Page 4 of Close Reading

“It is. I think this could be the final chapter.”

“You said that in April.”

“April was premature. This is different.”

Kim is in her seat, the bistro chair in front of the section of siding where she carved her name eleven years ago when she started her PhD. Sturdy in her green jacket, tote bag full of articles, oat milk latte. Her hair is electric blue this semester against pale, freckled skin. It was hot pink last spring, silver before that, as though all the change she is capable of has been redirected from her dissertation into her scalp.

I bring my cup back to the counter for a refill, half the usual, just to warm it up. Bea pours without comment. Then, wiping the counter with the slow deliberateness that means she is choosing her words:

“So. Margot Voss.”

“You know about the initiative?”

“I know about most things. This one I know because Alan Marsh told me when he came in for his latte yesterday, and Alan Marsh tells me everything because he thinks making small talk with the coffee shop owner is the same as having friends.” She rinses the cloth. “You’ll be working closely with her.”

“Tuesdays and Thursdays, starting next week. Some kind of shared research space.”

Bea is quiet for a moment. She folds the cloth into a neat square, practiced, something her hands can do while the rest of her is elsewhere. When she looks at me again her expression is layered: affection for me, worry I can’t place, and underneath both a protectiveness so old it has become structural, part of who Bea is.

“Margot is the most brilliant person I know,” she says. “She is also the most guarded. I’ve known her for fifteen years, and I would like her to be happy in a way I am not certain she would permit.” She sets the folded cloth on the counter. “Be patient with her. She has her reasons.”

I wait for more. More does not come. Bea moves to the next customer with the seamless redirect of a woman who has been ending conversations at exactly the right moment for two decades.

I take my coffee back to my seat. Marcus is watching me.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing.” He opens his laptop. “Bea doesn’t say things like that about people she’s not worried about.”

“She said to be patient.”

“She said Margot has her reasons. Which means Margot has a story, and the story is the kind you don’t tell a new collaborator on the first day.” He types something. “I’m adding that to the chart.”

“You’re adding Bea’s conversational subtext to an astrological chart.”

“I’m adding contextual data to a predictive model. The methodology is sound even when the results are mixed.”

I drink my Calloway. I think about Dr. Voss. The precision of her. The blazers. The silence. The way Bea folded that cloth, slowly and carefully.

Be patient with her. She has her reasons.

I think about the fact that her department is under threat and mine is not, and what that will mean when we sit across from each other next week and try to build something collaborative out of an asymmetry neither of us chose. I think about the colloquium, her voice dropping lower as the argument deepened, the whole room leaning in. And I think about my cold coffee, the coffee I forgot to drink because I was listening too hard.

I finish my Calloway and go to find my research notes.

They are under Kali. I was right about this. I am right about most things, eventually, if you give me enough time and don’t mind that I arrive seventeen minutes after you expected me.

3

MARGOT

Iarrive eight minutes early to the conference room, which by my standards is late. By the standards of the rest of the academy, of people who consider a meeting time approximate, a philosophical position rather than a commitment, eight minutes early constitutes an almost aggressive punctuality.

The room is on the second floor of Prescott Hall, wood-paneled and designed to communicate authority and age. The table seats twelve. Two chairs have been pulled to the center. The rest stand empty, pushed back against the walls, which gives the arrangement the feeling of a dinner party most of the guests had the good sense not to attend.

I have brought my materials in a folder I organized last night. The Dean’s initiative brief, annotated in my handwriting: margin notes in black ink, questions in red, structural observations in green, a color-coding system I have used since graduate school. A preliminary bibliography. Three possible structural approaches, ranked by viability. I set the folder at the seat I have chosen, facing the door, back to the window, the light behind me. I prefer to see who is coming. I prefer to be the one who is already seated, already prepared, already composed when the door opens.

I smooth the folder. I align the pen alongside the edge. I check that the three frameworks are in the correct order: weakest first, strongest last.