Brown-Eyed Girl by Virginia Swift

Wertz, the king of cultural anthropology. Her own field work had taken her all over Asia and later to Los Angeles, and it seemed to her that every time she tried to imagine pristine “natives” who inhabited “homelands,” she met a Trobriand Islander wearing a ZZ Top T-shirt. People didn’t stay put, she surmised. This stunning observation had led to three prize-winning books on refugees, exiles, expatriates, and diasporas, and had eventually won her a MacArthur Foundation genius grant. Byron Bosworth probably thought she got his MacArthur.
    During her time in New Jersey, her husband had taken up with a University of Wyoming cheerleader. It was a rotten divorce. But when she finally got tenure in the anthropology department, she did as she damn well pleased. There was plenty of oil money in the state then, money enough , even, to fund a fledgling women’s studies program. A small, merry band of feminists kept a lot of balls in the air, year to year.
    She became a community builder. Edna was an avid concertgoer and patron of the arts, a member of every commission and task force in the state. And she was known to her lucky friends as the best and most creative cook in Wyoming (what, they asked, was the competition?). Her dinner party invitations were treasured. Her kids went to Laramie High, and Edna ended up falling in love with and marrying her daughter’s green-eyed American literature teacher, Tom Youngblood.
    Friends from Cambridge and Berkeley and Palo Alto had come to visit during the occasional summers Edna remained in Laramie, and wondered why she didn’t move someplace civilized. They didn’t realize that despite her warmth, wit, and graciousness, despite her good-looking new husband and MacArthur cash in mutual funds and all the good things that had happened in her life, Edna McCaffrey still lived with the bitter urge for revenge. One big reason she had stayed at the University of Wyoming, turning down much better jobs in much more prestigious places, was that she planned someday to have enough power to really stick it to the bastards who’d messed with her all those years ago.
    So Byron Bosworth and the boys had “needs”? Edna grinned nastily. She and the Boz would hold a fakecordial conversation on the matter. Like the best administrators, Edna specialized in appearing sweetly reassuring while being as insulting as she chose, and filing all information for future use.
    She went into the kitchen to look up Margaret Dunwoodie’s number in the Laramie phone book, a volume smaller and slimmer than Edna’s daily planner. She wanted to call to invite Sally Alder to lunch at El Conquistador and to a little dinner party on Saturday night. Sally and Edna had become friends years ago when both had needed the solidarity of sisterhood and the solace of a good laugh. But Sally was also, at this point, a highly expensive property that could be an asset, or a definite liability. She could be—had been—a bit of a loose cannon.
    It had not been entirely Edna’s idea to recruit Sally Alder for the Dunwoodie Chair; in fact, by the time the Foundation and the University had decided to move on the bequest and had brought Edna into the process, Sally was already the clear first choice for the job. Sally was a fine scholar, but there hadn’t been the slightest effort to do an open search. And it wasn’t just that there might be equally qualified candidates. Back in the days she’d lived in Laramie, before starting school, Sally Alder had been best known as a hard-living bar singer. Who wanted her? Really, why?
    The Foundation was secretive. (And who was the Foundation anyhow? There were rumors, of course. Only the lawyer, Sonnenschein, seemed to know.) The president’s office was unusually discreet. Edna had done considerable digging and run up against one stone wall after another. Failing to find out anything useful, Edna had decided, in her sensible