The noise and the beer and the party were crowding out thoughts Morgan didn’t want to think. He was starting to feel good, a nice glow in his belly. He even forgot about his wet slippers.
A tap on his shoulder.
He turned and looked down into the soft eyes of the woman in the blue V-neck dress. She looked good.
“You’re Morgan?” she shouted over the music.
He smiled, nodded.
“This way.” She grabbed his elbow, pulled him along.
Morgan followed gladly.
She led him from the party, down the hall. She turned, walked, turned again, walked more, turned a few more times. The building didn’t seem big enough for this. Surely they were going in circles. Morgan couldn’t keep track, but he wasn’t trying too hard.
And he didn’t wonder too hard where he was going. It was good not to make such hard decisions for a change. He allowed himself a brief fantasy, like in
That didn’t happen.
She pushed open a door and led him into a smoky room lit by candles. A man he didn’t know sat deep in a cushy armchair. Valentine sat at the far end of a long, low sofa.
“Ah, good. It’s Professor Morgan.” Valentine puffed savagely on his bong. “Brad, this is Bill Morgan. Bill, Brad Eubanks. He’s the custodian here.”
“It’s Jay, actually.” Morgan shook the man’s hand.
“How do,” Brad said.
“I’m afraid I never got your name,” Morgan said to the woman.
“Annette Grayson.” She offered a slim hand.
Morgan shook. It was soft and cool. He let go reluctantly.
“We teach in the same department,” she said. “I manage the Writing Lab and oversee Freshman Composition. I’m surprised we haven’t run into each other before now.”
“I’m sorry it’s been so long.”
She pointed at Morgan’s beer cup. “You don’t actually want that, do you?”
“Don’t I?”
“Let me fix you something for a grown-up.”
She produced a bottle of vodka from thin air. Where had that been, between the couch cushions? Tonic next and a lime. Morgan was still reeling from the sleight of hand, when Annette pushed the vodka tonic at him. He took it, drank. Made the whole thing disappear presto chango.
Valentine was on about something, but Morgan only considered the bottom of his empty cup.
“A refill?” Annette was already pouring.
Valentine went on about the state of poetry and academia, all the time puffing at his bong like some kind of homemade life-support system. Morgan’s cup never seemed to get empty. His face warmed, and he floated through the hazy conversation with eyelids heavy, head bobbing in eager drunken agreement with the random conversation.
The night didn’t really end. It trailed off like an ellipsis.
eleven
When Morgan awoke the next morning on the couch, he was bitterly disappointed not to find Annette Grayson underneath him. After three or four vodka tonics he’d offered subtle hints, made it clear he was interested. After a few more drinks his suggestions became more overt.
Annette had only giggled, shook her head, gently pushed him back whenever he’d tried to lean in for a kiss.
Morgan couldn’t remember when he’d lost track of the janitor or Valentine. At some point in the evening he’d simply found himself alone with the head of Composition and Rhetoric.
Morgan shifted on the couch. Something was digging mercilessly into his back. He arched, reached underneath. It was the empty vodka bottle.
He sat up. His head was appalled at the notion and began to throb. His stomach gurgled, and Morgan belched a sick blend of beer, vodka, and lime. His feet felt slick and ripe within his slippers.
He heaved himself to his feet, stumbled out of the room. In the hall, he leaned raggedly against a wall, battled a sudden wave of nausea. Nothing came up. He swallowed hard. Belched a few more times. He looked around the empty hall.
Lost again. The fifth floor of Albatross Hall was more confusing than the minotaur’s maze. Morgan closed his eyes, hung his head as if in prayer. He listened.
The music. He’d come to count on it now. Classical this time.
He followed it to Valentine’s office, found the old man in a frayed blue robe. He was brushing his teeth. Valentine spit into a glass, wiped his mouth on a sleeve.
Valentine looked at Morgan and frowned. “Good God, Bill. You’re a wreck.”
“I slept on your couch.”
“Perfectly all right.” Valentine ushered him in. “How about some coffee?”
“That would help. Thanks.”
Valentine poured it into a mug that said
Morgan closed his eyes as he sipped. The hot coffee hit his belly, and Morgan waited. When it didn’t come back up, he drank some more. He started to feel a little better but not much.
Morgan cleared his throat. “Professor Valentine?”
“Yes?”
“Why do you live in Albatross Hall?”
“My house burned down.”
“That explains it,” Morgan said. “Are you rebuilding or hunting for a new one?”
“Neither. That’s why I’m living here.”
“I understand.” Morgan didn’t understand.
“My house burned down, let’s see, I guess it would be about six years ago. I spent all the money on this lovely girl. Young, twenty or twenty-one, I think. A little wisp of a thing. In pigtails she passed for sixteen. A clever little poet too.” Valentine sounded dangerously nostalgic. “We blew it all in Fiji. Then she left me for a Samoan pastry chef. You want a refill on that coffee?”
“No thanks,” Morgan said. “I guess I’d better get going.”
It took Morgan twenty minutes to find the stairway. He climbed down and found his way out of the building. The early morning was gray and damp. The sudden cold battered him, but helped wake him too. The world was wet. It would rain again soon.
Morgan stumbled along the sidewalk in the direction of-he hoped-his car. He didn’t bother avoiding the puddles. When he got home, he’d throw the slippers away.
And then he saw Reams crouching low along the sidewalk behind some bushes. Reams looked wild, hair tousled, bags under his eyes. His nose and cheeks were red from the weather. He was wearing the same clothing as the night before at the party.
But then again, so was Morgan.
Reams had a thick, hardcover book in his clenched hands.
Morgan was fresh out of tact. “What the fuck are you doing, Reams?”
Reams leapt from the bushes, snagged Morgan by the wrists, and pulled him down into the foliage. Morgan
