Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

Just inside the livingroom, at the edge of the circle where Blassenheim held forth, Tom Garret turned his best ear, apparently tuning in on Blickstein’s words, though he continued to smile as if with interest at Blassenheim. Brenda Winburn, to Blassenheim’s left, stood pressed up close to the young man’s elbow, touching him.

“Theoretically they can’t, and morally they can’t,” Blickstein said, and raised the glass in his right hand to give the air a little poke with it, as if ending the conversation with a period.

“But that’s not an answer,” Mickelsson said, refusing to let Blickstein past him into the livingroom. Tillson came up behind Blickstein, grinning, to listen.

“Pig-in-a-blanket!” Edie Bryant cried, almost a squeal of delight. “Did you make them yoahself or ah they the frozen kind?”

Mickelsson held the plate toward her and ignored the question.

“Well,” Blickstein said, and hesitated, obliquely smiling. One could see that he was teased toward launching a lecture full of inside information—a sport he relished. “I guess you might say they’ve got us hostage, Pete. You have to remember the larger picture. The whole university system’s under fire these days.” He cocked his head, grinning, and looked up at the corner of the room. “Governor Carey comes in at the end of every year with his six-hundred-million-dollar revenue bonuses, and the people whoop with joy. He’s no dummy, you know. He understands that if you close down a couple of mental hospitals, or two or three university campuses, overcrowd the prisons, even squeeze a few police and fire departments, you’ll get a lot of people mad but you make a lot more people happy. He’s figured out the leak in the Hobbesian theory of civilization. Self-interest does not necessarily lead to fine police departments, hospitals, and schools. It can as easily lead to some old man grinning like a monkey, stuffing his forty-dollar tax-rebate into his mattress. So he’s got us on the run. From the whole university system he’ll be cutting out one-half the budget this next year alone.” Blickstein smiled as if that explained everything.

“Which means?” Mickelsson said, squinting. His wrists and knuckles ached. The murdered man’s wife stood exactly in the middle of the livingroom, smiling fixedly, listening. In her two hands she held the empty hors d’oeuvres plate.

“Well,” Blickstein said, as if surprised that Mickelsson couldn’t see it, “here we are with these people we brought in—with the noblest of intentions—in the Holy Roller campus-under-fire days. Whatever their virtues or defects, they’re here. In force. Well, so now we’re reaping the whirlwind.”

“Go on,” Mickelsson said.

Blickstein shrugged, grinning sadly. “Their position’s very strong. They can embarrass us, you see. Why?” He raised his eyebrows and, shifting his grip on the glass, held up one stubby finger. “A. They appeal to minority students—and they may be right that it’s partly a function of their program’s politico-philosophical orientation. Poor people always want clear, fast answers, preferably pious and rich with potential for bloodshed. No disrespect for the poor, you understand—far from it! But the stomach’s an impatient organ, or, to put it another way, the injustice has always gone on too long already. So an attack on the Soc gang is a blow against the poor, you follow? And not only do we not dare touch them, we don’t even dare make too much point of their existence, at least not if we’re smart; because B.”—he held up a second stubby finger—“they know how embarrassed we’d be if the taxpayers were to learn, in this conservative day and age—Reagan’s ‘moral majority’ and all that—that our university’s got a whole department, with the exception of one member, that’s ‘pinko.’ Stirs visions of Iran, Afghanistan. This is no time for university scandals. We need every penny we can get from our friends the taxpayers, and you can be sure our new man in the White House will make it as hard as he can.” Blickstein smiled at his audience, pleased to have made things clear but not taking undue credit, a servant of the general good. “So all in all,” he said, “it seems safe to say that, when the time comes, we’ll negotiate.”

“I see,” Mickelsson said, biting off his words. “In short, you’ll let them fire her.”

“I didn’t say that,” Blickstein said, half grinning, turtling his head in, lifting the ice-filled glasses up to shoulder level. “You know me better than that, Pete.”

That was true, Mickelsson thought, pouting. He glanced across the livingroom at Jessica, who stood poised, smiling and talking with Mabel Garret and Ruth Tillson; then he glanced over his shoulder at Tillson, just behind him in the kitchen. It was a depressing thought that this man he scorned might soon be his ally, and Blickstein, whom he liked, his enemy.

“It’s a mess, hey?” Tillson said, and nervously laughed. He sounded angry.

Mickelsson nodded, then remembered the plate in his hands and moved into the crowd.

The young woman whose husband had been murdered sat alone on the couch, the empty hors d’oeuvres plate on the coffeetable. When Mickelsson leaned down toward her with his filled plate, she shook her head. “Can I fix your drink?” Mickelsson asked. She’d hardly touched it, in fact. Again she shook her head and, for a second, smiled.

“Thank you for asking me tonight,” she said.

“My pleasure.”

“It’s a wonderful house—and a wonderful party. It’s always nice when there are students.”

He glanced over his shoulder. Beyond the partly closed study door, the grad students were belting out “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” It must be the historian Freddy Rogers that was playing the oddly mournful violin. He was missing; so was his wife. Mickelsson bent his knees, squatting down beside the woman. Her hair, he registered only now, was quite astonishingly beautiful, dark with red glints, like French-polished antique cherry.

“I’m afraid I was difficult the last time we met,” she said.

“My fault, don’t apologize. I wasn’t aware, at the time, of—” They