The Grays

“There’s one system that works,” Greenfield said, “the violence wire.”

“Duty calls, gentlemen,” Mike said as they started to filter into his living room for drinks. “There’s no time, not tonight. There is no time at all.”

He left, then, heading down to the garage in his basement. He needed to get to Wilton—which, of course, would turn out to be a trap. The larger question was how, exactly, did the trap work, and how could it be defeated?

If it could.

TWELVE

AS DAN ENTERED MARCIE’S OFFICE, he was enveloped in what he immediately perceived as an ominous silence. Behind her, the westering sun made a halo of her glowing russet hair. Her hands, holding what Dan presumed were his student evaluations, gleamed softly in the late light. Her skin was smooth and her features exotic, with large, frank eyes and lips that generally contained a hint of laughter—not the pleasantly sensual laughter that the face suggested, though. Marcie was first and foremost an administrator. She fired, gave bad news, and disciplined wayward professors for their crimes—drunkenness, sloth, and, of course, lechery.

He imagined her fingers touching him, and it was oddly thrilling. He blinked and shook the thought away.

She smiled, and he saw something unexpected: a sort of warmth.

“Given what I have here, it would have been useful to you,” she said, “if you could have gotten a little more support from faculty.”

“The student evaluations, ah—”

“I can’t give you details, Dan.”

“No, of course not.” Student evaluations at Bell were held secret from professors, so that they could be used as a tool and weapon of the administration. “But they’re bad, I assume.”

She laid the paper back in the file from which she’d taken it, aligned it with a long, deep red fingernail, and closed the manila folder.

From outside there came the distant strains of the Bell Ringers Band hammering away, improbably enough, at “Moon River,” the sound carried off on the stiff north wind that had come up around noon. Voices echoed along the hall, the comfortable laughter of some succulent coed making light, no doubt, of a flapping faculty admirer.

“Marcie,” he said. He stopped himself, astonished by a shocking and completely inappropriate sense of desire for her. She was doing nothing to seduce him. He looked at her right hand, lying there on the desk. If he reached across that two-foot space and laid his own hand on it, what would happen?

“Yes?” Her voice seemed almost to tremble. But why? Did she have to tell him no, and was she afraid to do that? But why should she be? He was no friend of hers and bad news was job one in this office. Poor student evaluations and no faculty support, open and shut case, toodle-oo.

“Marcie, look, we both know what’s going on here.”

She laughed a little, the nervous tinkle of a girl. “I think the problem is that your courses aren’t sexy.”

He had arrived at the edge of the cliff: poor evals, no support, now a negative on his courses. The next step would be, sorry, I cannot vote for tenure. “It’s physiological psychology,” he yammered. “Give me a couple of sections of abnorm, I’ll bring my comments way up.”

“That’s unlikely until you’re tenured.”

“But I can’t get tenured without good evals, and I can’t get those without good courses.”

“You’re Yossarianed, then. As we all are. Bell Yossarians us all.”

For a moment, he was at a loss. Then he remembered Catch-22. Yossarian was the character in the novel who was caught in a bureaucratic endless loop. Dan searched for something, anything, that might help him. He could drop a name. Pitiful, but it was what he had. “I knew a fellow when I was at Columbia—what was his name, Speed Vogel—who knew Heller.”

She made a note.

“What are you writing?”

“Knew friend of Heller.”

“Does it matter?”

“Not at all.”

He found himself watching her lips, the way she pressed them together, the slight and fascinating moisture at the corners of her mouth.

But why? Was he going mad? How could he feel this way for this woman who was about to wreck his life?

Did he want this so badly that he was willing to whore for it? Probably, but why would she want him? She had her pick of faculty masochists, eager to roll in the hay with their punisher. And yet, the only thing that was stopping him from leaping across that desk was the fear that any such action would backfire.

“Marcie,” he heard himself say, and he heard the roughness, the unmistakable sexuality in his tone. He almost slapped his hand over his mouth, but she looked up suddenly, blinking fast. Her eyebrows rose to the center of the forehead, her eyes filmed with tears that made them bright and awful.

“What’s the matter?” she asked in a horrible, low tone that made him think she feared him.

He remembered, suddenly, his seizure dream, going up into the dark womb of the sky, the cave in the silver moon. He shook it away, frightened for a moment that he was going into aura again. But no, it was only a memory.

She cleared her throat, lifted her hand, and brushed her lips with the back of it, smearing her lipstick a little. “Yes,” she whispered.

He said, “Is this the conference? My conference with my tenure advisor? We sit here staring helplessly at each other?”

“There’s nothing to discuss, Dan,” she said. She straightened herself, clasped her hands, and lifted her chin. She was beautiful, then, tragically beautiful. He could see her in the darkness, and she looked very afraid. But no, it wasn’t dark and she wasn’t scared. She looked across at him, her eyes steady. “It’s just—obviously, you know the student evaluations—well, you know, they’re often rather indifferent to the welfare of somebody they know has need.”

“They know I’m up for tenure?”

She nodded, her little mouth grave, her eyes flashing. “Oh, yes,” she said, and he knew, in that moment, that he must have her. He must do this, he could not help himself. He also knew that she was aware of the potential that existed between them. He went to his feet.

She looked down his body, then cleared her throat. Her cheeks had gone bright red. He stood before her like a little soldier at stiff attention. He said in his heart, Katelyn, I am so ashamed, but Marcie’s rising flush told him that there would be no escape for him.

She lifted her hand off the desk and reached toward him, her fingers extending.

They froze, then, remaining like that, him pressing his thighs against the edge of the desk, her reaching to the air six inches in front of his midriff.

Tears poured down her cheeks. She whispered, her voice an unsure murmur, “What happened last night?”

Something in him, some sort of inner door, fell open. He remembered the blaring confusions of his boyhood, the stars passing his face, the field of silver and the black opening, gaping.

“You heard about that?” He backed away from her desk.

Then he saw:

—A narrow steel cot, Marcie lying on it in heat, her face flushed and sweaty, her bush brown and touched as if by dew.

And he felt:

—His own nakedness delicious in the night air.

She gasped as if struck. “Dan,” she said, “Dan.” Her eyes widened, glistened, their green suddenly horrible