Burning Down the House by Lev Raphael

Author:Lev Raphael [Raphael, Lev]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Welcome to the hothouse world of academia where egos bruise as easily as peaches and vendettas grow like weeds. Cheerful, sarcastic professor Nick Hoffman never wanted to be a sleuth, but circumstances at the outwardly bucolic State University of Michigan keep forcing him to solve crimes and save himself from prison or worse. Now, at Christmas time, he's caught between rival factions in his department over who should be the next chairperson and even over what kind of Christmas tree the office should have. His life spirals out of control, thanks to an unexpected sexual attraction, and a blur of anonymous threats, stalking, and assault. Is murder next? Nick's only hope is doing something he's never imagined possible--buying a gun. Acclaimed mystery writer Lev Raphael scores another bull's-eye in his academic mystery series that takes readers behind the scenes of a world that prides itself on scholarship and fellowship, but is often just a ship of fools., mystery, academic mystery, gay mystery, Michigan Mystery, Satire
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

10

OUT in the sunny parking lot, I confronted Juno.

“What was all that couple stuff?”

“Wasn’t it fun?”

“She’s a nice woman, and now she thinks we’re a

couple—that’s dishonest.”

“Give it a rest, Nick. It’s not deception, it’s

entertainment. She thinks we’re sweet. To her, we’re at the beginning of our lives.”

“You make it sound like we were picking out a silver

pattern, not a gun.”

“And you make it sound like we’re grifters. Nick, we gave her a little gift. It made her happy. She’s a widow, she undoubtedly misses her husband, we made her smile. What’s so fucking terrible about that? We’re not cheating her out of anything.”

I had never thought of Juno as a psychological Lady

Bountiful before, but I felt somewhat mollified, even as I knew I wasn’t addressing the real question—how disturbing it was to be taken for a straight man. Disturbing because it was so profoundly pleasing.

Juno was right—it had been fun pretending to be

something I wasn’t. Easy fun. And there was a strange relief to momentarily being one of the pack. Did that mean my self-esteem tank was running low? It was flattering to be thought of as Juno’s boyfriend or husband, since she was the kind of woman who would make a man “feel—mighty real,” if quoting Sylvester wasn’t completely inappropriate in this circumstance.

“You enjoyed it, too,” Juno asserted, head cocked to the left, studying me as if she were reading my mind. She was doing a good job. “You didn’t pull away. You didn’t correct me.”

“That would have been rude.”

“Oh, really?” She leaned forward and stage-whispered, “It’s not that big a deal, Nick.” Then she strode to her Lexus and waved as she got in. “See you at Parker,” she called, peeling out of the lot like a spoiled teenager who’d already totaled a BMW and a Mercedes and was about to rack up a third disaster.

When she had merged with the light traffic, I realized we hadn’t even touched on what we’d learned from Mrs.

Fennebresque about the possibility of silencing a .22 with a nipple. It seemed vaguely ludicrous, but no more so than anything else that had been transpiring in EAR.

As I drove home, I calmed down more. I thought that

Juno might be right about our brief imposture. It wasn’t a big deal. We hadn’t cheated Mrs. Fennebresque out of anything, just played to her fantasy about us. And so what if for forty-five minutes of my life I had been less than totally authentic?

Did somebody behind the counter at a gun shop need to know my whole life story? And what if she didn’t even believe it herself—what if she were playing a game with us? Anything was possible when a retired nurse sold firearms.

But me passing? I had lived so many years of my life on the outside, as the son of immigrants, as a Jew, and as a gay man. If that wasn’t enough, having been born and bred a New Yorker left me open to suspicion and preemptive hostility, since everyone outside the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.