CLOAK/1.8The GossipThe Senator must have observed in Dr. Judith Gentile-Cheek the workings of a very active fantasy life in which all of Us are getting all our oxygen from Her. Like watching the richest girl at boarding school unpack her underwear. The brittle forms of an archer, sleeker, smarter time flop from her brow, Did himself call? Who's himself—it could be anyone. Extending her dying swan postures of inadvertence over the discovery that she had scheduled her new weekly vice presidential teas against her former departmental rival's senior seminar. Just the apotheosis of the old faculty trick of hanging about the cafeteria conducting colorful Socratic dialogues with students during one another's classes, blighting rival attendance rolls—we call it the Van Helsing effect. |
| With a rustle and rubbery slapping, something in sandals approaches—the director of admissions, gathering the nosegay of sad applications she'll bear to her monthly Ophelia turn before the board which has once again denied her deanship. One of the long-termers, the stayers, the weight gained over years over desk chair seat splayers, ground down like unattended teeth gritted against the quotidian yell, grown incontinent of nerve, and ambition's brittle hymen shrunken, self-shattered, a tattered pennant fluttering like a broken tent of gypsy moths, a scrap of shroudy stuff. |
| Our offices rely upon workstudy students for staffing since the hiring freeze was applied to justify tuition hikes—We can cut no more!, of that tired variety. Of course there's always money for more security and housing staff. Be sure to stop by the Personnel office, working racists sorting through the working poor. We're left to face the perils of hiring students; in our new filing system all the documents are arranged in one massive compact lengthwise stack and touch is not allowed, we have to wait until she leaves. She says it's what she visualized—she's on Cloak. Meanwhile the clerical union is trying to broker a diagnosis of sick building syndrome for everyone within fifteen years of retirement age. |
| The President, McPyre, is frozen—he's retiring before he has to face the prospect of losing everything to Magic University, where it's understood that all the students will be on Cloak. Cheer up, they're building Magic U!, this is his new thing to shout. But it's true—the wetlands are being drained, sucking systems are operational around the clock and on clear days the sun sends its indifferent aid. The curriculum is being designed by consultant teams stocked with programming executives from the major cable networks. Well of course the parent corporation is getting resumes, they're offering housing and stock options, and the weather down there, and the fear of belatedness, of arriving after all the good paper is gone, after all the paper is gone, period, and only talk left over, and watching the electronic results on a screen, and listening to the paid explainers go on and on, and regretting. |
