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Iris Amado stormed up the steps of Manheim Hall.

I am not storming, not storming, she thought as the word occurred to her. She marched down the hall to Martin Danzig’s office and pushed open the door. As the knob hit home, she heard the familiar rattle of Marty’s pottery case and wished to hell he’d move the damn thing because she always hit it and he always yelled at her for it.

"Iris! For godsake!" Marty jumped away from the table where he’d been huddled with two students. "You can’t keep storming in here like —"

"Someone is trying to kill me."

She watched the anger in Marty’s eyes cool to a glaze. The students — two girls both wearing tacky gold jewelry — smirked at each other. Did it sound like she was joking? She took a breath and started over.

"Professor Danzig, I really have to speak with you alone for a few minutes. If at all possible." She darted her eyes at the girls. But, instead of politely excusing themselves, they had the nerve to continue sitting there, eyes dancing between them and across the papers on the table.

"Come with me." Marty turned sharply away and headed toward his "consulting room." Iris followed.

The so-called consulting room was one of the perquisites of Marty’s full-professorship — a private toilet, large as bathrooms go, with a high tin ceiling, worn quarry tile floor and crackled porcelain fixtures. Its main feature of interest was a chaise — heavy as a load of bricks and covered with a nineteen-fifties plastic that had perhaps once been blue. Without a word, Marty and Iris both avoided it, Marty choosing to sit on the toilet and Iris parking her butt against the radiator, which in winter sputtered and spewed enough steam heat to make the room a very comfortable place to be naked in. Today it was cold, due to a stretch of false spring.

Marty stared at her belt buckle. "I thought you were heading down to New Mexico."

"Not scheduled till next month. Meanwhile there’s some kind of shit going on that I don’t understand." Her words bounced off the tile walls.

"Lower your voice, please. And I’d appreciate it if your tone didn’t imply that I’m responsible for your life going to hell, whatever the trouble may be."

The edge in his voice took her by surprise. "Forget it." Her anger was mixed with despair. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t manage to keep any friends? "Just forget it."

Eyes burning, she brushed past him toward the door, but he grabbed her hand and stood to block her way. "Wait. Wait. I’m sorry, Iris. I’ve been under a lot of stress lately and not being very sensitive. Tell me what the problem is." His watery gray eyes appealed to her over the half-glasses.

She took a breath. "To make a long story short, I’ve had this feeling that someone’s been watching me for a few days now and then this morning —"

"Janey and I have been fighting," he blurted. "Without telling me she went ahead and got a fellowship to study at Buffalo this summer. Wants to take the baby and stay with her mother there. Just like that, without even consulting me."

"Buffalo’s not the other end of the earth, Marty. Anyway, I woke up this morning —"

"It’s the principle of the thing, that’s what bugs me." The sound of a chair scuffling from the office made him glance toward the door. "Look, it’s not a good time. I’ll meet you out at the lake as soon as I can get away. You know where the key is and how to get the generator going, right?"

She nodded.

"Why don’t you pick up a jug of something and sandwiches on the way." He patted his pockets. "I only have a couple bucks on me. Could you...?"

"I have money."

"Great. Make yourself at home and I’ll get out there as soon as I can." They stood there looking at each other. "Okay?"

Iris realized she’d missed the signal that the conversation was over. She realized she’d been expecting him to end it with a hug, a pat on her shoulder, a peck on the cheek — some gesture of warmth, some nostalgic recognition of what she’d meant to him. But he had turned around to the mirror and was running fingers through his graying hair. Enough said.

Iris stomped past the juveniles in the office. Her hiking boots made a satisfying clop-clop-clop as she headed down the hall, out into the gusty wind of the oncoming cold-front, down the front steps, and along the sidewalk toward the parking lot. Clop-clop-clop. That’s why she wore the boots year-round, in city, suburb, and country: their heaviness challenged her legs, comforted and supported her feet and never failed to make the statement that Iris Amado was one tough cookie.

And this tough cookie wasn’t going to fall for Marty Danzig’s act anymore. Meet him out at the lake, hell. She’d bring food and wine, tinker with the generators and pumps that were always out of kilter, build a fire, and shake the dust out of the sheets and blankets. Then she’d wait. When she’d finally get so utterly annoyed that she was lacing her boots and looking for her car keys, Marty’s car lights would strafe the windows. His sense of timing was perfect.

Oh sure, Marty and Iris had their talks but Iris could finally admit that their relationship was only about sex. And Marty liked her angry. Although his charisma with women was based on his well-cultivated vulnerability and aura of mild depression, the resulting flock of women and girls trying their best to cheer him up went only so far. Every once in a while, the doting had to be tempered with the kind of fury Iris was capable of mounting. Making Iris mad enough to spew insults and obscenities or even to tear after him physically was his tonic. For a very intense six months, while they worked head to head on the Tuscarora project, Iris was the antidote to his life’s demands and entanglements. Then, around the time Janey had the baby — her first, his third — he reformed and stopped screwing around. Well, almost.

Iris sat in her Range Rover, staring at the steering wheel through a glaze of tears, reminding herself just who had been in control all these months and just who had been the sap to hang around town far too long.

A university security guard sauntered past. "You know, you’re taking up two places here," he scolded.

Iris wanted to tell him go fuck yourself, but instead she just stared into his eyes with that you disgust me squint they told her she’d perfected at the age of one.

Illustration: detail from a 16th c. Korean painting of hell, from our collection. I couldn't find anything at hand depicting anger against indifference, fire versus ice, so this had to do. If you can't see it well, one demon is holding the guy down across a beam while another prepares to bonk him over the head.

2.14.00

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