You Will Never See Me by Jake Hinkson

Author:Jake Hinkson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

Part VI: Saturday–Sunday

Alice Hardy

CHAPTER

21

THE MORNING AFTER the faculty party, I woke up with a hangover and an email in my school in-box from the chair of my department. My regular life, which I’d put on hold for as long as possible, had finally caught up with me. In her email, Shantell thanked me for hosting the party the night before and asked if I was feeling okay this morning. As she was closing her email, she delicately reminded me that I was next in line for the rotating chairmanship of the Theology department, a responsibility, she wrote, that she had always felt I was more than ready to assume. I’d deciphered enough faculty emails to know that, between the lines of this one, Shantell was gently implying that I needed to make sure the rumor didn’t get around that I’d become an alcoholic who made scenes at parties. If I did, I could kiss the chairmanship of the department goodbye.

I wrote her back thanking her for her email. Then I composed a short, strategically chipper message for everyone at the party, thanking them for coming last night and apologizing for my absence at the end of the evening, an absence I blamed on the recurrence of a migraine. I wrote Larry a separate email, short and light, making fun of myself, patting his ego, apologizing if I’d said anything “dumb.”

I had other emails to answer. Questions from a colleague about a symposium, “Organized Religion in the 21st Century,” that we were supposed to host at St. Ignatius next year. A request for a meeting from a student in my Religion and Gender class. And a reminder from HR that I was behind on my mandatory sexual harassment training. Every faculty member, the email reminded me, needed to complete the requisite number of hours of up-to-date training on recognizing and reporting sexual harassment before the end of the semester.

The thought of sitting through an online training program for sexual harassment while my knee was still sore from being attacked in an alley was too great an irony to bear. I decided I’d take care of the training later. Instead, I went downstairs.

Greg was in his office. Saturdays were typically his days to catch up on work. He had his own papers to grade, articles to write, emails to return.

Silently, I left him working and went and found Tuck on the couch. He was wearing shorts and the Fritz Lang Metropolis T-shirt I’d bought him for his birthday. I told him, “Grab your coat, we’re going to the movies.”

He looked up from his phone. “Now?”

“Yeah, why not? Music Box is showing a Joan Crawford matinee at 11:30.”

“Which movie?”

“Sudden Fear,” I said. Then, knowing my audience, I added, “They’re showing it on 35mm …”

He thought about that, clearly tempted. “I don’t know. I was supposed to go over to Julia’s.”

I shook my head. “Bring her. I haven’t gotten much Julia time lately. C’mon, text her and let her know we’re coming to get her.

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