Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 49

Finn, meanwhile, became both muse and foil. He’d drift into her apartment with half written poems about the stock market and a backpack full of expired meal vouchers. He called her “Professor,” though he never read her drafts. Their intimacy was transactional, but not in the way the grant implied. It was a barter of boredom for sensation, of cynicism for touch. Susan found herself laughing more, even as she fabricated data points that would later be cited in a minor think tank’s policy brief.

By spring, the study had taken on a life of its own. Professors praised its “provocative framing,” unaware that Susan had invented half the interviews during late-night sessions fueled by boxed wine and Finn’s distracted monologues about Nietzsche and baseball. She began to see the project not as deception, but as ritual; a satire of the very systems that demanded her compliance.

Finn, ever the underachiever, failed out quietly. He left behind a note scrawled on a napkin; “You were the only thing I ever wanted to plagiarize.” Susan folded it into the final appendix of her paper, filed it under “Primary Source,” and submitted it with a wink.

The grant was renewed. The myth endured. And Susan, now fluent in the language of institutional absurdity, began sketching her