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PARTISAN REVIEW
widened and darkened - the classic expression of horror and trepidation
in Western literature - she just stood in the snow and stared. Terror
was
mixed with an emotion I couldn't identify. "Do I know you?" I asked.
I
She shook her head. "Are you in my Joyce lecture?" Another stunned
quiver. I paused a moment. "All right, good morning, then."
I'd like to think this caused me to meditate upon the role of young
prof, which has its charms for both students and the young prof; surely I
was not exempt from swagger, the temptation to appear in the Modem
Novel corral with a thumb in my belt and a learned but rakish squint in
my eye. The collison of non-tenured cockiness with adolescent dreami–
ness causes many an unnecessary £lash fire. The air on campus was right for
it. I'd like to think I had these wise thoughts, but I didn't.
That night the Provost came to see me at Telluride House. It seemed
that I was having an affair with a student, her parents were profoundly
disturbed, and he himself idly wondered what explanation I could offer.
My explanation: it was untrue. He went on: The girl disappeared for
nights and weekends to spend them with me in various motels nearby.
And, uh, embarrassment, what we did, furthermore, was the sort of thing
even married couples didn't do in upper New York State unless they
were pretty weird. Around the Finger Lakes, this stuff was only a rumor
- he couldn't say about Albany. I denied. Well, her roommate and oth–
ers had seen her dial my number, heard her conversations with me on the
telephone. Ah, I remembered those calls. They were one-sided conversa–
tions . She talked dirty and breathed hard, practicing for the modem
novel, but I always hung up promptly.
The Provost wanted to know why there wasn't a dial tone. I said
maybe there was and the girls didn't hear it. We debated the resonance
across a room of disconnect signals and the tympanic acuity, involving
helix, fossa of antihelix, concha, antitragus, tragus, external auditory
meatus, stapes, eustachian tube, and internal auditory meatus of nineteen–
year-old sorority sisters who swore there must have come an answer to
Penelope's (for indeed that was her name) sighs and groans. Huffily came
my breathing with Charlie Provost. HuffY and indignant was my style on
this occasion. I was improvising.
The girl's name meant nothing to me but a name on the register of
a large lecture class (there were several Penelopes, Sharons, Lindas, and
four Mary Anns); she had never come in for a conference, although her
fellow Penelope did; and I had a friend in New York whom I often vis–
ited on weekends. This aforesaid lady from New York (defendant's ex–
hibit A) had even traveled up to spend weekends in Ithaca with me. I
could produce witnesses to the fact. We had taken beef stroganoff over
rice with colleagues on one of the alleged nights of motel acrobatics
with the mythomanic, lying, vicious Penelope Whatzername ...
