Page 14 of No Safe Place

That’s where he had met his roommate Frank Stone, another working-class fish out of water looking to put some polish on his blue-collar ambition at the upper crust UVA.

Almost a decade after law school graduation, Cushing was married and still scrambling, working at a no-name Maryland insurance company when his old roommate Frank had called.

Frank, unlike himself, had taken off like a rocket into Wall Street success at some hedge fund. They’d kept in touch, Cushing had made sure of that, and when Frank had called, it was with an opportunity that he thought Cushing would be just perfect for.

Frank, newly on the board of an expensive minor Ivy League college in Connecticut, said they needed a new president and would Cushing be interested.

“You’re the greatest bullshitter I know, Marty,” Frank had said. “You already look the part. Just do the Southern-loving voice you used to get us laid and these New England Yankees up here will be eating out of your hand.”

Cushing couldn’t believe it. Finally, some luck.

Now a decade since that phone call, he had gone from faking it to actually making it, hadn’t he? He was rich now. And not just rich. He had power. The basketball program gave him national recognition and the entire campus was more like his kingdom than a school. He even had knights, in the form of the campus police.

Cushing smiled as Puccini’s Suor Angelica started up from the iPhone Bluetooth speaker on his desk. He loved all of Puccini, of course, but something about Suor Angelica pierced his soul. As the de capo aria shifted into the B-episode key, Cushing laid the legal pad down, a smile playing on his lips.

He knew all about expensive cultured things now. Fine wine, opera, art. He’d actually seen the opera in person performed at the Teatro Real in Madrid two Christmases ago headlined by the incomparable soprano, Ermonela Jaho.

Lost in this reverie, his half-lidded eyes drifted to the wall beside the seascape where his favorite quote hung in a gilt frame.

“A man should

hear a little music,

read a little poetry,

and see a fine picture

every day of his life,

in order that

worldly cares may not obliterate

the sense of the beautiful

which God has implanted

in the human soul.”

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

His old fellow defensive linemen back at Fort Mohave were doing what around now? he wondered. Backing an 18-wheeler into a loading dock? Meth? Five to ten?

Cushing laughed.

“Suckers,” he said.

He was still sitting there transfixed when from his half-open office door came a soft tap. Opening his eyes, Cushing turned to see the frizzy-haired Dean Darwell staring in at him.

Well, that kills it, Cushing thought as he thumbed off the music.

What now? he thought, reluctantly waving her in. It was nothing good. Poker-faced, Elizabeth was not, and there was a look on her face that was uncharacteristically ill at ease.

Worldly cares, here I come, he thought.

“President Cushing,” she said as she slipped in and closed the door behind her.

“Yes, Elizabeth?” he said.

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