LITMIR.BIZ

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watching her.

      “Don’t say it. Don’t even think of saying it. If I didn’t smoke I’d be one of those crazy cops who go home and shoot the family and then themselves.” Her plump shoulders sagged.

      “Jim still having no luck?”

      Jim, her husband, was an out of work firefighter, the victim of budget cuts in their small, south suburban town this past fall. That made six months he’d been out of work. The strain on their family had been enormous. Alice worked over-time, Jim stayed home and got depressed, and their daughter Shawna, who’d seemed to me to be a happy, energetic child when I’d met her with Alice on campus one day, was now wetting the bed. A typical and tragic story in the ‘not so great’ American local economy today.

      Alice stopped. We’d reached the middle of the campus. My faculty office was straight ahead, the campus police station to the right and a few blocks further. Her eyes didn’t meet mine.

      “Nothing. Just nothing. He hardly even looks now. He . . . ” She broke off. “Let’s just leave it, okay?”

      “Okay. But if I can help in any way, let me know.”

      Alice glared at me.

      “What, you got a fire that needs putting out?” She threw down her second cigarette and ground it into dust. The slicing wind took the tobacco flakes and the paper and spread them across the grass in an instant.

      I looked down at her. No, I didn’t have a fire that needed to be put out. What I did have was a huge trust fund. When I’d married my husband Marco, we hadn’t wanted to touch the Hilger wealth. I was rebelling against my family and he was too proud. After he had been killed, I’d had no energy either for rebellion or pride. I’d used the money to help support myself and the boys. No, I didn’t have a fire. I had Hilger shipping stock. But Alice would never take my help and so I would never offer it.

      Time to change the subject.

      “Well, no, but I might burst into flame when the Dean of the Faculty gets wind of what I did last night,” I said dryly.

      Alice and I both knew the Dean would just love to see me kicked off the faculty because of my meddling ways, and because I’d effectively blackmailed him into giving me my current release time from teaching one class and doing “consulting” for the campus police that seemed, so far, to mean sitting on a committee and also having coffee with Alice. Could be worse.

      Alice shot me a forced smile, erasing the pain from her face by sheer will power.

      “Man, that’s the truth. If I was you, I’d sneak in to work, wear a disguise, do what you can to be invisible.” As she said this, she looked me up and down, clearly noting my six-foot frame encased in black. She shook her head.

      “But there ain’t no way.”

      “There’s no way I’m going to be on time for my class either,” I said, glancing at my watch. “What do you say I call your cell around 1?”

      Alice nodded and started to turn toward the campus police station. Then she stopped and turned back.

      “What’re you teaching them today?” Alice was endlessly curious about my switch from being a cop to being a professor. Or maybe incredulous was more accurate.

      “The course is called ‘Good and Evil,’” I said, trying to keep a straight face.

      Alice snorted.

      “You kill me, girl. You purely do.” Her shoulders were shaking with laughter as she hurried away.

      I trudged on toward the building where the department of Philosophy and Religion was housed.

      It was killing me too.

      7

      You have no heart

      You make me sick

      You’re a robot

      Not a person

      You took away my mother

      In your van

      She looked back at me

      Crying

      “ICE-Y Hearts”

      Valerie Hernandez, #998

      StreetWise

      Thursday, May 18, 8:45 a.m.

      I clumped up the three flights of stairs of Myerson Hall to our offices and classrooms. Our medieval-style building was gray stone with turrets holding down the four corners. Philosophy and Religion had one side of this top floor, history had the other. Academic backwaters, both relegated to ancient and unrenovated buildings. The elevators never worked.

      The faculty office door was open when I entered our corridor. Good. Maybe that meant our faculty secretary, Mary Frost, was out.

      I cautiously stuck my head through the door. The office seemed empty. I could grab my snail mail and get going. But as I moved further into the room, Mary backed out of the closet in the far corner carrying a stack of large manila envelopes. Her thin, elderly face was flushed even with this small effort.

      “Professor Ginelli. Good morning. How are you this morning? Can I get you some tea? I brought some Lapsang Souchong from home and it’s still quite hot.”

      All of this was said in a rushed, whispery tone as she bustled over to her desk. She placed the stack of envelopes hurriedly on top of an already precarious stack of papers and reached for a paper-thin teacup next to the stack that would be crushed if the pile slid that way. As she picked it up, the delicate china cup rattled on its saucer. She literally jumped at the sound and put it back down. She placed both trembling hands around a shining, stainless steel thermos that was next to her computer, more to still them, I thought, than to get me any actual tea.

      This is what I had been trying, coward that I am, to avoid. Mary Frost had been the faculty secretary for Philosophy and Religion for more than twenty years. She’d had a breakdown, what she referred to as a ‘spell,’ when our former department chair, Harold Grimes, had died and his various misdeeds had come to light. I’d always thought Mary had idolized her old boss and yet her almost collapse had seemed extreme. I had often wondered if she’d also been a victim of his misdeeds, or perhaps a silent witness. She’d been given medical leave until the middle of April and then had returned to work. Astonishingly, given the role I’d had in exposing her old boss, she had switched her devotion from him to me. It was so unnerving.

      “No, thanks, Mary. That’s the good stuff. I’ll just have some coffee if there is any left down the hall.” I mumbled this while shoveling into my backpack the amazing amount of paper that still accumulated in my mailbox despite the advent of the digital age. I hefted it and turned to look at Mary. She was bent over the messy piles of paper and files that six months ago would have appalled her; she was simply moving papers from one stack to another.

      “Well,” she said in that whispery rushed voice, “you know best, though coffee is bad for the heart. I just read an article on that. In fact I have it right here,” she said as she rummaged around even faster, going through one of the piles. The pale May sunshine from the window behind her shone through her thinning gray hair and piteously illuminated her pink scalp. I stood helplessly watching her shuffle papers, now unwilling to leave her and just walk out.

      “Lose something, Mary?” A robust voice coming from the doorway was both brisk and yet held an undertone of compassion.

      My boss, Dr. Adelaide Winters, newly appointed department chairperson, came into the office. She glanced sharply at me and I jumped in as bid.

      “Mary has an article she wants me to read, on how coffee is bad for you. But just now she can’t seem to locate it.” Mary continued shuffling papers, seeming oblivious now to both of us.

      Adelaide might have been a large woman, but she was always quick on her feet and she swiftly reached Mary’s side, putting one of her soft hands over the thin, restless ones—delicately stilling their motion.

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