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THE CHANCELLOR’S WELCOME and Halloween party was scheduled for Friday night, at the lavish and taxpayer-funded Chancellor’s Residence. I had been planning to skip it, but Dan Watanabe, the interim Dean of the College of Commerce, had waylaid me in the hallway to encourage me to attend. He made a very convincing case that, as I was going up for tenure this year, I needed to look like a “team player.”
“You’re a department chair now,” Dan said. “It’s going to be obvious if you aren’t there.”
“I’m only interim department chair,” I countered.
“Still, you should attend. You don’t want to snub the Chancellor when your tenure application might be sitting on his desk.”
He’d convinced me. I trusted Dan. Dan Watanabe had always had my best interests at heart and had come through many times with support and good advice. (Unlike some other members of the management department. Not to name any names but Hanson Harrison, for all of his liberal posturing, clearly couldn’t stomach the idea of a young-ish, female person serving as his department chair. If anything, I would have expected trouble from Rodge Cowper. Rodge, after all, had been the original inspiration for the Rodge Cowper Rule, the one that mandated faculty must keep their office doors open at an angle of at least forty-five degrees when a student was visiting. But Rodge hadn’t been a problem at all. It was Hanson, the grandfatherly progressive, who had reflexively opposed me on everything from classroom assignments to final exam schedules to parking permits. At our last department meeting, he’d even publicly stated his opposition to a motion he’d introduced at our previous meeting, the only possible explanation being I had just spoken in favor of it.)
I had no idea where to find a costume on such short notice. Fortunately, Stephen Park, in the theater department, came through for me with a cockroach costume that had been constructed for a student production of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. I had dated Stephen briefly, before I met Donnie. I’d heard rumors Stephen hadn’t taken the news of my marriage well, so I was relieved that he seemed to harbor no ill will and was eager to help me out.
Donnie agreed to accompany me to the Chancellor’s Welcome and Halloween party, but he refused to wear a costume. Instead, he dressed in his usual, conservative going-out clothes: crisply ironed navy blue and white aloha shirt tucked into black slacks.
Donnie’s instincts, as it turns out, were correct. No one at the Chancellor’s Welcome and Halloween Party was wearing a costume. Except for me. Even the wait staff made their champagne and canapé rounds in black trousers and white dress shirts.
I tried to blend in, although this was difficult when my ensemble included a solidly-constructed exoskeleton, a headpiece with long, waving antennae, and a third pair of limbs that sprouted from the waist and were wired to move in sync with my arms.
Of course, no one acknowledged my fashion faux pas. Everyone was far too polite. Even Donnie kept a straight face and said nothing. At least none of my students is here to witness me trying to be inconspicuous while dressed as a giant arthropod, I thought.
“Hey, Professor Barda.”
I turned (cautiously, as my costume had many moving, waving parts) to see my student Lars Suzuki, dressed in too-long black trousers and an oversized white dress shirt. Donnie detached himself and went over to chat with our athletic director, who happened to be an old schoolmate of his.
“I’m supervising the caterers,” Lars announced happily. “That’s how come I get all dressed up.” Lars had tucked his shirt in, which caused the excess fabric to balloon over the waistband. He was carrying a metal clipboard.
“Very nice. All you need now is a stopwatch.”
He grinned.
“Frederick Taylor kine, ah? Eh, the costume’s cool. Really realistic. I saw you and thought, ho, das one big cock-a-roach.”
“Well, I thought it would be fun to get into the spirit of things. It is Halloween, after all, exactly the day when one might expect people to show up in costume.”
“Eh, you get one extra pair of arms,” Lars exclaimed. “You could probably hold four champagne glasses at one time. Hang on, I go get ’em, we try.”
“No, no, it’s not necessary.” I imagined throttling Stephen Park with all six of my legs. “Listen, Lars, I see more guests coming in. I should probably let you get back to—”
“You know, I really like this job, professor. Keeping everything running, making sure everyone got their food and drinks and everything. I think I like work in hospitality when I graduate. You know, last summer I worked on a cruise ship?”
“I think you mentioned it. I’ve never been on a cruise ship. It sounds very glamorous.”
“I wouldn’t say glamorous. Lotta stomach flu going around. It gets kinda nasty.”
“I can imagine.”
“Worst thing, though, is you get people disappearing at sea. Either they jump overboard, or someone goes push ’em. And if no one sees it happen, cannot do nothing. Eh, if I was gonna murder someone, I’d do it on a cruise ship.”
“Well, I’ll certainly keep that in mind.”
“Molly.” Emma had just come in, looking elegant. She wore a simple black dress instead of her usual jeans-and-free-conference-t-shirt ensemble. Her black hair was brushed back from her face and fell in loose waves around her shoulders.
“Where’s Yoshi?” I asked.
“At home. He didn’t want to come. He just wanted to stay home and be a lump. How come you’re dressed like a big cock-a-roach?”
“Because it’s Halloween?”
“Did Stephen Park talk you into wearing it? He did, didn’t he?”
“He didn’t talk me into it. I asked him for ideas because I got summoned to this on such short notice. How did you know it was Stephen?”
“Because number one, who else would have a giant-size cock-a-roach costume sitting around, and number two, he’s passive-aggressively getting back at you for getting married.”
“Why would he care? We’ve been broken up for years.”
“What kind of robot planet are you from, Molly? He’s upset. You ended up in a serious relationship, and he didn’t. Anyways, you gotta get out of that thing.” She rapped my hard shell with her knuckles. “People are gonna think you’re making fun.”
“How was I supposed to know this wasn’t a costume event?”
“This is the chancellor’s house. Does this look like the kinda place you wear a giant bug outfit?” Emma gestured across the spacious, marble-tiled living room toward the floor-to-ceiling picture windows. Far below, the whitecaps of Mahina Bay glowed in the moonlight.
“I’ve never been to the chancellor’s house before. I have no frame of reference.”
“Let’s go into the bathroom and get you out of that thing,” she said. “What you got on underneath?”