…A Dangerous Thing (15 page)

"I guess so," George said.
 
"If I can."

"Good.
 
Then she should certainly be willing to do the same for you."

Burns tried to think of someone that
Bunni
might talk to.
 
Miss Darling was still in her office, but Burns was pretty sure that Miss Darling wouldn't have any more of a clue to what was going on than he did.
 
Clem might, but she had already gone home.

Dawn
Melling
was still in the counseling office, however.
 
Burns didn't have much confidence in her advice, but she
was
a certified counselor.

"We'll ask
Bunni
to talk to Ms.
Melling
," he said.
 
"Do you know where she is right now?"

"I think it's too late for that," George said.
 
"She's already talking to somebody."

Uh-oh.
 
"Who?" Burns asked.

"Miss Tanner."

Burns groaned again.
 
This time he did it aloud.

 
"
B
unni's
right, you know," Elaine Tanner said.
 
She was sitting at her desk, surrounded by her trophies.

"Maybe," Burns said.
 
If he got into an argument with Elaine, he didn't want it to be about
Bunni
and George.

"There's not really any maybe about it.
 
Do you see all these trophies?"

Burns thought about saying that, no, he didn't see any trophies.
 
Were there supposed to be trophies around?
 
But Boss Napier had already caught him using sarcasm.
 

"I see them."

"And I told you why I have them, didn't I?"

"To increase your self-esteem, you said."

"That's right.
 
And why do you think I might need to do that?"

Since Burns had only recently been wondering the same thing, he said, "I have no idea."

"You wouldn't."
 
Elaine looked at him with something like pity.
 
"That's because you're a man."

"I don't see why being a man has anything to do with it."

"Naturally.
 
That's because you've never had to prove that you're something more than a pretty face.
 
You've never sat in a class without being called on because you were a cute redhead that the professor thought was dumb as a post without ever having spoken a word to you."

Burns would have liked to dwell on the fact that Elaine had more or less admitted that she was a cute redhead, but he didn't think that would be smart.

"I try to call on everyone in my classes," he said.
 
"I probably go out of my way to call on the women."

"I believe you."

There was some comfort in that, at least, but there was no consolation in what Elaine had to say next.

"I suppose you realize that calling on the women as often as the men makes you an exception.
 
Studies have shown that even female teachers don't call on women nearly as often as they call on the males in the class."

"I've read about that.
 
But how does it explain the trophies?"

"No one ever called on me, even when I knew the answers.
 
And I
always
knew the answers, which is more than I can say for most of the people, the
male
people, who did get called on.
 
And that didn't do a lot for my self-esteem.
 
By the end of my undergraduate academic career, I needed more than just a bunch of guys calling me for dates to boost my ego."

"There were a bunch of guys calling you for dates?"

Elaine waved a hand, dismissing all the calls.
 
"Yes.
 
But that doesn't have anything to do with it.
 
Later on, when I went to library school, the majority of students were women.
 
I got called on a lot more often.
 
But it was too late; the damage was already done."

Burns was beginning to catch on.
 
"You started buying the trophies about then, I suppose."

"That's right.
 
I needed something to affirm my self-worth, and I thought having the tangible signs of success around might help, even if I hadn't really earned them myself."

"The Cowardly Lion," Burns said.

Elaine smiled.
 
"Leave it to an English teacher to relate everything to literature."

"Not everyone would consider
The Wizard of Oz
to be literature," Burns said.
 
He was thinking that Eric Holt would, maybe, except that Frank L. Baum had the misfortune to have been a white male.

"That's their misfortune, then.
 
I think it's a wonderful story.
 
But we're getting off the subject, aren't we?"

Burns supposed that they were, but they hadn't drifted too far.
 
"So you think
Bunni
, having been judged on her appearance, is going to suffer like you did?"

"I would say that it's possible."

"But this is different.
 
It doesn't have anything to do with her classes, and George said that her appearance was important to him only at first.
 
After he got to know
Bunni
, he began to appreciate her better qualities."

"She told me.
 
He thinks she's
sweet
."

"Is there something wrong with that?"
  
Burns knew what he thought.
 
He wanted to hear Elaine's views on the subject.

"Maybe not, if there's more to it.
 
But if that's all George sees, he's guilty."

"Guilty of
lookism
?"

"Of more than that, whatever it is.
 
He's guilty of looking for June Cleaver and Harriet Nelson instead of a real person."

"And I don't suppose women are looking for Ward or Ozzie, either."

"Not most women."

Burns thought that was too bad.
 
Ozzie and Ward seemed to him to represent ideal husbands.
 
He'd always hoped that if he ever got married and had a family, he could be like either man, both of whom always seemed to be available and able to solve any family crisis with a short man-to-man talk with the kids, none of whom, come to think of it, had been daughters.
 
Now it seemed that Burns had adopted the wrong role models.

But then he'd always suspected that.
 
The unmarried women in movies and on TV never went for the clean-cut guys who followed the rules.
 
They always went for James Dean or his latest wannabe.
 
Luke Perry, lately.

It was the same in fiction.
 
Sid Sawyer could never be the hero of a novel, though Tom could.
 
And Huck Finn was even better.

"You don't think
Bunni
will change her mind?" Burns asked.

"Are you asking me to help her change it?"

While Burns might have had that in the back of his mind earlier, he knew better than to admit it.
 
"I just thought someone might help her to see George's point of view."

"I don't think I can do that.
 
I'm afraid I believe George's point of view is based pretty much on what
Bunni
says it is."

"Would it help if you talked to George?"

"I don't think so.
 
You've explained his views very well."

Burns didn't remember having explained George's views at all, but he could hear a bugle in the back of his head blowing retreat.
 
So he got out of there.

T
he next day was HGC's annual "Spring Frolic."
 
There were a few people who thought that having a frolic only two days after the murder of a long-time faculty member was just a little bit tacky, but Dean Partridge wasn't one of them.

Her memo on the subject said:

Inasmuch as the students will need something to relieve their minds in the current gloomy circumstances, it seems appropriate to continue with the Spring Frolic as scheduled.
 
Samantha Henderson has expressed her personal wish that everything at HGC continue in as routine a fashion as possible
.

The memo reminded Burns of a couple of things.
 
One was that he hated the Spring Frolic, and every year he tried to avoid as many of its activities as possible.
 
The other was that he still hadn't paid a call on Henderson's wife.
 
He didn't like doing things like that, though he considered it more or less a duty, and he would have to do something about it.

As he sat in his office looking out over the campus, he thought about Tom Henderson and the Spring Frolic.
 
As a matter of actual fact, Henderson hadn't liked the Frolic any better than Burns did.
 
The two of them had occasionally stood in Henderson's office and watched the yearly Mud Tug, commenting sarcastically on the participants.

Henderson's window looked out over not only the sidewalk where he had fallen to his death but also over the patch of ground where the Mud Tug took place.
 
Burns, who would never have dreamed of taking part, nevertheless wasn't averse to watching others make fools of themselves, especially if two of the potential fools were Tomlin and Fox.

It had always surprised Burns that those two would willingly take part in something like the Mud Tug, which was simply a tug-of-war between the freshmen (or, as they were now called, thanks to Dean Partridge, the "first year students") and the faculty, or at least those faculty who were willing to risk being dragged through ten yards of slimy muck.

Early in the morning of the Frolic, the maintenance crew would quite thoroughly wet down the turf in the middle of the patch of ground overlooked by Henderson's window.
 
Then, during the hour scheduled for Assembly, the faculty and first year students would gather around opposite ends of the thick rope that the maintenance workers had left lying across the sludge they had created earlier.
 
At a signal from the college president, who also, had declined to participate more directly, as had been the tradition with HGC presidents from the first right down to the present one, the participants would grab hold of the rope and begin to pull.

The object of the exercise, of course, was for one side to pull the other through the gummy slime, while at the same time relaxing just enough at the end to give the losers hope that they might be able to return the favor.
 
But as soon as the losers got back to more solid footing, the stronger team would always drag them right back into the ooze.

Burns couldn't think of anything he would rather do less than slop around in the mud, but Fox and Tomlin had never seemed to mind.
 
They defended the activity as good for the morale of the students, but Burns told them that while that might be true, getting slimed wouldn't be good for
his
morale.

So there he was, sitting alone in his office in the deserted building while practically everyone else was out to frolic in the mud.

Well, that wasn't exactly true.
 
Miss Darling certainly wasn't going to get into the act, nor was Clem.
 
But they were outside to watch, ready to cheer on the certain-to-be-overmatched faculty.
 
Holt, who preferred afternoon classes, wasn't around yet, and Burns didn't know him well enough to predict whether he would be pulling or cheering had he been there.

Burns stood up and walked around his desk.
 
He couldn't see the Mud Tug from where he was, and while he didn't want to go outside, he would have liked to see if just for once the faculty could win the annual battle.

Maybe Tom Henderson's office would be open.

Burns made his way through the deserted corridors, the old boards beneath the carpet creaking under his feet.
 
He went down the stairs to the second floor.

There was no one there, either, and Burns went on back to Henderson's office.

The office was locked, which was certainly not surprising.
 
And there was a yellow plastic ribbon stretched across the doorway.
 
The ribbon said that this was a line Burns should not cross, but he didn't take the warning seriously.
 
After all, who was going to find out?

The locked door didn't pose any problems.
 
As Burns had reason to know, it was quite easy to slide a credit card between the door and the frame and slip the lock.
 
He pulled out his wallet and extracted his Visa card.