Blue Angel Read Free Page B

tomorrow?”
    â€œAbsolutely!” booms Swenson. Office hours tomorrow ? He schedules two conferences with each student per semester, though actually, he’d rather not go into his office at all. He’d rather be home writing. Trying to write. If he has to be in his office, he likes to sit and think. Or jerk off, or make long distance calls on the college’s nickel.
    Of course, he can’t tell the class that. He wants the students to see him as generous, giving—on their side. And he wants to be, he used to be, when he first started teaching. Well, anyway…he owes Angela for bailing him out, for helping him divert the class from the wipeout toward which it was heading.
    Swenson says, “What time are my office hours? Someone remind me, please.”
    â€œTomorrow morning,” Nancy Patrikis says.
    â€œ I have morning office hours?” says Swenson. “Are we positive about that?”
    â€œThat’s what it says on your office door.” Danny’s happy to play along, he’s so thrilled that the class is over.
    Clearly, there’s no avoiding it. “All right, Angela. See you at nine.”
    â€œSee you,” Angela—half out the door—calls back over her shoulder.
    On his way out, Carlos punches Swenson’s upper arm and says, “Hey, Coach. Thanks. Good class.” Nancy and Danny find each other—it’s like Noah’s Ark. Claris and Makeesha leave together, apparently reconciled since Makeesha criticized the politics of Claris’s latest story. The disenfranchised Carlos with the feminist Meg, the furious first-family Courtney with the furious farm-girl Jonelle. Everyone’s in a fabulous mood….
    A tide of satisfaction sweeps Swenson out the door and sends him, practically skipping, down the belltower’s helical stairs. Not until he’s halfway across the quad does he realize that he hadn’t needed to mention the detail of the chicken’s head, gazing back at its attacker.

 
    A s always, getting out of class, Swenson feels like an innocent man, sentenced to life, whose jail term has just been commuted. He’s saved, alive, he’s been reprieved…at least until next week. Hurrying across the quad, he nearly plows into a tour group inching across the campus. Rather than ruin his sneakers by cutting across the boggy lawn, he trails behind the high school students enduring the mortification of being here with their parents.
    Deep in the Northeast Kingdom, an hour from Montpelier, sixty miles from Burlington, one hundred fifty from Montreal if you’re desperate enough to wait at the border while the Mounties tweeze through each car to discourage Canadians from crossing to shop at the Wal-Mart, Euston’s nobody’s first choice. Students willing to travel this far to a college this cut off and inbred prefer Bates or Bowdoin, which have better reputations, the Maine coast, and the L. L. Bean outlet. Euston’s conveniently located in the midst of the two-block town of Euston and the moose-ridden wilderness that its founder, Elijah Euston, so loved.
    Recently, a public relations team advised Euston to market its isolation. And so the tour leader—Kelly Steinsalz, from last spring’s Beginning Fiction—is explaining that the lack of distractions lets her concentrate on academics. The parents nod. The teenagers scowl. That’s just what they want from college. Four years of concentration!
    Swenson can’t imagine how Euston looks to someone visiting for the first time. They couldn’t have picked a better day. Warm vapors surround the handsome buildings, the gnarled maples and still-green lawns. What they cannot picture—and Swenson can, all too well—is how soon this soft green path will turn into a frozen white tunnel.
    â€œExcuse me,” says Swenson. No one budges. They’re too busy miming presentability or disdain. Trapped, Swenson listens to Kelly