Gabriel's Inferno 01 - Gabriel's Inferno (39 page)

He began muttering under his breath.

“I’m sorry, Gabriel, but I want to make her happy.”

“What about making me happy?”

“I…” Julia was at a loss for words.

He fumed slightly. “Will you promise to see me Friday night, instead?”

“After your lecture?”

“I’ll be going to dinner. I’d like you to meet me at my place after that.”

“Won’t that be too late?”

“Not for what I have in mind. You promised, you know.”

Julia smiled at the thought of the new, mature sleepover she had only recently discovered.

“So will I see you Friday night?” He dropped his voice to a seductive whisper.

“Yes. I’ll have to come up with an excuse to give Paul. We’re going to the lecture together.”

Silence rippled on the other end of the telephone line.

“Hello?” Julia moved to a different location in the hallway, hoping her movement would improve her reception. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here.” Gabriel’s tone was suddenly glacial.

Scheisse,
she thought.

He was silent for another moment before he resumed speaking. “Did we or did we not have an arrangement that excluded sharing?”

Double Scheisse
.

“Um, of course.”

“I’ve kept up my end of that arrangement.”

“Gabriel, please—”

He cut her off. “Tell me that I misunderstood what you just told me.”

“We’re friends. He asked me to go with him to your lecture. I didn’t think it was wrong.”

“Do you want me seeing other women as friends? Going to public events with them?”

“No,” she whispered.

“Then extend me the same courtesy.”

“Please don’t be cross with me.”

Her request was met with silence.

“He’s the only friend I have. Being a grad student in a strange city is very…lonely.”

“I thought I was your friend.”

“Of course you are. But I need someone to talk to about school and things.”

“Anything to do with the university should be discussed with me.”

“Please don’t make me give up the one friend I have, apart from you. Then I really will be isolated, since I can’t be with you all the time.”

Gabriel flinched. “Have you told him you’re seeing someone?”

Julia gulped. “No. I thought it was a secret.”

“Come on, Julianne. You’re smarter than that.” He sighed loudly. “Fine. I’ll concede that you need a friend, but he needs to realize that you are no longer available. He’s far too invested as it is, and that could create a problem for us.”

“I’ll tell him I have a new boyfriend. We’re supposed to go to the museum in two weeks to see—”

Gabriel growled into the phone. “No, you are not. I’ll take you.”

“In public? How can you?”

“Let me worry about that. So I suppose he’ll be carrying your books to class in a few minutes?” His tone became sarcastic.

“Please, Gabriel.”

He exhaled deeply into the phone. “All right. Let’s forget about this. But I will have my eye on him. As for Friday, I’ll give you a key, or I’ll call the concierge and he will let you in.”

“Okay.”

“See you in a few minutes.”

***

When Julia and Paul arrived at the seminar room, The Professor was already there. He glanced at them, scowled at Paul, and turned his attention to his lecture notes. However, he noticed with satisfaction that Julia was using her messenger bag. The thought pleased him a great deal.

The rest of the graduate students, including Christa, looked from Julia to The Professor and back again about three or four times. It was almost like watching a volley at Wimbledon.

Julia sat in her usual chair next to Paul and immediately adopted a deferential posture.

“Don’t be nervous. He’s been in a good mood all week. I don’t think he’ll bother you today.” Paul leaned in closely, far too closely, to whisper in her ear. “He must have gotten laid last weekend, more than once.”

Professor Emerson coughed loudly at the front of the room until Paul moved away from Julia.

For her part, Julia was flustered over Paul’s remark. She kept her head down, writing copious notes in her notebook. It was a good distraction, for it stopped her from thinking about Saturday morning and what Gabriel looked like under his clothes,
wet from the shower, dropping a small, purple towel…

The Professor barely looked at her and never called on her to comment or to answer a question. In sum, the lecture was a colossal disappointment from an entertainment perspective and left more than one graduate student wanting. Christa, however, was delighted that the course of the universe had finally corrected itself and all was (almost) as it should be.

“You are all invited to the lecture I will be delivering on lust in Dante’s
Inferno
at Victoria College on Friday afternoon at three o’clock. I’ll see you next week. Class dismissed.” The Professor quickly packed up his things and exited the seminar room without so much as a backward glance.

Paul leaned over to Julia. “Can I walk you home? We could grab some Thai food on the way.”

“It would be nice for you to walk me home. But I’m probably going to work right through dinner. And there’s something I need to tell you…”

***

On Friday morning, Julia stood in the entrance to her rather small closet wondering what she should wear. She knew that Gabriel would not be pleased when he saw her sitting with Paul. She knew that she would be meeting Gabriel at his apartment later that evening and sleeping over. She had already packed her messenger bag in preparation for her visit.

She wanted to make a good impression. She wanted Gabriel to notice her amongst all the other women and think that she looked pretty, so for the first time that semester, Julia decided to dress up for school. She wore a black dress with black opaque stockings and knee-length, high-heeled, black leather boots that Rachel had persuaded her to buy a few years ago. She wore simple jewelry—pearl stud earrings that had belonged to her Grandma Mitchell—and she wrapped a dark purple pashmina around her neck, fearful that her modest cleavage would turn out to be too much for a daytime lecture.

Julia and Paul were almost the first to arrive at the large lecture hall. They quickly chose seats near the back, on the aisle, so as not to be too conspicuous. Faculty members usually took the best seats near the front, and graduate students would not dare to meddle with that convention.

As soon as Julia stepped into the room she felt his presence. A strange tension hummed between them, even at a distance. She felt his eyes on her too, and knew that he was staring. She knew that his stare would quickly morph into a scowl. A sly glance to the front of the room confirmed her suspicions. He was glaring at Paul as he placed a hand to her lower back, guiding her to their seats.

Gabriel gave Julia a quick half-smile as his eyes raked over her form, resting a beat too long on the heels of her boots. Turning away, he continued his conversation with one of the other professors.

Julia took a few moments to admire Gabriel’s appearance. He was breathtaking, as usual, dressed in a very handsome black Armani suit with a white French-cuffed shirt and a black silk tie. He was wearing his glasses and a pair of black dress shoes that, mercifully, were not pointy. Surprisingly, however, he wore a vest under his suit, and as his jacket was unbuttoned, Julia saw the fob of a gold watch dangling from one of the buttons of his vest, with the chain leading to a pocket.

“Look at him. A vest and a pocket watch?” muttered Paul, shaking his head. “How old is this guy? I bet he has a personal portrait in his attic that’s aging rather rapidly.”

Julia smothered a smile, but said nothing.

“Do you know what he had me do yesterday?”

She shook her head.

“I had to pack some of his precious pens in a crate, insure it, and ship it to a fountain pen infirmary. Can you believe that?”

“What’s a fountain pen infirmary?”

“Some repair shop for sick fountain pens that caters to even sicker fuckers who have way too much money. And too much time on their hands. Or in their pockets.”

Julia snickered and switched off her cell phone.

***

Having recovered from the swine flu, Professor Jeremy H. Martin, the chair of Italian Studies, welcomed a crowd of about one hundred people and offered a glowing description of Professor Emerson’s research and accomplishments. Julia watched as Gabriel shifted uncomfortably in his chair, as if all the high praise and fine words displeased him. His eyes found hers, and she smiled encouragingly. She watched as his shoulders visibly relaxed.

Professor Martin was proud of Professor Emerson, and he had no qualms about making that fact known. To him, Gabriel had been one of the most promising hires of the Department and had truly lived up to his potential. He’d been tenured early on the strength of the publication of his first book by Oxford University Press, and was well on his way to becoming another Katherine Picton. Or so Professor Martin hoped.

After a thinnish round of applause, Gabriel took center stage, spreading his notes on the lectern and double-checking the readiness of his PowerPoint presentation. He took a moment to scan the crowd—Professor Martin was smiling in anticipation, Miss Peterson had slithered forward and was slyly fingering her plunging neckline, while his faculty colleagues sat quietly, seemingly interested in the topic of his lecture.

One striking exception was seated in the very front row. This professor had no interest in his research or his academic prowess. No, her interests were far more profligate, and it seemed to Gabriel that she was flaunting them now, her pink tongue darting out to moisten crimson lips. She was twisted. Predatory. And Gabriel was made very uncomfortable by the fact that she was staring at him with serpentine eyes, while sitting in the same room as Julia. He knew that his past lurked around every corner, but God help him if the two women ever met.

Dragging his eyes away from the blond professor, he forced a smile at the audience. He quickly sought out Julia’s pretty face and drew strength from her warm expression, and then he began.

“The title of my lecture is
Lust in Dante’s
Inferno:
The Deadly Sin against the Self
. Immediately, one might wonder why lust would be a sin against the self since it is always directed toward another—the use of another human being for personal, sexual gratification.”

A muffled snort reached Gabriel’s ears from the front row, but he ignored it, his reaction telegraphed by a noticeable tightening of his expression.

“Dante’s notions of sin are shaped largely by the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. In his famous
Summa Theologiae
, Aquinas argues that any evil action or sin is a form of self-destruction. He assumes that human beings have a nature that is supposed to be rational and good. Aquinas conceives of this nature, that of the rational animal, as being created by God specifically to pursue goodness, more specifically, the virtues.

“When a human being departs from this natural purpose, she injures herself, for she does what she was not intended to do. She wars against herself and her nature.”

Miss Peterson leaned forward, as if she were paying rapt attention.

“Why does Aquinas hold this peculiar view of sin?

“One reason is because he accepts Boethius’ assertion that goodness and being are convertible. In other words, anything that exists has some goodness in it because God made it. And no matter how marred or broken or sinful that being is, it still maintains some goodness so long as it exists.”

Gabriel pressed a button, and his first slide appeared on the screen to his left. Julia recognized it as Botticelli’s illustration of Lucifer.

“According to this view, no one, not even Lucifer encased in ice at the bottom of Dante’s
Inferno
, is wholly evil. Evil can only feed off of goodness like a parasite; if all the goodness of a creature were eliminated, the creature in question would no longer exist.”

Gabriel felt a pair of cunning eyes fixate on him, mocking him and his silly recognition of concepts so bourgeois as
good
and
evil
.

He cleared his throat. “It’s a foreign way of thinking to many of us—the idea that even a fallen angel condemned to live out his days in the
Inferno
has some goodness left in him.” His eyes wandered over to Julia’s where they rested just long enough for her to see something pleading in them. “Goodness that begs to be recognized, despite the fallen angel’s sad and desperate addiction to sin.”

Another Botticelli illustration, one of Dante and Beatrice and the fixed stars of Paradise, was displayed on the screen. Julia recognized it as the same scene Gabriel had showed her from his private collection.