Death of a Department Chair: A Novel

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187 13 Death is most frightening to those who fear the inevitability of change. Daphne Arbor Death is terrifying because it means the end. Period. No wake-up call possible. Susan Crane Those eminent Victorians loved their wordplay, cloaking death as a gentleman caller and orgasm as the little death. Some people need a little eros with their thanatos. Bettina Graf Exhibit C: Transcript from Susan Crane’s interview with Reggie Bradley, recorded October 27, 2002 (Subject sits at the table in a black crop top, blue jeans, and flip-flops. She is noticeably nervous—chewing on the skin around her nails [already torn and red ], scratching her head, drumming her fingers on the table—but coherent. Her posture is poor and her hair unwashed. The interview begins at 2:30 p.m. CST, Sunday, October 27, 2002.) I didn’t . . . I wasn’t spying on Dr. Vittorio . . . Well, sometimes we just happened to be in the same place. Yeah, we’d had kind of a rocky time of it. We used to be really tight, you know? I felt like I could talk to her. And she was really smart. And sharp. I liked how she dressed and the way she walked and stood—she was just so strong and so, well . . . tall. She was just, like, the most together person I’d ever met. She made other people just look pathetic, she was so together. She knew what she wanted. She took no 188 shit, she was a baaad girl, if you know what I mean. Nobody messed with her, ever. You just knew you couldn’t fuck with Vittorio, you know? I really grooved to that. Things changed in the fall. I don’t have a clue why either. Zip, nada. She turned on me, it seemed to me. It was like I had pissed her off or something. I dunno. She was sure different than she had been. I mean, I’d been her special assistant for two semesters. I did everything for her. Well, not everything . . . Here’s what I think. She was seeing someone. And keeping it secret. That person, no, I didn’t know her. I didn’t meet her either. Well, just that day, the day I guess Dr. V. died. But I think that woman was like a really bad influence on Dr. V. She changed: all of a sudden she seemed moody and upset, off somehow, not so sure of herself anymore. She always had kind of a quick temper, but not like she did later, like in August, then she went kind of ballistic. That was new. Saturday October 12. Let’s see. Well, yeah, I was on campus. I was in Helmsley Hall. Well, I work there. No, not for Dr. V., not anymore. But a friend of mine, a grad student in film, she lets me use her lab space sometimes. It just happens to be by the elevators, which is around the corner from the main office from Lit. & Rhetoric where Dr. V’s office is . . . was. Well, what happened was I went down the hall to the bathroom. The women’s room is on the same corridor as the elevator and around the corner is Dr. Graf’s office and across from hers is Dr. Held’s. So that’s how I know both of them were there on Saturday. I came out of the women’s room and I saw Dr. Graf kind of pounding down the hallway. She had on sneakers, but she was walking fast and hard, like she was pissed off, you know? I kind of flattened myself against the wall by the bathroom because she didn’t look like she wanted to see anybody. Then I went back to my lab space which is directly across from the elevator. I don’t know, maybe sometime after one 189 o’clock I saw Dr. Held take the elevator down. She looked kind of mad too, but she’s quiet, you know the way she is, kind of in control. She doesn’t throw her body around like Graf. So, yeah, I can’t remember why I decided to go see if Dr. V. was in. I thought she probably was. (laughs) Cuz Dr. Graf and Dr. Held weren’t her favorite people and if they were all pissed off . . . well, I don’t know, I...