Nine Lives(4)

“Honestly, I don’t even know if I want to be in a relationship, but if I did want to be in one, it would be with someone closer to my age, someone unattached, someone without kids, someone I don’t work with, someone who isn’t a narcissist …”

“I already don’t trust this guy.”

Jessica smiled, even though his attempt at humor was the type of thing she had grown to dislike about him. When they’d first gotten involved, there had been a real intensity between them. Aaron was a little bit of a jerk—she’d always known that—but he took his job seriously, he had empathy, and there had been a week early on when she thought they might be falling in love. She sipped at her vodka with slightly numb lips and knew she’d made a mistake by agreeing to one more drink. She decided to change the subject. “You really didn’t think there was anything strange about that list I got in the mail?”

Aaron was signaling Anthony with just his eyes, trying to get two more drinks. “What? That list of names? That bothered you?”

“It didn’t bother me. I was just interested. It was unusual.”

“I guess so. If you want, I’ll get Rick to cross-reference them in the database. Maybe there is a connection. Maybe you all won three free days at a timeshare in Fort Myers.”

“Maybe you’re right. Just some glitch in some mass mailing system.”

Two more vodkas arrived, and Jessica eyed the glass, knowing that the difference between drinking it and not drinking it was the difference between a full night’s sleep and Aaron winding up in her bed tonight.

She slid off the stool and began to put on her coat. “Sorry, Aaron. I need an early night.”

He pursed his lips, but said, “Okay. Lunch soon?”

“Sure.”

Anthony glanced over at Jessica, and she thought she saw a little bit of approval in his eyes. Although he’d never said it out loud, Anthony was not a huge fan of Aaron. “You leaving so soon?” the bartender asked, a crooked smile on his face.

“I am, Anthony. Thanks again, and tell Maria that I loved the penne.”

Anthony was reaching for the extra vodka on the bar when Aaron stopped him. “That’s okay, T, we’ll keep it.” He poured her drink into his as Jessica knotted her scarf around her neck. She turned and left before she changed her mind. She really did need an early night.





5





THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2:00 P.M.


Thursdays were Caroline Geddes’s office hours, two hours that she had begun to rely on as quiet writing time, due to the low number of students who stopped by to see her. That Thursday there was only one, Elaine Cheong, who dropped by unannounced, while two students who had previously arranged meetings didn’t show up. Caroline had taught long enough—a dozen years now—to see how email had transformed the student-teacher relationship. Today’s students went out of their way to do everything via email, or via the wiki she’d set up for some of her larger courses. They sent their late papers, their excuses, and even their grade-grubbing compliments, all via email. One of her male students from last year might even have sent a sexual proposition to her, although, despite twenty years spent parsing text, she still wasn’t sure what he’d meant by “Wish you were my teacher aide, know what I mean? jk.” It took her half a day to realize that jk stood for “just kidding.”

Elaine, with tears in her eyes, explained to Caroline that she was late for the second class of the semester because of a problem with a faulty alarm clock and that was why she’d missed the pop quiz. “It’s not fair that I can’t make it up,” she said, for the second time.

“It was a pop quiz. It’ll be a very small part of your final grade.”

“I need to get an A in this class.”

“Tell you what, Elaine, I’ll give you a new pop quiz right now.”

Caroline pulled a piece of paper out of one of her notebooks and quickly jotted down three new questions on one of the Wordsworth poems that they hadn’t gone over in class that morning but which had been assigned. Caroline pushed the sheet of paper across to her student and told her she had ten minutes.

“This isn’t the same quiz,” Elaine said, two distinct lines appearing on her otherwise flawless forehead.

“No, it’s a new pop quiz.”

Caroline pulled out a book and pretended to read it while watching the girl bite at her lower lip so hard that she left little teeth impressions in it. “I didn’t know we were supposed to memorize dates.”

“Just do your best, and at least you’ll get better than a zero.”

Elaine hunched herself over the paper and scrawled some answers, and just before Caroline was going to announce that time was up, she pushed the paper across the desk. “I still don’t think it’s fair,” she said, but almost so low that Caroline couldn’t hear it.

“I’ll see you in class next week,” Caroline said, and Elaine left in a huff, her phone already in her hand. Caroline imagined she was texting someone about what a bitch her English professor was. It didn’t matter; there were twenty minutes left in her office hours. She glanced at her emails and there was nothing pressing to respond to, so she opened the email she’d received two weeks earlier from David Latour, the professor from McGill University whom Caroline had met when she’d delivered her lecture on Joanna Baillie at the Scholarly Theories Conference in Toronto over the summer.