39

Affenlight didn’t hate David, not anymore. Not that he had much regard for the man, but he’d spent more time thinking about David in recent years than about anyone in the world besides Pella and Owen, and that kind of constant mindfulness, over time, could mellow into sympathy. He would never forgive David, but David had become a part of life, and Affenlight had achieved a grudging acknowledgment of the fact that David would continue to live and breathe whether he wanted him to or not. He used to think of him as a selfish lothario and borderline pedophile; now he thought of him more as a man with whom he had a quarrel. Almost—perish the thought—as a son-in-law, albeit an unpalatable one.

Even Affenlight’s moral indignation had cooled recently, for obvious reasons. He himself had always observed a strict rule against liaisons with students, both as a sought-after boyish section leader and as a sought-after dapper professor, and even during that period of CNN-level celebrity when the Crimson ran his photo with the caption HEARTTHROB OF THE HUMANITIES. This resistance to constant, often blatant temptation had given him a strong footing from which to criticize someone like David, a grown man who’d seduced a vulnerable, huge-hearted girl. But what could Affenlight say now? How could he know that David hadn’t succumbed to something similar, a feeling as sweet and fortuitous that steamrolled him just as fully? Plus, of course, Pella claimed that their marriage was over, and victory could make a man magnanimous.

And so Affenlight felt almost sorry for David when he found the latter in the hallway outside his office, fooling with his cell phone, looking forlorn and agitated. He naturally thought of Menelaus, come to reclaim Helen, but David suffered a bit in the comparison. It was pouring outside, and though he was wearing galoshes and a waterproof jacket, his head and trousers were soaked. Affenlight wondered what kind of man brought galoshes on a mission of this nature.

“David,” he said. “Guert Affenlight. You look like you could use some coffee.”

“Where’s my wife?” David said.

Affenlight felt suddenly calm. It was a situation he had often seen in dreams: his nemesis here, in his office, on his terms. But the desire to assert and avenge himself had subsided.

“Did you call the line upstairs?”

“Repeatedly.”

“She’s probably still at work.” Affenlight nodded toward his open office door. “Come in. Have a seat.”

In person, David looked less substantial than the fellow in the photo on his firm’s website, who wore a turtleneck beneath his sweater and leaned back from his drafting table, mechanical pencil in hand, smiling benevolently. He had, at least in the picture, the punctilious self-possession that Affenlight associated with a certain kind of evangelical Christian, tightly groomed beard and all. Today he looked significantly less composed.

“I suppose you’re pretty pleased about all this,” David said, his voice soft but strident, as Affenlight, having made the coffee whether David wanted it or not, handed him a steaming mug.

The room contained another Westish-crested chair of the sort David was sitting in; when Affenlight wanted to make a guest feel equal and at ease, he arranged himself in it. Now he slid behind his vast desk, which was cluttered with paper. His job performance lately had been decidedly second-rate. “Depends what you mean,” he said. “I’m worried about Pella.”

“She’s my wife,” David said, shivering and still dripping. He set the full mug of coffee down on the edge of Affenlight’s desk with an air of finality. Perhaps he was exercising his right to refuse hospitality, or maybe he took milk. “We’ve been married four years.”

“I know. Though of course I wasn’t invited to the wedding.”

“I have a right to speak to her.”

“She’ll be here,” Affenlight said.

Spring thunder grumbled softly, sans lighting, quite unlike the violent whipcracks of July and August. David lifted his mug from the corner of the desk, taking care not to slosh any coffee onto Affenlight’s papers, and took a tiny, temperature-gauging sip. It seemed to relax and compose him. He looked around the room, eyeing the framed diplomas and accolades, the spines of the books that lined the walnut shelves. “Nice woodwork,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“They don’t build them like this anymore. Too expensive. These shelves are from the twenties?”

“Twenty-two, I believe.”

David nodded. “The year Ulysses was published. And Moncrieff’s translation of Du côté de chez Swann. And The Waste Land, natch.”

Affenlight wasn’t sure whether this represented an attempt to engage him on his own terms, or was the way that David habitually talked. “Correct,” he said.

“Is she okay?” David asked, helping himself to another, fuller sip. “You said you were worried.”

“She’s fine,” Affenlight said. “Much better than when she arrived.”

“What was wrong when she arrived?”

Affenlight was surprised by the question; he’d meant the remark as a mild dig at David, not a topic to be pursued. “Well, you know. She looked pretty… beat-up.”

David sat up indignantly, gripped the armrests of his chair. “Surely you’re not suggesting—”

Affenlight held up a placative hand. “No no no.”

“I would never.”

“Of course,” said Affenlight. A knock at the door—could it be Owen? Better late than never. Of course Owen couldn’t stay, not with David here, but that didn’t matter, what mattered was that he’d chosen to come. Affenlight pushed back his chair, but the door swung open before he could reach his feet.

Pella stood in the doorway, still dressed in her dining-services uniform. Affenlight hadn’t seen her in a baseball cap since she was a child. Maybe that was what made her seem suddenly young, or maybe it was the way she hovered anxiously in the doorway, as if waiting for the grown-ups to finish. “No blood on the floor,” she said. “That’s a good sign.”

Affenlight smiled. “We went outside for the messy stuff.”

David was up out of his chair. “Bella.” He took a step toward her. Affenlight tensed, ready to hurl himself between them, but he was still behind his desk and it was a silly impulse anyway. They kissed on both cheeks like good cultured people while Affenlight studied his daughter’s face for signs of love.

David held Pella at arm’s length by the shoulders. “What happened to your finger, Bella?” His tone was that classic romantic-parental blend, as admonitory as it was solicitous.

“I walked into a tree.”

“I suppose that’s a common hazard here,” David joked. “Too many trees. At least it’s turned a pretty color.” He was still holding her by the shoulders, observing her proprietarily. He looked pointedly at her stained collared shirt. “I thought we were going to dinner.”

“We are.”

“Am I overdressed, then?”

Affenlight was familiar with the kind of man who wilted around men but bloomed when dealing with women—supremely heterosexual, indifferent to or disdainful of or afraid of other men, but also supremely attuned to women’s needs and interests. David had bloomed just that way when Pella walked in.

“I have to get ready,” Pella was saying. “Did you check into your hotel?”

“No, Bella. I came straight to you.”

“I made a reservation for eight o’clock at Maison Robert. I’m sure you’ll hate it, but it’s all we’ve got.”

“I’m sure I’ll find it delightful,” David said.

“Right.” Pella looked at Affenlight. “So should David come back and pick us up? Or what?”

“Us?” said David.

Us? thought Affenlight. During their early-morning tête-à-tête Pella had said she needed him during David’s visit, but Affenlight hadn’t figured that that would involve eating dinner with the man. Not that he was unwilling; if Pella wanted him there as a buffer, he was glad to comply. It was flattering, a hopeful sign, that she wanted him there.

“Us,” Pella said. “My father and me.”

“Bella,” David began to murmur in low pouty tones meant to exclude Affenlight, “I mean, really—”

Affenlight’s eyes flicked out to the quad and saw through the dwindling rain that the twin dormered windows of Phumber 405 were alight. Someone was home, Henry perhaps—but then that unmistakable slender silhouette appeared against the windowlight, lifted the window with two hands, leaned out appraisingly over the misty quad. He disappeared into the room, reappeared with two small slender items between his fingers. One he placed between his lips, the other he sparked between cupped hands and used to solicit a prick of orange light from the first. And Owen leaned out over the darkened quad, elbows against the sill, and commenced to smoke his joint. Seeing him there made Affenlight terribly sad. Not only because Owen hadn’t come but because he looked so satisfied and self-contained as he leaned and smoked and thought his thoughts, as needless of help or company as some gentle animal feeding in the wild. It made Affenlight feel not only superfluous but also, by comparison with such wholeness and serenity, hopelessly agitated in his soul. He needed Owen, but Owen—being himself whole, or never farther than one well-rolled joint from whole—would never need him.