Office hours

Leslie DaFox’s office was strictly on a rental basis.  While he was teaching at the Camberwick Community Centre (easily identifiable from miles away by its ziggurat-style construction and Stalinist design ethic) he was granted an office, but the instant his contract expired the elite security force that he was increasingly suspecting came from the same school as the Okrana would lock him out and refuse him entry.  For the moment though, it was the middle of the term and the office was safely his.

It was astonishingly large.  His desk was three times the size he was used to, and as an experiment once he’d tried laying all of his students’ homework out on it, side by side in a neat paper matrix.  It had covered less than half of the available surface area.  His chair had arms, little extrusions on the rear legs to let you tilt it back safely, cushions (not one, but three!), a cup-holder(!) and an adjustable rear-view mirror on a little angle-arm.  There were five full-size bookcases lining the wall opposite his desk, it was a ten second walk from the door to his desk, and it was another three or four second walk from his desk to the windows.  The windows were the only real disappointment, being essentially glassed-over arrow slits, but the glass was rose-tinted and made the world outside look warm and friendly.  There were four filing cabinets, in one drawer of one of which he kept his students’ homework.  In an effort to make more use of the facilities he put his packed lunch in another drawer, and his satchel in a third, but he still worried that it looked like he wasn’t trying.

“This is impressive, Sir,” said Policeman Number 1, looking around him.  “Who did you murder to get this then, eh?”  He laughed in a heavy way that suggested he was really hoping that the clumsy question would elicit a confession from Leslie.

“Oh stop,” said Policeman Number 2.  “Mr. Fox is far too clever to admit to murdering anyone, aren’t you, Sir?”

Leslie said nothing, knowing that Policeman Number 2 was the more subtle of the pair but would still leap up and down like an excited puppy if he thought Leslie was admitting to not admitting to a crime.

“Sit down,” he said instead.  “My office hour starts in five minutes, so we will be here until that finishes.  Students may wish to come and visit and ask questions.  They will be asking questions of me, not you.  Let me repeat that.  They will be asking questions of me and not you.  You should not answer those questions no matter how tempting it might be.  They are here to learn.  You are here to harass me, make crude and lewd suggestions at inappropriate junctures, and waste tax-payers’ money.”

“Speaking of wasting tax-payers’ money,” said Policeman Number 2, “why do you have such a large office when you’re only teaching at a community college?  You could fit three of our offices in here, and that’s forty-eight officers.”

“I wish I knew,” said Leslie, sighing just a touch.  “There is something very odd about this place that I just can’t put my finger on.”

“What exactly is it you wish to put your finger on?”  Policeman Number 1 looked keen and attentive.

“You mean like employing a man who keeps murdering students in his lecture halls?  You can see why we have to be here in your office now, can’t you Sir?”

“Frankly, no.”  Leslie sat down in his chair and then remembered he needed homework from the filing cabinet.  He considered, briefly, asking one of the officers to get it but then decided that he didn’t want to have to explain how to operate a filing cabinet.  He stood up again.  “I’ve murdered no-one, you’ve never proven that I’ve even attacked someone, let along murdered them, and you persist in dogging me instead of conducting a serious investigation!  Good God, Miss Marple was more effective that your police force!”

“And who is she, please?”  Policeman Number 1 had produced his notebook and was writing the name down.  Leslie opened his mouth, but someone knocked on the door.

“Come in!” he shouted, and hauled the filing cabinet drawer open.

“Mr. daFox?”  He recognised the face of the student stood in the doorway looking scared, but he couldn’t remember his name.  The young man had the beginnings of a moustache, little cuts from shaving on his chin, watery grey eyes and a self-inflicted Justin Bieber haircut.

“Come in,” said Leslie.  “And tell these gentlemen your name so they don’t worry that you’re an accomplice.  Then ignore them as best as you can and sit down.  At my desk.”

“Uh, I’m Nigel,” said the young man.  “Nigel Parks.  Which chair, Sir?”  There were four chairs on the side of the desk opposite Leslie’s, and the policemen were picking from another twelve arrayed around the office.

“Any,” said Leslie, dextrous fingers finding Nigel’s last two submitted homeworks.  Neither had scored higher than a C.  “Now, I’ve got some homework to return to you, but first, do you have any other questions about the material we’re covering in class, the lectures in general, or… well, anything I suppose?”

“Why are there policemen following you around?”

Leslie smiled thinly and sat down.  He desperately wanted to say Because I’m an international playboy and suspected jewel thief but he was certain that both the student and the policemen would take him seriously.  It was like being in a badly-written sitcom – which by definition was not one of the ones he’d successfully written and sold in the seventies.  Three of his were still being re-run in Asia today.  “Apparently tax-payers have been over-paying and there’s a budget surplus,” he said.  “They come with the office.  Just ignore them, I do.”

“Oh,” said Nigel.  “Oh.  Well, in that case… er… I was wondering… when do we get to sleep with girls?”

Leslie took a closer look at Nigel, and in the process realised that the young man smelled of stale sweat and, if he wasn’t mistaken, camel.  Wet camel.

“This is a creative writing course,” he said.  “Sleeping with girls is part of the post-graduate syllabus, when you’ve actually written and sold something.  That class starts with an introduction to hygiene and aftershaves.”

“Oh.  Oh.  Well, is it still ok to sleep with boys in this class?”  Leslie’s jaw dropped before he could catch himself, so he desperately improvised it into a yawn.  “Only, Dave keeps telling me that we have to be sleeping with people if we’re real writers, and I think he’s kind of interested –“

Leslie leaned back in his chair, the extensions catching him and supporting him safely, and listened to a ten minute description of a love-life that would leave rabbits confused and frustrated.  At the end of it he reflected that he now had no idea what Nigel would or wouldn’t sleep with, and if he’d enjoy any of it anyway, and that this in no way made his, Leslie’s, life any better.

“Why don’t you write about this?” he said.  “Look, here’s your last homework.  Dreadful.  If I didn’t know you were paying for this course I’d think you were doing this deliberately to punish me.  Do you see on page two, that–“

“Excuse me?”  Policeman Number 2 held up a hand.

“What?” Leslie glared at him, using the same stare that had reduced his housekeeper to tears and impelled her to hide in the piles of wet laundry.

“Can he repeat everything after the bit about the tortoise, please?  We didn’t get it all down.”

“What?”

“Sure,” said Nigel looking animated.  “Did you get the ketchup bottle–“

“Yes!” said the Policemen in unison.

“That’s kind of why we missed bits after that,” said Policeman Number 2.  “But we have to take notes on everything that’s said around you, Mr. daFox.”

Leslie’s palm slapped audibly against his face.

“Go on,” he said, his voice dull and lifeless.  “Tell them again.” 

Leslie daFox

The outside of the Camberwick Commuity Centre was Stalinist: it towered for seventeen stories above the surrounding houses and businesses, emphatically stating that it was watching them.  Windows were recessed by fluted columns of stone, carefully cast into shadow so that people looking out couldn't be seen by people trying to look in, and all the windows on the lower floor were smoked glass or one-way mirrors.  The entrance was reached by climbing seventy stairs, a wide granite staircase that begged for three minis to come roaring down them and zoom off towards central London, laden with stolen gold.  At the top of the stairs, unseeable from the bottom, the entrance doors were two entire stories high and fronted by doormen dressed as early-Soviet KGB men, whose salary apparently came from a singular bequest from an oligarch with a strange sense of humour.  As Leslie daFox, onetime author and sitcom-writer, approached the doors they moved en masse to greet him.  He paused, a fatal error as it allowed the eight of them to surround him and start demanding proof of who he was and what he was doing there.
"I'm delivering a class," he said, unable to get the bad taste out of his mouth caused by knowing that he was resorting to paid employment.  "A twelve week creative writing course, for the Litter Ate."
There was a snigger from his left, and he turned that way, swivelling on the heel of one smartly polished boot, astonished that his condescending little sneer had been recognised.  The sniggerer, a man with a moustache that would have made Stalin proud, was still chuckling under his breath.
"Oh you shouldn't look at us like that, Sir," he said.  "I've got three degrees in various branches of English Literature, and one in Finnish Theological Studies.  This job pays very well and provides you with a lot of time for study: most people give up before they get half-way up the stairs.  If you don't mind, I might sit at the back of your class and audit it for a while."
"Er."  Leslie was nonplussed, and furiously running through his own qualifications trying to find one suitable for a put-down.
"Well, I think we've got you on the guest-list now," said another, a young man with runny eyes and whose breath smelled of oranges.  "There shouldn't be any issues from now on, but just in case –"  He handed Leslie a laminated card with a sickle-and-crescent logo on one side and "ADMIT one" on the other in large letters.
"Er." Leslie was aware that other people would say thank-you at this point, but was still struggling with the idea that a doorman might be better educated than himself.
"That way, Sir," said a third doorman whose face was overshadowed by the outsize peak of his Crimean-issue hat.  "You're in the Kantorovich Chamber.  Seats three-hundred on a good day."
"It does?"  Leslie's jaw dropped, but gentle and firm hands were already pushing him in the direction of the doors – well, the portals – to the Camberwick Community Centre.



*
Twenty minutes later he was joined in a room on the eighth floor that he rather thought should have been an amphitheatre.  His class trooped in, mostly middle-aged though there was one man who was on two crutches and looked to be dying and another girl who might not yet have been eighteen but was dramatically pregnant.  Leslie was sitting on a hard wooden stool at the front of the room looking over the class-list which had been on the stool before him.  Despite the size of the room it appeared that only nineteen people had signed up for the course, which he was still bitter about having to offer.  If it hadn't been for his wife deciding to interrupt their retirement by offering flower-arranging classes he would still be sat at home right now, probably shouting at things in the paper, or at the maid for dusting wrong, or at the gardener for either wearing or not wearing a shirt.  Leslie was secretly very amused that the gardener kept trying to get it right, and had not realised that Leslie was going to shout at him no matter what he wore.
"Sit down, sit down," he said, a little testily.  They all sat at least four rows back from the front, and he was about to motion them all to come forward when he realised that this allowed him to shout.  That thought made him feel a little better.
"Creative writing," he said, not bothering with a formal introduction, "is not something everyone can do.  I expect that over the course of the next twelve weeks we shall discover that none of you are capable of creativity, and that most of you are equally incapable of writing.  However, I shall do my best to leave you with at least an understanding of why you are so utterly worthless.  Are there any questions before I begin?"
A woman in the closest seated row raised he hand timidly.  Leslie stared at her, having expected no-one to be brave enough to respond.  She mistook his astonishment as an invitation to proceed.
"Will we be learning how to write slash?" she said.  "Only I'd like to be able to do that.  No-one really seems to see how naughty that Harry Potter is, and I'd like to set the record straight."
"Slash?  The guitarist with Guns'n'Roses?"
The class giggled, and Leslie glowered; he'd been quite pleased that his knowledge of modern culture extended to musicians and their bands.  He decided to ignore the question.
"Right!  First exercise.  Look around you at this... vast... classroom.  It should be obvious to all of you that this room has been used for more than just teaching over the years, so close your eyes and relax, let yourself soak in the atmosphere of the room.  There will be many overlapping threads here, activities that have happened again and again will resonate strongly, seeking to repeat themselves once more, while things that happened just the once might be faint, dying echoes or loud, desperate clouds of unhappiness.  Find one.  Make it yours.  Share the misery of the room, and then bring it back with you, write it down, in pencil, pen, or blood if that's what it takes.  Show us all the story that you've found, and when you've all written something, no matter how incoherent and shaming, we shall read them out and have a good laugh, and someone, perhaps me, will offer some criticism."
Silence prevailed as the students closed their eyes and sat back, and Leslie promptly sneaked his smartphone from his pocket and started to google slash.  And regretted it.