Age of Consent by Howard Mittelmark

Author:Howard Mittelmark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-27T16:00:00+00:00

Nobody else went upstairs that night. They all stayed downstairs until they’d come down from their trip, and nobody said a word about the noises they heard coming down through the ceiling, from Keith and Amy’s bedroom, even sort of got used to them, so that by the time they could see the first sign of the sun lightening the sky in the east, they weren’t even flinching anymore.

11

At five fifteen, the setting sun was exactly low enough in the sky to shine directly in Phil’s office window and straight on into his eyes. He might have gotten up and lowered the blinds, but he was caught up in an article in Speculum, one of the journals he regularly skimmed. The article was by a brash young historian with some very interesting ideas about the varying standards for miracles used in the canonization of saints in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Phil recrossed his legs, settled an elbow on his desk, and rested the journal in his lap.

The religious were like children, he thought. Miracles ... and they still believed in such things. God was so much a projection, the great daddy in the sky, so obviously what people wanted to be true, he was sometimes actually embarrassed for them, for so clearly and unconsciously revealing themselves. Miracles were like Daddy doing tricks with quarters when he came home. What’s that behind your ear? Why, it’s a statue of the Virgin, crying real tears!

They were no better than “abductees,” or conspiracy theorists ... in fact, hmm, there wasn’t that much difference between religion and conspiracy theory, was there? Somebody was watching you all the time, secret meanings and patterns everywhere, only the truly enlightened saw beyond the pretense. Yes, religion as conspiracy theory. There was an essay in that.

How could so many people accept such things? In fact, if there was one question left for him, it was why so many smart people had been taken in over the years. He shook his head and returned to reading just as he heard a knock on his open door.

“Professor?”

Phil had thought he was safely past his office hours; by five, not only were the hallways clear of students, but on most days his colleagues had all left, too. “Yes,” he said without looking up, doing his best to express his displeasure at being interrupted with the one word.

“I was wondering if you had a few minutes?” Rising inflection at the end of the sentence, sound of submission.

He recognized the voice in the second before he looked up and saw that it was Molly.

“Oh,” he said. “Come in,” but she had not only already come in, she had closed the door behind her.

“What can I do for you, Molly?”

“Well ...”

“If you’re here to talk about your term paper, it’s really too early in the semester to—”

“No, no, it’s not about that,” she said and took the three steps from the door to the desk.

“Well, what is it then? Is there a problem at the house?” He sounded a little impatient.

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