Of course, before any of that happened, there was the little matter of what I would live on. All the doctoral students had tuition waivers, but my stipend was only $9,000 a year, and first-years weren’t allowed to teach. I dreaded loans. I was eligible for work-study, but I knew from Urbana College what that was like: minimum wage under fluorescent lights, dishing up nachos in the cantina for professors with warm, pitying smiles and fellow students who pretended not to know you. I needed a job that was dignified, lucrative, and within walking distance—my car had died soon after I arrived. Gwen, who’d never liked driving much, had left hers with her parents. She was used to public transportation and could, I supposed, always call a cab.
At least finding work was something I knew how to do. After spending the morning together in long lines at the registrar and student ID office, Gwen and I parted ways—Gwen for an optional meet-the-faculty lunch, me for the only four-star restaurant in the neighborhood. Nona occupied the mezzanine of a grand old university-owned apartment building called the Libertorium, and it was a far cry from the Frogurt Palace. On my way, I slipped on the diamond studs stolen from my mother’s dresser long ago. I’d read somewhere that a “good diamond,” however small, could lend anyone an aura of success.
The earrings worked. “We don’t usually hire from the university, but you look like you can hustle.” The manager, Derek, handed me an apron. “That’s ten dollars, we’ll take it out of your paycheck. First training shift tomorrow, ten a.m. Don’t be late.”
Flush with success, I met Gwen back on the quad just in time for the campus tour. Strolling the grounds with a small herd of students, we listened to the tour guide’s monologue on the black leaves (the color came from high arsenic levels in the soil), founder Dwight Handler’s various obsessions (theosophy, Fletcherism, model ships), and, of course, the notorious rigor of the student population at DHU. Gwen and I suppressed a giggle when the tour guide solemnly pronounced the number-one ailment treated at the student health center, after depression, to be anal fissures from prolonged studying.
The tour ended on the university seal by the front gate, just as the bell tolled four. It was time for the new student reception.
“Do you think Bethany Ladd will be there?” Gwen said doubtfully, studying the campus map. “She hasn’t been at any of the events so far.”
“Which one is she again?”
Gwen looked up from her map, too distracted to hide her surprise at my question. “She basically invented the Program. Ethical Negation?” She saw my face and tried to play it off. “Everybody says she’ll get a MacArthur when the new book comes out.”
“Oh, right.” I went beet red and followed her without any more questions. Over the summer, I’d read as many books by Program faculty as I could find, but Ethical Negation had always been checked out from the Urbana College library. I should have tracked it down and bought it. How had Gwen known it was the important one? The same way she had learned about the Program in the first place. Her father’s professor friends or the parties at Columbia, full of boring people who knew everything. And then there were the intangibles. Like the way she’d known to wear her jeans tucked into Hunter green wellies today, even though the weather was fine, with a V-neck cashmere sweater in a calming shade of melon. The women on the tour had shown up in a rainbow of cashmere sweaters and rain boots. Even the hipsters, with their perfectly dyed undershaves and tattoos from classic children’s books, wore wellies, though perhaps they were meant to be ironic. No doubt they’d all read Ethical Negation. How many other gaps between my knowledge and Gwen’s lay waiting to trip me up?
I fingered an earring nervously and followed her across the quad to the reception.
* * *
“—and a few more surprises!”
Department chair Margaret Moss-Jones, a tall woman in her sixties wearing loose layers the color of dirt, stood at the front of the reception room, listing the activities for tomorrow’s orientation retreat.
My heart raced. The whole thing was a surprise. The day-long orientation retreat hadn’t been on the schedule, and Margaret had sprung it on us with the air of someone tossing a handful of confetti. First thing tomorrow morning, we were all supposed to caravan upstate to a farmhouse “on loan from a generous faculty member” for a day of team-building exercises. The retreat would culminate in a dinner and campfire where we were supposed to mingle with professors who’d made the trip. Good clean fun, and impossible for me to attend, given my work schedule.
“Without further ado, please enjoy yourselves, but don’t overdo it—you don’t want to be hungover for the obstacle course!”
There was polite laughter, and the students in the wood-paneled seminar room broke into chatty groups.
“What am I going to do?” I hissed to Gwen under my breath, clenching my plastic wine cup. “I can’t miss my first day of work.”
“Can’t you drive up after your shift?”
“My car’s still broken,” I reminded her.
“Does someone need a ride?”
Gwen brightened and smiled over my shoulder, and I turned to get a look. The man who’d spoken was not movie-star handsome, maybe, but he was definitely TV handsome: tall and solid, a hank of black hair dangling over thick eyebrows, nearly touching the tip of his Roman nose. In his double-breasted jacket—oddly formal for the occasion—he looked older than the rest of us and a little hardened. But when he flashed his dazzling white teeth, I saw baby fat around his chin and cheeks and thought he couldn’t be much older.
Gwen spoke up. “Mac’s, um, having an emergency root canal tomorrow morning.” She was a terrible liar.
Boy Gangster winced sympathetically. “Oh no,” he said, with a hint of an accent too faint to place. “Does it hurt?”
I curled my tongue in my cheek and nodded. Then I lifted my plastic cup. “This is helping.”
He leaned toward me, raising his glass of red and touching its plastic rim to mine. “Here’s to that. When’s your appointment tomorrow?”
“Ten o’clock.”
“I was planning on driving up around two.”
I could find a way to get cut early. It was just a training shift. “That would be perfect.”
“Meet me in front of the library—Mac. That’s short for Mackenzie, right? Mackenzie Woods. And that must make you”—he gestured at Gwen with his glass—“Gwendolyn Whitney.”
“Our fame precedes us.” She sidled a little closer to me. “I haven’t seen you around today.”
“I just got in,” he said vaguely. “Rocky.” He thrust his hand out, and we each shook it in turn.
“So, what have you got tomorrow morning?” Gwen said.
Rocky raised his glass of wine meaningfully and winked. “The same thing I have every Saturday morning. Most Sundays, too.” Catching sight of someone behind us, he drained the glass in one gulp and rattled it so that the last few beads of red slid back and forth along the bottom edge. “Speaking of which. If you’ll excuse me.” He wandered toward the bar with his empty glass.
“I wonder what his deal is.” I took a tiny sip and licked my lips compulsively to ward off red wine stains. “I don’t remember a ‘Rocky’ on the email list. I guess it’s a nickname.”