“I see,” Rawlins said, trying to maintain what he hoped was an impassive face while shifting as his cock hardened in his pants, hoping his movement was covered by the picnic table.
“What Ineed…is someone who can take control,” Ellsbeth said. “Who can tell me what to do. And fuck me the way I like. And I think you want that, too.”
His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, his neck felt hot despite the chill in the air, and he thought, uncomfortably, of the boy with the bike, numbly compliant, which made Rawlins feel once again theexhilarationof that power. Then the image intertwined, strangely, with the sight of Ellsbeth on his office chair, thighs parted. A twisted marriage of two memories, creating a Gordian knot of feelings—desire and guilt and curiosity and anger and excitement—all overlapping and inextricable.
Ellsbeth leaned in, waiting for his reaction, and when it became apparent he didn’t have a clue what to say, she broke the silence. “But hey, if you’re not interested…” She shrugged and stood up, pulling her coat tight against the wind. “I’ll find someone else who is.”
From:Rawlins.T.M.
To:Storer.Ellsbeth
Subject:Our Conversation Yesterday
Ellsbeth,
After giving the matter some thought, I agree that it might be possible for us to enjoy our complementary proclivities without any emotional entanglement. But to make that work, I will need you to be…cooperative. As a scholar, you are served by your willfulness and your impatience and your pride. But those traits make me wonder if you can really let someone control you in the way you say you want.
So first I would require a demonstration of your willingness. When you come to class tomorrow, I want you to wear a top that is low-cut enough to be revealing, and a skirt that is short enough to draw attention, with nothing underneath. Given the weather, a coat or sweater is permitted, so long as it is removed when you take your seat. And since you are so proud of your punctuality, I want you to come five minutes late, and make a convincing apology to me and the entire class.
You will sit in the front row and take notes diligently. When I look at you, you will part your thighs and show me that you have cooperated fully with my instruction. Nothing underneath.
I think I have been clear, and there should be no need to write back until your demonstration of willingness is complete.
Rawlins
From:Rawlins.T.M.
To:Storer.Ellsbeth
Subject: Re:Our Conversation Yesterday
Ellsbeth,
Good girl.
I’m sure you were eager for an evaluation of your performance, and it’s rare that I have a chance to give a student evaluation in such blunt terms. Sartorially, impeccable choices. I noticed that Curt was quite taken with your new look, and he did not have nearly the view that I did. Which, I must say, was exquisite.
I am impressed enough to proceed, but as your instructor, I think it’s important for us to work on your patience. So I’d like you to stop by during my office hours today. No need to say a word, simply step over and take off the black leather belt I am wearing. But nothing more after that. I want you to go home, put it on your desk, and leave it there forme.
This time, we’ll meet at your place. Send me your address and I’ll come over. Before I arrive, take a hot bath. I want you not only clean, but relaxed. Wear a pair of white underwear and nothing else.
When I get there, have a bottle of decent red wine open to breathe on the table, with a proper glass, and my belt beside it. Leave the door open and unlocked at 8 p.m.; I will come sometime after that, but I won’t say how long. Whether it’s a minute or an hour, I will endeavor to make it worth the wait.
Rawlins
Ellsbeth
Ellsbeth had a routine she tended to abide by after Rawlins’s lectures. The class let out at noon, and Ellsbeth would walk across the small grassy quad on the western side of campus to the student center, where she could purchase a sandwich and a self-serve cardboard cup of black coffee without needing to actually interact with another human being beyond a nod of acknowledgment to the sleepy undergraduate cashier who swiped her studentID.
She’d bring her lunch into the graduate center library, where one of the wooden study carrels carved with decades of initials and bad doodles was always free underneath the stained-glass windows. Normally, the time passed so quickly that Ellsbeth wouldn’t even realize it was evening until the lamp at her desk automatically clicked on, set to a timer like the cabin of an airplane. But her thesis proposal, not due for months, was all but written, and she had already finished Rawlins’s deathly boring assigned reading (A Metaphysical Understanding of the Arcane as a Reflection of Victorian-Era Paranoia).
And so Ellsbeth opened her computer, refreshed her email twice, went to the homepage ofThe New York Times,and counted down the minutes until Rawlins’s office hours.
The hours until three o’clock were like a massive block of ice in front of her; she was forced to stare at it, bored and unmoving, until it melted. She had no motivation to accomplish anything productive until then. All that was to be done was to keep checking the clock inthe corner of her laptop screen and hope that more than two minutes had passed between each glance.
Ellsbeth despised afternoons like this, lazy uninspired stretches that she spent wishing away time, the one precious recourse of existence. She scrolled through a celebrity gossip site, and then theNew England Journal of Mechanicals.She recognized a byline: Curt Ladove. His article was rudimentary and proved a self-evident point—an explanation of a study he had done on whether the amount of smoke produced in a diagnostic ritual correlated with the accuracy of the results. Curt’s conclusion: It did not. Still, just being published as a graduate student in one of the most prestigious journals in the field would no doubt give Curt a leg up when it came to applying for the all-too-few remaining tenure-track positions that existed in their field. (Ellsbeth comforted herself with the knowledge that as soon as he had his degree, Curt would almost certainly be the type to abscond from the pilled-sweater-and-warm-wine-in-plastic-cups world of academia and make six figures consulting for a pharmaceutical company or an investment bank.)
Ellsbeth refreshed her email again. It was thewaitingthat she hated, the feeling that there was a new, thrilling development in her life just around the corner but there was nothing she could do to speed its advance. No emails promising glamorous internships or buzzy fellowships appeared in her inbox. Nothing new from Rawlins. On the third refresh, there was an invitation from the College of the Arcane Arts to a wine-and-cheese mixer after a lecture from Dean Lennox on the “possibility and promise of perpetual motion” before the winter holidays.
