The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(65)

"Nothing excuses her betrayal," Sergeant Irwin insisted.

I looked at Professor Mitchell. He was following the conversation, which was perhaps a good sign. Perhaps not. I asked Simon and Blake, "Do you guys feel sorry for the woman at the end?"

Simon grinned. "Oh, man, the nose thing was tight."

I looked at Professor Mitchell. We'd definitely lost him.

I gestured at my class. "Somebody want to recap the nose thing?"

Gregory raised his hand. "The werewolf is saved by the king and kept as a pet. The wife and her new husband come visit the king and Bisclavret recognizes her. He can't talk so he bites her nose off, kills her new husband, leaves her offspring bearing noseless children for the rest of time."

Blake made a fist. "Totally tight."

"The wife reneged on her marriage commitment," the sergeant said. "She was the villain. She got punished, Bisclavret got his humanity back. Happy ending."

"From the wolf's point of view," Morticia said.

Sergeant Irwin shrugged. "You cross a wild animal, you get what you're asking for."

"Anybody else feel sorry for the wife?" I asked.

Apparently nobody did. I steered the conversation back to Lanval and Guigemar, took some more notes on the manipulativeness of women, tried to avoid gagging.

Then, hoping to balance things out, I gave a little lecture on the theory of women as the "fourth estate" — on the woman's voicelessness in medieval society and the ways a woman writer might subtly combat that problem. I got blank looks from Simon and Blake and Brian. A suspicious scowl from Sergeant Irwin. Edie and Marfa didn't take any notes but they did manage to finish knitting two booties.

Finally, mercifully, the period was up. We agreed to continue the discussion on Monday and the class filed out.

Professor Mitchell smiled at me. "Do you have a minute, Tres?"

"Sure."

Actually I had fifteen. Which I desperately needed to use getting ready for the undergrad Chaucer class, but I sat down next to Mitchell.

"That seemed to go well," he said.

"Oh — thanks."

"Getting Brandon's papers back to them quickly was an excellent idea."

"I'm a pretty fast grader. You know — the throw-them-down-the-stairs method."

Mitchell nodded absently. He was drawing little circles on the corner of his notes.

"I was kidding," I added.

He looked up, his focus a hundred miles off. Then he came back to the present and smiled. "Of course."

"Was there something else?"

Professor Mitchell's eyes tightened at the corners. "I heard on the news about Mr. Berton. Is he—"

"He's stable. He's got friends with him around the clock. That's about all we can do for now."

"I'm sorry. It makes it hard for me to say—"

"That the University wants to terminate the investigation?"

Mitchell twirled his pencil. "How would you feel if that were so, Tres?"

"It's understandable. Would Erainya have a few more days to finish up on some loose ends?"

Mitchell let his shoulders relax slightly. "I'll arrange it with the provost."

"Good enough."

Some of the heaviness lifted from his face. He pointed toward my brainstorming on the blackboard. "How is the teaching going so far? How do you feel?"

I wanted to answer like shit, but instead I heard myself say, "I'm enjoying it. It's a change of pace, a way to exercise a different part of myself for a while."

I think Mitchell was surprised and pleased by my answer. Not half as surprised as I was — especially when I realized that I meant it. At some level, I was enjoying it. For a few moments in there, I'd actually managed to get into the technicalities of Marie de France, of sexism and romance in the 1200s. It had momentarily let me forget about George Berton.

"They say a change is as good as a rest," Mitchell offered.

"But not as good as a beer."

The old man laughed. "When this term is done, son, when the grades are in — I'm buying."

The offer warmed me, made me feel almost confident in my new position.

Then Mitchell got up, patted me on the shoulder, and leaned closer to my ear.

"But son, you misspelled commitment. Things like that count. I'll see you Monday."

He left me staring at commitment, wishing not for the first time in my life that the damn C word would just go away.

THIRTY-TWO

The Bexar County Jail/Sheriff's Department complex sits just north of the Commerce Street Bridge, its back to the railroad tracks and its face to the West Side.

If the cons ever got to look out the arrow-slit windows of the upper stories, they'd see the parallel one-way streets of Commerce and Buena Vista stretching west, through two miles of the worst he**in dealing and prostituting and gang-banging in the city. In other words, they'd see home. Commerce-Buena Vista was a conveyor belt, moving people from street to jail to street in regular, recursive cycles. Plenty of men spent their whole lives on that two-mile path. I parked in the empty visitors' lot and looked up at the huge orange block of jailhouse. Different levels of roof were topped with black mesh boxes — workout areas for the prisoners. The sounds from up in the blocks were high-pitched and echoey and unreal, like some kind of gigantic aviary.