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I really hate talking to people about Pascal's Wager. Normally I would just walk away at the first chance, but the guy talking about Pascal's Wager was the head of his department, and I also really hate being unemployed. I gritted my teeth and hoped it looked like I was smiling.
"I've been writing a paper about it," continued the guy – hell, I couldn't even remember his name. "It's fascinating, how the problem of belief was solved hundreds of years ago and people still persist in arguing that atheism is a rational choice."
"Yeah," I said. Irrational to a fault, that was me. I grabbed my glass and took a gulp of my drink. The conference didn't have an open bar, but I needed the buzz to get through this, never mind whether I could afford it or not.
"The potential benefits of belief vastly outweigh the potential benefits of non-belief, and-"
I had learned all this in undergrad. I had learned all this freshman year of undergrad. I could feel my head drifting ever closer to the polished wood of the bar.
"Of course, the Wager only works if we're discussing the Christian God in isolation," said a new voice, and I looked up.
There was a tall guy – not as tall as me, but tall – with a sharp suit and gray-green eyes leaning over whatsisface the Pascal man. I grinned at him, thankful for the rescue.
"After all," said the man, nodding at me in return, "if you believe in the wrong deity or force, you might be punished even worse than a non-believer might be. Depending on the religion."
"Some religions don't even require belief," I chimed in. "Just a certain level of conduct." I paused to let that sink in, but Pascal Man just looked at me as if he was expecting a trick. Which, okay, fair enough. "What we need to do is make a spreadsheet, compare the different acceptable levels of belief and behavior, and pick the route that fulfills the most strictures."
"That sounds a bit complicated," said Pascal Man, frowning.
"Sure," I said. "But Pascal's Wager still stands. If you could guarantee yourself heaven or whatever, any inconvenience in this life is better than hell."
"Although," said my new friend, thoughtfully, "if the true religion is one that doesn't punish non-believers or one that doesn't allow you to hedge your bets by believing in other gods, your success becomes dependent on luck. If you'll be wasting your time by making the Wager, perhaps atheism is the wisest course after all."
There. A nice, neat, logical argument. I grinned at my ally and got a faint smile in return.
"Is that the time?" said Pascal Man, looking down at his watch and breaking the moment. "I have a talk to give, so sorry-" He stood up and hurried away without a backward glance.
Yeah, I hadn't wanted to work for him anyway.
"Can't put up with the least dissent," said my new friend. "John Marcone, by the way." He took Pascal Man's seat next to me.
"Harry Dresden," I said, and held out my hand to shake his. "Thanks for-" I reclaimed my hand to make a wobbly gesture that was supposed to mean 'chasing off the most boring guy whoever lectured on Pascal, and that's saying something.'
Marcone chuckled. "Doctor Davies has been writing that paper for the last fifteen years," he said. "Or so I'm told. He labors under the delusion that someone will actually want to read it. Theologians." He shook his head, indulgently.
"Hey now," I said, stung. "I'm a student of religion myself. It doesn't automatically turn you into a fanatic about stuff nobody cares about." I couldn’t speak for theology, but Pascal Man hadn’t been a theologian either. Not that most people understood the distinction.
"No offense meant," said Marcone, holding up his hands. "Though I do notice a preponderance of irritating fanatics within your discipline. Most of us are taught not to discuss religion out of private quarters. It takes a certain," he paused, "let us say, strength of conviction to bypass that."
"Yeah, well, most people are taught not to discuss sex either, yet colleges have no problem with a biology department." Most colleges, anyway, I said in my head. Normally it would be outside of my head, but I was making an effort to play nice here. "You don't have to be a fanatic to be interested in a subject."
"So you'd be an atheist, then," said Marcone.
I was, actually. Religions and their effects on people were fascinating, but I didn't have a lot of faith to spare. My field was sociology of religion, not seminary studies. I drew breath to say as much, but I caught the glint in Marcone's eye and stopped myself. He wanted me to say that, so he could turn me into an exception that proved the rule. Reasonable only because I lacked belief, which was wrong, and also beside the point. Plenty of people of plenty of different backgrounds study religion, and if there are a couple fanatics, well, every field has them. But I wasn’t going to let Marcone put me in a category apart from the rest.
"No," I said, instead. "Methodist. Now, I'm going to assume you're not involved in religious studies."
"Philosophy professor," said Marcone. "I'm giving a talk on morality in about an hour. The seminar on relativism."
Ooh, I had been going to go to that. Not that I was going to tell him that now.
"Sure, fine," I said. "And I suppose you always avoid talking about religion, even in connection to morality."
"There's a difference between discussing religion briefly and dedicating your career to it," said Marcone. "While I have the utmost respect for you and your colleagues-" I snorted, but he just raised his eyebrows at me. "The utmost respect, my experience with those who are drawn to religion has hardly been a pleasant or an easy one."
"Oh, I see," I said. "Look, thanks for helping me with whatsisface-"
"Davies," supplied Marcone.
"-but I've got somewhere to be." I stood up, unfolding into my full height. Marcone's eyes widened a bit, though the rest of his expression didn't change. I grinned at him, anyway. I'm not above taking advantage of my ability to look down on practically everyone.
"See you around," I said, fully intending not to. Things I don't need in my life: strangers telling me what I should be studying. I got enough of it from my professors in undergrad. Here I'd thought having a doctorate made you immune.
"Mister Dresden," said Marcone, nodding again.
"Doctor Dresden," I corrected, and got out of there. I felt his eyes on my back briefly as I fished a piece of gum out of my pocket and stuck it in my mouth to try and get rid of the alcohol smell. The only thing worse than being an unemployed postdoc is being a drunk unemployed postdoc. Actually, being drunk can actually help – just not with the unemployed part.
Right. I was here at this conference to network, and network I would.
---
I networked. And I networked. Eventually I realized I didn't really know what networking was, but it didn't matter at that point because I had gotten an interview.
"You came very highly recommended by Doctor McCoy," said Dean Leanansidhe. She smiled at me over my CV.
Okay, so maybe I hadn't exactly gotten this interview on my own initiative.
"I really enjoyed working with Ebenezer," I said. Standard interview stuff, but it was true. "He's the one who convinced me to try for my doctorate in the first place, way back when."
"I see," murmured Leanansidhe. She flipped through the CV a bit more. I was pretty sure she was finding the typos, but she hadn't kicked me out yet. "You're currently researching Augustine?"
"I'm writing a book about his defense of the omniscience of God and the importance of perceived free will for early Christian sects." The phrase spilled off my tongue easily – I'd typed it often enough. "I've written a lot of academic papers about Augustine, but I was going to try for a more accessible style this time."
"But you're familiar with religions outside the Christian tradition?" Leanansidhe set my CV down. "It's very important to this university that we offer students as many areas of study as possible."
"I did my doctoral thesis on modern Iranian Zoroastrians," I said. "I've been a bit buried in Augustine lately, but I've done postdoc work on Fuuru nu Kami of the Ryukyu Islands with Doctor Liberty."
"Well, we'll let you know within the month." Leanansidhe tapped a finger against her mouth. "Do you have any questions? Comments?"
I really need to eat, I didn't say. And I'm so sick of postdoc positions.
Instead I stammered out something inane about classes I might be expected to teach, and got out without pleading with Leanansidhe. Much. It probably wouldn't be good to look too desperate.
When I got home I called Ebenezer.
"Hello?"
"She hated me." I scrubbed at my face with one hand. "She hated me and my book."
"You haven't finished your book, Hoss." Ebenezer actually chuckled at me. No sympathy at all.
"You don't know that," I said, weakly. "Okay, you do know that. She hated the idea of my book. What did you tell her?"
"I told Lea that you were the best graduate student I ever had," said Ebenezer, slowly. "I told her that you were too good to keep bouncing around doing other people's research. I told her that everyone knows her religion department is losing professors and students and she needs to start taking it seriously."
"You scolded her into giving me an interview." I tucked the phone in between my shoulder and my ear and started sorting through the papers on my kitchen table.
"Go work on your book," said Ebenezer. "Call me again when you get hired."
He hung up on me.
"Your confidence in me is the reason I'm in this mess," I said into the dial tone.
It didn't answer, so I hung up too. After a while I managed to clear enough space on my table that I could actually sit down and have dinner without dripping ramen on The Confessions.
---
I got the job. Assistant professor, teaching intro to religion studies and a senior seminar on Augustine. I called Eb again, though I don't actually remember what I said, and was over the moon for about a week and a half.
Then I had to figure out what I was going to live on until September.
I made it, through the power of clean living, personal virtue, and a job at the laundromat down the street. Then I packed all my books into my rickety car and drove to the other side of Chicago so I could move into my office.
I'd had offices before. I'd had many offices. But this one was mine, and I didn't have to share it, and my name was on the door, and it was mine.
It was also on the third floor of Winter Hall. I pulled my car into the tiny lot behind the Hall and gamely carried the first box upstairs.
The office was just past the top of the stairs. My key fitted the lock, and the door swung open. Desk, chair, bookcases, all bare. I set the box down and went for another.
By the time I was carting up the fifth box out of way-too-many-what-was-I-thinking, I was puffing a bit. I may have been working out a bit less as I concentrated on getting the first draft of the book finished.
There was a familiar-looking guy coming out of another office at the top of the stairs, watching me with amused green eyes.
"Doctor Dresden," he said. "A pleasure to see you again."
"Uh, yeah, likewise," I pushed past him and dumped the box in my office.
Must be a guy from a conference, because he definitely wasn't anyone I'd worked with. Suit, green eyes, oh, starts with an M. Or an N. No, an M.
"How are you?" I said, playing for time. M. Some Italianish name.
"Passable," he said. "Of course, the undergraduates will be reappearing soon, that always puts a bit of a damper on things."
"I like undergrads." I shrugged. I knew his name was Italian and started with an M. Mussolini? Machiavelli?
Wow, this guy must have really rubbed me the wrong way. I peered over his shoulder, trying to read the nameplate on his door.
"I'm sure," he said, shifting as if to purposefully block my view. "Do you need help getting things from your car?"
"That'd be very kind-"
"John Marcone, Doctor Dresden." He smiled slightly.
"Oh, right, the philosophy prof." This guy again, what were the odds? "I'm not so great with names. I guess our departments share the building?"
"Yes. Now, your boxes-" Marcone stuck his head into his office, calling for a Hendricks.
The red-haired mountain that came out of the office was wearing a tweed jacket and a worn pair of jeans. I'd never seen a mountain do that.
"Professor Marcone?" the mountain said.
"This is Doctor Dresden," said Marcone. "Doctor Dresden, this is Mister Hendricks, one of my graduate students. I'm sure he'd be happy to assist you with your boxes."
"Thanks," I said, meaning it. I meant the next words too, but I probably shouldn't have said them. "Wouldn't want your suit to get rumpled, huh, Marcone."
"Oh, I'm also happy to assist, Doctor Dresden." Marcone took off his suit jacket and put it carefully away in his office. "Shall we?" He started down.
I followed, shaking my head. Only a philosophy professor would talk like that.
"Thanks," I said again, to Hendricks. "I hope it's not too much trouble."
"Won't be," said Hendricks.
Well, with his muscles, I could believe it. His arms were bigger around than I was. I looked away from them to concentrate on getting down all of the stairs, and caught Marcone frowning at me. Okay, my attention had been wandering a bit, it wasn’t a crime.
It took about three more trips to get the last ten boxes, with Marcone and Hendricks helping. They hung around as I unpacked, Hendricks reading the titles of my books and Marcone staring at each of my weird knickknacks like they held untold secrets.
"They're just junk," I told him, as I lifted my skull carefully out of his case.
"Really," said Marcone. "Is that real?"
"As far as I know," I said. "This is Bob." I set Bob down on a pile of books and started rooting through another box.
"Memento mori," said Hendricks, and started reading my copy of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling.
"Yeah, sure," I said, and hit the button on the back of Bob's head that made him cackle.
Hendricks jumped, just a little, and glared at me. Marcone just picked up the skull and turned him around and around in his hands.
"Someone wired a real human skull and made into a Halloween noisemaker," he concluded, setting Bob back down. "Macabre."
"I didn't do it," I said. "Friend of mine found him at a thrift store like that."
Marcone looked like he was going to ask more questions, but there was a knock on my open door.
"Hi," said the newcomer. I would have said he was muscular before I met Hendricks, but he was still pretty built for an academic. I really would need to start working out to make it in this department. "I'm Michael," he said. "Shiro asked me to talk to you about your classes?"
"Oh, right, we talked on the phone," I said. "Let me just- I know the syllabi are in one of these boxes-"
"I'll leave you to it," said Marcone. He headed back to his office.
"Can I borrow this?" Hendricks waved Fear and Trembling at me.
"What? You haven't read Kierkegaard?"
"Different translation," said Hendricks.
"Whatever." I shrugged. "Just don't lose it."
Michael smiled at us. I was probably giving the impression that I was settling in well. Yep, I could lend books with the best of them.
"Sit down," I said, pushing the lone chair at him. "Tell me what I should be doing."
"Well, you've got the syllabus and slides for Intro to Religion," said Michael, taking a seat. "The ones Slate left before his contract expired."
"Yeah," I said, having finally located the stack of papers Michael had mailed me the week before. "I have to tell you, Michael, this stuff is pretty incoherent." That was understating it. I still wasn't sure how Lloyd Slate had managed to segue from Max Weber to a rant about the Dalai Lama, and I had decided I really didn't want to know. That kind of crazy can be infectious.
"Slate had some problems," allowed Michael. "You should feel free to revise his course plan as much as you want, although I'm afraid you'll have to keep the book - at this point most students have already bought their copies."
"So I can do whatever I want, as long as it's based on," I looked at the syllabus, "A Basic Guide to Religion, by Lloyd Slate."
"You can always assign more readings online," said Michael, offering a sympathetic smile.
"Great," I said. "I'm haunted by the spectre of the man who last had my job."
"You do have the seminar," said Michael. "Which you'll need to assign books for soon. The students who signed up for that only had it listed as a Senior Seminar, no topic."
"Great." I sat down on my desk, for lack of another chair. "It's cross-listed as a graduate course, right?"
"Right, but you probably won't have to do anything special for the graduate student. Give her longer papers."
"Wait wait wait," I held up a hand. "The graduate student."
"There are a couple others," said Michael. "But Shiro has taken them into his research, so they'll probably never be heard from again." He smile hadn’t gone, but he didn't exactly look happy. "We're a small department, Harry, and you're coming in at a difficult time. Two people are on sabbatical, so it's just you, me, Shiro and Sanya. And Shiro's not teaching this semester, except for his research class."
"Do I ever get to meet Shiro?" I asked. "I mean, I should say hi to the head of the department, shouldn't I?"
"He won't be in until the freshman orientation's over," said Michael. He shrugged. "I'd concentrate on getting your classes together. Let me know if I can do anything to help," he added, getting up.
"Sure, thanks," I said. Not that I'd need it. I'd taught Intro to Religion as a lecturer twice before. I just had to read Slate's book, see what I could make out of it.
---
Slate's book was awful. And boring. And awful. I groaned and nearly tossed it across the room, except I'd just got it from the library and I didn't need them coming after me. Instead I set the book carefully on my desk and leaned my chair back until I was nearly tipping over.
If I ignored the book, the undergrads would complain about having had to buy it. If I used the book, they would complain about having to read the book. Not that undergrads ever stop complaining about having to read things – I certainly hadn't shut up about it in my day.
I stared gloomily at Slade's book, willing myself to pick it up, but I couldn't do it. Instead I glanced out my open door, across the hallway.
If I leaned back just a little more, I could see right into Marcone's office. I anchored myself to my desk with my feet and tried to divine the secrets of John Marcone, relativist philosopher and assistant box carrier.
He was talking to some older guy in a suit. I looked down at my own t-shirt and jeans and decided I might need to get some better clothes before I started lecturing. At least today I'd had the excuse of moving in.
Marcone didn't look very happy about whatever they were talking about. I couldn't quite hear what was going on, but if I went just a bit further back I could see their faces more clearly...
I lost balance and fell over, cracking my head against one of the bookcases. It was pretty much inevitable, but that didn't make me feel any better, just dumber.
While I was lying there, rubbing my head, Marcone came into view.
"Are you all right, Doctor Dresden?" He looked concerned, but I was pretty sure he was laughing at me.
"Yeah," I said, struggling up. "Just testing my chair. For stability."
"I'm sorry to see it failed," he said. Definitely laughing at me. He offered me a hand, but I pulled myself up using the edge of my desk.
"Don't let me interrupt your meeting," I said.
"Doctor Vargassi was just leaving," said Marcone, looking back at Vargassi, who didn't look like he was ready to leave at all.
"Still a few things to clear up, Johnny," said Vargassi. Marcone made a face at me. Well, sort of a face – it wasn't anything more than a twitch of his mouth and a lift of his eyebrows, but I was certain he wouldn't have even done that if Vargassi could have seen him.
I didn't blame him for the not-face. I wouldn't want anybody to call me Johnny in that tone of voice. Or Harry, for that matter.
"Just a moment," said Marcone. "Doctor Dresden, I was meaning to ask you if you'd obtained a parking pass for your car."
"Uh, no." I had forgotten, actually.
"You might want to move your car, then. That's a restricted lot down there." He turned and followed Vargassi back into his office without waiting for me to respond.
I waited until his attention was occupied before running down the stairs and into the lot. Some enterprising university official had already ticketed my car. When I flipped over the ticket, I found that they'd also made some nasty remarks about the state of the various paint jobs on my patchwork Beetle.
I could already tell that I'd love it here.
---
I had a week and a half until classes began. I spent the first half trying to fix Slate's lesson plan, then spent another half trying to get my seminar together. I kept catching myself staring longingly at the pile of paper that made up my manuscript, but I didn't have time to work on my book. This is what happens when you finally get a real job.
It was edging on two in the afternoon with three days left until classes began when somebody knocked on my door. Usually it was open, but today I'd kept it closed so that Marcone couldn't see me despairing at the draft of my first lecture.
"Come in!" I shouted.
The woman who pushed the door open was around my age, short, blond hair and blue eyes. She walked a little stiffly, but her face said she was used to it.
"Professor Dresden?" she said. "Wait – Harry Dresden?"
"That's me," I said. Weird that she knew who I was but didn't seem to have been expecting me. My name was on the door, after all.
She looked sort of familiar, but I couldn't place her off the top of my head. I'm terrible with names.
"I'm Karrin Murphy." Her lips quirked. "The graduate student."
"Right, right," I stood up and pushed the chair around so she could sit on it. "Nice to meet you at last."
She didn't answer, just looked at the chair, then at her leg, then at me. I got a glare.
"I'd do the same for any lady," I said, nobly. The glare intensified. "I'd do the same for anybody," I amended. "I give Michael my chair when he comes in. I'm tall, I can sit on my desk." Murphy laughed at that.
"You need another chair," she said, and sat down.
"I'll keep that in mind," I said. "So, what can I do for the graduate student?"
"You don't remember me, do you?" she said, ignoring my question. "Well, I guess you wouldn't – we only met the once. But John Stallings used to talk about you all the time."
"You're police," I said. I couldn't quite keep the coldness out of my voice. Shit, shit, shit.
"Used to be." Murphy glanced down at her leg again. "You nearly broke my nose, ring any bells?"
"You'll have to be more specific," I said. I kind of wasn't joking, but the memories were coming back. Back in Chicago for the summer, instead of staying at school, like I would later. I had been pretty drunk – I wouldn't normally throw a punch at a lady, even a cop. I didn't feel much better about it when I remembered that she'd pinned me to the ground in a shoulder-lock almost immediately after. "You must have been a rookie, because I wasn't more than nineteen."
"Twenty's what it said on the paperwork," said Murphy. "Look, Professor, I don't want to make things difficult for you. It was just a surprise, seeing you." She smiled, but I wasn't quite sure whether to take the offer of truce, not yet.
"Yeah, real surprise," I said. I took a breath, and then another one, and then decided to go with it. "Look, why don't we start over? What can I do for you?"
"I was mostly just stopping by," she said. "I had an advisory meeting with Michael, and he said I was going to TA for you. And I'm in your seminar."
"Did you find the books for that okay?" I asked. The itch in my hands and the tightness at my temples were starting to die down, and I managed a real smile.
"I already owned most of them." Murphy shrugged. "I was actually wondering if you knew what you needed out of a TA. I mean, am I going to be running a review section, or just grading papers?"
"I have no idea," I admitted. "The kids didn't sign up for a review section, but there are nearly two hundred of them. An optional one might be a good idea."
Murphy made a face, and I actually laughed.
"Tell you what, I'm starving." I got up off the desk. "Why don't we get lunch and we can discuss it?"
"I've already eaten," she said, but she stood up too.
"You can watch me eat," I said. I grabbed my duster and walked out. She followed me to the stairs, but then kept going when I stopped.
"Elevator," she said over her shoulder. I hurried to catch her as she turned a corner down the hall.
"There's an elevator here?" I had carried all those boxes up all those stairs when I could have been riding?
"Don't get too excited, Professor," said Murphy. She fished a key out of her pocket and waved it at me, before using it in the lock next to the elevator door. "Use restricted to those who actually need it. The rest of you get to enjoy the exercise."
"I'll just have to hang out with you, then," I said, and jumped in when her hand hovered over the door close button.
She didn't really try to close the door on me. That's how I could tell we were hitting it off.
"There's a pizza place on the other side of campus," I said. "We can drive if you want."
"I'll be fine, Professor," said Murphy, sounding a bit exasperated. The elevator stopped and we got out. "Let me grab my stick from my car."
It was a bit chilly for September, with a light breeze catching my coat and making it flap. It blew Murphy's hair into her face, and she constantly had to brush it away with the hand that wasn’t occupied with her forearm crutch.
"So," I said. "You don't want to teach a review section."
"Everybody hates review sections," she said. "I hate them because I have to spend time explaining basics to kids who don't really care, and the kids hate them because that's another hour out of their week when they could be drinking. Or doing homework," she said, sounding generous.
"I guess," I said. "But I'm worried that I won't be able to take many questions, and office hours won't cover it."
"No, it's a good idea," said Murphy. "We're just all going to hate it."
"I am resigned to being the bad guy," I said. "Wait, what if I give you a big bowl of candy-"
"Professor, they're eighteen, not twelve."
"I didn't say the candy was for them." I grinned. "And call me Dresden. Or Harry. I insist all my former arresting officers call me by my name."
She laughed at that, and I felt a lot better. I had gotten past that stage in my life, and it could be a joke now.
We got to the pizza place and I ordered a pie with pepperoni. Murphy had a piece of it to keep me company, and I devoured the rest.
"So," I said, mouth full. "What made you want to study religion?"
She eyed me over her slice of pizza. She'd probably heard the question a thousand times - every academic has. She was thinking about it, though.
"I saw some things, on the force," she said, at last. "I've been a Catholic all my life, but dealing with- with all that, it showed me how powerful faith can be. I want to understand it."
"Good luck," I said. "The subject of a million theses."
"Yeah, I guess," said Murphy. "What about you, Dresden?"
"Had a good professor," I said. "Got interested." I was going to say something trite about redemption, but I figured she might read too much into that. Instead I changed the subject, asking after Stallings.
"He's fine," she said. "I'll tell him I saw you – I don't know if you understand how it is, but it's a bit awkward when you stop seeing a repeat. You're glad they're staying out of trouble, but you're worried something's happened."
"Yeah, something happened," I grinned. "I got religion."
"Nice, Dresden." Murphy rolled her eyes.
---
On the first day of classes, I stood in my apartment and looked at the clothes I'd laid out on my bed. Black button-down, suit jacket with only a few patches here and there. Jeans, but they were nice jeans and I'd found out that my cat had shed all over my dress pants. I got dressed and put my boots on, letting the jeans disguise the fact that they were my favorite cowboy boots. I though for a while about whether or not to put on my silver rings - I don't usually wear them, because I worry about them getting lost or stolen, but today was a special occasion. Then I spent awhile trying to decide whether the students would think I was loveably eccentric or laughably eccentric if I showed up with my fingers covered in silver. I already had my mother’s pentacle tucked away under my shirt. Finally I put about half of the rings on, three on each hand.
I drove to campus, parked my car in the lot behind Winter Hall and adjusted my new parking pass so it was clearly visible through the window. I hadn't been ticketed since I'd moved in to the office, but I still caught one of the security guys, Morgan, watching me from the distance every once in a while, waiting for me to trip up and park in a fire lane.
I got to the lecture hall at a quarter after ten, early so I could watch the students trickle in. It was one of the big auditoriums with a stage, so I sat on the edge of the stage and enjoyed letting my feet dangle for once. Murphy turned up and I offered to give her a boost up, but she glared at me and just sat down in the front row.
Some of the kids were sitting in the back, far enough away that they could stare without being worried about me doing anything about it.
"Hey!" I shouted. "Come down here – I don't have a mic, and I don't want to wear out my voice. And I don't want to make Murphy walk around everywhere passing out the syllabus."
The kids muttered, but they collected their stuff and came down. I had to repeat myself more than that once – more than ten times – but I finally got to the point where all one hundred and eighty-seven students (more or less) were ranged in the seven rows in front of me.
"Hi," I didn't stand up, because right now I could see their faces and if I stood up I would have to bend in two to do that. "Welcome to Intro to Religion. I hope this is where you were planning to be, but if not, I'm sure someone can give you directions to your Econ class or whatever." Nobody moved, but a couple people giggled restlessly.
"Right," I said. "I'm Professor Harry Dresden, and this is my lovely assistant Karrin Murphy. Give the kids a wave, Murphy." Murphy did so, not looking up from where she was rummaging in her messenger bag. "Murphy has two stacks of paper for you. One is the syllabus, one is blank index cards. Take one of each and pass it down the row." Murphy got up and started handing out stacks to the student at the end of each row.
"Don't start reading the syllabus yet, and don't do anything with the card. We're going to do some student-teacher interaction first." I looked around the room. A couple kids had notebooks out, but most of them were just sitting there. One guy already had his eyes on the clock on the wall to my right.
"Show of hands," I said. "How many people here practice a religion? No need to specify which or your level of involvement." A jumble of hands went up, some fast, some hesitant. Karrin's was among them. I didn't bother to try and count them, just nodded. "Okay, how many people don't practice a religion? Again, doesn't matter why - atheists, agnostics, and lapsed whatevers." Another batch of hands went up. "How many didn't raise their hands for either?" Five or six hands went up, and I grinned. "How many refuse to raise their hands because I am obviously not keeping track and they're too lazy to move their arms if it's not going to count toward participation?" Two hands went up, both belonging to the same ironic hipster chick. I made a face at her and the class laughed.
"Okay," I said. "Now we're going to do the part where I try to learn your names and fail miserably. At least this time I have the excuse that there are a ton of you." I took a spare notecard out of my pants' pocket and held it up. "What I want you to do is write your name and a physical description on the card Murphy gave you."
Kids started scribbling or borrowing pens from neighbors.
"Can we do a sketch?" asked one of the kids in front.
"As long as it's not a stick figure," I said. "Sure, knock yourself out."
I waited until almost everybody was finished, and then added, "and put your religious belief on there." A couple kids groaned, and I raised my eyebrows at them. "What did you expect, your favorite ice cream? Look, these cards are for my use only. If I make statistics, they'll be completely anonymous. If you still don't want to answer, that's fine. Just write 'refuse to say' or 'Professor Dresden is an asshole,' and we'll call it good."
I got another couple chuckles at that, and I went back to waiting.
"Right," I said, at last. "We've got forty-five minutes left, and I know no one wants to be here the full time today. I'm going to read the syllabus first, because that's the only way I know for sure that you'll actually pay attention to it."
Not even then, I amended, as I read from the master copy I'd folded up and stuffed in my pocket. Most of the kids were doodling on their copies, and the sketch artist kid was still working on the headshot on his index card. I finished up and took a few inane questions about grading and the fact that yes, really, there were two papers. Yes, really, they were three whole pages each.
"Okay, any more questions, I just told you when my office hours are. And before you ask, they're still written on top of the syllabus if you forgot. I need you to pass your index cards down the row - try to keep them in order - and Murphy will collect them. I'm going to talk about why we're here."
The hipster chick raised a hand.
"Yes?"
"You mean, why we're here on this planet, in this state of being?"
"No," I said. "I mean, why we're in this class."
"It's because it's an easy humanities credit," said a guy with glasses sitting next to the sketch artist. He got a laugh and a lot of nods.
"That may be why you're here-" Murphy handed me the pack of cards and I shuffled through it. "William Borden. Will? Bill?"
"Billy," he said. I took a pen out of my pocket and made a note. He'd listed his religion as 'follower of Erythnul and Obad-Hai.' Geeks. "Well, Billy, that may be why you're here. Those of us that have made a career out of the study of religion, maybe we have a slightly less pragmatic reason.
"The study of religion can take many forms," I held up the hand that wasn’t full of index cards and ticked off fingers. "We can talk about anthropology, history, psychology, biology, or, my particular field, sociology. One thing we're not going to talk about is the essential truth of any religion." A few of the kids made noises, and I talked over them. "There's a place for that, and that place is in the philosophy department or a theology school. In this class, we're going to discuss what religion is and what it does to people, not whether god or karma or spirits exist."
I got a few confused frowns and a few approving grins. A lot of kids just looked bored.
"Any questions?" I asked. "Or do you all want to leave early?"
"What about you?" asked the sketch artist. All he'd written down on his card was 'Fix, pagan.' The sketch of him on the back was nice, his hair a little spikier than it was in the bleached reality. But his thin face was portrayed in a realistic rather than flattering way.
"You know our beliefs now," said Fix. "But do we get to know yours?"
"I'm trying to preserve a mystique," I said, and grinned. "Or the illusion of neutrality. All right, get gone, get out of here." I made a shooing motion with my hands. "Read the introduction to your textbook, and I'll see you here on Wednesday."
The class rushed out, far faster than they had come in. Murphy gave me a wave as she left – I knew she had a class with the mysterious Professor Sanya after, so I didn't try to stop her. Instead I waved back as I fielded a half-dozen questions from the hipster chick. Georgia, my cards informed me, worshipper of 'the moon goddess.'
I guess the standard Christians didn't want to talk to me, or something.
I spotted Marcone sitting in the back as Georgia finally realized she had another class in five minutes. I fanned my cards out and back in a half-hearted shuffle as I walked up the aisle past him.
"Decide to enroll, Marcone?"
"I have class downstairs." He picked up a briefcase and followed me out. "I finished early and decided to see how you were faring."
"Aw, I didn't know you cared," I said. "What did you think?"
"A standard opener," said Marcone. "You shouldn't feel bad – every first class is boring, practically without exception." I scowled at him, but he kept talking. "It was probably wise of you to conceal the fact that you already have a stake in religious truth."
What, that I thought all of them were wrong? Or, wait, no- He still thought I was a Methodist. I couldn't really remember why I had told him that, especially since American religions weren't really my field, but I couldn't back down now.
"I don't want to make the non-Christians feel alienated," I said, loftily. "I already got a lecture about inclusiveness from Dean Leanansidhe."
"Laudable," said Marcone, "in that respect. But I have rather less admiration for your emphasis on refusing to examine the truth of what you will be lecturing on."
"Oh, you heard that part, did you?" I looked at him sideways, trying to decide if he was serious or just trying to get a rise out of me. "Look, Marcone, the effects of religion and religious belief are real, whether or not the belief itself has a factual basis. That's what matters to me." I started walking faster, hurrying back to my office.
"I simply think that's a limited point of view," said Marcone, matching my long strides with shorter and faster steps of his own. "What's the point of restricting your avenues of study to stimulus-response rather than the metaphysical nature of-" I held up a hand to stop him.
"What's going on here?" I asked. "Are you following me to argue about my lecture?"
"I'm going to my office, Doctor Dresden." Marcone lifted his eyebrows. "It happens to be in the same building as yours, as I thought you were aware."
"Yeah, okay," I said, and resigned myself to another fight with Marcone about the validity of the study of religion. At least I hadn’t been drinking this time.
---
After that first day, things settled down and ran smoothly. Intro to Religion didn't have any work for the students yet, just lectures, and I already had those planned out. Mostly. My seminar was ten interested seniors plus Murphy, and I had no difficulty with moderating a discussion of Augustine.
The Augustine did make my fingers itch to be working on my book, though. I finished off my last class on the Thursday of the second week of classes and practically ran to my office. Murphy gave me a weird look, but my brain was already buried in Augustine again and I ignored her.
I took the stairs two at a time, slammed into my office, and set up to get typing.
The first draft was more or less done, but that didn't mean much. I flipped through the pages, seeing my notes and the places that needed to be fleshed out. There were a lot of those. Chapter Six, for instance, just had a title and a two sentence description of what I had been too lazy to actually type out. It had been so boring and obvious at the time.
"In Creatures," I read, "Finding God – importance of intelligence and memory. Early Christianity valuing intellect more than corporeal form – contrast with contemporary Roman religions. Connection to free will thesis."
I stared at the paper some more. Then I held the page of Chapter Six up, letting the light from the window filter through it. The light didn't really illuminate the contents for me.
"What the hell does that mean?" I asked.
I got no answer. I put Chapter Six down, and thought. That didn't help. I picked up Bob from where he'd been holding some paperwork down, and pressed the button. He cackled, and I had it.
I started typing, a grin edging through my face. I didn't stop to make references, so the text was full of things like "snappy quote from Confessions Ch X here" and "think this is possibly already proven wrong." But I had the idea, and the rest was just editing.
I was still in full flow when Marcone knocked on my open door.
"Hi," I said, not stopping. "Busy. Come back later."
"I see that you're busy, Doctor Dresden," he said. His voice was a little surprised, a little amused, and I had no time for thinking about that when there were words to be put on pages.
I grunted, hoping he'd get the hint.
"I was just coming in," said Marcone, taking another step inside, "to ask if you could do something about that loud, interminable clacking noise, only to find that you have procured an Olivetti typewriter and appear to actually be using it."
I looked down at my trusty blue typewriter, and then up at Marcone.
"I didn't procure it," I said. "You carried up the stairs for me."
"Ah," he said. "That would explain why that box was so light - I had assumed it was more of your anatomical collection."
"One skull is not a collection," I said, glancing at Bob. "Listen, what can I do for you?" The flow was gone, irrecoverable. I had to get Marcone out of here so I could try and get a new one going.
"Why do you have a typewriter?" he asked. Answering a question with a question was not cool. This was not an improv class, this was serious academic business.
"To write with," I said, as if explaining something to one of my freshmen.
"Yes," said Marcone, in the same tone of voice. "That is what a laptop and a word processor are for."
"I had one of those once," I said. "Three times, actually. And they cost a fortune and I broke them within a week. Do you know how much this typewriter cost me?"
Marcone did not.
"Ten dollars," I said, proudly. And another three hundred to keep it running, but that didn't sound as impressive. It was still cheaper than a computer, anyway.
"You realize your department would provide you with a laptop if you asked," said Marcone.
I hadn't known that, but I wasn't about to abandon my typewriter in the face of Marcone's scorn.
"Sure, and then I'll break it and they'll bill me." I gave him a glare. "What do you want, Marcone?"
"If you're going to type," he said, "please keep your door closed. It's extremely distracting for your colleagues."
He shut the door for me on his way out. Considerate.
I seethed. He was cutting me off from the life in the hallway! No longer could I see what was going on outside my box of an office.
But I resolved to be the better man, and didn't get up just to open the door. I did forget to close it after having gone to get coffee, but Marcone came and closed it for me again, without comment. After that I just couldn't work on the book any more, so I went home. My cat needed feeding anyway.
---
Friday I had no classes, but I did have office hours. I came in at nine and set up my typewriter again.
At ten Hendricks stopped by.
"The professor says keep your door closed," he said. He didn't say it like a threat, but any order from a man that size sounds like a threat.
"The professor meaning Marcone?" I snorted. "You tell him I have office hours today. The door stays open."
Hendricks shrugged, and turned to leave.
"Hey," I said. "When do I get my Kierkegaard back?"
Hendricks paused with his back to me, thinking. "When the door gets closed."
I made a face at him as he left and typed louder. I had to stop hitting the keys so hard when I remembered what a pain they were to repair, but the thought was still there.
At ten thirty Marcone himself deigned to walk across the hall. He didn't say anything, just picked up one of the stacks of paper cluttering my desk – probably Chapter Four. That was a good chapter.
"You realize this is littered with spelling errors, don't you?" he asked.
"It'll get fixed in the next draft," I said, still typing. "I'll get Murphy to look it over for me, that's what grad students are for."
"Word processors," said Marcone, "generally come with built-in spellcheck. Sometimes even automatic capitalization, which I see you seem to have a problem with."
"My shift key is a bit sticky," I muttered. "Look, Marcone, I'm not closing my door while I have office hours. The kids will think I've left."
"They will undoubtedly be able to hear your relentless tick-tacking and binging, even through the door. You seem to think that it is an impervious barrier, but your door is in fact merely a cushion that makes the typing bearable."
"What's eating you?" I asked Marcone, matching his calm, reasonable tone. "Is it really me? Because I think you've got some misplaced anger problems."
Marcone's face went blank. He set the chapter down and left, closing the door behind him. I sprang up and opened it, making a rude gesture at Hendricks as he glanced at me from inside Marcone's office.
A little while later the first undergrad showed up. Billy. I gave him my chair and sat on the desk, as usual.
"The first paper’s coming up, right?" he asked. "I wanted to discuss potential topics with you."
"Not for a couple weeks," I said. "But shoot." Billy was an engineer, and I knew he had some trouble with creative writing. I didn't blame him for wanting to get started early.
"I was thinking I could write about the logical fallacies in-"
"Hold up," I said, putting up a hand. "Do you remember what I said we weren't going to be discussing in this class?"
"Yeah," he said. "But I was talking to Georgia in review, and it got me thinking-"
"Thinking is good," I said. "But unless you can spin the paper so that your 'logical fallacies' relate to the people or the history - the physical, not the metaphysical - I'm afraid I'm going to have to nix it."
"So I could write about how Catholic dogma is complicated by, like, the measures demanded by the military during the Crusades."
"Sure," I said. "That sounds like an interesting topic."
"Okay, I'll work on that," said Billy. He shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat. "Also, are you planning any extra credit-"
Every undergraduate in the world will ask that question. The proportion increases exponentially by how badly they think they're going to do in a class. I started to give my standard 'no, better do your work instead' answer, but a thought occurred.
"Billy, I will give you an extra one percent toward your final grade if you go across the hall and ask Professor Marcone your metaphysical questions."
"That's not much," said Billy. He looked to Marcone's office and back at me. "And are you even allowed to do that?"
"People give out extra credit for weird stuff," I said. "I had a professor way back when who gave it out for answering trivia questions." Billy didn't look convinced, so I tried again. "Come on, I'm giving good value for what I'm asking you to do. Just head over there and ask Marcone annoying questions."
Billy shrugged, giving me a look that said something like 'I'll never understand professors/academics/liberal arts-and-crafts types.' Then he adjusted his glasses, which had come askew in the progress of the look, and went to.
I did the same thing with the next undergrad, and the next. Murphy stopped by and she wouldn't do it, but she did take my first chapter and the chair and started checking for typos.
Which was when the last student I'd sent across the hall came back.
"Professor Marcone said that you don't have a computer," she said, accusingly. "Is that why you haven't been doing powerpoints? Because I take much better notes with powerpoints."
"Powerpoints let you ignore the lecture," I said. Also I had no idea how to make them. "Begone before I revoke your extra credit!" I tapped Bob's button to make my point, and she left, giggling in counterpoint to the cackles.
"How are you going to do online grading?" asked the next student. "And is that why you haven't been answering my e-mails?"
"I do have access to the library computers," I said. "I just haven't gotten around to your e-mails yet." And now I wouldn't have to, since he had come to office hours.
Still, that question made me feel guilty, and Murphy was definitely making fun of me silently, so I gave up on sending my students to Marcone for the day. I shut my door when office hours were over, too.
But only to lull Marcone into a false sense of security. Not because he had won.
---
I thought about staying home on Saturday, but lugging all of my notes and books back to my apartment sounded like too much work. Instead I came in to the department and started up with the typing again.
If I left my door open, it was because I didn't think anyone else would be in on a Saturday afternoon.
"Hi, Harry." Michael walked in. "I've been getting some complaints about noise."
"Michael, tell me honestly," I said. "How many of those complaints have come from Marcone?"
Michael tried to hide a smile, which told me everything I needed to know.
"He's got it in for me," I informed him. "It's a grudge."
"Sure, Harry," said Michael, humoring me. "Anyway, I really came to ask if you would come to the departmental dinner next week."
I hesitated. I mean, I probably had to go, but it sounded really boring.
"Departmental dinner meaning I invite everyone to my house to eat burgers and hot dogs," said Michael, and I was in.
After he left, I got back to the book. I had just about gotten to the point where I couldn't make any more progress until I did more research, and I couldn't get back into Augustine and my secondary sources until I caught up on lectures for my classes. By the time I'd done that, the due date for Intro to Religion would be coming up, and Murphy and I would be buried in essays.
I wound a last sheet of paper into my typewriter with a sigh.
Marcone walked in as my fingers hovered over the keys.
"Don't you have to leave soon?" he asked. He sounded almost hysterical – for him that meant his tone had another tiny inflection besides amused or cold. "Go home, eat dinner, go to bed early?"
"Why would I go to bed early on a Saturday night?" I asked, mystified.
"So you can get up tomorrow morning and go to church," said Marcone.
Oh, right, I had forgotten. Was he going to ask me where I went to church? I had no idea if there was a local Methodist congregation I could claim as my own – I mean, there had to be, they were everywhere, but I might need a name-
"Doctor Dresden," said Marcone, interrupting my thoughts. "I have to completely rewrite three of my lectures today, and I have made little to no progress because of your typing, so-"
"Okay, okay, sorry," I said. "You should have said something."
"I may have mentioned once or twice that your typing was driving me to distraction," snapped Marcone.
"Maybe I'd like a little explanation to go with your orders," I threw back. My hands itched, and I could feel my face getting a little hot-
And then it broke. I forced myself down, and I saw Marcone doing the same. It looked so similar that I wondered for a second if we'd gone to the same anger management counselors. Or maybe that whole counting to ten thing was more widespread than I had thought.
"Look." I stood up and pushed my chair around to him. "It sounds like you're having a bad day. Why don't you sit down for a minute? I'm nearly done here, I'll be out of your hair in no time."
"Thank you," said Marcone, slowly. He took the chair and sat down, propping his elbows on his knees and folding up his hands in front of his face. He looked tired without his anger, and I felt a little guilty.
I started gathering up my papers and scattered sources to distract myself, trying to get something like order back to my desk.
"Doctor Vargassi told me he'd had some complaints about my last lecture in my ethics class," Marcone said.
"So?" I asked.
"So I don't think any of my students actually complained," said Marcone. "At the very least, they took it to Vargassi first without mentioning anything to me."
"That sucks," I said. It did. It's one thing for there to be a problem, it's another for that problem to be taken to your superiors before you have a chance to fix it.
"Mhm." Marcone sat back, watching me move around.
I finished up, and put my typewriter back in its box on the bottom shelf of my smallest bookcase. That last page could wait until I'd done more research.
"Finished for now?" asked Marcone. He sounded more himself now that he'd got the Vargassi thing off his chest.
"For a while," I said. I picked up my duster and my bag, and Marcone got up out of my chair. "Tell Hendricks that he can stop holding my book hostage." Marcone smiled at that.
"I think I owe you an apology," he said. "You may have been right about misplaced anger."
"I probably should have taken you more seriously," I offered. Goodwill gestures are important, or so I'm told. "Anyway, see you on Monday."
"Good night, Doctor Dresden."
I could feel his eyes on me again as I tromped down the stairs.
---
Marcone started making a habit of coming by to hang out at the end of the day. We still snapped and argued at each other a lot, but it felt much more comfortable than before. I didn't have to worry about pushing it too far or getting in trouble with him for saying something I shouldn't have. Which was nice. My brain-to-mouth direct connection has caused problems in the past.
After about a week, he even brought me another chair.
"I don't mind sitting on my desk," I said, eyeing the hard grey plastic. "Are you trying to tell me something?"
"Harry, you're tall enough," said Marcone. "My neck is starting to wear out from having to look so far up."
"Don't call me Harry," I said, but I ducked my head and grinned. "Thanks, Marcone."
"Don't get too excited," he said. "I only borrowed it from a classroom downstairs."
"You're very good at carrying things up stairs," I said. "Such talent should be recognized."
"Mister Hendricks carried it up the stairs," said Marcone, a little reluctantly.
This led to an argument about the proper use of grad students, in which Marcone pointed out that I was making Murphy copyedit my book and I pointed out that Marcone was making Hendricks do everything else. And that I still hadn't gotten my Kierkegaard back, which was really nothing to do with Marcone, but I figured I'd bring it up for completeness' sake.
When I stormed out at six, though, it was less because I was angry and more because I had remembered that the departmental dinner was tonight. I came back after a second and kicked Marcone out of my office – if I left him there, he'd only go through my things and write unwanted comments on whatever drafts I had lying around.
---
I pulled up to Michael's house around seven. It was a nice enough place that I felt bad about parking my beetle in front of it. I was sure I was decreasing property values with each passing minute. Still, I walked up and rang the doorbell.
The door was answered by a tall blonde teenager who looked a lot like Michael. I assumed she was his daughter.
"Hi," I said. "I'm Harry Dresden?"
"Molly Carpenter," she said, formal and trained. Then she smiled at me and let me in. "The parents are in the kitchen, just go through. You can dump your coat on a couch or something."
I dodged through a minefield of children and children's things as I walked through the house. The place looked as if it had been cleaned recently, but then the kids had happened. There were a lot of them – I kept trying to keep track, but they ran around so much that I must have counted a couple of them twice.
When I finally got to the kitchen, Michael was searing hamburgers and hot dogs on the stove.
"Hi!" I shouted over the kitchen fan. "How's it going?"
"Harry!" Michael smiled. "This is my wife, Charity." He nodded over at a blonde woman who was checking potatoes from the oven. She nodded at me.
"Hi," I said, again. "So, anything I can do to help?"
"Dinner will be ready in no time," said Charity.
"Why don't you go sit down with Sanya?" suggested Michael. "Dining room."
"Oh, sure." I went to try and find my way to the dining room.
There was a tall black man sitting at the table. Sanya, I assumed.
"Hi," I said. "I'm Harry Dresden."
"Ah, yes." He waved me to a seat across from him. "Sanya. I read your paper about Zoroastrians. Very interesting."
"Thanks," I said, embarrassed. I hadn't read anything of his. All I knew was that he was teaching a class on Marxist and post-Marxist theory of religion. Which, okay, meant that I could probably fake having read one of his papers, but things like that never turn out well in the end.
"I don't suppose you have any thoughts?" I asked instead.
"Ehh, not necessarily," said Sanya. His accent – Russian or some Central European country, I couldn't tell – pulled at his last word in odd ways. "But I was impressed by your handling of the tension between the pressures of traditional religion and the religion being imposed by the state. My research interests-"
The handy thing about academics is that you only have to show a little interest to get them talking about their work. I know I do it too, but still.
Sanya was a psychology type overlapping a bit into my sociology field. It's a difference of methodology as much as anything else. Sanya was more hands-on with his research; I was more in the place of an observer. I was actually even more distant from practitioners, these days, when I was working on early Christianity rather than modern religions.
We moved on from talking about work to talking about backgrounds. Sanya was young, younger than I was, which made me a little jealous. But it turned out he'd had a tough time of it.
"There are many bad people in Moscow," he said. "I was one of them, for a while. Then I was a bad person in other places of the world."
"Another troubled adolescent rescued by religious studies," I said. "There are a lot of us here."
"Two is a lot?" asked Sanya. "Michael is a good man. Shiro – Shiro is himself."
"That's still fifty percent," I pointed out. Tiny, tiny department. "Where is Shiro, anyway?"
"He e-mailed to say he was too busy researching to eat food," said Sanya. "I have not seen him all year."
"I haven't ever seen him," I said. "I was starting to think he's just a story that Michael made up so that I wouldn't question Michael's orders."
"A figurehead?" asked Sanya, tapping his fingers against the table. "Perhaps Shiro has died and Michael does not want us to know that we 'troubled adolescents' now outnumber him."
"Stop plotting behind my back," said Michael, walking in. "Dinner is served."
The food was great – nothing special, but I've never gotten a handle on stoves or microwaves, so it was better than whatever burnt leftovers I had been eating this week. There was a false start there when the food was on the table and I started to reach, but everybody around me was saying grace. I started back, guilty, and tucked my hands in my lap. Sanya did more or less the same thing, only without the awkwardness. I made a face at him while the Carpenters had their heads bowed, and he shrugged, a tiny smile on his face.
Atheists unite. Well, atheists and non-Catholics, I guess, but I had a feeling about Sanya.
There was a little shop talk between us adults over dinner, but most of the kids – six of them, I finally got a count – didn't seem much interested. They didn't keep quiet, like some kids, but dominated the conversation with stuff about school and sports and friends. Molly started talking to me about my classes, though. She kept asking questions about sociology, and I caught Charity giving me looks when I gave my speech about religious truth yet again.
"So what do you believe, Harry?" Molly asked at last.
"I got nothing," I said. Usually I'd have more to say, but Molly was young and Charity didn't look especially happy with the direction of the conversation. "Religion's my job, not where I go in my down time."
Molly thought about that, picking at her baked potato.
"I got the impression from John that you were a Methodist, Harry," said Michael.
"You've been talking to Marcone about me?" I wondered what they had to say to each other. Nothing good, probably, though I'd hope Michael would stick up for me. "He might think that. It's a long story. And not really an interesting one."
"Well, then," said Sanya, leaning forward. "Let us talk of something else."
I won't say that contrasting Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution with the events of the Reformation were that much more interesting than my story, but it was way less personal, so I was inclined to approve.
---
Of course, given all of the discussion of my personal religious beliefs, it was only a matter of time before the horrible truth came out.
It wasn't like it was actually important. The only reason the whole 'Harry the Methodist' thing had lasted so long was because I was a bit stubborn about backing down from my ill-advised lies. I didn't make them often, after all.
Marcone was sitting in the chair he'd had stolen for me, reading the student paper. I was trying to squash two lectures into one to get back on schedule.
"I can't believe you actually read that," I said.
"It's important to know what's going on on campus," said Marcone. He flipped a page.
"Yet you read that and then give me a hard time about my spelling," I muttered. The lecture wasn't going well, and I was about due for an argument break.
"The students who create this publication are much younger than you are, Harry. They'll have time to learn."
"Sure," I said. I saw how it was. He was calling me old. "What's so interesting in there, anyway?"
"Well, there are several op-eds about whether the university should hire a Humanist chaplain," said Marcone. "The hot button issue of the day – more the semester, actually."
"Oh. Good. We should have one of those."
"Really?" Marcone raised his eyebrows at me over the paper. "Are you aware that the university currently employs only four chaplains? Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and a part-time Muslim chaplain that we share with three other schools. Is the need for a Humanist chaplain so great that it eclipses the other underserved communities?"
"Most of the other communities can go to a church or a study group in town," I said. "Humanists are harder to find. There's not the same support structure."
"You sound as if you're speaking from personal experience, Harry."
"Don't call me Harry," I said. "I mean, you know, this Methodist thing- there's sort of a fine line between that and atheism-" It sounded weak, even to me.
Marcone was grinning, a tiny thing, but it was there. He knew. Someone had told him already.
"Was it Sanya?" I asked. "Michael?"
"I can't reveal my sources," said Marcone, waving it away. "I was not aware, however, that you followed the Humanist teachings."
"It's a good moral code," I said. "It gives you a basis of operation without having to rely on any imaginary enforcers."
"But without the imaginary enforcers, what is the point of an absolutist moral code?" Marcone shook his head, looking disappointed. "Absolutes only make sense when infractions will be invariably punished."
Goddamn relativists.
"Humanism doesn't have any dogma," I tried.
"But what would you call its emphasis on democracy and free inquiry?" asked Marcone. "I can imagine many situations in which one or both might have to be restricted."
"How can they let you teach ethics?" I demanded. "Some of us think humans are worth a baseline of respect and dignity, regardless of the situation."
"But why?" asked Marcone. "And even so, what makes the tenets of Humanism more right than other moral codes?"
"I dunno, and I dunno," I said. "I'm not getting locked down in a philosophical debate with a freaking philosophy professor."
"So you concede?" asked Marcone.
"No," I said. "Look, bear with me for a moment. You say there are no absolutes, right?"
"Correct action can only be determined by the circumstances and your own judgment," said Marcone. "Yes."
"So, let's try to apply that." I leaned back in my chair. "Trolley problem. There's a trolley going down the tracks, and it's going to hit three people. You can't warn them in time, but you're standing next to a switch that will change the tracks. Only problem is that there's another person standing on the other set of tracks that would die. What do you do?"
"All things being equal," said Marcone, "I should switch the trolley." It was a point for him, but he wasn't smirking. He could tell I was setting something up.
"Okay, so now there's no switch. You're standing next to the track with another person. If you push them in front of the trolley, the trolley will stop and the three people will be saved. What do you do?"
"The problem remains the same," said Marcone, automatically. This stuff was all old hat to him. "One person or three."
"Yeah," I said. "So do you do it?"
"Yes," said Marcone.
"And what if the other person is a kid?" I asked. It was a shot in the dark, but I could see from the way that Marcone's face went blank that I had him.
"I admit my instinct would be not to harm the child," he said, quietly. "But my instincts are hardly inevitably correct. I think reason is a more trustworthy guide."
"Okay, some instincts are good and some instincts are bad, I can agree with that. But not all of us have the ability to reason through everything from scratch." I certainly hadn't. "We need help."
"So you need a Humanist chaplain?" asked Marcone. "Again, I ask - what makes him or her a better source of guidance than any other person on the street?"
"There are plenty of people on the street that you shouldn't trust," I said. Another lesson learned the hard way. "I'm not going to ask a random thug or drug-dealer what I should be doing with my life."
"Why not? He probably has far more life experience than the average college student. More experience with difficult choices, definitely."
"So what you're saying is," I summarized, "you think criminals are better life advisors than trained Humanist counselors."
Marcone shrugged. I resisted the urge to throw something at him. It wasn't his conclusions, it was the way it all made perfect logical sense and was totally nuts.
"I feel we've gotten somewhat off track," he offered.
"I'll say," I snorted.
"For instance," he continued, "when I was first sitting here, I was not thinking 'how can I expose Doctor Dresden's pointless web of deceit,' but rather 'how should I ask Doctor Dresden to dinner?'"
"Listen, my web of deceit was not pointless at all." I jabbed a finger at him. "There were plenty of good reasons-" none of which I could remember, but still.
Marcone was giving me an odd look. I stopped talking and rewound to what he had just said.
"Um." I felt my face heat a little. "Were you trying to ask me out?"
"Yes?"
"Um."
"Take your time, Doctor Dresden," said Marcone. He stood up, folding his paper under his arm. "I'll see you tomorrow."
"Um," I said, cleverly.
---
I did take my time to think about this whole Marcone dating thing. I thought about it as I drove home and I thought about it as I ate dinner, and I thought about it while I didn't sleep that night.
I could go out with Marcone. It had been a long time since I had dated anyone, though, and the last time I had dated a guy had been what, college? One of my therapists had decided that my fights were 'homosocial deprivation gone wrong' and had kind of pushed me in that direction.
It hadn't ended too badly. Not that that was a recommendation or anything.
When I got up the next morning, I still hadn't made a decision. I drove to campus, did my morning lecture, collected papers, and cornered Murphy after.
"I have Professor Sanya next," she said, trying to get her backpack on without losing her grip on her stick. "We're meeting to start grading papers over lunch, aren't we?"
"Yeah," I said, "But."
"So we'll talk then," said Murphy, and started stumping up the hill to Sanya's class.
Agh.
It’s not like I’m totally friendless, but the number of people I could talk to he knew both me and Marcone was pretty limited. And I wasn’t going to ask Michael or Hendricks for advice.
I took the papers to my car and went to do errands, staying as far away from my office as possible. I got a bunch of pens from an office supply store – undergrads kept stealing mine. I picked up my mail. Finally I stopped and got pizza and a couple sodas, put it all in my car, and decided to pick Murphy up from her class.
Sanya raised his eyebrows at me when I appeared outside his classroom, but he didn't say anything, just kept lecturing. I raised my eyebrows back and loitered in the hall some.
When it was finally a quarter after one, Sanya dismissed class and came out into the hall.
"Need something?" he asked.
"I thought I'd give Murphy a ride to the department," I said. "We're grading papers."
"I see," said Sanya, nodding. Hell, maybe he did see. Had he been talking to Marcone, like Michael? Was my whole department sneaking around behind my back?
"I don't see," said Murphy, behind Sanya. "I can make it fine on my own."
"I really need to talk to you," I said.
Sanya was laughing at us silently. Well. Laughing at me, anyway.
I followed Murphy out of the building, and steered her toward my car when she still showed signs of wanting to walk.
"This is not a Murphy thing," I said. "This is a Harry-Dresden-having-a-panic-attack thing. I'm being totally selfish here."
Murphy looked at me suspiciously, but she still got in the car.
"So." I started the car, after a few whines from the engine. "I need to talk. Not professor to student or even academic to academic. I need to talk to you man to woman."
"Dresden, I've got a boyfriend," said Murphy.
"No, that's not- Wait, what? What's his name?"
"Jared Kincaid."
"Oh, cool," I said. I was not grateful for the distraction, I was just interested. "What's he do?"
"He freelances-" Murphy seemed to realize she was being sidetracked. "Dresden, what's this about?"
"Oh, look, we're here," I babbled. I parked in my usual spot and launched myself out of the car. I scrabbled in the back seat, piling the papers, the mail, and the pens into a bag before scooping that and the pizza into my arms. Murphy got out and held the door open for me without comment.
"Man to woman," she said, unlocking the elevator.
"It's kind of personal," I said. We rode the two floors up, and I led the way to my office.
I didn't see Marcone anywhere. Hendricks was coming up the stairs, though, so I got into the office fast, dumped all the stuff on my desk, and closed the door after Murphy.
"Okay, okay," she said. "Let's hear it."
"So Marcone asked me out," I said in a rush, and then stopped.
Murphy stared at me for a moment. She sat down. She started laughing.
"It's not funny," I protested.
"Your face," she said. "This is what you've been freaking out about all day?"
"No, I mean, yes." I grabbed up a couple of the papers and sat down. "You know what, never mind. We have grading to do."
"No, you wanted my advice, didn't you?" Murphy had her breathing under control now, barely. "What did you tell him?"
"I said I needed to think." He inferred that I needed to think. Same difference.
"Are you worried because you're not gay?" asked Murphy, "or because you are gay?"
"It's a spectrum," I snapped. "I'm like a one on the Kinsey scale." Okay, so actually more a two. But my homosexuality was only slightly more than incidental, so I decided on a one point five.
"Sorry," said Murphy, raising her hands. "So, Marcone asked you out. What's the problem?"
"I don't know!" I got some pizza from the box - dating advice was all very well, but the pizza was getting cold. "It's been a little while."
"Since you dated a guy, or since you dated?"
"Um. Both?"
"Marcone's hot," said Murphy. I could tell she was already giving up on my issues. "Weird, but hot. I'd go for it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Worst thing that happens, you get a free dinner and some awkwardness when it doesn't work out."
"He's not going to pay for dinner," I said.
"Look at him, Dresden," said Murphy. "He's totally going to pay for dinner."
I pointedly started grading papers for a while, until Murphy followed suit.
She was right, though. There wasn't really anything to lose.
Marcone knocked around three, already leaning through the open door.
"Uh, hi," I said.
"I need to head home," said Murphy, giving me a significant look. "I'll work on my half of the papers, Dresden." She gathered up her stuff, nodded to Marcone, and headed out.
I actually had kinda wanted her to stay.
"So, Doctor Dresden," began Marcone.
"Call me Harry." I grimaced at the sound of my own voice. "Yes. Um. Yes?"
A normal person would have asked what I was talking about, but Marcone just grinned, his teeth seeming sharper than usual.
"Excellent, Harry. Tonight at eight?"
---
At five to eight, I was pacing my apartment, doing nothing. I would have driven to the restaurant and waited, but Marcone had offered to pick me up. This was probably because he hated my car.
My car is amazing, and a saint for putting up with me, but not everyone understands that. A point against Marcone, for not being one of the select few that loved my beetle.
I ran my hands through my hair. It was getting a little long. Maybe there was a reason why my students kept asking me if I'd like a recommendation for a local barber. I’d assumed it was yet another ploy for extra credit, though I admit I hadn’t figured out how.
The buzzer went, and I jumped. I debated whether to let Marcone down, but in the end I just grabbed my duster and went up the stairs.
"You live in a cellar," said Marcone, instead of saying hello.
"It's not bad," I said. "It's cheap."
Marcone was wearing another one of his nice suits, a light woolen coat over it warding off the October chill. He showed me to his car, a beautiful matte black Lexus. The drive was short, Marcone filling it with a steady trickle of conversation. I nodded along, unsure of whether to argue with him, like I was used to, or whether to be more agreeable, like a date was supposed to be.
Then we were at the restaurant, seated and ordering.
"They do a delicious Cannelloni de Mere here," advised Marcone.
"Uh-" I scanned the menu, trying to find a description. Olive Garden didn't serve that one.
"Seafood cannelloni with both cream and red sauce," said Marcone.
"Oh, okay, sure." I handed my menu back to the waitress. "So," I said, casting around for a topic. "I've been kind of assuming that you're Italian."
"More technically than otherwise," said Marcone. He smiled, playing at self-deprecating. "My mother still spoke a little Italian, but the last person from the old country emigrated in the 1880s. My only real affinity is Chicago." He looked around the restaurant, a proprietary look in his eyes. More for the location than the building, I thought.
"And yourself?" he asked. I winced. It was the logical next step, but I never saw stuff like this coming.
"I don't really know," I said flatly. "Never had anyone to ask about it."
Marcone gave me a look for a moment, but I didn't volunteer anything else. He nodded, though, like I'd said something profound, and changed the subject.
"Your work on Augustine is fascinating, if not quiet," he said. "What prompted you to research him?"
Remember what I said about academics and their work? Once you get me started on Augustine, it's hard to get me to stop. Marcone just let me keep going, giving me a nudge here and there. We paused for a second when the food got there. And then another few seconds before I managed to regain my manners and stop shoveling delicious food into my mouth.
The cannelloni was pretty amazing. Marcone gained several points, making up for the car thing and more.
"I guess," I continued, "that it's mostly Augustine's story that fascinates me. He was always smart, but he wasn't ever satisfied as a hedonist or a Manichean or an agnostic – his real successes as a teacher and a writer didn't begin until he got into Christianity. And then all of a sudden he's cranking out book after book and beating up everyone who tried to debate him."
"I know what the Church would say about that," said Marcone. Lapsed Catholic practically radiated off of him. He probably knew more about Augustine's feast day than I could ever care about.
"Sure," I said. "But there has to be some change. I mean, transformative power of faith or whatever, but there was something in his new belief system that was propelling him."
"Well, I look forward to reading your finished work," said Marcone. He actually did look interested, his green eyes holding mine.
I asked him something about philosophy, and it ended up being a bit more than I could understand. Marcone was pretty involved in the kind of academic politics I've always stayed out of – his talk abut his own work bled into his critique of his contemporaries and back out again.
I liked him when we were arguing and he was being annoying as hell. When he was talking about finding his enemies and cutting their lives' works apart with his logic, he was a little scary. A little too intense.
Kind of hot, though. Ruthlessness can be pretty impressive when it's not directed at you.
We finished our meal, with tiramisu for dessert.
"You sound like you should be head of your department," I said, licking my spoon.
"Hm?" Marcone's attention seemed elsewhere. "What?"
"Why aren't you running the place, already?" I repeated. Marcone dragged his eyes up from my mouth.
"I would be if Vargassi didn't have anything to say about it," he said. "Unfortunately he does. Ready to go, Harry?"
He did pay. I thought about insisting on halves, but then I thought about what my car looked like and what his car looked like, and then I just left the tip instead.
He dropped me off at home. I didn't invite him in, not on the first date.
"I had a nice time," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Of course, Harry." He leaned in just a little, like he wasn't sure, so I went ahead and brushed my lips over his.
"Bye-" I started, and then first name, first name, shit, I couldn't just say Marcone- "bye."
Then I got out of the car and into my apartment and sat on my couch with my cat and freaked out about the fact that I couldn't remember John Marcone's first name.
Hell! It was John.
My life would be so much easier if he had a handy nickname that would let me remember that. I'd have to make one up or something.
---
When I got to work the next morning, Murphy and Sanya were waiting for me.
"So?" said Murphy, watching as I unlocked my office door. "How did it go?"
"Fine," I said. I looked across the hall, but it didn't look like Marcone was in yet. "What's up?"
"I'm checking up on you," said Murphy, matter of fact.
"I am avoiding my students," said Sanya. "It is the day after I handed back their test, and they all want special consideration."
"You're not supposed to hide from the poor kids," I said, but I let them in anyway. Murphy instantly took the guest chair, and I ended up giving Sanya my chair and sat on the desk. How many chairs did I need in order to get to sit down properly all the time?
"So?" asked Murphy, again.
"It was nice," I said. "Pasta. Conversation."
"That's it?" asked Sanya. "Karrin, you said this would be interesting."
"So you didn't invite him back to yours?" asked Murphy, raising her eyebrows.
"No," I said, patiently. "Murphy, it was the first date."
"Good," said Murphy. "Don't put out until the fourth date, I mean, if you're looking for a relationship."
"Harry does not strike me as a casual sex man," said Sanya. He was looking less bored, and I made a face at him.
"Right," said Murphy. "So, wait until the fourth date. Second date, he'll think you're easy; third, he'll think you're boring; fifth, he'll think you're not interested in sex. You are interested in sex, right?"
"We will still respect you if you are not," said Sanya. "Asexuality is a perfectly natural orientation."
"I am interested in sex," I said. I said it proudly, but very quietly, because I was a little worried that people in the hall were listening to this conversation. "But this fourth date thing is ridiculous. Sex is something you have when everything feels right. It's a special moment between two people – you don't have it on some kind of schedule."
Sanya and Murphy were just staring at me when I finished.
"How many times have you actually had sex?" asked Murphy.
I kicked them out of my office pretty soon after. I told Murphy not to come back until she had graded at least half of her share of the papers, which meant I probably wouldn't see her for the rest of the week, outside of class.
Hendricks was outside the door when I ushered Murphy and Sanya out. He had definitely been listening. I glared at him, ignoring the heat rising in my cheeks.
"Where's my Kierkegaard?" I asked.
"I'm using it for a paper," said Hendricks. "Need it for something?"
"No," I admitted, and closed my door again. I had my own grading to do.
I went out around two and taught my seminar, then came back and graded more papers. When Marcone knocked on my door at five, he was a pretty welcome distraction.
"How goes it?" he asked, nodding at the stack of papers.
"Freshmen," I said, which was probably all the answer he needed, but I kept going. "They can't spell, they can't write, and some of them are full of good ideas but their papers are so awful that I'm trying to decide whether I can even get away with giving them a cee plus."
Marcone made an encouraging noise, settling into the guest chair.
"Half of these things were written the night before they were due!" I ranted, shaking red-ink-stained fingers at Marcone. "They think I can't tell, but I can. I can tell." Marcone nodded, but his eyes were tracking my fingers.
"I've read some research lately," he said, "that grading in red ink makes you think more harshly of the author of the paper."
"Whatever," I said. "Harshness is good for the soul."
I started to calm down, though. I mean, you're supposed to have a nice, careful relationship with the person you're dating. You're not supposed to just start complaining and yelling at them.
"Speaking of souls," said Marcone.
How I went from trying to keep sweet and calm to arguing with Marcone about souls, I don't really know. I felt bad about it for a minute, but Marcone's eyes were gleaming and I decided maybe his idea of a good relationship was debating the existence of a metaphysical component to the human being. I did win the debate, but since I was arguing the opposite of what I actually thought, it wasn't much consolation.
---
Toward the end of October, John and I went to see a movie for our third date. Probably our third date. I mean, we weren't getting out much, but he'd been hanging out in my office pretty much every evening, and I had gotten to the point where I was comfortable calling him John most of the time. He'd been in my house for coffee – just coffee – and he'd met my cat. It was all going pretty well. I'd even let him pick the movie we were seeing, and he'd gone for a showing of The Green Hornet, rather than some art house foreign film.
Which is why I was actually really disappointed when the screen broke down.
"Ladies and gentleman," said the supervisor, "you can wait until we fix everything, and see the rest. It'll be about forty minutes. Or you can just come back some other time. Either way, we'll give you all vouchers for another showing."
"Stay or go?" murmured John.
"Let's get out of here," I said. "I got the old radio plays on cassette, if you want to-?"
"You would have cassettes," said John, but he stood up and we walked to the car.
"No computer, remember? And it's too much work to convert to CDs with all those machines and things."
"You're a luddite," said John. We got into the car and he started the engine.
"No, I'm not." I hadn't taken that class on the industrial revolution for nothing. "I'm not attacking progress or trying to destroy machinery. I'm just too cheap and too lazy to upgrade my own life."
"But the repair bills for your outdated equipment must be enormous," pointed out John. "It's more cost-effective in the long run to buy expensive and well-made things that allow you to keep down on maintenance."
"That's true for boots and furniture and so on." The reason why my boots and my duster had lasted me so long was because I'd spent a lot of cash I didn't have on them when I graduated the first time. "But," I continued, "modern technology moves along so fast that buying an expensive computer just means money wasted when you have to replace it in two or three years anyway. I'm just dodging the whole problem by using 'old-fashioned' technology that already does what I want it to do."
"But by the same token, you could buy an old computer and just not replace it," said John. "I realize you can use a public access terminal, but so much of what's done on the internet these days – e-mail, banking, grading – is private, and can only be kept so by using a private machine. And sometimes not even then."
"Whatever," I said. "I can just use your laptop, then."
"Private means private, Harry." John grinned as he pulled into a parking spot near my building. "Private means I don't like to share."
"Oh, so I shouldn't invite you to my private residence, then," I said.
John gave me an assessing look, and I could see the moment where his brain switched back from debate time to date night.
"It depends how much you're willing to... share," he purred.
"Is that a euphemism?" I asked, a little nervous, a lot interested. "That's an awkward euphemism."
John just shrugged, watching me. He did that sometimes, a lot of times, his green eyes picking up on my every movement. I shivered a bit.
But it was only the third date! I was supposed to wait until the fourth – no, wait, that was Murphy's awful advice that I had decided to ignore. I was supposed to wait until everything felt right, and-
"Harry?" John still had that deep, liquid tone of voice.
Yeah, everything felt all kinds of right.
"Why are we still sitting in your car?" I said. My voice didn't break, and I only sounded a little stupid, so I counted that as a win as I got out of the car and rummaged around for my keys. John followed me at a bit of a distance, catching the door as I finally got it open.
When we stepped inside, John knew enough to hold himself steady as Mister bumped his legs. He waited while I put food out for Mister and cleared some space on the couch.
"So," I said.
"So," he said.
I glared at him for a moment, kind of hoping he'd make the first move, but he seemed content to stand around and do nothing useful. In the end I just stepped forward and kissed him.
We push-pulled each other to the couch, which actually wasn't clear enough for this. I slid on paper and books as John tried to get his knees on either side of my hips without falling off the couch. I got my hands on his ass to help him up, and he jerked toward me, a tiny loss of control before he became smooth and cautious again.
Fuck. I wanted some more of that.
We kissed, long and slow. I kept trying to speed it up, get a little hotter and messier, but John would bite my lip in warning and calm things down again.
I began to plot.
I flipped us on the couch – it wasn't easy, because while John wasn't as awkward as I was, he wasn't light either. I only managed it because he went along with it when he figured out what I was doing. Then I sank to my knees in front of the couch, sliding into the space between John’s legs and the coffee table.
John’s eyes went dark, and he was breathing a little hard at last. Score one for moving faster. I rested my head on his knee and just grinned at him.
"Are you going to do something?" John asked, affecting coolness. "Not without a condom, I hope."
"You've got one," I said, not a question. Of course he'd have one.
He looked over at his coat, which he'd hung up about a million miles away. I tried to make it move with the power of my mind, but that didn't do shit. I started to get up, but John moved first.
"Don't move," he said. "You're right where I want you."
I actually blushed at that, which was stupid because I'd been the one to go down in the first place. John fished a box out of his coat pocket and came back, opening it. He sat down again and I grabbed a foil packet from him.
"Okay?" he asked.
"Yeah, of course," I said. "Get your pants off, seriously."
He raised his eyebrows, but he did as I told him. I had the condom on him pretty quick after that, and his dick in my mouth, and this was pretty great. John Marcone, stone-cold philosophy professor and owner of way too many expensive suits, was starting to come undone. It wasn't much, but I knew him well enough to savor the way his hands ruffled through my hair, the way he kept making tiny, cut-off noises. He didn't try to thrust or anything, which was good, because it had been a while. He just let me keep working him deeper, slowly, until I could swallow around him. His hands tugged at my hair, at that, and I fumbled my fly open so I could jerk myself off.
I think that did it for him, the fact that I was getting off on this. His hands tightened as he came, and I arched into the pinpricks and tightness on my scalp. I pulled off of him, and I think he got rid of the condom, but I was too close at that point to care. I was just thrusting up into my hand and trying not to knock over the coffee table when John sat down beside me.
"Why didn't we move the table?" I gasped.
John laughed, and curled himself around me, supporting my back with his arms.
"A little help here?" I asked.
"You seem to have the situation well in hand, Doctor Dresden," he said.
"That was awful," I said, and "call me that again," and then, "oh, gods and goddamn goddesses," because he'd just curled his hand around mine and I was coming.
All over my jeans and rug. Hell.
It was getting late, and I was pretty loopy after having sex for the first time in years, so I didn't feel bad about sitting there and staring at the mess while John got a washcloth. Bad host, sure, but I don't think you can call a guy who just gave out an awesome blow job a bad host.
"You should stay over," I mumbled at John.
"You can't fall asleep on the floor," he said back, and between his startling ability to think coherently and my knowledge of the layout of my own apartment, we made it to my bedroom before I collapsed on top of John.
He didn't seem to mind.
---
When I woke up the next morning, there was an annoying buzzing noise invading my ears.
Buzz, buzz. Whatever. I curled closer to the warm thing in my bed and tried to ignore it.
Buzz. Buzz.
"Harry," said the lump. "Harry, your phone is ringing."
"Mnmgah," I said, and shifted out and up. There was a man in my bed. Wait. There was a John in my bed. That was fine, he was supposed to be there.
Buzz.
"Harry." John rolled over so he could stare at me, already wide awake. "Go answer your phone."
"Kay," I said, and dragged myself to the landline. "Hello?"
"Harry!" The cheerful shout on the other end made me straighten up and finally get some sense into my head. "Happy birthday!"
"Oh, right." I leaned back on the kitchen counter, wincing. John had managed to get my shirt off, but I'd slept in my jeans and they were pretty uncomfortable. "What time is it?"
"Seven your time," said the phone. "I wanted to catch you before you went to work."
"Bob, it's Sunday."
"Is it something important?" called John. I leaned over to see what he was doing, and he was actually getting dressed. No one should be up at this hour. Mister disagreed - he was twining through John's legs and demanding to be fed.
"No, it's just Bob," I said to John. "You can go back to sleep if you want. Bob, it's even earlier in California. What were you thinking?"
Bob chuckled. "Hey, I gotta work today. It was the only time we could get the shoot together. Somebody stay over?"
"Bob is your skull," said John. He came into the kitchen, doing up the buttons on his shirt. I glared at him, willing him to stop doing that.
"Yes," I told Bob. "Yes," I told John.
"It sounds like a guy," said Bob. "Is it a guy? It totally is. Did you do that thing I taught you?"
"Harry, skulls can't operate telephones," said John. I revised my estimate of how awake he was. He was either running on automatic or being incredibly patronizing. Okay, probably patronizing.
"Hold on," I told them both. "I can't do two conversations at once." John nodded at me and I waved him toward the fridge. If he wouldn't go back to sleep, there was probably food in there.
"Where were we?" I asked Bob.
"Did you do that thing I taught you?"
"No," I said immediately. Yes.
"Ha, you totally did!" crowed Bob. "Excellent. Hey, can I talk to him?"
"What are you going to say?" I said, suspiciously.
"I'll tell him all your secret turn-ons," said Bob.
"Bob, we had sex like three times."
John had been pouring himself a glass of orange juice, but he stopped at that. He didn't do anything, just stopped.
Yeah, maybe ex-boyfriends calling at the crack of dawn was bad morning-after etiquette.
"Come on, just let me talk to him," said Bob.
"He wants to talk to you," I said to John.
"Give it here."
I had to stand around and be awkward while they talked about me. I decided to use the time to get into a clean pair of pants.
"I'm a co-worker of his." John's voice filtered through to the bedroom as I changed. "John Marcone. Philosophy." He laughed. "Yes, he did. I see. I wondered about that. Yes. No, he's safe with me- well, I'd like-"
"Okay, that's enough of that." I emerged from the bedroom pulling a t-shirt over my head, and snatched the phone back from John. "Don't believe anything he told you," I said to both of them.
"Hey, whatever," said Bob. "Listen, I've gotta go, setting up the cameras now. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
"That is a tiny, tiny list," I said. Bob just laughed again as he hung up.
"There's nothing to eat in your fridge," John informed me as I hung up as well. "Only juice and coke and beer."
"Yeah, I was afraid of that. Uh. Let me take you out to breakfast, okay? My treat. IHoP."
"Oh, how could I resist?" asked John, dryly.
"You can even harass me about Bob while we eat," I offered. I ruffled my hand through my hair, and nearly got stuck a few times. "Maybe a quick shower first."
"I'll join you?" said John. I winced at the suggestion, and his eyebrows went up.
"I'd love that," I said quickly. "It's just that my hot water heater doesn't work."
I could tell that John was having to work really hard not to say anything about my living situation, so I beat it to the bathroom.
---
IHoP was nearly empty this early on a Sunday, so we got good seats and a server who wasn't dead on her feet yet.
"Bob isn't your skull?" said John. One track mind for things he doesn't understand, that one.
"Bob is my friend from undergrad who bought me a skull that I also named Bob," I said. It hadn't seemed so confusing ten years ago. "When we graduated he moved to LA and started making, uh, movies."
"You've dated."
"A long time ago. Very briefly. Everything he told you is wildly out of date. And wrong."
"So it's not your birthday today?" said John, not-quite-mocking me.
"Okay, yeah. That one's true." I shrugged. "I don't pay much attention to it."
John was considering me again. I was saved by the arrival of my pancakes and John's omelet. I dug in and avoided having to say anything.
When I was about halfway through the stack, John leaned over and caught my chin in his fingers.
"Happy birthday, Harry," he said, and kissed me.
I clutched at my fork and tried not to look wildly around at who might be watching us, but it was cool. This was fine. Except-
"Shit, John, my mouth was full of pancakes." I swallowed.
"I could have timed that better," admitted John. He wiped a crumb from the corner of his mouth.
I started laughing then, head in my hands and food forgotten. It was the best birthday I'd had in nearly a decade. Look at Harry Dresden, employed adult with an actual significant other! Who would have thought?
So, of course everything had to start going wrong after that.
---
The first thing that happened on Monday was that Hendricks came in to my office. He knocked, but he didn't wait for me to say anything, just pushed in through the open door.
"Here." He held out my long lost Kierkegaard, and I snagged it from him before he could change his mind.
"Thanks," I said, and went back to revising my lectures.
"Need to talk to you," said Hendricks.
I waved a hand toward the guest chair, not looking up. Hendricks didn't sit down. He did shut the door, though.
"What?"
"You be careful," said Hendricks. "With the professor."
I gaped at him. Seriously? A grad student was giving me the dad talk?
"I've been with the professor for four years," said Hendricks. "He doesn't like many people."
"Maybe they don't fight with him like he wants," I suggested, but Hendricks wasn't in the mood.
"Don't screw it up," said Hendricks.
"Or else what?" I asked, morbidly curious. "You steal all my books for good? You destroy me with didactic philosophy? You beat me up?"
"You got a car down in the lot," said Hendricks, thoughtfully. "Not a nice car. But it could get a lot worse."
It's a good thing I have better self-control than I used to, or I would have been over the desk and in his face right then and there. Instead I just sat and simmered as he let himself out.
He was just trying to look out for a friend. Bob had probably said more or less the same thing to John yesterday, in between pornographic tidbits. No big deal. Hendricks had obviously taken John's skewed moral reasoning to heart, that was all.
I rubbed at my face and tried to be glad that John had such a close relationship with his students.
---
The second thing that happened was that I had to go teach Intro to Religion, as per usual. The unusual thing is that I felt like a sign on my forehead that said 'I had sex, I had sex, it was awesome.' No less than five students asked me why I was looking so happy. Murphy kept sending me weird looks from her seat in front.
She had class with Sanya next. She was definitely going to gossip about me with Sanya.
I nearly choked on a summary of the Kikuyu Christian tradition in Kenya when Murphy waved four fingers at me from her seat. I kept going, trying to think up a hand gesture that meant 'glorious coming together of bodies' that wasn't a bit obscene. I never figured it out, and Murphy left before I could say it to her face.
---
The third thing that happened was that I didn't hear from John. He didn't stop by that afternoon, and his office door stayed resolutely closed, and I left without ever seeing him. Which, okay, he didn't have an obligation to come say hi to me and start arguments about weird things. But, at the same time, I was expecting him to.
His car was still in the parking lot when I left.
---
When I didn't see John the next morning, either, I started to worry. As it edged into late afternoon with still no word and his office door resolutely closed, I snapped.
"You were right," I said to Murphy. She was sitting in my office, trying to talk to me about one of her final projects. "I went too fast."
"Just walk over and talk to him," she said. She grabbed her stick and levered herself out of the guest chair. "Come on, I'll go with you. I won't get anything useful out of you about my paper otherwise."
I hesitated for a second, but then I started getting a bit angry. Two days of no contact was totally unacceptable.
"Right." I got up and Murphy opened the door. "Right."
Marcone's door was shut, and Hendricks was standing outside, looking for all the world like a bodyguard instead of a grad student. I strode up to him confidently, and jerked a thumb at him.
"Take a hike. I need to talk to Marcone."
"No can do, professor," he growled. "Professor Marcone is busy."
"Murphy, take him out," I said.
Murphy sized him up and handed me her stick. Hendricks looked down at her and shifted into something resembling a martial arts stance.
Hell, they were actually going to fight? I guess you shouldn't underestimate a grad student's loyalty to the professor who controls their future.
I leaned Murphy's stick against the wall and dodged around the circling that Murphy and Hendricks had going on. While they were distracted, I just pushed Marcone's door open.
"Look, we really need to talk-"
Marcone was sitting at his desk, Vargassi the philosophy head leaning across from him, in his space. Marcone looked up at me, not startled. He'd probably been alerted by the commotion outside. Vargassi looked pretty mad at being interrupted.
"I didn't realize you were in a meeting," I said. Not an apology, just an explanation.
"We're done here," said Vargassi. He pushed back from the desk violently, rocking himself out of his chair. "I need you to rewrite that paper, Marcone. Just do it."
"I'll see what I can do, Doctor Vargassi," said Marcone. His voice was even and his expression was blank, the equivalent of gritted teeth and white knuckles.
Vargassi gave me an appraising look and walked out. I looked after him, momentarily derailed.
"You had something to say, Harry?" Marcone sounded tired.
"Yeah." I snapped my attention back to Marcone. "Where have you been? Look, if it was a sex thing, whatever. I thought it wasn't, I mean, not that you led me astray, or, okay, whatever. But you can't have it be a sex thing and get to call me Harry." Right, that made complete sense, Harry. Marcone had the gist, though, and he was shaking his head.
"I've been a little busy," began Marcone, but I could already tell that it was going to be an awful excuse.
"I am right across the hall," I said. "You could have just walked over and said that."
"Harry," began Marcone, but he checked himself immediately. "Doctor Dresden. There's been a situation with Doctor Vargassi. I should have said something to you, but I admit to being a little paranoid about Vargassi discovering our," he hesitated, but I guess he couldn't find a better word, because he went with "relationship."
"Uhuh." I sat down, still stiff and angry but now pretty confused to go with. "Make that make more sense."
"There's a conference in a month that both I and Doctor Vargassi are presenting papers at. On the same topic – moral relativism and its role in maintaining or disrupting an orderly society. Our arguments contradict each other quite strongly."
"Sign of intellectual diversity in a department," I said. I'd seen that in one of the university memos Leanansidhe kept sending out.
"Doctor Vargassi takes it more as a sign of his failure to maintain discipline as department head," said Marcone. "He wants me to rewrite my paper and conclusion ahead of the conference, even though I've already submitted the abstract."
"That's bullshit," I said, fervently. "But what has it got to do with us?"
"Doctor Vargassi has a tendency toward underhanded tactics." Marcone waved a hand that illustrated something I wasn't exactly clear on. "I was worried that if he became aware of a connection between us, he might-"
"What, kidnap me?" I snorted. "Blackmail? This is academia, not the mob, Marcone."
Marcone smiled, but he still seemed tight around the eyes.
"Okay, obviously you were right about your paranoia thing," I said. "And you've been under a lot of stress. I think we can let this slide if we go to dinner tonight."
"Of course," said Marcone. "But I think-"
There was a loud thump from outside the door, and then another, quieter one. Relatively quieter.
I had kind of forgotten about the grad student cage match.
When we opened the door, Hendricks was flat on his back, with Murphy collapsed next to him.
"I can't believe you flipped me," said Hendricks. He reached a hand up to feel his shoulder and winced.
"I can't believe I flipped you," said Murphy. "My knee feels like shit."
Marcone wordlessly held out a hand to Hendricks, and I got Murphy's stick.
"No more lovers' spats," she said, pulling herself up and massaging at her knee. "They're way too much work."
"I think this one's sorted out," I said. It had all been a bit weird, but at least now I knew that my grad student could beat up John’s grad student. You know, for future reference.
---
Everything was fine for two more days. I mean, fine for me and John - Murphy complained about her knee a lot and Hendricks kept shooting me dirty looks. I kept a close eye on my car for a while, but nothing happened and I relaxed.
Friday night, I was staying late dealing with some undergrad crises. I was just wrapping up and getting ready to go home when Vargassi came in to my office.
"So," he said, without preamble. "You're dating Marcone."
"There's not any rule against it," I said. Vargassi just nodded, leaning on the guest chair.
It looked like John had been right about Vargassi coming after me. Obviously everyone in the philosophy department was weird. But Vargassi didn't have anything on us – some schools had rules about professors dating, but our university couldn't care less, as long as we kept it among ourselves and didn't let it filter into the student body.
"Didn't know Johnny went for men," said Vargassi. His lip was curling, like he was a bit disgusted but a bit pleased. I didn't like that look at all.
"Can I help you, Vargassi?" I asked. "Help you out the door, maybe, with my foot up your ass?" Shit, that was one of the things I wasn't supposed to let out of my mouth.
"Temper, Harry," said Vargassi. "That temper's got you in trouble before, hasn't it?"
I went cold. I still didn't know what was going on, but it had upgraded from pointless bigotry to very pointed personal details.
"How many times have you been arrested?" Vargassi tapped his hands on the back of the chair. "Assault, arson, disorderly conduct."
"I haven't been convicted of anything since I was fifteen," I said. "I'm not a felon, and it's not any of your business."
"It's pretty easy to find arrest records, though," said Vargassi. "And it changes what people think of you, doesn't it? Students. Peers. Boyfriends. Bosses."
I tried to keep calm. It didn't work, but I was still sitting down when he cut to the chase.
"I want you to get Johnny off my back," said Vargassi. "Tell him you love him as a regular old professor, and that he shouldn't do anything to jeopardize his position. And exchange, I'll forget about your record."
"There isn't anything on my record that's less than ten years old," I said. Okay, maybe eight. But still. "Leanansidhe has probably seen it already, if she does background checks."
"The Dean, she’s willing to ignore some things." Vargassi pursed his lips. "But Professor Yoshimo – well, this whole religion department is a bit righteous, isn't it? I'm not sure what Shiro would say. His input on your first-year review is pretty important, isn't it?"
I wasn't sure what Shiro would say either, seeing as I'd never managed to meet him. My urge was to tell Vargassi to fuck off, but. But this was a job, my job, and I wasn't going to let it go. The ratio of doctorates to positions was high enough that the university could let me go and try again, no problem. Me, I might never get a chance like this again.
I might survive it, if he told everyone about my history. It depended on what he knew, and I didn’t know what he knew.
"I'll think about it," I bit out.
Vargassi eyed me for a moment. Apparently he was satisfied, because he got up and out without another word.
I slumped in my chair. I had three options, as far as I could see.
One, I could actually talk to John and get him to bow down to Vargassi. I couldn't imagine that going well. And it annoyed me, to let a blackmailer get away with it.
Two, I could bluff Vargassi out and let him go to Shiro. Maybe it would be okay. Maybe.
Three, I could take some action. That might work if I had any idea what to do.
I didn't have a phone in my office, so I went downstairs and used the one that the secretary type person kept.
"Hey, Murphy? Hi. Yeah, I know it's late. Listen, I need your help."
---
Murphy and I were meeting at a bar. I got there early and snagged a booth while I waited. Normally I would've got a beer, but I thought about why I was there and Murphy's last experience with me and drinking, and I just got a soda instead.
Murphy walked in with a scruffy guy with longish golden-brown hair. They spotted me and walked over.
"Hey," I said. "I'm sorry about this, Murphy. I'm just really screwed."
"Don't worry about it," she said. "This is Kincaid."
"Right, your boyfriend." I held out my hand, and Kincaid took it, carefully.
"Sure," he said, glancing at Murphy. "More or less. Karrin asked me to sit in, thought I might be able to help."
They sat down, and I brought them into the picture. Murphy knew my past, so I just sketched it out to Kincaid. The important part was that the freaking head of the philosophy department was actually trying to blackmail me, and it would have been hilarious if I wasn't so worried.
"My first instinct was to go smash all the windows at his house," I said. "Then I realized that might be a bit counter-productive."
"No shit," said Murphy, at the same time as Kincaid said "I'll do it if you get an alibi." They both broke off and glared at each other.
"We should go after Vargassi, not his stuff," said Murphy, and Kincaid and I nodded. Good compromise. "If he's been pulling shit like this for long, there's got to be some kind of trail. We get that, we show it to him, he fucks off. Simple."
"Split the work," said Kincaid. "Dresden can go after the academic stuff, you call up your buddies in the police, and I'll ask around. Talk to people."
"What exactly do you do, again?" I asked. That last bit had sounded a bit sinister.
"Freelancing," said Kincaid and Murphy at the same time.
Whatever. There was a plan. Plans made everything a hundred percent better, especially when it was a plan like ‘go do stuff and then win.’
---
Except the plan didn't exactly work. Vargassi wasn't clever or innovative as an academic – his tricks were old ones, and you could spot them if you went far enough into the literature. But he covered his tracks pretty damn well. After a week of reading page after page of philosophical theory, all I had was a pile of suspicions and a few trends. Nobody I'd called up had anything concrete against Vargassi.
Murphy and Kincaid were getting the same results. Vargassi never seemed to get into trouble with anyone. I bet it was just because his victims had a tendency of knuckling down quickly.
I rested my head against my pile of articles and groaned. I was so caught up in my misery that I didn't notice John had come in until his hand was ruffling the hair on the back of my neck. I jumped at the contact, but then relaxed into it as I realized who it was.
"Hard at work?" asked John. He didn't back off into the guest chair, just kept standing and massaging my neck.
"Sure," I said. He moved back and on to my shoulders. I looked up for a moment and noted the closed door, and then let my head drop back on to the stack. "I'll be honest, this stuff makes a way better pillow than it does reading material."
John stopped for a moment despite my protests, nudging me to the side so he could read the top title.
"Reading outside of your field? This is one of Vargassi's papers."
"I was interested," I said. John's thumb brushed a knot in my shoulder and I melted a little. "What's the difference between you two, anyway?" I knew they disagreed, but Vargassi’s theories were sounding awfully similar to what Marcone had outlined to me.
"I suppose it's a little fiddly for non-experts," said John. "But since I have your attention." He punctuated that with another dig from his thumbs, and I stifled a noise. Yeah, he could do whatever he liked.
"Pure moral relativism argues that all morality is situation and person specific. There are no over-arching principles which can be applied to everything. What I view as moral behavior is different from what you view as moral, and so on."
"Right." I arched up into his hands, and he pushed me back down again, palms fitting on top of my shoulder blades.
"Taken to an extreme, you can argue that it is possible to justify any behavior by the fact that you don't find it objectionable. The problem with this statement is that, when taken into the real world, it can cause complete anarchy. My point of view is that societies need some form of morality to operate properly. Vargassi tends more toward the... individual point of view."
Yeah, I could see that. Nothing wrong with crushing his peers and blackmailing poor beleaguered assistant profs as long as he got what he wanted.
"So you're both relativists, just with different scales of what’s important?"
John hummed and stroked along my spine. "If pressed, I think I hew closer to moral particularism. There are problems, but-" I could hear him checking himself. We'd strayed past my knowledge of philosophy about three words in to this discussion, and he could probably tell that I wasn't up for a long explanation. "At its root, particularism proposes that there are no great moral guidelines, just a set of duties that must be carried out for the good of the individual and the group. The importance and salience of each duty vary according to the situation, and must be considered appropriately. There are reasons for each action, not simply laws that force you to follow them."
"I could get behind that," I said. "You and Vargassi sound pretty different, for both being relativists."
"We operate within the same sphere currently," said John. He patted my back, and moved away to sit down. "Vargassi would certainly prefer that we present a 'united front.' I can't say I'm interested."
I groaned and sat up, looking him in the eye. That was an opening if I'd ever heard one, and I wasn't getting anywhere with this detective work.
"It'd be easier if you bent a little for him," I said, quietly, hating myself. "Just until you got tenure."
"Tenure." John waved a hand dismissively. "Too many academics hide their true beliefs in the everlasting hope of tenure. By the time they've received it, the discourse has moved on and they have nothing novel to say. I won't let Vargassi run – or ruin – my career, Harry."
Yeah, that had gone about as well as I had expected it to. I nodded, and pushed at the stack of articles, wiping away where I had drooled a little on the top page.
"Are you all right, Harry?" asked John. He leaned forward, looking concerned. "It's not like you to be so," he hesitated, and I could practically hear him flicking through his mental dictionary, looking for a word that wouldn't put me on the defensive. "To be so subdued."
"It's nothing," I said. "Tell me more about particularism, okay?"
I could have told him what was happening, right there and then. But you know, I liked being Harry Dresden, the religions prof with a nearly-finished book. I didn't want John to think about me as a former teenage delinquent. Even if it was pretty much true. And I definitely didn’t want to talk about my childhood, and I couldn’t imagine him letting me slide on that once the conversation had begun. So instead I listened to John talk and kissed him good night and tried to keep my uncertainty from showing.
Options one and three used up, and I still wasn't ready to risk Shiro. Time to come up with another plan. What I really needed, I decided, was information. I had to find out the inside scoop on Vargassi.
---
The next night, John was working on a paper and I was done twiddling my thumbs. Hendricks was loitering in the hall, doing his guard dog shtick again.
"Hendricks, my gigantic friend," I tried to throw an arm around Hendricks' shoulders, but gave up pretty quickly. "Do you want to go out with me and Murphy and her guy? I know John's too busy for either of us right now."
Hendricks eyed me uneasily. "You don't have to make nice with me, Professor Dresden."
"I do lots of things that I don't have to do," I said. "Come on. Are you doing anything tonight?"
Hendricks apparently had a date with Critique of Practical Reason, but no one has ever wanted to read Kant enough to fend me off.
Murphy didn't look surprised when I dragged Hendricks along to our little powwow at the bar. Kincaid nodded at him.
“You’re Hendricks? You got in a fight with Karrin?”
“Yeah,” said Hendricks, wary. Kincaid just grinned in answer and started talking to Murphy behind his hand.
"You want a private conversation, I can leave," said Hendricks.
Kincaid shook his head while Murphy actually blushed. I didn't really want to know what they'd been talking about.
We kept chatting, kept buying drinks for Hendricks. At first I was, because I wanted to get him talking about the philosophy department, but then Kincaid started picking up his tab. I gave him a look, but kept pumping Hendricks.
"I hear Vargassi isn't easy to work with."
"He's a self-absorbed dick," said Hendricks. "Keeps a fucking file in his office of everyone's screw-ups, pulls it up if he wants something."
"Really," I said.
This was exactly what I wanted. That blackmail folder might appear innocuous, but it definitely set up a trail of previous behavior if it turned into a fight between me and Vargassi. I could go to Leanansidhe with it and make a case that Vargassi hadn't been warning Shiro about me – that this was just one string in a line of similar manipulations.
"He got something on you?" asked Hendricks. He'd put away twice as much as I had, and it wasn't making a dent. "You should just tell John. He'll take care of it."
"I'm handling it," I said, annoyed. I had this!
Murphy leaned over and up – way up – and whispered something in Hendricks' ear. He got an odd look on his face, and I glared at them.
"No talking about me behind my back," I said.
"This hasn't got anything to do with you, Dresden," said Kincaid, easily. "Actually, it's getting pretty late. Maybe we should head out?"
"It's not even ten," I said.
"It's a school night," said Murphy.
"It's a Thursday," I said. "You have practically no work to do tomorrow."
"See you, Dresden," said Hendricks, and they all walked out. Together. I gaped after them, trying to reconcile their sudden abandonment.
Fine, whatever. Me and Vargassi's office had a date.
---
My key to Winter Hall got me past the locked back door, and I didn't bother to be quiet as I made my way up the stairs. The only people that were generally here this late were me and John. I wouldn't get caught.
Vargassi's office was locked, but it wasn't that hard to get in. I'd grabbed a kit from my apartment before driving back to campus. When you have a tendency to lock yourself out of your dorm room and you know a lot of nasty people, you learn how to pick locks pretty fast. The door clicked, and I walked into the dark office.
I didn't turn on the lights, just pulled up the blinds so the moonlight could filter through. The office was a bit messy, with actual drifts of paper on the floor, but I figured the folder was going to be in one of the two big filing cabinets on the left wall.
I skimmed through them quickly at first, then slower when I didn't find anything. Where else would you keep a folder except-
I stopped, and looked at the big desktop computer which was surrounded by books. Right. Computer file. Shit.
Maybe he hadn't bothered to password protect the thing?
I tried to turn the computer on, realized it was a mac and I had no idea how to turn it on, and then just started fumbling around the place, trying to figure it out.
It was probably inevitable that I would knock the damn thing over. That bit was my fault. It was not my fault that Vargassi had tangled his plugs together so much that the monitor half-dragged everything else with it, exposing some wires for the wall socket. And it was definitely not me that had left paper on the floor, right where it could catch the sparks.
I yelped and stomped on the smoking paper, trying to pull it away from the wires without getting too close myself. I managed to avert disaster. I mean, except for the monitor and the ripped-apart wall socket. Avert further disaster.
Which is when someone pushed the door open.
It could have been Vargassi. He'd have had a field day with this. Or it could have been Michael or freaking Shiro, and I would have given up and resigned right there. I count myself lucky that it was John standing in the door, half-illuminated by the lights in the hall.
"Uh." I shook charred paper off my boot. "Hi."
John just stared at me, assessing and reassessing.
"I don't think I broke anything that much," I said. "The wiring in this building must have been pretty shoddy to begin with."
"It's going to be reworked this summer," said John. "The fire department has been complaining."
"Exactly," I said. I picked up the monitor, and set it back on the desk. Apple makes sturdy products, I guess, and it had fallen on its back. Nothing obviously wrong, anyway.
"Harry-" began John.
"Look," I said. "Breaking and entering may be generally wrong. But you have to judge each situation by individual factors and variables, and I'm pretty sure that breaking in was the right thing to do in this case."
"Perhaps," said John, carefully, "you should come explain the situation to me."
"Maybe we should go somewhere else for that," I said. I didn't really want to stand around here. "Maybe we should go somewhere not in this building."
We ended up going to his house – an actual house, not an apartment or anything. He did have some housemates, but the place belonged to him.
"It's less costly to just buy a place if you're going to live in an area long enough," he said. "I'm not planning to leave Chicago."
"Still," I said. I looked around the little kitchen we were standing in, noting the clean stovetop and the new refrigerator that was probably filled with food. "This is nice."
"You're avoiding the point, Harry, as you have been all night. Why were you in Doctor Vargassi's office?"
"So, he's been trying to blackmail me." I can get blunt when I'm not trying to get out of a conversation as much as possible.
John's eyes narrowed, but he didn’t interrupt.
"To get at you," I continued. "You're making him nervous, I guess. I was trying to find evidence that he's done stuff like that before, so I could go to the dean with the whole story without it being all about what a fuckup I am."
"I am going to strangle him," said John. A hint of a Chicago accent bled through, and I flinched a little as I looked down and saw his hands shaking. "Why didn't you come to me?"
"I was fixing it," I said. I rubbed my nose, uncomfortable. "I didn't want you to get involved."
"What does he have on you?"
I crossed my arms. This is exactly why I had wanted to get through this on my own. So I wouldn't have to talk about it. But I guess that ship had sailed.
"Arrest records," I said. "Lot of arrests."
"For what?"
"Stuff. Being an angry kid, mostly." I shrugged. "Lot of shit happened. I didn't really have much in the way of outlets. So I got in fights with guys that were bigger than me, when they did stuff I didn't think they should be doing. Charges got dropped, mostly. I got brought up for that barn burning down, but they decided it was an accident."
"I can see why," said John, dryly. "You do have a bit of a tendency toward mishap."
"Yeah. It's nothing big, and it stopped after I got a ways into college," after I met Professor McCoy, "but it looks bad. To people."
"To me," said John. "To Professors Carpenter and Shiro. But if it's only arrests-"
"I nearly killed a guy when I was fourteen," I said, abruptly. Oh, hey, that's the part I really didn't want to talk about. "I was in the system, and Justin, the guy who was taking care of me, he- he did some stuff. Me and Elaine nearly beat him to death."
"Elaine?"
"Another foster kid. She's gone," I said. "And it's a juvie crime, so it's not supposed to be available. But I think he knows."
John didn't say anything. He just moved toward me. I flinched again, but he just kept moving until he was hugging me. More of a possessive grasp, really, his hand tugging on the back of my head until I was curled around him.
"This is nice," I said, uncertainly, mumbling into his shoulder. "Um. I'm kind of over it by now. Lots of court-mandated therapists."
"You don't have to worry about Vargassi," said John, in my ear. "I'll take care of him."
"Yeah, because one man against the machine has been working so well," I said.
"Why don’t we try working together, then?" John tilted his head and kissed me, and I decided maybe things would be okay after all.
---
I probably shouldn't have stayed over that night, because it meant getting up extra early so that I wasn't showing up to work in yesterday's clothes or, worse, John's. Romantic gestures and whatever, but his clothes wouldn't have fitted, and not in a cute way. Better to swing by my apartment and change real quick. Not that I regretted anything, because staying the night at John's was making me feel way more optimistic about my life.
The middle of November meant the kids were turning in their second paper. Copies were already appearing in the drop box I'd set up when I got in to the office. I'd been hoping Murphy would show up to help me deal with them, but she was nowhere to be found. And John had a lecture, and I didn't know what to do about the Vargassi situation yet. I ended up emptying out the box of papers and settling into my chair to rearrange lectures yet again.
Vargassi walked by, on the phone to a tech support place, by the sound of it. I put my most innocent look on when he glanced in through my open door. I guess it wasn't very good, because he stopped, pointed at John's door, and mimed cutting his throat. Probably more threats. Fortunately he got distracted by the support line's audio menu, and he started walking again, "monitor trouble. Monitor trouble." fading as he turned the corner.
It still made me antsy, and I was glad when John finally turned up.
"Ready?" I said.
John gestured me into his office, his finger pressed for a moment against his lips. His office wasn't quite as claustrophobic as mine or Vargassi’s, due to some rearranging of the requisite bookshelves and papers. There were three whole chairs, even, a luxury. John closed the door and began to talk.
"Your idea about the file was actually a good start."
"But I can't get at it," I pointed out. "We can't get on Vargassi's computer while he's there."
"Harry, not all computer storage is confined to one drive." John put on his 'I am explaining this to you because you really are a luddite' face. "The university provides a remote storage account for every student and employee, one which can be accessed over the net. Since Doctor Vargassi doesn't have a portable computer, I'm sure he makes extensive use of this service."
"So we just need to get on to that," I said. "Can we do that?"
"Possibly," said John. "The usernames are standardized, so I just need to figure out his password – which is also standardized. The secretary has them."
"Oh, her? Can you get them?"
"Miss Beckitt has already provided them to me," said John. He grinned. "Perhaps because I am capable of remembering her name, Harry."
"Right, well, do your stuff, then."
Sitting and waiting for John to do his computer thing was really dull. Especially when John made me shove my chair as far away from his desk as possible.
"I'm not going to do some kind of magic destruction thing to it," I said.
"You've destroyed four computers that I know of," said John. "It would be unwise of me to gamble with the fifth."
I was glad I hadn't told him about the library computers crashing on me, then. It wasn't my fault that there was a bug in my e-mail program that kept shutting the system down.
I tapped my feet and stared at the books while I was waiting. Nothing I had any particular interest in except for a worn-looking copy of Critique of Pure Reason. For all I've said about Kant, he's still preferable to doing nothing, so I was reaching out for the book when I noticed John had stopped typing and was just staring at the computer.
"Problem?"
"He's changed his password." John ticked at the keyboard on his laptop, idly. "I knew it was possible, but so few people actually bother."
"You have, haven't you?" A look at John's face assured me. "Vargassi's got more to hide than you."
"Yes." John pushed back from his desk, thinking.
"So can't you get in there with your hacking thing?"
"Hacking thing." John upgraded his 'luddite' look to an 'idiot' look. "Contrary to what you might have seen on television, not everyone who owns a computer is actually able to crack passwords at the drop of a hat."
"I don't own a television," I said. Obviously that was the most important thing that John had said. "Wait, so the great John Marcone is actually bad at something?"
"I do not possess a certain special skill," corrected John. "I was hoping that Mr. Hendricks would be available today, but he seems to be absent."
"I think it's grad students gone AWOL day," I said. "I've lost Murphy, too."
John frowned and seemed about to say something, but he was interrupted by a knock on the door. I glanced at him and then opened it, since I was closest.
"Professor?" Billy's bespectacled face peered in. "Uh, I have a question about the paper."
"You have class with John, I mean, Professor Marcone, too?" I said. "I thought you were an engineer."
"No, it's your paper, professor." Billy looked confused.
"So why are you knocking on John's door?"
"Well, you weren't in, so I asked the guy down the hall, uh, Sanya, and he said that your boyfriend probably would know-"
John was smiling. I was a little grim. Okay, we were dating and taking down evil department heads together, but I didn't want the whole school to know.
"Anyway," said Billy, riding over my annoyance. "I was actually wondering if I could have an extension..." He launched into one of those ludicrous explanations that is maybe true, maybe not, and it didn't matter because I knew he wouldn't have a doctor's note or a letter from a mortician. I was getting ready to tell him to look up the late penalties in the syllabus when something struck me.
"Billy, you're an engineer."
"Right, we've got that, and-"
"No, but, me and John are kind of having computer trouble. You wouldn't be able to give us a hand, would you?"
"I'm a mechanical engineer," said Billy, as if that were supposed to mean something to me. From a glance at John, it probably meant that he wasn't going to be any help. "But my friend Cindy is comp sci."
"Billy." I leaned in, secretive. "You get Cindy to help us, I can probably manage a couple days extension."
Billy grinned and backed up, already texting on his phone. John gave me a sideways look.
"That's an abuse of your position," he said, mildly.
I shrugged and scratched my nose with my middle finger, because I'm classy like that.
---
Cindy showed up and didn't bat an eye when we told her what was going on. This might have been because we gave her a slightly edited version or because of natural criminal tendencies, because she sure knew what she was doing.
"We'll try standard passwords before I break out the more complex things," she said. "Do you know his birthday? His license plate number?"
John went down to talk to his best friend the secretary, and I ran down to the lot to check Vargassi's car. I didn't actually know which one it was, but there were only five cars in the lot, so I picked the nicest-looking one that wasn't John's.
When I got back, John had somehow managed to finagle Vargassi's personnel file from the secretary, and he and Cindy were trying out combinations while Billy hovered over them.
"You don't need to hang around," I told Billy, writing down the number on a piece of paper.
"Got nothing better to do," he said. "This is interesting."
"You could be finishing your paper," I suggested, and he grimaced.
John looked up and walked over to take me aside.
"We'll get in sooner or later," he said. "I need you to go talk to Professor Yoshimo."
I made a face. John shrugged, not unsympathetic, just sure of himself.
"We're going to go to the dean with this. Your department head is going to hear about it, and I think you should acquaint him with your record before anything happens."
"Right." I shuffled my feet, and tried to make myself get out of there.
"You haven't done anything wrong," said John, insistently. "Just talk to him."
I gave him a smile, probably strained, and went to try and track down the elusive Shiro.
---
Michael was doing work in his office with his door open. I leaned in and waited for him to finish scribbling on a page.
"Hi," I said. "I need to talk to Shiro. Do you know if he's around?"
"I think he's out on the Lawn," said Michael. He looked at me with a crease between his eyebrows. "Is something wrong, Harry?"
"Stuff's happening," I allowed. "I just need to give Shiro a heads-up."
"Okay," said Michael. "It's about time you met him, anyway. He'll be on the lawn with the other graduate students. Short man with a sword."
"With a sword?"
Michael's smile left me thinking he was joking. "Why don't I come with you?"
---
The Lawn was covered in students, enjoying the surprisingly warm weather. There was too much wind to actually do any studying so most of them were just kind of lying around, pretending to work. There was a crowd of them blocking off a section of the lawn that was as far away from the library as it was from any of the other paths. Michael walked toward it and then shouldered politely through the crowd, clearing a path for me. I followed, looking over the kids' heads and gaping at what I saw. It was an actual freaking swordfight.
There was a youngish Hispanic guy, trying to defend himself with something I tentatively identified as a bamboo kendo sword. There was a slightly older Asian girl doing the same on his other side. And attacking them both, his stylized wooden katana a blur, was an elderly little Asian guy with thick glasses and a look of serene concentration on his face.
"What the hell is going on?" I muttered to Michael.
"Research," he said. He was actually grinning a bit. "We'll have to wait, Shiro hates to be interrupted."
The fight went on for ten more minutes. At first I was expecting it to end with the two younger people having their heads chopped off, or the wooden equivalent, but then I realized that they were actually going through some sort of form, only really, really quickly, too fast for me to keep good track of. Suddenly it was all over, and Shiro was bowing to his students. The crowd of kids around us started to disperse, already looking for another show.
"Michael?" Shiro wiped a tiny bit of sweat off his brow, while the two students panted and collapsed at each other.
"Shiro," said Michael. "This is Harry, the new lecturer. He needs to talk to you."
"Harry Dresden." Shiro nodded at me. "Shiro Yoshimo. These are Ramirez," nodding at the guy, "and also Yoshimo, no relation." The girl waved at me.
"Hi," I said. "Uh, what were you doing?"
"The professor's studying alternate forms of meditation," piped up Ramirez. "Different ways of clearing the mind."
"We tried listening to death metal last month," added Yoshimo. "I like this better."
"Listening to-"
"Some people meditate with flute music," said Shiro. He blinked at me, his glasses making him look like a white-haired owl. "I hypothesized that a louder and more consuming music would make it easier to subsume the self. Also the Buddhist imagery of the band Gojira seemed appropriate."
"Buddhist death metal?" I was getting off track. "Um. Anyway. I just wanted to finally introduce myself, and tell you... something..." I glanced at the students and at Michael. Not that I was cutting him out, but I really didn't want this going everywhere if I couldn't help it.
"Let's go get some water for you," said Michael to the students, taking pity on me. Shiro and I watched him go.
"So?"
"You know Vargassi, right?" Best to just plunge in.
"Oily man." Shiro scratched his beard. "Yes."
"He's been kind of harassing me. I've got a bit of, uh, history." I spilled out the whole story to Shiro, leaving out the bits about any crimes that might be being committed right now. I hoped John and Cindy were actually getting somewhere.
"I see," said Shiro, when I was finished. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Doctor Dresden." Shiro looked me up and down, and then started gathering up all the wooden swords that had been left on the ground. "Your future here at the university will be determined by your performance, not by your past. We have had some trouble with criminal acts in the department. Lloyd Slate."
"I've heard some things," I said. Not anything concrete, just things.
"Yes," said Shiro. "But he was fired for what he was doing, not what he had done. I am going to go out on a limb here," he smiled, "but from what I hear from your undergraduates and Miss Murphy, you will do well here."
"Thanks," I said. This was not going anywhere near what I had expected. This was about a million times better than expected.
“And Michael likes you,” said Shiro, shrugging. “I trust his judgment.” He walked away. I thought for a second about following him, but I ended up running back to Winter Hall. I wanted to know what was going on.
---
When I pushed open the door to John's office, Cindy was alone in there, packing up a box of equipment.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey. Did you get it?"
"Yep." She grinned, a little bit of triumph showing through. "Was a bit of a pain. It was hashed, but not salted, so the rainbow table took care of it after a while, and-" She kept talking gobbledygook for a while, and I nodded along. "So we e-mailed it to the Dean."
"Is John talking to her?" Leanansidhe's office was in a building back the way I had come, and I was already weighing whether to walk over and try to get into the meeting or whether to just wait for John to come back.
"Nah, he went to talk to Professor Vargassi. Some lady came upstairs and they had an argument and then Professor Marcone said he had to go."
"Oh," I said. That was probably bad.
I waited for Cindy to finish zipping up her bag and start walking down the stairs before I went to Vargassi's office.
There was shouting in there. I didn't bother to knock before getting the door open.
"You think you're going to get my fucking department with this? I'm going to take you down, you and your giant fucking boytoy." Vargassi had John backed up against a wall, spitting in his face. John was taking it with the look of someone that he was going to win out in the end.
I was a little less capable of taking the long view.
"Get off him," I growled. I nearly grabbed Vargassi's collar, but a look from John warned me off. Right, that was probably a bad idea, considering. "Let's just walk away," I said instead.
"Both of you," said Vargassi, inarticulately. "Never fucking work again."
"We'll see," said John. He ducked away from Vargassi, wiping his face with one hand. He walked out of the office. Vargassi actually picked up a book and held it like he was going to throw it at John. I quickly stepped in to place myself between them.
"Hey," I said. "Look- shit!"
Vargassi let fly, and I didn't quite get my arm up in time. The book bounced off my nose and on to the ground, and I backed out pretty sharp, slamming the door behind me.
"Harry?"
"Ow." I rubbed my forehead, then my nose. "Nothing broken."
"It cut you, there," John touched a place above my eyebrow, setting off a tiny sting, and then glared at the door like he wanted to go back in.
"It probably just helps our case," I said. "I've seen worse. Come on, come away from there." I half-dragged him away until we were standing between our offices, next to the stairs.
"What were you doing in there, anyway?" I said. It seemed pretty dumb to me.
"Miss Beckitt thought it seemed appropriate to inform Doctor Vargassi of our actions," said John. “Given that, I thought I should talk to him myself.”
Okay. Really really dumb. I was about to say so when Hendricks and Murphy walked up the stairs, trailed by Kincaid.
"You're in late," said John, a bit of bite under his even tone. "It's three in the afternoon."
"Are you okay?" asked Murphy, glancing at my face.
"Sorry," said Hendricks.
I kept quiet. Arriving together, and what the hell was Kincaid doing on campus, and actually, that shirt he was wearing was definitely not his-
I glanced between Murphy and Hendricks, my eyes going wide. Seriously? Murphy scowled at me, and I noticed her hair was still a little wet. John and Hendricks were having some kind of very quiet fight, and, hell, Hendricks' hair was wet too. I looked back at Kincaid and raised my eyebrows.
He gave me a double thumbs-up and grinned like a hyena.
"You abandoned me," I heard myself saying to Murphy. "You abandoned me for a kinky fifteen-hour-long threesome."
John and Hendricks stopped talking. Murphy colored, a bit, and looked like she was trying to decide whether to just punch me or trip me down the stairs.
Kincaid grinned impossibly wider.
I sat down, right there in the hall, and laughed and laughed.
"So, it all worked out," said Murphy. "Also, Dresden, fuck off."
"Not enough dates!" I said, shaking four fingers at her.
Yeah, John looked at me like I'd just turned pink and green, but it was worth it.
---
On the last day of the semester, Bob called again.
"I've only got a minute, I have to give this final," I said.
"I've only got a minute," retorted Bob, "I have to tell these beautiful women the changes in the choreography."
"Yes, Bob, your job is so much more interesting than mine, what do you want?"
"Hey, just checking in. Everything good with your boy?" I could actually hear Bob's leer over the phone.
"Yeah," I said. It was true. Vargassi was going on 'sabbatical' at the end of this semester, and John was going to act as temporary head while the university investigated allegations of misconduct. Vargassi had actually had the police report on my conviction for assault when I was a minor, but instead of me getting in trouble, John had pointed out that it was illegal for Vargassi to have that report. In fact, a lot of things in that computer file had been illegally obtained.
Michael, Sanya, and the students all seemed to like me, and Shiro was still ignoring me after having moved on to koan meditation and an EEG machine. I was on track to getting my contract renewed, and there was promotion and tenure to hope for. Maybe even get, unlikely as it seemed.
"Yeah," I said again. "Everything's actually really great."
"Wow," said Bob. "What happened, did you start getting into rimming?"
I took the phone away from my ear, and set it on to my desk, next to Bob the skull. Then I gathered up the stack of printed tests, pressed the button on the skull, and walked away to the combined sound of the Bobs' cackles.
John was waiting for me in the hall, and we walked down the stairs together.
“Having a good day?” I asked.
“Reasonably so,” said John. “I was just thinking about solipsism-“
“John,” I said, sweetly, “if the next words out of your mouth are ‘what is your opinion,’ I reserve the right to sleep at my own apartment tonight. Alone.”
I could see him thinking about it. He was actually weighing the pros and cons.
“So,” he said, eventually. “What do you think of the solipsist argument? What if we reverse it; perhaps we are not real, but there is someone else who is who we may or may not be in contact with. Can you really be sure of even your own existence?”
“Cogito ergo sum!” I shouted, walking as fast as I could, holding the blank tests like a shield.
“Ah,” said John, “but Descartes’ reasoning is based on a faulty proposition. Kierkegaard – who Hendricks informs me you have definitely read – points out that ‘I think therefore I am’ already presupposes that you are the thinker. Also, Harry,” I had sped up and John was beginning to breathe a little harder, “I would appreciate it if you could slow down to a pace where I am able to sustain the argument.”
“I’m going to run late,” I said, which wasn’t actually true. I made a show of weighing the pros and cons of letting him catch up, and then gave in. “Okay, but you’re saying that there’s one person who’s imagining all this, and projecting thoughts into everyone’s skull? Is this a backdoor argument for the existence of God?”
“Nothing so simple,” said John. He gave me a brilliant smile, and I listened to his argument, the rise and fall of his tone. The sound of the words was nice enough, even if the words themselves were ridiculous.
I said as much and was treated to another smile. We went back and forth until we were standing outside the lecture building and John was pulling on the lapels of my duster.
And, okay, maybe I was a little late for the exam after all. But I gave the kids extra time to make up for it, and they paid me back by not commenting on my flush and my rumpled collar.
In my hearing, anyway.