CHAPTER 16
Nate
The noodles cooked in the pot, the sauce ready for the egg to complete the dish. Once the garlic toast was finished, I opened my laptop and set it on the kitchen counter. Most of the students and faculty were on the patio, drinking and waiting for dinner, while the rest were showering. Mara was upstairs, I hoped reading her new book. I had a few minutes to check my email before adding the final touches to our dinner.
An unread newsletter for one of the local colleges, the Experimental Distance College of Southern Nevada, the subject:EDCSN seeks Director of Humanities.I scanned the rest of the email. I was comfortable at Las Vegas University. I might have despised my colleagues for their pretentious attitudes, but I was guilty of it too. And it was a job, and after seven years of lecturing with tenure close to my grasp, I didn’t have any reason to leave. Besides, EDCSN would mean teaching online, seminars via streaming, forums for participation. It was harder to argue with a student and force them to see the other side with a screen as a barrier. Yet EDCSN was always a curious college to me, yet it had never been an option. Besides, the Crossing Collaborations Contest wasn’t over yet. I had made a commitment to see it through with Mara. It would be wrong to do otherwise.
But why did I want tenure? I had more than enough money. The content was fascinating, and it always found new ways to challenge me. Tenure had been the unachievable goal, something to prove that it wasn’t a distant, faint idea. Another argument to prove wrong. But was that enough of a reason to stay at LVU for another seven years?
Mara was reason enough. Until she graduated.
But then a subtitle in the EDCSN newsletter caught my eye:Florence Berkley to take short-term positionin Humanities.Why Berkley had any interest in a small college in Las Vegas was beyond me. She must have known someone there, perhaps an administrative official that had called in a favor. She had to be in her eighties by now.
Florence Berkley. Mara’s favorite theorist.
An image danced in my mind: Mara’s gaping jaw as she shook hands with Berkley. The two of them would hit it off, discussing the peculiarities of the world, while I took a back seat, watching them absorbed in their discussion. Maybe applying to the position at EDCSN wouldn’t be entirely bad. If only a chance to get to know Berkley. To ask her a favor myself.
And if I got the position, I wouldn’t be working at LVU. Mara and I could actually be together. Without hiding it.
The cackle of voices and laughter came into the house, followed by the sounds of bare feet on the hard floor. I closed my laptop and finished the pasta. The professors and students entered the kitchen, and I directed them on which plates and bottles of wine to take back to the table on the patio. As the rest of the group took their places, Mara took the empty seat across from me.
It was better for both of us to be at a distance. If she were close to me, I would be tempted to touch her, to caress her thigh, any excuse to remind her that I was there, waiting for her. And at least this way, I could look at her. A subtle blush on her skin from the warm sun, her round cheeks grinning at the food.
“It smells so good,” she said. “Thank you, Dr. Evans.”
A murmur of thank yous followed hers, and for a moment, the group was silent, too engaged with the food to bother with polite banter or heated academic argument. Mara and I locked eyes, and everything was dim. There was no one around us. Just the two of us sharing a meal on the backyard patio. Enjoying the evening.
But we weren’t alone. We were a part of a group.
“And he cooks too,” Jessica finally said, breaking the silence.
“Yes, what don’t you do, Dr. Evans?” Dr. Smith said, raising her brow. “You should give a webinar on stock market investments.”
I cringed inwardly. A few excited chirps echoed at her suggestion, but I shook my head. “You can’t give a talk on luck,” I said.
Dr. Smith rolled her eyes. “Give me a break, Evans,” she said. “Do you call it ‘luck’ when you scored Mara?”
‘Scored’ was a curious word. I glanced at Mara, who was furiously blushing. “I call it a professor’s intuition,” I said, my eyes glued to Mara.
“I should’ve listened to that intuition,” Dr. Smith said. I was glad she hadn’t. Had Mara somehow wound up as her pupil instead of mine, would I have met her, the real her? There wasn’t a guarantee that we would have crossed paths beyond LVU.
At the end of the meal, a few students, Mara included, helped clear the table, then went to the sitting room to discuss their theories on the human experience. Jessica was particularly drunk, talking loudly, her theory breaking through the rest. Dr. Smith idled at the kitchen counter, watching me clean. She had something to say. She was taking her time, figuring out her wording.
“Out with it,” I said. I turned off the faucet and waited. “What’s on your mind?”
“I was wondering,” she paused, eyeing the doorway leading to the sitting room. A soft hush of a conversation trickled into the kitchen. “Have you composed the counter-response to the contest essay?”
“Not sure if I’ll finish it,” I said.
“But youdidcome up with a response?”
She was searching for something, perhaps a motive to use against me. But there was nothing in my words that was a secret. I had a reputation for writing counter-responses for the sole purpose of teaching the student to defend their arguments. Mara knew that.
But I couldn’t argue with Mara. Not when it came to power and submission.
“I always do,” I said.
“She’s a strange one,” Dr. Smith said. “Had I realized her potential, I would have given her a chance.”
