When Ted arrives at the university on his last day as chancellor, wearing an old tee-shirt showing the Golden Gate Bridge and new blue jeans instead of his usual gray suit, maintenance workers are hanging red banners from all the lampposts.  The banners look like serpent fangs wagging against the blue sky.  The white letters on them spell “Renaissance.” 

“What is this?” Ted asks a worker, but the man ignores him, doesn’t even look down from his ladder. 

Ted is on his way to the Comparative Literature Department.  He has put in a request for emeritus status and an office.  He plans to write an article on Dante’s Inferno.  He published two dozen articles and a couple of books, one on Kafka and one on Proust, back in his whiz-kid Assistant Professor days before he turned thirty.  He taught in jeans and tee-shirts and strolled into class, singing operas or folk songs in French or German or Italian; he won teaching awards; his scholarly achievements intimidated his colleagues; and a series of long-legged coeds visited his apartment.

He hasn’t taught in nearly thirty years, and the idea of teaching again excites him.  He will wear jeans and grow a beard.  He will flirt with the young women, tell them to call him Ted instead of Dr. Raleigh.

In the Comparative Literature office, a lanky girl is talking on her cell phone behind the receptionist’s desk.  She holds up a long finger to him and mouths, “One sec,” a tongue stud wagging.  Then into the cell phone, she says, “He’s nobody.  Forget him.  Anyway, I gotta go.  Put some clothes on.”  She lays the phone down and says, “Can I help you?” 

“I’m supposed to see the department chairman about an office.”

“Are you a new prof?”

He smiles.  “Kind of.  Old really . . . rather than new.”

“Yeah, well, new to us.  The chair’s not here, but he left some paper for somebody named Raleigh.  That you?”

“Yes.” 

It’s the request form Ted’s administrative assistant filled out and submitted to the new chancellor for approval.  Rubber stamped in red across it is the word “REJECTED.”  

Ted blinks fast several times.

“Is it what you wanted?” the girl asks.

“Yes.  No.  I mean . . . .”

“Are you an easy grader?”

Ted turns away.

Outside, he stands at the top of the steps to the Humanities Building and watches one of the new banners flap in the wind. 

As he’s walking to the Administration Building, he passes two deans but fails to catch the eye of either, and they miss his nod and smile. 

When he arrives at his office, he knows no one.  Men are moving the new chancellor’s things into his office.  The receptionist is a very tall woman who looks as though she could be a former fashion model.  She’s emptying a file cabinet, dumping the contents into a large trash bag.  He clears his throat.  He smiles at the men carrying furniture and boxes.  But all these strangers ignore him.

Finally, he speaks to the back of the secretary’s head.  “Excuse me.  I would like to see the chancellor.”

She turns, glances at him, turns back to the file cabinet, slams one drawer and pulls out another.  “The chancellor is booked all day every day for the next month.” 

“I put in a request for an office and it was rejected.”

“I know nothing about office requests.”

“I’m Ted Raleigh.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Raleigh, but--”

“Is my next request going to come back rejected, too?”

“I don’t make that decision, Mr. Raleigh.”

“I want to work on an article.”

“University facilities are limited, you know.”

“I know.  Of course, I know.  But I wanted to start my article today.  I suppose I could use the library.  Can I use the library?”

“Can you?”

“Yes, I can.  I know I can.”

A man carrying a potted cactus into the office smiles at the secretary.  She smiles back, her face suddenly radiant.

“I just might,” Ted says.

“Might what?”

“Use the library.”

The day has become windy and sweltering.  He sweats through his tee-shirt, and his laptop is heavy in his right hand.  The red banners snap at him all the way down the sidewalk.

On the third floor of the library, in a dimly lit hallway,  dusty former chancellors hang.  They all wear gray suits and are clean-shaven back to 1899.  They look like manikins.

Nearby he finds a vacant carrel.  He closes the door and boots up his computer.  He sits awhile, looking at the blank word-processing screen.  He types “Dante’s Inferno is . . . .”  He shakes his head, deletes the words, and signs onto the internet.  He reads the first sentences of news stories about the economy and about the war.  Then: Britney Spear’s marriage is in trouble; Jessica Simpson’s marriage is over; Tom Cruise appears happy, but reliable sources claim he’s faking it.

When someone knocks on the door, he says, “This carrel is occupied.”  The knock comes again.  In a louder voice, he says, “This carrel is occupied.”  But the knocks become more insistent.

Still seated, he opens the door, and a woman’s round, red face comes at him, hissing, “I know it’s occupied, you arrogant son of a bitch!”

He stares at her.

She glares back.  When she finally blinks, she backs off, stands up straight, wobbling on her thick ankles.  She is obese, middle-aged, her mousy hair curled elaborately, her make-up heavy, and her green eyes wild.  Her dress is pink and frilly, like something for a huge three-year-old.

“Do I know you?” Ted asks.  He tries to recall all the recent faculty who have been denied tenure.

Her small, pink mouth drops open.  She turns away from him, turns back, flings her flabby arms up.  “You really don’t know who I am?”

“Should I?”

She sags.  She mutters, “You ruined my life.”

He almost shouts, “I ruined your life?”

While the fat woman nods sadly, a librarian comes over to them. “The two of you will have to take your quarrel somewhere else.  Are you faculty?  Do you have ID cards?”  The librarian is a frail-looking young woman with a rash on her chin.

Ted steps out of the carrel and says, “I don’t have one.  Nobody has ever asked me for one.”

“Which department do you teach in?”

“Oh, well, I haven’t taught in decades.”

“I need to see an ID.  I don’t know you.”

The fat woman says, “I know you.  Boy, do I know you.”

The librarian looks him up and down.

“Listen, I know you probably just started working here,” he says to the librarian.  “I’m the chancellor.”

“The chancellor is a woman.”

The fat woman flares up again.  “You know people jump off the Golden Gate Bridge every year,” pointing at his tee-shirt.  Then turning to the librarian, she shrieks, “This bastard flunked me!”

“I flunked you?  What are you talking about?”

“You flunked me.  World Lit.”

“What?  When?”

“Spring 1971.”

“In 1971?”

The librarian says, “You need to take this outside.”

“I dropped out of school because of you.”

“I’m sorry but I don’t remember . . . .”

Her jowls quiver.  “I used to be beautiful.” 

“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing that can be done now.”

“I didn’t read Madame Bovary or any of that Kafka crap you gushed so much about.”

“Well, then how can you blame your failure on me?”

“I thought you’d let me by with at least a C.”

“Outside.  Both of you,” the librarian hisses.  “Or I’m calling security.”

“That wouldn’t have been ethical.  And why wait thirty-five years to complain?”

“But I slept you!”

Ted feels like an elephant trainer who has just been kicked.  He glances at the librarian, who frowns severely, her chin rash brightening.

     “I was in love with you.  When you flunked me, I knew you didn’t love me.  I dropped out of school because I couldn’t stand seeing you any more.  I’ve thought about you every day.”

“I’m calling campus security.”  The librarian hustles off.

“I’ve had five husbands!  I’ve been in the hospital for depression sixteen times!”  The fat woman squeezes into the carrel and sits down.  The screen of Ted’s laptop displays a photo of Tom Cruise.  “What the hell you looking at on here?”  Then she bursts into tears.  Her big shoulders tremble.

Ted shakes his head.  “I’m sorry.  What is your name?”

When she tells him, he still can’t remember her. 

The librarian returns with a young campus policeman.

“Hello,” Ted says.

“Sir, do you have an ID?”

“I’m the chancellor, young man.”

“Can you show me an ID?  Sir.”

“Well, no.  I just told you--”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave.  Sir.  Immediately.”

The fat woman says, “Go on, you bastard.  I’m through with you.”

When he reaches the Chancellor’s Residence, he’s drenched in sweat, and his key won’t work in the lock.  He continues trying until a well-dressed man he has never seen before opens the door on his way out.  Ted steps back, then catches the door.  The entrance is crowded with stacked boxes.  In the living room, all the furniture is gone.  The windows have all been striped of their drapes. 

At the bar in the den, a local businessman who occasionally makes donations to the university is mixing himself a drink.

“Hello, hello,” Ted says. “How nice of you to stop by.”  Ted steps down into the sunken den and approaches with his sweaty hand extended.  “Sorry I’m a mess.  Place is a mess.  Moving is hell.”

A martini in his left hand, the man stands open mouthed, shaking his big silver head.  “I’m sorry.  I’m here to see the chancellor.”

“Oh.”  Ted freezes, drops his hand. “Why, yes.  Of course.”

“You might be able to help me, though.”

Ted’s wife appears from the back of the house.  She’s carrying a small suitcase and continues down the hallway without a glance in Ted’s direction.

“Honey.  Honey!  Excuse me, sir.”

“Wait.  Do you know when the chancellor will be here?”

“No.  No, I don’t.”

“Do you know if the chancellor has any scotch?”

“First shelf on the right under the bar.”

“But it’s not here.”

“Sorry.  Excuse me.”

Ted hurries out of the room, down the hall, and through the front door. 

She is driving away in her Mercedes.  He waves and calls her name.  The setting sun blazes through the tendrils of a weeping willow.

Behind him, the door of the Chancellor’s Residence closes with a definitive click.