Today's Reading
Thirteen years later, I sat in Paul Rutger's office, my palms slick with sweat, my leg jittering. I wondered what I must look like to Paul. The bags under my eyes. The weight I'd put on. The air of resignation that followed me around. A man already washed up before middle age. Paul took a breath, leaned forward, and steepled his fingers.
"I'll be honest with you, Neil," he said with all the gravitas of a department head. "I'm not entirely sure how to proceed here."
I nodded. My leg bounced. I needed a smoke so bad my hands were shaking.
Years ago, when Phaedra and I landed our teaching jobs, Paul had taken us out for celebratory drinks. "I'm so damn glad to welcome you both," he'd said, whiskey-breathed and beaming. "You're exactly what this department needs!"
At the time, Phaedra and I felt like luminaries, like bright, shining stars that would never burn out. Now, Paul eyed me like he was trying to find some trace of that promising young professor still buried inside somewhere.
"I wanted to check up on you," he said. "To see if there are any...updates?" Paul avoided the word tenure, but it hung over our conversation, leaden and airless.
"I'm on the judiciary committee," I offered feebly.
"Okay." Paul nodded, as if to a child. "That's good. That's a start."
He leaned back in his chair. Behind him were shelves of trinkets, objects he'd picked up on his travels. Figurines of sparrows, an angel from the German Erzgebirge, iridescent globes of glass. Paul once brought back garden gnomes for everyone in the department. Phaedra and I didn't know what to do with ours, so we wrapped scarves around their necks and laid them on the lounge chairs we'd dragged up to the roof of our loft.
Back then everything felt perfect. Everything felt smooth. Then the documentary came out.
It was about Kitty Genovese, the woman who had been killed in New York while thirty-eight people witnessed in silence. Her brother had done some digging. Turns out, those witnesses weren't so silent after all. Some had called the cops.
One had held Kitty in her dying moments, blood smeared on the stairwell next to her.
Oh, I remember thinking. Okay.
Good news for humanity. Shit news for me. I know this doesn't paint me in the best light, but truly, it gutted me. Everything was grounded in that number. Those thirty-eight negligent bystanders. Those thirty-eight assholes who didn't do a thing. In my small world, Kitty Genovese was the first domino to fall. Soon, they would all come down.
Now Paul removed his glasses and exhaled.
"Listen, Neil, you know I'll do everything I can to support you, but there needs to be some...some movement...so they know you're still kicking."
I looked around. It was hard to breathe. All those figurines on Paul's shelf staring out at me. The birds and angels and globes of glass. The memory of those gnomes, scarves wrapped around their thick necks, lying strangely on our lounge chairs.
"Well, um..." I said, groping for words, "I'm about to publish something, actually."
I've never been a good liar, but this one slipped right out.
"Oh, good Lord!" he said, clasping his hands. "That's great news! Really great." Paul looked genuinely relieved. For a moment, his expression softened, and I knew what was coming. Please don't say it, I thought. I watched him take a deep breath. "I know this hasn't been easy on you," he said. He didn't use Phaedra's name, but I could feel her specter haunting our conversation.
"I'm fine, Paul." My throat clenched. "Really. I'm good."
He nodded, like he had more to say, then thought better of it.
...
