Blue Angel (11 page)

A
s Dean Francis Bentham opens the door of his Main Street
Victorian, a cloud of acrid smoke billows out at Swenson and Sherrie.

“Welcome to the crematorium, chums!” Francis waves them inside. “Enter at your own risk. We're in the midst of a crisis. Let's just say a head-on crash between high tech and haute cuisine.”

“Is something burning?” asks Sherrie.

“Dinner,” Francis says. “I suppose I should have taken the new Jenn-Aire for a test run. A maiden voyage, what? The range-top grill is the problem. Not vented properly, I guess. The minute I put on the sausages, they erupted like volcanoes.”

Swenson and Sherrie exchange quick looks. Both think, Serves him right.

Francis makes a major production of serving roast hunks of meat. It's partly the British tradition he's hanging onto so tenaciously in the savage vegetarian colonies, and partly his private dig at the health-conscious squeamishness of Americans in general and of academics in particular.

Swenson likes red meat. He's glad to get it. They rarely eat it at home. He certainly prefers it to the ectoplasmic zucchini casseroles so popular at faculty dinners. But he doesn't think food should be used to make a point about status and power. Who cares if you've got tenure? The dean can serve you what he wants. And you can either eat it or shut up and go hungry. Also, it occurs to Swenson that he'd better get his tooth fixed before he attends too many more of these flesh fests. He probes his molar with his tongue. He'll chew on the other side.

He and Sherrie used to go to faculty dinner parties, but when Ruby was born they got out of the habit, and by now they've lost the impulse—besides which, they're rarely invited. In a community like Euston, turning down invitations makes you seem briefly more desirable. But fairly soon the magic wears off, and you stop being asked.

It's been a while since they've participated in one of these protracted peeps into the abyss. Deadly conversations, banal beyond belief. Did Mrs. Professor X really and truly see a red-crested titmouse at her bird feeder this morning? Could Professor and Mrs. Z possibly have ordered a double sleeping bag and been obliged to send back the single they received by mistake? The gossip, from the tepidly mean to the libelous and cruel. And the vile food, memorable only by decade, as generations of wives discovered the joys of olive oil, garlic, paella, sun-dried tomatoes, crudités with yogurt dip, parched chicken breasts, falafel—and now the ascetic vegans with their soy cheese and faux sausage.

Swenson wouldn't be here if Sherrie hadn't answered when the dean's secretary phoned. Sherrie thinks it's suicidal to keep insulting his colleagues. He might need to ask for a favor someday, for a string to be pulled—or just tweaked. And Bentham will think of him as the man who wouldn't come to dinner.

Having forgotten that the party was tonight, Swenson's spared himself the anticipatory dread, so that now the full horror assaults him. Their host ushers Swenson and Sherrie past the massive Victorian pieces that Marjorie Bentham has draped with folksy weavings from their junkets to third-world conferences. The house suggests an English country manor with the obligatory scuffings inflicted by the Benthams' three outdoorsy, oversize, puppylike children: one now at Princeton, one at Yale, one in boarding school. Tonight, the details of that scruffy aristocracy are obscured by smoke. Bentham coughs, allowing—almost requiring—Swenson and Sherrie to hack politely after filling their lungs with particulate flakes of charred protein.

“Be good chaps,” says Bentham, “and toss your coats over there. I'd take them, but—” He models two transparent speckled gloves of grease. It used to be the wives who were responsible for the dinners, but now often the cooks are men, who preempt any suspicion of feminization with fierce territorial possessiveness about what goes on in their kitchens. Men who, like Francis Bentham, use the ladle to remind their guests of the manly pleasures of animal muscle.

Why is Swenson being so harsh? Of what are these people guilty? Dull dinner parties aren't crimes. They're not making child snuff films. Why not see this scene as Chekhov might: a gathering of lost souls pretending they're not expiring from boredom and angst in some provincial outpost? Chekhov would feel compassion for them and not judge them, as Swenson does. And who is he to judge? A guy who gets a hard-on over girl-student erotica.

The memory of his afternoon—the incident in the library—makes him feel as if his skin is coated with a thin film of sticky lotion. What if the soot from Bentham's kitchen adheres and coats him with black? So now he's imagining himself as a Hawthorne character whose sin manifests itself at a faculty dinner party. What is his crime, exactly? Borrowing some poems? It's not as if he hurried home and rushed off to his study to read them. They're where he left them, on his desk.

Speaking of Hawthorne…here's Gerry Sloper, Mr. American Lit, his florid face dimly visible through the miasma of sausage fumes. Whom else has Bentham invited? Swenson prays that the guest list will venture beyond the English Department. Sometimes the dean makes an effort to include new faces, insofar as there
are
any at Euston. On the way over, Swenson let himself hope that Bentham might have asked Amelia Rodriguez, the sexy, unsmiling Puerto Rican martinet recently brought in to head—to
be
—the new Hispanic Studies Department. The disapproving Amelia might at least generate a faint hum of the exotic, a promise of masochistic excitement as the guests took turns failing to amuse her.

But Amelia's isn't among the group in the living room, the all-too-familiar bodies perched on the edges of sofas and chairs, balancing drinks and nibbling Triscuits smeared with some sort of fecal material. Who knows how long they've been knocking back those vodkas and double scotches. They may have given up red meat, but some things are still sacred.

“Marmite!” cries elderly Bernard Levy, their eighteenth-century man. “Why, I haven't had Marmite since my
wunderjahr
at Oxford!”

“Oh, do you like it?” says Marge Bentham. “Most Americans don't.” Encouraged, she picks up two more crackers and waves them at Swenson and Sherrie, biscuit treats offered witholdingly so they have to trot over to get them.

Marmite! Is there no end to the Benthams' sadism? What will they be serving next—wobbly slabs of jellied calves feet? Steak and kidney pie? If Marjorie knows that most Americans—most humans—don't like Marmite, why is it the only hors d'ouevre? Swenson gobbles his Triscuit in one brave bite and tries not to make a face at the sharp wheaty splinters glued together with vile salty paste. Attentive as baby birds, the other guests wait for him to gulp it down.

Who's the audience for Swenson's magic trick? The Benthams. Gerry Sloper. Bernard Levy, the elderly Angophile, and his wife, the long-suffering Ruth. Dave Sterret, their Victorian man, and his boyfriend, Deconstructionist Jamie. The frosting, so to speak, on the cake is Swenson's number one fan, Lauren Healy, the feminist critic and head of the Faculty-Student Women's Alliance. He's thrilled to see Magda—a friendly face for his gaze to alight on in its frantic swoop around the room. But his pleasure turns into a low-grade unease that takes a while to diagnose: lunch today. Angela's poems.

“You need to wash that down with something, old man,” Bentham says.

“Vodka. Straight up. A double. Please.” Swenson feels Sherrie's eyes drilling him. Let
her
drink the white wine.

It's a purebred English Department crowd, just as Swenson feared. The tepid predictablity, the lack of interest or buzz. Easy, it's only dinner, not death and eternal hell. The guest list suggests that this isn't “pleasure” but business: one of the dean's periodic checkups on his various departments. Bentham will ask thoughtful questions and murmur soft grunts of comprehension as they cut their own throats, one by one, each sounding too jaded, too naive, too earnest, too complaining, until even the tenured will feel anxious about their jobs as Bentham sits back and watches how badly they're behaving.

The smoke has begun to dissipate, and their convivial moment of alliance against the elements ends. They regard each other in the unflattering light of their most cherished resentments.

“Please, sit down,” says Bentham.

Two seats are vacant, a Queen Anne chair and a large hassock. Swenson and Sherrie dive for the hassock.

“Hello, Ted,” Bernie Levy says in his cultivated accent.

Swenson is supposed to have forgotten how, twenty years ago, Bernie, who still had some fight in him then, battled Swenson's appointment, campaigned against hiring a novelist and starting a writing department. Some department: Swenson and Magda. Bernie needn't have worried. Oh, if only Bernie had won! Swenson might have stayed in New York.

“Our author in residence,” Bernie says. “How's the writer's life, old boy?”

“Hello, Sherrie,” Ruth Levy says grimly.

“Hiya, Ruth,” says Sherrie.

“Fine,” says Swenson. “Thanks.”

“How
is
your work going?” asks Dave Sterret, the nicest guy in the room, battered daily into mellowness by his sadistic boyfriend, Deconstructionist Jamie.

“Some days fast, some days slow.” Is that really Swenson talking? All you have to do is walk in here to catch a case of terminal banality.

“The creative life is such a challenge,” says Ruth Levy. “So difficult—and so rewarding.”

Deconstructionist Jamie shoots daggers at harmless, ga-ga Ruth, while Lauren Healy glares at Jamie, protecting the older woman from his patronizing, oppressive maleness.

“Can you talk about what you're working on?” Could Jamie somehow have intuited that Swenson's not working? And why should Jamie care? He hates books, or as he calls them:
texts
. And he especially hates the writers who deposit these annoying book-length paper turds that Jamie must dispose of.

Ever since he got tenure, Jamie has made no secret of his contempt for the rest of the department—everyone but Dave, with whom Jamie fell in love his first year at Euston. How strange that Bernie Levy fought Swenson's hiring and eagerly welcomed Jamie, the viper in their midst. Jamie has managed to communicate that he's never read Swenson's books, nor does he intend to, though sometimes he does inquire about Swenson's more famous and successful contemporaries. He likes to ask why such-and-such is so terribly overpraised.

Jamie says, “Is talking about one's writing strictly against the rules?”

“I'm going to help Marge,” Lauren announces. “The poor woman's all alone in there.” And indeed, Bentham's left Marge to clean up the wreckage. He leans dapperly against the mantel, twirling a drink in his hand.

“Excuse me, Jamie. What did you say?” says Swenson. It's one thing to skip a beat in front of your class, another at the dean's dinner.

“Are you working on a novel?”

“No wonder I didn't hear,” Swenson says. “Yes, in fact. I am.” Sherrie and Magda are watching, wishing they'd all drop the subject.

“What's your new novel about?” asks Bentham. “Have you told us? Sorry if I've forgotten.”

What if Swenson had told them? How would he feel to learn that his wisp of an idea had already floated out of the dean's famously retentive mind.

“That's all right,” says Swenson. “I don't think I
did
tell you. Or anyone. Not even my nearest and dearest.” He nods at Sherrie.

“Don't look at me,” says Sherrie. Chuckles, all around.

“I hear that's quite common among writers,” ventures Ruth Levy. “Secretive. You know.”

“As if we're all just dying to steal their ideas,” says Jamie.

“Not even the title?” prods Francis coyly. “You won't even tell us that?”

“Well,” says Swenson. “All right. It's
Eggs
.”

He feels like that girl in
The Exorcist
. What demon made him say that? He wishes his head could swivel around to see where his voice just came from.

“What an interesting title,” says Dave.

“Ted?” Sherrie murmurs worriedly. “I thought your title was
The Black and the Black
.”

Dave says, “I suppose the wife's always the last to know.”

“
The Black and the Black,
” says Ruth. “Another interesting title.”

“We get it,” Jamie says.

“They're both good titles,” says Magda.

Swenson wonders if Magda knows what Angela's novel is called. Did he tell her over lunch?

“Titles are tricky,” says Swenson.

He can't bear this another minute. He gets up and starts to leave the room with the vague purposefulness of some nonemergency bathroom errand. And why not? A leisurely piss would provide a nice mini-vacation from the party.

“Here's another double for the road,” Bentham says. More vodka glugs into Swenson's glass. He downs half in one gulp, so that his throat is still burning when, en route to the bathroom, he meets Lauren Healy, emerging from the kitchen with a rattan tray on which are neat rows of yet more Marmite crackers. Normally Lauren wears dark suits, but tonight she's put on a dress, dark cotton, gathered high over the waist, puffing discreetly over the breasts, at once matronly and girlish. Swenson checks Lauren out. Lauren watches him check her out. Now he's done it. Lauren draws nearer. Half his size, she peers up at him with a bleary pugnacious tilt.

“Ted, what are you doing here?” Lauren's whisper is oddly conspiratorial.

“What do you mean?” asked Swenson.

“You're not up for tenure. You don't want anything from Bentham. You're not lobbying for a sabbatical? Or a new faculty line? Are you?”

Is Lauren saying he's a cowardly suck-up for accepting the dean's invitation? Or a guy with such a nowhere social life he's glad to be asked, even here?