Thief of Dreams by John Yount Page B

hadn’t gotten his tenure, so he’d moved to some college in California.
    Why hadn’t she gone with him? Edward wanted to know.
    She laughed at that and took a swallow of her drink. Well, she guessed she just hadn’t got her tenure either, she explained.
    He’d asked what in the devil “tenure” was, and she told him it meant the bastards couldn’t get rid of you until you died, and while he pondered the sad drift of that remark, she went on about her husband. Oh sure, he was brilliant, she supposed—anyway she never understood half of what he said. But looking back on it, as far as she was concerned, he was pretty damned useless too. He never wanted to do anything except argue some point with somebody or read. Either that or screw like a billy goat—probably because he didn’t know how to do anything else. If you asked him to change a light bulb, he was in trouble. Hell, he was forty years old and he didn’t even know how to drive a car and couldn’t begin to balance a checkbook. People were forever calling him on the telephone, threatening to sue him if he didn’t pay his bills. And boy how that would put him on his high horse, she said and laughed. Every time he’d wind up insulting them as though the whole thing was their fault. Oh but she knew all about that, she told Edward, since he’d even tried to blame not getting his tenure on her. On the way she’d acted at two or three of the silly little faculty parties he’d taken her to.
    Edward laughed with her. Well how had she acted? he’d asked.
    Hell, she told him, she didn’t act. She never acted. She tried to have a good time like always. She said what she thought and did what she felt like doing. She cocked her head and peered at the ceiling above his head. What was wrong with that, she wanted to know.
    Nothing, he told her, nothing at all. So, he said, what did she hear from Professor Pergola these days?
    She didn’t hear from him. Hoped never to hear from him. Anyway his name was Whitney, but she’d stopped using that the moment they’d parted company.
    So then, they were divorced?
    She had divorced him in her heart and said good-bye and good riddance in the bargain, but she didn’t see any good reason to pay some lawyer a lot of money to shuffle papers and fart around over it. She knew it was a mistake, and Mr. Fancy Pants knew it was a mistake. A very bad joke that had lasted eight whole months. As for herself, she was back to being Paris Pergola, thank you very much, and if the great Professor Whitney wanted some little piece of paper to say, in writing, that the marriage was over, well fine; he could hire a lawyer and pay for it. But she didn’t need such nonsense because she was a free person in her heart, and that was what mattered. Anyway, she didn’t even know where he lived in California, or if he was still in California.
    Having said all that, she’d looked at him and smiled, although in the next moment the smile began to waver, and she tossed her head and took a sip of her drink in order to cover up the way her smile had begun to flicker toward something else, he guessed. But then, all at once, he realized she was crying, her face still bent over her lowered drink.
    Whoa, he’d told her, don’t do that; but she’d given up all pretense, and her shoulders were shaking, and he’d gotten up and gone to her to hold her awkwardly and try to shush her. After a while she managed to say that the drinks came to five dollars if he still meant to buy them, and they’d both laughed at her telling him that at such a moment. Then she’d said she wasn’t crying over any fancy-pants professor; she wouldn’t have him think she was. She was crying over love in general, or marriage in general, or some damned thing she wasn’t sure of herself. Then, laughing and crying at exactly the same time, she stood up and held out her hand to be