Runaway

It's dawned on me only this week, nearly two months into the semester, that the friendly drop-ins to my office by my fellow faculty are motivated by a shared apprehension that at any moment I might flee.

Don't think I haven't thought about it, Gentle Reader.

But I've thought about it in the manner of dreams of Sara's friend Tiffany, and as I used to think about what I'd do when I won the 6/49. I dream that the University of Toronto hears about my leading-edge research into the history of Internet advertising, demands I return home forthwith and posthaste for an interview, and then, upon meeting me and being charmed by my amusing anecdotes and karaoke prowess, offers me a position as head of the Advertising Department at the Rotman School of Business. With full tenure.

Then I wake up, and remember that the odds of being introduced to Tiffany and winning the 6/49 lottery on the same day are greater.

Meanwhile, I thought my colleagues knew, but apparently they have no idea, how astonished I am to have been offered this position at this university. How thrilled I am to find myself in the capital of Silicon Valley. How every night before I go to sleep I offer the Alan Shepard prayer: Please lord, don't let me fuck up.

"I hear you've been having some trouble getting paid," said Scotty, leaning in my office doorway for a moment on his way home at the reasonable hour of 5:30. I'd be at my desk for another two hours, at least. Scotty teaches business journalism at USJ. He and his wife moved here last year, from Wisconsin. They've had me over for dinner twice.

"I'm guessing you're referring to my lack of a social security number? I see word travels fast around here," I replied.

"I may have heard something from Arthur and Doris," admitted Scotty, non-committally.

Arthur and Doris are the token septagenarian faculty. I'd been dead certain, after my trip to San Jose for my interview in April, that Doris hated me and I'd never be offered the position. But ever since I arrived on campus, Doris has been downright grandmotherly to me, and last Friday night she and Arthur took pity on me, seeing as how I was the only professor pathetic enough to be at the school at 8:00 on a Friday night, and took me out for dinner. During our meal we chatted about the tribulations of beaurocracy, and Doris told me that the university insists on filing her records under her married name, though she has never used it. She uttered her married name and only then did I realize that she and Arthur were married to each other.

I can be clueless sometimes, I may have mentioned.

The incident that clinched my theory that the rest of the faculty in the School of Business Communications at USJ are afraid I'll disappear one day came from Hollywood Tom, who popped in yesterday and told me, "The rest of the faculty are afraid you'll disappear one day, you know."

Tom is from L.A. He grew up in Hollywood, and tells me stories about how he used to deliver liquor to Andy Griffith's house, and how his son — Tom's, that is, not Andy Griffith's — auditioned for Forrest Gump and almost got the part of young Forrest.

I laughed, and told him, with a straight face, "To tell you the truth, Tom, I consider calling Air Canada every time I look at my grade spreadsheets and remember I have 206 students, and that I negotiated release time and this was supposed to be a light semester."

Tom's usually pasty white complexion paled another few degrees, and he leaned even more of his weight against my door jamb.

"Your predecessor did," he said, and I realized he was serious.

"Are you serious?" I asked, just to be sure.

"I'm serious," he insisted. "She was from Korea, and her English was terrible."

"She was teaching advertising?" I asked, incredulous.

"You can imagine. The students hated her; they couldn't understand anything she said. And she was all of 25, so she didn't know anything. There were a lot of hard feelings in the department when she was hired."

So that's why they hired me. They were desperate. It explains a lot.

"She stuck it out until about two weeks before finals," continued Tom. "And then she just disappeared. Went back to Korea. We never heard from her again."

I told all this to Kay when I got home from school that evening.

"That kind of thing happens all the time at the bank," she told me, as she poured me a stiff drink.

"Clearly I've led a sheltered life."

"I know, but I like you anyway."

"I'm baffled. Tell me."

And so she did:

"Well, there was the infamous Grant Martin from New Jersey who showed up for a week in advance of his start date to look for a place to live, and to get the lay of the land. My assistant Tamara and one other bank officer who was also from New Jersey, met up with him on the Friday evening and they all went out on the town. By all reports he was having a lovely time. Then Monday came around, the day he was to start work, and we learned he had left the island on Sunday's BA flight never to return. Reason unknown."

I poured another Macallan. Kay continued:

"Then there was the young Bermudian man who returned from university in Atlanta, stayed for a month and a half, after which time he said he needed to go back to Atlanta to pick up the rest of his stuff to bring home. Two days later he called from Atlanta to say he wasn't coming back, and didn't."

"Both of those tales of weirdness happened while you were there? I mean, you didn't just hear about them, the way you hear about urban legends?" I asked.

Kay favoured me with her renowned Look of Scorn and said, "I've been there almost nine years. Those are only the two most recent ones I can think of. They both happened in the last few months."

She poured herself another glass of Merlot, and thought some more.

"A few years ago now, I don't remember the girl's name, but she came out as a trust officer, and her boyfriend was coming out as well to work for another company. At the last minute he backed out, they broke up, and she ended up coming out alone. She spent a week crying at her desk before leaving."

Kay took a sip of wine and made a face. "That was special."