Ellen’s head snapped up. “I can’t tell this if that’s what you’re going to do.”
Admonished, I shut up.
“He was feeling under a lot of pressure to produce something, to make his mark as a member of the Thackeray faculty. Others had been published, not that they’d had bestsellers or anything, but they’d written academic works that had been well received within the community. They had something to show for themselves. But Conrad didn’t want to produce some essay that would be read by fifty people and then tucked away on a library shelf. He wanted to do more than that.” She took a breath. “And then he met Brett Stockwell.”
“His student.”
“That’s right. A promising, gifted student. Gay, and troubled, moody, and mature beyond his years. Certainly where his writing ability was concerned. Conrad, who normally didn’t have a good thing to say about any of his students-who felt so much above them-talked about him all the time.”
“Let me guess. Brett showed him the novel he was working on.”
“He wasn’t just working on it. He’d finished it. He wanted Conrad to read it, tell him what he thought about it.” She shook her head and looked downward again. “He worshipped Conrad. He desperately wanted to know what his favorite professor thought of his novel. He so looked up to him.”
“And Conrad betrayed him,” I said.
Ellen gave me the look again. The one that said shut the fuck up and let her tell it.
“So Brett gave him this book to read. He told him he’d been working on it for months, hadn’t shown it to anyone else, hadn’t had the nerve to even tell anyone else what it was he’d been working on. Conrad was very skeptical at first, because, even though he regarded Brett as a fine student, he doubted he had the stuff to write a novel at his age, at least a good one. Brett had the book on a disc, which he gave Conrad, and which Conrad read on his own computer. And he was blown away by it. It was a strong piece of work, satirical, provocative, funny. It was vastly superior to the book Conrad had been struggling to write for years.”
Ellen stopped. “I need a drink,” she said.
She got up, opened the fridge, and I expected her to pull out a bottle of wine. I figured that, after pouring out what she’d had the other day, she’d had a change of heart and replenished her supply.
But she brought out a bottle of Fruitopia and held it up to me, asking, without asking, if I wanted one. I nodded.
Ellen sat back down, uncapped the bottle, poured it into two glasses, and continued. “The thing was, Brett’s book was similar in subject matter to the one Conrad had been working on. I mean, not the exact same idea by any means, about a man who wakes up one day and finds his entire sexual identity has been changed, but it was a satire of contemporary sexual attitudes, and I think when Conrad read the book, he somehow convinced himself that this was the book he’d been trying to write all along, that in many ways he and Brett were on the same wavelength. Conrad wanted a professional opinion at this point. He wanted to know whether he was alone in thinking it was brilliant. So he sent the book to Elizabeth Hunt.”
“Did he tell her who’d written it?”
“No. He didn’t say anything at all.”
“Do you have any idea what he was thinking at the time? When he sent it to Elizabeth? Was he thinking, if she loves it and can get it published, I’ll be able to take credit for launching Brett Stockwell’s career? Or was he thinking, if she loves it, I’ll tell her it’s mine?”
“I don’t know what he was thinking. I don’t even know whether he knew. There had to be something going on in the back of his mind. Maybe part of him was hoping Elizabeth would say the book was terrible, that it was unpublishable, because that would have been the end of it. He wouldn’t have to think about it anymore.”
“But that’s not what Elizabeth said, is it?”
“No,” Ellen said. “She said it was brilliant. That it still needed a lot of work, but it was brilliant. She said she wanted to try to sell it, that she wanted to represent the author. And she asked Conrad, ‘Who’s the author? Are you the author?’ To this day, I think, he can’t believe he said yes.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
“That was when. .” And Ellen’s voice trailed off.
“When you were sleeping together,” I said. She said nothing. “He was sharing all this with you, these developments.”
“Up until the time that Elizabeth reported back that the book should be published. He stopped talking about it then.”
“Conrad didn’t want to admit to you what he was contemplating doing.”
“No. I know he met with Brett. I’d come to see Conrad about something, to his office, and the door was slightly ajar and I could hear that he was having a meeting with a student. So I just hung around outside, waiting for them to finish, and then I realized that he was talking to Brett, about his book.”
“What did Conrad say?” I asked.
“Conrad told him the book was not very good.”
“You’re kidding.”
