The Theory of Games (21 page)

“Is that so?” Katelynn asked suspiciously. Zoë stopped typing and looked up from her laptop across the table.

“Actually it’s why I stopped by today,” Gilfoyle took another sip of coffee, “First, I couldn’t help but notice that I haven’t seen my four best students around campus recently.”

“Five,” Katelynn hissed almost under her breath, “you forgot about Nick.”

“That was tragic,” Gilfoyle agreed, “I was devastated when I heard the news. I had no idea that Nick was so depressed; much less suicidal.” Gilfoyle lowered his eyes and peered into the depths of his coffee.

“And what was the other reason you stopped by professor?” Katelynn asked curtly.

“I wanted to invite all of you,” Gilfoyle motioned to the four students around the table, “to Briarcliff tonight for dinner. I felt we needed to talk about the rest of the semester.”

Shelby shot Zoë an astonished glance. Briarcliff was the baronial mansion of the real estate slumlord that had founded Mount Mary College by conveniently dying without heir and making a deathbed bequest to the nuns that was as suspect as the Donation of Constantine. The campus was carved from what had once been Briarcliff’s surrounding acreage; the mansion itself was situated at the far west end and was now a rent-free perk awarded to Gilfoyle for building the department up from nothing. “Professor, we would love to come to Briarcliff for dinner!” Shelby gushed.

Katelynn was about to object when Pete chimed in, “That sounds great, professor, do you want us to bring anything?”

Gilfoyle chuckled, “No thanks, Peter, I think we have everything we need. How does seven o’clock sound?”

“Sounds great, professor, do we need to dress up?” Zoë jumped in before Katelynn could object.

“No, you’re fine as you are; nothing formal,” Gilfoyle answered. “I would really like you there, too, Katelynn.”

“How ‘bout Bill?” Kate countered.

“I’m sorry,” Gilfoyle replied, “the college forbids pets at Briarcliff, but I’ll have my housekeeper bring something special over for him. You doing okay with that new pacemaker, big guy?” Gilfoyle bent down and scratched Bill. Bill responded with a wag of his tail.

“Okay, we’ll see you at seven,” Katelynn relented.

Gilfoyle got up from the table, “Good; it’s settled, seven it is.” He handed the River Rats mug back to Katelynn -
“Thanks for the coffee, it was delicious.”
– and left the way that he had come in. Katelynn looked out the window and watched Gilfoyle lock the back gate behind him and walk back on to campus.

“I do not trust that man, Bill,” she said.

The dog said nothing.

CHAPTER 5.6

INTERVIEW WITH MS. KATELYNN MARGARET O’BRIAN CONTINUED

Q
: So you, Ms. Eingraben, Ms. Taylor and Mr. Felix had dinner with Professor Gilfoyle that evening at 1900 hours?

KMO’B: Yeah. Zoë and Shelby were thrilled like they were going out on a date. They both ran back to the dorms to change. Pete disappeared somewhere and when he returned he smelled to high heaven of a certain heavily advertised allegedly pheromone-based cologne. And then, promptly at five minutes before seven…

•

Promptly at five minutes before seven, Mrs. Halperin, Professor Gilfoyle’s housekeeper, arrived at the backdoor of the little yellow house bearing a silver tray that held a china plate covered with a linen napkin. “This is the food for the dog,” Mrs. Halperin announced with a slight air of disgust. “Professor Gilfoyle is waiting for you at Briarcliff.”

Katelynn lifted the napkin and suspiciously sniffed the meat.

“It is the finest prime rib, ma’am,” the housekeeper said, “the same that you will be fed.” Bill wagged his tail and excitedly pranced about the kitchen linoleum.

Katelynn pursed her lips as she weighed the decision, “I guess it will be okay,” she said and she took the plate and put it on the floor. Bill, on his best behavior, took three chomps to devour the meat.

“The plate, ma’am,” Mrs. Halperin indicated, with icy disgust, the china on the floor that Bill was now earnestly engaged in polishing to a fine sheen with his tongue. Kate bent down, retrieved the plate and daintily placed it back upon the tray that Mrs. Halperin was still holding stiffly.

“Okay, Bill, you be good; you’re in charge,” Katelynn earnestly instructed the dog as she patted his head. “And if we’re not back by nine sharp call the cops,” she added. “Okay, kids,” she announced to Peter, Shelby and Zoë who had formed a semi-circle around Bill mesmerized by the devouring and slurping, “It’s time to go visit the weird uncle’s house for Christmas. Everybody be on your best behavior.” And with that she walked out the door and led the procession out the back gate and across the quad to Briarcliff while Bill settled in on the living room couch in the little yellow house and enjoyed a deeply satisfying belch.

CHAPTER 5.7

Professor Gilfoyle stood upon the portico of Briarcliff dressed in gray Irish tweeds and holding the last swallow of what had been his third glass of claret. With his free hand he waved cheerily to the troop of students walking through the quad to his house.

“Welcome to Briarcliff! Welcome one and all!” Gilfoyle greeted the students like a demented Father Christmas and vigorously shook each one’s hand in turn. Katelynn pulled her arm back from Gilfoyle’s grip as if it was about to be seized by a lamprey. Gilfoyle seemed to take no notice as he ushered the students in to the dark paneled foyer with marble floors inlayed in what the original owner had fancied to be his family crest. Collectively Zoë, Peter, Shelby and Katelynn had been at Mount Mary College for fourteen years but this was the first time that any of them had been inside Gilfoyle’s mansion and they were each in their own way astonished.

Peter, who had been raised on a small, barely self-sustaining farm forty miles out of town, felt as if he had been ushered into the presence of the renaissance oligarchy.

Shelby, whose taste had been horribly deformed due to a spate of ineptly taught art history classes before she had found her true calling in computer graphics, felt as if she had won an invitation to a private showing at the
musée du Louvre
; or at least the storerooms of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Zoë – in spite of her affectation of anarchy - was secretly enamored by the opulence of the bourgeoisie of the early twentieth century.

And Katelynn O’Brian felt decidedly uncomfortable. Subconsciously she extended her right hand to reassuringly touch the fur on Bill’s head or the spot behind his left ear, but he was not there. With Jake gone, and Katelynn left in charge, Katelynn sometimes felt overwhelmed. She did not know what was going to happen tonight, but she would have felt better knowing that Bill and his teeth where nearby.

Mrs. Halperin pushed her way past the clot of students in the foyer and bustled down the hallway towards the kitchen muttering to herself.

“Have any of you been to Briarcliff before?” Gilfoyle disingenuously asked knowing full well that no student – not student body president, not homecoming queen nor the offspring of munificent contributors – had ever before crossed the threshold of Briarcliff. Indeed, even the Christmas Eve eggnog with the Board was the one annual – and dictated by legal codicil – breech of Gilfoyle’s solitude within the manse.

Peter sputtered in response; Shelby’s eyes blinked spasmodically as if delivering a coded message and Zoë shuffled her feet as she lowered her gaze to examine her perfectly chipped Goth nails painted in purple
rigor mortis
. “Let me show you around,” Gilfoyle offered, “while Mrs. Halperin sets out dinner,” and the professor swept his arm expansively towards his study and stumbled with unsteady feet into the room.

From floor to ceiling the room was lined with classic and catalogued books.

A massive mahogany desk squatted at the northern end of the room and upon it stood a black thirty-one inch flat panel LED computer monitor (every nerd’s dream). Behind the desk, perfectly centered, was a straight-back green leather upholstered banker’s chair; the brass studs marched down both flanks of the back with military precision. A wooden ladder on ancient wheels that fit into a brass rail encircled the room. “My
sanctum sanctorum
,” Gilfoyle announced. Shelby squealed under her breath.

“This is where I conduct my research,” Gilfoyle said.

“Research,” whispered Pete Felix.

“Can I look at your monitor?” asked Zoë.

“Miss Eingraben,” Gilfoyle invited, “you are more than welcome to avail yourself to my research facilities anytime you wish, but, just now, I think I hear the dinner bell,” and then, right on cue, Mrs. Halperin, rang the ancient brass bell from the dining room.

The students followed Gilfoyle back through the foyer, past the serpentine staircase that led upstairs to Gilfoyle’s quarters, and into the dining room that encompassed the entire east wing of Briarcliff. Hung upon the walls, each on identical parallel 18 inch chains screwed securely into the crown moldings, were portraits of dead men and women: the benefactor’s family (back to the grandparents both distaff and paternal), college presidents, regents in precise chronological sequence, the one alumnus that had become the state’s governor – and at the head of the room directly above Gilfoyle’s chair – was Gilfoyle himself, immortalized in oil looking fierce and demented. It had been painted by a promising student from the class of ’93 who had traveled to Paris in her senior year and, most unexpectedly, went mad, ran off with an Algerian nationalist, and was never heard from again.

The table had been built for not less than twenty-four guests with host and hostess stationed at each end appropriately and tonight’s handful barely filled the northernmost third. The light from the candelabras fell off abruptly midway down the table approximately where the linen and china place settings ceased.

Gilfoyle made a great show of settling himself into his chair; unfurling the thick linen napkin upon his waist and pouring himself another glass of claret from the crystal before him.

The students sat in their assigned seats, and were on their best behaviors. Katelynn turned her crystal wine goblet upside down and placed her napkin
just so
over it. She knew that there was weirdness afoot tonight and come what may she best be sober for it. Again, subconsciously, she reached down for Bill’s ear; but Bill was not there.

Mrs. Halperin carried in an immense silver platter covered with a matching ornate dome. She stood at attention on Gilfoyle’s right as he lifted the cover and inhaled the aroma of the steaming prime rib. “Mrs. Halperin,” Gilfoyle said with a wide smile, “I think you’ve outdone yourself tonight; please serve our guests.” As his housekeeper made a circumnavigation of the table, stopping before each student so that they could load up their plates with prime rib and russet potatoes, Professor Gilfoyle addressed the students, “It is so wonderful to see you here tonight, and on such short notice. We really need to do this more often; I feel I’ve fallen out of touch with my students – my best students. You know teaching is my first love.” Gilfoyle looked at each of the four students in turn. “Here, you must really try this claret, it is something exceptional, it was put down almost eighty years ago by the school’s benefactor,” Gilfoyle reached over to fill Peter’s glass. “Oh, Miss O’Brian I see you won’t be joining us; it is your loss,” Gilfoyle shrugged and filled Zoë’s goblet to the rim. “So, please tell me what you have all been working on instead of attending your classes,” Gilfoyle said with a hint of sternness in his voice.

Shelby lowered her fork to her plate and looked at Katelynn, “I’m not sure we can talk about it” she said.

“Oh, I see,” Gilfoyle said, “did you sign some sort of Non Disclosure or Confidentiality agreements?”

“No, it was nothing like that,” Shelby answered demurely.

“Well, then,” Gilfoyle shrugged, “I would think that you are free to talk about your top secret project.” Gilfoyle punctuated
top secret
by making question marks in the air with his hands and laughed.

“I guess it would be okay, then,” said Peter and then he and Zoë and Shelby proceeded to explain the simulation for ‘Homeland Security’ that they had been working on for the last two weeks while Katelynn picked at her food and glared.

“Well, well, that
is
quite a project,” Gilfoyle gushed as he leaned over and refilled their glasses with claret. “I think we could count this as an independent study project for, say, six credits apiece. What do you think?” Zoë, Peter and Shelby nodded like bobble-head dolls. “So how far have you got on this project? Have you run into any snags?” Gilfoyle asked.

Zoë explained about the problem with the data structure and how they were beginning to solve it.

“Do you think you’re on the right track? This is a very important question,” Gilfoyle sternly intoned, “Exactly how long do you think it will be to solve this problem with the data structure?”

“Maybe another three weeks?” Zoë asked hopefully.

Peter and Shelby nodded their heads in agreement. “Maybe two weeks if we get lucky.” Peter suggested optimistically.

Gilfoyle reached into his vest pocket and withdrew a magnificent pocket watch attached to a platinum chain that encircled his paunch. He opened the lid and examined the face and made a barely audible
tsk, tsking
, sound. “I am sorry,” Gilfoyle said, “Truly, truly sorry. But we have run out of time.” And at that exact moment two things happened:

The mahogany grandfather clock in the foyer struck eight mournful clangorous tones.

And Lieutenant Reardon appeared in the doorway leading from the kitchen.

CHAPTER 5.8

“Everything on schedule, Lieutenant?” Gilfoyle asked the police officer.

“Everything on schedule, Professor,” Reardon confirmed.

“Miss Eingraben, Miss Taylor and Mr. Felix, would you be so kind as to accompany officer Reardon?” Gilfoyle nodded toward the lieutenant. “Miss O’Brian please remain seated.”