…A Dangerous Thing (4 page)

As Burns descended the stairway in Main, he looked down at the worn and frayed carpet that covered the steps.
 
There were places where it was worn through to the pad, and now even the pad was disintegrating.
 
Burns remembered when the carpet had been new, a thought that vaguely depressed him, so he pushed it aside.
 
Maybe now that the enrollment was on the rise, the carpet would be replaced.
 
He hoped so.

He pushed open the doors on the east side of the building and went out.
 
The sky was infinitely blue, and the sun threw crisp shadows on the brown grass, giving the day a spring-like appearance that was seriously misleading.
 
The temperature was in the low thirties, and the wind was swooshing straight down from the polar ice cap.
 
It lifted
Burns's
short brown hair and flapped the tails of his wool sport coat.

When he got to the library, the building blocked off most of the wind, and he paused for a moment to reflect on his pleasure that Dr. Partridge had abandoned the practice of referring to all the campus buildings by number.
 
Formerly, the library had been "Hartley Gorman III" and had to be given its proper title in all memos and documents.
 
Burns had hated the idea, and he was glad to see that Dr. Partridge seemed to think it was silly, too.

He entered the building through the E. R. Memorial doors and went past the circulation desk to Elaine's office.
 
She was there, surrounded by trophies of all kinds.

There was a trophy for finishing in first place in the Pecan City Fun Run in 1979.
 
There was a trophy for "Prize Bull" in the 1968 Youth Fair.
 
There was one for baking, and there were several for baton twirling.
 
There was one from a bowling league, and one from a chili cook-off.
 
There was even one for catching the big bass in a fishing tournament.

There were short trophies and tall ones.
 
There were trophies sitting on bases of fake marble and trophies with elaborate stands of red, white, and blue.
 
There were trophies surmounted by statuettes of Winged Victory and trophies topped by straining sprinters.

There were trophies on the desk, on the bookshelves, and on the floor.

Anyone entering the office might get the idea that Elaine Tanner was a woman of many accomplishments, and that might even be true.
 
But the fact was that she had earned none of the trophies herself.

She had bought them at flea markets, thrift shops, and garage sales.

As she explained it to Burns, she bought them because being surrounded by symbols of accomplishment increased her self-esteem.
 
And she didn't tell just everyone that she hadn't won the trophies herself.

Burns couldn't understand why a woman as good-looking as Elaine Tanner would need to increase her self-esteem, unless it had something to do with those big round glasses she wore, which as far as Burns was concerned simply emphasized her eyes and didn't make her one bit less attractive.
 
But if she wanted to buy trophies, there was nothing wrong with that.
 
It seemed like a harmless enough eccentricity.

"Good morning," she said when he came through her open door.
 
She had a low, husky voice that always made
Burns's
stomach flutter.
 
"And how's your semester going?"

Burns moved a calf-roping trophy out of a chair and sat down.
 
"Not so well," he said.
 
He brought her up to date on his discussion with Fox and Tomlin.

She did not seem especially concerned.
 
"There's nothing wrong with being politically correct," she said when he was finished.
 
"This place could do with a little more of that sort of thing."

Burns ran a hand through his hair, hoping that it would lie flat.
 
"For example?" he asked.

"All right.
 
Let's start with you.
 
Do you think of yourself as a department chair
man
?"

"Uh-oh," Burns said.
 
Of course he did.
 
For that matter, he thought of Faye Smith, of the math and science department, as a chairman, even though she was definitely a woman.
 
True, she wore cowboy boots, jeans, and western shirts to teach in, but there was no mistaking her sex.

"And I've noticed your use of pronouns, too," Elaine said.
 
"You say things like 'The student left
his
book in the car.'"

That was true.
 
Burns had to admit it.
 
He found saying something like 'The student left his or her book in the car' awkward and silly.
 
Of course you could get out of situations like that by rephrasing the sentence, but who had time to think of rephrasing sentences in the course of ordinary conversation?

"And another thing," Elaine went on.
 
"You--"

"Never mind," Burns said, holding up a hand.
 
"I get the idea.
 
And you're right.
 
I'll try to reform, but don't expect me to spell women 'w-o-m-y-n.'
 
Or to say that Earl Fox teaches '
herstory
.'"

Elaine laughed.
 
"All right, I won't.
 
Now what else is bothering you?"

"Is it that obvious?" Burns asked.
 
He told her about the papers he had been reading.

"That's more serious," she said.
 
She looked around her office, as if thinking about giving Burns one of her trophies.
 
Or maybe she was thinking about giving them to his students.

"It's not that they're stupid, either," Burns said.
 
"I'm sure that some of them, maybe most of them, are quite good at any number of things."

"But not writing," Elaine said.

"Definitely not writing."

"Do you encourage them, give them lots of positive feedback?"

Burns was usually suspicious of phrases like "positive feedback," but not when Elaine used them.
 
"Sure I do," he said.
 
"I try to be as positive as possible."
 

For some reason, one of Mal Tomlin's favorite stories popped into his mind; the punchline was, "For a fat woman, you sure don't sweat much."
  
Burns supposed you couldn't joke about fat people any more.
 
"Calorically challenged" maybe.

"Well, I know you're a good teacher, so that can't be the problem," Elaine said.

She didn't really have any way to judge how good a teacher he was, but Burns appreciated the compliment anyway.
 

"I don't know," he said.
 
"Sometimes I don't think I'm doing such a good job.
 
Maybe I should have considered taking the dean's position."

Elaine shook her head.
 
"You wouldn't have been happy.
 
If you want to do something else, maybe you should get into police work.
 
Ever since you caught that shoplifter last Christmas, R. M. says that you might have investigative abilities."

"R. M." was Pecan City's police chief, Boss Napier, and it really bothered Burns to hear Elaine refer to him so familiarly.
 
He would never, even in his wildest imaginings, have thought that he and Napier would become romantic rivals, but that was exactly what had happened, and Elaine seemed to take what Burns deemed was an unseemly amount of pleasure in stringing both men along.

"I'd make a lousy policeman—"

"Police
man
?"

"Police
person
, then," Burns said.
 
He thought the word was absurd, but he was weak in Elaine's presence.
 
"Whatever you call them, I'd be terrible.
 
I may have to take it under consideration, though."
 
He told her about the suspicion some people had voiced about Eric Holt being groomed to take over
Burns's
job.

"That's ridiculous," Elaine said, reaching out and brushing a speck of dust off one of her bowling trophies.
 
"Why would Dr. Partridge do something like that?"

"Who knows?" Burns said.
 
"There's no rule that says deans have to have reasons that anyone would understand."

"Don't be so gloomy.
 
You always look on the dark side of things.
 
Why don't you do something positive, instead?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know.
 
You're the person with investigative abilities, not me."

"There's nothing to investigate," Burns said.

"If there are rumors, there's something to investigate.
 
Rumors don't just start from nothing."

Burns found himself smiling.
 
"Around here, they do."

And that was true.
 
There were always rumors of one kind or another swirling around at Hartley Gorman College.
 
Gossip was one of the most popular pastimes at the school, but then Burns supposed it was a popular pastime in almost any organization of any size.

"Maybe I could find out a little something about Holt, though," he said, remembering what Fox had mentioned about Tom Henderson.

"What kind of something?" Elaine asked.

Burns didn't know.
 
Even Henderson hadn't seemed too definite in his comment to Fox.
 
Still, the whole business of Holt's coming to HGC so suddenly seemed very suspicious.

Gwendolyn Partridge had a degree in literature, and she had no doubt read Holt's articles in the journals, but why would the idea of having Holt come to Hartley Gorman ever occur to her in the first place?
 
Wasn't it more than likely that there
was
some connection between them, just as some of the rumors implied?

And why would Holt come to Hartley Gorman, for God's sake?
 
Sure, he was already teaching in a community no larger than Pecan City and at a college that probably had a library no better than the one at HGC, but he was established where he was.
 
Why change just because he was asked?

"I think I'll talk to a few people," Burns said, getting out of the chair.
 

He picked up the calf-roping trophy to replace it, but Elaine stopped him.
 

"Just leave that on the floor.
 
I found it at a garage sale last weekend, and I haven't made a place for it on the shelves yet."

"You didn't happen to see Earl Fox at the sale, did you?" Burns asked.

"As a matter of fact, I did.
 
He was buying some polyester pants."

Burns nodded.
 
It figured.

"That new Kevin Costner movie starts Friday night," he said, changing the subject.
 
"Would you like to go?"

Elaine looked at a trophy on the front of her desk.
 
It was topped by a strutting twirler made of gold plastic.

"R. M. mentioned something about a basketball game," she said finally.

Burns was not surprised.
 
Napier, though he didn't look the part, had proved to be a regular Casanova.

"You could come with us," Elaine said.
 
"I'm sure R. M. wouldn't mind."

"Ha," Burns said.

Elaine turned her big green eyes on him.
 
"Now just what is that supposed to mean?"

"What?"

"That noise you made.
 
That 'ha' sound.
 
What is that supposed to mean?"

"It's supposed to mean 'ha,'" Burns said.

"I don't know why you don't try a little harder to get along with R. M.," Elaine said.

"Ha," Burns said again.
 

It wasn't that he and Napier didn't get along, exactly.
 
Their relationship was never going to rival that of Aeneas and faithful
Achates
, but they did get along.
 
Or at least they got along when Elaine Tanner wasn't part of the equation.

Burns liked to think he had the advantage with Elaine because of propinquity, if nothing else, but he was beginning to wonder.

"Maybe I'll see you at the game," he said.

T
he Counseling Office at Hartley Gorman College was located on the first floor of Main (Hartley Gorman I in the old system that Burns was trying to forget, obviously without too much success so far).
 
It shared quarters with the Records Office, and both of them were crammed in among the offices of the Education Department and the Print Shop.

The counselors had a difficult job.
 
They had to advise students about which courses to take, explain which courses would transfer to other schools and which courses HGC accepted in transfer, deal with students who had learning difficulties, handle disciplinary violations of the student behavior code, help students with their degree plans, and interpret the arcane secrets of the HGC catalog for students who could not figure them out for themselves.
 
They also handled admissions testing and were responsible for placing students in the correct courses after their enrollment.