Tall Man Down - 1. Chapter 1

“Do you believe Catlin?” Keith Zawaski asked.

We were waiting for the faculty meeting to start.

Steve Catlin was standing in the hallway outside the lounge. Keith and I watched through the open double doors. Catlin was leaning down and talking intently with a woman I hadn’t seen before. She was maybe twenty-two and looked like she belonged on the cover of one of my husband Pete’s fashion magazines. Only this woman didn’t need to be photoshopped.

“Who is she?” I asked.

Keith smiled. “Someone new in Tech. Between them and Business, they outnumber us now.”

Keith taught Bio.

“Very pretty for Tech,” I offered – carefully.

“Borderline sexist,” he warned, smiling

“Way over the border,” I agreed, grinning back. “Let’s hope no one heard.

We both looked around, mock-furtively, then turned to each other and laughed. We weren’t really worried about what we said. We were both properly trained. Besides, we were both also happily married, he far longer than my almost ten years. And in other times, I might have agreed that it was a shame how our supposed Liberal Arts college was shifting focus – possibly losing it. But after being dragged through the statistics yet again the previous spring, I knew how the constantly expanding Business and Tech departments were funding the rest of our programs.

“It’ll pass,” I’d told Pete one evening. “These things go in cycles.” He’d nodded but hadn’t agreed.

Keith poked me and nodded toward the doors as Catlin led the woman into the room. She settled as comfortably as you can on a plastic folding chair and had seemed fairly relaxed following him. Though I think she would have been as comfortable walking into a roomful of strangers.

“He’ll be with her again at lunch,” Keith predicted.

“You overestimate him.”

“No way.”

“Underrate yourself then.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“No?”

He made a sound that could have been a chuckle. “Maybe...” That turned into a shrug.

“And your wife?”

“There is that.”

He laughed again, and, at that point, Pete sat in the chair I’d been saving beside me. I’d missed him coming into the room but was glad he was there. Keith was one of the more sensible people on the faculty, but any time he or most of the other faculty guys got into matching contests with Steve Catlin, we all became kids. At forty-six, Catlin simply had too much of what everyone else wanted.

“I got Josh settled in,” Pete told me. “The girls were late, apologizing that they were up half the night talking – first weekend back and all. But I’d told them to be earlier than I needed.”

He smiled at me, seeming far more energetic than anyone should at nine AM.

“Ready for another one?” I asked.

“Year?”

“Meeting.”

“They’re not so bad.”

“I’d rather read Wittgenstein.”

“Go back to sleep then. I’ll wake you if we have to vote.”

I leaned over to kiss him, drawing friendly abuse from the Phys. Ed. folks sitting behind us. But I’d been out of the house before Pete that morning, and with him stopping by the costume shop to deposit Josh, we really hadn’t seen each other.

“Here we go,” Pete said, and Rebecca Varner – Dean of Academic Affairs and contender for perhaps the Most Human of all Jellyfish – moved to the podium. She smiled her Gerber baby smile and began drooling.