

“Well, Alison!” said Mrs. Walker. “I haven’t talked to you in a couple of weeks.”

Alison sighed. “There’s been a lot to do.” She had a forkful of barbecued beef close to her mouth, but she allowed it to sink to her plate. Alison, Mrs. Walker knew, had an M.A. in linguistics from the University of Michigan. Her husband taught in the vet school, and she actually drove to work in a certified, though elderly, Mercedes. Rumor had it that these very claims to academic respectability were what goaded Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek, once a mere faculty wife herself, into the irritable, demeaning way that she treated Alison. Having not found a better job in spite of everything she had going
for her must have convinced Alison that she deserved such treatment. But there was nothing Mrs. Walker could really do about it, except recognize the fact that some people didn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain, and Alison was one of them. She said, “Well, that’s always true this time of year. You have to be firm about what they are going to do for themselves, and, of course, realistic about what they CAN do for themselves. Sometimes they look more competent than they are. On the other hand, they like responsibility if you shift it to them gradually.”