Janne Drangsholt - The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter

“Strange,” she said.

“Manufacturing glitch,” I said.

The following Monday the chair of the department summoned me to the meeting room.

“I’m going to be honest with you,” she said after I sat down in the same chair I’d been placed in the week before. “I hear you’re planning a mutiny, and I don’t like it.”

“Pardon me?”

She pulled out a sheet of paper with some scribbling on it.

“Do you deny writing this?”

“No. I mean… yes.”

“I’ve been informed that you’re the one behind this document,” she said, tapping her finger on the sheet of paper accusingly as she watched me expectantly.

“That’s incorrect.”

“Is it also incorrect that you’re going to play ‘bad cop’ at the meeting when we discuss the course revision? Is it also incorrect that Frank is going to play ‘good cop’?”

“Listen—”

“I think you’re the one who should be listening to me now.”

She leaned over her desk, took off her glasses, and looked me right in the eyes.

“How are things going on the home front?”

“Good, I—”

“You went to see the doctor about your dizzy spell?”

“Yes, I—”

“I’ve heard you’re trying to sell your house. Is it not selling?”

“No, but—”

“We couldn’t sell ours when we tried, either, the one on Lysegata. It was on the market for six months. I thought I was going to lose my mind. We lost an unbelievable amount of money on that, but we got back on our feet again.”

“It’s really hard,” I admitted. “And I—”

“My point, Ingrid, is that you can’t take out hostility you’re feeling—at the housing market or real estate agents or nonexistent home buyers—on your coworkers here. Documents like this”—she waved Peter’s piece of paper around—“aren’t constructive. The course revision is being imposed on us by the college. It’s not my place or your place or the place of any of the others in the department to agitate.”

I tried to get a word in edgewise, but she just brushed me aside.

“Cooperation, Ingrid, is the key. Not activities that undermine this institution.”

“No,” I said tiredly. “No, I do understand that.”

“And Ingvill as ‘hard-liner’? What were you thinking? She can’t stay focused for five minutes! And Peter as ‘leader’? Honestly.”

She laughed heartily and slowly ripped the piece of paper into little pieces.

“I think we’ll just forget this whole business,” she continued, “put it behind us. I won’t bring it up with the dean. You’re selling your house, you’re tired. It’s understandable. But this is unacceptable.”

“I’ll—”

“You’ll take over the local coordination work for the revision.”

“Me? But that’s the faculty coordinator’s job.”

“The faculty coordinator has enough to do. Anna has three kids and a husband who works in the private sector. We can’t saddle her with this. I’ll make sure you get the notes she’s taken so far. This is a time-consuming process with a ton of meetings and possibly some overtime. But not paid overtime. You should be prepared for that. Teamwork, Ingrid. Maybe it’s time you learn a little about that.”

“But I have three kids, too. And a husband who works around the clock. In the private sector. It’s not feasible for me to put in overtime. Especially now that we’re in the middle of selling the house. The house we bought cost—”

“Maybe you should have thought about that before, Ms. Bad Cop. And then maybe you should have… um, what was that again…?”

She started flipping through her notebook.

“Maybe you should have ‘mindfucked’ your students a little less.”

“What?”

“There have been complaints. The students claim that you’re messing around with their heads, confusing them, not imparting the reading-list material in an intelligible manner, and spending all your time on movies and pop culture.”

“I was teaching Lacan. And Henry James. It’s complicated material. We were using The Matrix as an example.”

“No need to get into the details. Just stick to the syllabus. Got it?”

“Got it.”

I wanted to say something more, but didn’t really know what, so I pushed the chair back, got up, left the room, and started the trek back to my own office while trying to pin down the crux of what had just happened.

My cell phone rang.

“Hello.”

“Tjenare,” a monotone voice greeted me in Swedish. “I’m calling for Anne Undheim.”

“Who?”

“She gave me a phone number that doesn’t seem to be correct. I met her at your home address. This is about the property at 32 Pine Lane. We had agreed that she was going to buy an alarm system, but I haven’t been able to reach her.”

My heart was pounding hard in my chest, and I realized I had to lie. Again.

“Oh, Anne Undheim, yes,” I said. “She doesn’t live there. She was only there to clean.”

“Are you the home owner?”

“Yes, but we don’t want an alarm system. The house actually sold. We’re moving tomorrow.”

“Do you know what happens when someone breaks into a home—”

“I’m just heading into a tunnel,” I interrupted. “So I can’t quite hear—”

I hung up. Two seconds later he called back, but I rejected the call and then turned off my phone.

A little butterfly-like sense of mastery fluttered in my chest for a second before I spotted Peter’s back disappearing around a corner farther down the hallway.

“Peter!” I yelled. “Peter, wait!”

Any idiot could see that he sped up, but it didn’t matter, because I soon caught up with him.

“Peter,” I said, taking him by the arm. “I know you heard me, you Judas. You need to tell the chair that I wasn’t the one who wrote up the good cop/bad cop plan.”

“Why?”

“Because she thinks I’m planning a coup, that’s why!”

“Ah,” Peter exclaimed, beaming, “that’s perfect!”

“No, that is not perfect! Because now I have to take over coordinating the course revision, and that means a ton of extra work and meetings and stuff I don’t have time for! Plus, I’m already in trouble because of the awful job I did as faculty coordinator. Not to mention mindfucking my students.”

“I don’t know anything about the mindfucking, but I thought you were great as the faculty coordinator.”

“You’re the only one, then.”

“Well, to be honest, it’s good she thinks you’re the one behind it, because then I can proceed undisturbed. That’s why we leaked your name.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was Ingvill’s idea. She can be quite brilliant.”

“Ingvill,” I muttered.

“What was that?”

“Do you realize what you’ve done? This was surely Ingvill’s plan all along. Now I’m the fall guy. You see? Just like I said!”

“Oh, you’re exaggerating. After all, you were the faculty coordinator until just recently. You know the administration, and they know you. You’re safe. If anyone from here is going to be exiled to the preschool-education program, it’s not you.”

“But they thought I was a bad faculty coordinator,” I hissed.

He smiled and patted my shoulder. I sighed heavily.

“Fine, I won’t say anything. But could you please knock it off with the hard-liner plans? I’ll do my best to secure our interests. And I’ll try to make sure no one gets sent to the preschool program, no one other than Ingvill. What do you say?”

“We’ll see,” Peter responded evasively. “We’ll see.”

“Promise me!” I called after him, but he just raised his hand as a kind of good-bye.