He clears his throat, and my eyes jump back to the road.
“I only wear it when I’m playing,” he says. “And I don’t play often anymore. Just for special occasions. Like this.” He goes quiet, and the song on the radio switches, some kind of string instrument now playing alongside the bagpipes. “I’m a teacher. A professor.”
“College professor?”
“Yes,” he says. “University.”
I turn the steering wheel, following the path of yet another roundabout, exiting when the GPS tells me to.
“What do you teach?”
“Poetry,” he says. “Other literature courses as well, but I specialize in poetry.”
“Brains,”I think. My initial assessment was correct. Really, the signs were there all along. The glasses, the elbow-patched sweater, the authority when he speaks.
“What’s that like?” I ask.
He lifts a hand, adjusting his glasses, and I’m not sure if he’s about to shut down. He’s been speaking to me fairly cordially for a while, which means he’s due for a cold snap. A glare, a look of disdain, a huff of disappointment. But he continues, speaking normally, as if he’s forgotten he hates me.
“It’s…it’s nice. I enjoy the students, the perspectives they bring, the way I can read the same passage for years and years but find new meaning each time.” He sits up straighter, his eyes brightening. “We’re also introducing new texts—well, texts that are somewhat new to the department—outside a typical Western academic gaze. Rumi and Hafez and Tagore and more recent voices too, Kamala Das and Meena Alexander. And my students have really taken to that, especially my students who are members of a diaspora. Whether they were born here or come from abroad. It’s the kind of thing I wish—”
He comes to an abrupt stop, and the air shifts. I can feel the mood change as if it’s a tangible thing. A drop in temperature. But I push forward.
“You wish what?” I ask softly.
He doesn’t respond, and when I glance at him, his mouth is pulled tight. His jaw firm.
“Nothing.”
Left turn ahead,the robotic GPS voice chimes.No kidding,I want to respond.
Because that’s what speaking to Jacob feels like. One hard turn after another as he changes personalities and expressions and moods like the wind, and I can’t keep track of them all. I should find it exhausting, but instead…it’s almost compelling. I’ve gotten even the most hardened contestants to open up before. I can do it again. It’s just…a challenge.
It’s not that I have any personal interest in getting to know him,in peeling back his layers, in getting him toseeme again. It’s not as if I want to know what happened. Why he changed from the warm, gentle man I’d met at the bar to the man beside me now.
“I would have enjoyed something like that in school,” I say. “Our curriculum was incredibly Eurocentric. I actually didn’t realize it until much later.”
I pause, giving him a chance to say something, but he remains silent.
“My college roommate went on to get her doctorate in education,” I continue. “And this was one of her areas of interest. Decolonizing educational standards and curricula. We used to talk about it all the time, but—”
Now I’m the one to stop mid-sentence. Because I haven’t spoken to Tara in six months. Maybe more. We once lived together, spent every second outside of class together. We pumped each other up for first dates, and cried together through breakups, and coordinated themed outfits for Halloween frat parties, and were there for each other through multiple breakdowns and existential crises about school and life and our careers.
But now? She still lives in L.A., but I’m barely there, and she has a toddler, so it’s hard to meet up. We don’t even text much, outside of birthdays and important occasions. Neither of us initiates anything outside of that.
“But?” Jacob prompts, and the way he sounds right now, softer than before, pulls the words right out of me.
“We don’t see each other that often anymore, so we don’t really talk about it.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “This is one of your friends who got married?” he asks.
“Uh, yeah. She’s married.” I pause. “She has a kid now too.”
The silence returns for a bit.
“None of my friends have children,” he says. “But I can see how that might…how that could make a friendship change.”
“Yeah,” I say. “And it’s—her son’s so little. So I understand, really. She can’t just make plans at the last minute anymore. Things are different now, but—I don’t know. I used to text her all the time to try to coordinate stuff, but it never worked, and now…I don’t want to keep bothering her about it.”
