Stork Raving Mad(8)

Mendoza picked something out of the spoon—some kind of shellfish. My stomach lurched.

Spike growled softly. A small stream of drool began dripping from his open mouth.

“Perro! Perro!”

Mendoza grabbed a dishcloth and waved it in front of Spike like a toreador’s cape. He shook it slightly. Spike growled again and swallowed, never taking his eyes from the dishcloth.

“Perro!” Mendoza said again.

Spike lunged at the dishcloth. Mendoza swept it away in a dramatic arc. Spike braked, turned, and then popped up on his hind feet and whined.

Mendoza threw his head back with a laugh and tossed something at Spike, who leaped into the air to catch it.

I was relieved that Mendoza didn’t seem to hold a grudge about Spike biting him.

Mendoza saw me watching.

“Oyster?” he asked, holding out the spoon.

“No thanks,” I said as I ducked out of the kitchen. I wasn’t retreating, of course. I wasn’t sure whether my protective instincts were aroused or my curiosity, but I realized I should follow Ramon back to the front hall. By the time I got there, he was standing in front of the prunes, shifting uneasily from foot to foot.

“—highly unsatisfactory,” Dr. Wright was saying. “We’ve been trying to reach you for weeks.”

“Nine days, actually,” Dr. Blanco said.

Ramon stopped shifting and hunched his shoulders as if expecting a blow. But he didn’t say anything, and the prunes just sat there, waiting.

I glanced back to see if anyone else was around to help. I saw only one of the women students—the one who had arrived with Ramon. She was watching the scene with a worried frown on her face, but she didn’t seem ready to intervene.

And someone should.

“He’s been here for two weeks,” I said. “And working almost full time on his dissertation and his play. Did you leave a message with the drama department secretary?”

“We e-mailed Mr. Soto,” Dr. Wright said. She turned her frowns on me, and I heard Ramon take a deep breath of relief. “And precisely whom do you mean by the drama department secretary? The last time I checked, the drama curriculum was still under the English department. There is no drama department, and thus no drama department secretary.”

Her prim, condescending manner set my teeth on edge. And, to my astonishment, I felt some combative, articulate part of my brain wake up for the first time in several months.

“I do beg your pardon,” I said. “I should not have spoken carelessly. I meant Kathy Borgstrom, of course. As you surely know, she coordinates matters related to the drama curriculum and the students enrolled in it.”

“Perhaps she does,” Dr. Wright said. “But she has no formal position, other than as Dr. Sass’s secretary, so I fail to see why we would have any reason to consult her.”

Maybe because if Dr. Wright had half a brain, she’d know that after ten years as Abe’s secretary, what Kathy Borgstrom didn’t know about the drama department wasn’t worth knowing. But before I opened my mouth to say so, I remembered where I’d heard of Dr. Wright before. She was on Michael’s tenure committee. The committee that would start its final deliberations in a few weeks. The committee that would determine whether the twins would grow up with the security of a father who was a full professor at Caerphilly College or whether Michael would remain a mere associate professor, whose employment could be terminated at the first sign of a budget crunch.

Or whenever he ticked off someone like Dr. Wright.

Luckily, Ramon finally found his voice.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But my computer’s in my room. It’s a desktop, so it wasn’t easy to move, and I just haven’t had the time to bother with it. I know I could probably get into my e-mail someplace else, but it just didn’t seem that important. I’ve been very busy with the show.”

“Yes,” Dr. Blanco said. “The show. I’m afraid—”

“First things first,” Dr. Wright said. “You could have saved us all a lot of trouble if you’d remained in proper communication with the department. But at least now we can formally notify you that your dissertation topic is unsuitable.”

“Unsuitable?” Ramon echoed. “But—”

“We are the English department,” Dr. Wright continued. “Of an English-language institution. We cannot possibly approve a dissertation in a foreign language.”

“Then what’s the problem?” I said. “As far as I know, he’s writing it in English.”

Dr. Wright fixed her frown on me.

“That is immaterial,” she said. “The topic is foreign, and thus unsuitable for an English department degree. Mr. Soto will have to select another topic.”