Another You by Ann Beattie Read Free Book Online

sponsoring an annual poetry prize, which the President understood would be the first step toward working with the college and offering an endowment to bring in visiting poets. “I hate these machines,” Emmet Llewellyn said, with much more conviction in his voice than when he asked Marshall to appear on short notice to help entice a rich woman to donate money. The second message was from Sonja; she had called to say that Dr. Llewellyn’s secretary had called her at work because they were trying to track down Marshall about something very important. “Sherry and a hit up,” Sonja said with a sigh, telling him to call her if he hadn’t already received Llewellyn’s message, or if he needed further clarification. Was she exasperated with him, or with them—she should only blame them—because they’d called her at work about something that was clearly not an emergency? The third message was from “Barbara. Secretary to President Llewellyn. The President would appreciate your calling him as soon as possible regarding the visit of Mrs. Adam Barrows.” She pronounced the last three words very slowly and distinctly, as if she were saying “I need help” in a foreign language she was unaccustomed to speaking. She left the President’s phone number at the beginning and end of the message. As he picked up the phone to return the call, he briefly considered telling the secretarythat he was sorry he hadn’t called back sooner, but he had some trouble finding the phone number. What the hell: he had tenure. And if you didn’t keep yourself amused at Benson, certainly no one else was likely to amuse you, unless you still had a taste for students’ outrageous stories about why work was late or enjoyed tracking the course of the plague that inevitably killed numerous family members during the time the students were scheduled to take final exams.
    “Thank you so much for calling,” President Llewellyn said. “And I very much hope you can make yourself available for about an hour this afternoon.”
    The one thing Marshall liked about Llewellyn was that he had a big pig of a dog, a rottweiler-black lab mix, he thought it was—that he brought to school with him. Why not send in the dog? It would be just as charming as anything he could muster.
    “Yes,” Marshall said. “But in your note to me, when you thought Mrs. Whatever-Her-Name-Is—”
    “Mrs. Adam Barrows. She refers to herself that way. Keeps us guessing about her first name, but not about what generation she’s from,” the President said.
    “Yes. You thought she was coming at the end of the week. I said—”
    “You said you didn’t remember her daughter, but let me tell you, Professor Lockard, that girl remembers you, and as you must realize, our college would be most pleased to have an endowment that would allow us to bring in a visiting poet. No need at all to state what you don’t remember.”
    “I’ll pretend that I’m being tortured,” Marshall said. “I’ll just state my name—”
    “Good one,” President Llewellyn said. “I was in Korea. You?”
    “Flunked the physical during the Vietnam War,” Marshall said. “Mental illness.”
    “That aside,” President Llewellyn said. “I can count on you?”
    “Sir, where Spanish sherry is poured, I am never far away.”
    “We have red wine, too,” President Llewellyn said, sounding more on the offensive than he had when he spoke about serving in Korea.
    “Beaujolais?” Marshall asked.
    “Good one. Three-thirty, in the Irving T. Peck Room. I appreciate it.”
    He hung up.
    For a while, Marshall considered taking some poetry books with him, reading aloud from them whenever he could pretend a stanza or so was pertinent, watching the President squirm. To add to the impression of preoccupation and self-absorption, he could wear the black beret Sonja had found—something that had been mysteriously left hanging on the car aerial in the grocery store parking lot, she said. She had thought about