Patricia Gaffney by Mad Dash

Author:Mad Dash [Dash, Mad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

andrew

thirteen

“Next item.” Richard Weldon bounced from the window back to the conference table and checked his notes. “As you know, we still have no budget for next year, so we remain in the dark as to the summer schedule.”

Groans; tsks.

“But not for long.” Richard held up his hands with tired patience. “Next week, the dean assures me. Probably at our next meeting, I can let you know exactly how many courses we’re going to have to cover.”

“Assholes,” Dominic Brodsky muttered, shoving his chair back and dropping his feet, thud, thud, on top of the table.

“It’s like this every year,” Peter Flynn said in his patronizing tenor, rearranging the tails of his tie over the front of his shirt just so. “They like to see us with our mouths wide open, cheeping like baby birds.”

Every year. As if he’d know, Andrew thought; he’d been here all of three.

“But Christ, it’s almost the end of March.” Tim Meese scrubbed the ends of his mustache with both hands. “Why the hell can’t they get their act together?” He sounded more worked up than he usually bothered to get at faculty meetings; in fact, the summer schedule was the only order of business so far that had roused a word out of him. But the meeting had been going on for over forty minutes, and after five o’clock Tim’s focus had a way of about-facing, like an honor-guard soldier, from college business to a warm glass of stout.

From his perch on the tepid heat register, Andrew stared out at the network of illegal footpaths crisscrossing the winter-dead grass squares of Main Quad two floors below. The days were getting longer, but today it was almost dark out at—he pulled up his sleeve to see his watch—five-thirty. Late March: the time of year when students committed suicide most often, not at Christmas or during finals or senior comps. “

Poor bastards; he could hardly see them down there in the gloom, bending into the raw wind or letting it hustle them from behind, using their books and book bags to shield their heads from an icy, spiking drizzle. The students, the sky, the wet stone faces of Mason Library and Burnham Hall, the whole blighted world today was the shade of gray of a rain-slicked cemetery. It was the first day of spring.

Richard bounced to the other side of the chilly seminar room and began to talk about a temporary vacancy in the fall term, when Dominic Brodsky was scheduled to go to some vowel-less Balkan country for a conference. Andrew couldn’t concentrate on the topic, could hardly follow it. His mind stalled out these days, rushed forward to catch up and stalled again, like an old lawn mower. He ought to wake himself up by drinking more of the stale coffee Miriam had set out, but it gave him heartburn.

He caught Miriam’s eye; she sent him a sympathetic look that brought him out of his stupor enough to sit up straight. He’d had his cheek and temple pressed so long to the windowpane, he had to rub them to get the circulation back.

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