Academic Affairs
Love and Murder in Academia
by
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I spent Thanksgiving back home in Ohio. My parents were glad to have me. So was my sister, my brother-in-law and my niece and nephew. The Saturday after Thanksgiving, I hooked up with Jamie, my best friend from high school, now a lawyer trying to become a Cuyahoga County Commissioner. "Hey, that's life," Jamie said of my afternoon at the Lake Ste. Marie condos with Claudia. "Take what it gives you. Never look a gift horse in mouth. Forget it. It's done. There's nothing to feel guilty about. It wasn't like you forced her to do anything she didn't want to do; it was consensual. What her husband doesn't know won't hurt him. There is no reason why you and he can't still be friends. Things like that have happened between men and women ever since there've been men and women. It's in the past now. Forget it. If you don't forget it," he chuckled, "it may never happen again. As long as it doesn't happen with you and my wife." Neither Jamie nor my parents, nor my sister or my brother-in-law or niece or nephew had any advice to give concerning Patty. "Sorry to hear it; hope it works out for the best," was pretty much what everyone said. You never know; you might get back together. All couple's go through rough periods." They thought Patty and I might someday get back together because I didn't tell them about David Wicher. I'd told them Patty had left me to go live in a writer's commune, because she thought marriage was getting in the way of her writing. She needed to feel completely liberated to write the kinds of things she wanted to write. To have told them about David would have been too humiliating. I couldn't do it. My first day back from Thanksgiving in Cleveland, I made a special trip to the Spencer Yankee Doodle, hoping that Diane, my favorite cashier, with her big, clear, glittery brown eyes and bright little girlishly dimpled smiles, would be at one of the cash registers. She wasn't. I was glad she wasn't. The store was more crowded than I had anticipated. I wouldn't have had the nerve to go up and ask her out and risk being rejected with so many people around. After rejecting me, she would tell her co-workers. From then on, every time I came into the store, everyone would look at me and see the pitiful guy who had asked Diane out, but had been rejected. I'd been deluding myself. Diane didn't look or smile at me any differently than she did any other customer. I wasn't any more special than any other customer. I would get some milk, some bread, fruit, vegetables, fish, chicken, juice, oatmeal, popcorn, pretzels, and leave. I turned my cart into the frozen food aisle, and there she was - Kimberly Lloyd. Proudly built, strawberry blond, ruddy-complexioned, light greenish blue-eyed, twenty-seven-year-old Kimberly Llyod, Special Assistant to Karen Grooms, President of Spencer College, among other things, barely able to swerve her cart to the side in time to avoid direct collision with mine. "Hello, Chris," she nonetheless smiled happily. "Fancy running into you. I thought you might be in here when I saw your car out front. Where have you been keeping yourself?" "Different places." "Different places? I've been to different places and haven't seen you." "Probably because you haven't been looking for me." "How do you know I haven't?" she flirted. "How do you know I didn't see your car and decide to come in here just so I could run into you?" "I don't. "I've been thinking about you. How have you been?" "Not too bad. Kicking along.. How about you?" "Not too bad. Kicking along," she mimicked. "Looks like you're taking the day off ," I said with a nod at her attire: baby blue down parka with ski gloves sticking out of the pockets, over a white cashmere turtle neck, black corduroy jeans and hiking boots. "Brilliant deduction," she nodded approvingly. Yes, I am taking the day off. I'm just back from skiing with my parents and brothers. Some families spend Thanksgiving eating turkey; mine spends it on the ski slopes. Did you have a good Thanksgiving?" "Yes, I went back to Ohio, ate turkey and dressing with my parents and sister and family. How's Justin getting along?," I asked, reminded of him by the diamond engagement ring on her finger. "I read in the Spencerian [the Spencer College student newspaper] that he left for Russia a couple of weeks ago; and won't be back until Spring, just like you said. Is everything going all right with him over there?' "As far as I know," she said as if not greatly concerned one way or the other. "Great. I hope things continue to go well for him." "Good for you," she said with an approving nod at the contents of my shopping cart. "Lots of good, healthful things in there. Next time you give a dinner party invite me." "I could give one tonight." Engagement ring or no engagement ring, if she could flirt, so could I. "Why don't you?" "Would you come?"
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About the Book
Written from the point of view of Christopher Mercer – a professor of sociology first at Spencer College in Northern New England, and then at Pacific State University in San Diego County, California – Academic Affairs tells of the five murders that occur on these two campuses, how they interrelate, and how they are ultimately solved in Tecate, Mexico during the "running of the bulls." Academic Affairs is not only about death, it is also a series of love stories, making it a "romance" novel, as well as an "action-adventure/murder-mystery" that gives the reader a close-up "backstage" view of the academic life.
About the Author
The holder of a Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University, Phillip Timothy Gay is the published author of works of fiction, as well as non-fiction. Before Academic Affairs his most recently published work was Modern South Africa (McGraw-Hill, 2001) He is, at present, a professor of Sociology at San Diego State University, working on, among other things, a sequel to Academic Affairs.