A New Eden Read online

  The sartorial ensemble of Harris Grant, PhD, by contrast, while worn with no shame, had cost less than half that of the younger man’s shirt, minus a few of the buttons. The thinning tweed jacket was all that remained from his teaching days in New York; the rest had been acquired from the discount racks of the department stores in the valley below. His faux-leather shoes were finally wearing in, just as the soles were wearing out. The professor, however, was unenvious. He had long ago accepted the trade-offs of a life in academia, though for more than a decade he hadn’t seen the inside of an institute that would qualify as academia – at least by the standard of most of his former colleagues. With rare exceptions, such as the adventure of the past week, the perks were far and few between for a history teacher, now teaching at a junior college, no less.

  He plucked at a loose thread on the button of his jacket sleeve, resolving to re-sew it before the button could make good its escape. Given his track record for remembering such things, the disk was destined to join its wayward brethren wandering the universe, unattached.

  The assistant came through the cabin, smiling as she tidied up, her crisp white blouse and figure-hugging charcoal skirt looking as fresh as when she had met the men at the limousine that morning. She turned to ask the professor if there was anything more he needed, the blouse button between her breasts straining, a waft of perfume taunting. Anything more he needed? The more cruel for her innocence, he mused with resignation.

  He was grateful for the kindness in her smile and tried to convey as much with his own as he declined. Anything more he needed? She was half his age, her loveliness unmarked by disappointment or grief. How reflexive it had become over the years – the raising of the drawbridge, the retreat into the castle close, the perfunctory warding off of the attentions of flirtatious students who would be disappointed anyway, their fires cooling as he waxed enthusiastic over dinner about a newly discovered scroll that lent a different dimension to interpretations of Thales, or a letter of Jefferson’s that clearly reflected the influence of Paine. How quickly their adventurousness would dissipate as they came to realize the professor knew nothing at all about the lives of their favorite celebrities, that he had never even heard of their favorite reality TV shows. Being bookishly handsome, as one of the girls had described him, was enough to get him so far, but for only so long. How polite they would be, trying to hide their disillusionment when they discovered how frugally he lived, where he lived, that he didn’t even own a television. His bed wasn’t even comfortably large enough for two.

  He watched the assistant’s faultless, full hips shift as she turned to buckle herself into her seat in preparation for landing. Anything more he needed? Perhaps if she could have the pilot turn the plane around and take him back to New York, back to his beloved Manhattan.

  He had been away from Aurelia only five days, but it had seemed a short eternity. The barren dun hills rolled beneath the plane’s wing until they died in the salt flats where even the scrub couldn’t grow. Maybe another fresh face and charcoal skirt were just what he needed, if only for a night, if only for an hour or two before she would leave. And she would leave. They always left. They might occasionally last a few days or even a few weeks before they walked or ran or drifted away, disappointed or hurt or bored. But they never stayed.

  Across the aisle, Aaron pressed a key on his keyboard and leaned back in his seat. The graphs and financial statements on the screen in the bulkhead in front of him were replaced by a map showing the plane’s location, overlaid with weather radar and the local time in a dozen cities around the globe. Turning to the window, the young man looked down to the valley. He raised his hand to the glass and let the back of his finger trace the river. “We’re home. . . .” he said.

  The professor looked away, as though having stumbled into a moment of intimacy between lovers. He couldn’t help but smile.

  Yes, the perks were far and few between. For Harris Grant, PhD, Aurum Valley was an intellectual backwater, an arid cultural hole, a vapid vacuum from which he might never escape, yet – how many teachers could look across at a student such as Aaron Hale and be as proud?

  * * *

  The pilot taxied past the commercial terminal and toward the private hangars, coming to a stop near a black limousine, next to which stood a silver-haired gentleman, driving cap and gloves in hand. He greeted Aaron, the first to deplane.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Hale, sir.” The tilt of the Scotsman’s smile, the twinkle in his eye greeted them. The professor had never known the Hale butler to project other than a certainty that the day was as good as it could get and would only get better.

  “Good afternoon, Sam,” Aaron answered warmly. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Sam opened the car’s rear door. “I see that our wayward Dr. Grant has been recaptured and returned. Well done, sir.” He acknowledged Harris with a nod and a wink. “Welcome home, Professor.”

  Harris had long given up trying to get Sam to address him by his first name, even on the occasions when they enjoyed cigars and whisky together on Sam’s porch. “Greetings, Sam. I wish you had been in New York with us. I would have preferred having you drive us around.”

  “I’m always at your service, Professor, but you know I’m a butler by profession, not a driver. I would sooner attempt riding a unicycle with a flat tire through a herd of irritable rhinoceros than play at chauffeuring in Manhattan.”

  Harris tried to assist with one of the heavier bags but was waved off. Sam took pride in being as strong as he was in his youth. Harris suspected he would keep proving it until the day he found himself in the hospital with a hernia. “Nonetheless, Sam, it would have been entertaining to see if the New York cabbies could elicit a curse word from you.”

  “Never, sir. That’s not to say a situation mightn’t arise in which I could find myself obligated to refer to the existence of my sidearm and a willingness to employ it, should circumstances require – most regretfully, of course – but I can think of no reason why any necessary communications couldn’t be managed with decorum and proper manners.”

  “I could envision it no other way, Sam.”

  There was chilled water and fresh fruit in the limousine for Aaron. For Harris there was a pour of soft-amber liquid over a single large ice cube in a crystal tumbler. As the car pulled away towards the gate, Harris breathed deeply of the Scotch and took an exploratory sip. Nodding approval, he raised the tumbler and a questioning eye to the driver’s rearview mirror.

  “Glenmorangie 18, sir. I thought you might enjoy a change.”

  “Thank you, Sam. Well done.”

  “You’re most welcome, sir.”

  Aaron glanced up from his phone. “Sam, we’ll drop Dr. Grant off first, please.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  On the highway, a white passenger van pulled alongside and passed, taking the westerly fork towards the Church’s side of the valley. The Flock’s ubiquitous vehicles needed no signage: any resident of the valley could identify the white vans and SUVs from a distance. For a moment, Harris thought he had recognized a familiar face in the back of the vehicle, but it wasn’t who he had thought, who he had hoped.

  “Skye should be back in town for Passion. . . .” he mused aloud.

  Aaron, too, had reflexively checked the van’s occupants before reabsorbing himself with renewed concentration in the messages on his phone. He said nothing in reply.

  Harris regretted mentioning her.

  * * *

  For the professor, the brief buoyancy from Sam’s greeting deflated on the drive into town as they passed the gas stations, convenience stores, the strip mall with the tattoo parlor, the liquor store. The south end wasn’t the town’s best. In the empty, dusty windows of what had once been a video-rental shop, the going-out-of-business signs were faded and peeling, litter and tumbleweeds lodged in the recessed entrance. Sam eased the car over the center line to avoid hitting a heavy woman riding along the shoulder in a motorized wheelchair,
a case of beer in her front basket, three cartons of cigarettes balanced on her lap. Harris finished his Scotch in two swallows.

  He had flown to New York to visit his sister in Brooklyn. She was ill, terminally in all likelihood. He hadn’t seen her since he’d moved west. Perhaps if he had stayed with her for the duration of the visit, the return to Aurelia would have been easier, but after three nights on her sofa, he had accepted the invitation to join Aaron in Manhattan.

  When the professor stepped off the 4 train at Grand Central, he knew he was in trouble. The city sucked him up the stairs and lifted him out onto the street, washing him along in its energy. There was no fighting it. He was back. It was good to be home. Good in the worst way. Coming back had been a mistake.

  Leaving his bag at the hotel, he found himself walking straight to the Village like an addict to an opium den. At first he was alarmed to find that his favorite deli had changed ownership – but, thankfully, the menu and recipes were the same, if not better. It tickled him being served some of the best Jewish fare in the city by a family of Thais, but such was Manhattan, such was America.

  After savoring the first decent bagel he’d had in years, he stopped into the bookstore on Fourth. The old chairs and garish sofa had been replaced with newer old chairs and a less garish sofa; otherwise the shop was the same, if not as busy. For old times’ sake, he selected a literary review from the magazine rack, sat in his corner near the window and, with a cup of coffee, perused the articles as the world went by.

  At noon he followed his old route to Little Italy, noting which shops and restaurants were still open, which had been remodeled, which were new. He was recognized and greeted enthusiastically at his favorite Italian place by Mrs. Mustafa, the Turkish owner, as if he’d been away only a week or two. Her Afghani husband, Farshad, was still in the kitchen, still making the world’s best eggplant rollatini.

  After lunch, it was a short cab ride up to Central Park. From the park he wandered north through the upper West Side, having no intention of going anywhere near the university – yet, there he found himself, in front of the Socrates’ Cat, the cafe where he had conversed and dueled into the morning hours with prodigies and professors, plumbers and politicians, where he had become something of a local legend: hero to some, villain to others, parrying logical fallacies with nimble precision and rapier wit, serving up rhetorical retorts with benevolence when warranted and devastation when deserved. The Socrates’ Cat, where the one deft and deadly stroke had been slipped beneath his guard and thrust deep, leaving him standing there, unable to reply. . . .

  The windows were dirty and smudged now, plastered with darkly existentialist flyers promoting indie bands that had played there over the recent semesters. On the sidewalk, a bored busboy was hosing off the rubber mats from behind the bar. A coed with muddy-blond dreadlocks came out for a smoke, in clothes that looked like she’d lived in for a week. Harris couldn’t bring himself to go inside.

  Just visible to the north, through the blossoming trees, were the copper-crowned roofs of the university’s history and philosophy halls.

  He turned away and walked south.

  Despite having resolved not to do so, he found himself detouring a block east to the street on which he and Carol had lived. The neighborhood had changed little, except that the trees had grown taller and fuller. Mrs. Flores, from upstairs, was sitting on the front stoop luring a feral cat with bits of bologna. He greeted her as he walked by. She didn’t recognize him. Of course he no longer wore the beard. He wondered if her husband, the building supervisor, was still alive. He glanced up at what had once been his window – their window. There was a bumper sticker taped on it now, the word “peace” spelled out using the symbols of the major religions. On the sill next to it sat a potted agave that looked like it had been dead for months. Feeling suddenly fatigued, he took the bus back to the hotel.

  Was it the city that had changed? Or had he become more realistic, more perceptive over the years? Less optimistic? More cynical? Everyone had their heads down, staring into their phones. Drivers were even more irritable. Pedestrians looked more anxious, as though just trying to endure. Much had changed, it was true, over the past decade, with the rising unemployment, the teetering economy, the threat of terrorism – the actual terrorism. There were more sirens – or had he simply not noticed them as much when he lived here? Aurum Valley was such a quiet little backwater, where nothing of consequence ever happened, where everything of no consequence was everyone’s business. . . .

  From the bus stop in Midtown it was two blocks back to the hotel. Where the hotel’s lobby began, the city’s irritability and anxiety ended. All horns and sirens were banished, the deep rugs and textural wall treatments deadening any vibration that might slip by the thick glass of the front doors. Despite the professor’s attire, the staff treated him like a billionaire – which for all they knew, he realized with wry amusement, he might be.

  The room Aaron had reserved for him, on the same floor as Aaron’s own, was larger than his entire living quarters at home. It was all too nice, really. He wouldn’t know what to do with the contents of half the bottles in the basket by the sink. Though his feet and legs were sore from all the walking, he wouldn’t risk taking advantage of the marbled spa tub, not wanting to know what he would be missing again all too soon, upon return to his austere existence. The bed was sinfully comfortable though. He sank into it, laid back and closed his eyes, allowing himself just a few moments. The linens felt and smelled as if they’d been line-dried in the sunshine over blooming lavender. His bed at home no longer deserved to be called a bed. . . . So this is what money is for. . . .

  When Aaron’s knock woke him it was early evening. He had been dreaming of being back in the Socrates’ Cat. The place was full once more with students and fellow academics. He was attempting to convey an original observation about the metaphysical status of arbitrary assertions, but everyone was leaving to watch Carol argue with Mrs. Flores over the missing Sunday paper. He could only follow the crowd. On the stoop of the brownstone, a dozen feral cats with dirty-blond dreadlocks were lazing about and twining through Mrs. Flores’ legs. In the open window above, the word on the sticker had changed from “peace” to “war.” The agave in the pot had been replaced by a severed head, its eyes staring blankly at the apartments across the street. The head kept interrupting the vehement argument between the women with accusations of “Straw man!” and “Tu quoque!” until Mrs. Flores hurled a cat named Schrödinger at it and general mayhem ensued.

  After washing his face and changing, he joined Aaron in the hotel’s restaurant, where they dined lightly but well before taking a cab to the opera. A local connection of the family – Aaron was on the last leg of an extended business trip – had gifted their two season seats in the second row, orchestra center.

  Harris had never experienced a professional arts performance of any kind from closer than about mid-house, and for the first time in his life, he was in an opera. The ingénue soprano was mesmerizing, captivating. The tenor was powerful, persuasive. Later that night, in the most comfortable of beds, he dreamt of the soprano luring him with her siren song into her dressing room. Bracing himself in her doorway, he sang dramatically – in Italian no less – of his deep reluctance: surely no good could come of a relationship with a student. A student? Why did it always have to be a student? She laughed irresistibly, sang urgently, imploring him to have mercy, desperately needing his help with her thesis or she would never get it right. She was everything youthful and desirable – passionate, effervescent, insatiable, vivacious. Of course he resisted with all of his will, lamenting being caught in the tragic role written for him, and yet – the key changed from a torn minor to a resolved major – it would have been unchivalrous of him to spurn her plea, to fail to assist with the zipper down the back of her dress, to help slip the dress off of her perfect, alabaster shoulders as he sang the call to her response, while neither of them, nor anyone else in the audience, was being fooled
as to who was calling and who responding. The key suddenly wrenched back to a minor, and he was protesting Carol being completely unreasonable about his predicament, barging in with her raised knife, the busybody Mrs. Flores close behind, rubbing her hands wickedly.

  He woke in a sweat and tried to rewind the dream, wanting nothing more than to fall asleep again in hopes of Carol giving him just five more minutes with the girl. But the next time through the scene, it was Carol singing in the tenor’s dressing room, sitting on the tenor’s lap while he serenaded her, with Carol insisting, as Harris stood helplessly in the doorway, that it was only fair. Except that it wasn’t the tenor on whose lap she was sitting but Professor Fuhrmann. Fuhrmann? Why did it always have to be Fuhrmann?

  The next morning, after a palliative second visit to the bagel shop, he spent the day in another of his old haunts. All he had ever needed to do was to walk through the doors of the Met to have the world and his problems disappear.

  Aaron joined him after lunch, having concluded his day’s business that morning. They explored the museum’s rooms and wings, enjoying the artworks separately, coming together before the occasional piece as tutor and student again, sharing observations and thoughts on the esthetics, techniques, historical context, intended theme – when such could be identified. Standing before other works, they would say nothing at all, but simply contemplate and enjoy.