A Butterfly in Flame (6 page)

Chapter Twelve

“Wait in my office, would you, Professor Taylor?” Elizabeth Harmony soothed. “Tom” –-to the student at the reception desk—“if Professor Taylor wants coffee, would you arrange it?”

Fred held out the cup he had brought with him—bad black coffee from the Stillton Café. “It’s Fred,” he said.

Elizabeth Harmony turned and moved off with swift purpose, as if bent on reprimanding a delinquent caddie. Tall and broad hipped, her white hair clipped into a Prince Valiant helmet, her perfunctory greeting had hardly rippled heavy features that revealed that she had gotten the better of many encounters with the Demon Rum.

Fred had found her in the small cottage marked
Administration,
engaged in a conversation with Tom, whose desk, on which were a telephone, a typewriter and a sign saying
Reception,
occupied a space that would otherwise be called the front hall. The sign on the door behind him, which was ajar, said
Director.

“I’ll hang out with Tom,” Fred said to her striding back.

“My name’s not Tom,” the young man said. “Tom Meeker sits here sometimes. As far as she’s concerned, we’re all…”

The desk telephone rang. The man whose name was not Tom noted which light was blinking before he told the receiver, “Stillton Academy. Admissions.” A pause while he noted some information from dictation—a name and address—before he continued, “The new catalogue is in preparation. What she’ll need in the meantime is the brochure, and an application form. Have her return the form, with the deposit, and the next thing is the admissions interview and portfolio review.” A pause. “Yes, that will be with one of our studio faculty. The admissions director is presently…excuse me, may I put you on hold?”

He switched to another line, told it, “Stillton,” listened and continued, “No, he’s here. At least, there’s another guy. So it’s meeting…I don’t know. Professor Taylor. Search me.” He switched back to the earlier line, failed to get a response and told it, “Shit!” before he hung up. “I probably cut them off,” he said.

“‘Meeker,’ Fred said. “That rings a bell. Something I heard in the café. “I know, ‘The Meeker Method.’ What’s that?”

The question got a grin, but no response. “I go by Fred,” Fred said. “If I let them call me Professor, I have to get new shoes and everything. Can I see one of the brochures?”

Not-Tom fiddled with the
Reception
sign on his desk. It was one of the triangular bars which, after he had played with it, exposed a second side:
Admissions.

“You’ll have to wait,” not-Tom said. “Let me put this in the pending file or I’ll forget.” The slip of paper on which he had recorded the name and address of the prospective student went into a folder, along with several others.

“No brochure?” Fred prompted.

“She’s having a new one printed.”

“I’ll settle for an old one.”

Not-Tom shook his head. “Recycled,” he said. “It had the name of the old director. President Harmony didn’t want…”

“
President
Harmony?”

“She says, if this is supposed to be a college, and if she’s supposed to be…” his face went blank. Elizabeth Harmony’s reappearance had been as quick as it was stealthy. She placed on not-Tom’s desk a sign that read
ELIZABETH HARMONY, PRESIDENT
and instructed him, “Have Milan put this on my door, Tom, would you? As soon as he can. Have the other one taken down. It’s confusing. Also, I’ll have coffee. In the china cup, please. Cream and sugar beside it. On a tray. With a napkin. You are sure you won’t…?” she asked Fred. He shook his head. “Knock before you come in,” she instructed, leading the way into an office that had almost nothing in it but a desk, three chairs, a memo pad, a telephone, a file cabinet. “I hate a cardboard cup,” she continued, closing the door. “It sets such a poor…” Taking note of Fred’s cup, she did not finish her thought aloud, but took a detour. “We’ll give you a coaster,” she promised doubtfully, as if speculating whether she would be obliged to instruct him in its proper use.

“Where were we?” she asked, as they sat down. “I appreciate your joining us at such short notice.” She spoke as if she was used to having her whims made flesh. They sat, she gaining credibility as she took her position behind the desk.

“I haven’t joined you,” Fred pointed out. “Your attorney asked me to gather some information, Mrs. Harmony, in the guise…”

“President,” she demurred. “Speak softly. The walls…”

“And there’s a problem,” Fred continued. “First a question. Everyone seems to assume that Morgan Flower is gone for good. Why?” He took a sip of his coffee and held onto the cup, disregarding the coaster she had placed on the edge of her desk. “The way I work, I like to be direct. Ask questions straight. The way this situation ties me up, me pretending to be…”

A knock on the door was followed by the entrance of the man she called Tom, carrying a tray on which objects in flower-sprigged china clinked furtively, although he was walking as evenly as he could manage.

“On the desk,” President Harmony instructed.

She made the student stand in abeyance while she reviewed the tray’s contents—coffee, two cups, sugar, creamer, cloth napkins, silver spoons. “Very well,” she dismissed him. “Tom is a work-study student,” she explained as he was making for the door. “Our tax money at work,” she finished in a whisper as the door was closing. She got busy serving herself as Fred continued.

“…me pretending to be a member of the faculty. It means I’ll be wasting a lot of time. With students and faculty I have to back in to the questions I need answers to. For example, what kind of car does Morgan Flower drive?”

“Good heavens, I don’t know,” Harmony said. “I should think a Mercedes, wouldn’t you? Green. Yes, that would suit him.”

“That was a for instance,” Fred said. “My point is, with everyone else around here…”

“We can’t take chances. Can’t let any trouble start,” Harmony interrupted. “In terms, you asked, why do we assume he is not coming back? What
I
assume, since you ask, I won’t
have
him back. After what I think he’s done. I have no interest in finding him at all. The man, I could care less. The thing is the girl. Find the girl, that is the essential thing.”

“Moving on, my point is,” Fred said, “with everyone else, I have to pull my punches and not show an interest in anything beyond what a substitute teacher wants to know. On the other hand, with you I can be straight. There’s twenty minutes before my first class starts, next door. Let’s use it. When did you last see Morgan Flower?”

“You are sure you won’t have coffee?” she asked, raising her cup. “It’s my own service from home, naturally. The college has nothing appropriate. I’m petrified they’ll break it. They are so…”

“How large was Missy Tutunjian’s father’s gift? This past year. He is said to be a significant contributor.”

“The treasurer would have that,” President Harmony said. “The treasurer is a board member.”

“How large is your board? Who is on the board? How selected? Aside from the suspicion, is there evidence that Morgan Flower and this student had a sexual relationship? Who knows? Who knew? What is the school policy about such relationships? How does Flower get along with his colleagues? Where is his personnel file? I want to see it. Missy Tutunjian’s records. I want the name of her roommate, the address…”

The telephone rang. Harmony pressed a button, told it, “I am in conference,” and pressed the button again.

Chapter Thirteen

“We don’t need all this hoo-hah,” Harmony interrupted. “What are you thinking? What we want and need is simple and straightforward.” She gazed at Fred severely across the top of her flowered china cup. “Find that girl. Deal with it. Deal with her. Find her and report back to me. She must be protected, before…”

“My questions continue,” Fred said evenly. “There was a time when Flower did not work here. Then he did. How did that change come about? What’s his prior history? I want the address of your predecessor, the director who was fired last fall. Also your director of admissions—you have one?”

“Not presently.”

“I’ll talk to the old one. Your receptionist…is all that business done by what you call work-study students?”

“We had a disagreement with the former receptionist,” President Harmony said. “She had been here for many years, and the variety and intricacy of the position…old wood…you understand.”

“No, but maybe I will when I talk with her. What else? I’ll take a look at the books.”

“The library? We have no…”

“The finances. What comes in, what goes out. I’ll let you know.”

“This is unheard of,” Harmony protested. “Working for me you are in no position to make conditions.”

Fred said, “Pushing on: you, as chairman of the board and acting director—president as you call it—what are the terms and conditions of your office? Are you paid? How much? What…”

“This is outrageous!”

“Yes,” Fred said. “My first class is about to start. I don’t want to be late. Bad way to start. I’ll stop back at lunch, whenever that is, and get started with your answers. You’ll think of other things, too, that will help.”

He left the office before she could reply.

***

The students gathered in Stillton B looked up at Fred with a hostility tempered only by indifference. Stillton Hall proved to be a long, low frame building, one story high, under a peaked roof high enough to contain a garret. A hallway running along the entire front of the building would seem a waste of space, except that it gave a place, this damp morning, for students to congregate around the lockers assigned to them there.

Fred’s arrival had been at close to eight-thirty, the supposed start of class. At that hour a variety of students was still milling about the corridor, conversing in small groups, talking on cell phones, pulling material out of lockers or, just generally, putting off the moment of entering either Fred’s Stillton B, or Stillton A next to it, where Meg Harrison’s figure modeling class was supposed to be meeting.

The big room itself, Stillton B, was oddly unprepared for any exercise that carried the title
Intro to Lit.
Redolent of turpentine, paint thinner and mediums, and marked with streaks of paint on exposed sinks and surfaces, its furniture was notable for what wasn’t there—anything like a desk or chair. Sturdy metal easels were bunched together against one wall, to either side of the big sinks. A back wall, along the longest side, was all windows whose lower halves were masked with a material that would discourage and disappoint neighborhood boys. A third wall—more easels and some tall stools—had at its center closed sliding doors behind which, from the gabble and clatter of industry that issued from the far side, Meg Harrison’s figure modeling class was in progress. At the center of Fred’s classroom a heavy square platform, a foot high, was festooned with stools and drapes in varied colors. A plastic bowl of discouraged fruit sat on an orange cloth there, and beside that a pinned paper notice “Do not move. MH.”

In a more or less random circular pattern around this platform, Fred’s students began to sit on simple, squareish home-made looking contraptions like no other furniture in the known world. Each was basically a bench, not quite large enough for two people, and with the leg at one end extended upward to a height that made it seem a back rest, except that the students tended to be sitting astride and resting their arms across these uprights. There might be as many as twenty people, drifting in, getting settled, finishing their conversations, taking out pencils or charcoal with which to sketch on the tablets some carried—the only sign that anyone had come to class with paper, of any kind, for any purpose.

Fred stood in front of the model stand—that was what it must be, but with the model absent—and started, “I guess we’ve all kind of been thrown to the wolves. Imagine if we had to use the bathrooms Emily Dickinson was used to.” A mild incredulity tinged the indifference that mitigated the general hostility. “Like anything else that started over a hundred years ago—plumbing, railroads—there’s lots of room for improvement. Where’s Missy Tutunjian?”

The students stared and mumbled to themselves or to each other until a young man in ripped jeans and a streaked sweatshirt challenged, “Who are you?”

“The guy noticing that nobody in this so-called lit class seems to be carrying a book,” Fred said. “What do you do with Morgan Flower, sing? I don’t care. I’m here. He’s not. I expected to see Marci. You all know her. Moonlights at the Stillton Café.”

“Marci Patenaude,” two of the females agreed, but talking to each other in undertones. Everyone looked around the room the way that’s learned in high school, to establish a fictive communal ignorance and putative innocence.

Fred said, “If it was my class, and it’s not, I’d say the way you understand a book, a novel, like
Moby Dick,
is by the end, figure out who’s left? Who’s missing. If this was a book we’d count three people missing anyway, and ask how come? Missy, Marci, Morgan Flower. Who hates them? Are they in China? Dead? Sick? Kidnapped? Lazy? Asleep? Do they think it’s Wednesday?

“But pushing on, since it’s not my class—or we’d, if we really wanted to find out, talk to Missy Tutunjian’s roommate or—but I don’t have much time. Since Emily Dickinson’s day we’ve made the toilets better, we’ve improved the railroads, let’s see what we can do with Emily’s poems.

“Here’s the assignment. While you work on it I’ll talk to you one at a time, see where we are. Here’s the assignment. Take any poem by Emily Dickinson. Find your books, share them, whatever. Copy the poem. Write it again making it better by subtracting six words. Write it again, making it better by adding six words. Write it again, making it better by removing twelve words and substituting twelve different words. For extra credit write an extra stanza of your own and stick it in somewhere. Make it so much like one of Emily’s that we can’t tell—A stanza is one of those blocks of lines, usually four lines in Emily’s poems—that we can’t tell which is the fake. Right.” He looked at his watch. “Get started.

“At the same time we’ll begin getting acquainted.”

He motioned to the woman who had flinched when he mentioned Missy Tutunjian’s roommate.