THY NAME IS WOMAN
Like anyone toiling in academia, Winfield Payton suffered his share of boors. Over the years he had developed a grudging tolerance toward the smirkers, the know-it-alls, the under-medicated schizophrenics, the drunks, the dopers, the day-dreamers, the texters, the whiners (“Not another paper!”). He even welcomed the disdainful, patronizing questions put to him by undergraduate Mensa deconstructionists, radical feminists, Standard English-is-Fascism dialect preservationists, diehard what-happened-to-the-Soviet-Union-changes-nothing Marxist-Leninists, and We-Reject-All-Your-Western-Ism’s-Islam-Is-The-Solution-Muslims. But he could not abide snoozers. Self-conscious exhaustion or hangovers were one thing, but students who buried their heads in their folded arms or tossed themselves back over their chairs like whiplash victims and shamelessly slept were intolerable.
Winfield’s summer session of Business Communications 201 was actually interesting for once. This class included two financial advisors brushing up on their writing skills while on appeal. And there were no fewer than three thirty-something female executives from Bank One, all divorced, and, if their choice of skirts and lipstick were any indication, readily available. Then there was Jason Quirn. Tall, lean, handsome, the nineteen-year-old never failed to promptly fall asleep in class each day during the first week.
Late in the second week, Jason Quirn failed to appear, missed three assignments, and was presumed dropped. This left Winfield free to concentrate on the Bank One execs. During his lectures, he noticed the quick sidelong glances and polite smiles flashing between them and the convicted advisors. All of this was promising. Simple subtraction left one tight-skirted, lipsticked Bank One exec unattended.
The class went on swimmingly from eleven to twelve-fifty each day. While the undergraduates rushed off to other classes or summer jobs, Winfield joined the advisors and Bank One execs for drinks. They made a perfect sextet sipping Diet Cokes in the Student Union. Three well-dressed couples amid the swirl of boys and girls in denim and leather. Having missed out on Enron and Too Big to Fail, the execs were infatuated with the detailed legal maneuvers the advisors were mounting to delay incarceration. Ladies love outlaws, and mutual fund bandits were as close as these suburban Republicanettes could come to Jeff Skilling and Dick Fuld. Win, himself, made a point of describing his colorful, though limited role, in the multi-million-dollar collapse of Brewer’s Court. He was out a condo, his down payment, his consulting contracts, his plush office in Frederick Douglass Savings and Loan, his title of Communications Director, but if could entice one of the Bank One divorcees into a hot tub at County Galway, it just might be worth it. As yet he had not determined which one of the women to approach first. He sensed his chances would improve if he gallantly stepped aside for the condemned and take whomever was left. No doubt the prospect of a prison term put the advisors’ hormones into high gear.
It was after one such afternoon in the Union that Winfield returned to his office to discover the snoozer dozing outside his door.
“Dr. Payton, can I talk to you?”
Win was in too good a mood to object, granting an undergraduate an undeserved office hour.
“Sure, come in. Have a seat.”
But Jason Quirn did not sit. Eyes reddened, his large Nikes squeaking softly on the tiled floor, he wobbled uneasily and began speaking in low, mournful tones.
“Dr. Payton, I know I’ve missed a lot of class.”
“Almost two weeks. That’s equivalent to over a month during the regular semester.”
Quirn nodded his curly blond head. “I know. I know. I just don’t want to fail this class. It’s the only thing I’ve got going right now.” He sighed, his chest heaving.
“Well . . . .”
“You see, I’m from Appleton.”
Winfield nodded, wondering if there was more to his plight than being from Houdini’s home town.
“I came here with my girlfriend. We went steady all four years at East High. And we decided to go to college together, and we got this apartment on Oakland, and things went OK until this summer. I wanted to go to summer school at MITI because it’s cheaper than Marquette, and she was going to work as a secretary because we needed some extra money for a flat screen. Well, back in May she used to come home every night right at five-thirty. Then two weeks later she began coming home at six and then seven. Then she started staying out till ten or eleven. She said she was going to happy hours with the girls from the office. Then in June, a couple of nights she didn’t come home at all, and she told me she stayed at a friend’s place because she had too many Alabama slammers and didn’t want to drive drunk. Well, things just got worse.”
Winfield felt a tightness growing in his chest, and he stopped rocking his swivel chair. Quirn was getting teary-eyed.
“Well, then the sex stopped. She wouldn’t even let me touch her. And then I came home three weeks ago, and she was packing. Putting all her stuff in boxes, even the sweaters I bought her at Gurnee Mills. She said there were never any girls at the office. She was going with her boss the whole time. He’s married, so he got her an apartment in Downer Estates, and he’s buying her a car. A Camaro. And she just left. I don’t even have a phone number. When I went to Downer Estates, the manager threw me out. I don’t know what to do. This was the only girl I ever went out with. Since I was fourteen. I don’t know. I don’t have any friends here. I can’t study. I don’t know whether to stay in school or quit and go back to Appleton. I can’t sleep, so every night I go out drinking.”
The last words were choked. Win cleared his throat, his heart aching for this 6’2” block of adolescent pain. Even with his suppressed sniveling, he was cute. A boyish Paul Newman. Jeez, kid, Win thought, just stay away from The Black Cat.
“Well, I don’t know what to say,” Winfield began, his own heart empathetically aching with memories of LeAnn in high school, Vicki in college, Shireen in grad school, and lastly Barbie who had not returned his calls for three weeks. What was there to say? Track the bitch down, slug the bastard, call his wife, and cart the wayward bimbo back to your pad? Contact the campus ministry? Call an escort service? Blow your brains out and hope Miss Appleton is torn with Blanche DuBois guilt for the rest of her worthless life? Win’s mind swam with notions and poses. He wavered between asking supportive Dr. Phil questions and coming on strong with some retro Rat Pack wisdom—listen, pal, wait till you’re my age. Every three or four years some broad is going to put your heart in a blender. Find ‘em and forget ‘em!
“Well,” Winfield found himself saying, “you have to get a grip on yourself. Getting drunk every night never solved anything.” Win had a four-hundred-dollar bar tab at The Black Shamrock to attest to that. “You have to concentrate on something meaningful, something to give your life purpose. And there is nothing like an introductory business communications course to provide just that. Now, if you don’t want to drop out, you’ll need to catch up. Write some collection letters. Just keep busy.”
“I know, but I just can’t stop thinking about her and some of the things she said. She told me that this guy really turned her on. She said she never knew how good sex could be until she met him.”
Winfield waved his hand dismissively. In another minute the kid would be balling out loud. “Don’t believe that. She’s probably scared to death of leaving you. What will her parents think? What if his wife finds out? What will her friends say? She has to run you down to convince herself she’s doing the right thing. Don’t take any of that stuff seriously. Why would she go out with you for four years if you were no good for her? There must have been plenty of other guys at West High.”
“East.”
“What?”
“East. We went to Appleton East, Dr. Payton.”
“Whatever. You weren’t the only guy there, right? She had chances with other boys, so why would she stick with you?”
“I know. I just needed to talk with someone. I wanted to call my Mom, but she’s in Italy.”
Winfield swallowed. Just the Saturday before, after leaving six messages on Barbie’s voicemail and written and deleted three emails, he had called his own mother. Thankfully, she was out, and Win hung up, too drunk to leave an articulate message.
“OK, well, just follow this,” Winfield said, hastily circling missed assignments on a spare syllabus like an impaired internist scribbling a prescription for Prozac. “You write a draft of a business letter and bring it to class tomorrow. We’ll have a few beers . . . uh, a few Diet Cokes at the Union.” He regretted the offer, wondering if the free Bank One exec might fall for Quirn. She could easily rationalize an affair with a despondent young man, telling herself she was saving him from suicide, homosexuality, or a lifetime of expensive and ineffectual psychotherapy. Anything to keep him from ending up on Jerry Springer in a dress.
Jason Quirn accepted the syllabus like a conscript ordered to the Russian Front.
Walking home, Win stopped at The Black Shamrock and added eighteen-seventy-five to his bar tab, leaving his last three limp dollar bills as a tip to Moira. Money was lean during the summer. His last Frederick Douglass Savings and Loan check had bounced, and no one had offered him a dime in kill fees.
In the lobby of the Downer Estates he collected his mail, scanning the boxes for fresh labels. I’d kill to know what she looks like, Winfield thought, cursing himself for not asking Quirn her name. He could easily find out but dismissed the idea. Don’t get too close, a voice cautioned him. It’s way too teenage.
Winfield took the elevator to the third floor, trudged down the hall, entered his flat, and went through the mail. Standing over the recycling bin, he tore up a rejection slip, shredded a pair of charity requests, carefully set aside a car wash coupon, and glumly opened bills from AMEX, MasterCard, Visa, and Discover. Dejected, he headed to the study, clicked on the remote and channel surfed while contemplating a new screenplay good enough for a kill fee. He was flashing between True TV’s coverage of a copyright infringement trial and The Great Gatsby when he noticed the voicemail light pulsing on his telephone.
Pressing the button, he expected a call from his mother or an invitation to a last minute racquet ball game. He was feeling down enough to welcome a call from Shelly Bronfman. At first he didn’t recognize the breathy voice. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of spanking, flat loving blows against willing flesh. Barbie! His heart froze. Then came more sighing. “I just want you to know. . . just want you to know I don’t need you . . . I found someone better . . .” A male voice, choked with rhythmic gasps asked, “Who you calling, bitch?” Then he heard Barbie again—a chain of sighs and gasps leading to panting and woman-in-labor groans. Hearing the last of her orgasm spill from the machine, Winfield buried his face in his hands and wept.