Quoth the Raven(11)

“I don’t see what we can do about anything.” Lynn stepped off the chair and pulled the shroud over her head. “I know you’re frustrated, Alice, but I don’t understand why you put up with it. You could go anywhere. Why stay here?”

“Why not? Look, I’ve been all those places you’re so depressed you couldn’t get a job at. Even if it wasn’t for the politics—I don’t mean the academic politics, I mean all that crap about being politically correct—what would I have there that I don’t have here? The right to tell people at cocktail parties that I teach at Harvard?”

“It would be nice,” Lynn Granger said.

“It would be crap. I got my B.A. at Harvard. I ended up graduating in three years because I couldn’t stand the place.”

“I got my B.A. at Southern Connecticut State,” Lynn Granger said dryly. “I ended up graduating in five years because I flunked my math requirement twice.”

“You just got a late start in academics, Lynn. You shouldn’t judge yourself on the things you did while you were undergoing adolescent paralysis.”

“A lot of people don’t seem to go through adolescent paralysis.”

“If they don’t go through it as adolescents, they go crazy when they’re forty.”

“Like Donegal Steele?” Lynn said.

Alice Elkinson had put the shroud down on the sewing machine and slid the hem of it carefully under the needle. Now she looked up, caught Lynn Granger’s eye, and burst out laughing.

“Oh, Lord,” she said. “Donegal Steele.”

“Don’t you mind it?” Lynn asked her. “The man comes in here, spends all his time trying to take over your life, runs around bad-mouthing you to the administration, puts his hand up your skirt twice a day—”

“Donegal Steele is a lot older than forty.”

The sewing machine was making a very odd noise. Alice had turned it on without thinking about it, and now the shroud’s hem was caught in the bobbin thread and bunching up. She switched the machine off automatically and began to unravel the mess. The truth was, she did mind about Donegal Steele, she minded very badly, but not in any way she could explain to Lynn Granger. Lynn was a brand-new faculty member, just arrived on campus this term. She had an equally brand-new doctorate under her arm, from Michigan State, Alice didn’t think she had ever met anyone who had actually completed a doctorate who was as self-conscious, excruciatingly insecure as Lynn. Alice could have understood it if Lynn’s insecurities had centered on her appearance, which was bulgy and a little sad. Lynn’s insecurities centered on her intelligence, and that made no sense to Alice at all. A doctorate, even from Michigan State, was a doctorate. Most people didn’t have one.

The shroud’s hem was unraveled. Alice put it back under the needle.

“What I mind,” she said, “isn’t so much what Steele’s doing to me—I can take care of me. What I mind is what he’s doing to Ken.”

“What he’s doing to Ken is what he’s doing to everyone else,” Lynn said. “I heard him in the Beer Cellar the other night, ranting and raving about what an unutterable fool Dr. Carraway was. Dr. Carraway was sitting in a booth in the corner with three of his students.”

“Well, that’s Donegal Steele, all right. But that isn’t what I’m worried about. Ken can handle that. It’s all this nonsense about being Head of Program.”

“Do you think they’d really make Donegal Steele Head of Program?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. But Steele’s always pushing it at Ken, you know, hammering away at it. Ken’s given his life to this college, for God’s sake.”

“Ken’s not as good an historian as you.”

“I think you’re wrong, but that’s not the point. There’s more to being Head of Program than being a good historian. No matter what you think, I’d be a thoroughly lousy Head. Some fool would come into my office, spill his neuroses all over my desk, and I’d decapitate him.”

“Decapitate Donegal Steele.”

“I’ve been thinking about biting him hard enough to tear flesh the next time he pinches my ass. Do me a favor, will you? Go out on the porch and get me the hand bleach. This thing seems to be turning grey.”

“Hand bleach,” Lynn repeated dubiously.

“It’s the one in the white bucket.”

Lynn tromped off through the kitchen. A moment later, Alice heard her open the back door and go out on the “porch,” which was really a balcony. That was when she began to get a little nervous. She kept a lot of things out on that porch. She never worried about them, because nobody ever went there but herself. With the way Lynn felt about her, it would only be natural if Lynn went looking through things she shouldn’t touch.