- "The Swimming Pool" - The first-person narrator's been married for a week to another social activist lecturer. He helped her get the job. It's his second marriage. They're lounging in their garden on a Sunday. Their fibre-glass pool is about to arrive. A drunk colleague, Blake, turns up. The narrator got him out of trouble when he slept with a student. He gets rid of him now by giving him his car keys. The workteam arrive. The boss is irritated by the couple's attitude. Yes, the workers are illegal immigrants but they work hard to get their kids into college only for the lecturers to behave badly. The narrator retrieves his car (Blake had driven it to a bar) and thinks of driving for hours as far as he can go.
- “Only I Have Escaped to Tell You” - The first-person narrator's a college chaplain who's lost his faith (communion wafers lierally make him puke) and is on enforced leave. His climbing partner's on forced leave too - an anatomy teacher who likes cadavers too much and refuses to teach using computer simulations. The narrator's seen the simulation - a talking cadaver that he hallucinates about. A 20 year-old has been missing in the mountains for a week. His father's a colonel, familiar with the idea of mass death, but having trouble coping with the idea of a single one. The two men search for the boy. It's dangerous. The narrator becomes isolated, finds the dead boy, doesn't tell his partner about it. He wants the father to have hope that his son's run off to start a new life. He learns that he's going to be sacked.
- “Dead Birds Don’t Make Good Pets” - A 50 y.o. lecturer (widower for a year) has animal nicknames for his students. He's worried about pretty, clever Raven Girl - she'd been driving in an accident where her boyfriend died. He asks her if she wants to move in with him. Soon she kills herself. I like the story for its density of incident, the way the themes interact - the Barbie doll essay assignment, the attempts to clear the campus of crows, etc.
- “The Old Guys Ski Club” - The first-person male narrator lives in an isolated community where it's cold enough to ski though there are no ski lifts. His artist wife left him for Lucille - "It started as a scandal but became a movement. Four other couples split." He's painted over her dark painting with glossy white. His mate Roscoe is single again too. Two young girls arrive in town, asking for DIY help etc. Roscoe's keen to help. Lucille arrives in the bar, saying that the narrator's wife has left her, and wants her paintings back so she can paint them over again. She leaves. Roscoe invites the girls to a hot-tub party at his place. They go, he stays behind. He doesn't want to go home because he knows Lucille will be there wanting to pour her heart out, so he spends the night above the bar with the barmaid whose husband is in Mexico for the winter. He's slept there before.
- “Poetry can Wait” - The narrator's a male psychology lecturer who fancy-dresses to fit the topic he's lecturing on. He's on a committee to choose a new poetry/essay lecturer. He wants a wacky 26 y.o. woman, Barbi, the only one to have submitted a poem, but a man offered the job. The narrator has a meal with Barbi to tell her the bad news. She says the poem's not hers, that she's anorexic and desperate for a job. He takes her home and they get very drunk. The man rejects the offer so she gets the job. It gets awkward - she claims the narrator slept with her. He claims mistreatment and is offered a longterm contract.
- “Selfish Gene” - The first-person narrator (mid-50s) is a biology lecturer at a campus where there have various accident injuries and deaths (staff, students, dogs). He used to sleep with Ethics lecturer Lizzie (only a little younger than him, recovering from a broken hip) until she left him for Gauthier. She and Richard Gauthier called off their marriage a week before it was due. Gauthier's treasured dogs have died eating rat poison supplied by the narrator. Richard left her because he wanted kids. He's sleeping with a student. His contract won't be renewed. The narrator (who worries about being an emotional moron) visits Lizzie and they have great sex - "Our genes had made it through eons, only to be stopped by hosts with enough brains and education to delay having children until it was too late". He visits Richard's flat, finds that he's killed himself with rat poison. The narrator collects the rats he'd scared Richard with.
- “Nocturne” - A cynical lecturer's office is now in the reconditioned boiler room. The Dean suggests he should retire. He nearly faints. He's 70. His doc says it was a stroke. He walks past some beautiful students and faints. The college nurse says he should go to hospital. He locks himself in his office. A woman (who was a student he slept with decades before) knocks at his door. She's the grandma of a student who was recently disrespectful to him (she's asked why she should care about dead philosphers). The grandma apologises for the student. She, a pianist, has not had the life she'd hoped. Her grand-daughter had told the lecturer that she had to miss a test because she was going to her grandma's funeral.
- "Sudden Death, Over Time" - On his 54th birthday an ex-lecturer and his wife (20 years younger; they met when she was a student) is putting up a fence with 54 posts around their ranch where they live with his mother, who feels she's lived long enough. The guy who delivers the posts (an ex-classmate of the narrator, a school bully) makes a pass at her, which make the narrator feel old too. The delivery man had "turned himself into an easy-going big guy, which is a career choice for a high school bully in a small ranching town if you've got a name like Bottoms". The story ends tamely - not my favourite piece.
The scenarios are clearly laid out at the start of each story - no artificially delayed disclosures. There's often a disparity between the way characters live, and what they say about class, mortality, morality, etc. Sometimes they're unaware of the disparity, sometimes it troubles them. University politics is the prime target. I think “Dead Birds Don’t Make Good Pets” is the best of a good bunch - I like the funny lines and how the stories are tightly organised.
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