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“You’re the new professor over at the college?” Paul says, trying for casual, but peering at me intently.
“I told you about him, Paul,” Marjorie says, elbowing Paul, and my stomach clenches. “And I wish you would get over this tiff with Mark, dear. You’re not in high school anymore.”
“And you know about cars, do you?” Paul says, clearly desperate for a change of subject even though he looks skeptical.
“A bit. You want to pop the hood?”
While Paul fumbles to pop the hood, I take off my button-down shirt so I don’t get it dirty and untuck my T-shirt so I don’t look like an idiot.
Staring down into the guts of the Accord makes me feel like I’m ten years old again, when my dad would open up a car and line up me, Brian, Colin, and Sam in front of it to see which of us could guess the problem first. Colin, who’s extremely competitive, almost always won. You wouldn’t guess it, since he tends to act like a yahoo much of the time, but Colin’s actually really smart. He could spot the problem before the rest of us had even started to narrow it down. Of course, later, after I’d stopped pretending that I cared about the cars, I wondered if Brian and Sam didn’t sometimes let Colin win because he got so angry when he didn’t.
Marjorie appears at my elbow, holding out a bundle of paper towel when I start to unconsciously wipe my hands on my pants.
“Thanks.”
She just shakes her head at me and I can practically hear the word “hoodlum” rattling around in her head as she takes in my tattoos and my now-dirty hands.
“Um, it’s not the cat, so that’s good. The catalytic converter,” I correct myself, when Marjorie and Paul exchange a look that clearly says I’ve confirmed their suspicion that I don’t know anything about cars. “I think it’s probably a spark plug wire. If it sparks too early or too late, it messes up your ignition timing. I can’t test the wires here, but if that’s what it is, it shouldn’t be that expensive to fix.”
Marjorie’s smiling and Paul’s looking at me blankly. Two Sludge customers holding iced coffee concoctions have found their way over and are standing next to Marjorie, staring at me.
“Hey,” I say to them. “Um, so, yeah. It’s not hard to replace them,” I say to Paul. “Mark—is it?—will just need to run a diagnostic to see which wire’s the problem and then replace that one. I mean, if that’s what’s wrong,” I say, not wanting to sound like a know-it-all. I could offer to try and fix it for them, but in a town with only one mechanic, it doesn’t seem wise to step on his toes.
“Thank you,” says Paul, holding out his hand.
“Aren’t you the new professor?” one of the coffee-drinkers—a thirtysomething woman with badly bleached hair—asks confusedly.
“Yeah, hi,” I say, holding out my hand to her. “I’m Daniel.” She seems confused by the gesture, but then gives a limp, lingering shake.
“Wow,” she says. “I’m Ellen. So you fix cars too, huh? I wonder what other tricks you’ve got up your sleeve.”
“Oh, no, not really,” I say. “My dad owns a shop in Philly, so I’ve just picked up some stuff.”
They’re all looking at me like they expect me to give them more information, but I don’t have anything else to say. I can’t tell if they’re thinking that knowing about cars disrupts the gay stereotype or the academic stereotype more. I gather up my stuff and try to extricate myself before they can ask any more questions.
“You,” Marjorie says, pointing at me. “Free coffee tomorrow.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I didn’t really do anything.”
“Don’t argue; just accept it,” Marjorie says, and I smile.
“See you tomorrow!” Marjorie calls after me.
Chapter 5
October
FOR THE last twenty minutes, Guy Beckenham, a skinny, mousy man with a gray mustache who specializes in medieval literature, has been flipping through what appears to be some kind of illustrated manuscript. It’s either in Middle English or my upside-down reading skills have really deteriorated. Every so often he’ll lean back in his chair, hands over his stomach, and grin as if whatever is going on in this medieval tome is just tickling the hell out of him.
It’s Friday afternoon and I am in the last place that any academic ever wants to be, most especially on a Friday afternoon: a faculty meeting. As a graduate student, I heard faculty complain about them all the time, but I was so curious about who these people really were that I imagined there could be nothing more interesting than getting to see the inner workings of the English department—who is friends with whom, who is actually a pompous asshole and who has people’s best interests at heart, what’s the real reason so-and-so took a semester off, etc.
