A Self Made Monster Read Online Free Page B

fumbled with his books and stole glances at Holly’s buttocks, coiled under her skirt.
    “Must be animal magnetism,” Alex said as Edward passed the lectern.
    Edward stopped. “I’m sorry?”
    “Don’t be sorry. I understand. How can I compete with her?”
    “What–?”
    Alex smiled, nodded at the departing Holly.
    Edward looked toward the door, but Holly was gone. “Must be all that talk about Lady Chatterly and Mellors,” he joked.
    “We haven’t talked about it yet.”
    “Anticipation,” Edward conceded. He stood awkwardly, not knowing how to proceed. He wanted to build rapport with the professor. His attempt to talk about Resartus’s novel had ended quickly. “I very much like Lawrence,” he asserted, trying to sound scholarly.
    Edward began rambling about D. H. Lawrence’s home in Taos, New Mexico. Alex walked toward the door, but nodded, indicating that Edward should follow.
    From the rear of the class, Jimmy Stubbs cursed. The know it all, he thought, is after Holly too.
    Alex bided his time, waiting for the sun to ease into the west. He swiveled around in his chair, rested his feet on a pile of books in the window sill, and gazed out the window of his fourth floor office. The window offered a pleasant view of the court that separated Elmhurst Hall from the library entrance. The court featured concrete benches, scattered abstract sculptures, and a garden of perennials. A cluster of students stood chattering in the court, the breeze ruffling their hair and their jackets. The setting sun reddened the students’ faces. In another thirty minutes, the court would be dark and safe.
    Two hours earlier, Alex had bid Edward Head a good afternoon. Edward had even managed a joke: “I know it’s goofy to say that you’re a hero of mine, but I guess you are. But I’ll try not to grovel in public.”
    Alex smiled, rubbed his eyes. “Nice talking with you, Edward.”
    Talking nearly non-stop, Edward had offered a treatise on literature that spanned from the Ancient Greek to the Modern British, from Euripides to James Joyce.
    “Quite a leap, Edward,” Alex had noted.
    “The connection,” Edward explained, “is Euripides and Joyce were both iconoclasts. Euripides overturned the structure of tragedy in the fourth century B.C., and Joyce overturned the structure of the novel in the 20 th century.”
    “And Joyce’s use of the stream of consciousness!” Edward gasped. “What a breakthrough!” Then a minute later, “The phrase ‘stream of consciousness’ was coined by William James, which is cool because he made empiricism extreme. You know, that experience is the essence of the world.” He caught himself. “I know you know all this stuff, Professor Resartus. But it’s fun to find someone to talk about it with.”
    “Of course.”
    Edward was off to William’s brother, Henry James. “Henry’s concern with international themes is, it’s neat. You know, when in The Golden Bowl …”
    Now, peering at the rising dark in the court, Alex was thrilled. Edward had a magnificent disciplined mind. And Alex was going to take it.

Chapter Six: A Dry Run

    Alex studied Edward’s habits for two weeks. Five nights a week, Edward studied into the early morning in the academic center. The college kept classrooms open all night for aspiring scholars, and Edward was certainly scholarly.
    On the first floor, data processing students stared at computer screens and labored over programs. On the second floor, students worked in study groups or wrote papers on the college’s platoon of word processors. By 11:00, most students had departed, except Edward and a lonely African student. By midnight, the African departed.
    Except on Fridays, Edward studied until 2:00 a.m. Around 12:30 a.m., however, Edward put on his red Tailor College jacket and walked to the 7 Eleven, ten minutes away. He bought a large cup of coffee and a bag of peanuts. He ate the peanuts on the return walk. Fueled by caffeine, Edward continued to