73

As the door swung shut his foot kicked something, knocking it over—a squat container like the ones he’d just emptied. Luckily the seal on the lid was tight and it didn’t spill. As he picked it up he could feel the heat of the soup through the plastic. He carried it down the stairs with him, lit a cigarette as he stepped outside.

The evening was cool and dry. Affenlight sat down on the broad stone base of the Melville statue. The warmth of the soup container felt good between his hands; he peeled off the lid and let the steam waft up to his nose. Chowder, Boston clam. It smelled marvelous. He lifted the container and took a sip, parted his lips to let through a cube of potato, a chewy dollop of clam. The texture, the richness of the cream, the proportions of salt and pepper, which seemed so simple but were often skewed—Affenlight had eaten his share of chowder, and this was a nearly ideal specimen. The lake spread out before him, better than any ocean. Was this what they were serving in the dining hall these days? It couldn’t be. If it was, they should cut costs. If it was, he should have eaten there more often.

When the soup was gone he lit another cigarette. The pain had returned to his chest, and in addition he could feel it in his shoulder, or his collarbone—somewhere around there. Each drag on the Parliament seemed to exacerbate it. If it didn’t pass, if it came back again, he might have to think about calling the doctor.

By the time he entered his office his chest felt better. Contango greeted him warmly. Affenlight scratched the back of the husky’s sugar-furred neck, opened the office door and the outside door so Contango could wander out into the quad. Then he called the airline and converted his plane ticket to Henry’s name, called his car service and scheduled a trip to the airport for six o’clock. There was no need to drive Henry to the airport. Henry could decide whether he wanted to go to South Carolina, just as Mike Schwartz could decide whether he wanted to take the job in the AD’s office. These children weren’t his children; they weren’t children at all.

He loosened his tie, poured a sizable scotch, put Gounod’s Faust on the shiny executive stereo that was tucked into the bookshelves. He lit a Parliament and sat down at his computer to write Pella an e-mail.

Dear Pella,

I just wanted to tell you that I saw Henry today. He looks a little rough, but he’ll be fine.

He paused, unsure of what else to say. He wanted to write a truthful message, and yet regarding the biggest, most intractable matter of all he had no intention of telling the truth. If he told Pella the truth, she would leave this place and never forgive it. He wanted her to stay. For practical reasons, he told himself: She had been accepted. Her tuition would be nil, provided Gibbs kept his word. Given her disciplinary record at Tellman Rose, her expired SAT scores, her lack of a high school diploma, it would probably take two years to get her into any other decent school.

But there were selfish reasons too, and maybe those were the ones he really cared about. He needed her here. They’d erase him from the memory of this place as quickly and thoroughly as they could; she was the part of him that would be allowed to stay. That was the deal. Even if he was elsewhere—God knew where he would be—he needed her here. Was that insane? Probably it was, after what had happened today. But he couldn’t change what he wanted just because it was insane. He couldn’t hate this place just because it had cast him out. And he couldn’t have Pella or Owen hating it either. It was no worse than anyplace else, and it was theirs.

Contango wandered back inside, did a lap of the office, and settled down on the rug, head propped on his paws. Affenlight finished his scotch, lit another cigarette. He wasn’t sure what to say to Pella; maybe the safer course, for the moment, would be to say nothing. He’d get his story straight first. With Owen too. That would be even more difficult—how to give up Owen without Owen knowing why? Owen would almost certainly figure it out, there were clues enough to piece it together, but Affenlight couldn’t let Owen figure it out. He couldn’t let any of the weight or blame of his banishment settle on Owen’s shoulders. He couldn’t become burdensome or pitiable in Owen’s eyes. The thought of such a thing sent a pain through his chest that was worse than the actual pain, unless that was the actual pain and he was confusing the two. In any case he’d have to get his story straight before he talked to Pella. Early retirement, doctor’s orders, stress, a longing to travel, to write, to teach again—some bullshit like that. He closed out of his e-mail and shut down the computer, as he did every night.

When the screen went dark he felt so deeply and sweetly tired that even to walk upstairs seemed impossible. With effort he pushed back his massive chair and made his way over to the love seat. He sat down and laboriously unlaced his wing tips. Contango was asleep on the rug. Affenlight lay down, crossed his long legs at the ankles, and spread his jacket over his torso so as not to get cold. He’d taken to turning the building’s thermostat down, way down, at the end of the working day.

The music that entered his dream wasn’t Gounod or Mozart or anything Affenlight loved. It was the first few notes of the old Westish fight song, sentimental, unassuming, played by a flute or some other trilling woodwind. The band kicked in, brassy and strong. Eighty-six maple go. Eighty-six maple go. Hut hut. The ball came back between Neagle’s gold thighs, snapped into Affenlight’s hands. The pleasure of pebbled leather against his palms. Cavanaugh on the go route, fastest man on the team, a wonder of speed but with terrible hands. Affenlight drop-stepped, scissored, dropped, scissored. The end would come from his blind side. Cavanaugh loved the go route, ran it like a big-college guy though he couldn’t catch anything, what a tease that made him, a purveyor of false hope with his racehorse strides, neck and neck with his man but not for long, no safety ever deep enough to be there to take credit when Cavanaugh dropped the ball. Still there was always the chance that this would be the one. The next one was always the one.

How many days since Affenlight found that sheaf of papers in the library basement? Now with the scrum of linemen snorting and collapsing around him, he remembered the music of H. Melville’s words. How odd. His concentration was usually total, everybody’s was, needed to be, that was what made it work, the common agreement that the game was all-important, but now the encroachment seemed lovely, an intimation of a world beyond the world of the green-and-white field. It was then, as he finished his seven-step drop and heard Melville’s words and saw Cavanaugh gaining separation from his man, that Affenlight knew he was through with football, through for all time, he wouldn’t be back next year. Other things awaited. It was good to be young and to know it for once. So much unfolding to do. He had the laces, he patted the ball. Footsteps pounded toward him from behind. There was no hint of wind, a ship captain’s nightmare, a quarterback’s dream. I won’t be back next year. He pushed off and threw as high and as deep as he could, the ball arcing through blue toward Cavanaugh’s terrible hands, but he no longer cared whether Cavanaugh caught it or not, and as the end arrived and his breath left him he couldn’t remember or imagine ever having cared. He was five or six, he was cutting pumpkins in the sun with his father. The tiny sere needles of stems bit through his cotton gloves and stung his hands. Still he loved the pumpkins, he could not lift the big ones, and the field all around was autumn brown.