Gods of Aberdeen Page 6

  “Cancer.”

  He nodded solemnly and sat back, rotating the glass in his hand.

  “They gave her chemo for six months but it didn’t help,” I said. “And radiation for the last month, which did nothing except make the last of her hair fall out.”

  “Do you know the exact diagnosis? Was it non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma?”

  “A malignant tumor in her ovaries,” I said. “The surgeon tried to remove it all but missed some pieces, and it metastasized and spread everywhere.”

  Silence between us, again. I scanned the room for a clock. There was one on the wall opposite the desk, a glass and brass work of art, with filigreed hands and an ivory-colored face. It was almost eleven. By now, I thought, Nicole would be returning from the film festival.

  Dr. Cade broke the silence, finally. He filled his glass again, motioning to me with the decanter. I nodded, more out of courtesy, and he refilled my glass.

  “Arthur highly recommended you as a research assistant, citing your expertise in Latin. I haven’t had the chance to look through your file but Art’s word is enough, for now. You are aware of the time constraints we’re under, correct?”

  “Art told me a little.”

  “Yes, well…every day is precious. And because we don’t have the luxury of time, I would expect you to work quickly.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “And you feel you would be able to balance the two—your schoolwork and my project?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  Dr. Cade took a sip and set his glass down. He looked at me and smiled.

  “It’s getting late,” he said. “However much I’d like to continue our conversation, I still have some work to do before bed.”

  I stood up, unsure if I should leave my full glass of grappa or down it in one gulp.

  “I realize that talking about the death of a parent can be very unsettling,” he said, standing up. “‘To most men the death of his father is a new lease on life.’ Wise words, I believe. Perhaps they’ll provide some comfort.”

  He continued as if to interrupt me, but I wasn’t going to say anything anyway. I took a final sip, shuddered, and set my glass on his desk, mumbling thank you.

  “I believe Howie will be taking you home,” he said, and he shook my hand and asked me to please close his door on the way out.

  Howie was the only one in the living room, slumped on the couch, head back, mouth open, eyes shut. There were papers scattered across the coffee table, covered with sketches, and a jumble of pencils sat in an empty tumbler atop the English garden book. The dining room table was cleared except for Howie’s place setting. Crumbs were scattered around his plate; his napkin was a crumpled ball shoved into a smeared wine glass.

  The floor creaked under my foot and Howie jerked his head up.

  “Shit.” He squinted at me. “I’m supposed to take you home.”

  He looked in no condition to drive. “I’ll call a cab,” I said, probing my pockets to make sure I had my keys. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Howie looked at his watch.

  “It’s pretty late.” He looked over his shoulder, to the stairway. “You were up there with Dr. Cade?”

  I nodded.

  Howie lowered his voice. “How did it go?”

  A door shut from upstairs, followed by the creak of footsteps.

  “I don’t think I made a good impression,” I said.

  Howie shrugged and yawned and sat up. He stared at the sketches on the coffee table.

  “I’m so far behind,” he said. “I’m supposed to have the initial inking done by the end of this month.”

  I took a closer look at his sketches. The largest one was a map of the world. Six wind-heads framed the continents, their cherubic faces puffed and blowing little fountains of wind; ships sailed in the direction of marked routes; snakelike monsters menaced the open seas; elaborate strap work, like illuminations lining the text of ancient Bibles, framed the map in intricate latticework and clusters of fruit. The bottom right corner of the map had a decorative box with Howie’s name in Cyrillic calligraphy.

  “This is amazing,” I said.

  Howie looked unimpressed. “Once I’m done with the ink,” he said, “I have to finish smoothing the copper plate, which is god-awful work. But you don’t have to worry about any of that. Dr. Cade will have you doing the easy stuff, burying yourself in books like Art and Dan do, all day.”

  He rubbed his eyes and shook his head, like a boxer hit with a knockout punch trying to clear the cobwebs.

  “Phone’s in the kitchen,” he said. “There’s some cash in the cookie jar if you need it.”

  He faded off, and that’s how I left him, staring at his sketches.

  Chapter 3

  The following month I didn’t hear any news from Dr. Cade or Art. In fact, Art had seemingly lost interest, not avoiding my stare but simply ignoring it, taking his time after class to collect his book and papers, not noticing if I hesitated while walking past his desk. I thought back to the dinner, and searched for anything I may have done to offend my hosts, but I couldn’t think of anything, and so I blamed it on general inadequacies on my part, and eventually, like all college freshmen, I became distracted by the fantastical existence of dorm life.

  Fall was now firmly entrenched, bundling itself up in crackling leaves and stiff branches like an old ogre, trudging forward inevitably toward winter. The students had also changed, from whites and blues to grays and blacks; shorts and sandals gave way to pants and oxfords. The women I used to watch from my window as they jogged along the main strip now wore sweatshirts over their sports bras. My first round of exams went very well; I scored A’s on every one, and likewise on my papers. This sparked a period of indolence, and I even got stoned for the first time, sharing a joint with Nicole during a small party in her room, in the last week of September. Later that night we kissed, while I clumsily groped her breasts under her white blouse, and it may have gone further but I fell asleep with my head on her shoulder, and when I awoke she had covered me with a blanket and tucked a pillow under my head.

  I found her sitting on the bed, knees drawn close to her chest and glasses placed low on her nose. She wore red ABERDEEN ATHLETICS shorts and a gray sweatshirt. Her hair was twisted into a swirl and held in place with a pencil. She had a notebook propped open atop her knees.

  She looked angry, her full lips pouty and pushed together, as if she were holding something bad-tasting in her mouth.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  She shrugged. “You tell me.”

  I looked around. My pants were lying under the nightstand. I felt foolish, sitting there in my boxers with a baby-blue blanket draped over my legs.

  “Is something wrong?” I said.

  “No.” She turned the page of her notebook. “Who’s Helen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She looked at me, over the top of her glasses. “You don’t know?”

  “No,” I said, pulling my pants under the blanket. “I don’t know anyone named Helen.”

  Saying the name made it suddenly clear. Ellen. She had meant Ellen. I pulled my pants up, arching my back off the floor. Ellen. I had thought about her almost every night since the dinner, masturbating into oblivion, seeing her face pressed to my stomach, her lips resting against my skin. I had been piecing her together from women I saw every day on campus—her hair from the blonde down my hall, her lips from Nicole, her leaf-green eyes from some tall redhead I had spotted in line at Campus Bean.

  “Not Helen,” I said, “Ellen. She’s a friend of Art’s. His girlfriend, okay?”

  “Art?”

  “Art Fitch,” I said. “He’s a senior.”

  “I don’t know him,” she said.

  “Well, he’s kind of famous,” I said.

  “I’m sure if he were famous I would’ve heard of him,” Nicole said. “Anyway, you were saying her name in your sleep. Over and over again. Ellen, Ellen…” She closed her notebook
with a sharp thwap. “You know, if you’re seeing someone you should’ve just told me—”

  I stood up and ran my hand through my hair. “I’m not seeing anyone,” I said. I turned and walked to the door.

  “Then who is she?” Nicole said. I guessed that not many men had left her room so hastily. I looked back at her.

  “I don’t know, yet,” I said, and I left.

  Later that morning I made my way to the library. The sky was a dull wash of grays and blues, like silt at the bottom of a puddle. A crow glided to the ground in front of me and cocked its head, blinking shiny black eyes. I thought of Stulton’s pigeons, fat and graceless, and then this black crow, walking below me, like a preacher with his head down, hands clasped behind his back. It stopped and thrust at the dirt, a swift, killing stroke, and then unfolded its wings and flew away, toward the woods.

  The H. F. Mores loomed, wooden doors closed to the world. I took a deep breath, then climbed the steps as the skeletal remains of leaves swirled at my feet.

  Cornelius was seated at the front desk, swaddled in the endless folds of his robe. His cane was lying across his legs, and he picked it up and poked a large plastic pitcher sitting atop the desk, nearly toppling it.

  “Fill it up—there is a faucet in the bathroom. The plants need watering.”

  I looked around. There was one plant, a leafless ficus, in the far corner.

  “What are you studying?” Cornelius asked.

  “History,” I said.

  “Of what?”

  I fiddled with the pitcher and dropped it. It clattered noisily on the floor. I bent down and snatched it up. “I don’t know,” I said, my face burning. I always felt like a complete idiot around Cornelius.

  “You haven’t decided yet, is that it?” His voice hitched and he stifled a cough. “Why history? Why not something useful and practical, something like philosophy?”

  It’s proof of your age that you think philosophy is something useful and practical, I thought.

  Cornelius coughed and a glob of blood flew from his mouth and landed on the desk. He dabbed his mouth with a handkerchief. “You’re friends with Arthur,” he said. “I have his books for him, you know. You should take them before you leave.”

  “You know Arthur?” I said.

  Cornelius nodded. “I know everyone. Henry Lang had hair when he first came to Aberdeen. Don Grunebaum was still married to his second wife. Dean Richardson was still a vibrant young man.” He smiled. “It’s the students that never change. Eternal idiots. Of course there are the rare exceptions. Your friend Arthur, for example. But one day he’ll leave and an idiot will take his place. Maybe that idiot will be you.”

  “I’m no idiot,” I said.

  “Of course you aren’t. Youth is never idiotic—only ill-informed.” Cornelius grabbed his cane and pointed to the pile of books on his desk. “Will you bring Arthur’s books to him?”

  I nodded and looked out one of the windows. On its sill sat a pigeon, staring inside the library with its stupid, blinking eyes.

  Thirty days had been the grace period—now, entering the fifth week after my strange evening at Dr. Cade’s with Art and company, I couldn’t stop thinking about them. All of their defining elements—Howie’s glassy gaze, Dan’s ill-fitted suit, Art’s lanky aggressiveness, and Ellen’s terrifying beauty—replayed constantly in my mind. I still saw Art in class but he had become as remote as an actor on a screen, someone I could listen to and watch, but who was incapable of interacting with me. I still had his library books—three strange, old volumes: Abram Oslo’s Index Expurgatorius, some other massive tome titled Gilbert’s Universal Compendium, and a reprint of the 1898 edition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. I’d kept them in my room, like victims of a kidnap, in a pile on my desk, and I’d been waiting for Art to find out from Cornelius that I had them. But Art didn’t say anything to me, and Cornelius seemed to forget he’d let me have them, and so I left them there, collecting dust and water rings from late-night study sessions.

  I had been avoiding Nicole since my fumbling exit from her room, and when she finally broke the tension it was classic Nicole: She crept up behind me, in the Paderborne lobby, and crushed me in a full-body embrace, her dark hair falling all around my shoulders. I tried to apologize for leaving her room so abruptly but she covered my mouth with her vanilla-lotioned hand. Please, she said. Let’s not be all dramatic about this, okay?

  There was a hand-painted banner strung across the doorway of the student union, advertising an athletic rally for Aberdeen’s crew team, which Nicole had become the coordinator of.

  “You really should consider getting more involved around here,” she said to me. “Have you ever considered joining a sports team? Aren’t you tired of not having any friends?”

  “I do have friends.”

  “Name one.”

  I stopped and smiled at her.

  “You.”

  Nicole laughed. “I mean real friends.”

  “You’re not real?”

  “You know what I mean…” She grabbed my hand and pulled me along. “Real friends don’t fuck.”

  I stopped again. “We had sex?”

  Nicole bit her lower lip. “Not yet.”

  I looked away, my face burning. Say something cool, say something cool.

  We walked across the Quad, Nicole talking the entire time. She told me she wanted to move to New York City and get involved with an art gallery in SoHo owned by her aunt. I was half-listening, lost in my own thoughts, when I saw what I thought was a child walking across the grass ahead of us, dressed in a suit and carrying a leather briefcase. I looked again, and recognized him. It was Dan.

  I grabbed Nicole’s arm and walked in the opposite direction.

  “Hey,” she said, frowning and yanking her arm free. She readjusted the French cuffs of her blouse. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t want him to see me,” I said. “That’s one of the guys I told you about.”

  Nicole glanced over her shoulder. “Oh.” She dropped her voice into a whisper. “The crazy one?”

  “No. Just wait a minute until he’s farther away.”

  “You’re being silly.”

  “I am not.”

  She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey you,” she shouted, yelling after Dan. I had a sudden urge to run, maybe to hide behind a tree or duck around the corner of a building.

  “If you owe him money you better get out your wallet, because he’s coming over.”

  “Why are you doing this? You know—”

  I promptly shut up. Dan was standing before us, smiling politely, holding his briefcase handle with two hands in front of his body. His suit was crisply pressed but too large. The shoulders were boxy, the pants were bunched around his shoes, and he had to pull the sleeves back to fully expose his hands. His thin neck jutted out from the recesses of his dark gray shirt.

  “Good to see you again,” he said, nodding to me. I introduced him to Nicole and he delicately extended his hand toward her as if he were greeting a woman dressed in an evening gown at a black-tie affair. She took it, looking both amused and surprised.

  Dan looked skyward, squinting. “Beautiful day. Cirrus clouds and nothing else.”

  “Sure is,” I said. Nicole looked at me funny and I mouthed What?

  “It’s the altitude,” Dan continued, still looking up. “Five miles is the cirrus domain. At two miles altostratus appears. Look, there’s one…You can always tell altostratus by the bluish veil.”

  Nicole craned her neck and shielded her eyes from the sun.

  “I can’t see shit,” she said.

  “How are things at the house?” I said.

  “Same as usual,” Dan said. “Lots of work, not enough time. How were your exams?”

  I shoved my hands into my pockets, going for some look—I don’t know which, rakish scholar, or something. “Not bad,” I said. “All A’s.”

  “Congratulations,” Dan said. I nodded dumbly.


  Nicole remained remarkably quiet. She was inspecting her nails, spreading her fingers wide and wiggling them.

  “Look.” Dan put down his briefcase and held up his hands, palms outward, as if I were holding him at gunpoint. “I’m not good at this type of thing so I’ll just say it: I think you’re capable of handling the workload.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He blinked. “I was just surprised, that’s all.”

  “Surprised at what?”

  “At your decision. I think you would have been a great addition to the team.”

  “Dr. Cade wanted me?” I said, incredulous.

  “Of course. Didn’t you…” He faded off. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the last week,” he said. “I had to leave messages with your RD because she wouldn’t give me your phone number.”

  I looked at Nicole. She’d been filing her nails and stopped in mid-stroke to raise an eyebrow. Our Paderborne RD was Louise Hulse, a morbidly thin, spiteful woman who did little else but sit in her room and listen to the Cure at full volume. Her room was right next to mine, and on the rare occasion she wasn’t in her room she was at the lobby desk, lording over the mail and checking student IDs even though she knew everyone’s face. I could set my clock to her late-night bulimic retchings.

  “Louise is so paranoid,” Nicole said. “A friend of hers was sexually assaulted freshman year, and now she won’t give out phone numbers to anyone. She wouldn’t even give my aunt my number. Can you believe that?”

  I looked at Dan. “I didn’t get any of your messages,” I said. “Honest.”

  “Simple miscommunication,” he said, with a shrug. “We had a house meeting a few weeks ago. Everyone agreed you would be a tremendous asset to the project.” He smiled at Nicole. “Art’s girlfriend Ellen comes to the house all the time, you know.”

  Nicole put her file away and blew on her nails. “What?”

  “Professor Cade’s house. He doesn’t mind girlfriends visiting.”

  “I’m not his girlfriend.”