Nassau Community College
Saturday, July 31
The English Department. Summer school midterm grades were due, plus there was some kind of faculty meeting about the new staff starting in the fall. Through everything, Rhea had kept working. It kept her sane. Work was the only place where the murk didn’t unfurl.
But even that was changing, because she didn’t remember what had happened over the last hour she’d been sitting here, thinking about a girl on a bathroom floor, and the final, confusing scenes of The Black Hole （Did the bright center of that singularity lead to time travel? Heaven? Hell?）， and how much she wished Gertie and her whole family dead.
A knock at her door. The chair of her department arrived, looking chagrined. Which was strange. Usually, he looked like Sneezy or Dopey.
“Hi, Allen!” she said. Allen was forty-two and a graduate of some crappy southern school that everyone was always calling the Harvard of the South.
“May I speak with you?” Allen asked.
She winced as she moved her legs out of the way. Her knee was really swollen. She’d been picking at it, moving the cap around, and now the scarring inside had torn. She gestured at the extra chair’s emptiness. “My desk is your oyster.”
He nodded, flustered and breathing too fast. “Funny. Listen. I’ve got a problem.” He opened a file folder over her desk and pulled out something that looked familiar. She blushed before she even saw it, remembering somehow, even though she no longer remembered the act itself.
“This is Miguel Santos’s paper. He came to me yesterday…”
“He malingered, then. He missed class. He told me he was sick,” Rhea said.
“Did you nickname him Speedy Gonzales?”
Rhea’s face went red. Last week, she’d done this. He’d laughed. So had the whole class. “What kind of jerk do I look like?”
“Okay. That’s a no. I’m glad. And this red. All this red.” He lifted the paper. Panted harder. “What is this?”
“I got carried away, Allen. I’m sorry. I’ll go talk to him.” In the moment she said it, she meant it. She really did.
“I think it’s better you step out. I can have someone cover your classes until the fall. You’re back too soon.” He said this in a rush, and she understood that these were the exact words he’d planned to say upon entering. He was set in them, the way people tend to get set and stuck in the positions they take.
Rhea pursed her lips. Chewed on the flesh of them, then spoke. “I need this job. I have to put on pants and brush my hair like a person to come here. I’m the best teacher you have! Don’t take this away from me!”
“It’s not my choice.”
Rhea’s eyes watered. “One kid. I messed up with one kid.”
“No.”
“Who else?”
Allen fanned out two more papers behind the first, both more red with corrections than white. It was as if she’d spilled wine on them. The names were Debra Lucano and Tom Mijares, which meant nothing to her. “If they have a problem, they should come to me,” she said. “They shouldn’t be rewarded for going behind my back.”
Allen tapped Debra’s paper. “This is good. You gave it a D.”
“Oh, you’re an expert?”
“She’s shown all the indicators for the point system. Subject is thesis, backed up with annotated text evidence.”
“And content means nothing? She quoted Bertrand Russell! Who does that? We’re America. We have Noam Chomsky. It’s my class, Allen! Why can’t you back me up? I work so hard here. But the first kid to go crying and making up stories, you take their side?”
Allen squeezed the bridge of his nose. Looked honestly saddened. “I’ve never understood you.”
“We have coffee every semester. You’ve had plenty of time for million-dollar questions. Yes, my dad died of cirrhosis and I never knew until after the funeral that he drank. It was a secret. In his orange juice. In his milk. In his Coke can. In his coffee thermos that never left his side. Nobody knew. He never even kept beer in the fridge. No liquor cabinet. He was so sly. He raised me. We spent all our time together. I know every piece of science fiction in the canon by heart, especially The Black Hole. I have something called an attachment disorder. Read a book once in a while and you’d have figured that out.”
Rhea stopped talking. The room seemed to ripple, like barbeque heat rushing through summer wind. Had she just spoken such terrible things out loud? Her mouth felt as if it had done so. But she couldn’t have! There was no way. She braced herself, blinked the ripple away, and looked to Allen for a reaction.