35
NICK AND I considered taking the offensive and informing Human Resources that a new day had dawned. We’d quote the sentence in the ECD sexual harassment manual prohibiting romantic relationships between a manager and employee—so clearly not the case between equals.
But HR was staffed by gossips; word would get around, codes of conduct might be baselessly cited, and we’d have Reggie’s smirking to contend with. So we stuck with our usual office collegiality, which required us to be our own two-person acting troupe, fund-raising in tandem without touching, still driving to work in separate cars, teasing each other within Reggie’s earshot about imaginary social lives.
We found this endlessly amusing, which gave the most routine, gray, subfreezing days some added color. We did eat lunch together more often, our brown bags packed that morning, side by side in various states of undress, at our speckled Formica counter. Sometimes our sandwiches and snacks matched; sometimes our knees touched under the cafeteria table. Did anyone notice? Let them.
And then came the trustees’ retreat in the Berkshires. The whole Development team, minus me, packed up for the last weekend in January. I drew the short straw for the stated reason that my specialty was long-distance epistolary fund-raising, but everyone knew the real reason was to save the school money. Reggie and Nick could share a room at the conference center, whereas female me would, theoretically, need a single.
Back on campus, assigned to hold down the Development fort as if that carried the most prestige, I was in close touch with Nick. He’d text or call between meetings and after hours. If roommate Reggie was present, Nick would say, “Um, can’t talk,” or “Not a good time,” and I’d say, “Got it. Reggie’s there.”
“Exactly.”
Due to the frequency of these cryptic “can’t talks,” followed by Nick’s too-long disappearances, allegedly to fill their ice bucket or find a newspaper, Reggie grew suspicious. Finally, Reggie asked, “Okay, dude. Who is she?”
What followed was reported to me by Nick upon his return, over my welcome-home lamb stew and mashed potatoes. He’d told Reggie the truth for this reason: our playacting was one thing, but lying when asked a very direct question struck him as unnecessary, cheap, even disloyal to me. He did not want to dissemble about what now constituted “us.” So when Reggie asked, “Who is she?” Nick said, “I think you can guess.”
“Did he?”
“Sort of.”
When I pressed him, Nick said, “I swear it was in a kind of awe, and . . . and . . . definitely a thumbs-up—‘Not Frankel?’ ”
“And you said . . .”
“ ‘Of course it’s Frankel!’ ”
“Then . . . ?”
“He’s such an asshole! Okay—he asked who made the first move and . . . how is she?”
“How am I what?”
“In the sack.”
“No!”
“Yes! So I said, ‘You know, Reg, even between us guys, that’s a pretty throwback question, and you realize it constitutes sexual harassment because you’re my manager.’ Of course, that didn’t shut him up. I believe the next question was ‘Are you going to sell one of the cars. If so, which one? Any chance the VW Golf?’ ”
First I laughed, then asked the recurrent rhetorical question, “How the hell did he get to be head of a department?”
“QB1. Have you forgotten that?”
Impossible to forget. Reggie’s office was a shrine to his varsity glory days, a whole console table devoted to trophies and framed photos. His Everton diploma, double matted in the school colors, hung above it, and in a clear Lucite box, Windexed at the first sign of a fingerprint, the sacred pigskin that scored some career-making touchdown.
“Now what?” I asked. “Now that he knows about us?”
“I told him I didn’t want to hear about this at work. No leering. No stupid jokes. We were professionals. At least you and I are.”
“Did you ask him not to tell anyone else?”
“Good luck with that.”
“Everyone knows?”
“You can picture it, in a coffee line, to whoever was listening, ‘Nick here has some news.’ Or ‘Nice going, lover boy.’ It saved him from making intelligent conversation with the trustees.”
That prompted me to ask about certain board members, the few who wrote me thank-you notes for my big Hepworth score. I also brought up one of our favorite topics. “How was Dickenson?”—understood to mean how much did our headmaster drink before, during, and after the dinners.
“Under control. He sure can hold it . . .” Then: “Sometimes I wonder if he has any idea what a fool he hired as head of Development.”
“Any rumblings about that at meetings?”
“Not from Dickenson, but from a couple of trustees. They asked me about Reggie after he gave a particularly lame department report. No one explicitly questioned his competence, but the gist was definitely Is your boss this goofy on the job or just while public speaking?”
“Were you honest?”
“Kind of. Each time I said, ‘I’d be guilty of departmental disloyalty if I answered that truthfully.’ ”
Late, almost midnight, after the welcome-home celebration had gone horizontal, we were side by side in my slightly warmer, south-facing bedroom. Nick’s eyes were closed, and his breathing had taken on the rhythm of sleep. Propped on my side, quite sure he was out cold and deaf to my question, I whispered, “What did you say when Reggie asked if I was good in the sack?”
His eyes didn’t open but he smiled. “I said, ‘Some things are too sacred to speak of aloud.’ ”
“No, you didn’t.”
He sat up, brought to life as if reliving the weekend’s aggravation. “Okay, I didn’t. I was pissed. I said, ‘Did you really just ask me how my girlfriend is in the sack? Because Faith and I are your employees, and the school specifically bars . . .’ ” followed by more words, more sentences, more indignation.
But I didn’t absorb the rest and didn’t need to. My powers of concentration waned after hearing him use the lovely, unambiguous girlfriend.