The Philosopher's Apprentice Read Free Page B

where the philosophy majors can huddle in the corners hashing over eros and mortality while the athletes sit at the bar discussing fucking and sudden-death overtime. At Hawthorne, this favored hangout was the Shepherd’s Pie, a convivial Commonwealth Avenue grotto where, according to rumor, H. P. Lovecraft had composed what is probably his worst piece of fiction, “Herbert West—Reanimator,” but the theory is dubious at best, as that hidebound recluse rarely left Providence.
    I skipped dinner and headed straight for the Pie, where I ordered a pitcher of Guinness, then sidled toward my favorite alcove, the very niche in which I’d once gotten my fellow Ph.D. candidate Matthew Forstchen, a card-carrying pragmatist, to admit the logical flaw in William James’s assertion that refusing to believe something is itself a kind of faith. (Do I have faith that the moon is not made of green cheese? Must I experience a divine revelation before rejecting Ouija boards?) Although my intention was to celebrate my escape from academe, I could not summon the requisite jollity. My position at Watertown High was about to evaporate, and since I wasn’t remotely qualified to teach front-end alignment in Framingham or anywhere else, I would soon be staring privation in the face. Returning to my parents in Philadelphia wasn’t an option, as the law of self-preservation required me to distance myself from the slow-motion train wreck that was their marriage, nor could I imagine moving in with my sister Delia, who was barely surviving through a combination of waitressing and off-Broadway acting gigs and didn’t need a grumpy unemployed little brother in her life.
    I was also enduring the emotional aftermath of my meltdown in Schneider. Holding forth on the stage, I’d imagined I was participating in a venerable heroic tradition—the individual versus the system—but now I simply felt like a screwup. I vowed to send apologetic e-mails to Eberling, Schwendeman, Girard, and perhaps evenPielmeister. Tracy Blasko also deserved a letter, a real one, the kind that reposes on paper and arrives in an envelope. I would thank her for tolerating my idiosyncracies during the past five years, then attempt to explain why I’d jumped ship.
    â€œMind if I join you?” a sonorous voice inquired.
    I looked up. My visitor was an owlish black man in his late forties, with a salt-and-pepper beard and eyes as dark and soft as plums.
    â€œI’m not in a very good mood,” I told him. “Have a seat.”
    We shook hands.
    â€œDawson Wilcox, paleontology department,” he said. “Your notoriety precedes you. Mason Ambrose, late of the philosophy department, author of a quirky dissertation called Ethics from the Earth. ” On the nearest empty chair, he deposited a leather satchel, brown and scuffed and also bulging, as if perhaps it contained a fossil mandible. “May I buy you a beer?”
    I gestured toward my pitcher of stout. “I’m fixed for the evening. Here’s a question for you, Dr. Wilcox. Does this pitcher truly hold four beers, or merely four potential beers, each awaiting the reification that will occur upon being poured?”
    Wilcox gave me a blank look. “No wonder philosophers can’t get funded.”
    I filled my glass with stout. An ivory wave of foam frothed over the rim and cascaded onto the table. “Will you help me get to the bottom of this? The pitcher, I mean, not the ontological mystery.”
    Wilcox fetched a second glass from the bar, along with a bowl of miniature pretzels. I poured him a beer, grabbed a pretzel, and took a gulp of Guinness.
    â€œI followed you here from Schneider,” my drinking companion said. “Let me congratulate you on what was perhaps the liveliest dissertation defense in Hawthorne history.”
    â€œSeppuka makes a great spectator sport,” I said, munching.
    â€œI’m here to offer you a