Night Shadows Read online

  One had to move the chair to open the closet. One had to close the closet door and move the chair to open the bathroom door. That too was tiny. A small, ugly, once dusky-pink painted room, its height greater than any other dimension, with a light brown tiled shower built in under an overhang, so it resembled nothing so much as a dark glass coffin, next to a sink barely large enough to place a sponge flat into, and opposite, a dullish pink toilet. But like the room itself, the bathroom was blissfully cool, even though windowless.

  “It’s small but it will do until something larger comes up,” he told the uncaring desk clerk some five minutes later, after yet another trek around corridors and down stairs and again past the unsavory triumvirate at the bar, by now, he was sure, quite sick of seeing him. “At least it’s cool, and opens to the outside.”

  “Room nine,” the clerk said, altering his registration book, then turned unconcernedly back to the unending fascination of his complexion.

  “But as I’m staying for a time, I’ll need a larger room,” he insisted, he was certain unlistened to and unheeded.

  The old ethnic fellow was muttering more loudly as he passed, so he turned to see the old stick of a thing who was now almost vibrating with a kind of inner excitement.

  “What is it, old-timer? What’s got your motor going?” he asked, he thought kindly enough, taking notice when no one else about seemed to.

  And listened to the fossil mutter words that he would later—from hearing them so daily—make out to be “Something not quite right, you know!”

  “More than something,” he would respond to the same uttered mantra daily in the weeks to come. “More than just some one thing is not quite right around here!”

  *

  Called into Dr. Blethworthy’s office, he sat, regarding the report he’d made, which faced away from him and toward the American Studies department head, standing, facing a window that gave onto one of the university’s less insalubrious commons. His chief for the past three weeks, Edwin Blethworthy was a tall, well-built fellow, even a rather handsome fellow, despite his high color, who dressed himself and in general spoke and acted with the casual impudence of someone of equal rank in, say, Wisconsin or Nebraska. Upon them first meeting, Blethworthy had made some half-joking remark about the length, extent, and even the “substantial depths” of his own personal American experiences as a cultural exchange student, summer student, then assistant professor in “the States.” All of it totaling, as far as he could make out, but a few years at most; yet more than sufficient to make Blethworthy rather a personage at the university here. One with powers and perquisites either he or one of his minions were always bringing forth whenever the merest suspicion of a hint of criticism was in the slightest danger of arising.

  “Let us review,” Blethworthy now spoke into the window panes he faced, “your task here, young sir, these past few weeks.”

  “My task, as I understood it, was to read the text being used for the final year of American Studies courses, and to compare it to a newer text covering the same material which it has been suggested might replace it.”

  “And then?” Blethworthy urged.

  “And then to evaluate the one over the other based on various criteria…Isn’t that precisely what I’ve done…here?” He lightly tapped the report on the desk. “I thought that’s exactly what I’d done,” he concluded.

  Blethworthy covered his handsome face with one large, fluid hand, then spun around and seemingly in a single movement placed his body in his chair across the wide desk, where among other papers and books, the report in its pale blue plastic cover now glittered, a touch cruelly.

  “What you’ve done, young sir,” and here one of Blethworthy’s large, masculine, yet somehow extremely elastic hands shot out and covered his own hands laid on the desktop in a light, slightly caressing grasp, “is…excellent! If…altogether…preliminary.”

  “How could it be…preliminary? I covered every chapter and…”

  “Preliminary…since you could hardly be expected to do all that work, all that judging, all that reading, all that thinking, not to mention all that evaluation in a mere three weeks and one day.”

  “Yet I did,” he protested.

  “You did so…preliminarily,” Blethworthy corrected, caressing his hand with such fervor that he became somewhat uncomfortable and wondered if he dared slip out of the grasp. “It’s a three-fortnight task. At the least. Four fortnights makes more sense to me, before you could possibly have all the material in hand.”

  Eight weeks? Eight weeks on such a simple task? Blethworthy had to be kidding. He’d done it in three, three and a half weeks already at a half dozen universities already. Not these texts precisely, of course, but others awfully similar, since they were all awfully similar. He had evaluated American Studies courses in Reykjavik, in Mayaguez, in Riyadh, in Bangalore, in Darwin, even in Vancouver. The material was, one must face it, limited. The “takes” that textbook authors adapted were a mixture of the couth and un, of the trenchant and the bland, of the factual and the speculative. One, for example, might spend pages decrying the folly of “The Vietnam Adventure.” Another barely mention it in the context of “The Counterculture Wars” or “The Sixties Rebellion.”

  No matter. He knew the material seldom varied, as the authors’ attitudes toward the material by now could be filed away into a mere handful of approaches, all needing to be toned down, of course, made more generalized, to be worthy of conclusive text.

  He’d been hired by the university here, by Blethworthy himself as it turned out, based on all that previous work, all those evaluations he’d done, all over the world. What was all this now, suddenly, about the work being preliminary?

  “You wish me to take it back,” he asked, and watched the blandly handsome features for a hint. They softened, the cool blue eyes gleamed, the upper cheek creased. “You wish me to take it back and spend five more weeks evaluating the material?” he asked, just to make certain that indeed was what Blethworthy required.

  “To get it exactly right,” Blethworthy agreed instantly. “You see, that’s not so hard, is it? Not so hard to work at it a bit more. The salary, I dare remind you, is not ‘by the job’ as it is ‘by the time spent,’ you know…And that,” after a brief respite, Blethworthy’s hands had found his and were once more caressing them, “that couldn’t possibly be construed, even by the most pessimistic, as a discouragement, now, could it?”

  “No. No, of course not,” he had to admit. That he needed the money badly was certain. That double the amount he’d signed on for would be late Brahms to his mother’s ears back in the States, he knew for certain, almost managing to pay his brother’s extensive medical bills for the period. “Except,” he was forced to say, “well, except…there is one matter that is discouraging. Quite awfully so.”

  “My poor young sir,” the blond-haired hands now all but did a dance atop his own, “what ever could that be?”

  He winced having to say it, knowing it was far from the first time he had said it, right here, and into that blandly handsome face, “The accommodations! I’m afraid they remain unaltered from the first day I arrived here and…”

  The big hands released their captives, the big body retreated, the handsome face closed against him, turning inward.

  “Ah, but you already have heard how utterly out of my hands that situation is?” Blethworthy mewled.

  “I have indeed. But it doesn’t in the least solve the problem.”

  “The problem being a small space.” Blethworthy had listened—at least once.

  “A monk’s cell is larger,” he confirmed. “And considerably warmer.”

  “But this isn’t ‘the States,’ you must know, with its endless prairies and deserts of space, nor its unstinting central heating!” Blethworthy repeated words he’d uttered at least twice before.

  “The hotel has central heating,” he argued. “The corridors are hellishly warm, day and night. It’s my room alone that remains icily cold no mat
ter the weather or the central heating.” And before he could be stopped, “And even that monstrousness I can put up with. I have put up with, all these weeks. But the bathroom…the bathroom is…impossibly icy. And the shower. Well, it’s simply unusable. There’s some kind of film, not quite mold, not quite fungus, but—and it can’t be scrubbed off. I’ve tried. Bought a local scouring product and scrubbed and scrubbed. To no avail. Once only have I showered in it, and the water began warm enough only to become quickly arctic. While the shower tiles were all but alive with some growth, who knows what exactly…! Never again. I swear it.”

  By now Blethworthy was staring closely at him.

  “I’m not an expert, but,” sniffing, “you aren’t of particularly high odor, you know.”

  “Probably because I’ve been using other people’s showers. Well, one other person. A young woman down the hall. It’s not what you think!” he quickly corrected, as the blond-furred hands had crept forward onto the desk again, approaching his own. “We meet over breakfast downstairs most mornings. I was upset and I confessed my problem and she’s never actually in the rooms when I use the shower, naturally, and I clean it down properly, afterward.”

  “And so you see, you’ve solved the prob—”

  “Except that solution won’t do any longer,” he quickly interrupted. “As the young lady’s been forced by circumstances I don’t…well, anyway, she’s been forced to leave the hotel. And no,” he headed the dean off at the other path, “I’ve not yet met anyone else with whom I can share my problem or whom I’ve come to know well enough to possibly even ask—”

  “Nonsense!” Blethworthy’s hands now did sidle over and take his own in a loose, warm grasp, and for a second, he wondered if there was a shower bath here, behind the big office, one he could come use whenever he wanted. Until Blethworthy said, “I’ve just the place for you. It’s mid-distance between here and your domicile. Always spick-and-span clean. Large, empty at certain hours, and with scads of blistering hot water and soap.”

  He waited for the other shoe to drop.

  “My club! Or rather,” Blethworthy corrected, “my former team’s clubhouse.” He suddenly stood and was at a cabinet tray, turned, and cast some keys upon a heavy metal ring onto the desktop midway between the unsatisfactory report and his lap.

  He could make out two door keys and a thinner locker key attached to a metal tag carved to represent a soccer ball.

  “In truth, I still belong.” Blethworthy swaggered a bit. “They hung up jersey number fourteen for good, you understand. So I’ll simply ring the grounds manager and tell them to expect you in my place. It’s only busy around practice time and game time, of course. So most late mornings no one uses the place at all. You can stop, take as long as you wish in the large shower bath, and arrive here sparkling clean and lovely, as you always are.”

  He picked up the keys and admitted that they in fact did solve the problem, or at least the shower problem, if nothing else. So he said, yes, okay, he’d stay, he’d do more work, he’d reevaluate the manuscript yet again, and at greater length and depth, yes, he could even bear the cold little monk’s cell for that longer period of time.

  “That’s a big fellow.” Blethworthy raced to where he’d just stood up and grasped him in what he could clearly now feel was a former winning amateur athlete’s grip around the middle, all but lifting him off the ground, and planting an official kiss on his cheek. “You’re so needed! I just knew I could count on you doing the right thing!”

  *

  Cregnell listened to him relating the gist if not the details of that meeting, strangely unmoved by it all, a few hours later. His interlocutor had one ear tilted away, as usual, aimed toward the corner aluminum food service bins where other scholastics tended to gather and murmur news and gossip that he couldn’t make out but that he was sure Cregnell could pick up, given his extra-sensitive hearing.

  “It’s transparently clear, then!” Cregnell placed a slice of pineapple from the salad bar at the widest possible angle to his lips. “The Great Bleth intends for you to approve of the replacement text and discard the one in use.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Of course he does! That’s what he’s telling you by making you redo it and paying you handsomely for your effort.”

  “But why would he want to do that? It’s no better than the text already in use.”

  “No matter. He personally knows two of the four authors of the new volume. By getting their text approved, he washes their hands. Next time they find some way or someone to help wash his.”

  It was such a cynical statement that he simply sat there, unbelieving.

  Cregnell jumped into the silence. “He’s clearly got you seduced with his big blond head and footballer’s body!”

  “Men do not interest me in that manner,” he said quietly, so as to not seem to protest too much. He strongly suspected they interested Cregnell in that, and in other manners too.

  “Not to mention those big blond-haired hands. I believe he puts some kind of elixir on them to encourage that specific hair to grow. Possibly, he even tints it to blond it up more than would be natural.” Cregnell seemed blasé enough about his outrageous statement.

  “He’s done nothing in the least to lead me to conclude that he wishes to seduce me.”

  “You certainly resemble enough that Irish tosh he went gaga over.” Cregnell snapped up his pear triangles like a happy alligator. “The one who was here last season. What was his name? Agathorn?”

  “That’s a character from Tolkien. A deposed prince. I’m almost sure of it.”

  “A. G. A. Thorn. The Crowley specialist. The Great Bleth seduced the bejesus out of him.”

  “Excuse me if I don’t fully credit your account of Dr. Blethworthy seducing younger men he works with. Has he ever made anything even resembling a pass at yourself?”

  “He doesn’t have to. He knows I’d fall to my knees at his feet, eyes closed, mouth a…”

  “It’s your fantasy entirely, then. It…is…not…reality.”

  “That’s what Agathorn said to me at this very table. And look at him now!”

  “How can I? He’s not here at college.”

  “What did I tell you? Seduced and abandoned!” Cregnell assured him, holding up an index finger as though pointing out the moral.

  “Isn’t that Jocelyn Cardew?” he observed of one of the younger women who’d just entered the dining hall. He found her pretty and nice, and, hoping to end this profitless conversation, he zealously waved her over.

  “It’s not going to help,” Cregnell said. “Being all la-di-da and making up to the girls like you do.”

  “I happen to like girls. I like them a great deal.”

  “Excessively, perhaps?” Cregnell suggested, blotting his lips with a napkin as though he’d just applied lip gloss.

  “Not excessively!…Suf-fic-iently.”

  “Well, that’s too bad, then, for them. And for you too. As,” and here he whispered furiously, “Bleth’s got you by the short hairs already.”

  “Miss Cardew!” He greeted her. “And is that Mamselle LaFoyant? Please join us! Won’t you?”

  *

  He’d been alone so completely in the weeks that had passed while here in the huge pale green tiled shower or steam room that he had to shake his ears free of possibly interfering water to realize he was actually hearing voices. Meaning someone else was here at the club besides himself. Just beyond the showers, undressing, he postulated, at the triple row of stand-up lockers. Not quite conversing, he thought, over the loud whoosh of his heavenly warm shower, so much as playing around, as young lads tended to do. So he ignored them. Especially when their voices took them around the tiled wall to another queue of showers which were suddenly turned on deafeningly, almost but again not totally drowning out their voices.

  If the showers were heavenly hot, his hotel room, despite the change of seasons, remained glacial. No wonder he all but leapt to come here daily, sometimes t
wice daily, to warm up, to and from his study cubicle at the university.

  Blethworthy had only stopped him once in the weeks since their talk, during a chance encounter at a local pub frequented by the staff, to confirm that “matters were working out as promised.” They were so much so working out here at the club that he couldn’t bring himself to remind his superior that his room still needed looking into.

  Certainly his mother appreciated the protracted checks arriving back in Indiana. She’d even gotten Robert to shakily endorse a tasteful thank you card, doubtless one she’d herself picked out, as his brother, though nearly thirty now, tended to favor artwork emblematic with cuddly bears and large-eared elves.

  Therefore he would make do, as he said he would. Eke out things, really, he reminded himself, since sending home such a large ratio of earnings allowed little for forays into public houses here, even for an occasional half pint, never mind restaurants or “cinema dates” with any of the younger women, including La Cardew and Mlle. LaFoyant, whom he now daily stopped and chatted up.

  Still, matters could have been worse; coming to the club, he could use the toilets at leisure, avoiding his room’s polar, daily cleaned yet somehow everlastingly loathsome lav—except for lightning-fast whizzes.

  Right now spotless, warmed to the core once again, relaxed, he shut off his showerhead and grabbed for a bulkily soft club towel to wrap around his middle. Steam saturated the large chamber, and he exited onto the floor into yet more billows of it, groping his way back to the borrowed locker, until the mist seemed to abruptly clear, enough for him to stop and look and see…