Chapter 11

Charles shows up twenty minutes early to work on Monday without intending to—he’s been up since six with a stomach full of, apparently, Pop Rocks and jumping frogs, and the anticipatory anxiety kicked him out the door bright and early. The lights are shining through the blinds at 3636 Long Street, though, spilling out in thin bright bands into the grey winter morning. Julian lives upstairs, so it’s probably fine to be early. It’s all probably fine, just generally. There’s no reason to hover on the doorstep like an anxious teenager about to pick up a girl for a first date. There’s no reason for the tiny explosions taking place in his esophagus. He puts a hand on the doorknob.

A flash of motion behind the closed blinds makes him pause. He peers in, finding a gap in the slats over the door’s small window, and his eyes widen.

Julian is moving aimlessly around the front room of the office, a tie slung unknotted around his neck and a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. He’s in his socks, which are red-and-black checked. There are headphones in his ears, and he’s bobbing his head in time to the music. He isn’t pacing, precisely—more just generally wandering around in a way that speaks of restless energy and a bright, quick mind, picking up objects and putting them down again, sitting briefly in a stiff striped chair and then getting to his feet, hopping up to perch on the edge of Charles’ desk. A dribble of toothpaste slides out the corner of his mouth and he wipes it clean, grinning to himself.

Charles realizes he is frozen on the front step, hunched over with his face pressed to the glass, mesmerized by the sight of Julian unbuttoned and at ease. He jerks back, feeling his cheeks grow warm. Oh dear, he thinks hazily, I can’t go in now, and hurries away in the direction of the nearest coffee shop.

At precisely nine o’clock, he pushes into the office, clutching two hot paper cups like talismans. Julian is seated at his desk, tie tied and shoes on and his mask of sober reticence firmly in place. Charles is both relieved and disappointed.

“I brought, um, coffee,” Charles says, only then realizing what that might look like, bringing him coffee, after what had happened between them on Friday—perhaps Julian would find it presumptuous, or obnoxious, or something—

“Oh,” Julian says, a surprised smile flickering across his face, there and then gone. “Thank you.”

Charles’ stomach dives dizzily. “I’ll just leave it—here—”

“Oh, I can take it—”

“It’s hot—”

“Yes. Ah. It is.” Julian looks embarrassedly at his hand, now damp with spilled coffee.

“Sorry.”

“No it’s—not your fault—”

“Well—oh, um, I did put milk in it, by the way. Skim. That’s right, isn’t it, that’s—”

“Yes. Thanks.”

“Good.”

“I—yes.”

They shut up.

“Well, I’ll just—get started,” Charles says quickly. “On the, um, paperwork. For the Lu Fairchild case. What we’ve got so far.”

“Oh, that one,” Julian said, as if they have anything else of importance going on, and then looks hastily away. Charles makes a quick exit before either of them hurts themselves and sits down at his desk, feeling as though has managed a narrow escape.

Charles types, trying not to be quite so hyperaware of Julian’s presence in the next room. He can’t stop himself from feeling as though Julian’s body is emitting a sort of charge, currents of static electricity that pull bits of Charles (arm hairs, eyes, the lint on his sweater) in the other man’s direction. He swears he can smell the faintly herbal scent of Julian’s shampoo even from this distance. They haven’t talked about the kiss. Maybe, Charles thinks a little wildly, they never will.

But then Piper shows up, trembling and dazed, and the tension between Charles and Julian abruptly tumbles far down the list of things to worry about.

“I didn’t even register the spray of it on the walls,” Piper says distantly, unsteadily. “I was so fixated on his neck. And this one little trickle on the ground.”

Piper is sitting in Julian’s office, perched unsteadily on the edge of a chair. Tyler Wakefield, their friend from the drama department, is positioned firmly beside them, one hand gripping their shoulder. Julian is seated at his desk, leaning forward, a grave look on his narrow face. Charles is standing a at the corner of the desk, just too far away from Julian to accidentally brush against him. He’s staring at Piper, whose news has almost, but not quite, muted his acute sensitivity to Julian’s presence.

“There was so much blood,” Piper says again. Tyler squeezes their shoulder.

“Have you given a statement to the police yet?” Julian asks.

Piper nods shakily. “There wasn’t much to say, really. I mean, I didn’t know what else to say. We found him there after we heard Rachel and her friends scream.”

“Those are the undergrads you mentioned?”

“Yes.”

The room falls silent. Everyone in it is asking the same silent question. Charles feels it burning the tip of his tongue. Finally, Piper glances up at Tyler, a quick, comfort-seeking glance, and then takes a breath in.

“Do you think…could this have anything to do with Lu?” they ask. Their voice is tight, stretched thin across the gaping pit of fear Charles can sense has opened up inside them.

Julian is quiet. Then, for the first time that day since their exchange over coffee, he looks directly at Charles.

Heat shoots through Charles, an instantaneous flush across his cheeks. Julian’s eyes are so pale. How are they so pale? He looks like a ghost, like he might just fade out of view at any second.

“It’s hard to know,” Charles says, tone coming out steady and calm—because that’s what Julian’s look was asking for. To talk to Piper, on Julian’s behalf.

“How could it?” Tyler asks, his deep actor’s voice resonant and rich even in the little office. “Lu and Jack didn’t have anything to do with each other.”

Charles glances at Julian, puzzled. “But they’re both English grad students, right? They must have spent a fair amount of time together, even if they weren’t friends.”

Tyler laughs. It’s not a very nice laugh. “They were on opposite sides. They stayed as far away from each other as they could.”

A pause expands meaningfully in the room, almost tangible, the edges of a bubble pushing outwards.

“Opposite sides?” Julian’s voice is quiet but sharp. “What do you mean by that?”

Piper is looking guiltily down at the table. They fidget a little, shifting in their seat.

“Piper?” Charles asks gently.

Piper rubs their face. “I maybe understated the ideological split within the department.”

Tyler mutters, “To be fair, it would be hard to overstate it.”

“Piper, could you explain the situation to us a little more clearly, please?” Julian asks. He seems to have forgotten his shyness in the face of this new information, Charles notices.

“Yes,” Piper says. “I’m sorry. It’s…they don’t like us to talk about it. It doesn’t look good, to have the department be so divided. So…the split between the historicists and the presentists that I was talking about before—the people who are interested in, like, how things really were in the past, and the people who care more about what scholarship tells us about today. That’s really strong in our department. Like, there are people who do one thing, and people who do the other. And they don’t mix. So you work with one set of professors or the other. And you hang out with and exchange ideas with one set of grad students or the other.” Piper squirms a little, hesitating; Charles gets the sense that they’re still minimizing the situation somehow. “People on either side of the debate aren’t very friendly. So Lu and Jack didn’t see much of each other.”

Charles doesn’t really remember presentism and historicism being big subjects for debate in his grad program. Were they out of touch, he wonders, or is Schenley deep in some sort of niche debate? “Is this common knowledge?” he asks. “Amongst academics, I mean. That your department is so split on this issue.”

Julian frowns, and Charles realizes suddenly that this might not be not the most pertinent question to be asking at the moment. His stomach squirms with a wash of embarrassment.

“Um,” says Piper. “Well. Not…I mean, sort of. It’s obvious from the scholarship that comes out of the department that we’ve got folks on multiple sides of the question. But we, um…we try to present it as a kind of friendly debate. Laugh about it at conferences, that kind of thing. It’s just—it doesn’t look very good to potential hires or applicants to the program.”

Tyler is looking a bit like he’s trying to hold his tongue, Charles notices. But Piper seems grateful for his hand on their shoulder.

“Could Jack’s murder have to do with this schism?” Julian asks bluntly.

Piper’s forehead creases. “I don’t know how it could. I mean, I guess it’s possible? But I’m not sure in what way.”

“Could someone have objected to his views enough to kill him?”

Shock flashes across Piper’s face, and even Tyler looks startled. “Oh my god,” says Piper. “No. No. Nobody on our—no one would have done that. You don’t know—I know you don’t know them, but I do, and that’s just—it’s not possible.”

“We often don’t know people as well as we think,” Julian says quietly.

Piper’s face contorts in what Charles thinks are the beginnings of anger. He steps in quickly—better to swerve away from the question and come back to it later. “I can see how murder might be taking things too far. And maybe Jack’s killing had nothing to do with the English department.” He can see Julian open his mouth to object, but hurries on: “But Lu, though. Say that’s true, and that her leaving has nothing to do with what happened to Jack. Could her disappearance be related to the departmental split?”         

The anger drains from Piper’s face. Slowly, they nod. “Yeah. I mean, in one way or another. It’s not…people do leave, you know. Grad students. New faculty. It’s not a very…easy place to be a lot of the time. But Lu—she’s committed. She really believes in her work and in the rest of the presentists and I don’t think she’d just get fed up and go.”

“Then maybe she was pressured to,” Julian says. “By someone who disagreed with her views.”

Piper rubs their face with their hands. “Maybe. I guess so. But then that would mean—that would mean her leaving doesn’t have anything to do with Jack. Right? You don’t think she’s in danger? Or that—that she’s—”

Julian’s throat bobs as he swallows uncomfortably. “Well. One thing we know is that Jack’s body was very publicly placed. And a cut throat, with that much blood—it might not have been premeditated. He also might not have seen it coming. Either way, it made quite a…” He hesitates. “A spectacle. And if Lu had been—hurt—I’d expect it to look something like what happened to Jack. But…”

“But there’s no body,” Piper says quietly.

Julian nods. “As we know from the fact that she took her things and left the plane ticket as misdirection on your laptop, she clearly left under her own steam. And she’s missing, unlike Jack. Those are good signs.”

“But the five pips.”

Piper’s voice is soft. Tyler rubs his hand in a soothing circle on Piper’s back. Charles feels a pulse of sympathy and worry.

“Yes,” says Julian. “That’s concerning.”

Tyler glances at Julian and Charles, then at Piper. “What if—the police…”

“No,” Julian says immediately. Everyone’s heads swivel to him. “You’re thinking of getting the police involved in Lu’s disappearance,” he says. “I wouldn’t do that. Not at this stage.”

“Why?” Tyler asks, a little defiantly.

“You don’t want to give them a reason to link Lu to Jack’s murder.”

“But that’s the whole reason to tell them,” Tyler says. “In case they are linked.”

Julian gives a little hm. “Lu and Jack on opposite sides—Lu suspiciously absent for the week leading up to his murder—”

Piper’s eyes grow wide. “You think they’ll wonder if she did it.”

Julian raises a shoulder, then lets it fall.

“Fuck,” says Piper. “You know she didn’t, right?” They look at Tyler. “You know, right? Lu would never—”

“I know,” Tyler says, looking more bemused than anything. “Of course not. Jesus.”

“Besides,” Julian adds, “the department is going to be shaken up enough by the investigation into Jack’s death. People will be on the defensive. The less obtrusive our inquiries can be, the better. If the police are poking around Lu’s situation…”

Piper nods. “I don’t trust the police, anyway,” they say.

“Yeah,” Tyler says. “I mean, no shit, I know, I just thought…”

“It’s okay,” Piper says. “I get it. But I think he’s right.”

Julian clears his throat. “How’s the situation on campus? If there are lots of people around it won’t be a good time for me to go around asking questions. But I’d really hoped to talk to some of the folks on the list you sent us.”

“Right,” says Piper. “Um…well, classes are cancelled today. And the police were still there when I left. I don’t think they want anyone in the building right now. Oh, but—there’s going to be a vigil tomorrow night, out on the quad. Everyone will be there, if you want to come.”

Julian nods slowly. “Yes. That’s a good idea. It’ll give me a chance to observe everyone, at least.”

Observe everyone, Charles thinks; he’s not sure Piper hears the unspoken implication, but Charles does—everyone, he thinks, means all the suspects.

Piper doesn’t want to go back to campus the following day—the thought of it makes them a little shaky again—but they have a meeting scheduled that afternoon that they can’t miss. It’s about the upcoming open house for new grad student admits, and they really need to make sure they get some more presentists in this year, ones who will stick around to carry on the work once Piper and the cohort above them leave. So they steel themself and take the back staircase, making their way to the department library without passing the place where Jack was killed.

Isabel Ortiz, Fatima Amir, Sarah Rasmussen, and Jordan James—all the presentist professors—have their heads together when Piper walks in. The curtains are closed and the shade is drawn over the window in the door. The bookshelves that line the walls are full of old books, mostly dust-covered and fading, collected when Professor Christopher Maynard, Schenley’s one holdout for old-school, old-white-man scholarship, still had friends and sway in the department. Or rather, collected when those friends retired or moved on and donated the dregs of their own collections to its little library. Highlights include various aging editions of the Norton Anthology of English Literature, twelve identical copies of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a collection of T.S. Eliot’s essays, and Lu’s favorite, discovered while eating pizza at a welcome event her and Piper’s first year, a slim clothbound volume entitled Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Several elaborately upholstered chairs sit lumpily in the corners, and a long dark wooden table suitable for an Oxbridge dining hall takes up more space in the middle of the room than it should. The library lacks the comfortable disorder of the grad lounge; perhaps because it is meant to be a unifying departmental space in an extremely disunited department, no one has done much to update it over the last twenty years.

Piper takes a seat near the huddle of professors. They glance up with welcoming smiles that fade quickly from their faces. The department hallways were eerily quiet when Piper walked in, avoiding the staircase where Jack had been lying that morning. They know he won’t be there anymore, but even in the absence of his body and all that blood, Piper knows they’ll always imagine they can see the infinitesimal traces of the event that will linger there forever.

Also, there are police officers all over campus. Piper passed one, ducking their head and making themself as unobtrusive as possible, as they walked into the building this morning.

“I’m sorry you all have to experience this,” Isabel says once Katie, Antonio, and Phoebe have all trickled in. “It feels really fucked up. You know, the dean wanted the police to bring metal detectors and scan everyone coming in.”

“Jesus,” Antonio says.

“They don’t—does anyone have any idea what happened?” Katie asks.

Isabel shrugs. “They’re not telling us any more than you.”

Sarah Rasmussen glances at the door. “We’re not waiting on anyone else, are we? Phoebe, will you shut the door all the way? Thank you.”

Piper looks briefly at their friends, surprised. They’d assumed some of the presentist students from younger cohorts would be coming as well.

“Thought it would be best with just us, this time around,” says Isabel. “Just the old guard. Open house is just so tricky to navigate, as you know, and considering the events of this morning…well, we’re going to need to be especially on our toes. It would be entirely reasonable for the new admits to worry about coming here after what’s happened. We want to make sure they know it’s still a safe, welcoming space.”

As Isabel speaks, she absently pulls her hair back, fingers deftly twisting the curls into a knot. It’s her battle look. Piper’s not sure if Isabel thinks of it that way, but they and the other presentist students have been calling it that since they were still in coursework. As always, it’s accompanied by a change in the atmosphere: a sharpening, a focusing. Everyone sits up a little straighter, opens their notebooks, clicks their pens out. Even today, the outside world recedes and the task at hand takes center stage.

“Okay,” Isabel says briskly. “So. First of all, some updates on the new admits. As of yesterday, we’ve got nine total confirmed for open house, out of sixteen who still haven’t made up their minds. Three of those are definitely ours if they accept, two are maybe us or maybe the historicists’. Antonio, one of the maybes is an early modernist, so if you can email him, that would be great. I’ll get you his contact info. You’ll need to make sure you stick to him throughout the open house, too, along with Fatima. We might be able to get you to pick him up from the airport if we play our cards right.”

Antonio nods. “Got it.”

“The other’s less likely to be on our team—she does twentieth century British, seems fairly standard, but I know one of the people who wrote her rec letter and that might be a good way in. I’ll make sure to be in touch with her but as far as you all go, Phoebe, that’s you. Oh, and she’s got her M.A., so she should have some sense at least of the state of the field.”

“The early modernist is an undergrad?” Antonio asks.

“Yeah. From…”

“St. Olaf,” Sarah supplies, consulting her list.

“Right. So. His writing sample was excellent, some good if standard-ish insights about Marlowe, but there was a section on a recent production of Dr. Faustus at the end, so we might be able to get him to see the light if we’re persuasive. I don’t get the sense that he has much background in critical methodologies, but I’m hoping he’ll get excited instead of run screaming.” She smiles wryly. “Now. Some really good news. Jordan, you want to do the honors?”

Jordan James, a short, dapper trans man in a suit and tie, grins. “Yes, I do. You all remember Elena Gutierrez, the really fabulous candidate with the M.F.A. from CalArts?”

“The dancer?” Piper asks.

“That’s her. She’s working on the intersections of queer Latinx dance with Catholic rites and colonial histories. Really, really good stuff. She’s been accepted to UCLA and Rutgers, too. But. I have convinced her to at least give us a shot. She’ll be at open house.”

“Oh, fuck yes.” Katie pumps her fist. “Another dance person.”

“There’s no guarantee she’ll accept,” Isabel cautions. “We’ve got a lot working against us. But we could really use her in the department. She’s a dancer herself—I’d love to be able to keep doing performances once you’ve moved on, Katie, it’s brought so much energy to the work.”

Katie’s face flushes with pleasure. Piper can see the excitement in their classmates’ faces and tries guiltily to feel it too, to focus harder; they’re still feeling the nudge of recent events at the back of their brain.

“Want to talk schedule, Sarah?” Isabel asks.

Dr. Rasmussen nods. “Yeah. So, I’ve been checking with Bianca,” she says, naming the department administrative coordinator, whose competence and professionalism is just about the only thing the entire department agrees on. “We’re having the usual whole-department breakfast on the first day. Fruit, pastries, coffee. Chatting in here. Bianca’s scheduled that, and then an info session with her, and then possibly a teaching panel before lunch or a campus tour.”

“Best behavior at breakfast, of course,” Isabel says. “No need to step on the historicists’ toes then—if someone who’s obviously one of their admits talks to you, chat politely and then excuse yourself as soon as possible. They’ll be doing the same with ours. And for the few who are in the middle, don’t let them know what’s up, of course, but try to get in on those conversations as much as possible.”

They all nod. Piper remembers the open house breakfasts of the last few years—tense, polite affairs, everyone trying to act like a cohesive department for the sake of the new admits while maneuvering to get as much time with them as possible. The rush of adrenaline as the first students arrive, the sense of being on high alert, senses sharpened. They tried to explain it to Tyler once; he said it sounded like tech week or the final dress rehearsal, when everything is balancing on the edge of falling into place but could all fall apart instead.

“If it’s a not another panel before lunch, we’re thinking about a library tour—emphasis on the experimental poetry and performance archive—and hopefully draw a crowd for that,” says Jordan. “That’ll definitely attract Elena, at least.”

“She’ll be there by midmorning for sure?” Isabel asks.

“Yup,” Jordan answers. “She’s flying in the night before.”

Sarah nods. “We’ve talked about the afternoon already—some panels, etc. One is organized by the writing program so all the new admits will be there to hear about teaching comp. The next day is the real issue. Francis is having a sexuality studies meeting.”

Several of them made faces that showed exactly how they felt about that. “Great,” Jordan says. “So they can make sure none of the new admits are using the word ‘homosexual’ to refer to texts from before 1870.”

“If one of their admits calls the Ladies of Llangollen lesbians, can we have them?” Phoebe asks.

“We should check the department handbook, but I’m pretty sure that’s an automatic forfeit to us,” Piper says, grinning.

They all smile the smiles of conspirators, a spark of comradely feeling passing through them.

“Maybe we can steer them away,” says Antonio. “I can seduce at least one of them.”

“Come do ‘sexuality studies’ with me instead,” quips Katie.

“All right, all right,” says Isabel, laughing. “No seduction, but if we can at least keep Elena away, that would be great. Not sure who amongst the others will want to go—our two other for-sure candidates might, but they’ve both explicitly referred to presentism in their applications, so I think we can nudge them away.”

“Or let them witness the opposition,” suggests Antonio.

“Better not,” Isabel says. “Diminish it. ‘Oh, a couple of folks in the department are pretty old-school,’ etc., etc. You know the drill. They may come in having heard rumors about the situation here, but we’ve all been poking around at conferences this year as usual and the extent of it still seems pretty under wraps. They may have a sense that we’re a bit at odds, but not—well. You know. And it’s best to keep it that way till they’ve accepted.”

Nods from the room.

“Now,” Isabel says, glancing again at the closed door. Her hands lift themselves up to her hair, unconsciously poking a few stray strands into place. “We have been discussing some…backup plans, in case things go badly. We almost lost control last year when they scheduled that last-minute panel. And their grads are very well-versed at the whisper campaign. So I’ve been discussing things with Sarah and Jordan and Fatima—some just-in-case things. The possibility of…fiddling with the schedule a bit more seriously. But hopefully we won’t need to go there.”

There’s a silence, and for a moment they’re the same as always—united, comrades, conspirators. And then the rest of the world starts creeping back in. Piper can feel it; they’re pretty sure everyone can.

“Um,” Katie says. She glances at Piper, then at Isabel. “Can I ask…what’s going on with Lu?”

Piper thinks that Isabel stiffens very slightly. But perhaps they are imagining it.

“Lu has…well, I guess you’ve heard that Lu has left us.” Isabel sighs. “I’m sorry. I should have talked to you all about it. I just—it’s hard. It’s really rough. It’s a really bad time, too, with open house coming up, and I just didn’t want to believe that she’d really…” Isabel gestured vaguely. “And I feel it’s my fault, at least in part.”

“Why?” Antonio asks tentatively.

“Well. Lu didn’t tell me about any concerns or frustrations she was having, and I wonder…if she’d felt she’d been able to, maybe I could have helped. Maybe I’d have been able to convince her to give it another shot.”

There’s an unhappy silence. For Piper, it’s filled with all the things they’re not saying—all the details they’re holding back about Lu’s situation. Those details press on them, wanting to spill out; they should tell Isabel. They should tell everyone. If it is because of something the historicists did, then she needs to know. They all need to know.

But they don’t speak up. If it will help Lu to keep quiet, then they’ll keep quiet.

“I know I wasn’t on her committee,” Fatima puts in, “but from what I know of Lu, it doesn’t entirely seem in character for her to leave like this.”

Isabel nods. “I know. That’s partly why it’s such a blow.”

“Has she actually unenrolled?” Antonio asks.

“Yes, she has.”

“Have you talked to her since she left?” says Katie.

Isabel shakes her head. “As far as I know, she’s made a clean break.”

Piper shifts. This feels somehow uncomfortable in a squirmy sort of way; not telling them everything that’s happening fills them with guilt, but it also makes them feel foolish. It makes Piper feel as though of course Lu just decided to leave, of course she is not special and nothing out of the ordinary is happening, and as though Piper’s private grief, outsized, unearned, is making them refuse, embarrassingly, to acknowledge this.

“It just seems so weird,” Katie says. “But, like…it is possible, I guess.” She looks at Piper a bit apologetically. “It’s just that Lu’s such a—she is sort of, I don’t know. Unpredictable.”

Not like this, Piper thinks desperately. Not quite like this.

“Holy shit,” Jordan says suddenly. He’s looking at his phone. “I’ve just gotten a Google alert. The police have arrested someone for Jack’s murder.”

Silence falls over the room.

“Who was it?” Isabel asks quietly.

“The headline says ‘Vagrant wanted for murder of Schenley student.’”

“A vagrant?” Fatima asks quietly.

“That’s what it says.” Jordan scrolls down his phone. “‘Police are looking to arrest a homeless man in connection with the murder of Schenley University graduate student Jack Hart. Police believe the man, who has not yet been located, entered one of the campus buildings early Monday morning and stabbed Hart. Sources close to the incident suggest that the man was mentally unhinged and had been seen on campus in the days preceding, yelling at students and shouting profanities and threats.’ Fuck.”

Piper’s attention snags on one word as their brain tries to process this information. Stabbed. Jack wasn’t stabbed. His throat was cut. Slit. In a way Piper would describe as—or are they inventing this after the fact, a product of shock and preexisting images from television shows?—precise.

“They’re going to be calling for metal detectors and increased security,” Isabel says grimly. “This is not going to be pretty.”

“They’re sure as hell going to mobilize this against the homeless. All throughout Pittsburgh, on all the college campuses. Fuck,” says Jordan.

Fatima looks disturbed. She says, looking down at the table, “You know, Jack would have really hated them calling the man ‘mentally unhinged.’”

Everyone is quiet for a moment.

Sarah says, “Well—it’s a terrible thing to say, but—I’m glad it’s not someone from the department. Not just because of how that would affect the program, but…I didn’t like the thought that…” She trails off.

It feels hard to agree aloud, but they all know what she means.