Everybody Loves Somebody (24 page)

He’s amused by her comment that her favorite passage in the
Confessions
is where Saint Augustine of Hippo admits he’d been doing nothing more for a decade than telling stories to himself. Indeed.
The joys of self-deception. Professor Harrison hopes Nora is liking his class. She babbles something about the pleasures of
studying a subject unrelated to one’s field of expertise. Not that she’s an expert in anything, she adds with a short laugh.
He points out that fundamental connections can be perceived between the most disparate subjects. “In the Taoist scheme...”
he begins to explain as they turn the corner together—but look, here’s his house, a modest, well-kept lemon Colonial on a
side street shaded with new maple leaves. Won’t Nora come in for a cup of tea?

How easy it would have been to thank Professor Harrison for the invitation and excuse herself. Too easy. Instead, knowing
full well the implications of acceptance—

“Okay.” With a shrug meant to convince both of them that there’s nothing at stake.

“Good. Come on in!”

The room is lit with afternoon sun. A bamboo screen painted with spirals of blue and white and gold casts its shadow across
the wood floor. Two wicker chairs flank a low, cream-colored sofa. Nora, uncertain where to go, drifts toward the bookcase.
She doesn’t recognize a single title, and her dismay over this extends into surprise as his fingers brush against the back
of her hand.

“May I?”

Nora has bunched the top of the 7-Eleven bag, and her fingernails have left little tears in the paper. She realizes that he
merely wants to relieve her of the bag of groceries. Not really groceries. Just some cans of soda, Triscuits, Tootsie Rolls.

“May I?”

“Oh. Sure.” Another shrug.

Already the air has become charged with the prospect of dangerous intimacy, though before they walked out of the 7-Eleven
together it hadn’t ever occurred to Nora to think of the professor in these terms. She’s one of twenty-seven students in his
class. She received an A- on her midterm exam. Sometimes she’ll work on a chemistry assignment while he’s lecturing. Even
when she has an opinion relating to the discussion, she’ll keep quiet.

She’s quiet now while he bangs about in the kitchen, clattering pots, dragging warped drawers open and shoving them closed.
Does she have a preference? he asks from the kitchen. The question strikes her as both significant and silly. She has to stifle
a laugh. He appears in the doorway with a tea canister in hand.

“Lapsang souchong?”

Fine. She flashes him an inappropriate grin. He grins back, and Nora suddenly imagines herself watching him from the back
of the class. Why does she think this now? Why does she think anything? Because of who she is. The stamp of personality. He.
We. A professor who invites his students in for tea. A saint who spends a decade telling stories to himself. A young woman
who is supposed to show up for work at the library’s reference desk at six o’clock.

Coincidentally, she forgot to wear her watch. She interprets this as a sign that she shouldn’t worry about the hour. She shouldn’t
worry about anything. For a long while—long enough to switch from tea to wine—they talk about Saint Augustine. They discuss
his theory that some parts must disappear in order to make room for new parts before a whole entity can be created. The crackling
music of an old record establishes the ambience. “It ain’t necessarily so.” The inch of tea left in Nora’s mug is a translucent
caramel. Her wineglass is empty. “It ain’t necessarily so.” Remember, Nora, how Saint Augustine offers the example of a sentence
to demonstrate that disparate parts cannot be perceived simultaneously? And his conclusion: we should not attach ourselves
to objects cursed with a temporal existence. The professor quotes the relevant passage as he refills Nora’s glass: “If the
soul loves them and wishes to be with them and finds its rest in them, it is torn by desires that can destroy it.”

Nora doesn’t even know if she is already late for work. She’s not used to this. She’s used to knowing exactly where she should
be at any given point. Now, as if to persuade herself that she belongs where she is, she hides a forced yawn behind her cupped
hand and sinks deeper into the sofa.

Perhaps responding to her cue, the professor reaches across the small coffee table and lays a hand on her knee. He begins
humming a few bars and then adds words, singing along with the final chorus. “The things that you’re liable”—he is an unexpectedly
strong baritone—“to read in the Bible...” She laughs softly, nervously, idiotically. He sings with gusto. “It ain’t necessarily
so.”

When the professor saw her in the 7-Eleven, he apparently decided that Nora Owen could be seduced. His expectations, she believes,
are her fault. She’d given him some subtle signal, invited him to pursue her so she could lead him on in a direction that
would be familiar to both of them. He knows what he’s doing. He is obviously a man used to success, someone who sleeps with
his students whenever the opportunity arises and then rewards them with casual appreciation. And she is a young woman used
to reneging on commitments. Together, Nora and the professor are a volatile match—surely he understands this as well as she
does and has already guessed that she intends to extract herself from this tense situation before it is too late. Which is
why he’s resting his hand on her knee. And singing. And trying to capture her with his gaze. He doesn’t just want her to look
at him. She is supposed to look through him into his soul and to consider the possibility of union.

The song ends, and the room fills with the scratching noise of the needle sliding along the empty groove at the end of the
record. Then the series of clicks as the bar rises automatically.

His goal, the professor explains after a moment, is to be able to reflect back on his life from old age and feel no regret.
What he says seems to be related to the music they’ve just heard, yet it’s as though he’s speaking English in translation,
using words drawn from the mysterious context of a language Nora doesn’t know. His intensifying solemnity has the effect of
thunder rolling in the distance. Nora wonders where Max is, whether he’s gone to the library to find her. And Sophie? She
imagines ahead to the carefree future when she and Max and Sophie will laugh together about how Nora was delayed on her way
home from the 7-Eleven.

“Um...do you know what time it is?”

“Does it matter?”

Somehow she musters the poise to thank her host for the wine and tea and conversation. It’s been interesting, but it’s time
for her to go.

She can’t go, not yet. The water for the pasta is boiling. Won’t she stay for dinner?

“Sorry, Professor Harrison.”

He wants her to call him Eric.

“I really have to leave.”

When the phone in the kitchen begins ringing, Nora flinches. The professor gives a sympathetic nod, indicating that he understands
why she is scared. The ringing seems to grow progressively louder. Why won’t he answer his goddamn phone! Nora rises from
her chair. The professor mutters something—a
w
sound,
wait
or
won’t
. His expression suggests that he is about to reveal some terrible secret. Instead, with a nimble motion, he grips her wrist.

A man expecting more; a woman expecting less. She’d meant to stay in control of the situation and make her limits clear, but
she was not prepared for such an abrupt escalation. Her awareness is clouded by confusion. She can’t figure out why she is
unable to summon the strength required to resist, why suddenly she feels dizzy, drained, as in the aftermath of a high fever.
She can hardly stay on her feet. What is happening? She can’t tell whether she is following his lead, or he is following hers.
When did the phone stop ringing?

She tries to regain her balance, buying time with nervous laughter. Really, it can’t be as serious as it seems. Surely he’s
joking when he tells her that he knows what she wants and wraps his arms around her. He’s relaxed into laughter again, and
now she’s laughing, both of them admitting the inanity of this embrace. How can he know what she wants when she doesn’t know
what she wants? Then and now. The present offering no more than a repetition of the past.

He combs his fingers through her hair until they’re snagged by a tangle. He brushes his lips against her cheek. His touch
is surprisingly gentle, and this gives her the momentary impression that she can trust him. She wants to trust him. She wants
to be able to anticipate what will happen next. And the possibility that what happens will injure her reputation stirs in
her a vague, odd sense of relief. Whatever happens, she won’t be able to go on pretending to be innocent.

Tentatively, she parts her lips. He slips his hand inside her T shirt, caresses the curve of her waist and climbs upward.
Slowly, cautiously. See how easy it is? Show him what you want. Okay. The soft exhalations as they settle into each other.
Okay. Here you are. She isn’t wearing a bra—a simple discovery that has an animating effect, and suddenly he is all over her,
his tongue is inside her mouth and he is fumbling with the zipper of her jeans.

Feet bare, jeans down. He pushes her backward, back farther, back through a doorway and across a hall, back into a room until
she tumbles onto a bed. He falls over her but catches himself with his hands and peers down as though from a great height.

If he is using her, then she is using him. Looking up at the professor, she could almost convince herself that there’s nothing
wrong with this, as long as the satisfaction is mutual. Yet now that it is too late to refuse him, she wants to refuse him.
All her strength goes into the effort of escape. She tries to lunge out of his reach, but he’s got his hands inside her shirt
again, and he manages to hold her in place while, with a single swift motion, he turns the shirt inside out and pulls it over
her head. At the same time he nudges her legs apart with his knees, and after an awkward series of jabs he’s tearing into
her.

His face is hidden over her right shoulder, which he presses down with a hand that is too soft to be so strong. His other
hand is rubbing her left breast. One of his knees is on her thigh, pinning her to the bed. When he bears down, his weight
squeezes the breath from her lungs. She can’t breathe. If she can’t breathe she can’t think. That’s good. Without thinking,
there can be no memory. Only the thudding of the headboard against the wall.

“It follows,” Saint Augustine explained, “that the very thing which by its presence causes us to forget must be present if
we are to remember it.”

What is the professor trying to say?

He’s telling you, in case you hadn’t realized, that you’re something special. My love, he calls you.

The only word Nora hears is
my
. The assumption of possession. A word that should repel her, she knows. But her response is like this effort—raising her
pelvis to push him away only makes the grinding fiercer, the sensation more intense. Wanting to belong to no one only makes
her more dependent. She belongs to him. That’s good.

But you see, Nora, he’s far more experienced than you, with precise ambitions and self-control. How artfully he thrusts, once
more, a strong, groaning thrust, and then withdraws, spilling onto the sheet, an accomplishment that instantly becomes in
Nora’s mind the distinguishing factor. Because of this, the professor is nothing like the boy who attacked her when she was
fifteen. That boy was under the delusion that he had to hurt Nora Owen. The professor would never set out to hurt anyone.
He’d found a willing partner for a mild spring afternoon. She belonged to him only for the minutes he remained inside her.
Now she is free to go.

He doesn’t actually send her away. Lying beside her on the bed, spent and pleased with himself, naked from the waist down
only, he makes an effort to demonstrate affection. As he reaches across her to turn on the lamp, he tells her she’s beyond
wonderful. He tells her she’ll get an A on her final essay, though she has yet to write it. He chuckles to indicate that he’s
only kidding. He remembers he left the pot of water to boil and jumps up in a panic, pulling on his boxers as he stumbles
toward the kitchen.

Nora looks down at herself, trying to see what the professor saw. Her body, slick and veined with blue in the lamplight. The
curls of pubic hair. She notices that the thigh of the leg turned outward is broader than the other. She waits for the professor
to return. She hears water running, a toilet flush. After a few minutes she goes into the living room and pulls on her jeans
and shirt. Deliberately, she leaves her underwear on the floor.

When he appears again he is dressed in gray sweatpants and a red muscle shirt that must be new, for it still has the creases
from the package. He settles into a chair and rubs his arms as though to warm himself. He asks, “Now where were we?” He says
it in jest, but there is also something different in his voice, an inkling of annoyance, which Nora interprets as impatience.
He says nothing about dinner. As far as she can tell, he’s just waiting for her to leave.

He reminds her how the turn of the afternoon’s events came without warning. The day was supposed to be ordinary. He’d gone
out for a quart of milk and had been planning on staying up late to grade papers. He has forty papers to mark for another
class. He’d promised his students he’d have them done by tomorrow.

This is his most obvious hint—he has work to do, and it’s time for Nora to leave. Okay. So long. She doesn’t know what to
call him. He’d wanted her to call him Eric, but that was before.

He accompanies her to the door and kisses her softly, with a lingering wisp of passion meant, she knows, to signal an end.
They’ll not meet again, except in class. He won’t be caught carrying on a romantic relationship with a student. He doesn’t
want to be in any relationship. He is a puckish, independent sort, fun-loving but ultimately solitary.

“Good-bye, my love.”

This time it’s the last word that she hears.
Love
used in mockery of love. The sound of the word, emptied of meaning, fills her mind as she walks through the evening darkness
back to campus. Love. Love. Love. She doesn’t even look when she crosses the street and doesn’t jump when a blue Ford Escort
swishes toward her. Go ahead, smash her. It would be a perfect ending. But the Escort veers around her with an angry honk
and disappears down the block, leaving Nora to continue on her way.