The Shakespeare Requirement

“She left you this.” Ashkir handed Fitger a personalized copy of the faculty meeting agenda:
Welcome back.
You are the chair.
Committee assignments. (Do not allow faculty to change assignments.)
The Statement of Vision.
Other/adjourn.

In Fran’s opinion—not that anyone ever asked for her opinion—it was not a good idea for the incoming chair of a department to be absent during the very first week of the semester, to cancel his first class and his office hours and at least two meetings, and to tell his assistant to say he was sick (he didn’t sound sick) and could be reached via e-mail at home.

Why, why, why, Fran thought. Why was not the right question. At Payne, the only question that could reasonably be answered was what. What was that in the corner of the chair’s office? A broken shredder. Why was it broken? The second question had no response

but he was the chair, for god’s sake; the ship might be ugly and battered, but he stood at its helm, his colleagues—unwilling to serve as chair themselves—having held their breath, plugged their noses, and voted him in.

Fitger’s predecessor, Ted Boti, recruited during a moment of administrative despair from the Sociology Department, had abandoned his post after only nine months, racing out of the office as if his head were on fire. He had bequeathed to Fitger a scrim of dead insects on the desk, a defunct computer, and a file cabinet containing a Sudoku puzzle book, eleven pencil stubs, and a tube of psoriasis cream.

he reminded himself that there were benefits to being head of the department: his new office did not abut the men’s room; his teaching duties consisted of two classes per year instead of five; and he had been granted permission to select from a glossy catalog an ergonomic chair that, should the photo turn out to be accurate, would not be crisscrossed with electrical tape that adhered to his pants.

He’d had to prop his window open with a dictionary and several rolls of toilet paper: due to two broken sash cords, it functioned more or less as a guillotine.

he left behind a silent, air-conditioned Erewhon and reentered the grim and steamy underworld that served as heart and soul, at Payne, of the liberal arts.