Chapter Two

Chapter Two of Darwin's Theories

Chapter 2

“Who was it?”

Darwin looked around. It looked a lot like his EN-312 class--mostly because it was.

“The portrait. Who was it?”

The students were awake and asking questions. This is the kind of position every professor hates to find themselves in. At some point Darwin had gotten off on discussing how Mercier's The Year 2440 influenced the development of speculative fiction and instead started recounting his gumshoe story. He ducked his head out of the doorway and spotted a mealy-mouthed blue-suited janitor listening in on the lecture. He nodded at the janitor. The janitor looked him up and down in disgust and skittered off, mop bucket in tow.

“Next class. You’ve all been very patient with my lecture today, so I’ll wrap up the story then if you want. It’s part of your education, after all: this all happened at your school not too long ago. And it’s a matter of public record somewhere, I suppose.”

The students started packing up when one bright student, Annie, spoke up. “I looked up the case, Professor Darwin. Sorry. But it’s really interesting. Is it true that someone tried to, like…kill you?”

Darwin shuffled papers and began to resent bright students like Annie. “That’s what the judge said. And the cops. And my physician. But I didn’t really know anything about that. You’d be surprised about how unexciting most of it is, really, minus the gunfire and intrigue. Remember that we’re finishing the 18th century and moving into the 19th, so get ready for slightly more hopeful visions of things to come. But only slightly. See you next class.”

Annie came up to the professor as he left the room.

“I read the Wikipedia on the whole thing. You found out illegal practices within the administration occurring at this school that would have bankrupted it within five years. I’d like to write a story about you for the paper.”

“Sounds great, Annie. But I’d ask your adviser before starting that story. Please let me know how that goes.”

When they got to the end of the maze hallway he smiled and told her to have a good day and walked away feeling sorry that she wasn’t going to get the story she was looking for.

In truth, he had lost more than just his parking spot over the whole affair; while his position was protected thanks to tenure, Darwin would feel the after-effects of his involvement for years to come in the petty details of working at a university. This included being assigned the worst classrooms on campus; given the hours that no other professor--tenured or otherwise--would want to teach at; and his office was moved from his department to a single concrete room with its own separate entrance under a cold, damp walkway located next to the heating units for the science building. It was soundproof, which was nice, and could withstand a nuclear bomb blast if it came to it, so Professor Darwin set up shop and hung a shingle over his entrance that read:

Professor Darwin

Department of Literature

MA, PhD, PI

He was having a bit of fun by thumbing his nose at the administration. Having hung it up last week (he placed the order for it shortly after the events of campus intrigue took place but the sign shop took ages to complete it, now rendering the joke now somewhat less funny--but he had already paid for it so d****t it was going to go up), some unknown party responded by having some campus goons egg his car. Darwin had thought that the influx of goons this semester was rather high, but he put it out of his mind as one of those things these crazy kids are into these days.

Unlocking the industrial metal door and pulling it open with some effort, a dim glow greeted him inside. He had installed a solar light that ironically"having no window for natural light"was charged solely by artificial indoor light. It was his nightlight to make sure he wouldn’t have to enter the room blind. The door made a loud whoomp as it vacuum-sealed the room. Besides the air vent and overhead light that loudly hummed the worst note ever produced by an object of illumination, the room was otherwise desolate, with four concrete walls and a light switch, like a prison cell no humane country would allow to exist. He had complained to the Teacher’s Union, but they couldn’t hear him over the stereo blaring Van Halen and margarita machine constantly running at their headquarters.

Like the sign, Darwin took his diminished circumstance in stride and turned the 8’ X 8’ office into his own. He strung up white Christmas lights for ambiance, disconnected the light switch, brought in some power strips, and made his office a relaxing oasis complete with a mini-bar with airplane bottles and a set of whiskey glasses.

Darwin flipped open his laptop and put on some Mingus. He opened up his small fridge and took out a Coke, took a long sip, then took a shooter of rum and poured it into the can, swirling it around as he poured. Taking another sip, he put the can down on his desk and leaned back in his chair. 

Across from him on the wall by the door was a picture of Groucho Marx with his feet up on a desk, leaning back and smoking a cigar. Sometimes he felt like the guy and could understand why Groucho was such an a*****e to everybody all of the time--he was simply shocked at how serious everybody was taking everything, especially themselves, and he was trying to shake them out of it.

The air came on and began to blow cold, colder than any heating system Darwin had ever experienced before he was banished to this room. It was November, but then again it blew hot air in the office during July, so at least it was consistently wrong. He leaned forward and put on an extra jacket he left on the back of his chair for such occasions and checked the time on his computer. 3:28. Office hours hadn’t even begun yet and he had another class at nine that evening. He took another sip of his ad hoc rum and Coke and put his feet up on the desk.

He already had the key players of the conspiracy laid out: the three bald suits, Joffs, and the mystery man from the missing portrait. Darwin could already connect a few dots, but the man without a portrait was the hinge this strange series of events swung on. All he had was a name.

Darwin located a small cluster of janitors deep in the bowels of boilers and pipes under Dewey Hall, where he gained their trust through an offering of malt liquor and by throwing ten bucks into their craps game. After he had lost three rounds straight in what he increasingly suspected was loaded dice, Darwin hung back and offered a cigarette to one of the old timers hiding in the shadows.

“What’s new, pops?”

“Nothing’s new around here; same garbage year in, year out. The days turn into years turn into decades. Even the faces don’t change at this point.”

“As long as you enjoy your work, I suppose. I noticed a portrait’s missing in the boardroom.”

“So?” The old janitor was chewing on the filter as he smoked.

“So I was wondering how a nice oil portrait of one of our esteemed leaders has disappeared.” Darwin noticed that one of the dots from the die had flaked off and landed on his shoe.

“Something can’t disappear t’weren’t never there,” the gnarled man--whose dirt-covered patch on his front lapel announced was Gus--articulated poorly.

“That’s odd. How long has it not been there?”

“Ever since I’ve been here, it’s never been there, and I’ve been here forever.” Gus spat out what Darwin hoped was tobacco. Instead it was a few loose domino dots.

“What about the man whose name is on the plate, Jeremy Atherton? Ever seen him in person?”

The old janitor retched dismissively and Darwin took this as a sign that he’d pumped this well of information dry. He gave Gus another cigarette and thanked him for his time. Gus tossed it into his mouth and chewed it like a piece of gum.

“Hi, Karen, mind if I look around a little?” Darwin chirped, knocking on her desk twice as he breezed past it. She stopped clickity-clicking and got up in pursuit. He had already turned a corner when she grabbed his sleeve.

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“Looking for financial records. I’m pretty sure this must be the place,” he said while standing in front of a large sign that said FINANCIAL RECORDS DEPARTMENT.

“You can’t just come in here and rifle through the files,” she whispered as he began violently shaking a stuck metallic drawer, the clatter of which reverberated throughout the department.

“When I saw all the paperwork I’d have to fill out to gain access to the files I’m looking for, and all the ugly administrators I’d have to look at to sign off for permission, I thought to myself, my good friend Karen works in that department, and surely she wouldn’t mind if I just took a quick look” said Darwin while reviewing names and titles labeled on the folders in the now-open drawer. 

Karen slammed the drawer shut, the noise of which caused several heads to spring up from their cubicles.

“I’m just wondering if you’ve ever heard of a man named Jeremy Atherton,” announced Darwin as began walking down a narrow hallway surrounded by offices on one side and cubicles on the other. Karen gingerly ducked below cubicle walls and quickly sprinted past open doors while following his path, hoping nobody would see her. 

“One of our Board of Directors who’s been on the board for so long that nobody even remembers who he is or what he looks like. Wondering if there’s a folder in here under A, for Atherton.”

He slid open another cabinet at random, which held what looked like the transcripts for the class of 1974 and certainly smelled like it. He left the drawer open, leaving Karen to slide it closed as quietly as possible.

“It could be that the man hasn’t existed for some time, or else isn’t who he says he is,” concluded Darwin at the end of the square he had traced around the room, now with his arm casually draped over a cubicle wall as he waited for Karen to catch up to him.

“I don’t think you’re going to exist to me after this,” she said while forcefully taking Darwin’s arm off the cubicle and leading him back to the entrance. “I don’t know if you’re drunk or just bored, but people are trying to work here. If you have a request for information, please submit it through the proper channels and using the correct forms. If you’d like, I will provide you with these materials.” 

At this point they were back at her desk in the front, and she was beginning to take the required forms out to hand to Darwin.

“I prefer to submit my request for information verbally and in person, which I just did. Thanks, Karen. I hope I don’t cause you too much trouble.” Darwin walked back towards his office, leaving the forms on Karen’s desk.

If he knew people (and he liked to think that he did, especially if they were morally deficient in some way), then his brazen display in the finance department that afternoon had just set the right trap. Now all he had to do was wait. 

If only he had anticipated how long he would be waiting, he would have brought some snacks with him. Otherwise, he was perfectly comfortable hanging suspended from the ceiling of the Financial Records Department at 10 o’clock at night.

“How’d you get up there?”

“A winch.”

“What’s a winch?” asked Tommy, the large football player in his class who--he suspected--was deceived by his class description and was trying to complete the required credits for graduation.

Darwin sighed. Have vocabulary skills really gone that downhill since when he was a young, snot-nosed little b*****d in school? he thought.

“A winch is a lifting device consisting of a cable wrapped around a rotating drum that’s also attached to a crank that rotates it.”

“What’s a crank?”

Darwin ignored that question.

“So I was hanging above the Financial Records department. It was kind of stupid, really: I had to get there right after the department closed with a 10-foot ladder to attach the winch to the ceiling, get the ladder out of the room, and then I hoisted myself up so I was hanging suspended over the department.”

“Couldn’t you have just hid in one of the offices?” asked Annie.

“Yes, but this was cooler. So around 10 o’clock at night, I heard the rustling of keys outside the department…”

“If the door was locked, how’d you get in?” Asked Tommy, that contemptible student of his.

“I broke in through the window. I literally smashed the glass and broke in that way, unlocked the door to get the ladder in, and then brought the ladder back out and locked the door again.”

“That’s crazy,” said one student.

“I was also slightly drunk at the time. So anyway, in come the three bald men, along with another man that I’d never seen before. I hung from the ceiling recording them with my cell phone while they went through the files. They must have found what they were looking for because when they pulled one particular file out, they all started going “Hooray!” and exclaiming, “Our malfeasance will continue to be kept secret!” and other unbelievably stupid things.”

“What’s malfeasance?”

“Shut up, Tommy. So I had the three bald men on video breaking into the Finance Department to steal a file along with some dude I’d never seen before. After they left, cackling in victory, I lowered myself from the ceiling and looked at which file cabinet they had broken into. It was a drawer of student files Aa-At from 1988. I slid open the drawer and tried to figure out where a spot was open. I saw a gap between Ataron and Atmoore. That drew me to my next theory: something involving Atherton and the missing portrait from the Board of Trustees.”

“What’s a Board of Trustees?”

“Goddammit, Tommy…”

After story time with his 9 PM class, Darwin went home to his apartment, the third floor of a house in the small town of Ocean Grove just five miles away from Wilson University. He poured himself a scotch and soda, put on Steely Dan’s Gaucho, and sat on his enclosed deck that looked over Asbury Park across the lake. 

Somewhere down there, hipsters and aging artists and some of his students with fake IDs were scrambling into bars and music venues hoping to feel alive for just a moment. He felt alive enough safely ensconced in his apartment that night. After retelling his short story of intrigue to his eager and hoping to avoid more lectures on 18th-century-science fiction students, he felt glad to be alive at all. He had almost forgotten that he nearly died two years ago because of his little scheme of utterly dismantling the newly appointed dean of the university.

He was feeling a little more melancholy than usual that night: it was the three-year anniversary of his divorce, a brief union to a madwoman that for reasons that were still unclear to him he suddenly married. Maybe he felt like it was the right time to marry in life; whatever it was, 11 unhappy months together disavowed him of such romantic notion. At least a court order eventually made her take down ProfessorDarwinIsAMonster.com.

Since then, it had been a string of relationships of various levels of seriousness and casualness; the last woman he dated seemed like a good match--Nova Barnett, a doctor he had met at an academic conference--but she suddenly broke it off a month ago without giving him any real reason as to why. That loss particularly stung since he felt they complimented each other well, like peanut butter and Fluff, but Darwin supposed that heartbreak like this was what scotch and Steely Dan were invented for. Maybe he just didn’t want to spend another holiday season alone or (even worse) with his nutty family in Lovelandtown, just fifteen miles south of where he was on the Jersey Shore.

Darwin couldn’t find his cigarettes again; he suspected that his cat, Harold, was stealing them but hadn’t been able to prove this since it’s exceedingly difficult to catch a cat doing anything it knows it’s not supposed to be doing. However, more than once he had entered a room and found a lit cigarette smoldering in an ashtray next to an open copy of Cat Fancy and his tabby walking through a cloud of perfume it had just sprayed.

Figuring that he should have quit smoking fifteen years ago, Darwin toyed with the idea of just letting it go for the night, finish his drink, and go to bed early without polluting his lungs with carcinogenic smoke. Then he thought, well that sounds boring, and promptly left his apartment to walk down the road to the convenience store to get a new pack. 

Stumbling down the sidewalk in the chilly November air, all Darwin could think was how he wished he was drunker and also that maybe he shouldn’t have gotten involved in the whole Altherton Affair (as the newspapers would call it once the whole awful business came to light). He certainly wouldn’t have gotten shot in the arm, an injury that bothered him on cold nights like that evening. He wondered if he should have sued somebody for taking a shot at him as he stepped into the much-too-brightly lit convenience store.

“Good evening, Professor Darwin,” said the old, heavily accented voice from behind the counter. 

That was Raj, the polite owner of the store who Darwin was well-acquainted with and for whom  he was one of his best customers. Being a perpetually single man, Darwin wasn’t one for cooking his own meals or shopping in regular grocery stores, so he would lazily just go to the closest store from his house--this store--and shop for what he needed here. Even though it was a 200% markup, Darwin felt that it was worth it for its convenience. He grabbed a roll of toilet paper, two cans of cat food, and a microwavable hamburger and headed to the counter.

“Good evening, Raj. How are you tonight?”

“Another night, another problem. Had a shoplifter in here. I threw a can of soup at him and told him never to come back.”

“What did he get away with?”

“Just some Twinkies. Less of a loss than a dented can of soup. I’ll sell you the can for half-price.”

“No thanks; I’m off soup.”

“Anything else?”

Darwin asked for a pack of his favorite cigarettes--the kind that he could smoke--and paid the total.

“Say Raj, how many shoplifters do you think you get in here a month?”

“I get at least one a day. That’s why I keep this stack of soup cans on the counter.”

Darwin looked over and saw a stack of various brands of dented soup cans with a sign that says “Discount Soup.”

“You must have a hell of an arm.”

“It keeps me in shape.”

Darwin looked at him puzzled.

“Throwing soup cans! Turning those thieving b******s’ brains into soups!” the clerk laughed. Darwin wondered if Raj hadn’t taken a few soup cans to the head himself in the past.

“Thanks, Raj. Keep that arm up.” He felt a pulse of pain in his own arm at this comment, took his bag, and left.

When he returned home, there was an envelope sticking out of his front door with his name on it. He took the envelope out, brought it inside, and placed the bag and envelope on his kitchen table. He could see a haze of cigarette smoke in the air and heard Harold coughing from the living room. Once he made himself a drink, Darwin opened the envelope. To his surprise, it was a letter from Nova. He took the letter to the porch to smoke a cigarette. From what he guessed, letters left mysteriously at night from ex-girlfriends were rarely filled with good news. On the enclosed porch he turned on a small lamp. After taking a few sips of his scotch and soda, he opened the envelope and read the letter.

Dear Darwin:

To start, I’m sorry for disappearing on you. It was never my intention to hurt your feelings. I’m in an awful mess and didn’t want to drag you into it. But now things are spinning out of control and I don’t know who else to turn to for help. To put it simply: I’m being blackmailed, and if it ever got out I would lose my medical license. I know that you’ve played detective before successfully, and you’re the only person I can trust. 

When this whole mess is sorted out, we can be together again. Start over. No olives this time. I’m sorry if I caused you any pain. If you think you can help me (or want to), call my number and let it ring twice, and then hang up. Then I’ll meet you during the next office hours you hold on campus. If not, I understand. Again, I’m sorry.

With love and hope,

Nova Barnett

He read the letter twice before placing it on the couch cushion next to him and stubbed out his cigarette. Then he lit another one and took a sip from his drink, staring out over the glittering lights of Asbury Park. 

He thought of how he and Nova had met, in a large hotel where several different academic conferences were being held simultaneously a few months ago. He was presenting a paper on the semiotics of toy commercials from the 1980’s and 90’s and their representation of gender norms while she was part of a panel discussion on a new treatment of collapsed heart valves. 

They met at the most popular fixture at these sorts of conferences: the bar. They bonded over a shared hatred of olives. They stood next to each other at the bar and both immediately removed the olives from their martinis and placed them on separate napkins at the same time.

“Every time I order a martini, I specifically ask for no olives, and every time there’s olives,” said Darwin.

“Maybe it’s a conspiracy between the martini industry and the olive industry,” joked Nova.

“And they already have the monopoly on these stemmed glasses. Greedy martini fat cats.”

She laughed and they made introductions and spent the next few hours getting to know each other until winding up back in her room. Some weeks later when they were dating, Nova told Darwin that he was the funniest man she had ever met. This made him wonder, for the first time since his divorce, if he would get married again after all. 

And then, the month after that, she left him without giving any reason. She stopped returning Darwin’s calls and wouldn’t accept his or respond to any of his text messages. Dejected, he went back to his lonely life as a rapidly-approaching middle-age professor.

And now, a month after that sudden ending, this letter appears. Why should I help her? thought Darwin. What kind of blackmail is being used against her? She just wants me to play detective. But she also said she wanted to be with me. Then he realized that he loved her. He called her number, let it ring twice and then hung up.

Author's Note

Same as last: dialogue, characters, interest, structure, etc. General notes. Is it working?