Free This Glittering World by T. Greenwood Page A

this just can’t happen. This has to be a safe place for these kids. They can’t be worried that their profs are going to hurt them.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?”
    “He’s threatening to press assault charges,” Rob said.
    “For throwing his cell phone at the wall?”
    “Never mind what the university might do.”
    “What are you saying, Rob?”
    “I’m saying that Martin Bello, Joe Bello’s father, is in the Arizona state house of reps. He’s also an alumnus and a significant donor to the school. What I am saying is that you draft a formal apology to Joe and his family. We’ll transfer him into a different section. Maybe with Rose? You just need to make it through the next month until the end of the semester without any more incidents, and then maybe you can take a little sabbatical after that. Joe Bello graduates in May. We can start a new contract for you next fall if there are some sections available.”
    “A sabbatical is a paid leave,” Ben said, seething.
    Rob shook his head sadly. “Not for adjuncts.”

B en was grateful for the mind-numbing routine of washing and sanitizing the glasses, dusting the bottles of liquor, sweeping the peanut shells off the floor. He relished the mundane tasks: wiping down the bar, slicing lemons, cleaning the mirror that reflected the patrons’ faces. There was only one customer today, a regular who sipped slowly on his Jack and Coke. Ben refilled his glass about once an hour.
    He hadn’t told Sara about his conversation with Rob at school, about the great cell-phone fiasco. Since the weekend, she’d been so happy. He didn’t want to wreck it.
    On Saturday they had gone for a hike down in Oak Creek Canyon. It was at least twenty degrees warmer down there, sunny and so quiet. Sara had made a picnic lunch and brought a six-pack of Sierra Nevadas. They spent the whole day hiking and got home Saturday night sunburned and exhausted. On Sunday they’d curled up on the couch together all day watching football and eating bean dip.
    For a little while, it was as though they had spun backward through time, as though none of this had happened. It was an amnesiac weekend, when Ben began to wonder how he could ever have thought about leaving Sara. Thoughts of Shadi became whispers, like a hazily recollected dream. And this is what Sara had wanted, wasn’t it? Perhaps this was proof that Ben’s theory about her was true; things always worked out for Sara. She always got what she wanted. Her glass was not just half full but brimming.
    They didn’t talk about Ricky once.
    But here he was two days later, and everything had gone to shit. And it was all his fault. He had no idea how to tell Sara that he’d lost his job, that he was now officially the only fulltime bartender with a PhD in town. He imagined how angry she would be, how disappointed. He could already see the furrow of her brow, the lines in her forehead, the ones he’d certainly put there, deepening with another new worry. And then, as he was sweeping up the shards of a glass that had slipped through his soapy hands, Shadi came in through the heavy doors of the bar, breathless.
    “Ben,” she said.
    “Hey,” he said, startled but happy to see her.
    She sat down on one of the bar stools and set her purse on the bar. She looked anxious. She leaned in close and said softly, “There’s a kid bragging about being the one who beat up Ricky.”
    “What?”
    “My girlfriend who works over at the Laundromat on Milton said that she overheard some guy talking about tipping Indians on Halloween.”
    “What the hell does that mean?” he asked.
    “You know, find a drunk Indian and knock him over?”
    “Jesus,” Ben said, wiping his hands on his apron. “Did she tell you what he looked like?”
    “ Belagana, white guy, college age. Blond hair, baseball cap.”
    “That could be anybody.” Half of the guys at the university fit that description.
    “Wait,” she said, her eyes lighting up. “She said