Tenure Track (26 page)

“
Bullshit! Reputation?” he barked. “You didn’t care about your reputation when I was eatin’ you out in your office!”

She glanced around uneasily, preferring for the others in the apartment not to hear this crude vitriol. She tried to remain calm. “That was a mistake. I should not have let that happen.”

“
Well you did, and you liked it, ya kinky, backstabbing bitch!” he bellowed. “You’re not so high and mighty ya know. You’re as much a fuckin’ whore as the junkies who offer to blow me for some weed.”

Jane was dumbfounded. He had never talked to her that way before.

“
Yeah, that’s what I said. And sometimes I take ‘em up on it. They give better head than you!”

Jane was stung by the viciousness of this verbal attack. She breathed in deeply, trying not to reveal how much his words stung. “Look, you’re obviously not feeling well. I’ll just go and we can talk about it later.”

“
We’ve got nothin’ to talk about, bitch! I’m done. I tried to loosen you up, but you’re too uptight for me.”

She tried to protest, her voice cracking. “But, I really care about you.”

“
Bullshit!” he shouted. “I’m your stud, Mrs. Robinson. You only care about my dick and my tongue. Well they’re off limits now. Go find a stick or something to fuck!”

She had no comeback for that. She looked into his eyes, no longer filled with penetrating sexiness, but with strung-out hatred. Yet she could not deny that she still wanted him. It took all of her strength not to get down on her knees and beg him to reconsider. Luckily, some of her remaining pride stopped her. She turned and walked out the door, never to see the young man again.

Jane spent the rest of that weekend holed up in her apartment, crying over the end of the affair. She hated herself as much as him. Hated herself for becoming so addicted to his superficial pleasures that she had risked her own safety and reputation. Hated herself for being just another junkie that he had gotten hooked on his product.

After spending days in a cloistered period of mourning and despair, she was able to step back and reflect with a bit more detachment, recognizing what an unhealthy relationship it had been and what a self-centered jerk he was. Over time, she became even angrier that he had been the one to end it before she had. Rightfully, that should have been her call long before he attacked her in the parking lot. Still, there were moments when she caught herself wiping away a tear of regret that she would never be with him again.

That longing quickly subsided after two other students came by her office hours during the same day to ask her out. Both slinked off after she politely declined, but their presence did not seem like a coincidence.
Two days later a third student made a similar request. This time, Jane replied with her new policy, “Sorry, I don’t date students.” The student looked puzzled by this response, raising Jane’s suspicions about the cause of her newfound popularity.

Her suspicions were confirmed a few days later when yet another young man whom she had never met sauntered into her office with an air of confidence and asked her to dinner. Stunned by her rejection and policy statement, he arrogantly retorted, “That’s not what I heard.”

She gruffly ordered the imprudent student out of her office and closed the door behind him. She could feel her body break out into a nervous sweat.
So I’m now grist for the gossip mill!
She could imagine the whispered secrets being spread:
That Professor Roardan likes to screw students. Easy lay. Kinky chick. Loves it when you go down on her in her office. Once got caught doing it in the faculty parking lot.

Tears of humiliation leaked out of her eyes. She should not have been surprised, she admitted. She knew that, even though there were probably plenty of male professors who had done the same thing with impunity, she would be held to a different standard. She was now the slutty professor, starring in the fantasies of unknown numbers of undergraduate males who had heard they could call her up for a good time.

Were they far off the mark? Accepting culpability for her own behavior, she also accepted responsibility for fixing the damage. When it came to handling gossip, she knew whom to call.

“
Perry?” she entreated over the phone. “I need some help pruning the campus grapevine.”

A honk from behind jerked Jane out of her memories. As she focused on her driving, her thoughts became a jumble of images:
me, Jessica, Mandy, Dana. All victims? How can I keep history from repeating itself?

Deeper Connections

Early on a crisp Wednesday morning, not long after his most depressing Valentine’s Day, a sweatsuit-clad Lewis decided to get a little extra exercise by taking Clint for another early campus walk. He hoped this venture might turn out a little better than the last.

As the pair resumed their campus tour, Lewis spotted Mandy and a young woman in a naval ROTC uniform walking towards him, both holding steaming lattes. He noted a smudge of black dirt on the other girl’s forehead, reminding him that it was Ash Wednesday. That usually meant low turnout for his morning classes due to the previous night’s Mardi Gras parties. Even the most nonreligious students enjoyed the overindulgent festivities of Fat Tuesday.

Lewis slowed his cadence, much to his furry companion’s relief. “Good morning, ladies,” he replied chipperly. “You’re out early today.”

“
Oh, hey, professor!” Mandy replied. “You are too. ‘Tryin’ to get some exercise?”

Lewis stopped and smiled as the dog took advantage of the break to lie down on the concrete pavement. “Who’s this?” the uniformed woman asked, bending down to pet the worn-out creature.

“
My new roommate,” Lewis announced. “His name is Clint, as in ‘Eastwood.’”

“
Oh, yeah, I can see the resemblance,” Mandy joked. As the women rubbed Clint’s head and belly, the hairy creature returned the affection with a series of wet sloppy kisses, which neither recipient seemed to mind. “Blanca said you were ugly, but you’re really cute!” Mandy squealed in a high-pitched voice.

“
Well, cute in an ugly sort of way,” Julie clarified.

“
Oh, you’re just a big baby, aren’t you?” Mandy squealed in an affectionate, baby-talk voice, completely ignoring the dog’s owner.

Trying to redirect attention back from his wingman, Lewis asked, “So you two aren’t sleeping in today? No wild Mardi Gras celebrations last night?”

Julie laughed, still rubbing the dog’s belly. “We took care of that a couple of weeks ago. Too much work during the week.”

“
We were at the real Mardi Gras, not the Faux Gras, as Blanca calls it,” Mandy explained. Realizing that Lewis did not know the girl with her, she introduced them. “Julie’s got drills this morning, so we went to early Mass. I was just gonna go study at the library while it’s quiet.”

Lewis recalled from previous conversations that Julie was the third female roommate, girlfriend of Gus the intimidating protector; secretly living in the same bedroom without her parents’ knowledge. He did not think she looked like the type to engage in such subterfuge.

“
I was in your History 310K last year,” Julie noted, as if trying to remind him who she was.

Lewis was embarrassed to admit that he did not recall her from class, but then, he rarely interacted with the hundreds of undergrads who took the required American history survey course. He apologized for not remembering her.

“
That’s okay,” she replied cheerfully. “I know it’s a big class. I had Kyle for my T.A.”

“
Did you like it?” he asked, trying to politely keep up his end of the conversation.

“
Oh yeah,” she replied. “I only made a B. I switched to Dr. Stevens’s class for 310L. ‘Did even worse, only squeaked out a C+, but I learned a lot. Boy is she tough! Luckily, I’m done with history.” Somewhere in there Lewis sensed the hint of an unintended insult.

Julie said that she had to get to her drill, giving Clint one last belly rub and Mandy a friendly elbow nudge as she ran off. Lewis offered to escort his assistant on the rest of her journey to the library.

“
I didn’t know you went to New Orleans,” he said as they made their way towards the Commons.

“
Just for the weekend,” she explained. “Blanca grew up there before Katrina, still has family there. So we flew in for a couple a days. Her Maw-Maw is such a good cook. I gain about 20 pounds every time we go.”

He did not notice any extra fat on her lovely frame.

“
It sounds like fun,” he commented. “I’ve been to New Orleans several times, but never for Mardi Gras. Is it as wild as they say?”

She shrugged. “Depends. It’s as wild as ya want it to be. We get kind of a different feel hangin’ out with locals. We try to avoid the places that cater too much to tourists. Blanca’s old church has a pretty big bash, which is fun.”

With the mention of church, he observed, “I’m surprised you went to Mass this morning. I thought you were Church of Christ.”

“
Well . . . . I’m not sure what I’d call myself,” she replied. “I was baptized Church a Christ ‘cause of my grandparents, but I was never really as hardcore as them. When Momma remarried, she went Presbyterian, more for appearances than anything. Since Mammaw and Pappaw died, I’ve kinda liked checkin’ out different religions, ya know? Daddy’s into the whole nondenominational, nontraditional worship thing. ‘Meetin’ God where he is,’ he says. Gus and Julie are Catholic. I’ve been to a couple of AMEZ services with Blanca. It’s neat to see how they’re all different. What about you?”

The question caught him off-guard. Lewis was not usually comfortable articulating his religious beliefs, but since he had dared to ask the question first, he felt obligated to return an answer. “Well, we didn’t really belong to any faith, but my parents always believed in spiritual forces. They were into meditation, crystals, whatever suited their fancy. They studied a lot about Eastern and Native American religions, though my mother also knew the Bible very well. She was named after Ruth, from the Old Testament. I guess you’d call my family New Agers. Donnie’s kind of that way, I guess —one with nature. Ben’s wife is Lutheran, but I think he mostly golfs on Sundays.”

“
But what do
you
believe?” she asked, not allowing his evasion to go unnoticed.

He paused momentarily to choose his words. “I guess you ‘d call me a practicing agnostic. From what I’ve seen and read, I think there are probably some kinds of spiritual forces in the world that we can’t explain, but I’m not really into organized religion. I got married in a church because that’s what my wife wanted, even though she claimed to be an atheist. It was all about appearances with her, too.”

He considered telling her about
the window,
but thought it might sound too crazy that he sought spiritual guidance from a piece of glass. Instead he admitted, “Sometimes during rough times I do catch myself praying to whatever’s out there, just to cover myself. ‘That good enough?”

She smiled with satisfaction.

He volleyed back to her, “So what conclusions have you drawn from all of your church shopping?”

“
I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’ve mostly visited different Christian churches. If you have any good stuff on Eastern religions, I’d be interested in lookin’ at it. Most of the people in my old church believe the Church a Christ is the
only
real church, ya know, so anything seems different to me now. I believe in God, definitely. And Jesus made a lotta sense. I’m just not sure where I belong. Maybe I’ll wind up being a Unitarian or something. Ba’hai, Buddhist, who knows? That’s the cool thing about college. You can experiment with everything, even religion.”

They approached Hammond Hall, which was about a block before the main library. “Here’s your stop,” Mandy announced.

“
Oh yeah.” Lewis was a bit disappointed as he was enjoying their conversation. “Hey, I’ll look around the house and try to find some books on Eastern philosophy for you. I think I have some tucked away.”

She thanked him and continued on her way, giving the dog one last head-rub. Lewis bent down to pet the mutt, just so that he could watch until she was out of sight. “So, what do you think?” Lewis whispered into a floppy ear, to which Clint responded by leaning down and licking himself.

“
In your dreams, dog,” his master replied.

The following Friday night, Lewis found himself searching for a box long tucked away in the back of a closet that held an odd assortment of his parents’ belongings. After their deaths, the boys had gone through the ritual of dividing up their personal possessions. Lewis, being the scholarly child, inherited their books, even though most dealt with subjects he never really studied. He could have taken the lot to a used bookstore, but he resisted, partly out of an academic’s neverending quest to expand his library and partly out of a son’s affection for his parents.

He withdrew various books on subjects that he thought might be of interest to Mandy. Most of the theoretical volumes were woefully out of date—more useful as a time capsule of post-sixties culture than for modern study of Eastern faiths. He culled a few useful primary sources, such as the Hindu
Bhagavad-Gita
, Buddhist
Diamond Sutra,
Confucius’s
Analects,
and even a volume of
Avesta,
the sacred text of Zoroastrianism.