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“What’s right isus—you and me. We fit together perfectly. How could anyone begrudge us our happiness when they see how good we are together?” He massaged the back of my neck. “Your muscles are really tight. Why don’t you take a nice long bath while I make dinner?”
That sounded like such a good idea that I followed Liam’s advice. I think he still felt bad about the argument, though, because he came upstairs while I was in the tub and offered to shampoo my hair. He sat on the rim of the tub and rubbed the lavender-scented shampoo into my scalp, kneading the muscles in the back of my neck and shoulders. Then he picked up the soap and lathered my back. “Hm…I could do this better if I wereinthe tub…”
I heard his clothes slipping to the floor and then he was climbing into the tub behind me, sliding his legs around either side of me. He massaged my scalp and neck, his fingers whisking the tension away as though by magic. He soaped my back, stroking wide arcs along my shoulder blades.
“Ummm,” I moaned, leaning back against his chest, the soap from my back making his skin slick. He reached around me and lathered my breasts, pinching my nipples lightly. I moaned and scooched my behind back between his legs and felt him go hard. He lifted my hips, tilting me forward, andcame into me from behind, sliding inside me so fast and sofarthat I felt a part of me that had never been touched before leap into life. I cried out with a sound that startled both of us.
“Did I hurt you?” he panted in my ear.
“No,” I said, although in truth I wasn’t sure if what I was feeling was pleasure or pain. I only knew I wanted more.
I got up early the next day to go by the dean’s office before class to make sure that she heard the news that Liam and I were living together from me and not from one of the students.
“That’s nice, dear,” she said, smiling vaguely while accepting a cup of tea from Mara, who was there helping her sort admission forms. “He seems like a nice young man. We were so lucky that he happened to have sent in his application just when we lost poor Phoenix.” She shivered and drew a shawl up around her shoulders. The shawl made her look old—she’d lost weight over the break and her hair was so thin I could see patches of her scalp.She’s fading, Frank had said. She did look as if she were dissolving into the muted wallpaper of her office. “I guess it was lucky for you, too.”
“Lucky?” I asked.
“Yes, if Phoenix hadn’t left you wouldn’t have met your new young man.”
I stared at her, aghast that she was suggesting I was lucky that poor Phoenix had had a nervous breakdown.
“I’m sure what the dean means,” Mara said, laying her hand on the dean’s frail shoulder, “is that we were all lucky to get a very competent teacher to replace poor Miss Phoenix while she is getting a chance to rest and get better.”
“Yes, that’s just what I meant. Thank you, Mara dear,” the dean said, patting Mara’s hand. “And I am lucky that you were here to help with the next year’s applications over the break. Usually I read each and every one myself and then hand them over to admissions with my recommendations, but this year Ijust didn’t feel quite up to it so Mara has read them to me. She has a very soothing voice.”
I tried not to look incredulous, but I couldn’t help wondering what Mara’s fractured English had done to those applications—or be somewhat shocked to see Mara’s hand still lying on the dean’s shoulder. Maybe in Mara’s country such physical contact between young and old people was more common—maybe Mara thought of the dean as a surrogate grandmother—but I had been brought up in the sexual harassment era and the easy physical contact made me uncomfortable.
“We’re almost done with all the applications, aren’t we?” Liz looked up hopefully, like a child asking if she had to take any more distasteful medicine.
“Almost, Dean Book. We have a handful left that I think we can finish today.”
“Excellent, Mara. But I’m afraid I won’t have enough work to keep you busy then. Perhaps someone else needs an assistant…”
“What about you, Professor McFay, aren’t you writing a book? That must be hard to do with your teaching responsibilities.”
“That’s right, Callie, you’re working on a book about Dahlia LaMotte, aren’t you? How’s that coming?”
“Oh, it’s coming along fine,” I lied. The truth was that I hadn’t done any work on it in weeks. “There’s a lot of material to organize.”
“Well, then, why don’t you take Mara? I’ll assign her to you as a research assistant.” The dean beamed at me and at Mara—the first really animated expression I’d seen on her face since I’d come into the office. Clearly she was pleased with herself for solving two dilemmas at once. And honestly, I could use the help. It was only the second day of the semester and already the essays I’d asked my students to write in class yesterday were weighing down my bag. Maybe I could get Mara to grade them. Although her spoken English was awkward, herwritten command of the language was impressive and she was a punctilious stickler for grammar and spelling. I could also have her catalog the Dahlia LaMotte manuscripts.
“That would actually be great,” I told Liz. “If it’s okay with Mara,” I added, glancing worriedly at the girl. We’d been talking about her as if she were a piece of chattel to be traded between us. But Mara looked almost as pleased as Dean Book.
“It will be an honor to work for you,” she said in her stilted, formal English. “I’m happy to be of use.”
I was still a little worried that some of my students—especially the ones who had crushes on Liam—would be jealous of my new relationship, but I couldn’t detect anything like that in class. After class that day, Nicky Ballard came up to tell me that she was glad I wasn’t all alone in “that house” anymore and that she thought Professor Doyle was perfect for me.
“You’ve both been so nice to me. I’m really looking forward to doing the independent study with both of you. I wrote a lot over Christmas.” Nicky, looking well rested and happy from her break, didn’t betray any sign of jealousy even though I knew she had a crush on Liam.
The only person who did begrudge my new romantic liaison was Frank Delmarco, who cornered me in the department office later that week.
“I hear you and Mr. Poetry are shacking up. That was pretty quick. Didn’t you just break up with some other guy? Do you think it’s such a good idea to move in with another man so soon—especially one you don’t really know anything about?”
“Who are you, my mother?” I snapped angrily—partly to cover up my inability to answer his questions.
I knew it was too soon, that Liam and I were moving too fast. At times I felt like I’d stepped on one of those conveyor belts that moved tired travelers through airports. How exactly did I get here? I would wonder, coming home at night to findLiam lighting a fire in the library and handing me a glass of wine to drink while he finished dinner. (I knew I should offer to cook sometimes, but I’d started working with Mara in the afternoons and I always felt so tired when I came home.) After dinner we’d curl up on the couch in front of the fire and I’d think, Who cares? Why question happiness? And when, later in bed, I watched Liam’s face above me, pale in the moonlight that struggled through the opaque ice-coated windows, I’d think: All we ever have isnow—this moment—so how can it ever be too soon to be happy?
