Stoner

Finch sighed, and then said abruptly, "Okay. I'm talking to you right now as a friend. There's been talk. It isn't anything that, as a dean, I have to pay any attention to yet, but--well, sometime I might have to pay attention to it, and I thought I ought to speak to you--as a friend, mind you--before anything serious develops."

Stoner nodded. "What kind of talk?"

"Oh, hell, Bill. You and the Driscoll girl. You know."

"Yes," Stoner said. "I know. I just wanted to know how far it has gone."

"Not far yet. Innuendos, remarks, things like that."

"I see," Stoner said. "I don't know what I can do about it."

Finch creased a sheet of paper carefully. "Is it serious, Bill?"

Stoner nodded and looked out the window. "It's serious, I'm afraid."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

With sudden violence Finch crumpled the paper that he had so carefully folded and threw it at a wastebasket. He said, "In theory, your life is your own to lead. In theory, you ought to be able to screw anybody you want to, do anything you want to, and it shouldn't matter so long as it doesn't interfere with your teaching. But damn it, your life isn't your own to lead. It's--oh, hell. You know what I mean."

Stoner smiled. "I'm afraid I do."

"It's a bad business. What about Edith?"

"Apparently," Stoner said, "she takes the whole thing a good deal less seriously than anyone else. And it's a funny thing, Gordon; I don't believe we've ever got along any better than we have the last year."

Finch laughed shortly. "You never can tell, can you? But what I meant was, will there be a divorce? Anything like that?"

"I don't know. Possibly. But Edith would fight it. It would be a mess."

"What about Grace?"

A sudden pain caught at Stoner's throat, and he knew that his expression showed what he felt. "That's--something else. I don't know, Gordon."

Finch said impersonally, as if they were discussing someone else, "You might survive a divorce--if it weren't too messy. It would be rough, but you'd probably survive it. And if this-- thing with the Driscoll girl weren't serious, if you were just screwing around, well, that could be handled too. But you're sticking your neck out, Bill; you're asking for it."

"I suppose I am," Stoner said.

There was a pause. "This is a hell of a job I have," Finch said heavily. "Sometimes I think I'm not the man for it at all."

Stoner smiled. "Dave Masters once said you weren't a big enough son-of-a-bitch to be really successful."

"Maybe he was right," Finch said. "But I feel like one often enough."

"Don't worry about it, Gordon," Stoner said. "I understand your position. And if I could make it easier for you I--" He paused and shook his head sharply. "But I can't do anything right now. It will have to wait. Somehow . . ."

Finch nodded and did not look at Stoner; he stared at his desk top as if it were a doom that approached him with slow inevitability. Stoner waited for a few moments, and when Finch did not speak he got up quietly and went out of the office.

Because of his conversation with Gordon Finch, Stoner was late that afternoon getting to Katherine's apartment. Without bothering to look up or down the street he went down the walk and let himself in. Katherine was waiting for him; she had not changed clothes, and she waited almost formally, sitting erect and alert upon the couch.

"You're late," she said flatly.

"Sorry," he said. "I got held up."

Katherine lit a cigarette; her hand was trembling slightly. She surveyed the match for a moment, and blew it out with a puff of smoke. She said, "One of my fellow instructors made rather a point of telling me that Dean Finch called you in this afternoon."

"Yes," Stoner said. "That's what held me up."

"Was it about us?"

Stoner nodded. "He had heard a few things."

"I imagined that was it," Katherine said. "My instructor friend seemed to know something that she didn't want to tell. Oh, Christ, Bill!"

"It's not like that at all," Stoner said. "Gordon is an old friend. I actually believe he wants to protect us. I believe he will if he can."

Katherine did not speak for several moments. She kicked off her shoes and lay back on the couch, staring at the ceiling. She said calmly, "Now it begins. I suppose it was too much, hoping that they would leave us alone. I suppose we never really seriously thought they would."

"If it gets too bad," Stoner said, "we can go away. We can do something."

"Oh, Bill!" Katherine was laughing a little, throatily and softly. She sat up on the couch. "You are the dearest love, the dearest, dearest anyone could imagine. And I will not let them bother us. I will not!"