Pound For Pound

September 16, 2010 at 10:35 am (short stories, works in progress, writing)

A long overdue response to “Charon,” a NaNoWriMo warm-up prompt from Rachel, given to me in October 2009. There are two versions; one is complete but feels far too long, and the other – which I’ve posted here – is nearly complete and ends in a much speedier, snappier fashion. I’m hoping to have a post-worthy conclusion by week’s end. Thanks to Rachel for the very rich prompt material; this one was fun to research! ~H~
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The man stood smugly behind his expansive oak desk, smirking even as the dust from the book he’d slammed shut reached his eyes and made them water. Victory at last, he thought, and he let his hand graze the centuries-old calfskin cover, savouring the moment. A quick glance at the tan line on his left ring finger nearly moved him to laugh aloud. Oh, yes. Today was a very good day.

For years he’d sought the answer to his biggest question, the antidote to his personal poison, the dagger for his albatross. Lois. He should never have married her, but blah blah hindsight blah, and now he was stuck. Seven years in and half his worth, not to put too fine a point on it. Divorce would be too expensive – at least in his estimation of things – and a man such as himself couldn’t tolerate the idea of his life’s work being liquidated into a joint account, his sterling academic career boiling down to little more than a new fur coat for the ungrateful slag. As the best law professor Cambridge had ever seen, he’d been witness to enough divorce cases to know it wouldn’t be a route he could take voluntarily and still live with himself.

He’d contemplated having her snuffed. A few snifters of brandy in his private study late at night always made that seem like a better idea, an almost romantic one, in the noir-ish sense. The cold light of day, however, tended to show its flaws in distinct relief. He’d seen men like him – colleagues, even – who’d thought they knew the letter of the law better than anyone, who watched enough C.S.I. To beat the system. Attorneys. Judges. Powerful men driven to madness by their vampiric trophy wives. And where were they now? Holloway Prison, mostly. One of his mentors had gone all the way to Ashworth thanks to his second ex-wife’s torment and spending sprees. He’d beaten her to death with the ceremonial gavel given him by Her Royal Highness in the late ’70s for something or another. Tragic, truly. To end up at Ashworth…”tragic” felt too light a word.

But now? That gorgeous, lithe redheaded graduate student, quite handily minoring in ancient history of mythology or something equally useless, had proven herself to be indispensible in a most unexpected way. What started as a bi-weekly shag, with her bent over his grand desk breathlessly moaning, “Oh, yes, Your Worship, my lord, yes,” had turned into the answer to his life’s biggest problem: The heinous bitch who still called herself his Lady. Red, or his girl Friday (he couldn’t always recall her name; it wasn’t significant enough to bother), had lugged the large, musty volume to his office, had stayed long enough for a brief but satisfying go ’round, and had left bouncily only an hour ago, at his insistence – he had reading to do, after all – which doubtlessly added to the lightness of his being. A quick nip of brandy before he began the proceedings and he’d have been satiated in all ways that mattered.

“Charon,” Red had said to him one day after Tort Law had ended. He had looked up from his lectern, his eyes taking her in over the top of his spectacles, and identified her as the student who always sat in the third row, precisely in his line of sight. She had to be at least nineteen years old, thirty years his junior as it was, but she favoured the schoolgirl look: short tartan skirts that grazed impossibly ivory thighs, Mary Janes with the grown-up twist of a high heel to them, and crisp white shirts whose top three buttons had likely never been fastened. He’d had all kinds of sex with all kinds of students during his tenure at Cambridge, but he usually found them rather boring. They were there to learn from him, which meant, as a general rule, that they stood to offer him very little, inside the classroom or out. Anything they could do, he could do better, he reasoned. And lord knows the only thing he’d truly learned from any of his previous graduate students was that marrying them was an unspeakably poor idea. After marrying Lois over spring break that year, he realized he should have stuck to using them for a quick poke and nothing more.

There was something about Red, though… He couldn’t decide if it was her choice of clothing, or the worshipful way she eyed him every Thursday afternoon as he paraded in front of two hundred trust fund babies cum wannabe lawyers. Or perhaps it was the slight hint of an Irish lilt in the way she spoke that one word – he’d always had a penchant for the lowest of classes, mainly because they were so plaible when it came to satisfying his questionable sexual demands – but it didn’t matter. She’d gotten his attention that day, and had held it ever since, though not for the romanticized reasons she surely imagined.

“Sharon?” he’d asked her, assuming she was introducing herself. She’d giggled, and he immediately felt it in his hip pocket. Interesting.

She’d stepped closer, close enough for him to see the flecks of gold in her green eyes, and he mentally cleared his schedule for the rest of the afternoon.

“No, sir,” she’d responded with a smile that made her look even younger than she already did. “Charon. You were using an anology about the old tradition of putting pennies over the eyes of the dead to pay their way to the other side. You attributed it to the wrong mythology. That’s the story of Charon.”

Despite his body standing at full attention as Red spoke, he’d found himself rather irritated with her presumption that he was open to being corrected. “I see,” he replied curtly, bending to pick up his attaché case and making ready to leave the hall. “Well, I’m sure that would be a useful bit of trivia for a class that asked less of its students than mine. I suggest you keep it on file for such an occasion. Good day.” A shame, he’d thought as he turned to walk away. She would have been a fine way to spend his office hours this week.

The jolt of electricity that had coursed through him when he felt her soft hand against his shoulder blade, however, had stopped him in his tracks. Her voice was plaintive, childlike, when she spoke again. “I’m sorry, sir… No offense was meant. I just thought you must have an interest in ancient mythology to bring that up in a lesson, that’s all. Please…”

He’d turned to look at her once more, enticed back into the web by her general request for permission of whatever sort. He’d put her in her place, and she’d obviously liked being put there; she’d have let him walk out otherwise. That always got his blood pumping a bit harder.

“Please what?” he’d countered, setting his case down on the table next to his lectern, a derisive smile in his eyes that hadn’t quite made it to his lips just yet. She’d looked a bit lost for a moment, but he grudgingly admitted to himself later that her quick recovery was impressive. Her cherry lips parted as though she’d been about to speak, then bought herself some time by licking them nervously, which had certainly helped her case – whatever it was – as far as he was concerned.

At last she’d said, “Please…let me buy you a cup of tea as a peace offering.” Her smile had disarmed him completely. “I would love to hear more about the Crown v. Stanton case, and I promise I won’t interrupt with any more…trivia.”

He’d sighed, feigning reluctance, when inside he was rather pleased at having roped in yet another ripe little tart. Off he’d gone with her, stopping by the faculty lounge to pick up two cups of tea as a prop before leading her back to his office. Fortunately for him, he’d allowed her to overtake the conversation once or twice – not his custom by a long shot – for it was through her slips of “trivia” that he’d learned more about this mythical Charon character, and how some cultures still believed there were ways to invoke him in order to assure the safe passage of a loved one from the living world to death. For the first time in his life, he’d found himself interested in an underling’s thoughts and knowledge, and he didn’t have to fake it in order to seal the deal and have her out of her knickers by sundown. In fact, she was still imparting fascinating tidbits about mysterious deaths and disappearances linked to Charon when he’d finally lured her onto his lap in his 17th century chair, listening to how her minor in whatever it was she’d been studying had led her to a long-forgotten section of the university library even as he slipped a hand into the welcoming space left by her undone buttons. And when he bent her over the desk for the first time, he wasn’t even annoyed by the way she knocked over his teacup, leaving a beige smear across his day planner; he was too busy thinking about how wonderful it would be if a Charon sort were to appear in his wife’s dressing room and save him a great deal of trouble. Red’s cries of what he could only assume was extraordinary pleasure went virtually unheard by him that first time as he fantasized about a world without Lois.

It had taken several weeks of regular tea-drinking and increasingly athletic sexual exploits upon his blotter – not a hardship for him, he had to admit – but he had finally managed to persuade Red to bring him her favourite reference book, one that presumably had detailed instructions as to how one could invoke Charon and pay him (it?) off as a means of getting rid of a living soul somewhat ahead of schedule. Everything Red had told him in their early conversations had led him to believe that this creature could be bribed quite nicely, but only if he was able to see the ancient book himself would he know for certain if she was correct. She’d proven to be slightly more intelligent than most of his students and previous peccadilloes, but there was no substitute for firsthand knowledge; he hadn’t gotten this far in his career and reputation without realizing that much. And by now Red was smitten enough that risking suspension by smuggling a restricted book out of a reference-only ward of the library seemed inconsequential to her. He wondered if she’d paid any mind to the fact that he spent more time looking at a musty old text than at her lily white arse this afternoon. If she had, she hadn’t let on, and he didn’t particularly care now that he had what he really wanted.

—

[to be continued…]

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