Mr. Wiley sat at his classroom’s Hurlbut Table, head in hands. The Hurlbut, named after Grove’s founding chaplain, was meant to host deep transfers of knowledge sparked by respectful debate. But what if his turned out to be a conversational black hole?
Wiley hadn’t worked a chalkboard since a community service stint at a middle school in a disadvantaged district. When a group of well-built sixth-graders began bullying him daily he started spending more time at the local Beta chapter: Bindles, binges, afters at the American Legion. By Thanksgiving he had quit the program and moved back home, where he worked part-time for a contractor doing demo work.
In between dump runs a frenemy offered Wiley $300 to ghostwrite an essay for his law school application. He turned the piece around quickly and soon wrote a business school essay for another friend-of-a-friend.
Things escalated when a guy emailed out of nowhere and asked Wiley to “edit” his son’s prep school apps. When the kid got into a respectable safety the guy offered Wiley a full-time job at his firm’s NYC office as a financial writer. Wiley had been living with his parents and their rescue hounds. He accepted the job, arranged a series of couches, then Googled “financial writer.”
Predictably, the reports he was tasked to complete turned out badly. Projects he was involved with tended to take longer and attract negative attention from both clients and internal higher-ups. Gradually the assignments ceased. Wiley smoked in the stairwell, ordered giant salads, watched reels, started a novel-in-fragments and generally infuritated his overtaxed co-workers.
Finally a VP, sensing dissension, arranged for an even easier gig writing copy for his family’s foundation. Wiley became a floater, ghostwriting condolence cards, speeches and memoirs for various board members. He had his own windowless office, no immediate supervision, no dress or conduct code.
Some nights (or even afternoons) he “got loose” with the analysts, dropping wads on escorts, dealers, bookies. His salary was generous for a ghost but nothing compared to even the junior money people. And he was older, unable to shake a hangover with an energy shot and an egg sandwich.
Between lines and lap dances the conversation slagged. The analysts didn’t read. Wiley didn’t understand or really respect their profession and the feeling went both ways. They mocked his battered blazer and frayed slacks. His literary aspirations were equally comical and inconsequential.
The analysts spent weekends on hunts upstate and galas downtown. Wiley spent weekends blacking out in the cheesy dives within walking distance of his apartment.
After some encouraging office banter Wiley asked out an administrative assistant. She forwarded his dinner invitation around the office, sparking a hundred mean-spirited Reply Alls.
Not long after that, the Chairman himself invited Wiley to lunch on the top floor: Had Wiley ever considered teaching? Well, he had led two seminars as a grad student at Iowa (State). They were dreary affairs. In their evaluations his students expressed concern for Wiley’s mental well-being. They also ignored the reading, never asked questions, rarely participated in class discussions or bothered to spell-check.
The Chairman explained that his alma mater was looking for a long-term substitute English teacher.
Wiley was hungover, dizzy with vertigo. The room’s tall windows were white with sunlight. Helicopters circled like dragonflies as the Chairman listed other notable alumni: a one-term President, that salad dressing guy, meddlesome industrialists, countless friends on the Street. Wiley said he appreciated the Chairman’s interest in his career but that he liked the city too much to pack up for the woods of Maine. Sorry, Massachusetts.
This wasn’t technically true. Wiley liked to imagine that someday he would get better at living in the city, that the striking women he admired would begin to smile wrly in his direction, that doors would open, bouncers would step aside, and he would finally sync full-time with what had previously been only glimpses, a momentary rush: stepping out of a taxi with a sweaty wad of cash, the comforting clink of fresh vials, accidental luxuries. He wanted the respect of elegant strangers, a passcode to the lifestyle of the idle rich.
The Chairman pushed a folder across his desk and Wiley flipped through one of the glossy brochures. Emerald lawns, classical brick, sculls whisking through sparkling waterways.
“To tell you the truth,” said Wiley, “I always hated school. I enjoy my work here, providing value.”
“I’m prepared to supplement your salary,” said the Chairman. He was slight, purposeful, nearly divine. “You’ll be doing me a great favor. Grove will be lucky to have you.”
The bell rang and students began to file into the classroom. Despite living on campus for close to a week, Wiley didn’t recognize a single face. That had proven to be a problem with the undergrads as well. He didn’t memorize their names until way too late in the semester. But it was just the first day. Introductions, overview, syllabus slow-walk, ice breakers, summer reading, lunch. Soon enough it’d be dinner time, then study hall and dorm duty. Handshakes. Lights out. Bed time.
After meeting with Headmaster Fink and formally accepting the position, Wiley decided to give up drinking for the year. Just as an experiment. Definitely no hard stuff, at least during the week. He spent August streaming adaptions of the novels and plays on his curriculum, favoring teen comedies with Shakespearean scaffolding. He figured he’d go heavy on the field trips and free write sessions, let them swear more than usual in the lit magazine. Play his cards right and the kids would dedicate the yearbook to him.
The students arranged themselves around the Hurlbut and shucked their skinny laptops. The windows were open. A lawnmower hummed.
Wiley tried his best to ignore the sweat trickling down his neck. He smiled and cleared his throat. The seat next to him was mercifully empty.
“Everybody here?” he asked.
In walked Sommer Grand and Wiley’s stomach crumpled.
Eventually there were so many meandering diversions that Wiley feared he might have led his students to question the very idea of education, like lost hikers who give up to die in peace on some scenic vista.
The class stretched across a seemingly endless 55 minutes, a giant block of ice that Wiley attacked with everything he had: material from his two months doing open mics, conspiracy theories regarding the success of others, the winding road that had led him to their classroom, an argument against graduate school, movie quotes he wrongly assumed they’d recognize, embarrassing moments he tried to turn into jokes, jokes that turned into embarrassing moments, chronic bouts of mansplaining and oversharing.
His attempts to be cool backfired immediately, met with befuddlement or outright indifference. Scoffing at the idea of summer reading led to shuffled papers and fallen faces. A winking allusion to bad behavior led to squirmy glances. And Sommer was taking notes all the while, documenting his demise.
This was a deposition — finally his fraud would be exposed. He stole glances at her notebook but couldn’t see past her flawless penmanship or flight fingers. Wiley was convinced his body was emitting a perceptible heat wave. It felt like everyone was somehow staring at his loafers.
He was embarrassed to admit even to himself that up until the bell rang, a time now lost deep in the past, he’d secretly assumed the students would accept him as one of their own. Instead they saw a middling shitheel, someone unable to commit to any decision, argument, coherent stream of thought or even his job, his seat at the Hurlbut, the noble task of molding young minds.
Wiley’s final delusions of youth were ripped away like a tablecloth. The students were no longer typing, just watching, searching, the only sounds Sommer’s scribbling and the lawnmower’s endless hum.