anything better to do than bully the new hires? This guy”—the tall, freckled young professor leaned in closer to Laurel and nodded at Kornbluth, whose face has turned three shades of red—“the legend in his own mind. Don’t trust him. He’ll stab you in the back just as soon as look at you, won’t you, Kornbluth?”
“Now see here, Cody—,” Kornbluth started.
The other professor—Cody?—cocked his head and looked at Kornbluth with a frown. “Is that your phone? Might be your agent calling.” He gestured to Kornbluth’s hand and Kornbluth automatically glanced at his Treo.
“Hah!” Cody pointed at him. “Made you look.”
Kornbluth shot him a disgusted look and tromped off through the milling faculty, leaving Laurel and Cody behind.
“Consider yourself rescued,” Professor Cody grinned at her.
Why does everyone think I need rescuing? Laurel wondered, but she had no time for a response before Cody barreled on. “Kornbluth is the Great White of the department. Shark, I mean—no race allusions intended. Don’t let the diminutive stature and lack of any quantifiable social skills fool you. He’s a killer. Any new hire is looked on as a threat to be annihilated.”
“A threat—” Laurel started, but he was already answering her.
“—to his rise in the department. Isn’t that what we all want, here in the Bermuda Triangle of academia?”
It certainly was beginning to occur to her.
“The man is just about strangling himself with his own ambition,” Cody said. “Of course, when I use the term ‘ambition’ about this crowd I’m using it very, very loosely. He is right about one thing, though—it’s all about the money.”
The brash and annoyingly attractive man in front of her had not a trace of a Southern accent. In fact, there was a suspiciously Valley lilt to his voice. As if he’d read her mind, he pointed to his own chest.
“Brendan Cody, CBT.” He meant Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Everyone in the room so far—besides Kornbluth—had introduced themselves by their specialty. Brendan Cody continued, rattling off: “BA/MA Berkeley, doctorate USF, thirty-three, six-one, black and blue—that always sounds ominous, doesn’t it?—love piña coladas and getting caught in the rain.”
He was so jovial and was talking so fast that Laurel wondered if he might be manic as well as being a little drunk; certainly he radiated the kind of slightly out-of-control charisma you often found in cyclothymic bipolarity. Also, she knew USF, University of San Francisco, to be a Jesuit school. Which meant Irish probably. More shades of Matt, which means you steer away. Laurel opened her mouth to excuse herself, feign a bathroom run or something, when he said abruptly:
“What were you doing before, when you were looking over the room? Categorizing?” She was surprised that he’d noticed, and guessed what she was doing. He nodded sagely. “You Myers-Briggs people are all alike. I’m ESFP, by the way. Myers-Briggs passes the time, but what’s way more interesting is identifying the out-and-out psychotics.”
“The—what?” she said, startled.
“Because statistically, there are some. Thirty-six full professors, twenty associates, twenty-five teaching assistants—chances are we’ve got three full psychotics, two associate psychotics, and two and a half assistant psychos. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
It did, but Laurel wasn’t entirely sure what it was making her think.
Cody reached out to a passing waiter and snagged two more glasses of champagne, handing Laurel one without missing a beat in his monologue. “The university environment is a hotbed anyway,” he informed her, as he clinked his glass with hers and took a healthy swig of champagne. “Cheers. It’s a virtual Petri dish for nurturing neuroses. Gifted and sensitive minds, ambition, stress, sex, debt. It’s a wonder more people don’t snap.” Despite the weirdness of the conversation, Laurel was beginning to suspect he was hitting on her, which must have been an automatic gesture on his part rather than a sincere one, as clearly he had his pick of teaching assistants.
“Not only that, but I think the collective angst of previous generations imprints on the entire environment. And magnifies with each subsequent generation.”
By this time Laurel was almost certain Brendan Cody was manic—or even on something. At the same time, she was acutely aware that, one-sided as it was, it was the longest adult conversation she’d had since her arrival in North Carolina.
“Your specialty has been occupational testing, right?” He faked a yawn. “Earth-shattering—”
“I love occupational testing,” she said, bristling. “It’s about helping people recognize their own talents—and potential—things they didn’t even know they could do.”
“Why, that’s delightfully fresh and uncynical of you, Dr. MacDonald. But what about your hidden gifts? Is