Thoroughly Kissed (10 page)

He sighed. She made him as giddy as a schoolboy. It would be a big relief for him to have her out of his department, away from his university, and off his block.

Out of his town.

He grabbed his leather bomber jacket off the coat rack behind the door. The jacket was his favorite—all soft and broken in by time and use. He had worn it for years and even though it didn't fit with his professorial image, he was loathe to let it go. It symbolized a younger part of himself, the part that had loved wrestling and motorcycles and hockey. The part that he had to let go the higher up in academia he went.

He left Humanities and crossed the Library Mall. His stomach rumbled at the smell of roasted peppers and fresh falafels, but he knew better than to order anything off the vendors' carts. Let the students worry about indigestion all afternoon. The food on the carts wasn't good enough to taste repeatedly throughout the day.

The day was beautiful but still a bit chilly. Spring weather that reminded him summer was around the corner. Despite the chill, students studied on blankets in the grass. All the benches were taken, and a large number of students sat on the steps leading up to the Historical Society. They were eating their lunches, engaged in what seemed to them to be life and death conversations about intellectual matters.

That was probably the thing he loved the most about the university atmosphere, the way that ideas got bandied about, discussed, considered, and reconsidered. Most people outside academia seemed more concerned with their 401(k)s than the continued relevance of Machiavelli in the modern world. Heck, half of them probably thought Machiavelli was some Internet start-up company.

He crossed Langdon Street and went past the rows of bike racks to get to the Memorial Union. The Union was a large stone building that was, in all important ways, the emotional center of the UW campus. Alumni who had graduated decades before still made pilgrimages to the Union to eat Babcock ice cream and sit for a half an hour on the Terrace.

There were some students—he called them the lifers, the ones who had paid tuition for more than eight years and still hadn't gotten a single degree—whom he swore lived in the Union. Every time he appeared, they were there, sitting at a table in the Rathskeller, discussing music or buying theater tickets at the box office, or reading a book in the quiet room on the second floor. Michael didn't know these students by name, but he had seen them so many times that he had a nodding acquaintance with them—they'd nod happily when they saw him as if he were an old friend and he, polite Midwesterner that he was, would nod back.

Because the day was sunny, the line at the ice cream counter went all the way around the Union's entry and trailed off down a corridor. Michael dodged it and went deeper into the building to the Rathskellar.

The Rathskellar was the grill that served folks who usually ended up in the Stift, which was licensed to serve beer and wine. Because the University had underage students, the beer and wine section couldn't be near the food.

The delineation between the Stift and the Rath was unclear to all but Union employees and the food and beverage inspectors. Both areas were done in a nineteenth-century German design, like the beer halls that they were clearly made to emulate. There were even paintings on the walls of a war between two different kind of dwarflike bearded Germanic men, one group pushing kegs of beer at the others like cannon, the other attacking with bottles of wine.

The place always smelled of frying hamburgers, popcorn, and fresh beer. After his experiences of the last two days, he wanted a lager, but he knew he couldn't have one. He was still working. So he bought himself a Coke, then he went out into the sunshine-filled Terrace, and ordered a bratwurst at the Bunker Brat Stand. He loaded the brat with sauerkraut, German mustard, onions, and pickles, aware that the meal he was eating made the indigestion he had faced on the Library Mall seem tame.

But brats, even without beer, were comfort food and he was feeling greatly in need of comfort.

The cast iron tables and chairs were scattered all over the upper concrete layer. The roar of conversation filled the air. Students, faculty, and townspeople sat in tight groups. The tables were full all the way to Lake Mendota.

The lake sparkled in the bright sunlight. This was the place that made him—and every other graduate of the UW—feel truly at peace. When he was a student, he'd never been able to study out here—study his coursework, that was. He'd study the women—especially during summer school when the temperatures hovered around ninety, and they wore as few clothes as they could get away with. He'd also study the other students, just because he loved people watching.

People watching would relax him and made him focus on something other than Emma Lost.

A group of students sat at the edge of the lake, dangling their feet into the water—a dangerous proposition, considering that the ducks that floated below had a tendency to think anything that came from above was food. Those ducks were the only wildlife he'd ever known that obsessed about popcorn. Huge signs covered the area leading to the lake, begging students not to feed the ducks. And of course, the students ignored it.

The grease from his brat was beginning to seep through the paper plate, and condensation had formed on the side of his paper Coke cup. He had to find a table, or he would have to carve a spot for himself on one of the stairs. He went down a level, closer to the lake, scanning tables for available chairs and not seeing any.

Finally, he saw one, and he hurried toward it before anyone else could snatch it. He barely managed to beat a scrawny freshman who took one look at Michael and backed away nervously.

Michael grabbed the chair and swung it toward the nearest table.

“Hi,” he said to the woman who sat alone. “Do you mind if—?”

And then he stopped himself. The woman was Emma Lost.

She looked even more lost than she had the day before. He wasn't sure he had ever seen such sadness in someone's eyes.

He froze, one hand on the back of the chair, the other precariously balancing brat and Coke. “I'll, um, just sit over here.”

“No,” she said softly. “It's okay. There's room. And if you're not careful, you'll spill everything on that poor psych major.”

He glanced down. A girl was lying on the concrete with her back to him. She wore shorts despite the chill, and her toned legs were crossed at the ankles. A stack of psychology books spilled out of her backpack, and she seemed completely absorbed in the tome she was reading. Every few seconds, she'd highlight a passage with a yellow marker.

She hadn't even seemed to notice that he had nearly set the chair down on her bare thighs. He hadn't noticed either, until Emma had pointed her out.

He set the brat and Coke down, then moved the chair around the girl, and sat. The chair groaned under his weight. Emma looked at his meal as if she couldn't imagine how anyone could eat that stuff.

It was not the kind of food a man should eat in front of a woman he found attractive. But he couldn't think of a way to beat a hasty retreat.

“I didn't mean to intrude,” he said.

“I know.” Her voice was gentle. He could barely hear it over the din around him. “I've been here long enough. I'll vacate the table soon.”

But she made no move to leave, and he suddenly understood what she was doing.

She was saying good-bye. Did she know that he was going to make sure she wouldn't come back? Probably. It was becoming clearer and clearer that whatever her problem with rules and regulations and honesty, she was a very intelligent woman.

“This is one of the most beautiful places on Earth, don't you think?” he asked and then inwardly winced. How lame was that?

But she didn't seem to notice. Instead she seemed to be pondering his words.

“It shouldn't be,” she said. “That great stone building behind us, the ground covered in concrete. Why, you even have to strain to get your feet into the lake from here. You're better off going down the bike path a ways.”

He picked up the brat, and some of the kraut fell out. He had forgotten a fork.

“But there's something about the people having a good time around you, and the view of the lake, and the smell of beer that makes this seem—I don't know—comforting, maybe.” She sighed and leaned her head back. “I'm going to miss it.”

“Everyone does,” he said. “People who have left Madison always make pilgrimages to the Terrace.”

She laughed without humor. “The modern Madisonian's Holy Land, huh? If it were taken over by nonintellectuals, would there be a crusade to save it?”

He hadn't expected the whimsy, especially since the sadness was still in her eyes. Part of him wanted to make that sadness leave. “Where do you think Richard the Lionheart lives? California?”

“California's certainly far enough away,” she said. “But England is a small nation that thought it was more important than it was. And it was cold and perpetually damp. I would think that if we were to find the modern Richard, he'd be in Washington State or Oregon—”

She stopped abruptly and the wistful look was gone. The sadness, banished for just a moment, was back.

He set his brat down. “Is that where you're going? The Pacific Northwest?”

“Oregon,” she said softly. “It was my home until I came here.”

“That's why you have the poster in your office.”

She nodded.

“I suppose you missed it.”

“Oregon?” She seemed surprised. “Maybe a little. In the winter. I hadn't been around snow much before this. But Madison's the first home I've ever made for myself.”

Her voice trailed off again. She seemed inordinately sad. There had to be more to this than she was telling him.

“You'll be coming back, won't you?” he asked, and then mentally kicked himself. He didn't want her to be back at the university. He had just spent the entire morning thinking about that, about how he didn't want her in the department.

About how she would look naked.

The thought made him glance at her face. She was staring at the lake, fortunately. He wondered if she had seen desire flicker across his own face, and hoped not. No matter how attracted to her he was, he didn't want to be involved with her. He wanted nothing to do with her and her vanishing furniture and instant time travel.

Still, she had the clearest, freshest skin he'd ever seen. It was a creamy color and the slight wind had brought out the natural rose of her cheeks. She was the only person he had ever met who had no blood vessels in the whites of her eyes. That made her pupils seem even brighter than they were, fresher, as if they had more life in them than any other woman's eyes he had ever seen.

“Michael,” she said, turning toward him, and then she stopped. He felt the beginnings of a blush warm his face. He hadn't blushed since he was eighteen and Sally Marquardt, who was the advanced age of twenty-five, had whispered a sexual suggestion in his ear that had so shocked him that he had no other response.

“Are you all right?” Emma asked.

He swallowed, picked up his brat again, and bit it even though he wasn't hungry anymore. The sandwich was cold. There was nothing worse than cold sauerkraut. “Fine,” he managed around the food.

Then he washed the offending bite down with a slug of Coke.

Emma was still looking at him contemplatively. “Michael, aren't you even curious about my magic?”

“Hmmm?” he asked, surprised. He hadn't expected the conversation to go in this direction.

“I mean, that's your area, right? Magic?”

He nodded. “The history of it.”

She glanced over her shoulders as if she were afraid of being overheard. Were there magic police who arrested anyone who revealed the secret? He took another sip of Coke so that a nervous laugh wouldn't escape him.

“But you just discovered that magic really does exist. Doesn't that change what you're writing?”

He froze. That was the thought he'd been trying not to have ever since yesterday morning. The short analysis he'd done then had been more than enough to terrify him.

“Emma,” he said. “If I write a historical text that claims magic exists, I'll lose any credibility I've ever had with my colleagues.”

“I suppose.” She leaned back. A delicate frown creased her forehead. “But you could talk about practices none of them even know about, and you don't have to sanction it, just say that some people believe it exists.”

“How would I do that?” he asked. “There isn't much primary material on real magic, is there?”

“Of course there is,” she said. “You just have to know how to read it. I'll help you.”

His fingers gripped his Coke cup so hard that it crumpled inward. Coke spilled over his hand, and down the table, onto the psychology major still studying at his feet.

“Hey!” she said. “What're you doing?”

He grabbed a handful of napkins, apologizing as he did so. The psych major scooted away from him—too close to a table full of beer drinkers and glared. He thrust the napkins at her and she snatched them away.

“You're awful careless,” she said.

“I wasn't the one studying on the ground.”

“Yeah, well, you know, you should always pay attention to your surroundings. It's not like I wasn't there, you know?”

He didn't quite follow that, but then it wasn't really worth his time to try. He turned back to Emma. She had mopped the rest of the Coke off the table, and had just tossed the wad of paper at a nearby garbage can.

“Why did it make you so nervous when I said I'd help you?” she asked.

He wasn't entirely sure. Maybe it was the thought of working beside her in a library, the fragrance from her dark hair wafting toward him, or maybe it was the way her soft voice had haunted his dreams.

Or maybe it was the fear of having her inept scholarship taint his own.