Most of the time, I’m sitting silently—either reading a book or staring at my laptop in the hope that a new book will manifest itself there. Sometimes it’s just a little story, sometimes it’s a substack page like this. I rarely need to exercise my vocal cords.
Some days I don’t speak a word until my wife comes home for dinner.
However, for part of every year, I seek gainful employment—basically to support my writing habit. It’s only slightly more respectable than burglary or dealing meth, but “gainful employment” requires me to speak—all day every day—with a random assortment of other humans. They have a wide range of occupations, from poets to sanitation workers, from bakers to bicycle mechanics, and from summer-hire camp counselors to retired executives.
I’ve gradually become cognizant of the spectrum of ages of my confabulators. Some were much younger, and some—though you might not believe it—even older than I am. They ranged from teenagers to nonagenarians. For the most part, we were able to communicate amiably, though I did notice some wholly expectable gaps in our shared experiences.
Which led to the writing of this little story:
May-December
Professor Cary G. Abercrombie strides across the quad, leaning into the March winds, his heavy daypack bunching up the shoulders of his stereotypical tweed jacket. He is escaping from his office, hoping to dodge yet another under-achieving underclassman’s unlikely sob-story excuse for tardiness-poor-attendance-shoddy-scholarship—or worse, outright plagiarism. He’s always amazed, and depressed, by the frequency by which students’ grandparents expire—and always shortly before the date that grades must be submitted to the registrar.
He needs some light sustenance, preferably with coffee that is better than that which he could find in the communal pot in the hall outside his office. No faculty member has been able to document it, but it is popularly assumed that the pot was brewed by the university’s founder, at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The wind has imperceptibly ruffled his trim little beard. He uses two fingers and a thumb to smooth its imaginary disorder as he pushes through the door of the Old Student Union. He avoids making eye contact with the students who loiter in the hallway. You never know—one of them might corner him in an attempt to enlighten him with some informed theory about his own subject. A subject that he has made his life’s work, a subject that he’s researched, in depth, at several of the most esteemed universities on two continents.
He turns toward the staircase at the end of the hall and climbs to what had once been a cafeteria-style lounge with couches for hungry students. Alas, it is now a food court served badly by several national fast-food chains. He chooses Starbucks, despite the fact that its over-roasted brew could have been made from virtually any kind of beans, from anywhere, with no discernable difference in flavor. As his only real need is a delivery system for caffeine, he orders a doppio—with an extra shot of espresso—and a slice of undistinguished pound cake. He leaves his name with the cashier and, while waiting, scans the room for a vacant table.
A few minutes later, the barista calls out, “Gary!” and the cranky professor stifles the urge to correct him. With paper cup, paper plate, paper napkin—and a piece of cake that might just as well have been made of paper—in hand, he wends his way to a small table that has only one occupant.
He interrupts a young woman who is attending to matters on her cellphone, “Excuse me... might I share your table?” She looks up, surprised to hear a voice so close by, and—after half a beat—answers in the affirmative. “Do you teach here?” she asks.
“Yes, in a manner of speaking —Nineteenth-century English Literature. Abercrombie’s the name.”
“Nice to meet you, professor. I’m Emma.” She stares at his chin and tries, without much success, to control herself—but a musical and not unpleasant giggle escapes her pretty little lips.
“Something amuses you?”
“Sorry. I just realized that a goatee really does look a bit like it belongs on a goat.”
“Which, no doubt means that you see me as an old goat...”
“Not at all,” she back-pedals furiously, “you know what a GOAT is don’t you?”
“A quadruped of the genus Capra, though I might be mistaken—farm animals are only peripherally-mentioned in the literature.”
“No, no, no... G.O.A.T., as in ‘greatest of all time’.”
“Ah... a bloody acronym. The bane of fine language usage, one of the curses of modern existence.”
“Perhaps... but I meant it as a compliment.”
“Thank you for the kind effort. Tell me, how did you come by such a lovely old-fashioned name?”
“Funny story...”
“Indeed?”
“My parent’s first date was to the movie Clueless, and they named me after the main character.”
“Interesting. My parents expected to have a girl, so they were unprepared with masculine names when I appeared. The only name they could come up with was that of the actor Cary Grant.” He switches back to professorial mode, “Ahhhhh... Clueless. You do know the movie is based on a novel—one of my favorites—by Jane Austen? In some ways, it addresses an issue examined in a very different way in Nabokov’s Lolita—with, of course, a very different sort of denouement...”
Her quizzical look inspires him to explain (he is, after all, a professor). “The denouement is the ending of a story, one that ties up any loose ends and resolves all questions that might have lingered, troubling the reader, the serving of just rewards—or desserts. In the cases of Emma and Lolita, the issue was the age difference between the two main characters. And, as I said, the resolutions of the two were very different.”
“Sounds like I really need to read both of them...”
“I’m sure you’ll find Emma in our library but, if you can’t find Lolita, I’ll be happy to lend you my copy.”
“That’s very sweet of you...”
“Sweet,” he thinks, “is precisely what this young woman is.” He takes a chance, asking, “Perhaps you might share your e-mail address... so we can stay in touch?”
“Better... I’ll give you my digits, and you can text me.”
“Now you see,” he responds, “that’s the difference between our generations. People of my advanced years will never learn to type, with our aged thumbs, on a keyboard the size of a Saltine cracker.”
Her laugh intoxicates him.
“You know,” he continues, “it was no different when I was trying to communicate with my parents. My father might have had a long career as an electrical engineer, but he never even learned how to change the time on his VCR. It was just not part of his life, growing up.”
Once again, a look of profound confusion clouds her aquamarine eyes. She has no idea what the letters “VCR” mean. He recognizes experiential differences that will interfere with the blossoming of their budding relationship, and he’s not likely to play the roles of George Knightley or—heaven forbid—Humbert Humbert.
Paid subscribers to these substack pages get access to a complete edition of my novella: Noirvella is a modern story of revenge, told in the style of film noir. They can also read the first part of Unbelievable, a kind of rom-com that forms around a pompous guy who is conceited, misinformed, and undeservedly successful. Both books are sold by Amazon, but paid subscribers get them for free!
Also, substack pages (older than eight months) automatically slip behind a paywall—so only paid subscribers can read them. If you’re interested in reading any of them, you can subscribe, or wait until they are re-released in book form (something I’m in the process of considering).
Meanwhile, it is easy to become a paying subscriber (just like supporting your favorite NPR station). It’s entirely optional, and—even if you choose not to do so—you’ll continue to get my regular substack posts—and I’ll still be happy to have you as a reader.
Would that it would sell as well...
Sounds like the beginning of a Philip Roth novel.