The Kingdom of Dog (20 page)

 

The sun came out, and I drove up to Eastern with my windows cracked open. I knew that spring was still at least a month away, but a boy can hope. I had barely got my coat off in my office when Ike Arumba came to my door.

“I really want to thank you for what you did, Mr. Levitan,” he said. “The police have dropped all the charges against me, and Sally hired me to start working part-time at the admissions office. It means I'll have to give up the Rising Sons, but there's a freshman baritone who can take my place.”

“Congratulations, Ike. Remember Sally is giving you a second chance and you can't make any more mistakes.”

“I've learned my lesson. I'm excited about getting back to work. Fortunately my course load is light this term and I can really get into it. Sally says I can apply for the assistant director's job, too.”

“Well, good luck.”

Next in my office was President Babson. “I understand the police have someone in custody for Joe's murder? And Perpetua Kaufman was murdered as well? It wasn't just an accident with her space heater?”

I filled him in. “I think we're going to need a press release. Shall I draft one?”

“Please. It's sad, losing Joe, and Perpetua. I knew her for years, you know. And all for something so silly as a plant. ” He shook his head. “Let me know if you think I should address the press directly.”

“Will do. I'll have the release for you shortly.”

I spent a while on the release, aiming for the right tone, trying to downplay Eastern's role in the whole scenario. When I had gone over it so many times the words were swimming on the page, I gave up and emailed it to Babson for his approval. Then I went down to Sally's office. “I understand you're getting some more help around here.”

“Ike starts Monday, and I can feel the relief already,” she said. “I can see light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, the light is still a long way off.”

“And remember, sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is just an oncoming train,” I said.

She made shooing motions. “Go. I have work to do. ” As I was walking back to my office, I ran into Lou Segusi, from my tech writing class, in the hallway. I remembered I had promised to talk to him about his career prospects.

“So you want to be a technical writer?” I asked.

“I've got bigger problems. ” He slumped down in the chair across from my desk. “I'm in, like, huge trouble, and I can't figure out what to do. You've been really nice and I was hoping maybe you could give me some advice.”

Rochester got up from his place by the French doors and walked over to Lou, sniffing him. Lou dropped his good left arm down and stroked the dog's head, and Rochester sat down next to him.

“Is this about all the papers you've been writing?” I asked. “They aren't all for you, are they?”

He shook his head. “It started last year. I can speed-read, and write really fast, so I was always finished with my papers super early, then just hanging around the dorm playing games and shit. One of my roommates asked me if I could write a paper for him. It was on
Wuthering Heights
, which I read in high school, so I was like, no problem, dude. It was just something to keep busy.”

“And against the college's Honor Code and plagiarism policy.”

“Yeah, I know. But it seemed like no big deal at the time. Then he told a friend, and I wrote a paper for him. And before you know it, I had these guys lined up for me to write papers. Mostly guys from the football team, but eventually their girlfriends and their roommates and all. I made good money, and it was really interesting, you know? It was like taking all these extra courses. I looked at it like I was learning a lot myself, and getting paid for it to boot. That's when I started to think about getting a job after graduation as a technical writer. You know, like, getting paid legit.”

As a teacher, the whole idea of what Lou had been doing was anathema. But as a smart guy who could write quickly myself, I could see his point. “So what happened? You broke your arm and you couldn't meet deadlines?”

“More like my arm got broken for me,” he said, frowning.

“Someone broke your arm? Someone who got a bad grade on a paper you wrote?”

“I never got a bad grade for anybody I wrote for. This was different.”

I sat back in my chair, waiting for him to go on. “I had this crush on this girl. Desiree DiLiberti. Only she had a boyfriend, one of the guys from the football team. So I figured I would just give up. Then she came to me and asked me to write a paper for her.”

“Yes?”

“And we, kind of, you know, started fooling around in her dorm room.”

“In place of her paying you?”

“No! Not at all. I never even thought of that. I just thought, like, cool, she's into me, too.”

“Let me guess. The boyfriend came in.”

“With one of his buddies. The two of them are always together. I swear, if it wasn't for Desiree I'd think the two dudes were into each other.”

“Jose and Juan?”

“You know them?”

I nodded. “They do some work for the director of alumni relations.”

He slumped back in his seat, pulling his hand back from Rochester, who looked up and started sniffing Lou's leg. “I am so screwed.”

“Who broke your arm?”

“Juan. Desiree is his girlfriend. Jose held me down so Juan could do it.”

“That's criminal assault,” I said. “You need to report that to the police.”

“But then they'd say how I was writing papers for them and their buddies, and I'd get kicked out of school.”

“I don't think they'd finger you, because they would, too. They violated the honor code just as much as you did. Even more, because they did something criminal, too.”

“But they're football players. And like you said, they're tight with the guy in the alumni office, too. He'll protect them.”

I could see his dilemma. Even at Eastern, which prided itself on academics, there was a double standard when it came to student-athletes. Professors were routinely asked to excuse students from class, or assignments, so that they could attend practice or away games. Jocks got extra tutoring to help them keep their grades up, and at many colleges they were pampered with all kinds of perks.

Just like with Ike, I could relate to his problem in a personal way. I'd done some things I didn't think were big deals, which ended up getting me in a lot of trouble. And I'd had a lot of trouble bouncing back. How much tougher would it be for Lou, if he were kicked out of Eastern in his last semester? He wouldn't have the degrees or work experience I had to fall back on.

What was I turning into? The Mother Teresa of distressed students? I sighed.

Rochester gave up on being petted and went back to slump next to the French doors. I remembered Thomas Taylor, the homeless man who had been denied admission to Eastern, and how his life had fallen apart after that. The parallel wasn't exact, because obviously there was more wrong with Taylor than just disappointment. But it was another example of how a life could go off the rails based on one decision.

“All right,” I said, leaning forward. “So far this has all been background. What's your current problem, and how do we get that taken care of?”

“You'll help me?”

“If you tell me what you need.”

He wasn't taking on any new assignments or clients, he said. “I'm done with all that. It's just too much trouble. But Juan and Jose, they say I have to keep writing for them until I graduate, or they'll keep breaking other parts of my body.”

“The way I see it, you've got two problems: criminal and academic. These guys have assaulted you and threatened you. That's a criminal matter. The ghostwriting and the violations of the honor code, that's academic. But they're both tied together.”

“But I don't want to rat out all my clients, and if I tell anybody from the college about the papers they'll want to know who I wrote for.”

I sat back in my chair. “You write well, Lou. That's a skill, and you could use that to help other students. Suppose I could negotiate a deal for you—you'd volunteer a certain number of hours in the writing lab, tutoring other students, until you graduate.”

“I could do that,” he said.

“There would have to be some kind of academic sanction as well. I don't know what that would be, but something short of expelling you, for sure. You can't fail any classes, because you've done all your own work. It wouldn't make sense to put you on academic probation, because you're about to graduate. And I can't see making you stand at a blackboard and write ‘I will not write other students' papers' a thousand times.”

I sighed. “Let me think about it, all right?”

“And what do I do about Jose and Juan?”

“I don't know, Lou. I'm making this up as I go. Just try and stay away from them for a couple of days.”

“Not easy. We all live in Birthday House.”

Birthday House was one of Eastern's largest dorms, donated by an alumnus named Hoare on his birthday years before—giving the college the opportunity to avoid having a dorm named Hoare House.

I scribbled my cell phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Lou. “If you run into trouble, call me,” I said.

He stood up, and he looked like the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. “Thanks, Mr. Levitan. I really appreciate this. You're a lifesaver.”

As he walked out, Santiago Santos passed him. “Good to know you're making an impact on young people,” he said.

Rochester looked up, then slumped back to the floor. Santos didn't interest him.

I wondered how much Santos had heard of our conversation. I was sure he wouldn't approve of my hanging around with a student who flaunted college rules, or conspiring with the kid to avoid punishment. “I'm teaching a class again,” I said. “A couple of days after I saw you last, the chair of the English department asked me to take over for an adjunct professor who passed away suddenly.”

“Sudden death has a way of following you around. ” He pulled out his laptop, put it on my desk, then sat down across from me and turned it on. “How does your boss feel about you teaching?”

“He's pleased I'm doing a favor for the English department.”

He clicked a few keys on the laptop, obviously opening his file on me, then began typing some notes. “I want to make sure you're not over-extending yourself, Steve,” he said. “You know how hard it is to come by good full-time jobs with benefits in this economy. And you know you need to impress your boss, so that he'll keep you on after this semester is over. I don't want to see you do anything that can screw this gig up.”

“I'm not worried,” I said, though of course I was. Every time I saw that paycheck automatically deposited into my bank account, every time I could pay the maintenance fees for River Bend, my electric and phone bills and credit card charges without sweating, I took a deep breath and said thank you to the gods of employment. I knew how easily I could lose everything that mattered to me, because I'd already been through that.

“How are you doing being around computers so much?”

I knew he was only looking out for me—but I was starting to get fed up. “Listen, Santiago, I'm forty-three years old. I made one mistake, and I paid for it. I'm still paying for it. I lost my job, my house and my wife. I know what's at stake here and I'm getting tired of you assuming I'm some slacker who doesn't think through his actions.”

Even as I said it, I realized I was guilty of that—not thinking things through clearly enough. But I was damned if I was going to admit that.

To his credit, he didn't rise to the bait. I guess he was accustomed to parolees going off on him. He stayed calm, asking me questions about what I did every day, about how closely Mike MacCormac supervised me, and so on.

I felt like I'd rather have my eyeballs scratched out than answer the same questions over and over again, but I took some deep breaths and tried to stay calm and pleasant. Then my cell phone buzzed with an incoming text message.

“Excuse me for a minute,” I said, pulling the phone to me and punching in my code. “Need yr help ASAP,” the message read. “J&J locked me in closet in their room in BH.”

“Shit. ” I stood up. “That kid who was just here? He's in trouble. I've got to run over to the dorms.”

“We're not finished yet, Steve.”

I handed him the phone, then grabbed my coat and Rochester's leash. “That look like it can wait to you?” I asked. The dog jumped up and came over to me.

“You're not a security guard, Steve. Call the police.”

I took the phone back from him. “I'm calling campus security,” I said, hooking up Rochester's leash.

“Steve.”

“Can't stay. Gotta dash. ” Rochester was already straining at his leash, so we ducked through the French doors and out into the cold.

We hurried down the slope toward Birthday House, and I dialed the number for campus security and explained the problem. The operator said that she'd have an officer meet me in the lobby of the dorm.

As if he knew time was of the essence, Rochester loped down the hill, tugging me behind him, not bothering to stop and sniff or pee. I was out of breath by the time we reached the dorm, where a student assistant sat behind a wooden desk. Behind her were cubbyholes for packages, and stacks of forms for various purposes.

I pulled my ID out of my wallet. “I need a student room number. Jose Canusi and Juan Tanamera.”

“Those guys,” she said. “135. Down the hall to the right.”

“When security shows up, send them down there.”

Rochester led the way down the hall, the girl behind me calling, “Hey, that dog can't come in here.”