Mickelsson's Ghosts Read Free Page B

born-again Christians. His female students’ papers were full of it. They batted their lashes and swung their rear ends, but their hearts seethed. Not that their anger was necessarily ill-advised. Here he was now, hunched over, looking irate and imploring, as domineering males had been doing for centuries, ever since they’d learned it was frequently quicker than hitting those fat little asses with sticks. He thought of saying, sheathing anger in a joke, “I’ll pay you of course. Keep track of your time!” But the girl was still covertly eyeing him, and he decided he’d better not. They already had reason enough to believe he was crazy.
    He worked on his expression, rolling down and buttoning his cuffs again, then moved toward Tillson’s inner sanctum, smiling, holding his hand at half-ready, prepared for the necessary handshake. He entered with his head tipped forward like a bull’s, one eyebrow raised, eyes dead serious, the rest of his features assembled to a hearty grin. They could always count on old Mickelsson, he thought; madman Mickelsson, born for better things, maybe for selling used cars. He was aware of Tillson’s watchful eye and the queer, no doubt accidental gesture of the right hand raised toward his grizzled chin, two fingers lifted above the rest and aiming outward, like a claw raised to strike, or a papal blessing, or the sly cobra sign of ancient Tibetan art. The young man who turned to shake Mickelsson’s hand had such glassy eyes and pallor of skin, color like a dead man’s, that Mickelsson was for an instant almost thrown. Careful, he thought, and tightened the screws on his expression, letting no muscle slip.
    â€œProfessor Mickelsson,” Tillson said, beaming with fake pleasure, “this is Michael Nugent. He’s transferring into philosophy from engineering.” He continued to beam, head twisted painfully up toward Mickelsson’s, as if tickled pink to have the honor of introducing two such marvels. Tillson’s black trousers were baggy at the knees. His shapeless black coat hung forlorn on the back of his chair. His tie was wide and wrinkled, not quite clean.
    â€œGlad to meet you, Michael,” Mickelsson said. He gave him a nod and put the smile on energize. “Good to have you with us! Glad you saw the light!”
    The boy mumbled something, accepting Mickelsson’s football-coach handshake without returning it—not just responding limply, but actively refusing to respond (or so it seemed)—and his eyes, meeting Mickelsson’s, threw a challenge. Clearly something was eating the boy. The leaden skin, the reddened eyelids, the nervous, weak mouth like a child’s all gave ominous warning. He wore a blue, pressed workshirt with starch in the collar, and neat, pressed slacks, such clothes as nobody in philosophy had worn since the fifties. His elbows and knuckles and the tip of his nose were red, as if scrubbed with Fels Naptha. Mickelsson drew his hand back.
    â€œProfessor Mickelsson, as you may know, is our department’s most distinguished philosopher,” Tillson said, and he put one hand on Nugent’s arm, the other on Mickelsson’s, preparing to press them subtly toward the door. Mickelsson smiled on, though he knew pretty well what the praise was worth, and he kept his eyes, with their familiar look of (he knew) intense, crazed interest, on the young man’s face. What a world, Mickelsson was thinking. Tillson and himself, arch-enemies, shepherding another poor innocent—fugitive from the clean, honest field of Engineering—into the treacherous, ego-bloated, murder-stained hovel of philosophy. But Mickelsson was a team man, at least when he was set up for public view—had been one all his life, even here in the Department of Philosophy he none too secretly despised. The show of happy solidarity rose in him instinctively, which was one of the reasons Tillson called on him in