One More Time (16 page)

Matt leaned his hands on the desk, bending so that he was close to her. “Nobody put me up to this,” he whispered, letting her see that he meant it. “I’d like to talk to you, over coffee, after your test today if possible.”

“But why?”

Matt grinned. “Because you’re cute. Why else?”

She flushed crimson and her hands shook as she put her glasses back on. “Now, I know you’re joking. Go away already.”

Matt opened one of his notebooks and tore out a page. He began to write his name and telephone number on it. “My name’s Matt Coxwell. I’m in the law school so you can ask anybody there whether I’m a rapist or serial killer.”

“And if they say you are?”

“Then they’re lying.”

She chuckled at that, and he grinned.

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

She glanced over her shoulder and dropped her voice lower again. “You’ve got lousy references, then.”

“A guy’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.” He met her gaze again. “Or you could just tell me where your class is.”

“I don’t think so. What would your girlfriend think of that?”

“If you mean Sharan—”

“The blonde. The affectionate one.”

“We’re not seeing each other anymore.”

She thought about that, though there was still suspicion in her eyes.

He had to say something, so he did. “Alternatively, you could just meet me at the Java Joint after your test. Name the time.”

“It ends at four,” she said, folding the paper he had given her and tucking it into her knapsack. “But you won’t be there.”

“Yeah? Let’s make a bet.”

She leaned back, her eyes twinkling. “Oh, that’s an easy deal to make. If you don’t show, you can’t pay any stakes you owe for not showing.”

“You’ve got my number. You could tell my mother on me, and believe me, she has no sense of humor about bad manners.”

She laughed a bit, though he could still see that she wasn’t convinced. “Four o’clock at the Java Joint, then.”

“Good luck on your test.”

“Thanks.” She smiled then, a brilliant and genuine smile that lit her features and left Matt blinking like a deer in the headlights. All too soon, she ducked her head, dismissing him by her inattention.

He wasn’t quite ready to leave, though.

“You never told me your name,” Matt whispered and her answering smile was so mischievous that his heart rolled over and played dead.

“If you show up at the Java Joint, I’ll tell you then.”

Matt smiled into the stream of hot water, recalling Leslie’s certainty that he wouldn’t be there, that he was putting her on.

Oh, he had shown. There hadn’t been any doubt that he’d do so, even though he’d had to skip one of his toughest classes to do it.

There’d been hell to pay from that old snarly prof—what had been his name? Bentley or something. Mean bastard. Probably a pal of Matt’s father... Matt neatly sidestepped the direction that thought was going to take him—but it had been worth it to see Leslie’s astonishment when she stepped into the Java Joint at five past four and saw him there, waiting just for her.

He’d had his first glimpse that day in the library of an ability of Leslie’s that had never failed to amaze him—her ability to remember so much information and to pull it together into a coherent whole. She integrated vast amounts of data so easily, never guessing how difficult it was for other people.

And when she had talked about her test afterward, he had seen her love for learning, her passion for history. Her eyes had shone with an intoxicating enthusiasm, one he wanted to see over and over again. Given his indifference for his own studies, her excitement was both alien and fascinating.

So, why did she hate her job now?

How could she hate her job as a tenured professor of medieval history? It was the only thing she had ever wanted to do—she’d told him as much. Anger roiled within him, anger that she hadn’t taken him into her confidence.

It was anger that he knew didn’t have its root in Leslie’s behavior, but just needed a focus. Even recognizing that didn’t make him less angry.

Matt rubbed himself dry and knotted the towel around his waist. There was only one way to get to the bottom of this and Sharan had said that he was welcome to use the phone.

One more call.

He snagged some aspirin out of the medicine cabinet and got himself another cup of coffee before he called north, in the hope that he would sound more human than he felt.

There was an outside chance that he could pull it off.

As he was dialing, he decided not to tell Leslie about the mugging. If he was disconnecting their lives, then he couldn’t expect her to console him or worry about him. It was time to start living apart in every sense.

Lying about his reason for needing his credit card numbers was the only decent thing to do.

* * *

By the time Leslie strode into her lecture hall, her tolerance was running at a dangerous low. This was a third-year class on the society and culture of the high middle ages. There were only about seventy-five bodies in this section: in each successive year, as courses became more specialized, the numbers dropped in a kind of natural selection. By the fourth year, there would only be twenty or so in each seminar, and they would pretty much be the ones aiming for grad school.

Leslie put the folder filled with their first essays down on the podium with a thunk. They kept talking to each other, which always infuriated her. She looked pointedly at the clock, which was at the hour, to no avail.

So, she looked at them. No, she glared.

Here was the future of scholarship and it was a depressing sight. It was even more depressing that academic excellence, curiosity and learning were being sacrificed to the greater good of the university as a financial entity. Leslie hadn’t signed up for bureaucracy and bullshit, but that’s what Dinkelmann seemed determined to bring to the table.

And thinking about that made her impulsively decide to chuck one of her burdens into the abyss. She might regret it, but you only live once.

Sayonara to the big heavy box called
Dutiful Professor
. It could keep
Team Player
company, down there in the bottom of the abyss. Oh, look, there went
Compassionate Teacher
.

Look at them tumble down, down, down.

Dinkelmann had pushed Crabcake Coxwell too far.

* * *

Poodles?

Beverly couldn’t believe it. She must have heard the bequest incorrectly. Marissa’s lawyer and his assistant beamed at her, so certain she would be thrilled by her windfall that she felt it would be rude to express displeasure.

Or astonishment.

“Did you say
poodles
?”

The lawyer’s smile broadened. “Yes! Two of them. Wonderful dogs. They were Marissa’s pride and joy. You’re very fortunate that she trusted you with their welfare.”

“They would be dogs, then,” Beverly said. “Actual live dogs.”

The lawyer chuckled and nodded, apparently thinking she was overwhelmed by her good fortune. “Of course.”

Dogs. Beverly didn’t have dogs. She didn’t particularly like dogs and she was developing a sudden vehement dislike of Marissa Fitzgibbons.

Dogs
. Plural, as in more than one dog.

“Is there any sherry, by chance?” she asked. It would take two glasses to set her straight at this point, but she couldn’t believe anyone would begrudge her that small indulgence.

The lawyer shook his head. “Marissa was a teetotaler.”

“I could make you a cup of ginseng tea,” the younger man offered.

“Thank you, no.” Beverly decided she’d stop at the liquor store on the way home, James and AA be damned. If she doled it out in nice little glasses, no one would ever know that she’d fallen off the wagon. She rose, filled with purpose, and made to leave.

“But don’t you want to meet the girls?” the lawyer asked, apparently surprised.

“We assumed you’d take them home with you today,” the younger man said, so earnest that Beverly wanted to shake him.

“What girls?”

“The poodles!”

“Today?” She was supposed to take dogs home with no warning? “I’m supposed to take them with me now?”

“There’s no one to take care of them, and they can’t stay in Marissa’s empty apartment alone.” The lawyer shook a playful finger at Beverly, and she glared at him for such inappropriate familiarity. “Marissa was so sure you’d love her girls.”

“They are not girls from what you have said: they are dogs.”

“Not dogs,” the lawyer said with a shake of his head. “Poodles!”

“You’ll see once you meet them. They’re the most amazing dogs,” the younger man said with an enthusiasm that was equally inappropriate.

Beverly passed a hand over her brow with resignation. She had clearly stepped into a universe in which everyone was insane and the only way to escape was to humor them.

“Well, why wouldn’t I want to meet them?” she said, though it was difficult to think of making the acquaintance of dogs as one met people in a receiving line. She forced a smile. “I assumed they weren’t here.”

“Oh, they’re here, just being as good as can be!” The assistant opened the kitchen door and two massive dogs trotted into the living room, right on cue.

Beverly nearly had heart failure at the sight of them. Poodles were little, weren’t they?

Poodles were lap dogs, tiny fragile things that yelped and yapped. Beverly was quite sure of that. Poodles had curly hair and stupid haircuts.

But these dogs were massive.

Though they did have curly hair and moderately stupid haircuts.

There was little time to think about it. The dogs bounced directly toward her, as if they had known the terms of Marissa’s will in advance, and Beverly was the one who yelped.

She had time to notice that one was jet black and the other was whiter than white, that the white one led the way. Although their fur was long with an enviable curl, their faces and paws were shaved. There was a pompom on the end of each one’s wagging tail and something glittered on their pink patent leather collars.

The fashion faux pas of rhinestones on pink patent alone could have given her palpitations.

“These aren’t poodles!” Beverly protested. “Poodles are small!” She lifted her hands up and away as the dogs circled her. She was afraid they would jump on her, but the dogs immediately sat down before her, their manner expectant. They sat with front paws tightly together, chests thrust out, brown eyes fixed upon her. They were as tall as her hip, the largest frilly dogs she’d ever seen in her life.

“They’re standard poodles,” the assistant said. “Originally, the breed was this size.”

Beverly glanced at him. “Really?” seemed the sum of safe comments she could make.

“Meet Caviar and Champagne,” the lawyer said. “The two richest dogs in Massachusetts, and now, your wards.”

The dogs’ tails thumped against the carpet, probably in recognition of their names, and Beverly Coxwell felt faint.

And she’d thought she needed a drink before.

T
he clearing of the professorial throat is always a portent of doom.

Funny how Gregory of Tours had never noted that.

Maybe that was why her students didn’t seem to know what it meant.

“Perhaps some of you think that the assigned reading is not actually reading that you should do,” she said and her students stilled. The bright ones were already wary, though the few in the back who sprawled in their seats and chewed their pens were muttering cracks to each other.

She paced the front of the hall, not adverse to a little showmanship. She’d been playing this game long enough to know that a lot of it was performance art. “Perhaps you think that my time is well-spent preparing lectures which none of you will heed. Perhaps you think that I enjoy reading your feeble if not incoherent attempts to write an essay, in English, comparing two elements of medieval society. Perhaps you think that doing any work for this course would cut into your social life.” She pivoted and faced the pranksters in the back of the hall. “Perhaps you think that obtaining a university degree without actually learning anything is funny.”

Leslie waited a beat, then smiled thinly. “Unfortunately, I do not agree.”

One of the anxious ones who always sat in the front row put up her hand, then unable to wait, blurted out her protest of innocence. “But Dr. Coxwell, I did the readings!”

Leslie chose not to test her comprehension in front of the entire class, but spared her a tight smile. “Those of you, like Ms. Smith, who troubled to do your preparatory readings, as well as those who managed to read three lines on your syllabus, will be aware that today’s lecture was to concern the emergence of the individual, as Georges Duby has labeled it, in the high middle ages.”

She paused, letting them worry for a moment. Dinkelmann wanted something done with the participation mark: well, he’d get something, if not what he wanted.

“There has been a slight change to the schedule.”

A rustle passed through the group of students at this ominous comment and they looked a little less smug than they had. Leslie was surprised to find herself enjoying this. She was pretty sure that unpredictability hadn’t been part of her reputation.

Maybe it would become part of it.

“We will, instead, see the emergence of a number of individuals in this class.”

They began to take notes.

Leslie paced. “I admit that my notion of education is somewhat anachronistic and owes more to the medieval model than the contemporary one, in which a degree from an institution of higher learning is no more than a commodity to be bought and sold, or even a product in which consumer satisfaction must be assured.” She faced them, rocket boobs pointing to the back left and back right corners of the room. “In short, I expect you to actually learn something, not to simply memorize, regurgitate and forget the material from this course, then complain to the dean if you do not receive an A.”

Leslie picked up a sheet of paper from the pile she had brought in, pretending that she was referring to it. “If you turn to the second page of your syllabus—” there was a rustle of activity, and the predictable murmurs from those who had not in fact kept the syllabus that Leslie had provided to them at the beginning of the semester “—you will note that 15% of your mark is allocated to participation. The more keenly observant among you will have noticed that I do not take attendance in this lecture, so your presence alone cannot possibly be the full requirement to obtain this grade.