Hugo and The Lucky Break
A humorous short story
This story was published today by the Soaring Twenties Social Club. You can read it and comment over there if you like: https://soaringtwenties.substack.com/p/hugo-and-the-lucky-break
That morning, a bright morning in early May, as I do every morning, as I’ve no doubt told you on previous outings, I entered my favorite haunt, the Jittery Scholar, and was greeted by the warm melange of coffee, baked goods, and spoiled cynicism that characterizes most college town coffee shops.
I wandered up to the counter and ordered a cappuccino. A little out of character, I know, but I was feeling a bit under the weather.
You see, Professor Riggs had asked to meet with me and hadn’t specified the nature, tenor, or character of the meeting. In short, he didn’t tell me why he wanted to meet with me.
I had noticed the email that morning and it had immediately soured my day. I had had big plans including getting a coffee and reading a book and now that was all out the window. Except the coffee of course.
Leaning on the counter, I cast a glance around the place. The comfortable couches and reclaimed wood tables were occupied by a few characters, likely grad students, whom I knew only by sight.
The menu behind the counter advertised its usual caffeinated drinks while a handwritten chalkboard on the counter suggested you should try something called a Chicory Honey Latte.
I ordered a cappuccino.
“How do you do that?” I said to Janie as she poured the frothing steamed milk into the glass, a shot of espresso already nestled within.
“I pull a double shot,” she said without looking up, “that’s what we call making an espresso. Then cold milk in a very cold pitcher. Then you prime the steam by turning it on, then turn it off, quick with the pitcher putting the tip of the wand under the surface of the milk, turn on the steam, and lower the pitcher slowly until you get the tip of the wand right at the surface. That way you inject not only the air from the steam but air from just above the surface of the milk gets mixed in too. For a latte you just leave it under the surface. Lattes have less foam. Cappuccinos get more dry foam. I like to move the steam wand around to pop some of the larger bubbles that pop up. It’s done just before the pitcher gets too hot for your hand. My hands have become desensitized so I have to pull it early before it gets to that point. Then steam off, remove the pitcher, and purge the steam wand. Then you polish the milk, which means knocking out any remaining large bubbles, you pretty much don’t want to be able to see any bubbles at all, just frothed milk. I like to hold the pitcher in one hand and tap the bottom with the other. Then give it a swirl and pour.”
“No, I meant how do you manage to get flour in your eyebrows.” I studied the dark brows fleck with white.
“Ha ha ha, you jerk.” She frowned. “You weren’t asking about cappuccino and you just let me go on?”
“You had a full head of steam and I couldn’t catch your eye, so, yes.”
“Well, I bake everything fresh the night before or early in the morning. There’s a lot of flour flying around. Ever baked before?”
I sniffed. “I don’t touch the stuff.”
“Flour?”
“No, not flour. The baking herb to which you referred.”
“Don’t be obtuse. I meant baking not getting baked.”
“Ah.”
I sipped the cappuccino and drummed a pensive finger on the counter.
“Something wrong?” Janie said.
“No. Well, yes. I’m just dreading a meeting with Professor Riggs. He didn’t say what it was about. I’m just concerned that he’ll get off topic and will talk at me all day. Trouble is I don’t know what the topic is in order to keep him on topic.”
Janie grimaced sympathetically. “That’s why I’m my own boss.”
“I’ll keep that in mind when I’m done with my program.”
“When will that be?”
“Woah, woah,” I said, laughing. “That’s extremely personal. That’s like asking a woman her shoe size. You just don’t go there.”
Confusion played across Janie’s face, starting at her eyebrows and working its way down. Then she burst out laughing.
“It’s too early for your nonsense, Hugo.”
“It’s too early for a lot of things. Alright, I’m off. See you later.”
**********
As with every professor’s office, Riggs’ office was lined with shelves upon shelves of books. I say ‘upon’ because naturally the shelves went up the wall on top of each other. It wasn’t lined with shelves next to shelves of books. That would just be silly.
I always wondered if there was a kind of cold war of sorts between professors as to who could have the most impressive collection on display. Or perhaps they just liked being surrounded by the books they’ve read as a means of providing a kind of reassurance about how much work they’ve done. Instead of trophies or diplomas it was books. The older, the more obscure, the better. Bonus points for foreign languages other than ancient Greek and Latin, which were a given. Several titles in German, French, and Italian were a must but display anything on Sanskrit or Demotic Greek in a Classics department and you’ll seem to be putting on airs. We don’t really do that Near Eastern stuff. That’s a different department.
“Thanks for coming, Hugo,” Professor Riggs said, standing up halfway as I entered, then sitting back down behind his desk. He was dressed in his typical cardigan, slacks, and vacant expression
“It’s a busy time of year for us here now what with one thing and another, exams and so on and end of year things, grant proposals and so forth—which reminds me I need to finish one that I was working on, hoping to get over to the UK for a bit next fall, I’m going to be on sabbatical—it’s a nice way to start the academic year, don’t you think?”
I smiled tightly and shifted in the seat, my t-shirt and jeans suddenly uncomfortable. He went on without stopping.
As Professor Riggs spoke at a spot a foot above my head I tried to get a grasp on the particular bush he was beating around but just like when you try to catch a fish with your bare hands, as everyone has done one time or another, the damn thing just kept slipping away.
“So I was thinking, well, I should say we were thinking because we all talked about it together—”
“Did you ask him?”
I turned to see Professor Malvern’s bald head and hawkish face sticking around the door.
“Oh, sorry, didn’t realize you were still here, Hugo.”
“Yes, I was getting to it,” said Professor Riggs.
“How long does it take?”
“Well there are preliminaries and various contingencies and issues to consid—”
Professor Malvern cut in. “Hugo, we’re in a bit of a tight spot and we were hoping you might help out. It’ll be good for you as well. You’re aware of our symposium series this semester?”
I nodded. Of course I was aware and he knew it too, well probably. You couldn’t be sure with Riggs. I went to the talks each month. Generally fell asleep in them too but that didn’t mean I wasn’t aware of their existence.
The idea of attending another was beginning to give me indigestion but we all knew that Malvern took note of everyone who was there and everyone who wasn’t and, like Peter at the gates of heaven, decided our fates accordingly.
I had the vague feeling that attending the talk in a few days wasn’t the full extent of what he wanted to talk to me about.
“Well, we seem to have missed scheduling a speaker for this month and with the short notice and the general busyness of the end of the year it’ll be hard to get someone in so, as one of the elder statesmen of the department, we were hoping you might step in and give a talk this Friday. Nothing too long. Just forty-five minutes or so.”
From his tone of voice you might have thought that he was asking to borrow a cup of sugar rather than sentencing a young man in the prime of his life to the gallows. I knew now how those miners at Chernobyl must have felt being volunteered for a job no one else wanted or was able to do and knowing that it would kill them.
I swallowed the golf ball in my throat. “Oh sure, no problem,” I said, nodding vigorously. “Forty-five you said?”
“Yeah, thereabout. Whatever topic you want. Whatever you’re working on.”
“No problem. I’ve got a couple things I could do. Friday, right?”
“Yes, Friday as always. Down in the seminar room.”
“Right, right. Okay.” I looked at each of them in turn. Malvern was looking at me intently. Riggs was rubbing at a spot on his sleeve. “Well, I better get to work then.”
The jelly that had replaced my kneecaps held until I got back to my office then promptly collapsed just as I made it to my desk.
“What’s the matter with you now?”
It was John, my unsympathetic officemate.
“What do you mean by ‘now’?”
“It’s just, there’s always something going wrong, isn’t there?” he said disinterestedly, still looking back and forth between the laptop screen and the open book.
“I’m glad to hear that things always go well for one of us. But John, Jonathan, John-seph—this one you won’t believe. You know the speaker series? Forty-five minutes of hell followed by fifteen to thirty minutes of mild torture as people strain themselves to come up with questions to ask? Well, yours truly is delivering the keynote this week.”
John looked up. “Oh, that actually sucks,” he said apologetically.
“Ahuh.”
“What are you going to talk about?”
“What am I going to talk about? How about, am I even going to do it?”
He snorted. “You can’t not do it. You’ll be blackballed. Blacklisted. An outcast, or they’ll at least be pretty pissed with you for a bit. Who told you to do it?”
“Riggs and Malvern.”
John sucked in through his teeth. “I don’t know, man. I think you just have to do it.”
I sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
I sat stewing for a bit.
“You must have something you can present.”
“I mean, yeah, of course. But there’s work and then there’s work, and this is the latter. I don’t know why this is getting foisted on me when it was the professors’ fault for not inviting someone to give a talk. And a Friday in May? No one will even listen. They’ll either be falling asleep from the pleasant warm sun coming in through the windows or looking out same windows longingly wanting to get away.”
“Perfect,” John said. “They won’t hear a thing and won’t ask any questions.”
“The professors always ask questions. Besides, I’ll still have to talk for three quarters of an hour.”
“Well, you better get started. Come on. The Hugo Davenport I know can spout nonsense for an hour with the best of them.”
I practically blushed. “Thanks but it’s not even the talk I’m worried about—though I don’t want to do it—it’s the questions after. Anything I do won’t be good enough for the faculty. I’m not at Harvard or Princeton or Yale or Cambridge where they all went. They’ll pick holes in my argument and ask questions I don’t have the answers to. Plus I bet Malvern is just using this as a way to get me to pick a dissertation topic.”
“You need to sooner or later.”
“I’d prefer later.”
“Look, I’m sure you’ll do fine. I’ll be there to ask you a softball question. In the meantime, I gotta get back to work.”
“Yeah, fine. I’m going to go walk around or something. Try to get some ideas flowing.”
Outside the shining sun was burning off the morning mist, birds were singing varied songs, and the air smelled like fresh cut grass, not that any of that had any effect on me. My mind cast a gloomy pall over it all as I walked aimlessly around the quad where undergrads ambled between classes.
My feet, and my legs, took me to the Jittery Scholar where I found Janie at the espresso machine as usual. I leaned an elbow on the counter.
“Why the long face?”
Janie was always perceptive.
“They’re making me give a talk on Friday. At the monthly symposium. It’s supposed to be forty-five minutes, maybe even an hour. Then the Spanish Inquisition to follow it up. It’s not that I can’t do it. I just really don’t want to. I had very different plans for this week which did not involve preparing a talk but rather…well, I hadn’t decided yet. I’d just rather do anything else.”
Janie made commiserating noises and slid an espresso across the counter.
“Thanks. Got anything stronger?”
“No. You might try the Blue Boar but you already know that.”
“Hmm, it’s a bit early. I might wait until noon before drowning my sorrows. Any ideas other than the sauce?”
A line had formed while I was talking and Janie had turned and was whirling between espresso machine, fridge, cash register, display case, toaster oven, espresso machine again, etc. I wasn’t sure she had heard me until she returned to the counter a few minutes later and said:
“Why don’t you get someone else to give the talk?”
“Someone else. Who would be that outside their mind to take my place in the guillotine?”
“Someone who likes giving talks. Someone who wants to impress the faculty. Anyone like that among the grad students?”
I snapped my fingers and pointed obnoxiously at her. “Yes, there is. You’re amazing, Janie.”
**********
“Thomas, Thomas. How are you? Good as ever, I hope. In the pink, as they say.”
Thomas Delavan was at his usual table in the Classics library, ensconced among the leather-bound shelves, wearing his usual suit, usual parted hair, usual snub nose, and usual obstinate expression.
“Who does?”
“What?”
“Who says that?”
“Who says what?”
“Who says ‘in the pink’. What is this, the eighteenth century?”
“Ha ha, no, not the last time I checked. Well I say it.”
“And that makes it good?” He looked up at me for the first time since I had walked up.
I frowned. Somehow we’d got off on the wrong foot although I thought I’d put the right foot in to start.
“Let’s start over. I’ve got a proposition for you, very prestigious, very worthwhile for an up-and-coming Classicist.”
“You want me to give the talk on Friday instead of you.”
I laughed nervously. “Not quite. The faculty are looking for someone to give the talk on Friday for the monthly symposium series. I thought it’d be a great opportunity for you. I knew you’d jump at the chance.”
“I already know they told you to do it.”
“Alright, Thomas. Cards on the table. Yes, they asked me to do it. I have no intention of giving a talk or doing any public speaking on Friday. You should take my place.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not doing it and you’d do a great job.”
“I don’t think so. I’m busy.”
“You can’t be busy. Everyone is supposed to be there. Malvern will be watching like a hawk.”
And also looking like one, but I didn’t add that detail for fear young Delavan would use it as ammunition to blackmail me.
“Fine. I’ll be there but I’m not giving the talk.”
“I really feel you’re failing to see the big picture here, Thomas. We’re supposed to be on the same side. When I was your year and an upperclassman asked me to get a book from the library or proofread a paper, I’d hop to it.”
“Makes you sound pretty weak and impressionable,” he said out of the side of his mouth while perusing the stack of books on the table.
I sniffed. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that and I’ll reiterate that we’re supposed to help each other out.”
“Okay then. Help me out.”
This kid had obviously never heard of the broadminded giving spirit. Here I was giving him a tremendous opportunity to raise his profile in the department and subject the rest of us to a tedious hour and a half of his work in progress but what he was more interested in was what I could do for him.
It seemed the occasion called for un douceur, an inducement, a bribe, if you will to turn the whole thing around. Not that I liked it.
Grudgingly, I said: “What do you want?”
He paused for an eternity and a half. “I need someone to carry my books,” he said, patting the stack next to his laptop.
I don’t know what I looked like since I didn’t have a mirror at that particular moment but I imagined that what he saw was a youngish man in his late twenties with a charming if not strictly speaking handsome face whose eyelids narrowed in displeasure were fighting a losing battle with his eyes protruding from their sockets.
“You want me to carry your books?”
“Yes,” he said in a smug, self-satisfied kind of way.
“I’m five years older than you.”
“Probably.”
“You should be offering to carry my books, not the other way around. Not that I would actually make you carry them, of course, we Davenports are too magnanimous for that. But it would be nice if the forms were respected: you offer to carry and I graciously decline.”
Thomas merely looked at me with a thin smug smile on his face.
“How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long do I need to carry your books for you?”
“Oh, just right now, today.”
“Alright. That’s not so bad.”
“Over to the department,” he continued.
I strained to make it seem like every fiber in my body hadn’t just gone slack like a haddock hit over the head by a mallet.
“Not to your place?”
“No, I’ve got what I need there. I want to keep these over at the office.”
I wasn’t going to let this little suit-wearing pissant see that he’d gotten the better of me. I pulled myself up to my full six feet and, looking him dead in the eye, said, “Let’s go then.”
**********
“And he made me go around to every grad office on the floor handing back books he’d borrowed. Once we walked into an office and he just said that he was mistaken, didn’t need to give anyone a book in that office. It was shameful, just parading me around like the department dogsbody.”
I took a deep drink of my beer. John Wanlock, Sarah Oneida, Steven Dimmick, and Phoebe Ashton were arrayed around the table in the cozy alley behind the Blue Boar. The fresh air was beginning to work its magic, smoothing over the day’s creases. The beer helped too.
“We know, Hugo,” John said. “We were all there.”
Unsympathetic as usual. “Ah, but you weren’t all there all of the time. I wanted to paint the picture for you. You each only got a glimpse of my shame, one slice of the image. I wanted to give you the whole MRI. But I suppose it’s over now, thank God.”
“Why did they want you to give the talk?” Phoebe said. She laughed, flicking her dark brown hair to one side. “I don’t mean you shouldn’t have been asked, just, why you in particular?”
“No idea. Malvern probably wanted to force me to come up with a dissertation idea. His idea of a bit of fun.”
“You know we won’t forgive you,” John said.
“Me? Why?”
“‘Cause now we have to listen to Thomas—what does he work on?”
“Plotinus,” someone said.
John continued: “—Plotinus and Neoplatonism for an hour, going on and on about the One, the Intellect, the Soul, phenomena, anti-materialism. He’ll annoy us to death before we even have a chance to fall asleep.”
“Everything in antiquity is worth studying. Some are just more worth studying than others,” Phoebe said.
“Who said that?” I said.
“Animal Farm,” Phoebe said.
“What? Where?” I said looking around.
“The book. Animal Farm.”
“Oh, right. Don’t most farms have animals?”
“Yes and this one is in a book. With talking pigs. And horses. It’s not real.”
“Oh, got it. So who said it?”
“George Orwell. Animal Farm.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“Never mind.”
“‘Nother round?” I said, looking from John to Steven to Phoebe. “I’m buying.”
“I’m good,” Steven said.
“Celebrating your near miss?” John said.
I grinned in answer.
“Sure, why not.”
Phoebe made noises of affirmation.
“Sarah?”
“Sunchorein pantas me dia methes poiesasthai ten en to paronti sunousian all houto pinontas pros hedonen,” she said, head down in a book.
“I heard ‘drinking’ in there so I’ll take that as a yes.”
I made two trips to the bar and came back with a golden ale, a stout, a wheat beer, and an IPA. All brewed at the Blue Boar, of course.
We sat luxuriating in the failing light, talking of this and that. In grad school everything always comes back to the work, the department, the scholarship. It’s the common glue that binds us all together. That and an appreciation for alcohol. And general laziness or at least a petulant avoidance of work.
I smoked a self-congratulatory cigarette basking in, if not complete success, since I had debased myself by acceding to Thomas’s demands, then at the very least the moderate success of not having to prepare and give a talk foisted on me by an equally lazy faculty body one of whom could have easily given the talk instead of me if they had been so inclined.
Friday afternoon came around soon enough and we all found ourselves crammed into the too-small seminar room on the first floor of the Classics department building. John, Steven, Phoebe, Sarah, assorted other grad students, a bunch of undergrads probably from one of the classes taught by a graduate teaching assistant probably bribed with extra credit to be there, Professors Riggs, Malvern, and Russell and several others I haven’t yet introduced to you but whom we’ll meet at a later date.
The warm sun filtered into the room through the partially drawn shades, putting everyone into a state of semi-consciousness before the talking had even begun.
Everyone except for me, for, as you may have noticed by now, I didn’t see Thomas anywhere. Strolling around, trying to act natural like I was minding my own business, I checked in the back of the room, in the front, behind the podium, behind the curtains, out in the hall, outside the building.
No Thomas. No one even resembling Thomas who might do in a pinch. How you grab someone off the street and make them give a talk on Classical philology, I don’t know, but I was pretty sure if pushed to the limit I would find out.
I went back in and perched on the edge of a chair, nerves juicing, anxiety racing. What if he was late? What if he was backing out altogether?
It’d be just like that smug little pissant to back out of our deal after he’d humiliated me and leave me holding the bag.
Four o’clock came barging through space-time far quicker than I would have liked and Professor Malvern made his way to the podium looking hawkish as ever and sharply dressed in a three-piece suit.
“Welcome everyone to the final entry in our spring speaker series symposium—”
Yes, they always have ridiculous names like that. Bonus points for alliteration.
“—on this beautiful Friday afternoon. I hate to keep you from the gorgeous weather outside and the weekend to follow and the summer break after that but I don’t think you will be disappointed. Today’s talk is by our very own Hugo Davenport. Hugo has been working on some exciting stuff,” he gave me a meaningful look, “and he is going to share his preliminary work with us today.”
I for one never thought that I would reenact Oscar Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol in real life but as a wise man once said, I confused the probable with the possible. Or the possible with the probable. You get it.
The Davenport courage was the only thing holding together the Davenport knees and the Davenport spine as the Davenport body plodded heavily toward the gallows.
I surveyed the crowd. Expectant professors and bored students arrayed in rows of wooden chairs. Warm sunlight was doing its thing.
I cleared my throat, tried to take a deep breath of the mildewed air (it was an old building), coughed, dabbed the tears streaming from my eyes, and started.
“Ladies and, to a certain extent, gentlemen. Welcome to the speaker series symposium, nice alliteration that, which Professor Malvern,” I nodded to the man, “has so graciously introduced. These sorts of gatherings are really the height, breadth, and, dare I say, width of the university life where minds great and small, which have been kindled, whittled, honed—I’m mixing metaphors—by the great institution of which we are a humble but important part, come together to share ideas, to share knowledge, to drink deep the sacred waters of learning, of illumination, of inspiration for what scholarly endeavor does not require some measure of creativity spurred by the draughts of the Hippocrene.”
Cool in outward appearance, mere millimeters above my t-shirt (I hadn’t counted on giving a talk so I hadn’t worn my suit coat) underneath I was sweating so much I was sure that someone had pulled a practical joke and replaced the floor of the seminar room with an Olympic size swimming pool.
As I took a breath Professor Malvern caught my eye, or I caught his, despite my best efforts. His moody, irked gaze nearly blinded me as our eyes met and I hurriedly looked elsewhere, trying not to panic as I wondered where the hell Thomas was.
“That learning is why were are here today, as I’ve said, and as Professor Malvern pointed out—”
“We know why we’re here, Hugo,” Malvern said. “Get on with it and tell us why you’re up there.”
“Yes, yes, right, of course. I am up here—,” I said, wondering myself how I was going to explain what I was doing up there, when the door opened at the back of the room and the devil himself walked in.
Thomas, of course.
He was looking more grumpy than usual with a solid frown below his snub nose and a furrowed brow above.
I sighed audibly.
He didn’t catch my eye to indicate he was on his way up to the speaker’s platform but I figured I’d charge ahead anyway.
“Well, I’m here to introduce our speaker,” I said, doing my best impression of Professor Riggs and looking over the tops of everyone’s heads, “sort of a second introduction, if you will. Thomas Delavan is a very talented member of our department and I imagine he will be enlightening us on the topic of Plotinus and Neoplatonism. Thomas?”
He banished the grim look from his face and took my place at the podium.
I will spare you the details of what followed. Thomas spoke at length on Plotinus and his (Thomas’s) thoughts on him (Plotinus). I’m sure Plotinus is interesting to some but some is not enough and the talk put most of us to sleep.
I ducked out quickly after questions to avoid Professor Malvern and was on my way to the Scholar for an afternoon coffee before drinks at the Boar.
“How was the talk?” Janie said.
“Great in that I didn’t have to prepare or give it, just suffer through it along with everyone else.”
“I’m glad it all worked out,” she said with a note of mystery.
I studied her. “What?”
“Oh, nothing much.”
“Come on. What is it?”
“Thomas Delavan was in here about an hour and a half ago with some friend of his. I overheard him laughing about how he wasn’t going to show up to the talk and how you’d be stuck having to give the talk without preparing. Said that’d show you for stealing his bag and coming off all high and mighty.”
I was speechless. Then I found it.
“That’s—that’s—the lowest of the low. The worst—what a jerk. I didn’t steal his bag and as for coming off high and mighty, well, it’s a family weakness. I said I’d never actually make him carry my books.”
Janie smiled knowingly.
“And?” I said.
“I intimated that if he didn’t show up and give the talk I wouldn’t let him buy my muffins anymore.” She tapped the display case.
Somehow I hadn’t noticed the display case before. I usually focused on the coffee.
“Muffins? You have muffins?”
“Where do you think that smell comes from?”
“I just assumed you piped it in to make people thirsty for coffee, like a casino pipes in oxygen” I said with a wink. “So Thomas eats these muffins?”
“Religiously. I don’t think he could live without them.”
“That good, huh?”
“Try one for yourself.”
“What kinds?”
“Right now there’s banana nut, apple cinnamon, blueberry, and chocolate chip.”
“What’s your favorite?”
“Probably apple at the moment.”
“Two apple cinnamon muffins then, if you please.”
Janie grabbed two muffins from the case.
“Rather loyal of you, what you did for me. You didn’t need to.”
“Well, that was pretty mean of him and I didn’t think you deserved that. I gotta look out for you, Hugo. Somebody’s got to.”
I beamed. “You are a miracle worker, you know that?”
“I know.” She put the two huge muffins on the counter. “For here or to-go?”
“Here. One for me and one for you,” I said.
“Aw, thanks, Hugo.”
“No, thank you.”
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, strictly a product of the author’s imagination. Any perceived resemblance or similarity to any other fictional works, to actual events or persons, living or dead, and any perceived slights of people, places, or organizations are products
of the reader’s imagination. This fiction is the result of a partnership between a human writer and the character(s) he accessed with his creative subconscious as he raced through the story with them. No generative AI was used in any way to write this story.
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He should have had Janie pose as a professor of cappuccinos and give an extended lecture on that!