Inspired by Edward Albee's play/movie
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
*****
"I thought I asked you to wear the tighter shirt under your jacket, Dillon—the one with the V neck that shows off the line between your pecs so well."
"Gunther Strang is the chair of the English Department, Madge. And isn't his wife the daughter of Montebello's president? I didn't think you'd want me to look like your boy toy."
"Of course I want you to look like my boy toy, Dillon," Madge said, as she rose from her dressing table, turned, and came in close to her young husband. "There's no hiding the difference in our ages, so we might as well make the most of it. And it's because Gunther Strang is chair of the English Department that I want you to look your most fetching. You know I'm up for tenure at the college this year and this is a one-on-one dinner for Strang to hone his assessment of me. I want you to look like a boy toy to him too. We've been over all of this before. I told you about Gunther."
"Yes, I understand—which is why I didn't think you'd want me to look like an Italian rent-boy. That wouldn't be too subtle."
"We've discussed Gunther before, Dillion. He's not exactly the subtle kind himself. there's a time-honored way of going about these things at this college. I've tried to make as clear as possible that you might have to help me with this. It's not as if you haven't—"
"You know I don't like to discuss any of what has happened in the past, Madge."
"Just humor me here, Dillon—and help me with this tenure thing with whatever it takes. The other shirt, I think . . . please?"
"Oh, OK," Dillon said as he went back into the closet.
Madge and Dillon had been the scandal of the fall at the small, sleepy—somewhat moldy, even—private university, with the esoteric study programs, that was tucked away in the Great Smokey Mountains. She was an associate history professor, and Dillion, eight years her junior, was finishing out his fifth year of eligibility as captain of the tennis team by taking graduate classes at the university in history.
It wasn't just the age difference that had fueled a scandal that was just one in a long line of scandals going back to the Strangs' own marriage and beyond. Sondra McMillan Strang—the emphasis always put on the "McMillan" because Sondra's father, Clifton McMillan, was Montebello's iron-fisted president—had robbed the cradle herself when she lassoed the young, then-married history associate professor, Gunther. Over the ensuing years, Sondra, who had been born and raised at the university, had been in many a scandal with men attached to Montebello, with the joke being that a male faculty member couldn't get tenure without laying the president's daughter first. The most recent buzz was her rumored liaison with a math professor, being ultra juicy because the math professor was a twenty-eight-year-old woman.
The rumors that Dillon's marriage to Madge had largely spiked, encompassed questions of the genders of his relationships at college. As well as being a first-class tennis player, he was one of the university's premier blond, blue-eyed, championship smile hunks.
Montebello might be a small, sleepy private southern institution hiding in the foothills of the mountains, but it had more than its share of spice.
Dillon was trying to cut down on the spice when the hot redheaded English professor came on to him and even showed interest in marriage. He'd always figured in the back of his mind that she had some reason of her own for this marriage. Now he thought he was figuring out what it was. She'd never made any bones about how important getting tenure at Montebello was.
* * * *
Dillon pulled to a stop in front of the Strang cottage on the Montebello campus. The garden setting was impressive, but the house appeared just to be a small wooden outbuilding on a tree-lined cul-de-sac, with larger houses of other senior faculty surrounding it. Initially, Dillon thought it was someone's garage.
"You sure this is the place? He's chair of the English Department, isn't he?"
"This is it," Madge answered. "It's bigger than it looks. It rambles back away from the street in a couple of later additions. But it originally was a caretaker's cottage for the president's house that abuts it at the back. The garden actually goes with the president's house. The professor's wife acts as her father's housekeeper and hostess, so she has to live close. The Strangs have the run of the president's house as well. Let's go in. We're fashionably late now."
"You sure you want me to do this?" Dillon asked as Madge opened her door. She gave a heavy sigh and sank back into her seat, but she didn't close the car door.
"I'm not really afraid of the other one they're looking at for tenure, Stan Snodgrass, but this is my last chance at tenure. I'll take any extra edge I can get."
"Don't you mean I'll take any edge you can get?" Dillon said.
"This is important to both of us. Remember what I did for you. I saved your reputation. And remember who puts the food on the table and provides both the table and the roof over the table. You may be a high-paid tennis pro sometime in the future, but not this week, and you have to eat this week."
"And now you want me to sully my reputation again."
"You're in no danger of that. The Strangs are married, but they live entirely separate lives. You know how Gunther swings, and I'm sure you've heard that his wife bonks all male faculty members. Which means you don't have much to worry about on that score. She's a snob about who she fucks. I wouldn't even be surprised if Sondra was being done by her father. The two of them are practically inseparable, and she won't let anyone forget that she's the university president's daughter. She has no life beyond him. Well, other than the bottle. The woman is a lush. Strang has to carry her home early from almost every faculty party. No one says anything, though. She's the president's daughter."
"So, why are you worried about this Snodgrass guy? Will I have competition from him with the professor?"
"Hardly. He's in his forties and is an ugly beanpole. His wife is younger and quite the siren, but I can't see Strang having any interest in him—and certainly not her. But it's Stan's last chance at tenure too, and he's been walking around with an 'I've got a secret' expression on his face the last couple of weeks. I'm sure it's just bluff to put me off."
"And it is putting you off?" Dillon asked.
Madge's expression turned ugly. "Of course not," she snapped. "Let's just go in and get this over with. Just charm the pants off the man—literally."
Sondra McMillan Strang met them at the door of the cottage. Dillon got the reference to being a lush right off the bat. She was a bit slack mouthed, was using the frame of the door for support, and had a large, half-full glass of amber liquid, swirling a couple of ice cubes, in her hand.
Dillon had never met her before. Now that he saw her—a faded beauty in her late forties who was closer to Rubenesque than trim—he realized that he'd seen her many times before—always in the background, in the shadow of the university president when he made his formal appearances. Until now, she had just been part of the wallpaper to Dillon.
He instantly felt sorry for her, especially when they entered the bookcase-lined living room, with its study-like atmosphere and Dillon was introduced to Professor Strang. He obviously was a good bit younger than his wife was, perhaps about forty, and had been a real hunk in his day. He was a Germanic blond, with pale blue eyes and a classic, square-cut face. He came across as all vitality to Sondra's fading beauty. Dillon didn't know why he had the impression he did—that once she'd been the driving force in the marriage but that now she was pathetic and that her trysts with male faculty members, doing her to curry favor with her father, were a last-ditch effort to reel her husband back in. But this thought made him pity the woman all the more.
Madge had told him that the two were amicable but hardly a dedicated couple—but when he saw the two together he realized that President McMillan had bought Gunther Strang for his daughter with favoritism, which was a very strong motivator in the small world of a university campus. This so obviously was a case of a father keeping his daughter in thrall by keeping her close and nearly smothering her with entanglements.
Dillon hated to think it, but he would have guessed that her happy hour had started in her bedroom as she was getting ready for the evening. Her auburn hair, with its lacing of gray strands was not quite in order, and her lipstick had overshot the corner of her mouth when she'd applied it. Her shirtdress had been indifferently ironed and the buttons on the top were one off, causing the bodice to gape a bit unfortunately, as she was buxom, and, as she lurched more than moved about, she evoked the worry that one of the puppies might escape at any moment.
It was all a pity, as she really had a strikingly fine-featured face under the badly applied makeup and the most engaging violet eyes. If her attempts at a smile could only reach her eyes, Dillon thought, what a temptress she would be. Her body was curvy enough to be an asset still if only she made the effort to carry herself better.
From long familiarity with the ritual of such evenings, the four settled in. Guiding Madge to a sofa in the middle of the room, the two women sat, and Sondra conversed in standard faculty-night formula with Madge. Meanwhile, with a hand and head gesture and a smile, Gunther pulled Dillon over to a bookcase, where he'd been standing, leafing through a book, when the guests arrived. Checking on the two women from the corner of his eye, Dillon sensed Sondra coming to life more and growing more attractive with each passing moment as she leaned into Madge and freely used arm gestures in her conversation. The two had found a topic they could work over and both at least could pretend to be interested in.
"Have you found an interesting book?" Dillon asked the professor, working to engage the scholar's interest. Madge had told him that Gunther's specialty was nineteenth-century German literature. Dillon had no interest in, or knowledge of, the subject.
"Yes, I often find myself stopping when I pass one of the bookcases and pulling a book out at random. As you notice, our little abode here is a firetrap with cases stuffed with books lining all of the walls, but what it lacks in safety, it makes up for in good insulation."
"Is that a German novel?" Dillon asked.
"But of course—by August, the duke of Saxony-Gotha in the early nineteenth century. It's
Ein Jahr in Arkadia
