Chapter 1 by Ken Bingham
Chapter 2 by Kathleen Volk Miller
Chapter 3 by Fred Siegel
Chapter 4 by Paula Marantz Cohen
Chapter 5 by Scott Stein
Chapter 6 by Dan Driscoll
Chapter 7 by Scott Warnock
Chapter 8 by Robert Anthony Watts

It must have been the heat. Drexel always kept the thermostat set to a hundred through April, and in the dead of winter it was pumping away. Cold as it was outside, I was sweating. Even with heat fleeing through open windows in room 2020, the air was heavy, pressed down on me hard, a corporeal force. It must have been the heat.

How else to explain the thoughts — not thoughts — the lunacy, that now consumed me? How else to explain the puzzle pieces, jigsaw no longer but smooth all around and matching every which way, coming together? How else to explain the sinister plotting the worst part of me was now attributing to my sweetest, dearest, purest Ginny? How else, indeed, to explain this long string of rhetorical questions?

One student — had to be an imposter from Penn — managed to work deconstruction, imperialism, postmodern, heuristic, and ontological , along with three therefores, a pair of thuses, and one however, into the same sentence, without pausing even for a breath. But I wasn’t listening. I had to get out of there. The kids were smart, too smart (notwithstanding the vocabulary thug from that other college in Philadelphia). They had me doubting myself, what I knew before all knowledge. Ginny. I could call on them again, but wouldn’t — some insights carry too high a price.

Phallic caught up with me on Chestnut Street, outside MacAlister. The wind whipped something fierce, and I arched my back and looked to the darkening sky, my arms outstretched as if a good gust might carry me away and I could forget it all.

“Schno — ”   he started to say. In an instant I was back on earth, feet planted, staring him down with intensity he hadn’t seen from me in years. Many years. But he recognized, remembered, and shut his mouth.

I had been a professor, true enough, before my patrol days. Phallic was the only one on the force who knew why that had ended. Despite my little display a few minutes earlier in our ad hoc seminar upstairs, as a teacher I’d spent most of my time in the trenches teaching freshman composition. I didn’t have the temperament for it. Understatement. I was terrible. It started with staples. Really.

My first term, I spelled it out on my syllabus, clear as could be: Papers had to be stapled. Just one, in the upper corner. I reminded students before the due date — “please don’t forget to staple.” Five papers were turned in unstapled. A few weeks later, another due date, another reminder. Eight unstapled papers. The pages were folded together at the corner, a nightmarish origami abomination that came apart as soon as I tried to read them. Before the third due date, I pleaded in class, practically begged. Fourteen unstapled papers. It was all I could take. I refused to accept them. I stopped class right there and told the students to go find staplers, that we’d sit there and wait for their return as long as it took.

For twenty minutes the remaining seven students had stared at me while their peers ran down the stairs from the fourth floor of Curtis and spread across the campus in search of staplers to borrow. At the end of the term, students wrote in their evaluations of the course that I was “obsessed with staples.” Also, that I was “nuts” and should “get a life” and that my hair was “ridiculous.” I lightened up on the staples.

But apostrophes were another story altogether. I would not budge. Blame my mother. All growing up, we’d pass the time by finding punctuation errors — in magazine ads, billboards, restaurant menus, the sides of trucks. My father didn’t know a comma splice from a semi-colon; Mom divorced him when I was six. But I took after Mom, could spot an error coming and going and back again. I was a stickler for grammar and my students knew it. I wasn’t unreasonable, though — I tolerated the occasional stylish fragment. If intentional and serving some purpose. But not bad punctuation. And apostrophes were the worst. Mom would often say that she just couldn’t understand why people didn’t know how to use them. “It isn’t that complicated.”

On a Tuesday during my third term teaching, I called to the class’s attention that a student had written it’s when he should have written its. Another student raised his hand and said with complete confidence that the rule was arbitrary.

I pointed out that it wasn’t arbitrary at all. “It’s means it is. The apostrophe is connecting the words and replacing the missing letter.”

The student then said something I will never forget as long as I live. “A good rule, when in doubt, is to always use an apostrophe.”

My mother just about rolled over in her grave, kicked open the casket, climbed through six feet of mud and dirt, and caught a cab to Randell 114 to throttle him. It was an assault not merely on the English language, but on me and my family, as personal as a spit in the face. I lost my shit. Would’ve taken a GPS to track it down. I ranted for the rest of the class. I went off on kids today with their long hair and their good time rock and roll. I said, “On my mother’s honor.” Twice. I didn’t hurt anyone, but I did throw chalk. At the wall and the ceiling. When there was no more chalk, I threw erasers. Then chairs, the ones with the little desk on the arm. Campus security showed up after I’d finished with chairs and was trying to rip the blackboard from the wall, white dust everywhere. The students were already long gone.

I was fired. This was long before Porter was department head. I don’t remember who was in charge back then. I didn’t like to think about it much, had put it behind me. Brebach had protected me, made sure no charges were filed. At first he’d laid into me good for what I’d done, but when he heard about the apostrophes, he said if it were up to him, he would’ve granted me tenure on the spot. He shook my hand and told me I was doing the Lord’s work. But I had to go. I never taught again.

For a couple of months after, I was a mess, hit the bottle hard—the bottle fought back, kneeing me in the groin. I was drunk all the time. Scotch, mostly. Also beer. And tequila. Dear God, the tequila. I was a menace, kicked a lot of people’s asses over typos on menus and errors on store window signs. My old buddy Phallic bailed me out of some jams, finally got me onto the force when I’d calmed myself down and was looking for a new line of work. It’s why I put up with his crap for so long — I owed the prick. My old temper hadn’t surfaced in all the time since — 15 years — not even at the height of the Paginator case. But seeing Ginny, and those students, and … it was all too much. I had to hit someone. When I stared needles at Phallic, he knew. I was dangerous. He wanted no part of it.

He cleared his throat, coughed, choked back “Schnoz” and continued. “Um, Joe, what’s going on? I got lost after the first thus back there. What does ‘pusmodem imperilust constructionish onlylogical hysterics’ mean, anyway?”

I didn’t answer. Didn’t have to — a call came over Phallic’s line. There was a fire. Less than a block from where we stood. Books, they said. We were on it in seconds.

Just across 34^th Street was Penn’s Hill Square, an open field through which winds a red brick path, lined left and right with quotations that celebrate women—their liberation, their accomplishments, their tribulations, something. At the north end of the small park, behind a low brick building, was an alley of sorts, in it a dumpster. Next to the dumpster was a pile of books, hundreds of them, half-charred. A janitor had found the flaming mass and called the fire department. They put it out.

Phallic deferred to me. “The Paginator?”

What the hell was going on?

“Joe?”

“I don’t …. no, it doesn’t make any sense. None of it fits. It’s afternoon — the Paginator burns books at night. And this alley is too public—the Paginator is more careful than that. And look how many of the books didn’t burn at all — water from the hose did most of the damage. If nothing else, the Paginator is competent, but this fire wasn’t much of a fire. And this…”

“What?”

“Look at it.” I held up a copy.

“Danielle Steel.” Phallic scratched his belly. “So?”

“It’s Danielle Steel. Palomino.”

“So?”

“Phallic, we’ve got to get you a library card. Don’t you see? Sure, Stephen King was a departure, but he has his defenders. And Rowling has hers — if you call Harry Potter a kid’s book you’re going to piss off a lot of adults. I could see those two being the Paginator, maybe. But Danielle Steel? She’s sold a ton of books — millions of the things. But the Paginator was going after Fitzgerald, Conrad — Twain, for Christ’s sake. Twain! And now Danielle Steel? I just don’t see it.”

Phallic was catching on, the dumbass. “So it’s a copycat?”

“Someone’s messing with us.” Sadness set in. If it were the Paginator, that would mean Ginny was in the clear — no one present at the seminar could have lit this fire in time. But if it were just a copycat, then the killer could be anyone. Anyone at all.

Phallic was waiting for my lead.

I felt the spork through my pocket, hoped for some hope. “Let’s see how many Steels there are in the city, just to be safe.”

Scott Stein is associate teaching professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at Drexel University and co-director of the Drexel Publishing Group. The book Drexel University Off the Record (the unauthorized guide for prospective students) lists “Scott Stein’s Humor & Comedy Writing class” as one of the “Ten Best Things About Drexel.” Stein is author of the novels Lost and Mean Martin Manning and editor of the online magazine When Falls the Coliseum: a journal of American culture (or lack thereof).

Check back here on Wednesday, May 19th for Chapter 6 of Turning the Page. Its author is Dan Driscoll.