Authors: John Strauchs
Jared took a deep drag on his Cuban Macanudo, closed his eyes and sank deeper
into the soaking tub until only his face, Martini, and cigar were sticking out.
The bathroom was dark.
A small candle flickered in the corner. The Belvedere Gibson was half
full.
The cocktail onions were already consumed.
He had to clear his head.
He had to
understand his feelings for Jenny. How did she fit into his life?
Did she fit into his life?
He felt deeply about Jenny.
He may be in love with her but he wasn’t sure that he was
capable of love. It seemed impossible, and yet, something was there.
Except for rare, thin slices of time when he was with her, he always felt a deep
aching loneliness. It was always there. His sadness was always with him as if it was his
skin.
Sometimes he felt melancholy even when he was with Jenny, though he always
concealed it. It was depression. It was his Black Dog. It was so common now it became
natural, like breathing. He couldn’t shake it. Life was as bad as he imagined it to be. The
depression was a consequence, not a cause. It wasn’t just his body chemistry. He understood his chemistry. This was something else. This was something in his genes. He knew
it. He knew that it would be with him the rest of his life.
The agonizing loneliness was also always present, even when he was with Jenny.
He
couldn’t
talk
to
her,
not
the
way
he
wanted
to
talk
to
her,
to
someone…anyone…anyone who would understand him. It was hopeless. It was like an adult
taking to an infant. You can’t have a conversation with a child.
Jenny was an infant. He
wanted to share his visions and thoughts with her, but she would never understand. Jared
knew things and understood things that no one else could know and understand. He was
watching the birth of a new star in a distant galaxy that no one else on earth could see.
He was a lone alien visiting the earth thousands of years in the future, gazing on the remnants of the Great Pyramid of Giza on a barren planet devoid of people like him.
How
could he enjoy the wonders of such sights if there was no one to share it with? It had no
meaning if it couldn’t be shared.
It wasn’t important if you knew that no other person
would ever see what you saw. Life without wonder was sterile.
It wasn’t her fault. She was one of the most intelligent women he had every
known, but they couldn’t converse on his level. He was in a world into which he could
never fit.
He hurled the martini glass into the shower stall. The migraine was starting again.
He tried to will it away, but it wouldn’t leave. It was just too deep inside of him.
Had he ever been happy?
Maybe?
Yes, there were those marvelous first few
years of his life, but after that, had be ever been happy?
Maybe there was one time. He
closed his eyes again and conjured up the images of happy moments.
Jared surfaced.
He had been entirely submerged.
He wasn’t sure how long. He
could hold his breath a very long time. His cigar was soaked. He took a deep cleansing
breath and climbed out of the tub.
Jenny was going up from Cambridge this evening. He longed to see Jenny. They
hadn’t been together for almost two weeks.
He went through the house getting it ready
for Jenny.
Jenny knocked on the heavy door. She knocked gently. The carved and paneled
oak door was unyielding. Her light taps barely made a sound.
She didn’t like Professor
Hartung.
He was pompous and imperial. Megalomania came to mind whenever she
thought about him.
She needed him to renew her Sea Grant.
Her doctoral program depended on that grant. He had delayed this interview for a month. She’d be happy to wait
another month so she didn’t have to face him. She was half-hoping that he didn’t hear the
knocks, but he did.
“Enter,” she heard.
The words were shrill and strident.
It was a heavy smoker’s
voice.
She opened the door and peered through the crack before pushing the door wider.
Professor Hartung was sitting behind a massive oak desk in an immense tufted high-back
leather chair. He was a little man. He looked like a child sitting in a grownups chair.
Virtually everything in the office was made of oak.
“
He was made of oak
,”
thought Jenny. There was a small stool in front of the desk.
The stool was short.
The
seating was much lower than Hartung’s.
“
This is calculated
,” she thought.
“Be seated,” said Hartung.
Jenny gathered her skirt beneath her and sat demurely on the edge of the stool.
Her hair was up. She wore little makeup; just a touch of lip stick. She was wearing a crisp
white shirt with small pearl buttons and lace on the edges.
Her skirt was grey wool that
went down to her calves. It was the most conservative outfit she had. The top button on
her shirt cracked while she was ironing it.
There wasn’t time to sew a new button.
She
had tried to hold it closed with a safety pin but that was even more unsightly.
She was
showing just a bit of cleavage. His eyes darted to her chest, to her face, and back to her
chest. The little slug was staring at her boobs.
Hartung was in his sixties, but he looked eighty. He was infamous for chain
smoking, even during his lectures despite campus prohibitions against smoking.
The
constant nicotine doses had carved hundreds of lines into his face. Jenny observed that
the leather in his chair also had a million cracks. The chair and the man were a symbiotic
organism.
He hadn’t changed his hair style since he was a boy. It was a crew cut. White hair
and a crew cut didn’t gel. That craggy face was framed by heavy tortoise shell eyeglass
frames with thick lenses. His eye brows needed a hair cut—badly.
He was one of the
many bow tie professors at M.I.T. He only wore Navy blazers. The brass buttons clicked
in a fast staccato each time he rested his arms on his desk. There was nothing about him
that wasn’t annoying. Even his name was annoying—hard tongue. He constantly pulled
on the hair growing in his ears. It was irritating to watch him.
“I am very disappointed, Ms. Nilsson.”
As he spoke, his eyes darted down her
shirt front again. Jenny sat more upright and pulled her shoulders back.
Jenny was expecting criticism and had practiced looking surprised.
“Really? I thought you would be pleased.” She shifted and sat more upright.
She had vowed last night that she would maintain her composure no matter what
he said. She was not going to be emotional and play into his little pink hands.
He pulled a paper from a pile on his desk and threw it below Jenny’s lap.
It
spilled on to the floor and landed open and askew.
A sheet broke loose from the spiral
binding and fluttered a few feet away.
She knew he did that purposely.
She bent down
and gathered the report and the loose sheet. She held the top of her shirt closed with her
left hand until she sat upright again. Jenny was angry, but she said nothing.
“We expect much of our doctoral candidates, Ms. Nilsson. Revise…no…rewrite
this report and get it to me by 10 A.M. sharp tomorrow morning.”
“Of course!
It would be an invaluable benefit and help me change the report to
your liking if you would share your critical comments with me.
I based my projections
on table 4. It correlates changes in sedimentation patterns with the long neck clam landings in recent years along Maine’s lower coast.
Were my conclusions correct?” asked
Jenny.
“Your summary reads like a freshman term paper. What I learned about clams last
summer,” he said in an ugly falsetto.
“No, I didn’t look at the tables. I am not going to
waste my time reading inferior work.”
“But that is just the first two pages. You mean to say that you didn’t read the rest
of my report? You only read the summary?”
He swiveled his chair away from her. He was now talking to her without looking
at her. It was a deliberate dismissive act. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it.
Blue threads of smoke slowly rose in the still, stale air of his office.
“That is all of the attention this substandard work merited.”
The smoke wafted
around his head. The morning sun came through the blinds and highlighted denser bands
of smoke drifting across his desk.
Jenny fanned the air in front of her face. She thought for a moment about asking
him not to smoke but then thought better of it. There was nothing to be gained by provoking him.
He was still facing away from her.
“To begin with…I strongly suggest you sign up for a freshman English class in
writing. GEMS scholars are expected to be able to write, Ms. Nilsson. Publishing is the
cornerstone of the Sea Grants program.”
Jenny thought she was an outstanding writer. Everyone told her so. Of all her abilities, she was proudest of being an excellent writer. She couldn’t believe what she was
hearing. He had crossed the line.
“That is hardly objective Dr. Hartung.
You’re basing these comments on two
pages of a 121 page report. And summary pages, at that.”
He turned his chair and faced her. He stared into her eyes but said nothing.
The
thick lenses made his glare menacing. His eyes were dry and dark. There was no spark of
life in them. Finally, he spoke.
“Ms. Nilsson.
You are the dullest graduate assistant I have ever had the misfortune to know. I don’t plan to read your dribble until you learn how to write.”
He spoke
the words slowly, in a measured pace. It was clear that he rehearsed this in his mind before he vocalized the thoughts.
This was more than Jenny could bear. She broke.
“Statistically speaking…DOCTOR Hartung…me being the dumbest grad that you
ever had would be too much of a COINCIDENCE. “
He bolted off his chair.
Jenny stood up slowly. She tucked her report under her
arm and turned toward the door slowly.
“You must thank your lucky stars each night that someone invented tenure…you
miserable has-been,” she said.
“Consider…yourself…fired. GET…OUT.”
He said it in a slow guttural tone,
enunciating each syllable.
When she was turned completely away, she silently mouthed, “ass hole!”
It
wasn’t enough. Her rage had to be quenched in one symbolic act of defiance.
She whipped around, stooped forward, and shimmied her boobs. Another button
popped off.
“Here you go you dirty old man.
You like staring at women’s chests?
Have a
good look.”
Jenny straightened her shirt as she pulled open the door. She walked out--slowly.
After a long silence, as she was half way down the hall she heard screaming from his office. It was a gagging sound.
words.
Now she had done it.
She couldn’t make it out.
She wasn’t even certain it was
Her face was flushed. People she passed in the darkened
hallway stared as she walked by. She stared them down.
“
Jenny…you moron
!” She said to herself.
The faculty hated him but he chaired the Sea Grant Program and either doled out
the money or withheld it—at his whim. That he was given the program strictly on the basis of seniority was a trifle not worth reflecting on. The annual student evaluations were
always brutal. Academic monster like him actually felt pride if the evaluations were
damning. All academics like Hartung rationalized their pathetic lives with the mythology
that the faculty that was most hated was the most able.
Good teachers would never win
popularity contests.
They would point to Socrates and that he was despised by his students.
There is no historic basis for that view but it fit well into the delusion. These
thoughts whirled through Jenny’s mind—to no avail.
She became emotional.
She insulted him. This wasn’t smart. She was a moron. She was out of money and she wasn’t
going to get her PhD. It was over and it was all her fault. She lost control…again…and
she was going to pay the price. She closed her eyes in self revulsion as she walked out of
the building.
She knew ahead of time that he would be a jerk. She knew it. She even rigged a
small digital recorder in her purse so she could provide evidence for any appeal she might
decide to pursue. What good was it?
She was as bad as he was. The recording damned
them both. At least the recording wouldn’t reveal that she had jiggled her boobs. That
was so infantile. Jenny tired to imagine Madame Curie flashing or mooning a critic. No
way!
Thank Goodness she didn’t think of mooning Hartung.
Her long dress had saved
her from that ultimate humiliation.
But she would have enjoyed that—mooning that
pompous little gnome.
“
Thank goodness I didn’t,”
thought Jenny.
She was a moron. She was ashamed of her loss of composure.
Maybe she deserved being kicked out of the program.
She certainly hadn’t acted like a scholar.
She
had been as petty as he was. Worse! She was screwed. She fucked it up—again!
Jenny pulled her bike out of the boxwoods and jumped on it at a run.
Her long
wool skirt made it hard to pedal.
She hiked it up.
She pulled out on to Ames Street in
front of an oncoming car, forcing the driver to brake.
“ASS HOLE!” yelled Jenny.
“
Now everyone on the planet is an ass hole. I am losing it.
” She thought.
Time stood still when she was pissed. Jenny was still fuming as she ran onto the
sidewalk in front of Mary Chung’s. Mass Avenue was packed as the lunch crowd was
slowly building. It seemed like seconds but she had been pedaling twenty minutes. She
wasn’t sure where she had been. She looked at her watch. It shouldn’t have taken twenty
minutes. Still, she was an hour early and she couldn’t think of any other place to go. The
library was always nice, but she was too mad to study.
She walked her bike to the stand
and snapped on the Kryptolok
®
ATB. Jared bought her this bike a few days ago. It probably cost more than some of the cars many students owned. She pulled off the front tire
for good measure.
This was a crappy day and having her bike boosted was not going to
happen. No way!