Good old Angus. May his ornery, angry soul rest in peace…or the eternal fires of hell. Whichever.
Smiling and nodding while the university lavished praise on his generous gift and visionary approach to preservation arts were preferable only to wading through a septic tank explosion. After six rounds of stiffly posed photographs and four requests for comments on my father’s commitment to developing a robust crop of young sustainability architects, my forced smile started to crack.
“That’s a great question,” I replied, my eyes darting across the ballroom in search of the closest exit. “He believed…it was important…to put new architects through their paces. Learn the craft. And what better way to learn than by doing?”
That was a nice way of saying he was a massive douche who taught us by making us figure it out ourselves.
“I’m curious, Mr. Walsh, what propelled your father to embrace sustainability when the preservation field was slow to get on board?”
I glanced at the student reporter and withheld a snicker. Angus never embraced sustainability; he seized every opportunity to criticize our decision to move in that direction, and harped on our every misstep as evidence of our foolish strategy. Sam was still bruised from Angus’s final beating on that topic.
“Well…”
“Just the man I wanted to see!” A strong hand clamped over my shoulder, and I was face-to-face with David Lin. Never was I so relieved to see my undergrad roommate, and I clasped his hand in a firm shake. “How the hell are you?” He glanced at the reporter. “Mariella, I need a few minutes with Mr. Walsh here. If you have more questions, forward them to his office. Give the reporter your card, Walsh.”
She accepted my card—with my new title—and moved on to get comments from other university leaders.
“Thanks for that,” I said, inclining my head toward the reporter. “How long’s it been, Dave?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and bobbed his head from side to side. “At least three, probably four years since I’ve seen your pretty face.” He looked around the venue and leaned forward. “I’m sorry about your dad. Can I buy you a cup of coffee? Catch up?”
“Lead the way.”
*
Dave mentioned severalrecent additions to the area, but I was compelled to stick with something I knew well: Stella’s Café. Cornell was always the kind of place that lived untouched in my memory, and I preferred the old haunts.
“Is it true that Mr. Disinterested is getting married?”
“True. The big day’s coming up. Next weekend.” I sipped my iced coffee and smiled. “He couldn’t have found a better girl. Such a sweetheart, but she doesn’t take any of his shit. It’s awesome to watch someone put him in his place, seeing as he likes to think he knows everything.”
“Never thought I’d see the day. He was my back-up, you know,” Dave said. “I need to revamp my long-range relationship strategy if he’s off the market.”
“Off the market,” I confirmed. “And, I don’t doubt you, Dave, but I don’t see him playing for your team.”
“Well, shit.”
“What’s this new gig you’ve got?” I asked.
Dave passed a hand over his forehead and adjusted his glasses. “Associate Dean. Never thought I’d be The Man. Definitely not The Man in the suit,” he laughed, gesturing to his gray three-piece. “But I’m more interested in what you’re doing. Hell, we used to talk for hours about the shops we were going to open and the shit we were going to do, and you’re the only person from our graduating class who went out and did it all. We were going to change the world, one brick at a time. I give you a lot of credit. We all do, up in the Ivory Tower, that is.”
I sipped my iced coffee and shrugged. Shannon was better at handling the praise. “Not without its challenges, Dave. My girlfriend likes to remind me I haven’t been inside a movie theatre since the nineties and I’ve missed major elements of culture because my head has been in building code for ten years straight.”
“So you’re not taking the girlfriend to the movies?”
My fingers were itching to message Andy. I wanted her to know how exquisite the word ‘girlfriend’ tasted on my tongue, and how I was beyond ready to tell everyone about us on Monday morning. Less than four days. “She’s in the business, so…it’s easier. Are you still with Jerome?”
Dave’s lips pursed and he broke his biscotti into several pea-sized pieces. “No. Didn’t want the same things. You think you know someone after six years…” He sighed, and looked up with a hollow smile. “Didn’t we send you an apprentice? How’d that go?”
“Andy Asani, and she’s fantastic. Incredible, really. We just offered her an associate position, and if she’s the kind of graduate you’re turning out, this program got a lot better after I left.”
“She’s a smart kid,” he said, his brow furrowing. “Good to hear she’s finding her niche, but, uh…keep an eye on that one.”
I laughed, thinking about any number of ways Andy could put Cornell through its paces. I couldn’t wait to tell her about Dave’s comments. “Anything in particular?”
Frowning, Dave spun his straw through his sweating iced coffee. “I’m not sure how much to say, and most of this is secondhand information, but…”
“But what?” I asked, my blood chilling. His tone was too serious, and I wanted to hear what he had to say while retaining the right to scrub every word from memory immediately.
