She started flipping through her notebook.
“Maybe you should have ‘mindfucked’ your students a little less.”
“What?”
“There have been complaints. The students claim that you’re messing around with their heads, confusing them, not imparting the reading-list material in an intelligible manner, and spending all your time on movies and pop culture.”
“I was teaching Lacan. And Henry James. It’s complicated material. We were using The Matrix as an example.”
“No need to get into the details. Just stick to the syllabus. Got it?”
“Got it.”
I wanted to say something more, but didn’t really know what, so I pushed the chair back, got up, left the room, and started the trek back to my own office while trying to pin down the crux of what had just happened.
My cell phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Tjenare,” a monotone voice greeted me in Swedish. “I’m calling for Anne Undheim.”
“Who?”
“She gave me a phone number that doesn’t seem to be correct. I met her at your home address. This is about the property at 32 Pine Lane. We had agreed that she was going to buy an alarm system, but I haven’t been able to reach her.”
My heart was pounding hard in my chest, and I realized I had to lie. Again.
“Oh, Anne Undheim, yes,” I said. “She doesn’t live there. She was only there to clean.”
“Are you the home owner?”
“Yes, but we don’t want an alarm system. The house actually sold. We’re moving tomorrow.”
“Do you know what happens when someone breaks into a home—”
“I’m just heading into a tunnel,” I interrupted. “So I can’t quite hear—”
I hung up. Two seconds later he called back, but I rejected the call and then turned off my phone.
A little butterfly-like sense of mastery fluttered in my chest for a second before I spotted Peter’s back disappearing around a corner farther down the hallway.
“Peter!” I yelled. “Peter, wait!”
Any idiot could see that he sped up, but it didn’t matter, because I soon caught up with him.
“Peter,” I said, taking him by the arm. “I know you heard me, you Judas. You need to tell the chair that I wasn’t the one who wrote up the good cop/bad cop plan.”
“Why?”
“Because she thinks I’m planning a coup, that’s why!”
“Ah,” Peter exclaimed, beaming, “that’s perfect!”
“No, that is not perfect! Because now I have to take over coordinating the course revision, and that means a ton of extra work and meetings and stuff I don’t have time for! Plus, I’m already in trouble because of the awful job I did as faculty coordinator. Not to mention mindfucking my students.”
“I don’t know anything about the mindfucking, but I thought you were great as the faculty coordinator.”
“You’re the only one, then.”
“Well, to be honest, it’s good she thinks you’re the one behind it, because then I can proceed undisturbed. That’s why we leaked your name.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was Ingvill’s idea. She can be quite brilliant.”
“Ingvill,” I muttered.
“What was that?”
“Do you realize what you’ve done? This was surely Ingvill’s plan all along. Now I’m the fall guy. You see? Just like I said!”
“Oh, you’re exaggerating. After all, you were the faculty coordinator until just recently. You know the administration, and they know you. You’re safe. If anyone from here is going to be exiled to the preschool-education program, it’s not you.”
“But they thought I was a bad faculty coordinator,” I hissed.
He smiled and patted my shoulder. I sighed heavily.
“Fine, I won’t say anything. But could you please knock it off with the hard-liner plans? I’ll do my best to secure our interests. And I’ll try to make sure no one gets sent to the preschool program, no one other than Ingvill. What do you say?”
“We’ll see,” Peter responded evasively. “We’ll see.”
“Promise me!” I called after him, but he just raised his hand as a kind of good-bye.
On my way out of the office, I saw that the chair had called. But I had no intention of calling her back.
16
Unfortunately there was already another course revision meeting the following day. The administration was meeting with the chair, a representative from the applied pedagogy program, and the ergonomics, occupational safety, and regulatory compliance officer. Frank immediately sidled up to the latter and tried to talk his way into getting an adjustable-height desk.
“That’s not why we’re here, Frank,” the chair said.
“As the ergonomics, occupational safety, and regulatory compliance officer, I’m always on duty,” the officer objected, thoughtfully twisting his mustache.
“Exactly,” said Frank, lowering one shoulder and stretching his back so they could tell how much he was suffering from not being able to raise the height of his desk. “The university needs to take care of its employees’ needs when they arise.”
“I want one of those adjustable-height desks, too,” Ingvill demanded.
She was wearing her hair up with a bunch of flower-covered hair clips and looked even crazier than usual, sort of a hybrid between a six-year-old and a sixty-year-old, like Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? or like tropical-fruit salad in human form.
“What are you talking about?” the chair protested. “You already have one, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You got one of those desks when you started going to physiotherapy two years ago. I remember quite clearly, because we set it up the day before I left on my maternity leave.”