My non-winning (non-placing even) entry to Toasted Cheese's 48 hour mystery short story contest, the theme being "something that is found between the pages of a used book."
Office Hours
“So you two are sleeping together, right?” Josephine asks me. She is laying on the top bunk flipping between Sanford & Son and the Discovery Channel, watching me fix my hair and makeup as I get ready to leave.
“What?” No. No!” I put on a finishing touch of lip gloss and a final spritz of hairspray before grabbing my tweed peacoat and gray scarf - very collegiate. Very Professor Keller. “It’s not like that at all.”
“Sure it’s not,” she says, laughing as Fred Sanford feigns yet another heart attack. This time it’s the big one, he’s sure of it. Josephine’s sure of it too. Not about the heart attack, but about the fact that I am sleeping with my English professor, which I’m not.
“Look, it’s not my fault that he has office hours at 7:00 p.m. is it?” I check out my backside in the mirror and grab my purse.
“Just tell me, Cate, when’s the last time anybody but you has showed up for these office hours?”
I don’t reply as I slam the door shut and skip down the stairs. So maybe it’s not totally true that my professor has office hours at seven o’clock at night. Maybe for the rest of the university he has them at two o’clock in the afternoon, with the appropriate overhead fluorescent lights turned on and the buzz of the photocopiers and the chatter of the English department secretary taking place outside his open door. But for me, his soulmate in a totally platonic sense of the word, office hours begin at seven o’clock in the evening, and the office I just described no longer exists. The fluorescent overheads are turned off, the banker’s lamps with their dusty green shades are flicked on, and the ancient velour couches that in daylight are nothing you would ever want to touch your clothing, become the most inviting things in existence. Towering shelves of books, set back among the shadows, turn this office on the 2nd floor of Bartlett Hall into a virtual porn set for the literary enthusiast. It is here that I prefer to spend most of my evenings. It is with Professor Keller that I feel most at home - stretched out on his couch discussing things that truly matter, and discussing them in a way that makes me see the world in a totally different light. When I finally emerge from his office into the darkness of an Amherst night I am renewed and refreshed, even though it is often close to midnight.
“Good evening, Professor,” I say as I push open the door. All that is missing from the scene before me is a roaring fire and a pipe between his lips. He is still wearing the green corduroy blazer with elbow pads from this morning’s lecture - a fashion choice that I never in a billion years would have thought I’d find more attractive than, well, than anything.
“Hey there,” he says, looking up from his copy of The Catcher in the Rye that he has had since high school. This is the book that brought us together. An email that I’d sent to him early on in the semester included one of my favorite quotes at bottom: "I don’t care if it’s a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it." He replied to me with an invitation to stop by his office to discuss what he believed to be the best piece of literature ever written, and I have been going back there nearly every night since. The book is magic, and we never tire of it. Josephine quotes Fred Sanford, I quote Holden Caulfield. You see now why this is my home away from home.
“How’s Holden doing tonight?” I ask. I stretch out lengthwise on the couch.
“Just about to lose his mind, as usual,” he says smiling at me and removing his reading glasses. His hair is tinged with gray, though he is only forty-two. He is tired of this world, of this country in particular. It is one of our favorite topics of discussion, the claim by some that we are better than everybody else on Earth, when many of us have never even ventured outside our country’s borders. He is tired of the hypocrisy. He has felt alienated for a very long time. I’ve asked him why he doesn’t leave, just pack up and move to Australia. He could raise sheep and write books. Maybe I’ll join you, I often joked. But we both know it isn’t possible. There are complications regarding his wife and his extended family - somewhat unsavory characters with close ties to highly unsavory characters. Leaving her, leaving the family, with the unfortunate knowledge he has gained over the years, has long ceased to be an option. Not that we ever spoke of why he might desire to leave her, as the impossibility of our situation has left no need to bring those feelings into the open.
“You look like something’s on your mind,” I say. I sit up and pull a blanket onto my lap. “Come talk to me.” I smell his Old Spice as he moves onto the couch, mixed with a trace of pipe smoke. Perhaps it is best he’s not allowed to smoke in the office, the sight of it might kill me.
“I’m going to tell her tonight,” he says. He looks at me in a way I’ve never seen from him before.
“Tell who?”
“My wife.”
“Tell her what?” I am barely breathing at this point.
“That I’m not happy. That I’m in love with somebody else.” He stares into my eyes and I know that any trace of a platonic relationship is officially out the window.
“You know you can’t do that,” I say, already fearing for his life. “God, no, especially not for that reason! No, please.” I grip both of his arms in absolute panic, envisioning the cement overshoes being strapped to his feet and his body tossed into the river. Yet he just continues to stare and I am sure he’s about to kiss me when he snaps out of his trance and gently pulls himself from my grip. He picks up his copy of The Catcher in the Rye and brings it to me.
“I want you to have this,” he says.
“I can’t take this!” I look from the cover of the book up into his face. “This book is special to you.”
“I’ll see it again, because I’ll see you again.” He tilts my chin up with the back of his hand and this time he does kiss me, softly.
“This feels an awful lot like a sad good-bye,” I say as the tears start to come.
“Don’t be silly,” he says. “I’ll see you soon.”
***
It’s late when I wake up the next morning. I didn’t sleep well, my thoughts jumping between Professor Keller’s kiss and a chilling fear for his life. I had dreams of us floating down the Mississippi on a raft, while his wife and her entire family shot at us from the shore. His copy of The Catcher in the Rye is laying on the floor next to my bed where I dropped it when I returned to my room last night. I’m about to reach for it when Josephine bursts through the door.
“Cate, you awake?” She kneels next to my bed. Something is wrong.
“Yeah, what’s the matter?”
“It’s Professor Keller.”
I shoot straight up, bumping my head on the top bunk. The cement overshoes, oh God.
“What about him?” I notice her face looks whiter than normal, as if somebody has -
“It’s all over the news, Cate. His car was found at the bottom of the river by his house. The brakes were cut and he went right through the guardrail. They’re saying he was...murdered.”
I feel that sick feeling when all the fears that you’ve convinced yourself are ridiculous begin to come true. Josephine wraps her arms around me as I begin to sob, and before I know it, I am telling her everything.
“Cate, please don’t be angry with me,” says Josephine. “But the police have already been questioning a lot of students.” She twists the corner of my blanket around her finger, avoids my eyes. “They already knew that he was spending a lot of time with one of his students - "
“Oh no, Jo, you didn't?” I pull away and look at her in disbelief. The girl has been selling weed out of our dorm room for the past two years and I have never once thought of turning her in.
“They already knew it was you, I swear. Other students have seen you there late at night. That’s why they questioned me, as your roommate.” She looks at me through teary eyes and I opt to believe her. “I told them that it’s true, that you go to his office nearly every night. I’m so sorry, Cate, but it was the goddamn cops! The last thing I need is for them to catch me in a lie. I’ve already moved all my inventory out of here, just in case. God, my parents would just die, Cate, they think I work at the mall.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m sorry you were even dragged into this.” My mind races with thoughts of how I will be blamed for the crime, and of what I can say to the police when they start knocking at my door.
“You know,” says Josephine, “you’re the only person who knows he was going to tell his wife that he was in love with somebody else. That’s a motive if I’ve ever heard one. You can’t let her get away with this.”
Josephine is right. I won’t wait for the police to come to me. I scramble out of bed and am dressed in under ten minutes. I find myself at the police station in just under ten more.
***
It is a week before I have the will to pick up the copy of The Catcher in the Rye from the floor next to my bed. I hold back the urge to smell the pages, wondering if they’ve soaked up his scent over the years. I don’t want to become that woman, doing creepy things like sniffing the pages of books. I am strong and will move on, eventually. But it is hard when everybody on campus looks at me like I’m a murderer, even though his wife is the one who was charged with the crime. I was cleared of any suspicion when Josephine vouched for me returning to our dorm room that night, long before the accident, and a record of my student ID being swiped at the front door solidified her story. The police also had no luck in finding a motive for me to murder the love of my life, though that is not much solace as I lay in my dorm room night after night, dreaming of the office in Bartlett Hall.
I start at the beginning of the book, taking comfort that Professor Keller’s eyes have grazed these same pages hundreds of times, when a bit of handwriting in the margin of page four catches my eye. I turn the book sideways - 47 Westlake Road, Perth. It could mean anything, really. He may have written it there thirty years ago. But it’s written on the same page as the quote that started it all, and that ink - I hold the book up closely to my eyes to inspect its freshness - but it’s no use. There’s only one way to find out, though it’s a damn long flight for a leap of faith.
***
The name on the mailbox reads “Caulfield,” and I see now that I’ve made no mistake. They never did find the body. My heart is in my throat as the door swings open.
“Good evening, Professor,” I say, even though here, on the other side of the world, it is morning.
