Envy (14 page)

Shakespeare was the one writer that most of them could possibly call to mind if a gun were held to their heads. He had never tried to explain that Shakespeare wrote plays in blank verse, while he wrote stories in prose. Some concepts were just too complex to grasp, especially for individuals like the fraternity brother who, upon being asked by his English lit teacher to identify the bard by his portrait, had responded, "How the fuck you expect me to know all the presidents?"

Roark was flattered by the nickname, but this morning it seemed particularly presumptuous. Checking his wristwatch, he saw that he had fifteen minutes to reach Hadley's office. More than enough time. Nevertheless, he drained his coffee, stuffed his

#manuscript back into its worn ########235

folder, put the folder into his backpack, and left the dining hall.

Not until he got outside did he realize the drastic change in the weather that had occurred overnight. The wind chill put the temperature down around the freezing point, not cold enough to freeze the pond in the center of campus, but enough to make him wish he had grabbed a heavier coat before setting out.

The Language Arts Building, like most on campus, was basically Georgian in design.

Older and statelier than the newer halls, it had a wide portico with six white columns. The aged red brick on the north wall was completely covered in Boston ivy that had turned from green to orange in a matter of days.

As soon as Roark was in sight of the building, he picked up his pace, more for warmth than for fear of being late. Despite his conservative upbringing, which had included church on Sundays, he was ambiguous about the existence, nature, and disposition of a Supreme Being. He wasn't certain that an entity with the omniscience attributed to God would give a flip about Roark Slade's daily trials. But today wasn't the day to reject any possible advantage, so he offered up an obscure little prayer as he crossed the portico and entered the building.

He was assailed by the burning-dust smell of old furnaces. Apparently they'd been

cranked up to full capacity this morning, because the building was uncomfortably warm. He shrugged off his backpack and jacket as he jogged up the stairs to the second floor.

He was greeted by several students with whom he shared his major. One, a rail-thin hippy with pink-tinted John Lennon glasses and stringy hair, loped up to him. "Yo, Slade."

Only girls called him Roark. Except

for Todd, he wasn't sure there was a male on campus who even knew his first name.

"Coffee later? We're getting together a study group for finals. Ten o'clock in the Union."

"I don't know if I'll be free. I'm on my way to see Hadley."

"You mean like now?"

"As we speak."

"Fuck, man, that sucks. Good luck."

###"Thanks. Later." ###############237

"Later."

Roark continued down the hallway. The jelly doughnut hadn't been such a good idea. It felt like a bowling ball in his stomach. The coffee had left a sour taste in his mouth, and he admonished himself for not having a breath mint. When he arrived at office number 207 he paused to draw a deep breath. The door was standing slightly ajar.

He wiped his damp palm on the leg of his jeans and knocked softly.

"Come in."

Professor Hadley was seated behind his desk.

His feet, laced into a pair of brown suede Hush Puppies, were propped on the open top drawer. A stack of reading matter was in his lap, which was only one of myriad surfaces in the room that was stacked with reading matter. An inestimable number of trees had sacrificed their lives to provide the paper that filled Hadley's office. Per square inch, it was probably the largest consumer of paper globally.

"Good morning, Professor."

"Mr. Slade."

Was it just his imagination, or did Hadley's greeting sound peremptory?

The advisor's manner could never be described as friendly. Unlike some instructors, he didn't get chummy with his students. In fact, it was customary for him to treat them with barely concealed contempt. Even a respectable grade on a writing assignment didn't inoculate one against his scorn.

His teaching style was to make a student feel like an ignoramus. Only after the student had been knocked off the pedestal of his self-esteem, and the pedestal itself reduced to rubble, did Hadley drive home his point and teach him something. He seemed to believe that abject humility sharpened one's ability to learn.

As he stepped into the cramped office, Roark reassured himself that the curtness was a habit with Hadley and that he shouldn't take it personally.

"No, don't close the door," Hadley told him.

"Oh. Sorry." Roark reached back to catch the door, which he had been about to close.

"You should be."

"Sir?"

"Is there something wrong with your hearing, Mr.

#Slade?" #########################239

"My hearing? No, sir."

"Then you heard me correctly when I said that you should be sorry. You are now ..." He glanced at something beyond Roark's left shoulder.

"Fifty-six and one-half minutes late."

Roark turned. On the wall behind him was a clock. White face. Stark black numerals.

A dash marking each of the sixty minutes. The short hand was already on the nine. The minute hand was three dashes away from the twelve.

__The old man's lost _it, Roark thought.

__Something's pickled his brain. Paper fumes, maybe. Is there such a _thing?

He cleared his throat. "Excuse me, sir, but I'm right on time. Our meeting was scheduled for nine."

"Eight."

"Originally, yes. But don't you remember calling and changing it to nine? You left a message with my roommate."

"I assure you that my memory is in perfect working order, Mr. Slade. I made no such call." Hadley glared up at him from beneath dense eyebrows. "Our meeting was at eight."

CHAPTER 10

He was an old man.

Not until recently had Daniel Matherly thought of himself as aged. He had refused to acknowledge his elderly status far past the reasonable time to do so. Unsolicited literature mailed to him by the AARP was discarded unopened, and he declined to take advantage of senior citizen discounts.

Lately, however, the reflection in his mirror was tough to dispute, and his joints made an even better argument that he was definitely a ...

graduating senior.

Today, as he sat behind his desk in his home study, Daniel was amused by his own thoughts.

If reflecting on one's life wasn't proof of advancing age, what was? His preoccupation with his degenerating body was a firm indication that it was degenerating. Who else but the very old dwelled on such things?

Young people didn't have the time. They didn't ponder death because they were too busy living.

Getting an education. Pursuing their chosen

#profession. Entering or exiting #########241

marriages. Rearing children. They couldn't be bothered with thoughts of death. "Mortality" was just a word that they kept shelved to think about in the distant future. Occasionally they might glance at it and grow uneasy, but their attention was hastily diverted to matters related to living, not dying.

But the distant future inexorably drew closer until the day arrived when one could no longer save the topic of his own mortality for later contemplation, when one must take it from the shelf and examine it closely. Daniel

wasn't morbidly fixated on the inevitable, but he knew that the time had come for him to address it and consider all its implications.

The faithful Maxine thought that he slumbered peacefully every night, but he didn't. When he told Maris that he slept like a baby, she had no reason to doubt him. As a young man, he had never required more than four or five hours of sleep per night. Those required hours had decreased in proportion to his aging. Now, if he was lucky, on any given night he would sleep for two or three hours.

The others he spent lying in bed reading his beloved books--classics he had devoured as a boy, bestsellers that other houses had been lucky enough to publish and profit from, books he himself had edited and published.

When he wasn't reading, he reflected on his life--his proud moments and, in fairness, those he wasn't proud of. He thought frequently about the prep school friend who had died of leukemia.

If he'd been born several decades later, he probably would have been treated and cured to live a long and fulfilling life. To this day, Daniel missed him and longed for the years of friendship they had been denied.

He remembered the pain of losing his first love to another man. Looking back, he acknowledged that the young lady's choice had been right for both of them, but at the time, he had believed he would die of a broken heart. He never saw her after her wedding day. He heard that she and her husband had moved to California. He wondered if her life there had been happy. He wondered if she was still living.

His first wife had been a lovely woman, and he'd been devastated when she died. But then he'd met Rosemary, Maris's mother, and she had

#been, without question, the love of his life. ####243

Beautiful, charming, gracious, artistic, intelligent, a perfect companion and ardent lover. She had been supportive of a husband who put in long hours at the office and was too often distracted by the pressures of managing a business. He had appreciated her patience and devotion to him and their marriage but was certain he had failed to let her know the extent of his appreciation.

In hindsight, he regretted all the times his responsibilities at Matherly Press had kept him from Rosemary. He wished he had those days back. His choices would be different. He would rearrange his priorities, appropriate more time and energy to his family.

Or, in all honesty, he would probably make the same bad choices, commit the same mistakes all over again.

Thankfully, his regrets were few and minor, although there were a couple of major ones. Once he had fired an editor out of pique, over a silly difference of opinion. Slyly, he had leaked the secret that the man was homosexual, this at a time when it wasn't accepted or even tolerated. He hinted that the man's personal life had begun affecting his work--which was an outright lie. The man was an excellent editor and his work ethic was impeccable.

Despite his qualifications, no one would hire him because of Daniel's rumor. He became a pariah in the industry he loved and ultimately moved away from the city.

Daniel's spite had ruined the man's

promising career and had cost publishing a talented contributor. He would carry the guilt over that to his grave.

Several years following Rosemary's death, he had engaged in an affair he wasn't proud of. It had been difficult for a middle-age bachelor to conduct a romance while living with a teenage daughter. It required finesse and a constant juggling of schedules. The woman had been jealous of his relationship with Maris. She became demanding, continually forcing him to choose between her and Maris. Daniel finally let his head overrule his desire. He realized that he could never love anyone who didn't love and accept his daughter wholly, completely, and without reservation. He ended the affair.

###Through decades he had managed #######245

to maintain his reputation as an excellent publisher. He seemed to have been blessed with a sixth sense for which manuscripts to grab and which to decline. During his tenure, he had increased the company's worth a hundredfold. He had earned more money than he could possibly spend, more than Maris could spend in her lifetime, and probably more than her children could spend.

Money was a nice by-product of his

success, but it wasn't what motivated him. His drive came from wanting to preserve what his ancestors had worked so painstakingly to create.

Before he turned thirty, he had inherited the stewardship of the family business. It had fallen to him to protect and improve it for the next generation.

Which was Maris, his crowning achievement. She was a thousand times more precious to him than Matherly Press, and he was more dedicated to protecting her than he was to protecting his publishing house from the wolves that got bigger and hungrier each year.

He couldn't shelter her completely, of course. No parent could spare his child life's knocks, and even if he could, it would be unfair.

Maris had to live her own life, and integral to living were mishaps and mistakes.

He only hoped that her disappointments wouldn't be too severe, that her triumphs and joys would outnumber them, and that when she reached his age, if she was fortunate to live that long, she would look back on her life with at least the same degree of satisfaction as he had been graced to do.

He wasn't afraid of death. To no one's knowledge, save Maxine's, he'd had several recent discussions with a priest. Rosemary had been a devout and practicing Catholic. He'd never converted, but he had absorbed some of her faith through osmosis. He firmly believed that they would enjoy the afterlife together.

He didn't fear dying.

He did fear dying a fool.

That was the worry that had robbed him of sleep last night. Deeply troubled, he'd been unable to read the nighttime hours away. Morning had brought no relief from this pervasive uneasiness.

He couldn't shake the feeling that he was missing something, that a revealing word or deed or demeanor that he would have detected when he was younger and sharper--

five years ago, even one year ago--was

#escaping him. #######################247

Was this paranoia valid? Or a symptom of encroaching dementia?

Before his grandfather's death, Daniel remembered him ranting about his nurse's thievery. One day he accused her of being a German spy on a mission to assassinate U.S. war veterans.

With the conviction of the mentally unhinged, he had claimed that the housekeeper was pregnant with his child.

Nothing could convince him that the

sixty-seven-year-old Englishwoman couldn't possibly be with child.

Was that where he was headed? Was this obscure and unnamed disquiet the harbinger of full-blown senility?

Or--and this is what he chose to believe--was it an indication that he had lost none of his faculties, that he was as astute as ever, and that the intuitiveness that had successfully guided him through fifty years of publishing was still reliable?

Until they proved to be untrustworthy, he chose to trust his instincts. They were telling him that something wasn't right. He sensed it as a stag senses the presence of a stalking hunter from a mile away.

Perhaps he was just overly troubled by Maris's unhappiness. She wasn't as good as she believed at concealing her feelings from him. He'd picked up signals of marital disharmony. The cause and severity of that disharmony he didn't yet know.

But if it was disharmonious enough to visibly disturb Maris, it disturbed him.

And then there was Noah. He wanted to trust the man both as a protégé and as a

son-in-law, but only if Noah deserved his trust.

Grunting with the effort, Daniel brought his leather desk chair upright and opened a desk drawer.

He withdrew his day planner and unzipped it, then removed a business card from one of the smaller compartments.

"William Sutherland," the card read. No company name or address. Only that name and a telephone number engraved in crisp navy blue block letters.

Daniel thoughtfully fingered the card, as he often had since obtaining it several weeks ago. He hadn't called the number. He hadn't yet spoken to Mr. Sutherland personally, but after this morning's ruminations, he felt that the time was right

#to do so. ############################249

It was a sneaky and underhanded thing to do. Merely thinking about it made him feel deceitful. No one ever need know, of course. Unless--God forbid--something came of it. Probably nothing would. Probably he was overreacting. But it wasn't within his makeup to be careless. There was too much at stake to let twinges of guilt overshadow prudence. Given a choice between conscience and caution, there was no choice. The adage applied: Better to be safe than sorry.

As he reached for the telephone, he resolved to be more watchful, alert to nuances in speech and expressions, more attuned to what was going on around him. He didn't want to be the last to know ...

anything.

He didn't fear dying. But he did fear dying a fool.

"You should stay away from it. It's ready to fall down," Mike told Maris as he took a swipe at the mantel with a piece of fine sandpaper.

"If it's that dilapidated, is it safe for Parker to go there alone?"

"Of course not. But try telling him that."

"Mike ..."

Sensing her hesitation, he turned toward her.

"Never mind," she said. "It wouldn't be fair to either you or Parker for me to ask."

"About ...?was

"His disability."

"No, it wouldn't be fair."

She nodded, shook off the solemn mood, and asked, "How do I get there?"

"It could be dangerous."

"I promise to run if it starts to fall down."

"I wasn't talking about the building. I meant you could be in danger from Parker. He doesn't like to be disturbed."

"I'll take my chances. Is it close enough to walk?"

"Do you walk a lot in New York?"

"Every day, if the weather's good."

"Then it's close enough to walk."

After giving directions, he cautioned her once again. "He won't like it when you show up."

"Probably not," she replied, laughing

#lightly. ##########################251

She had spent all day indoors, reading until her eyes felt strained. It was good to get outside, although by no stretch of the imagination could this be referred to as "fresh air." The heat was impossible, the humidity worse. The sunlight was glaring and relentless, but even shade offered little relief from the sweltering heat.

Still, the island was exotically beautiful, and the climate was essential to it. The live oak trees had an ancient, almost mystical dignity that was enhanced by the curly Spanish moss draping their limbs. The dense air smelled of salt water and fish, not altogether unpleasant when mingled with the intoxicating perfumes of the flowering plants that bloomed in profusion.

Maris passed a house that was set well back from the road. Children were playing in the yard. The boy and girl were young enough to dance around the lawn sprinkler without self-consciousness. They squealed in glee as they took turns leaping over the oscillating spray.

At another house, she spotted a large dog lying in the shade of a pickup truck. She crossed the road and watched him warily as she moved past, but she needn't have worried. He raised his head, looked at her with disinterest, stood, stretched, made three tight circles in the dirt, then resumed his original spot and closed his eyes.

She met no cars on the road. Her only company were the cicadas that buzzed loudly but lazily under cover of the thick foliage.

The abandoned cotton gin was located right were Mike had said it would be, although if his directions hadn't been so precise she might have missed it.

The forest had reclaimed the structure. From some angles, it would have been totally camouflaged by the greenery that enfolded it.

To reach it from the road, one had to take a crushed-shell path. It wasn't much of a path, however. Maris regarded it dubiously. It was no more than a yard wide, at most. Tall weeds grew on either side of it. Looking down at her bare ankles, she seriously considered passing up the gin in favor of the island's other points of interest that Mike had recommended.

"'Fraidy-cat," she muttered.

She looked around for a stick, and when she found one that was suitable, she started up the path, reaching

#far out in front of her to beat at the ######253

tall weeds. She wanted to alert any varmints, reptilian or otherwise, to her presence and give them an opportunity to relocate before she saw them.