Frederick Busch - Girls

“Jack?” the dean said.

“What I said last time. You tell us to do it, I’ll organize local people, deputies, security, student aides, the whole ball of wax. J. Edgar Hoover over here can put the sharpshooters in the balcony of the chapel and he can talk tough into his little radio.”

“Now, Jack,” the dean said.

“Take it back,” the Secret Service man said.

“Take it back? ” I said. “Like in the schoolyard take it back? That kind of take it back? Is that what we’re doing? Okay, no. Now it’s your turn.”

The one with the short hair said to the dean, “He is not cooperating.”

“Sure I am,” I said. “I just think the two of you are sissy boys and poops. Pushing around a librarian so you can get your rocks off. You go find the shooters around here. You protect the President. Vice President. Whoever. You don’t come onto the campus and act like we’re the problem. You’re the problem. You’re a bunch of incompetents. You’re clowns.” Turning to the dean, I said, “Is that better?”

Piri’s mouth was in its huge wicked grin. I looked away. She was outlaw as much as policeman’s daughter, I thought, and she was too deep for me.

You stud, I thought, crawling to her house, whining your way into her bed—

— where she wanted you—

— and then you decide she’s scary.

I shook my head.

Ms. Horstmuller said, “Yes, Jack?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“You can say that again,” said the one with longer hair.

“You need help with the spelling?” I asked him.

The dean smiled, looked down, lost the smile, and looked up. Ms. Horstmuller suggested that we’d run out of talking points. The dean told us how much he wanted the Vice President on campus and he spoke as well for the president, who was away.

Rosalie said, “A college is supposed to be a place where we want to give information. So’s its library.” Horstmuller nodded vigorously. “It’s ironic, then, that we end up feeling we need to suppress information for the sake of a functioning society of unfettered individuals. Which is what the Constitution’s about. Keep the information in so we can continue to give the information out.”

Short Hair said, “So?”

“Ironic, as I said.”

“Gee. Right. Thank you,” Short Hair said. Long Hair was silent, probably deciding how I would die. “Now the Vice President is safe.”

Rosalie said, “You know, our director of security spoke for me when he made some ad hominem characterizations.”

Long Hair looked at her, working it out, and the dean dismissed us.

Near the circulation desk, Rosalie caught up with me. She said, quietly and looking away as if embarrassed again, “I thought about you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Jack.”

“I have to get out there and protect the campus from people like me,” I said.

She whispered, “Where are those secret places on campus that your wife was worried about?”

“Damn,” I said.

“When will you be near one?”

“Maybe we could run into each other later by accident,” I said.

“I get out of my next class around twenty after one. I hope my car, which I parked behind social sciences, will start.” She batted her eyes like an old-fashioned movie heroine.

I was thinking of her beneath the covers, and how I had loved her thin, light limbs on me, the head with its heavy brain and the small, child’s fingers and toes that I felt, the little girl’s tongue and teeth and mouth. I felt greasy with sweat when I started the truck.

The dog pushed into my face, but I moved my head toward the window that I’d rolled almost all the way down. I took some breaths. Then I looked in the glove compartment to see that the pistol was there. And then I drove from the library onto the road that went to the top of the campus, bracing myself to see, on the posters they and Strodemaster and their other volunteers had taped up everywhere, the little girl’s sad mouth.

I had a half-gallon plastic jug of cold water and his dish, and he drank when we took our breaks. Then I’d let him out of the truck and he’d tear around on campus, always circling back to see where I was. Students threw snowballs and sticks for him, and professors waved, and he made a little bit of an ass of himself. He acted like a puppy. But you can’t live in a kitchen or even on the sofas all day, every day. You have to come out and pee in new places and run some circles to a little applause. He seemed to enjoy our patrolling, and he was perfectly willing to sleep in the corner of my tiny office, his ears jumping a bit as the radio buzzed and issued voices full of concern that alternated with boredom. He didn’t mind my random trips into buildings, either, although some of the older marble floors seemed to feel treacherous to him, and he waddled and panted as we walked. He liked it better when we were in the Jeep, and since we spent most of our time there, he had a happy day.

Archie Halpern had a big bright office in the back of the counseling suite. Sometimes I found him in a soft, brown reclining chair, his feet up, watching television, especially during basketball season, when he watched taped games on a VCR. He claimed it helped him counsel the jocks on campus. I think it was because he was devoted to the New York Knicks. This time, though, he was watching a pretty roughly made film. I thought I recognized the campus and then I saw one of our trucks roll past on icy ruts. The film zoomed in clumsily to the face of a man in a high bearskin hat. It was Archie. It showed his nose, which was running. It came in closer but lost focus. He stopped the machine with his remote.

He was wearing the turtleneck over jeans that were rolled at the bottom. I could see the blue flannel of their lining. He wore soft bedroom slippers and blue woolen socks. Squirming in the chair, shoving on a wooden lever at its side, he rocked forward and sat up.

“Are you here to arrest me?”

“For bad acting,” I said.

“That wasn’t an act. My nose was really running. The auteur behind this particular piece of shit is someone I’m supposed to be helping. Now he’s completely outraged by me and he won’t talk to me. So he gives me this. He says, ‘Check it out.’ Chuck it, more likely. How’s life?”

“Fine,” I said.

“So how come you look like dog shit?”

“I’m undercover. It’s my disguise.”

“You’ve never been much good at disguise,” he said. “For example, how’s Fanny? You see?”

“She’s fine. What do I see?”

“What I see. You set your face. It’s like a fighter taking a stance. I ask about Fanny, you get set to defend yourself.”

I nodded. I sat down in a chair in front of his desk. He was in a corner decorated with pictures of his children. They were all squat and thick-necked and roundheaded.

I said, “Fanny moved out for a while.”

“How long a while?”

“Maybe the rest of our lives, I think. I think she doesn’t know. But it’s not terrific.”

His telephone buzzed. I looked at it, at him, and he said, “Fuck it. For a couple of minutes.” He waved his hands. “I’m booked solid. These are healthy American children, which means they’re all pulsating with neurosis. But just sit there a minute.”

“Did she move out to get away from you?”

“I guess.”

“Or to force your hand?”

“For sure, that.”

“To do what?”

“To make me talk to her. To make me be happy. So we don’t keep nursing each other, she said. To make us get to springtime. Well, it was a figure of speech. To get better. ”