He watched her sleep now, envious. He had always been a light sleeper. His brain was always working. Now he would lie here, driven mad by the incessant tic tac tic tac while his mind worried at the day-to-day annoyances of academia, and the power struggle going on in the History Department.
He fretted because he hadn’t published anything recently. And that thought automatically brought the rush of bitterness that he had never been able to sell his book on the comparative similarities and differences in the warrior cultures of medieval China and Japan, his masterwork.
He should already have been named head of East Asia studies, not be fighting for the title. If he had a published book that was well received by his peers, the university would not have been able to deny him. He would have been the clear front-runner. Instead, he was in competition with Ken Sato and some Vietnamese woman from UCLA.
Sato, who never failed to irritate with his unconventional lifestyle and his unconventional teaching methods. Lucien suspected Sato was being considered for the job largely because he was Japanese, and the chosen star of that pompous ass and committee member, Hiroshi Ito. Lucien had considered suing on the basis of racial discrimination if Sato—or the Vietnamese woman, for that matter—were to get the position. He was far more deserving. Then again, he worried what a lawsuit would do to his reputation. Reputation was everything in academia.
If Sondra’s father had still been alive, his influence at the university would have negated all other issues. What terrible luck that he had died of a heart attack nearly a year past. Lucien was beginning to feel that the powers of the universe were against him. And now, to further complicate his life, was this ridiculous business with Diana and the Office for Conflict Resolution. The mere thought of it infuriated him. The conniving little bitch—jeopardizing his promotion, forcing him to take the actions he was about to put in motion . . .
No wonder he couldn’t sleep.
Tic tac tic tac. The sound was relentless.
Then came a sound out of time, out of place. A sound that seemed to come from another part of the house. Downstairs.
He sat up in the bed and strained to listen. They lived in a lovely old established neighborhood. But there were plenty of criminals in the run-down parts of the city. Crime was no longer a rarity in Minneapolis. Lucien blamed Minnesota’s overly generous public assistance programs for ruining the work ethic of the poor minorities.
He’d had a home security system installed years ago. Sondra had the jewelry she had inherited from her mother. He had a valuable collection of Asian antiques he had accumulated over the years, most notably artifacts of generations of samurai and ninja warriors. Had Sondra forgotten to set the alarm after dinner? It was her responsibility. He often worked late in his study, too engrossed to be bothered with household details.
Tic tac tic tac tic tac . . . thump.
Or was it just the wind? There was a shutter loose on one of the study windows. Someone from the handyman service was supposed to have come four days ago to fix it, but it had been banging against the house earlier in the evening. He had snapped at Sondra for hiring the incompetent fools in the first place.
She had originally called them to clean the rain gutters and put on the storm windows. The service was unreliable, its workers rude. Lucien wrote a scathing review of their work on Yelp after the storm window fiasco. The owner promised to rectify the situation in a timely fashion, but they had yet to show up. They were in no hurry to do a job for which they would not get paid. Now the shutter, which they had probably purposely loosened in the first place, would drive him mad the rest of the night with the syncopated combination of bang, thump, together with the tic tac tic tac tic tac of the freezing rain on the windows.
He wasn’t going to get a minute’s sleep, and first thing in the morning he had yet another meeting with Foster, the department chair; the director of undergraduate studies; and Hiroshi Ito, professor emeritus. He needed to be sharp, to present himself at his best. The decision on the head of East Asia studies would be made before the Thanksgiving break. He would go into the meeting with confidence, sure in the knowledge that he had an ace to play that Ken Sato could never trump, but still, he wanted his sleep. He wanted to look as confident as he felt.
Maybe if he closed all the doors between the stairs and the study, the sound would be muffled enough not to bother him. It was on the other side of the house from the master bedroom.
Giving his sleeping wife another resentful glare, he threw the covers back and slipped out of bed. A creature of habit, he put on his dressing gown, adjusting the sleeves of his pajamas so the cuffs showed and tying the belt in a tidy knot. He paused at the head of the stairs, just in front of his pair of eighteenth-century Qing dynasty carved rosewood chairs and the spotlighted Qing period portrait on silk. He paused and listened.
Thump bump, thump bump, thump . . .