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Chapter One
You bought a gun?"
My department at the State University of Michigan atMichiganapolis was not a place where they made mountainsout of molehills—they made volcanoes, and you never knewwhen the next eruption was due.
But despite that combustibility, I was shocked by Juno Dromgoole'sannouncement when she had me over for dinner on a mildearly December night. And so I asked her again, twice.
"You bought a gun? You really bought a gun?"
Juno nodded and set down her wineglass. "Of course I did.Teaching here is too dangerous. How else can I protect myself?"
Having shared this news, Juno calmly took another sip ofKenwood zinfandel.
While I may have been shocked, I wasn't going to stop eatingwhen the food was so good. I finished the last of an outrageoussalad of watercress, Belgian endive, toasted walnuts, Gorgonzola,and roasted pears in port with a touch of balsamic vinegar. Thevinaigrette was first press olive oil, Dijon mustard, and red wine.
"That was terrific," I said, for the third or possibly fourth time.Juno shrugged as if it were merely Lean Cuisine. Finished, Icouldn't help but return to her surprising confession. "Juno, don'tyou think getting a gun is—"
"What?" she snapped. "Extreme? No, it isn't. Not when theymow down professors left and right here."
Of course she was exaggerating, but even though the StateUniversity of Michigan atMichiganapolis wasn't quite Bosnia oreven the Alamo, Juno definitely had a point. The faculty at SUMhad suffered heavier-than-usual attrition in the past few yearsthrough murder, and there really was no way of knowing who wasgoing to become the next dead academic.
How bad was it? Well, if SUM were the Dow Jones index, brokerswould be talking about a "market correction."
"Why not take a self-defense class?"
"I've done those, I train at the gym, I swim, I'm in perfectshape, and I'm a mean bitch, but I'm no match for a killer."
That silenced me, especially since I had been attacked here atSUM myself a few years before, and might have been killed.Flashing on the incident made me suddenly feel ashamed that Ihad taken no steps in response to being endangered, while Junohad. Was I jealous, I wondered, of Juno's strength and determination?
With the Kenwood done, we moved on to a Montbazillac asluscious as the curves of Juno's thighs and breasts, which I wastrying not to stare at while she cleared the table. I wasn't entirelysuccessful, but then I don't think anyone—straight, gay, or Republican—canavoid staring at Juno. She is just too magnetic.
Boisterous and sexy, fortyish Juno combines Tina Turner'shair, legs, and attitude with Frank Sinatra's temper and foulmouth. A powerful swimmer, she is muscular and ripe, with thekind of coolly brutal voluptuousness you find in some of the nudesTamara de Lempicka painted in the 1920s and 1930s.
Her body was molded that night by black leggings and hip-lengthturtleneck cinched by a 1950s-style superwide leopard-printbelt. In that phrase waiters like, her outfit was "finished with"Audrey Hepburn flats. She looked good enough to eat, and therewould be plenty of leftovers. But would she leave me with heartburn?That was the question.
I wondered if she really noticed my attention and perhapsliked posing for it, or did she simply, beautifully take it for grantedthat all men, even those who lived with other men, admired her orat least took a second look?
"Stay where you are," she insisted when I offered to help."You're my guest." Juno le set the kitchen table and continuedcleaning up, moving around the kitchen with exaggerated nonchalance—JamesBond rather than James Beard—as if the meal werepotentially dangerous. I suppose it was, calorically, though in allmy travels to France with my partner Stefan, even in the Dordogne(home of foie gras), I'd never seen the kind of fat people you raninto all the time in Michiganapolis, especially if you shopped forfood late at night. I guess in France, overweight citizens are undera Ministry of Tourism curfew so as not to alarm visitors.
Like the rest of Juno's small house, the kitchen was a perfectbackdrop for her extravagance of manner and style. Juno's homeactually reminded me of Carmen Sherwood's boudoir in The BigSleep—a seductively chilly layering of ivory on white on chrome.The living room, in fact, was "self-striped": glossy ivory stripes overthe same tone in flat paint. When I saw it, I couldn't help thinkingof one of those puzzling, almost blank canvases at MoMA I'd assumedas a kid growing up in New York had to be a joke. Juno herselfwas an updated version of a Raymond Chandler bombshell,the kind of woman who could "make a bishop kick a hole in astained glass window."
I suppose there must have been some lingering skepticism aswell as surprise on my face, because when she sat back oppositeme, she asked a bit truculently, "Shall I show you my Glock?"
Despite my curiosity, I demurred. "Michigan's my home," Isaid, thinking briefly of our getaway cottage up north, "but I wasborn in New York, remember? I'm not really comfortable withhandguns—or the idea of hunting for anything more than aparking space." As I said it, I had the uneasy sensation of being acharacter in a Woody Allen film.
"But Nick, really, you can't imagine," Juno said, with lambenteyes, "how powerful it would make you feel just to touch it."
Though I remembered John Lennon singing about happinessbeing a warm gun, I was pretty sure I didn't want Juno handlingeven an unloaded firearm around me (it would be unloaded,wouldn't it?). After all, pistol-whipping didn't involve bullets, andJuno was the kind of woman who would be combustible even in acoma. I'd seen her enraged before, and it was like a sequence fromTwister.
Anyway, it wasn't her gun I wanted to touch.
The phone rang, and Juno checked her watch and cursed."Same time every time," she said, moving to the counter. Shepicked up the receiver, listened, and slammed the phone down.
"What's going on?"
"Crank calls. Somebody muffled, a man, I think, saying, 'Getout!'"
"Get out of what?"
Juno shrugged.
"Can the police trace the calls?"
"They have. It's no help. Public phones—all in town."
"So that's why you bought a gun," I said.
"That—and everything else."
We sat there in silence for a while, I suppose both contemplatingthe bizarreness of being a professor and fearing for your lifeon a college campus.
"Are you being stalked?"
"Not exactly. Not yet."
"Wow."
Having been the recipient of crank phone calls and other harassment,I felt more than empathy. I dreaded what might be instore for Juno. Before I could ask who she thought might be angryat her, she said, "Excuse me," and slipped from the room. I wonderedif she were going to check on her gun—a natural enough responseto a threat. Who could be hassling her on the phone? Anex-lover? A rival of some kind? Juno was so over-the-top, I couldimagine her igniting cinematic-size passions like Sophia Loren orGina Lollobrigida.
I didn't mind her being gone for a moment; I welcomed the interruption.Being this close to Juno for so long was as overwhelmingas I had guessed it might be, but I hadn't refused herinvitation to dinner. I was torn: attracted to her, and puzzled.
My trouble about Juno had begun a few months earlier whenshe and I wound up swimming together near campus at Michiganapolis'spremiere health club—daringly called the Club—and shehad seemed to flirt with me in the pool when we stopped to standand talk at the shallow end. Juno had looked incredibly sexysqueezed into a gold mesh one-piece with matching swim cap, herdeep cleavage glowing with promise in the shattered light of thepool.
Surveying her physical bounty, I had responded with my ownsurprising mutiny, feeling a hot burst of excited shame as if I werea teenager again, trembling and tumescent. Whether she had inflamedme deliberately or not by teasing, I was exhilarated andscared by being attracted to a woman for the first time in my lifesince I'd come out to my cousin Sharon at fifteen. It had never reallyhappened before, and I was shocked by the intensity, the suddenness,and my sense of vulnerability and exposure there in thepool.
Sharon, my ultimate confidante, had met Juno on a visit fromNew York earlier that fall, and when I told her what happened, shesaid she thought Juno would be a bit daunting for a first-timer."Work your way up to Juno," she had joked. But she'd also quizzedme seriously more than once. "Are you sure you want to have sexwith her? It's not just idle curiosity? Are you sure this isn't happeningbecause I've been sick?"
I couldn't at that point absolutely rule out Sharon's upcomingsurgery for an acoustic neuroma being at the root of my confusion,but I told her I didn't think it was.
"Well, sweetie," she'd said after a pause, "you don't have to doanything about Juno, really. Maybe you can even enjoy it a little.You know, accept that your sexuality is fluid right now?"
"Fluid? It's always been solid as a rock." I had suddenly feltpossessed by the Spirit of Bad Puns. And "fluid sexuality" was asdismal a prospect as overturning the cliché of straight men suddenlyrealizing they were gay in midlife. I did not want to be atrendsetter. I was a bibliographer, for God's sake. My job was to behumble and helpful, not create scandal.
But whatever I felt for Juno and whatever it meant, there wasthe whole question of whether Juno was really flirting with me, orjust playing some strange private game. Because what had passedbetween us was more than idle dishing—at least I thought so. UnlessI was totally off base.
"Yes," Juno said, striding back into the kitchen, "I have a gun,and I know how to use it. I didn't come all the way from Winnipegto become a fucking American crime statistic. You should see meat the firing range. I'm a natural. Nobody's taking me out!" Junorattled on about her shooting skills.
I tried to shake the image of her in the pool and stay with theconversation. It wasn't easy. I had not exactly been alone with herbefore—the pool didn't count—and up close, she was even moreremarkable, her heart-shaped face incredibly alluring.
"Maybe you're on the right track," I said. "But it's probably notenough for professors to start carrying weapons. What we reallyneed at SUM is a squadron of armed guards. To protect the faculty."
"Bad idea. It would never work, because anybody could turnthem," she said, as if Cold War spies were being discussed. Shejoined me at the table and took up her wineglass.
"Well, you know how Michigan's full of militia and conspiracytheory types? People are saying the murders over the last few yearsare part of some insane plan."
Juno frowned. "A plan?"
"Yes—the administration's trying to speed up what's happeningat universities across the country: replacing tenured facultywith lower-paid temporaries. You know, kill some professors,terrorize the rest into early retirement."
"That is insane. The idea that it's real, I mean."
I nodded. "But at least nobody's saying the dead faculty arebeing kept alive in crypts under the Administration Building—withAmelia Earhart and Bobby Kennedy. Personally, I don't thinkSUM's upper administrators are organized and efficient enough tomount a terror campaign against the faculty. Even sub rosa. Andwhat's the point? They don't need to kill anyone off. They're fullycapable of tormenting and alienating us without any stratagems.It's second nature. The lunacy here is atmospheric and institutional,not agenda-driven."
"True enough."
"But even if we don't believe it, Juno, lots of people do. They'reinsisting there has to be some kind of design to the killings. Evenmy mailman is obsessed. He's turned into one of those crustypeasants in horror movies, you know, the kind who limps alongand makes all these dark observations just before the monsterbursts loose."
She grinned, intrigued. "What does he say?"
"Oh, his favorite dire warning is, 'There's bad blood overthere.'"
Juno laughed. "I think septicemia would be the clinical term."
She was right.
"I don't know why people mock academia and say it's an ivorytower, that it's not like the real world. It's as real as any otherclosed environment, isn't it? Boiling over with jealousy, spite, cruelty,coldness, and hypocrisy. Passions here can become as crazedas any Mediterranean vendetta. And that's over minor issues—soit's no wonder that major contention can lead to murder."
"Given all that," she said, "I don't see why you haven't boughtyourself a gun and learned how to shoot it. With your track record,I'm sure you'll have plenty of cause to use one." She rose andstarted laying out the ingredients for our main course: foie grasseared in butter.
I had unfortunately been involved in each of the recent murders,all of which had some connection to our Department of English,American Studies, and Rhetoric (EAR). This made mepopular with thrill-seeking students who expected my compositionclasses to turn into crime scenes, and unpopular with administrators,who blamed me for the university's bad PR. If there's anythinga university hates more than a losing season or its footballplayers getting involved in a gambling or date rape scandal, it'smurder.
While nobody was calling me the Perilous Professor or sayingI had a doctorate in death, I suspected that wasn't far off, alongwith a cheesy Lifetime channel movie version of my story—SUM:State University of Murder—and a position on the advisory boardof the Jack Kevorkian Institute.
"Honestly, Nick, I really am surprised that you of all peopledon't have a gun," Juno observed, turning from the sink, French-manicuredhands on her hips as if she were about to berate me."After all the trouble you've gotten into over the last few years."
"A gun wouldn't have helped me stay out of trouble."
"How do you know?"
"Well, maybe." I sighed. "But a gun sure won't get me tenure."Perhaps nothing could now, despite my good student evaluationsand two forthcoming books that I had edited. Not only was Iunderpublished and disliked by many of my colleagues and by theadministration, but my tenure committee was in need of major reconstitution,thanks to a campus murder just at the beginning ofthe semester. If I wasn't exactly doomed or even suffering underan intermediate-level curse, too much had gone wrong over thepast few years for it all to work out in my favor. I sometimes felt socynical about the academic environment that I wondered if Iwould want tenure after I got it, anyway. Wasn't that the dilemmain Remembrance of Things Past? When Marcel finally gets to kissAlbertine, it's a letdown.
Juno was one of the few women I knew who could mouewithout looking childish, and she did a great job of it just then inresponse to my gloom. "Nick, your chances of tenure can only beenhanced if they know you're armed and dangerous. And thinkhow good it would make you feel—how satisfied and complete!"
I'd heard lots of self-help advice in my time—but this had to bethe most original: Get thee to a rifle range!
"Are you going to tell everyone at EAR you have a Glock?"
She frowned. "Why not? It's legal, and what's the point ifpeople don't know? How would that be a deterrent? How wouldthat make me safer?"
Did guns make people safer?
"Nick, really, think about getting a gun. It'll change your life."
That wasn't the best argument for anything at the moment. Iwasn't looking for change. I wanted stability. Fat chance. Here Iwas, lusting after a woman who might be interested in lustingback, after I'd been living with a man I loved for fifteen years. It didnot make sense.
What was going on with me? Was it Juno being so unlike therest of the geeks, freaks, and ghouls who were my colleagues?Though Juno was a professor of Canadian literature, there wasn'tmuch that was professorial about her, aside from her dedication toteaching. Moving in a perpetual nimbus of chic perfume, she wasdevoted to leopard-print clothes and accessories (before they becamepopular), and completely unafraid of expressing her opinion.All of that was profoundly anomalous in our generally craven EARdepartment, where the average look was a sort of tag-sale cross betweenincoherent and bland.
Trying to change the subject from her gun, I said, "I've neverhad foie gras as a main course." I watched her at the counter.
"I thought you'd appreciate something more refined than spaghettiand meatballs. Though I guess it would depend on the balls,wouldn't it?"
"Doesn't it always?"
She grinned. "Some balls depend, some don't, or not much,anyway."
I confess it took me a few seconds to get the pun on "depend."
Until that moment, our talk hadn't been remotely personal orrisqué, just about classes and general end-of-semester complaining(and the gun, of course).
Don't get me wrong, I love teaching and always have. Especiallysince I teach composition, I can almost always see tremendous,heartening changes in my students over the course of asemester—that is, if they come to class and do the work. It's one ofthe most important courses taught at the university, because inother classes, professors don't pay enough attention to how studentswrite.
Devotion aside, however, you can't just teach your classes andkeep your head down; no matter how you try to avoid it, the quicksandof academic politics and administrative idiocy is always readyto suck you under. Shop talk quickly turns to war stories in thatkind of environment.
Like me, Juno was dedicated to helping her students, whichwas refreshing. Too many of our EAR colleagues acted as if officehours were an imposition and simple politeness to their students acrime. And after five years at SUM, it was clear to me that the universitywas a small-potatoes version of Russia's current kleptocracy;it existed solely to enrich a small group of people: upper-leveladministrators, the president, and the sports staff. SUM'sathletic director, for example, not only earned $750,000 a year,but the university had bought him a Lexus and a BMW, athirty-foot boat, and a vacation home on Beaver Island. And that'sjust the largesse that had been made public. SUM may also havebeen supplying him with Rogaine, Viagra, and any other drugs hecraved.
But all those musings burned off like morning fog as I watchedJuno at the stove, and I drifted back to the vision of her in the pool,shocked and excited to imagine myself standing up, slipping behindher to stroke her breasts and kiss the back of her neck. I picturedslipping a hand down from behind to spread her legs,rubbing against ...
I crossed my own legs, trying to act cool. I had never fixated ona woman like this before, and each time the vision hit me, I shookmy head to clear it, but unsuccessfully. The disorienting sensationof fantasizing about her was almost like entering the love scenesI'd been seeing my whole life on film and reading about in books.Could that be what drew me to her? Some kind of crazed midlifelonging to be like the majority? Great! Next I'd be seeking baptismand reading Stephen King.
King made me think of Juno's Glock again. Now that she'dmentioned it, would I ever be able to think of anything else?Maybe I should accept her offer to see it, I thought. I'd never beenclose to a gun before. And wouldn't it help me teach my mysteryclass next semester to be at least mildly familiar with a Glock?
I asked, "Who else in our department do you think has a gun?"
Juno shrugged, unconcerned.
"Because maybe you're not the only one. The next departmentmeeting could turn into a shoot-out. I suppose if I hit the floor intime, there wouldn't be much of a downside."
Juno grinned, and I wondered if she saw herself as SigourneyWeaver laying waste to a host of aliens. No, too messy. Perhaps itwould be Queen Elizabeth I calmly sending opponents to theblock.
I asked, "Why did you choose a Glock?"
Juno rejoined me at the table, suggesting we wait a bit beforeshe actually started the foie gras, and I refilled her wineglass.
"The Sig Sauer has the smoothest action around, but I wantedthe Glock nine-millimeter because of its stopping power, and becauseit's light. You can throw it against the wall, and it won't gooff. You can dunk it in a bucket of water, and it still fires. Sixteengorgeous rounds without reloading."
"You can take it swimming?"
"Funny man. Have you ever heard of either of those? TheGlock and the Sig Sauer?"
"Of course. Both of them tend to be the big guns in mysterynovels these days." And before I could apologize for "big guns,"Juno said, "God—speaking of big guns—I had a lover from Vancouver,and God, Nick, he was just too damned big. Like whatthey say about that Matt Damon."
"They do?" I hadn't heard that rumor, or noticed. But then Idid fall asleep halfway through Good Will Hunting.
"Or maybe it's Ben Affleck. One of those boys. But anyway,Nick, it was awful. Take a photograph of it, fine. Or a plaster castand use it as a towel rack. But fuck him? Please! I'd rather run amarathon. Or compare jewelry with some nitwit doctor's wife at aday spa. Or read one of those dead-on-arrival Robert Ludlumbooks."
Embarrassed, intrigued, I asked the obvious question: "Howbig?"
Juno rolled her kohl-rimmed eyes, and her voice deepened asif she were a husky-voiced cabaret singer declaiming about chagrind'amour through a pall of disillusionment and cigarettesmoke. "A freak of nature," she summed up. "But even whenthey're not quite that big, it's just dreadful."
"Why?" I would have guessed that Juno was a size queen, soher complaint surprised me.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Burning Down the House by Lev Raphael. Copyright © 2001 by Lev Raphael. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
