Brenda walked down the hal to Mrs. Pencaldron’s desk, and on the way, she was passed by the university caterers rol ing a tray of linens and dishes toward the Barrington Room.
Mrs. Pencaldron was on the phone. She saw Brenda but looked right through her. She said something about shrimp in the pasta salad, Dr.
Barrett was al ergic, if he ate it, he’d die. She hung up, huffing.
“Impossible!” she said.
“Am I missing something?” Brenda said.
Mrs. Pencaldron laughed with a false brightness. It had become clear to Brenda over the course of the year that Mrs. Pencaldron regarded al the professors in the department as pets she was trying hard to train, but to no avail.
“Your class,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “What are you
“No one’s in the Barrington Room,” Brenda said. “Except now it looks like they’re setting up some kind of lunch.”
“The department’s spring luncheon,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “The notice has been in your box for ten days.”
“It has?” Brenda was guilty. She never checked her box.
“It has. Along with a memo informing you that because of the luncheon your class is being held in Parsons 204.”
“It is?”
“It is,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. She was al gussied up in a floral-print dress. Should Brenda have gotten gussied, too?
“Should I go to the luncheon?”
“Are you a member of this department?”
That sounded like a rhetorical question, but was it?
Mrs. Pencaldron sighed in a way that made Brenda feel like a hopeless case. “We’l see you at one.”
Brenda booked it over to Parsons 204. It was a beautiful spring day—final y!—and the quad looked like one of the pictures on the university Web site. Champion University had grass after al ! It had daffodils! It had students eating Big Macs on beach towels! Brenda hurried, but she was almost certain her effort would be in vain. After twenty professorless minutes, the class would have left, and on such a sublime day, how could she blame them? So there was one precious seminar wasted. Brenda prayed that, at the very least, Walsh waited around. The weather had put her in a flirtatious frame of mind. Maybe they could go out tonight, to the Peruvian chicken place. Maybe they could strol in Carl Schurz Park and check out barges on the East River. She would tel him about the cottage on Nantucket, half of it now hers.
Just outside Parsons 204, Brenda heard voices. She opened the door and there was her class, thick in discussion of the week’s reading, Lorrie Moore’s short story “Real Estate.” The kids were so into it, they didn’t even notice her standing there, and Brenda nearly burst with pride.
Brenda’s good mood got better: Walsh grinned when she told him, after everyone else had filed out of the room, that she wanted to go on a chicken-eating, park-strol ing, barge-watching date, and then— because they were in a strange classroom in the Biology Department—they kissed.
“I have to run,” Brenda said. “I’m expected.”
The department’s spring luncheon was in ful swing by the time Brenda arrived. The Barrington Room looked very elegant with the layered tablecloths, flowers, tiered silver trays of tuna and egg salad sandwiches, radishes with sweet butter, the shrimpless pasta salad, a bona fide punch bowl. There was a cluster of female graduate students by the door, teaching assistants, who greeted Brenda like a group of teenagers might greet Hilary Duff. Brenda was the department’s rising star, but to the teaching assistants, Brenda tried to come across as a nice, regular, down-to-earth person. She complimented Audrey on her skirt and told Mary Kate that she’d be happy to proofread the first chapter of her thesis. Brenda chatted with Dr. Barrett, the Russian literature authority who had been friends with Aunt Liv, and then Brenda found herself in conversation with Elizabeth Graves’s secretary, Nan, about the gorgeous weather and the weekend forecast. Across the room, Brenda saw Mrs. Pencaldron, Suzanne Atela, and a graduate student named Augie Fisk, who was a Chaucer specialist and who had asked Brenda out to dinner no less than three times. It would have been a beneficent gesture to seek out Augie Fisk and talk with him, it would have been wise to schmooze with Suzanne Atela—but Brenda was tired, and hungry. She fixed herself a plate and took a seat in a chair along the far wal next to a stout gentleman in a gray suit.
“I’m Bil Franklin,” he said.
Aha! Bil Franklin was the drama professor, a famous queen, known among the students as “Uncle Pervy.” Brenda had never met him. He taught at night, in the university theater. He had an office in the department, but the door was always closed.
“Oh, hi! It’s nice to final y put a face to the name. I’m Brenda Lyndon.”
“Yes, I know.”
She smiled, trying not to let his unfortunate nickname color her first impression. Bil Franklin was in his midfifties, he had a nondescript, semi-desperate traveling-salesman aura about him. Something about him was familiar. She had seen him before. Around campus, maybe. Brenda sneaked another look at him sideways as she nibbled on a radish.
“This is a very nice event,” she said.
And at the same time, he said, “You seem to be quite popular with the kids.”
“Oh,” she said. “Wel , who knows? I like teaching. I love it. Today I was late and the class just started up without me.”
“You’re very young.”
