“So why don’tyounominate him?” Rawlins asked.
“Because I want him to win the damn thing. I’m his adviser, and it reflects better on both of us if someone else puts him forward. Plus,” Gallway added, “your name still has a certain…cachet. Fame, you know. The bestseller. Don’t be modest. Your endorsement would give him a leg up.”
Rawlins was not entirely immune to flattery, but Gallway’s attempt had backfired; the subtext of the word “still” spoke volumes, implying adespitethat went unspoken. Despite the fact that you haven’t published a new book in several years. Despite the fact that your contributions to the field are effectively finished.
“So you wantmeto do the work of nominating him, whileyouaccrue the benefit,” Rawlins said. It was true that nominating a student was not a simple matter of writing a letter; to limit the number of applicants, they had made the process laborious and time-consuming.
“Oh, don’t worry about any of that.” Gallway put a hand on Rawlins’s shoulder and shook it playfully. “I’ll take care of all the work. I just need you to personalize the letter and then sign off on it all.”
“Sorry,” Rawlins said. “I just don’t view him as the caliber of scholar that the award is meant for.”
“Come on now. You know it would be good for our program,” Gallway said. “And it’s not like there’s anyone else in this cohort who’s better qualified for it.”
Rawlins checked his watch. “Maybe,” he murmured, then picked up his bag. “I’ve got a class to teach. And if he’s qualified for the prize, I’m sure the nomination of his own adviser will mean more than mine.”
While Rawlins was teaching hisTuesday lecture section, he discovered that he now had two different Ellsbeth problems, which were distinct but not wholly unrelated.
The first was the question of how to handle a particularly gifted student. His approach with Max had been unrestrained encouragement, and that had ended disastrously. He could not help but wonder if his praise had stoked the boy’s ego, convinced him of his own power and entitlement, when what he had needed were boundaries that would have kept him safe.
There was a simple lesson Rawlins took from that tragedy: Among students, effort should be more valuable to him than talent. He praised discipline now, not potential.
So he forced himself, with difficulty, to give Ellsbeth no special treatment. The girl had already admitted her own impatience, he didn’t need her walking around convinced of her own genius.
But after reading her ritual, treating her like any other student wasn’t easy. He was excited by her insights and opinions: When he asked the class a challenging question about the theoretical basis for performing a thermomantic ritual on a liquid-state substance, Ellsbeth’s hand rose immediately, and Rawlins found himself genuinely curious to hear her reply. For a moment, he wished they weren’t in class at all, that he was sitting across from her in a restaurant, discussing rituals over dinner.
That was the second Ellsbeth problem: For the first time in his professional career, he was fiercely attracted to one of his students. Plenty of pretty girls had come through the program, and he’d entertained idle fantasies, but this was different. His mind was constantly pulled toward Ellsbeth, the same way his gaze was pulled toward her in class. He would turn away from the blackboard, and suddenly their eyes would meet, and he would experience a thrill—a tingle on his scalp as he wondered what she was thinking—followed by a rush of nervousness, as though surely the moment of eye contact had given away the connection between them. Ellsbeth would look down at her notebook, and he would see the ghost of a coy smile on her lips. He would lose his place and need to vamp, grateful that he had done this lecture a dozen times, and even his rambling had the weight and cadence of importance.
It wasn’t merely a physical attraction; Ellsbeth lingered in his mind like a wine stain. Helikedher. Her humor, her flirtatiousness, her brazenness. Their email exchanges left him charged, energized as if he had just downed several small cups of espresso.
It was intoxicating—which only added to the problem. The force of his desire left him unmoored, but it also made him distrustful—of his own thoughts, yes, but of her motivations as well. Wanting like this did not simplyhappen;it was cultivated, it was caused. And while it seemed paranoid to view this bookish girl as some sort of femme fatale, it was true that she had pursued him, from the very beginning, with an agenda. To get into the program, to study a forbidden discipline. Which was more likely: that she might have happened to fall for himwhilegetting what she wanted, or that the two were connected?
He thought of the day he had seen her downtown at the civic center, when she had concealed something from him. A student telling him a white lie was generally no cause for alarm—but when he wasfallinglike this, finding himself wanting to know her inside and out andtrusther—it was a bracing reminder that he was on shaky ground.
He needed to proceed with caution. To keep his libido in check. To make sure their delightfully provocative email exchanges, toeing the line of propriety, did not escalate into something more serious, which could have grave potential consequences. Even if hewantedit to, so badly he could taste it, he had to confine his longings to the plausible-deniability realm of a few overly flirtatious emails. That was his only hope of maintaining his equilibrium and whatever measure of power he had in this situation.
When he wrapped up his graduate lecture about Galvani’s insights on thermomantism, it was a relief to reach the end of the discussion that day and dismiss the students. He reminded them of their assigned reading before Practicum and avoided eye contact as he added, in a voice of practiced casualness, “Anyone who sent me work this weekend, stick around for a minute.”
The students filed out, and Rawlins rifled through his bag, as though he couldn’t remember which cohort member, or how many, had turned in a paper for him to hand back. He looked up, feigning surprise, to find that only Ellsbeth remained in the room.
“Ms. Storer. That’s right. Your rough draft.” He handed over aprintout of Ellsbeth’s ritual, marked up in red pen. Shockingly little red pen, for how complex the ritual was.
She didn’t simply take the paper and leave; she hovered, looking through his comments.
She saw the error she had made with an abbreviation and winced. “Ugh, sorry about that.”
“A careless mistake,” he said.
“Maybe I was a little distracted,” she said. “Thinking about something else this weekend.”
“You’ll have to learn focus, then. Discipline.” His heart raced. God, was heblushing?
Ellsbeth finished scanning his notes, then lowered the page and studied his expression. “Thank you for the feedback. This all feels very manageable. But I’m just wondering…I mean. What do you think? Will it work?”
Rawlins felt his mouth go dry, and reminded himself:Be professional. “Do the revision, and then we can talk about that.”
“Okay,” Ellsbeth said. “But these are mostly typos. The ritual itself is going to be the same in the next draft. What do you think? Of the work?”
“WhatIthink,” Rawlins said, “is that you should focus on addressing the notes.”
