Hollyhock Ridge (17 page)

Claire’s hope level dropped to the bottom of the barrel as a
look of disappointment and irritation replaced Alan’s previously patronizing
smile. Why hadn’t he asked her earlier about getting Sloan? She would have told
him that was impossible. It was apparent he hadn’t even looked at her
application or resume. They didn’t care about her qualifications; they only
cared about the movie star. It had so often been that way. Why did she think
this situation would be any different?

“I’m sorry,” Claire said. “I hope this doesn’t mean I won’t
get the job.”

He waved her away as if he were already bored with the
topic.

“Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered,” he
said. “Leave it to fate.”

“Do you have a quote for every occasion?”

He gave her a stern look.

“Irritating you, is it?”

“No, I like it,” Claire said. “It’s a pleasure to hear you
speak.”

“It intimidates the students and amuses their parents,” he
said. “I like to give good value for the obscene cost of tuition.”

“What about ‘This above all; to thine own self be true,’ ”
Claire asked.

“Truth doesn’t always pay the rent, though, does it, pet?”

“No,” Claire said. “It doesn’t.”

“Are you in financial distress?”

“Nothing like that,” Claire said. “I’m just bored.”

“That is a statement I simply will not allow,” he said.
“There is no earthly reason for anyone to be bored, especially not one living
in a country where for most people matters of life and death are not a daily
consideration. You could read, for example, one of about a thousand books I
could name off the tip of my tongue, easily accessible through two libraries
and one excellent bookstore - owned by your fair cousin, no less - or by using
one of the many infernal contraptions the students attach to their persons like
external pacemakers …”

“It’s not that I don’t like to read,” Claire protested.
“It’s more that I hate to begin a book and know immediately how it will end;
it’s like there are three plots available and a thousand ways to rehash them.”

“What about the pleasure of the words, my dear? What about
the pure rhapsodic joy one may experience when language is wrought by the hands
of a genius? The bard often stole, no, borrowed his plots; hell, he even
sometimes borrowed the speeches from other plays, but all is forgiven when you
hear it spoken aloud. Never does the English language sing as it does when
performed well as written by Shakespeare.”

“I see why you’re such a great professor.”

“I merely play the role of professor, but my sentiment,
although dramatically conveyed, is humbly sincere,” he said. “One who can turn
up a nose at Shakespeare has no soul, at least not an English soul.”

“I love to hear it spoken, to see it acted,” Claire said.
“It makes sense to me then. But I fall asleep when I read it. It’s hard to
comprehend it when I’m the one interpreting it.”

“I shall take you on as a student,” he said. “A private
student. I shall convert your soul to English; nay, I shall save it.”

‘Good luck with that,’ Claire thought but did not say.

Torby and Ned returned and a new game commenced. Claire was
an average player, and no match for the intellects of her opponents, but to
them she was a valuable expert on common American English usage. It was a
dubious honor, but one she accepted, nonetheless.

Throughout the game, Claire listened as the three professors
also played a verbal game of quotes. Whatever word had been placed on the
board, the player who put it there would share a quote that related to its
meaning, and then the other two professors would share a quote that related to
the same word, or to a random word in the first player’s quote. She realized
now that’s what they had been doing on pub night in the Thorn.

After listening to several of these without participating,
Claire decided to try to join in. The word she placed on the board was “ruin.”

“We are here to ruin ourselves, to break our hearts, love
the wrong people, and die,” she said. “John Patrick Shanley wrote that; it’s
from the movie
Moonstruck
.”

The three professors were looking at her as if surprised to
find that not only was she still in the room but that she could speak. Claire
found she got a little thrill from shocking them.

 “I often think I should have that tattooed on my ass,” she
said, and then worried she had gone too far.

After a brief pause they laughed, or more accurately,
Professor Richmond smirked, Ned guffawed, and Torby giggled. Claire was
relieved.

“Well done, you,” Professor Richmond said. “If it is true
that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds
of love as there are hearts. Tolstoy.”

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that
makes unhappy marriages,” Torby said. “Friedrich Nietzsche.”

“Imagination, on the contrary, which is ever wandering
beyond the bounds of truth, joined to self-love and that self-confidence we are
so apt to indulge, prompt us to draw conclusions which are not immediately
derived from facts,” Ned said. “Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier.”

“That’s not very romantic, Ned,” Torby said.

“Romance is a lie told to propagate the species and sell deodorant,”
Ned said. “You can quote
me
on that.”

Claire was now wishing she had not attempted to play this
additional game. It added another layer of stress to an already challenging
situation.

Torby set down the word “reason” off of the letter
n
in Claire’s word.

He smiled at Claire.

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also
always some reason in madness,” Torby said. “Nietzsche, again.”

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not,” Ned
said. “Blaise Pascal.”

“Much improved, Ned,” Professor Richmond said. “Faith
consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.
Voltaire. You could substitute the word ‘love’ for faith and it would still be
accurate.”

“What, no Shakespeare?” Ned said as if shocked. “That’s two
in a row.”

“Very well,” Professor Richmond said. “And yet, to say the
truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.”

They all looked at Claire.

Her heart was racing as she tried to think of a quote using
the word ‘reason’ or ‘love.’ She could think of any number of song lyrics, but
here she was claiming her area of expertise was film, and she wanted to stick
with that. She thought of Laurie and a quote immediately came to her, as easily
as if the temperamental actress who once said it had just lit a cigarette and
raised a heavily-penciled-on eyebrow.

“Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth
or burn down your house, you can never tell,” she said. “Joan Crawford.”

“Wonderful,” Torby said.

“She is an old-time film actress,” Ned said. “Correct?”

“Correct,” Claire said.

“I want to thank you, Claire, for throwing up the sash to
allow some fresh air into our musty room,” Professor Richmond said. “You must
never miss a game night.”

Two hours later, as Claire left the professor’s apartment,
warmed by their flattering attentions and buzzed by their clever banter, she
thought, ‘What odd friends I’m collecting.’ They wanted her to learn to play
Whist; it sounded too difficult to her, but for them, she said she would try.
Alan had given her a reading list and a stack of books; it was daunting, but
she wanted to please him.

She hoped the position at the college would work out. She
also hoped her experience and skill would be more valuable than who she knew,
and yet, even as she cheered herself with these thoughts, deep down she
realized she was hoping it would all work out in the face of all the evidence
to the contrary. She was old enough to know that the world did not reward merit
as often as it did connections.

Her mother, who was known for her positive outlook, still
could be heard to say, “When has the world ever been fair to this family?”

‘I’m ass-deep in weltschmerz,’ she thought.

She crossed the street to the Rose and Thorn and stopped in.
Patrick was polishing glasses. He raised his head in a greeting. When he’d
returned from Laurie’s earlier in the evening, he had pronounced him passed out
but in no danger; Patrick was better than an EMT in diagnosing degrees of
drunkenness.

Claire set her stack of books on the bar and took a seat at
the end, near the front door, the seat her father used to sit in and the one
Laurie always chose: back to the wall, the best position from which to observe
the entrance and the whole bar.

At her request, Patrick brought her a club soda with lime.

“You want a shot in that?” he asked her.

“I’d rather face my troubles than drown them,” she said.

“What’s up?”

“I don’t think I got that job working at the college,” she
said.

“I don’t know why you’d want to work with that bunch of
snobs, anyway,” he said.

“I like the people I’ve met,” she said. “I would be great at
that job; I’m good at what I do, and I think I would be a good teacher.”

“So what’s the snag?”

“They want me to get Sloan Merryweather for their film
festival.”

“So ask her.”

“I can’t afford to,” Claire said.

“Why? What’s it gonna cost ya?”

“My soul, probably. And even if she agreed, she’d probably
cancel at the last minute just to spite me.”

“So work for Sean.”

“It’s so boring,” she said. “Plus Melissa wants the job.”

“She told me about the online class,” he said, and shook his
head.

“You don’t think it’s a good idea?”

“I think trying to be somebody you’re not is always a
mistake.”

“It’s okay to improve yourself to make something more of
your life.”

“Except you got her hopes up,” he said. “Now if she doesn’t
get the job she’ll feel worse than she did to begin with; plus things will be
weird between her and my brother.”

“I’m sorry,” Claire said. “I thought it would help.”

“Maybe it will,” Patrick said. “I want her to be happy and I
don’t want her to get hurt.”

“I wish I had someone like you on my side,” Claire said. “I
could use the support.”

“Laurie’s a good guy,” he said. “You could stand to be
patient with him for a little while.”

Claire shrugged. She thought of Laurie lying there in a pool
of piss and vodka, snoring his head off.

“Looks like old Ed’s got himself a little family now,”
Patrick said. “That Eve’s a piece of work.”

“Even bitches have sorrows.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s something I’ve been thinking about,” Claire said. “I’m
going to try to cut everyone some slack. We all have our troubles.”

“Listen,” Patrick said. “I could use a partner here, and
Melissa can’t do it on account of her parole. I heard Meredith’s been to see
Trick; she’s so broke she has to sell the tea room. I wanna buy it to expand
this place, but I haven’t got the dough for the down payment. Whadda ya say?”

“I’ll think about it,” she said. “Did you hear about Knox?”

“Of course,” he said. “The scanner grannies knew before the
police did.”

“That’s probably my fault,” Claire said, thinking of her
frantic cell phone call to the station.

The scanner grannies were a group of elderly people in town
who kept their ears glued to their old-school police scanners, now illegal,
which could pick up on even more than radio transmissions. Claire had taken to
doing more texting than calling since she’d been home on account of the
likelihood that any cell phone calls she made were being monitored by the local
blue-haired version of the NSA.

“What are you hearing?” she asked him.

“They’re after your ex,” he said. “The idiot shouldn’t have
run off like he did; makes him look guilty.”

“I don’t think Pip did it,” Claire said. “Not that it
matters what I think.”

 “The back door was unlocked and they found footprints in
the mud to and from the woods.

“Pip went in and left through the front door.”

“Poor old Pip; always in the wrong place at the wrong time;
like that time he married you.”

Claire balled up the cocktail napkin and threw it at him.

“He’s probably halfway to Mexico,” Claire said. “That’s his
usual response.”

“Well, Knox’s wife number two is in town, so she might have
done it; Anne Marie’s in California, so wife number one’s in the clear.”

“Unless she hired it out,” Claire said. “I overheard Trick
and Knox having an argument behind Machalvie’s. You think Trick would kill his
brother?”

“A few years ago I would happily have killed my eldest
brother, but someone else did me the favor,” he said. “Nothing would surprise
me.”

“The ex-mayor was worried about Knox talking too much,”
Claire said. “There’s a federal case being built against them.”

“Another fine suspect,” Patrick said.

“Plus whoever was in that car Knox was throwing rocks at.”

“That was very entertaining,” Patrick said.

“Are there any payphones in town?”

“Why?”

“I need to report something to the police, anonymously.”

“Care to share?”

“No,” she said. “The less people who know the better.”

“There’s a payphone down at the post office,” he said.

“Thanks for the drink.”

“Think about what I said. You could manage the events and
food. You’d be great at it. You could also sing anytime you wanted. I remember
when you used to want to do that for a living.”

“Not anymore,” she said. “I’m done traveling and I’m too old
for the band bullshit.”

“You could team up with Laurie,” he said. “Piano and
vocals.”

“I don’t think I can depend on Laurie,” she said. “I will
keep the partner idea in mind, though, thanks, Patrick.”