“All I’m saying,” I told her, “is thank God I came over when I did.”
“This fellowship is for real, isn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“So I’m ready for my dinner at the Red Dakotan.”
Dad cruised back with a bourbon and a business envelope. I took the drink as he showed the envelope to Trudy. On it, in script, was written “Gertrude Labelle.”
“It’s empty, of course,” he told her. “The real fellowship check will come in the mail from the University Foundation, but this is what the dean will present you in front of the photographer at dinner tonight.”
“Dean?” I asked.
There would be no photographer. The dean was not coming. It was even an accident that I showed up — Dad had ditched me, asking me to wait all night at a place he wouldn’t show, so he could scheme an intimate dinner with Trudy.
But there was no way to tell Trudy this — the excitement was unmistakable on her face; she beamed at the prospect of real recognition. I knew what a library basement was. I’d done time with carbon paper and computer punch cards. And I’d come to understand that the only real reward you got was the respect of your mentors and peers, that, years later, it could all come down to a colleague like Peabody saying something as simple as Well done. This was how you learned to respect your own work, after years of doubt, and it sickened me that my father would exploit this in the name of a stepladder peep show and the longshot of nooky.
Oh, that cocky smile of his.
A sip of bourbon gave my voice the timbre of false concern.
“Gosh, Dad,” I said, “the dean might be pretty busy with Parents Weekend and all. We might want to give him a call to confirm.”
Dad threw me a disapproving glance — it said, Hey, now. Work with me here.
“Let me use your phone,” I told him. “I’ve got his private number.”
“No need to call the dean,” Dad said. “If he says he’ll be there, he’ll be there.”
“Never hurt to check,” I said. “It’s an important night.”
Dad waved this off. “Why bother the man? We’ll see him soon enough.”
Trudy looked with wonder from me to Dad and back. She assumed a nasal, documentarian’s voice. “The alpha males lock horns over the feeding ritual,” she narrated. “Has the presence of a female threatened their respective roles?” Dad and I didn’t say anything. He just nodded toward the screened-off bedroom, where the phone was. I had no intention of calling the dean, a man I’d personally seen fire a toothless poetry professor just to get his parking spot.
My father’s room consisted of a small chest, a bed made with crisp black sheets, and a window with a view of the carnival. I grabbed the phone’s handset and lay on his bed, extending my legs down its black comforter, heavy and stiff as canvas. Beside me, on the pillow, lay a flower, presumably for Trudy’s sniffing pleasure. Above, an owl, body facing away, looked back at me from a metal plate set in the ceiling. Here and there on the walls, you could see vague symbols and writing ghosting from under the fresh white paint.
I stared at the ceiling a moment, listening to the murmur of Dad and Trudy talking. Their exact words were lost in all that space, yet it seemed natural that people should feel close and far at the same time. Then I examined the phone’s amber-glowing keypad. I was about to call Information to get the number for the Red Dakotan, to see what kind of reservation my father had made, but I already knew the truth: he’d booked a table for two. Instead, I pressed the redial button, which would call the last person my father had contacted. The line rang and rang until a woman answered. “Gi-Gi’s Go-Liquor,” she said. I hung up.
There was a set of speed-dialing buttons. The first one was programmed for Shanghai Express. “Sweet and sour, half an hour,” was their greeting. Other buttons connected me with Speedy Taco, White Glove Laundry, and an establishment called Bam-Bam’s. My phone number wasn’t there.
Then, for reasons I can’t explain, I dialed their old number, Dad and Janis’. A recorded voice told me the party I was attempting to reach was no longer available. The message repeated, without urgency, and nothing seemed reconcilable: I couldn’t imagine my father sleeping by himself, under these black sheets. Nor could I conjure him sleeping with Trudy, obviously the climax of his pathetic plan. And here I was, in my father’s bed alone, waiting for inspiration like so many Odd Fellow initiates who had come through this room, young men who knew nothing more than that the black button in the elevator had finally been pushed, the combination wheel spun, and here they were, on the cusp of secret knowledge, with the promise of unconditional acceptance ahead. Above them, the owl who sees tomorrow looked knowingly back.
When I returned, I decided to trump my father’s little plan.
I took a lick of bourbon, cedary and sweet. “Turns out the dean can’t make it,” I said.
“Well, looks like it’s just the three of us, then,” Dad said, eyeing me.
“Except that something else has come up,” I said. I turned to Trudy. “Remember Eggers’ little Clovis point from last night?”
We were immediately locked in our own nuanced world, one that excluded my father as much as he wanted to exclude me from his “Awards Dinner.”
“Of course,” Trudy said.
“Well, Eggers showed me where he found it. And there’s more where that came from.”
“Remains?” Trudy asked.
“In situ,” I said.
“Where?”
“I’ll show you. Out by the casino.”
Trudy picked up her briefcase. She grabbed her coat.
“Hey, hey,” my father said, “what’s going on here? What about the Red Dakotan?”
“You don’t mind if we take a rain check, do you?” Trudy asked, and I realized she’d seen through his little ruse all along. “Or, better yet, why don’t you come along?”
“I don’t dig,” Dad said.
Trudy said, “My car’s downstairs, Dr. Hannah. We’ll stop by my dorm so I can change and grab my digging gear.”
“Eggers wants to excavate with primitive technology,” I told her.
“Like hell,” she said.
In a courtly manner, Dad said to Trudy, “A rain check it is.” Thank God he didn’t try to kiss her hand.
The two of us took the old elevator down, cinching our coats as cold air rushed us through the open, scrolled metal-work of its walls. Old checkered floors whisked by, and you could have kissed the counterweight as it swooshed past. In the underground garage was Trudy’s GTO. The quarter panels had all been patched with Bondo, much of which had fallen off, and the whole undercarriage was crummy with rust. She was planning on fixing it up and giving it a cherry paint job, but till then, the gray coat of primer was hand-painted with details of cave art. Grand on the hood was the same symbol she’d drawn in blood: a red horizon, the low-slung sun, and those antlers, pointing down.
It took a while for Trudy to fire the engine up. I knew the sound of a souped-up GTO; I kept waiting for that joyous GTO rumble, but all I heard was the grind of the starter.
“Sorry,” Trudy said. “The flywheel’s missing a few teeth.”
When the motor caught, I felt more sorry for it than anything. Blue smoke started filling the garage, yet we had to wait there, choking, till the thing warmed up. Finally, we groaned out of the smoke and, lacking any real suspension, were pitched sideways as we pulled out of the garage. You could hear the wild jangle of Trudy’s tools being thrown in the trunk.