"Hi, it"s Cheryl calling. Is Harry there?"
"Speaking," I say.
"How are you?" she asks.
"Good," I say. "And you?"
"I"m sorry I never called you," she says. "I mean before now, I mean after we had our moment and before now."
"Oh," I say, still unable to make sense of it, "that"s okay."
"I want to be honest with you about the whole Internet thing."
"Sure," I say; the pieces are coming together.
"I thought I was okay, doing really well, so I stopped taking my medication and I was working in a friend"s catering company and then business got slow and I had all this extra time and I started surfing and then making these "dates" like the one I had with you. It got out of control and I crashed," she says. "Hard landing. I had to be hospitalized-briefly."
We are silent. I take my shirt off and let it fall to the floor. Stripped down wet, stinking of vomit, I sit at the kitchen table.
"Actually," she says, "I"m not being entirely honest. I stopped taking my medication and then I started self-medicating. I was completely out of control; our meeting was one of many. I put myself and my family at risk. My son, you may recall, he came home when we were in the middle of...Well, it wasn"t good."
It"s suddenly clear to me. "Of course," I say, enthusiastically.
"And you," she says, unnerved by my burst of enthusiasm and needing to change the subject, "what have you been up to?"
"If we"re doing full disclosure," I say, "I was hospitalized as well. I had a stroke."
"Perfect," she says.
"What do you mean, "perfect"?"
"I mean, I"m glad we both had something happen, some sort of event interrupted us."
"I suspect it was the v.i.a.g.r.a," I say. "I was taking too much of it."
"Amazing, isn"t it," she says, "how easily we slip right off the rails. Are you okay now?"
"I"m fine," I say. "Really good. And you?" I am looking around the room; everything is blurry. I am at least half blind and have no idea if it"s permanent or not.
"You"ve been on my mind," she says. "A lot. But I needed to wait to call you. I needed to be in better shape."
I make an agreeable if innocuous sound.
"Forgive me if now I"ve forgotten the details. But who was it you"re interested in, Richard Nixon or Larry Flynt?"
"Nixon," I say. "Nixon died of a stroke, and I don"t know why, but when I was having mine I kept thinking of him, feeling like I always knew we had something in common but was never quite sure what until that moment; it was like a psychic connection. It wasn"t about belief or political philosophy, but on a human, emotional level. I think the guy got a raw deal."
"I"m wondering if I might run an idea past you," she says, cutting me off.
"I"m all ears," I say-and it might be true, considering the condition of my eye.
"You should talk with Julie," she says with enthusiasm, like it"s a done deal.
"Julie?"
"Julie Eisenhower."
"Julie Nixon Eisenhower?" I ask, vaguely skeptical.
"Yes," she says.
"Really?" I say, suddenly gleeful, as though an entire tide could turn on three names, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, as Humbert Humbert once liltingly tripped over three syllables in Lo-lee-ta.
"Yes," she says.
I laugh out loud and then, coming to my senses, ask, "How is that possible?"
"Don"t ask," she says. And then pauses. "Okay, full disclosure, she"s my husband"s cousin by marriage. Can I have her call you?"
"Please," I say.
"I don"t know how current you are, but in recent years there were some issues with the library."
"Yes," I say, recalling various articles detailing Bebe Rebozo"s nineteen-million-dollar bequest and tension between Julie and Trisha with regard to how the library would be run.
"So now here"s the other thing." She pauses. "I want to see you. I want to talk to you, to have lunch."
"Sure," I say. "I don"t see why not."
"Just lunch," she says.
"Of course," I say.
"When?" she says.
"Whenever works for you; I have nothing on my plate."
"Okay," she says. "Let"s give it a couple of days, in case you change your mind, or in case it turns out I"ve gone off again."
"How about Friday?" I suggest.
"Friday," she says. "And, not just because I like the name, there"s Jerk Q"zine-it"s crazy cheap."
"Think of someplace nice," I say, "someplace you actually want to go."
"Have you ever been to Quarry Tavern?"
"No," I say. "I"m not really from around here."
"It"s really good," she says. "They make wonderful meatball pizza. I"ve been known to eat it in my car. I"ll meet you there," she says. "And I"ll give Julie your number."
"I"ll look forward to it," I say.
She pauses. "If Julie asks how we know each other, say we met at a barbecue. No, wait, say kids and sports and don"t go further."
"Got it."
"Okay, then," she says, "I"m glad we talked. Like I said, you"ve been on my mind."
"Friday at noon," I say.
"Friday at noon," she repeats.
"See you then," I say, coming down, crashing. I"m all at once up and down, both extremes simultaneously, and, well, it"s hard to keep talking.
Is it possible that a woman I don"t remember holds the key to my future?
I"m giddy, light-headed-actually, my head is pounding. I tell myself not to get too excited, not to buy into my own enthusiasm; it could all be for naught.
I hold myself in check, and then I am laughing out loud. Check! Checkers, the Nixons" famous c.o.c.ker spaniel. I play with my mental footnotes-like catalogue cards. Checkers died in 1964 and is buried at the Bide-a-Wee Pet Cemetery, not far from where Aunt Lillian lives. Perhaps next time I"m out I"ll visit.
Maybe this is the moment, the big break, the swift kick-start that I"ve been waiting for. Julie Nixon Eisenhower and me!
Tessie is in the bathroom licking the floor, cleaning up my mess.
"Good dog," I say, aware that my mood is all too subject to the winds of change. I go upstairs to shower and get ready for cla.s.s. My eye looks bad, red, bulging. I put in some kind of drops from the medicine cabinet which burn like crazy-makes sense, they are ear drops-and rinse the eye again. I shower, dress, and leave for school, proud of myself for remembering to bring some empty boxes. Today is packing day; years of cla.s.s plans, student evaluations, examples of good and bad papers will be edited-the highlights crammed into well-worn liquor boxes. Antic.i.p.ating the end, I want to be out long before it is officially over. On my final day I simply want to be done-teach and go.
As I"m walking into the department, the secretary stops me. "The Chair would like a word," she says.
As nonchalantly as possible, I stick my head into the Chair"s office, hovering at the edge of the doorway. "You looking for me?"
The Chair, my former friend Ben Schwartz, looks up. "How are you doing?"
"On what level?"
The Chair doesn"t answer right away; then he says, "I"ve known you for years, we"re old friends."
"That"s right," I say. "And not so long ago you took me out to lunch, ordered a cup of soup and half a sandwich, and told me my career was over. You said, "We"ve got this fellow who has a new way of teaching history, it"s future-forward. Instead of studying the past, the students will explore the future-it"s all about possibility. We think it will be less depressing than watching reruns of the Zapruder films.""
"I didn"t have the sandwich," the Chair says. "Just the soup. And the decision wasn"t entirely mine. I like to think I"m your friend. I"m the one who hired you."
"You didn"t hire me. We were colleagues, you told me there was a job opening, but you didn"t hire me. Frankly, I think if you could have ordered the soup by the spoon, you"d have had two spoons and left it at that."
He says nothing.
"What is it you want?" I ask, wondering if he wants my pardon, my forgiveness.
"Take a walk with me," the Chair says, putting on his jacket.
We exit the building and walk to his car.
The parking lot is filled with compact cars of various ages. The reflection of the sun off the endless sea of chrome is blinding. Ours is a commuter school. We used to think we were special because faculty got numbered parking places, hot until a graduate engineering student intentionally blew up the car in Spot 454 and the administration decided that it was better for parking to be random, democratic, with the exception of those with handicapped plates.
The boss unlocks the doors of his Toyota. The song of the automatic lock echoes off the other cars in the outdoor lot. I imagine someday cars will actually answer each other"s chirps in a postmodern reenactment of call and response. Hybrids, where are you? Chirp-chirp, we"re everywhere. He pulls out an envelope from under the seat, a standard white #10, and he hands it to me.
"Take it," he says.
My hands remain in my pockets.
"Take it," he repeats more urgently.
"What is it?"
"What does it look like?"
"One might a.s.sume it"s money," I say.
He pushes the envelope towards me. "You idiot," he says. "I"m trying to help you. I feel bad, I should have handled things differently, and you," he says, "you should have finished your book."
"Blame the victim," I say, hands still in my pockets.
"I couldn"t protect you-I had nothing to use to support my argument." Again he pushes the envelope towards me.
"No thanks," I say.
"On what grounds?" he asks.
"On the grounds that I don"t take envelopes of money from anyone. For all I know, you"re setting me up, having your secretary witness, call me in, making me walk out to your car, where you have the envelope hidden; for all I know, there are cameras everywhere, recording this-the car is miked."
"You are a paranoid motherf.u.c.ker," he says.
"I am a Nixon scholar," I shout. "I know whereof I speak," I say, as I turn on my heel to march across the parking lot and back to the building.
"Where are you going?" he calls.
"Office hours," I say.
I hear the chirp-chirp sound of him relocking his car, and his hot breath as he jogs to catch up with me. "Look, it"s not about the money," he says.
"But you are offering me money, hush money to go gently into the night."
"It"s my own money," he says. "Not the department"s."
"That makes it even more perverted."
"I hope you"ll reconsider," he says when we get back to the department. "Think of it as a research grant."
I pick up the boxes that I left outside his office door, one of which someone has inexplicably filled with balled-up sheets of paper-all I can think of is target practice.