Swapping Purples for Yellows by Duffus Matthew

Author:Duffus, Matthew
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SFK Press
Published: 2019-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

16

Banners flapped in the breeze that swept through the open end of Old Quad. Standing on the front steps of his building, Rob had to struggle for a moment to stay upright even though his equilibrium had returned to normal and he’d endured the past hour without resorting to caffeine, ice packs, or vomiting. He’d also graded half a dozen more papers and avoided Betsy Mullins, who’d been trolling the halls in search of more warm bodies for the department’s Visit Day table. As much as he appreciated Herman’s hospitality, he wasn’t about to waste two hours sitting with him while they answered questions about why the department didn’t offer credit for AP scores.

Instead, he gathered his coat around him and set out for the Faculty Dining Hall. The buffet table sat against a glass wall looking out on the Student Dining Hall, and though he’d told himself not to, Rob couldn’t help studying the faces at the smattering of occupied tables. He’d told himself not to because the last thing he wanted after spending the morning grading horrid papers was to run into the writers of such disastrous prose. Since it was the morning after Halloween, however, the undergrads were still tucked in their beds. The tables were full of alums who had made the nostalgic, albeit culinarily suspect, decision to eat breakfast in the cafeteria.

Rob stopped in front of a table overlooking the quad, where a group of ten-year grads sat sipping coffee while powdered eggs congealed on the plates before them. The group looked up in unison, all of them noting their old professor with smiles and shakes of their heads, the two men among them standing up to greet him.

“Dr. S.,” Trent Fulton said. “We weren’t sure you’d still be upright after last night.” Trent had married a fellow English major, Judy Koestler, in the University chapel the weekend after graduating. She looked to be six months pregnant, by the bump pressing into her lap.

“You were in rare form last night,” Corey Diski, the other man at the table, said as he went to fetch a chair.

“I wasn’t that bad, was I?” Rob looked from Trent to Judy to Renee Dunhill, the last, and quietest, member of the quartet.

“The last I remember,” Trent said. “You were reciting ‘Ozymandias.’ After that, it gets a little foggy for me, too. That young man behind the bar had a very liberal way with the liquor.”

“Scott,” Renee said. “He was nice.”

“You made quite an impression on him as well,” Rob said. Renee blushed.

Judy saved him from doing himself any serious harm. “We still haven’t seen your wife. Is she here?”

“Judy still owes Ms. Calloway a paper on first-order logic.”

Judy slapped his arm. “I’m fairly certain she’s forgotten about that by now, Trent.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Corey said. “Remember the way she hounded Michelle when she missed the midterm?”

“She had mono!”

Rob cleared his throat. “If I recall, she didn’t want Ms. Nyberg to lose out on Phi Beta Kappa. She meant well, in her way.

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