Untrue Love Page 7

  “Does a grizzly sing baritone?” he answered with a smile.

  “Does a grizzly sing at all?”

  “He does when a pretty girl gets him a beer.”

  Ellie snorted and headed for the kitchen. Maybe it would be nice having him around after all—but only for a few days.

  20

  DONNA STRETCHED WEARILY, trying to work out the kinks in her neck and shoulders. She had spent most of the day bent over a book, and her poor posture was taking a toll. She still had more than a hundred pages to read, though, before she could call it a day. She sighed, rubbed her eyes, and got back to work.

  It had been a quiet Saturday. Her roommate Lindsay had been out most of the day, leaving the apartment blissfully silent for Donna. She had been planning on spending the day at the library, but an opportunity to study at home, with the refrigerator in the next room, was too rare and precious to pass up.

  It was too good to last, though; Donna heard the sound of a key in the lock. She resisted a sudden urge to gather up her books and scurry into her bedroom. Instead she plastered an insincere smile on her face and waited for her roommate to enter the living room.

  Lindsay entered, but she wasn’t alone. The brown-haired sociology student had a friend in tow, and Donna’s smile flickered when she saw who it was.

  “Hey, Donna,” said a young man with brown hair and a friendly, round face.

  She gave him a half smile. “Hi, Glenn,” she said, and returned her attention to her book.

  “Are you studying?”

  She gave him a look. “I am,” she said, offering the most generous answer she could to what seemed a pretty dumb question.

  He waited for a moment, clearly hoping that she would expand on her answer. She didn’t. “My schedule is getting really tough,” he said at last. “Things are really picking up.”

  “Yeah,” Donna agreed, wishing that he would go away. Whenever Glenn came over he made a point of talking with her, and she was starting to think that he was interested in her. She didn’t much like the thought of that, though. He wasn’t nearly as tall as her friend Evan, and even though she had to admit that he had friendly eyes and a pleasant smile, he wasn’t as cute as Evan, either. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but she didn’t want him pestering her, either.

  She stared silently at him until he realized that the conversation was over. “Well, it was good talking with you,” he said, and headed off to Lindsay’s room, from where Donna could hear the sounds of a television show. She often wondered how her roommate managed to pass her courses, given that she never seemed to spend any time studying.

  Donna watched him leave, then she scooped up her book and notebook and headed for her bedroom. The time she’d spent studying on the couch was pleasant, but it was now over; she would spend the rest of the evening in her bedroom, with the door closed against unwanted intrusions.

  21

  THE KEY STUCK in the lock, but just at first, and then with a twist and a push Ellie pushed the door open. It was dark inside, but immediately she heard the outraged huffing of a dog protecting its turf, and she pulled it shut again until there was just a two-inch crack. Through it she peered with apprehension at the black nose and whiskers that were poking through from the other side.

  “Umm … good boy?” she tried. In response the dog, which seemed even bigger than when she saw it before, whined and pawed at the door. Its nails scrabbled against the wooden floor in an impatient dance that said either, “Please! I need to pee!” or “Step closer, little girl; you smell delicious.”

  Ellie took a deep breath and bravely pushed the door open. Her weight was on her back foot while she waited to see whether she’d need to defend herself against an aggressive beast, but instead the black dog burst through the door and danced around her, enthusiastically sniffing at her feet and ankles.

  “All right, then,” Ellie said uncertainly, and stepped into the apartment with the dog following her inside. When the door closed behind her, she was enveloped in a heavy, musky scent that smelled equally of old lady and dog, with an unmistakeable undertone of cat pee. She wrinkled her nose and made her way to the kitchen.

  “You must be hungry,” she murmured to the cat, also black, that waited for her on the kitchen counter. Ellie had taken it for granted that she’d had twelve hours or so folllowing the building manager’s visit to make her way down here, but now for the first time she wondered how long it had been since anyone had been inside the apartment.

  She found cans of cat food stacked in one of the cupboards, and there was a large bag of dry dog food in the corner. Ellie had only been inside for a few minutes, but the smell was already starting to get to her. There was something about the musky scent that slipped inside her nose and settled there, as if it planned to build a nest inside her sinus passages. She didn’t much feel like touching anything, either. There was nothing in the kitchen, or the rest of the dark and cluttered apartment for that matter, that seemed particularly filthy. It was more that the place gave off a general sense of malaise and standards of cleanliness that slipped ever lower as Mrs. Johnson’s declining health made it difficult to get everything done.

  With a sigh, Ellie leaned against the counter and took the place in. In front of her the dog did an impatient dance, in the hopes that she would soon furnish a walk, a meal, and hopefully both. Idly Ellie held out a hand for him to sniff while she came to terms with the situation.

  “This isn’t going to do, guys,” she muttered to her new furry friends. Then, with a muttered curse, she made her resolution. “I can’t leave you down here in the dark,” she sighed in resignation.

  Outside, with the black dog seemingly examining every blade of grass in the lawn, Ellie began making plans. “I’ll bring up the cat box and the food. I don’t suppose you’ll really care where you’re sleeping at night,” she added to a dog who was far too busy to listen to her. “It will only be a few days, just until your Momma comes home.”

  She repeated the thought to herself, as if it were a prayer or incantation: “It will only be for a few days.”

  22

  THE LOCK RATTLED and squeaked, then it turned and the door swung open to a dark, cold apartment. Karen Jefferson pushed through, dropped her shoulder bag just inside, and swung the door shut behind her.

  Buster was immediately at her feet, complaining that his dinner was late again. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she murmured. Heading to the kitchen, she switched on the hallway light.

  She came up short at the sight of herself in a mirror that hung over a table at the end of the hallway. Her hair was a mess, but that was nothing new. Karen was shocked, though, at the amount of gray she saw poking out from under her knitted cap. Her face, too, was lined with wrinkles. Was she really that old?

  She might have spent time at the mirror, fretting further over her appearance, but Buster would not be denied. She moved on into the kitchen and swung open the refrigerator door to snag the half-empty can of cat food she had left there in the morning. With a teaspoon she shoveled the food out onto a saucer while Buster rubbed on her leg, then she put it on the floor for him to eat.

  She should eat something herself, she knew, but she didn’t feel hungry. She could still feel that last cup of coffee sloshing around in her gut, and the caffeine was doing a solid job of suppressing her appetite. The refrigerator contained the remnants of last night’s dinner, takeout from a Chinese place she had gone to so often that everyone who worked there knew her name. In another world, that might be a nice thing, to be a regular. To Karen it seemed like one more sign that her life was on autopilot.

  She would eat later. Leaving Buster to his meal, she drifted into the living room and sat heavily on the couch. It was dark, but she didn’t bother to turn on a lamp. She looked at the light that was drifting in through the front window and listened to the cold wind she had just escaped.

  She was tired. She closed her eyes and lay back against the overstuffed couch pillows. If she fell asleep there and woke
in the early hours of the morning, her teeth unbrushed and still wearing her clothes from the previous day, well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

  “This is quite a life you’ve carved out for yourself,” she muttered to herself in the dark.

  23

  FOR THE FIRST time in years, Ellie was nervous. She hated feeling this way.

  She was sitting at a long conference table and waiting impatiently for the rest of the English department faculty to assemble for their meeting. In front of her on the table lay a piece of paper, on which she had scribbled a few notes on the points she wanted to make. Ellie stared at the words she had long ago committed to memory and fought against the urge to scream with impatience.

  She took a deep breath, and as she exhaled she visualized her body draining off the excess nervous energy that had collected in her arms and legs. When she’d been a student she would get so keyed-up before an exam that sometimes her body trembled and her teeth chattered. Back then she’d been ashamed of her body’s betrayal, which fell far short of the air of cool sophistication that she wanted to convey, and she did what she could to hide it away where no one else could see. She thought she’d outgrown that embarrassing habit a long time ago, but now she could feel a tremble building in her chest. She took another deep breath and fought for mastery.

  I will not tremble; I will not shake, she thought to herself. Today is too important.

  This was the day. This was the day that she would unveil the secret project she had been working on. Today she would discover whether her situation was completely hopeless, or if there might be an opportunity to turn it all around and turn this school into the sort of place where Jackson would want to live and work.

  She did her best to smile at the others as they took their seats. Tony Bradford smiled warmly back at her, while Beth seemed to be as pert and cheerful as she always was. Karen plopped into her chair with a sigh while carefully avoiding eye contact, but Ellie was not put off by that. She knew she had no friend in that woman; her goal was to get the support of the others.

  “Thanks, everyone, for getting here on time,” Beth began. “We have a few matters of business, but today we get something special! Ellie has asked for time in today’s meeting to make a proposal, and I’m sure we all want to hear that first. So let’s get right to it.”

  Ellie smiled at her, then cleared her throat. Here goes.

  “Thanks, Beth. I hope you all won’t think I’m speaking out of turn. The last thing I want to do is show up on campus and immediately start turning everything upside-down,” she lied, scanning the room with her best self-deprecating smile on her face. “But, as I’m sure you’re aware, when a big idea comes, it comes, and the best you can is try to make the most of it.”

  She paused for the space of a breath, and then launched into the strategic pitch she had been planning for days. “In part this is your idea, Karen,” she said, and was pleased by the startled look that the older woman gave her. “Or at least my idea started with something you said. Specifically, in an earlier meeting you asked what would tempt me to leave a vibrant, urban campus for a more sleepy, lower-profile school like this one. And the answer is, I don’t see any reason why this department’s profile couldn’t be much higher. I’ve been here long enough to see the talent you have on display, both within the faculty and among the students. And lately I’ve been asking why we shouldn’t shine some light on that talent.”

  She opened the manila folder she had brought with her and started distributing copies of a packet she had printed out. “My idea is that we do something about that, and we can get started right away. The department could host a conference this spring. As a topic, I suggest nationality and identity in the modern novel: it will get people thinking about the Arab Spring and political upheaval. We can all reach into our personal networks and invite someone notable to make sure that there are some important names in the audience. If we get it right, we might just wake up this sleepy little school.”

  Ellie smiled, pleased with herself and the way her pitch had gone. She was so sure of her idea that her goal had been simply to get it on the table and then get out of the way. The other members of the department faculty might not know her or trust her yet, but she felt certain that they would see the power of the idea. In the silence that followed, her eyes flitted from face to face and searched for the approval she expected to see there.

  “It’s very exciting,” Beth said after a moment’s hesitation, and immediately Ellie raised her estimation of the woman’s qualities. “I do wonder about timing, though. Next spring may seem like it’s far away now, but it won’t be long before it’s right around the corner!”

  Ellie was expecting this objection, and she was ready for it. “I understand your concern, but if we can get word of the conference out in the community, and then get started right away on the logistics, we can make it work. Really, the biggest limitation is the travel schedules of the people we’d want to come to the conference, and most of the professors I know don’t plan more than an academic quarter in advance. As long as we get the word out by the beginning of next quarter, we should be fine.”

  “I love the idea,” Tony beamed, and Ellie smiled warmly back at him. She had known all along that Tony would go along with anything she suggested. It was part of what made him so endearing. “I agree with Ellie, it’s high time that the rest of the world realize what a great thing we’ve got going here.”

  “Excuse me, but I wasn’t aware that we needed to justify ourselves to anyone,” Karen sniffed. “Going out and begging the academic elite to grace us with their presence seems a little desperate to me. Instead of trying to impress everyone with how clever and talented we are—and spending God knows how much money in the process—why don’t we just demonstrate that talent by doing our jobs?”

  Ellie resisted the urge to scowl at the other woman. “It’s not about trying to look clever, Karen,” she said carefully.

  “What is it about, then?” the older woman snapped.

  “It’s about taking up full membership in the academic community. After all, we go to their conferences; why shouldn’t they come to ours?”

  “I have to agree with Karen,” John Sullivan broke in, and Ellie’s heart sank. She had been counting on the support of the others to overcome the opposition she knew would come from Karen. “Not about the merit of hosting a conference. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t do that sooner or later, and I for one like the general idea. But Karen also raised the issue of money, and it’s an important question: where is the money going to come from?”

  All eyes swiveled to Ellie, and mentally she began choosing her words very carefully. She knew this was one of the primary ways that her plans might come to nothing, if she didn’t navigate very carefully through these dangerous waters. “I’m glad you brought that up, John, because of course every school operates a little differently and I could use your insight here. How would something like a conference be funded here?”

  “Well, if it was next academic year we’d just put it in the departmental budget and get it approved through the usual channels,” Beth piped up. “But in this case we’re talking about something that’s not accounted for in the annual budget, so it would have to come out of discretionary funds.”

  Ellie’s hopes rose significantly. If discretionary funds existed, that meant that they could be spent on her conference. All she had to do was figure out how to make that happen. “And how are discretionary funds disbursed?” she asked.

  “The board of trustees,” Beth chirped. “Well, technically the university President makes the decision, but he won’t take a step without the trustees’ approval.”

  “So I need to get the trustees’ approval,” Ellie said, mentally wondering whether it could really be that easy.

  “Better hurry,” Karen said with an unpleasant smile. “They meet every two months. If you miss the next one, you won’t get another chance until January.”

  After the meeting, Beth came up to Elli
e and put a conspiratorial hand on her shoulder. “Karen was right, you’ll need to move fast if you want to get the conference on the schedule for this academic year. But don’t wait for the next board meeting. Most of the trustees fly in from out of town for the meetings, but a couple have offices in town. You should meet with them as soon as possible. See if you can get them on your side.”

  Ellie smiled gratefully at her. Already a plan was beginning to form in her mind.

  24

  A FEW DAYS later, Ellie’s gaze was transfixed by a navy-blue hoodie.

  She and her teaching assistant were walking back to her office from a particularly uninspiring class discussion of Pride and Prejudice. She had hoped that a group of college-aged kids would identify with the story of a young woman wondering what would happen to her once she left her parents’ home, but she had no such luck. She hadn’t yet decided whether Jane Austen’s sensibilities were too refined and remote from those of her students, or whether the snot-nosed bastards simply couldn’t be bothered to take an interest in a world that didn’t involve iPhones and Snapchat.

  As she walked Ellie cast challenging looks at the students who slipped past her in the hallway. She very much wanted to believe that they were the sort of people who could and would take interest in learning about a world and a worldview that was different from their own. She wasn’t sure she could see that sort of spirit in their eyes, however. Most students, she knew, were in college more because they thought they should be than because they wanted to be there; they enrolled because that’s what their friends were doing, and because that’s what you do if you want to get a decent job. Until the light went on for them, Jane Austen would be nothing more than a dead woman who wrote books with no sex or violence in them.

  Now, though, those thoughts were banished by considerations of the hoodie that her TA was wearing, and how the way that it hung on her narrow frame made her look like a scarecrow dressed in a burlap sack. It didn’t help, either, that the girl had a habit of walking with her eyes on the ground, as if she was scared of what she might see if she ever looked up.