The Professor and the Prostitute by Linda Wolfe

be condoms that Robin, on the nights business was bad, sold to other Combat Zone hookers at a handsome profit. He added Savi Bisram’s name to the list of people he was employing for research, and Tufts issued her a check for $9,000. (Savi cashed the check and turned the money over to Robin.) He gave Robin herself some $20,000 directly. And he submitted numerous other false vouchers for money supposedly spent by himself. Ultimately, he swindled some $67,000 from Tufts within the space of a year. And virtually all this money he gave to Robin.
    She spent it freely, lavishing her income on designer clothes, furs, soft leather boots, necklaces worth thousands of dollars apiece. She also spent it on cocaine. She had become, at twenty, a girl without a future, a child-woman who reveled in flattery, fripperies, and the fun of the moment. Sometimes she’d go home to Methuen, where her parents had hung many of her sketches and paintings throughout the house. She’d study them, talk about continuing her art education. But according to a prostitute who knew her, when they’d first met, Robin had frequently mentioned that she hoped one day to make her living by drawing, but by the fall of 1982 she no longer took seriously the possibility of becoming an artist. “There were lots of reasons,” the prostitute said. “The cut in pay, for one.”
    Sometime in October Douglas was officially informed that he was suspected of having padded his expense accounts. He was called to a meeting by Richard Thorngren, the comptroller of Tufts, and Steven Manos, a vice president of the university, shown his questionable vouchers, and asked to justify them. Had he attended the out-of-town meetings he said he had? What kind of work had Benedict and Bisram performed?
    He stayed calm at first. He began leafing methodically through his appointment calendar. But, of course, there were no entries for the trips, and after a while he admitted that some of his vouchers were “problems and false.” Still, he insisted that some of the others being questioned were valid. And he particularly maintained that the vouchers for money paid to Benedict and Bisram were on the up and up.
    Thorngren contemplated Douglas and then, informing him that he was going to launch a full-scale investigation, demanded to speak with Robin Benedict and Savi Bisram. Douglas grew agitated and confused. The vouchers for the women’s work were valid, he repeated. But if they weren’t, he added brightly, and if it turned out he owed the university money, why, he’d pay it right back. It was as if he believed that all he needed to do was make restitution, and apologize, and the matter would be forgiven and forgotten.
    That same month, Nancy Douglas, too, demanded an accounting from Bill. This was unusual for her. For years he had been absenting himself from the household in the middle of the night, but always she had chosen to accept his explanation that he kept his extraordinary hours because his experiments were so delicate, so important, that they required round-the-clock attention.
    I thought when I first heard how trusting she’d always been that Nancy must be an extremely naive woman. But on reflection I recalled that I had known many women, and even some men as well, who ignored even the most telling evidence of sexual disloyalty, who appeared almost to prefer to look the other way so as to deny their spouse’s infidelities. To accomplish this, they generally convinced themselves that the spouse was unusually worthwhile—a talent, a prodigy, a fantastic father, a magnificent mother, a superb provider. I was to learn that Nancy took the tack that Bill was a genius—an eccentric one, perhaps, but nevertheless a genius. There are many marriages in which there is a star and a supporting cast. The Douglases’ marriage seems to have been one of them.
    In such marriages, the star is not just coddled but excused. In this case,