The Headmaster's Wife(16)

“Yes,” James said.

“I wish you’d come to your senses,” David said. “I wish you’d think about what you’re doing. I know you don’t like to get involved in causes, but there’s a good reason to get involved in this one: self-preservation. What are you going to do if somebody turns on you in this place? You don’t even have a pension.”

“Yes,” James said again. His coffee cup was empty. He couldn’t remember drinking what was in it. There didn’t seem to be any reason to argue with David since he didn’t really disagree with him. Yes, it was a jungle out there. Yes, he could be betrayed and crucified at any moment. Yes, he could lose all he had, which was—what?

“You know,” he said, “it’s not just a pension; it’s equity.”

“Excuse me?”

“Equity. This is a faculty apartment. I don’t own it. Some of the other teachers have bought vacation property, you know. It doesn’t make sense, if they’re living here, to buy an ordinary house that they wouldn’t use in the school year, so they buy vacation property. But I haven’t even done that. I don’t know why. It never really caught my imagination, real estate.”

“I’m talking about the apocalypse,” David said, “and you’re talking about equity.”

“Look.” James got up. “I went into Boston the week before last and got something to protect myself. It’s not as if I’m ignoring the apocalypse altogether.”

“Got something to protect yourself?” David said. “What are you talking about? There’s no way to protect yourself against false accusations and envy and spite. It’s not the Iraqi War you’re fighting here.”

“We had protests against the Iraqi War,” James said. He went over to the high-backed secretary and lowered its hinged writing surface. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, one of the few he owned, and it had taken him nearly two years to find and buy it. “These Regency-era writing desks are really wonderful,” he said. “They always have a secret drawer. Do you ever wonder what it must have been like to live in the time of Jane Austen, when people took manners seriously?”

“You don’t take manners seriously,” David said. “I don’t think you take anything seriously.”

The secret drawer popped open. James took the gun out and checked it quickly to make sure it was loaded. Then he brought it over to the coffee table and put it down again.

“It’s brand-new,” he said. “A .45. I don’t know what that means, but I do know that it’s more powerful than a .22. It’s probably not as powerful as a .357 Magnum, but those are hard to get. I thought of a few other possibilities, an antique German Luger, something with style, but in the end it seemed sensible to opt for the utilitarian.”

“You’re insane,” David said. “They could fire you just for having this. And it wouldn’t do you any good. It’s not the kind of protection you need.”

“Maybe not,” James said, “but it makes me feel better. I thought about it for a long time, believe me. I don’t know why it does, but it makes me feel better.”

“What if somebody gets hold of it and shoots you with it? What if somebody gets hold of it and shoots somebody else with it? What do you think you’re doing?”

“Maybe I’ll shoot Alice Makepeace with it,” James said calmly. “I’ve thought about that, too, you know. It’s truly remarkable how often I think about it.”

“You’re insane,” David said.

David’s voice sounded petulant and childish—another good sign, James thought, that their relationship was about to be over. People are petulant and childish all the time, but it’s only at the end of things that we notice.

James got up and put the gun back into the secret drawer, then clicked the drawer back into place, where it looked like nothing but a bit of carved desk front. All of these secretaries had the same secret drawer in the same place. Anybody who had ever seen one before would know right where to go to find the treasure.

“You’re insane,” David said again, sounding neither petulant nor childish this time.

James went back to the coffee table, picked up the tray with the coffee things on it, and headed back out to the kitchen to wash up.





7


Edith Braxner had never really believed that men and women had sex. She knew, intellectually, that it must happen—all the children who showed up at the doors of schools every September couldn’t be the result of artificial insemination—but the whole thing seemed to be so uncomfortable that she couldn’t understand the point to it. For a long time she simply hadn’t thought about it. She was old enough to have gone through school and college at a time when women were expected to be virginal until they reached the altar or died trying. She’d had no interest in getting married, and the only thing that bothered her about the era’s mania for virginity was its tendency to spill over into what she thought of as sensible things. It annoyed her to discover that men found it erotic, and faintly disreputable, that she had done well in a class on anatomy. It annoyed her even more to discover that many women thought the same way, as if they were convinced that they themselves couldn’t have remained intact and pure if they’d paid attention in their biology classes and not left school under the misapprehension that having sex while standing on one’s head could not possibly result in pregnancy.