Chapter 7
The following morning, Charles follows Julian out of short-term parking and into the Pittsburgh airport. He’d been brimming with anticipation during the drive, but now that they’re actually there he’s realizing just how risky asking questions at an airport can be. He and Julian have no plane tickets and no luggage; surely there’s no way they can blend in, and surely no one is going to answer questions about whether a particular passenger, to whom they have absolutely no legitimate connection, had been on board a certain flight. The alarm this causes him clears his head a bit, and he casts a worried look around at the fluorescent-lit check-in area, searching amongst the weary red-eye passengers for security guards. Three—no, four—and a fifth over by the arrivals and departures monitors. He glances questioningly at Julian, but his face is unreadable as he pulls a printout of Lu’s boarding pass from his coat pocket. Consulting it, he leads them to the appropriate check-in line, but Charles stops him before they enter the queue.
“What’s your plan?” he asks in a low voice.
Julian blinks. “I’m going to ask someone at the counter if they can look up whether Lu got on her flight.”
Charles shakes his head. “They’ll never tell you that. Not even if they believe you’re a licensed P.I. Not with airport security the way it is.”
Julian’s brows crease and for a second he looks irritated. Charles remembers, suddenly, that in an early episode of Young Sherlock, Julian had gone to LAX to ask questions during a missing persons investigation. They had been nothing but obliging—but that had been before 9/11 and he’d been a semi-famous kids’ TV star with a camera crew surrounding him, and the whole thing had probably been cleared with the airport beforehand. Charles feels for a second the frustration that Julian is probably feeling—the knowledge that at ten, doors had been open to him that now were closed—and a corresponding pang of sympathy.
“You’re right,” Julian says abruptly. “We need a story.” He turns a penetrating gaze on the personnel working the checkout counter. “Who’s the most susceptible, do you think?”
“Oh,” Charles says, taken aback. “I don’t—um…” He takes a breath, then looks at them carefully, trying to determine which one would be the easiest to interview, if he were writing an article for the newspaper. The answer is obvious.
“Her,” he says, relieved. “Definitely her.”
Julian watches the young woman, her dishwater hair tangled beneath a blue kerchief, as she fumbles with a passenger’s suitcase, struggling to pull it behind the counter and smiling at him apologetically as it lands heavily at her feet.
“Yes, I can see that,” Julian says, eyes narrowing. “She looks like the kind of person who’d assume she’s always the one making the mistake.” He straightens up, voice turning matter-of-fact. “Lu is your sister. She’s unstable. An addict. She was supposed to go to rehab in the U.K.—you have connections out there somehow—but you lost track of her on the way to the airport. Now you don’t know where she is.”
Charles’ stomach turns over. “Oh. Um. I…” Asking questions in the role of professional questions-asker is one thing, but pretending to be somebody else is quite another. He isn’t an actor. He certainly isn’t an improviser. He could slip up so easily.
“Can you do it?” Julian asks.
Charles looks at him, and something in his eyes, in the way they flicker down and then back to Charles’ face and then to the young woman behind the check-in counter and then down again makes Charles feel as though he is really saying, Please do this.
“Yeah,” he says, more confidently than he feels. “Let’s go.”
They get in line. It seems miraculous to Charles that nobody questions their right to be there despite their lack of luggage; somehow they blend in with the Frankfurt-bound passengers ahead of them and the family on their way home to Glasgow who come up noisily behind. Charles rehearses his story as they inch forward, feeling a slightly nauseating mixture of excitement and anxiety. They let the Glaswegians cut in front so that they can wait until the tousle-haired young woman is free, and then they stepped up to the counter.
“Hi,” Charles says, hesitating for effect. Mostly for effect. “Um…”
“Hi there,” she says, giving them what might have passed for a cheerful smile at the beginning of her shift but which now comes off as a sort of protective grimace. “Can I have your names?”
“Actually,” Charles says, attempting to sound apologetic, “I’ve got a question for you.”
“Oh.” She looks nervous. “Um, how can I help?”
“It’s—okay. Here’s the thing. I wanted to know if you could give me some information about whether somebody checked in for their flight a few days ago.”
The attendant—her name tag says Ashley—looks alarmed. Her eyes slide to the person working at the next counter, then to the nearest TSA agent. “Oh, I can’t give that kind of information, sir—do you—would you like to speak to the manager, or…”
Charles’ stomach drops. “Ah,” he replies, feeling a rush of panic as Julian stiffens beside him. “It’s—it’s just—it’s about my sister. She’s—she’s not well.”
Ashley’s face relaxes, just a fraction. Encouraged, Charles continues.
“She’s been having a rough time recently. We’ve all been worried about her, and…”
He pauses. Ashley’s eyes have grown quite round, her forehead puckered in sympathy. Silently, Charles applauds Julian his choice of cover story; Ashley is indeed the kind of young woman easily swayed by unstable sisters.
“Well, she was supposed to go out to rehab at a facility just outside London—we’ve got family there—and my uncle was supposed to take her to the airport, but something came up—his kid twisted his ankle during a basketball game,” Charles improvises, assuming she will also be moved by hurt children and attentive fathers. “And anyway, he thought Lu would be okay getting there on her own, but now it turns out she never showed up at Heathrow. So we—we don’t even know if she’s here or in the U.K., and she really isn’t well, and she knows some dangerous people, and….” he lets his sentence trail off. Ashley is hanging onto his every word. “Listen, I know it’s a little unusual, but—it would be really helpful if you could just let us know if she actually got on board the flight.”
Ashley looks torn. “Um,” she says, biting a nail. “Well…” She looks anxiously around. “Have you called the police?”
Charles’ heart skips, but he has an answer ready. “The thing is…Lu’s involved in some stuff that would get her into trouble if the police found her. Nothing—nothing violent, just…well, that’s why she needs to go to rehab. But we’d really like to avoid her being arrested—that’s not going to help her get better, and if we know where to start looking I think we can find her, it’s just…” he shrugs helplessly.
“This is a copy of her boarding pass,” Julian puts in, pulling the paper from his coat and offering it to her.
She looks startled, like she’s only just noticed Julian is there. Frowning, she looks from him to Charles, clearly wondering what their connection is. Charles curses silently. There’s no way Julian can pass as a relative of his, not with his weirdly pale eyes and hair—Charles scrambles furiously for some way to explain his presence, feeling the whole venture slipping through his fingers.
Julian takes his hand. Charles almost jumps out of his skin.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says to Charles, softly, gently, and brushes a stray hair from his forehead.
Ashley melts, almost literally. The anxious lines in her forehead smooth out, her shoulders relax, and her eyes grow limpid and bright.
“Here,” she says. “Let me see what I can find out.”
The two men stand there and wait, hand in hand, as she jabs at the keys and mutters darkly at the computer. Charles is frozen, afraid to move even a muscle for fear that Julian will read something, anything, into it—distaste, reluctance, affection—he might think Charles is pulling away, or settling in—and he wonders anxiously whether he ought to have let go already. Should he have given Julian’s hand a brief squeeze and then released it? Is it strange and unnatural that they are still holding hands?
It’s just part of the story, Charles tells himself. Why the hell is this knocking him so off kilter? He risks a peripheral glance at Julian. His eyes are fixed on Ashley. Charles can read nothing in them other than interest in what she’s about to say, and yet—whose pulse is racing? Whose hand is sweating, making their palms clammy as they press against each other? Julian’s or Charles’?
Ashley looks up, biting her lip.
“I’m so sorry. Um…” She takes a breath. “It looks like your sister didn’t check in for her flight.”
Charles’ heart leaps in excitement and he immediately schools his expression, trying to look upset. “Oh, no.”
“Did she get on any other flight that day?” Julian asks, voice sharp. His fingers tighten around Charles’ as he leans in, almost as if he’s forgotten that they’re holding hands. Has he really forgotten, Charles wonders? Even in the midst of his excitement about Lu and the case, their clasped hands loom, large and alien, in his consciousness.
Ashley looks nervously apologetic. “Oh. Uh, I don’t have access to that information. Sorry. Or, like, I really can’t—I shouldn’t—but if you want me to get my manager, though…”
“No, thanks,” Charles says hastily, still trying not to move his arm. “She probably didn’t. I, uh, I have places I can look now I know she’s still here.”
Ashley nods, eyes widely sympathetic. “I hope it all works out.”
“Yes. Thank you so much for your help,” Charles answers. “It was…it was good.”
“I’m so glad,” she says fervently. “Seriously, good luck.”
The detective and his assistant turn away, still holding hands. Charles feels that it would be impossible just then to separate, as if somehow it would break the spell they’ve cast over Ashley, or as if such a movement would be too drastic, like the severing of a limb or a sudden blackout in the middle of a play. So they walk through the cranky travelers and crying babies and piles of luggage, their fingers still intertwined, until the automatic doors slid open and they step back outside.
“So,” Julian says, both their hands very suddenly in their pockets. Charles finds himself breathing in huge gulps, like a diver surfacing after too long under the surface, and trying very hard to hide it. His palm is sweaty. He just lied to an airport worker. He just held hands with Julian Ellsworth.
They just found out that Lu didn’t fly to London.
“Was the plane ticket misdirection, then?” Charles asks. “Or did something stop her from getting on board?”
Julian shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know. But I think we’d better find out.”
Julian drives straight from the airport to Schenley’s campus. Somehow, the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Oakland has three research universities stuffed inside it: Carnegie Mellon, home of engineers, arts students, robots, and neurotics; the University of Pittsburgh, notable for its forty-two-story Gothic Revival-style Cathedral of Learning and blue-and-gold Panthers paraphernalia; and Schenley University, which pushes up against the west side of Schenley Park near the glass-domed Phipps Conservatory. Schenley is smaller than the other two schools and was the least favored by Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropic outpourings, perhaps because it was founded around the same time as the university that bears his name; nonetheless, it was largely built, as many Pittsburgh buildings were, with steel money. Its national reputation is the smallest of the three as well, or perhaps just the most eclectic, recognized by those whose specific fields correspond with the achievements of its most notable alumni: a pioneering psychotherapist, an experimental poet, and several entomologists. Built with the same grey stone as the nearby Carnegie Library and Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Schenley is a mildly attractive collection of square buildings and brief grassy slopes.
Because of the confusion of one-way streets and excessive parallel parking in Oakland, Charles and Julian have to make a bit of a hike to reach the English department. February in Pittsburgh hovers between very cold and just above freezing; today is one of the warmer days, with not-quite-melting ice shining slick on the pavement. Charles buries his mittened hands in his coat pockets and avoids the hurrying undergraduates and harried professors on their way to and from classes. Julian is wrapped up tight in a grey scarf above which his nose peeks out, red with the cold.
Piper meets them outside the humanities building. Charles texted them as soon as they left the airport, telling them what he and Julian had found out and asking if the two of them could come to Schenley and take a look around. Piper has agreed to introduce them to Dr. Isabel Ortiz, Lu’s dissertation chair. Charles thinks they look a little nervous as they lead the men into the gray stone building and up a drafty flight of stairs.
Dr. Ortiz has her office door shut when they arrive. But Piper checks their watch. “She should be in,” they say. “She teaches Fridays but she should be in between classes now.”
They knock. “It’s Piper,” they call through the door.
After a rapid series of thuds that sounds like several things dropping to the floor at once, a voice calls out, “One sec!”
The woman who appears when the door swings open has dark eyes and a mass of curly black hair with grey streaks and a pencil in it. She wears a long, draped black dress that hangs in loose uneven folds around her calves, just above her short black boots. Her nails are painted with iridescent green polish. Her face is full and round, almost moonlike, with dramatic eyebrows and an incongruously thin nose. She looks, Charles thinks, a bit like a witch—the kind that lives in a forest cabin and putters around with herbs and speaks to lizards. Or maybe she looks like an early-twentieth-century artist who has a pottery studio in her house and an overgrown garden. Or perhaps she looks like she danced in José Limón’s troupe in her youth, or in Pina Bausch’s earlier that morning.
“Did we have a meeting?” she asks Piper. She looks prepared to accept whatever Piper tells her, neither skeptical nor apologetic. This is typical; as Piper knows all too well, Isabel never means to forget she’s made plans to meet, but about half the times she needs to be texted a reminder so she can hurry over from Schenley’s overcrowded coffee shop or the fourth floor of the library.
“No, no. I just, uh…could we talk for a minute?”
Charles sees Isabel give Piper a quick once-over, then nod. He wonders what that look means.
“Sure,” she says, and then notices Charles and Julian. “Oh—who—?”
“Um,” Piper says, biting their lip nervously. “It’s—this is Julian, uh, Ellsworth and this is Charles Shelley. They—we—could we talk in your office?”
Charles catches Isabel’s curious look for a moment, and then she beckons them in. Her office is cluttered in a welcoming way, stuffed with bookshelves and hanging plants and a poster that reads, in big red letters,
QUEERS ON QUEERS CONFERENCE - SANTA FE - MARCH 27-29, 1996
She clears a pile of papers off a threadbare sofa and gestures for the two men to sit. Piper perches on a lightweight office chair stationed at a slight angle towards Isabel’s desk.
“Oh,” Isabel says suddenly, “before I forget, Piper, I have that book for you. Sally sent me a proof. You’ll need to check with her if you cite it, but I wanted you to read it ASAP.” She hands them a floppy paperback titled Past Future Now - uncorrected proof.
“Thanks,” Piper says. They set the book on their knees. “Um. So. It’s about Lu. The thing is, she, uh—” They hesitate. “You haven’t talked to her in the last couple days, have you?”
Isabel blinks. “No,” she says. Charles notes her eyes flickering quickly in his and Julian’s direction. “No, I guess I haven’t. Why do you ask?”
“I haven’t seen her since Sunday,” Piper says rapidly.
For a second, Charles could swear that lines of tension smooth out on Isabel’s face. “Oh,” she says. “Wait—it’s Friday, isn’t it?”
Piper nods. Concern sweeps over Isabel. “What about her classes? She’s teaching this semester, isn’t she?”
“Yeah. Freshman comp. I went to see if she’d show up and she didn’t so I just subbed for her this week. She didn’t...” Piper squirms, torn between embarrassed and worried. “She didn’t say she was going anywhere. I don’t want to make a big deal of it, if it’s nothing, it’s just—I don’t know. I don’t think she’d just leave without telling anyone.”
Charles watches through narrowed eyes as Piper fumbles. They were much firmer in their convictions when they came to see Julian. Why are they hedging now?
“Leave,” Isabel says slowly. “What do you mean, leave?”
Again, her eyes flick towards Charles and Julian.
“She left me a note. She said she was…going away.”
Julian twitches. Charles resists looking over at him. Instead, he watches Isabel run her hand through her dark hair, brow creasing.
“Hang on. So you’re saying she’s gone? As in, not in Pittsburgh?”
Piper hesitates, then nods.
“No,” Isabel says. “No, that’s not possible.” She pauses. “She really didn’t arrange for someone to take her classes?”
Piper shakes their head.
“This note she left you—is it—could it have been a joke? Some sort of game?”
Piper looks down and takes a breath. “I don’t think it’s a game,” they say to their lap. “I think…I think something’s happened.”
Isabel lets out a breath. “You think she’s left the program. Left permanently.”
Piper nods.
“But—but she wouldn’t—” She takes the pencil out from behind her ear and taps it rapidly against her desk. “Do you…have any idea why? I mean, if—if—she left, do you have any sense of what prompted her decision?”
“I don’t think she decided,” Piper says softly. “I think someone made her leave, or—or…” They don’t finish the thought. “I think she’s in trouble.”
Isabel stares at Piper.
Charles glances at Julian, feeling as though surely it is time to explain what they’re doing there. But Julian is mute, watching, mouth thin and eyes keen. And Isabel seems to have forgotten their presence altogether. Charles wonders at her ability to simply block out two men she doesn’t know sitting on her sofa.
“She’s been acting strangely,” Piper says in a rush. “Distant. Quiet. For maybe a week before she—before? And I just don’t think she’d do this, I mean, she’s finally making real progress on her diss, and, and…”
Piper looks smaller and more scared than Charles has seen them. They are looking at Isabel a little pleadingly, clearly looking for guidance.
“Shit, Piper, I’m so sorry. You’ve been worried.” Isabel squeezes their shoulder, a brief, comforting touch, not quite maternal—more like a coach to an athlete. “You know…it is a bit worrying.”
Clear relief washes over Piper’s face. “You think so?”
“It’s odd that she hasn’t been in touch and that she left her classes without a teacher. She’s not irresponsible.” Isabel taps the pencil against the desk again, slower this time. “But I wonder if—the fact that she left a note seems comforting to me, Piper. It sounds like this was her decision.”
Piper takes a breath. “She took her clothes, too,” they admit with some difficulty. “The ones she wears most often, anyway. And her laptop, and toothbrush and retainer and things. I also can’t find her copies of Tendencies or Foucault or A Room with a View, and—and there was a plane ticket on my computer. She uses it sometimes.”
Isabel inhales sharply. “A plane ticket to where?”
“London. But she didn’t actually—”
Isabel swears under her breath. “I didn’t think…” she murmurs, and then looks sharply up, straight into Charles’ gaze.
“Who have you brought to see me, Piper?” she asks, her tone losing some of its warmth.
Piper swallows. “This is Julian Ellsworth and Charles Shelley,” they repeat. They are…Julian is, um. Helping me look for Lu.”
“Friends of yours?” Isabel asks, arching a dubious eyebrow.
“Julian is a private detective.”
Isabel looks shocked. Then she rubs a hand over her face. “Piper.”
“Look, it’s just—I know it seems like Lu just…left. But why would she do that? Now that—”
“Lu always has her reasons.” Isabel leans forward. “Piper, it’s a little concerning, I admit. And confusing. But it really sounds like all signs point to her leaving of her own volition. She just—maybe she…got restless again. Unhappy with the university.”
“Again?” Julian asked. All heads swivel towards him. Charles can almost swear he sees a faint feathering of pink appear on Julian’s cheeks.
Isabel sighs, whether because she is irritated with his presence or because she’s upset with Lu, Charles can’t tell. “She…had something of a crisis the year before last, as she was preparing for her exams. She’d been planning a very different kind of project. It turned out it wasn’t what she wanted to do. She had to decide whether she wanted to take some extra time, work it out—it’s a very stressful period, and she thought about stopping. But she didn’t.”
“Had she indicated recently that she was thinking of leaving again?” Julian asks.
“Well, no,” Dr. Ortiz says, sounding almost reluctant. “But she wouldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
“I…last time it happened, I was very—I made it very clear that I thought she was being foolish. It would be a waste of study, of talent. It was largely upon my advice, I believe, that she decided to stay. So if she were serious about leaving, she wouldn’t have warned me. She’d have known I’d try and convince her not to go.”
Piper is looking miserable, Charles notes, sympathy pulsing through him. He’s trying not to be swayed by Isabel’s argument. It does seem possible, likely even, that Lu up and left. But Piper is so sure, and Lu didn’t get on the plane, and the ash and the scrap of paper, and Julian…
“Listen, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here,” Isabel says abruptly to Julian and Charles. “It’ll be very disruptive to the department, having people poking around, interrupting their work, stirring things up. I understand you’re just doing your jobs. But Piper,” she says, turning her head, “surely you must see that this is more likely to cause harm than to help.”
They look at each other for a long moment, Charles feeling—imagining?—intensity building between them. Then Piper looks down.
“Please,” they say softly. “Will you just talk to them for a minute? If there’s any chance Lu is in some kind of trouble, I don’t want her to be in it on her own.”
After a moment, Isabel softens. She says, “All right. Fair enough. Piper, will you wait in the hall for me? I’ll talk to them and then you and I can have a word.”
They nod gratefully and exit. Isabel watches the door shut and then trains her eyes on Julian and Charles.
“Well?” she asks.
Charles glances at Julian, whose eye twitches slightly, but who says, “Is there something you didn’t want to say in front of Piper?”
The professor sighs. “Honestly, yes. I wanted to ask you, please…don’t take advantage of them. I know you don’t know them, but they’re so devoted to Lu. It would be hard to accept that she’d leave like that.”
“Hard for you to accept, as well? You seemed ambivalent on that point.”
Charles has a definite feeling that Isabel would prefer they accept what she’s saying and leave immediately, but she keeps her expression mild as she answers. “I was surprised. I didn’t know she was getting to this point again. With her work, I mean. But like I said, this isn’t exactly unprecedented. And I do believe that she wouldn’t have told me if she was planning to leave.”
“What about Piper?” Julian asks.
“What about them?”
“Would they have tried to stop her from going? Would she have kept it from them for the same reason?”
Isabel pauses. “No,” she says slowly, looking suddenly thoughtful. “No, I wouldn’t say so. As far as I know, Piper has never tried to dissuade Lu from doing anything she wanted. I seriously doubt that they’d have attempted to stop her.”
Julian’s eyes narrow. “Then why not tell them?”
The professor shakes her head, looking doubtful for the first time. “Perhaps she thought it would be too painful.”
“What would be too painful?”
Isabel blinks. “Saying goodbye, of course.” She gets to her feet. “We can’t supply you with any official information about Lu, for confidentiality reasons, but if you find yourself wanting to know about the ins and outs of her research and writing over the years here—which is no doubt where the answer to all of this lies—you can schedule a meeting during my office hours. We’re pretty swamped with graduate admissions right now, but I can probably squeeze you in to discuss Lu’s struggles to reconcile her interest in Charlotte Brontë with her interest in anal eroticism, if you feel that it would be helpful to your case. Now I’m going to have a quick word with Piper, and then they can see you out.”
It’s a clear dismissal, its briskness miles away from the scattered but warm welcome she gave Piper when they’d arrived. They stand in the hall while Piper goes back into Isabel’s office and talks in a low voice that Charles strains to hear from the other side of the door. But he can’t pick out any individual words.
When Piper emerges, they don’t make eye contact, instead rubbing their arm as they gaze at the floor.
“We should probably stop for today,” they say. “I’ve got to lesson plan for my class later, and…um…”
Charles exchanges a look with Julian, then, tilting his head to beckon them down the hall, asks Piper softly, “Are you all right?”
They nod shakily, staring at the floor as they walk back towards the stone staircase. “Yeah. I just…” They take a deep breath. “Maybe she’s right. It makes sense. It’s not that suspicious, is it? And I don’t want to make trouble for everyone…”
“Hey,” Charles says, stopping at the top of the staircase, while students hurry past with backpacks and phones. “You’re worried. You’re not making trouble. We can be discreet.” He glances at Julian, who nods.
Piper rubs their face. “Okay. I don’t know. Um…can we talk later?”
As far as Charles knows, the only thing on Julian’s schedule for the rest of the day is a nighttime stakeout of a seedy motel in Monroeville to take pictures of a cheating husband. “Yeah,” he tells Piper. “Of course.”
Piper says goodbye and Charles and Julian walk down the stairs. Charles goes through the mental process of realizing he needs to use the bathroom, not wanting to say anything, deciding he can wait, deciding it’s ridiculous to wait, passing one bathroom, and then pivoting abruptly when the next one appears, muttering, “I’m just going to use the bathroom quickly.”
Julian nods. Charles ducks inside, face hot. In the stall, he peruses the graffiti, trying to distract himself from his own awkwardness. The pale green stalls are peppered with notes about crushes, social justice statements, doodles—and then one bit catches his eye. It’s written neatly in thin black permanent marker.
Staring, he takes out his phone and snaps a picture.
He shows it to Julian when they’re outside the building, once more in hats and scarves.
someone should say it publicly: the english department is f—ed up.
And underneath, several scribbled comments in different handwritings:
TRUTH.
why??? omg I love it here. what’s wrong???
—>ask a grad student lol
“Huh,” Julian says quietly. “Well, that’s interesting.”
Charles and Julian return to Long Street. Charles is anxious to keep working on Lu’s case, but Julian has a couple other open cases—a spouse who’s almost certainly cheating and another who almost certainly isn’t—and it turns out that in addition to the Monroeville stakeout that evening, the detective has to spend the rest of the afternoon skulking around an Armenian grocer’s in the Strip District in the hopes of catching the manager and his produce supplier locked in a secret embrace. Julian instructs Charles to finish some paperwork—“and if you have a little spare time, you can poke around and see what’s online about Lu Fairchild,” he mutters as he hovers in the doorway, hat in hand, not quite looking Charles in the eye.
So Charles flies through the documentation of several recent cases and opens a new tab on his browser. With one ear open for any clients who might come in, he types Lu Fairchild into the search bar.
Other than a biography of a Lucretius Fairchild from Wisconsin who served in the Civil War, the first several hits are all about Lu. The first takes Charles to the Schenley English department’s website, where Lu’s bio asserts that she specializes in queer theory, c19 literature and culture, and contemporary fanfiction and that her dissertation is titled “Reading for a Queer Sexual Ethics: Victorian and Contemporary Modes of Intimacy.” Instead of a photograph of Lu, there’s a grainy black-and-white image of a woman in a white dress sitting with her hands in her lap, with what looks like a fishing net draped over her body.
Charles scrolls through the website, glancing at the other PhD students’ bios—Piper is there, with an actual photo of themself—and then clicks back to the search engine. Lu has a website, which makes Charles’ heart leap, but there’s a big “UNDER CONSTRUCTION” banner on the home page, with just a link to her CV and contact info underneath.
Lu Fairchild
Curriculum Vitae, Feb. 2015
135 Poplar St., Apt. 2B, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
lufairchild@schenley.edu
Education
Ph.D. Candidate, English
Schenley University, Pittsburgh, PA
Expected completion May 2016
Dissertation: “Reading for a Queer Sexual Ethics: Victorian and Contemporary Modes of Intimacy”
Committee: Dr. Isabel Ortiz (chair), Dr. Jordan James, Dr. Sarah Rasmussen
M.A, English
Schenley University, Pittsburgh, PA
2012
B.A., English, Honors
Smith College, Northampton, MA
2010
Areas of specialization
Queer theory; c19 British; contemporary fanfiction
Conferences
PCA/ACA National Conference
New Orleans, LA
Apr. 1-4, 2015 (upcoming)
Paper: “Blood and Thread: The Precision of Excess in c19 Spiritualism and Hannibal Fanfiction”
“Queer Today” University of Pittsburgh Graduate Conference
Pittsburgh, PA
May 2, 2014
Paper: “Releasing the Straightjacket: For a Queer Presentism”
PCA/ACA Conference
Chicago, IL
April 16-19, 2014
Paper: “From Lucy Snowe to Captain America’s Ass: Reading Queer Interiority”
NAVSA Annual Conference
Oct. 23-27, 2013
Pasadena, CA
Paper: “Embodied Forms: Georgiana Houghton’s Spirit Drawings and the Lines Between Past and Present”
INCS Annual Conference
March 14-17, 2013
San Francisco, CA
Paper: “The Structure of the Séance: Consent, Violation, and Tying Up c19 Spirit Mediums”
NAVSA Annual Conference
Oct. 27-30, 2012
Madison, WI
Paper: “Feeling the Ghost: Spiritualist-Medium Relationships and the Breakdown of the Victorian Subject”
Charles, from his year as an M.A. student, recognizes NAVSA as the North American Victorian Studies Association, one of the major nineteenth-century organizations in the U.S.; it appears that Lu has been to their national conference a couple of times to present papers about Spiritualism. He has to look up INCS (Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies) and PCA/ACA (Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association). He wishes he knew better how to decipher her academic trajectory. Smith College is a prestigious—and expensive—women’s liberal arts school in Massachusetts, he knows that. But he can’t quite tell if her conference paper topics, particularly the one that places the heroine of Charlotte Brontë’s Villette in conjunction with Captain America’s nether regions, would be considered controversial or just eccentric.
Unsurprisingly, there’s no mention of Lu’s fic writing on her CV. That’s what Charles really wants to see. He’ll have to ask Piper where to find it.
Charles clicks back to her CV and stares at it for a little while. He dropped out of his program before he could attend any conferences. Looking at this compressed trajectory of all Lu’s academic work, he feels a flutter of something he can’t quite name, and pushes it down firmly. He has expended a lot of energy over the last four years not having any feelings whatsoever about his failed foray into the academy. He has quite deliberately avoided any and all romanticizing films or books about college. He’d spent so much time before grad school inhaling them that there probably aren’t any new ones left, anyway.
He shuts the document with an admittedly petulant huff. Besieged on all sides. First detectives, now academics. He’d better be on his fucking guard, he thinks grimly. Or things could get very bad very fast. He doesn’t need a repeat of spring 2011, when he was in the midst of his abortive attempt at a Master’s degree in Romantic literature and, fresh off a breakup with a young woman who accused him of faulting her for not being a wavy-haired maiden who wanted only to make love in daffodil fields and listen to him talk about the sublime, had a panic attack in front of a classful of 150 undergraduates to whom he was delivering a guest lecture on William Wordsworth.