Chapter 4

May 10

"Huh? I mean uh, Christ, I don't know," Kerns stammered. "The whole school? Can't I just teach economics?"
 Until slightly less than three minutes earlier, Professor Kerns' life had been quite simple. He was Jack Kerns, Professor Emeritus, happily married and head of the economics department at a prestigious New England college. For nearly eleven years now, ever since he had received tenure, he had lived totally free of both ambition and stress. Looking back on those years, Kerns now realized what an incredibly, amazingly happy decade it had been for him, although of course he hadn't realized it at the time. At the time, he had believed that he was bored out of his mind. Throughout those eleven years, Kerns had fanaticized daily about leaving his wife, abandoning his teaching position, and running off to follow his dream. 
 He didn't of course…
Mostly because he hadn't the foggiest notion what that dream might be…
And he was a little concerned that if he ever did leave his wife, she might be okay with it.
 So instead, Kerns taught three classes a semester to students who did not particularly care what they learned so long as they received nothing less than a "B" for their efforts. He published an article with a few graphs in it once a year in some economics journal or another, selecting the topics carefully so as to be sure that no one would ever consider reading them. He served on the occasional campus committee overseeing the college endowment or underage drinking, or some such blather. He attended a school sporting event every now and then to show the proper spirit--basketball games were shorter than baseball or football, Kerns had noted, and a track meet was always good because no one really expected you to stay for the whole thing. On the average weekday, Kerns was home by 3 p.m. Not too bad, he saw now, considering he usually didn't make it in till ten, worked only four days a week, and got summers off and a nice three-week break around the holidays. 
 All that ended the morning in May when Kerns was given the news about the untimely passing of Dean Jergensen. 
 "Jack, we're all going to have to make sacrifices to cope with the untimely passing of Dean Jergensen," Gregory Matthews, Chair of the University's Board of Regents had said. And as simple as that, through no fault of his own, Kerns' life took a rather dramatic turn.
 Technically, Dean Jergensen had been 92, a bit ripe for any death to be labeled untimely. And when it came right down to it, Jergensen's reign over the school had worn a bit thin for many reasons really not worth going into, since the man was dead after all, and it's poor form to harp on a man's faults at such times. Still, there was no denying that in the short run at least, the scheduling was a headache. Why the hell couldn't Jergensen have waited until the summer to keel over on his toilet? "Probably just did it to annoy me," thought Matthews. The other regents would have disagreed with him on this point, as each of them considered it far more likely that he had done it just to annoy them. As I said, Jergensen's reign had worn a bit thin. 
 "I, myself, gave up a very important golf date for this meeting," Matthews continued. He paused, but was disappointed to note that that this didn't elicit any obvious sign of sympathy from Kerns. "And I know for a fact that at least two of my fellow regents have been forced to delay long-planned vacations to be here…or at very least make some inquires to see if delaying their vacations would be feasible, which, regrettably, it was not…in either case." Matthews gestured to the two empty seats at the table, and noted, this time with visible disappointment, that Kerns outward expression still leaned more towards fear than commiseration. "Non-refundable tickets, you understand…"
 "But I think you see my point," Matthews soldiered on. "This is an issue that needs to be resolved now, before the end of the semester. Graduation is only two weeks away. We need someone to look respectable while handing out the diplomas. That's one of the most important functions a college dean has. You're more than tall enough for the job. And the gray around the temples? Extremely impressive stuff. Oh, and need I even remind you that reunion weekend is only a month away? That's the single biggest fund-raising weekend of the year. So I think it's clear that we need to find someone fast, and that means we need to stay in house on this one. An exhaustive search could take all summer, and in the end, we still might find that you're the best choice to take over." Heads nodded around the table. 
 That was about when Kerns started in with the begging. "It's just that I'm not exactly qualified," he said. "I've never even worked in administration."
 "Nonsense," said Matthews. "You're an economics professor. We've all read your paper on the economics of the non-profit sector," he lied. "A fine piece of work, that. We've had enough of administrators--nothing but a bunch of nervous paper shufflers." The administrators at the meeting shuffled their papers nervously at the remark. "We want someone with fiscal responsibility. Someone with real world experience. Someone like a college economics professor."
 Fiscal responsibility never exactly had been a top priority at Bucklin. In the past, whenever the school needed more money, it just did what any college would do: it upped the tuition, and offered to name a building after a wealthy alumnus. But while the first half of that economic plan was as sound as ever, the administration had begun to notice an alarming trend over the past two years: the alumni were becoming stingier. 
 "It's the economy, you understand," an apparently successful alumnus would say to a college dean or administrator when the subject of a new gym or dorm building had been tactfully raised. But the deans and administrators didn't understand. "What's this about the economy?" the college staff would ask each other in private. Then they would resolve to see if there was anything about the whole economy thing on the evening news. The next day around the coffee urn they would report back "Dan Rather says jobs are scarce," or "Tom Brokaw says wages are down." But this just wasn't the case, they knew. After all, no one in their circle had lost their job or seen their wages fall--and they knew people who worked at colleges all across the country. 
 "It's just talk," they reassured each other. "It will pass." But it didn't pass. Not by that May, at least. So Bucklin's regents and administrators made what seemed the most prudent move--they voted to install an economics professor as dean. "He'll straighten out this economy thing," they assured each other. "He's been published in all the best journals." 
 "And if he doesn't, we can fire him. Deans don't have tenure." The administrators had their man. 
And Professor Kerns had a problem.

May 12

"Do you have a dream?" Dana asked as we lay in bed, after some particularly draining afternoon sex. Dana was curled up in my arms. Her hair was in my face, and, inevitably, a few strands had managed to find their way into my mouth. But I didn't mind. What's the point of dating a redhead if you're going to complain about a face full of hair every now and then? If anything, I liked the hair in my face. I disliked the question. As is typical in the male of the species, I was happy just to lie around after sex and forget the future for a while. But this was one of those required conversation moments. I can't say I understood why it was required, but it was a well-known fact that a post-coitus conversation about life was the price one is expected to pay. There's always a price.  
 "Sure, I have a dream."
 "What is it?"
 "It's more-or-less what we just did," I said. "Only with whipped cream." That earned me an elbow in the ribs that pushed the limits of the term playful. I was glad I hadn't offered my real dream "…only with that roommate of yours joining in"
 "Seriously. Do you have a dream?"
 "Who am I, Martin Luther King?"
 "Bob, be serious for a minute. I'd really like to know." I could tell she was serious, since she called me "Bob" instead of "Gwaf." It was the same trick my mother used, an unsettling realization considering our current position. 
 "If I tell you if I have a dream can that be it for the serious questions for today."
 "Okay."
 "Then yes, I have a dream," I lied.
Dana waited. "Well?"
 "'Well' what?"
 "'Well' what is it?"
 "I thought we agreed that was it for the serious questions."
 "That counts as part of the same question, and you know it."
 "But if I tell you my dream, doesn't that mean it won't come true."
 "That's wishes, not dreams."
 "I dunno, sounds like a pretty fine line there. Maybe I better err on the side of caution on this one."
 "Bob, you know I love your jokes, but why can't you turn it off? I want to know the real you."
 "The real me is in my jokes. To understand them is to understand me." That ought to be deep enough to hold her, I hoped.
 "You spent half an hour this morning doing jokes about cottage cheese…is that what you're about? Jokes about cottage cheese?"
 "Any number of dairy products, really…"
 "Bob! This matters to me. Why can't you be serious? Is it that there's so little to you below the surface? Or maybe you're afraid of what people might think of you if they knew the real you?"
 "Maybe it's that I'm afraid of what I'll think of myself."
That stopped Dana for a beat. "Was that serious, or are you just saying something thoughtful-sounding so I'll shut up and you can get some rest?"
She's quick, I thought. It took me a moment to respond to her question; long enough that Dana turned her head to look at me, maybe just to make sure I hadn't dozed off. Looking into those green eyes from only inches away was just exactly the way I hoped to spend the rest of my life, or at least the rest of my afternoon, and I was anxious not to screw it up by saying the wrong thing. So against my better judgement, I went with honesty. "You know," I said, finally, "I don't know."
 
Dana and I had had a mere month to get from the beginning of this relationship to what seemed very likely to be its end--graduation day. Thus things had progressed at a more rapid pace than Dana likely would have agreed to under different circumstances. But I'd played nice and had given her no reason to regret the decision. I'd been decent and thoughtful, and, when it simply couldn't be avoided, even a little caring. Besides, for all our differences, Dana and I did have at least one thing in common: we'd both had our fill of campus social life, with its crowded frat parties and sweaty dances. 
 Instead we'd done our best to convince each other, and maybe even ourselves, that we were mature adults ready for the real world beyond the college gates. We'd done this mostly by hanging out at the café on Main Street instead of the one in the Student Center, by relaxing on the town green rather than the quad, and by visiting the used book shops that grow like fungus in college towns…even though we hadn't bothered to do the assigned reading for our classes. 
 When we'd exhausted Bridgeton's somewhat limited possibilities, Dana borrowed her roommate's car and drove us southwest to Portland, 30 miles down the coast. Portland was an old New England town, chock full of history. Or it would have been anyway, if not for its unfortunate habit of burning to the ground every hundred years. Still, Portland had history in the American sense, since unlike more discriminating European historical tastes, Americans are willing to consider anything old so long as it's been around longer than us and its warranty has expired. Whatever its faults, Portland had what we were looking for, which is to say there were a couple of restaurants that had neither burgers nor pizza on their menus, and plenty of bars where we wouldn't run into our classmates. Portland also gave us the opportunity to do what all mature, sophisticated adults do when they find themselves in a mid-sized city: compare it unfavorably to larger, more exciting cities we'd visited in the past. 
 On one occasion Dana and I even ventured all the way down to Boston, a ride of only two hours so long as there isn't traffic, which, of course, there always is. We both agreed we loved Boston. Then we got the hell out of there and never went back. It takes a certain type of person to sit in traffic for hours each day and decide 'this is the place for me.' But I suppose there must be a lot of people of this type, or there wouldn't be so much traffic. 
 It was maybe the most I'd ever enjoyed a relationship, by which I mean it was definitely the most I'd ever enjoyed a relationship, only that isn’t the sort of thing one admits when one's partner is about to leave for a year in, oh, let's say Spanish Guyana. I found a measure of gratification in the fact that the relationship meant something to Dana as well. When we first met, Dana spoke as if she couldn’t wait to begin her upcoming trip. Lately it was clear that she had mixed emotions. Maybe this was nothing more than the natural reservations anyone would have before leaving for a year in a country recently named runner up in a Weather Channel "Most Humid Location" contest, losing out to Hell by a mere 22 votes. But I preferred to believe that Dana had decided that she'd miss me. Either way, it was better than suffering alone. 
 "Maybe our relationship can survive a year apart," I thought from time to time. Maybe. Of course a year apart is a lot to ask of a one-month-old romance. And I wasn't the most patient sort in this department. I'd once gotten restless and taken up with another woman when my then-girlfriend had excused herself to use the lady's room. A year apart is much longer than a trip to the ladies room. Well, it's somewhat longer, anyway. Most likely, Dana and I would drift apart, and life would just go on, as life has a way of doing.
 In the meantime, at least the sex was good. Not great maybe, but good. And it wasn't Dana's fault that it wasn't great, either. It's just that the first time we'd had sex, I had made a particular effort to make sure it was good for her, even though it meant I couldn't exactly lose myself in the moment. I did this my first time with any woman. I figured if I didn't come through with a great performance the first time and there never was second time, then there would be someone walking around on the planet under the impression that I wasn't any good in bed. And who could live with something like that hanging over them? 
 If that's why the first time had fallen short, then subsequent encounters had been something less than perfection because…well, subsequent encounters always are something less than perfection, aren't they?  

May 20

"Dean, if you have a moment we need to talk," Associate Dean Thomas Prester Smith said, not bothering to knock on the door of Kerns' new office. Kerns had been in his new job for only ten days, but already he had come to hate Smith's "we-need-to-talk" talks.  
 "Smith treats me like I don't have any idea what I'm talking about," Kerns had complained to his wife, Katherine, the night before. "And it's surprisingly little consolation that he's right. In fact, it makes it even harder to justify hating the little jackass." 
 "Shut up and let me get some sleep," Katherine had advised.
 That night, as every other night of the past week and a half, Kerns dreamt that giving up his tenured professorship had been nothing but a dream. In his dreams, he'd wake up from a dream to find he was back in his lecture hall, happily teaching economics. Kerns found the whole dream-within-a-dream concept a bit confusing, especially to someone who was, after all, asleep and thus not operating at peak mental function. He often wished he could just dream he'd never even dreamed of the new job. But one couldn't have everything one wanted when it came to dreams. It was enough that each night he'd wake up back in his lecture hall, and for a few clouded minutes actually believe he had his safe, tenured life back--until that blonde coed named Shauna who always sat in the first row took her sweater off, as she did every night in his dreams, but never, alas, in real life…At least not in his class. 
 Even in his dreams, Kerns was a rational man, and Shauna's bare breasts were his tip off that this was just the wanderings of a sleeping mind. The realization would wake him with a knot in his gut, shortly after dawn. He'd come to hate Shauna's breasts. And by association, Kerns had come to hate Shauna as well, and avoided her when he saw her on campus. Rationally he understood that she couldn't really be blamed for removing her sweater in what was, after all, his dream. But then, rationally, there was no reason for her to taunt him by disrobing in an economics seminar, even one lacking in corporeality. There was enough fault here to go around, Kerns decided. 
 "What had come over me?" Kerns asked himself in the shower each morning after he'd wasted an hour or two trying to get back to sleep. Showering, like many of his daily chores, brought Kerns' self-criticism to the surface. "Why did I accept this damn job?" 
 "It was my sense of commitment to the college," he had explained to his wife. "And I was pressured into it," he'd thrown in for good measure. But deep down he knew the truth: he'd let his ego overrule his brain. Kerns wanted to run the school even if he knew he'd fail and hate every minute of it. It was the same psychology that drove men to become third-party candidates in presidential elections or managers of the Boston Red Sox.
 Well, no point reliving the errors of the past again, Kerns told himself. Right now, the pressing problem was dealing with this little weasel Smith. "It's not about the student diversity thing again, is it Thomas?" asked Kerns. "I thought we finally had that worked out."
 "It's always about student diversity, sir."
 "I thought you told me it's always about the budget."
 "Student diversity is the same as the budget," explained Smith. "Different diverse groups of students each want to get as much of the budget as possible."
 "I thought the student diversity groups were rallying for equality."
 "Yes sir, it seems that they've figured out that rallying for equality is their best strategy for getting more than everyone else."
 "Oh. Well, I guess that makes sense," Kerns admitted. "So what is it this time, Thomas? I thought everything had settled down since we agreed to build that African-American student center." The special interest group's new meeting place had been the prior week's big news.
 "It did--until word got out. Now the Homosexual Students Alliance, the Asian Student Organization and the Native American Student Board all want student centers of their own. And when that word gets out, we can expect the Jewish group and the women's group to demand them as well. And when word of that gets around, you just know that the United Muslim Student Front and the Bucklin Vegetarian Army will want in."
 "My God, Thomas, we can't afford all that. I still don't know if I'll be able to convince the trustees to spring for the African-American Student Center." Then a stray thought stopped him. "Wait, did you say the Native American Student Board? I've never even heard of that one."
 "Yes, sir--it's new. Brand new. In fact it was just formed when word got out that we were giving away student centers."
 "Did you try explaining to this group that we're not giving away student centers?"
 "Yes sir, that's precisely what I said when I met with him."
 "Him who? The leader of the group?"
 "Actually, the leader is the group."
 "You mean it's an organization of one?"
 "Yes sir, but there's a good reason for that."
 "Which is?"
 "There's only one Native American on campus. Fortunately, he says he's willing to overlook our obvious discrimination in failing to enroll more Native Americans in exchange for his student center. Frankly, I think we're getting off cheap."
 "Good Lord. Can we at least make it a smaller center, seeing as there is only the one of him."
 "Oh, no sir," said Smith. "We don't want to be seen as favoring one group over another."
 "Then you're actually saying that constructing a half-million dollar building for one student is getting off cheap?"
 "Well, the only other way we can avoid trouble would be to enroll a lot of other Native Americans--enough so that we'd be above reproach on the Native American front. But that's not really an option."
 "Why not?" asked Kerns.
 "Why not?" Smith was beginning to wonder if Kerns knew anything at all about running an elite liberal arts college. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to enroll Native Americans?"
 "It's difficult?"
 "It's extremely difficult. There just aren't that many qualified Native American students out there, and all the other schools are just as anxious to recruit them as we are. It's a real seller's market."
 "Well how did we get the one we have?" Kerns asked.
 "I'm quite proud of that, sir, since you asked," said Smith, genuinely pleased for the chance to tell the story of his coup, particularly to someone who hadn't heard it before. "I set a team of researchers to work on genealogical records until we found a high school student with a long-lost great-grandparent who was an actual Native American--even lived on a reservation like a real Indian. Then we offered him a full scholarship before any of the other schools could find him."
 "Then he isn't actually a full-blooded Native American, per se?"
 "No sir. Until we told him, he thought he was an Italian from New Jersey."
 "I see. So you're suggesting we build this Italian from New Jersey a multi-million-dollar Native American center?"
 "Absolutely. If you'd consider the big picture, you'd see that the center could help us attract more Native American students."
 "I understand," said Kerns, who in all honesty didn't. "Well, I don't know what to do about these student centers. Is that it for today's major problems, or do you have some other way to ruin my life?"
Smith was taken aback by the comment. He hadn't planned to start ruining his new boss' life for another month yet, perhaps even six weeks if it turned out he liked him. Both graduation and alumni weekend coming up fast, after all. There would be plenty of chances for Kerns to fail on his own, without any help from Smith. The smart play clearly was to wait for others to come down against Kerns before starting in with his own machinations. 
 Smith didn't want to ruin his boss' life. Not really. It was just that Kerns had taken the job that was rightfully his, in as much as Smith had served more-or-less loyally as an assistant to the now-departed Dean Jergensen for well over six months. Before landing at Bucklin, Smith had sorted all of the nation's job openings for assistant deans by the ages of those colleges' top men. Jergensen had been the oldest of all, and now he was the deadest of all. Yet somehow Smith hadn't been promoted, a temporary problem that figured to work itself out as soon as he could get Kerns fired. "Well, there is another treefrog protest," Smith answered.
 "What? Do I have to build a center for the treefrogs, too?"
 "Oh, no sir--I don't think so. But I'll certainly ask."