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

the campus ahead of him, saw that it was dark, a graveyard. He felt annoyance at the time wasted by his coming out of the way, then at the last minute changed his mind and turned in, thinking he might as well have a look at his mail, since he hadn’t been near the place in weeks. It occurred to him, in fact, that maybe he should try to find a box someplace and take home the piled-up junk on his desk, use what little he had left of vacation to square himself away. The divorce was behind him; it seemed a good time to shake off inertia, get moving. Besides, the campus was quiet as a tomb. He’d meet no one—maybe a janitor, or one of the campus cops.

He parked in the alley by the library loading dock, switched off his engine and lights, and sat listening for a moment. No one stirring. The bear-rug, bunched up on the seat beside him, was like a large, sleeping animal. He got out, walked over to the metal-plated door, sorted through the numerous keys in his keyring, and let himself in. There was a dim light burning in the entrance-way, another in the corridor beyond. The place smelled of some kind of cleaning fluid and new paint. As he went up the stairs, feeling his way step by step in the darkness, he fingered through his keys again, hunting for the key to the mailroom. In the upstairs hallway there was another dim light, and by holding the keyring up to it he was able to pick out the mailroom key, then the key to his box. When he pulled at the handle of his mailbox, the box wouldn’t slide, at first. He pulled hard and, with a sound like a mournful sigh, escaping air, the box came open, crammed with letters and papers. He looked down at the mess, just a vague, cluttered gray in the dimness of the room, and a sensation like drowning came over him. He would hardly be able to carry it all without leaving a wake of scraps. He decided to go look for a large cardboard box, dump the mail in that, then go down to his office for the mail waiting there. There would probably be a large box or two in the department office; he could think of no other source of boxes he had a key for. He started down the long, dark corridor, his overshoes almost soundless on the marble floor, his two hands feeling their way once more around the keyring. At the department door, with its large, Gothic-lettered black and white sign PHILOSOPHY—all around the sign, taped notices, announcements, cartoons from The New Yorker—he stopped and raised his head, thinking he’d heard some sound; but apparently he’d been mistaken. He turned the key in the lock—a gentle click—then turned the knob and pushed the door open. It made no sound.

He made out—though it shouldn’t have been possible in that windowless room, he thought—the large, solid rectangle of the receptionist’s desk. Then he saw that, farther in, there was a dim streak of light under Tillson’s office door. His heart jumped in alarm, and he looked down at the luminous dial on his watch. Nearly 2 a.m. Burglars? He stood half in and half out of the reception-room door, his hand on the doorknob, trying to decide whether or not he should retreat. Then once again he heard something, just the faintest hint of a woman’s voice. He felt himself stiffen, yispicion and curiosity rising in him at once. He let go of the doorknob and moved slowly, without a sound, toward Tillson’s closed door. It seemed to Mickelsson that he thought nothing at all as he moved, ghostly in the darkness, toward the band of dim light. All his senses were wide awake, his mind strangely empty, he believed, though in fact he was thinking. He remembered looking in and seeing Tillson asleep on his office couch, a pitiful little doll with his mouth open, and with a part of his mind he believed now that he’d been wrong about the voice: Tillson no doubt had stayed late, working, and had lain down for a nap and had fallen into a sleep deeper than he’d intended. With another, less generous part of his mind, Mickelsson was thinking of the rumor that Tillson had a mistress, dear friend of his wife.

He stood bent toward the door, undecided as to whether he should knock or just open it two inches and look in. It was unlike him, he thought—this stealth, even malevolence. His son Mark would never do such a thing—nor would he have, once. Even when Mickelsson had begun to suspect his wife, he’d avoided spying—though perhaps, as Rifkin had more than once suggested, not for the noblest of reasons. No matter, the world was in its last days.

Ten seconds passed, twenty, and he remained as he was, his hand on the doorknob, his head close to the wood, darkness and unnatural stillness around him, his soul, perfectly balanced in indecision. Then he heard again the woman’s voice, soft and gentle, just a whisper, and the very same instant he opened the door and looked in, then closed it at once, turning, striding out of the office, almost running, as from a flood, in his mind the charged image of Jessica Stark staring at him past Tillson’s gray head, her eyes serenely passive, or so it seemed; perhaps she had not yet had time to feel shock or alarm. On the couch, under Tillson, sprawled like a goddess, she seemed twice the size of the chalky-skinned, hydrocephalic little hunchback. Her arm lay around him, cushioning him, her hand on his neck in the position of a mother’s hand supporting the neck of a baby.

He was halfway home, helpless, borne along by rage, shame, and guilt, before it came to him that she couldn’t have seen him; he’d been standing