on tenure track—Sandy Rohde from Biology and Bernard Cogan from Psychology. That shouldn’t even be allowed, in my opinion.”
“Bernie? Oh, but I know Bernie! He’s my friend from—well, not friend, exactly, from school. The one I met at Freddy Katz’s synagogue. Bernie. He does turn up in the oddest places!”
“Used to bully you, didn’t he? Yeah, he said.” Tim grins. “He was dragooned into this by his chair because he’s published stuff on sexual abuse in families or something. He’s in his second year on tenure track, so he’s vulnerable, almost as much as me. Sandy is up next year, and the Big Boss in her section is Carl Gissing, who is like this with the Biology alumni, not least among whom is Frank Harrison, who is like this with our Nick, because they were in the same fraternity back in the seventies. It’s a farce!”
“Of course it’s a farce,” Giles agrees placidly. “Bureaucracy always is.”
“The irony is,” says Tim, “that in this day and age, colleges have to demonstrate their political correctness by having a fair number of sexual-assault cases to adjudicate each year, or they run the risk of appearing to discourage their female students from confiding in college authorities. If this case involved a frat boy and a sorority girl, most likely both pissed out of their heads, they would be on the ‘rapist’ like a pack of hounds. But it’s one thing to make an example of a drunken twenty-year-old who can’t even recall, the next morning, in which and how many holes he came the night before. It’s another to have our golden boy Nick up there. They’ll get him off, mark my words. The only one openly baying for his blood is Lorna O’Neal.”
I almost drop my fork at this. “Lorna O’Neal is a member of the Sexual Misconduct Hearing Panel?”
“That woman is a bulldozer!” Tim groans. “If she had her way, Hornberger would be strung up by the larger of his two testicles and left to rot! She is rabid! Just as well, maybe, because the rest of us are chicken.”
“You just said Nick doesn’t deserve to get it in the neck,” Giles reminds him.
“Well!” Tim swallows a mouthful of cake and puts on an expression I assume is supposed to evoke Hornberger. “‘I’m a full professor. My students are of age and of sound mind. It’s nobody’s business how many of them I fuck, how often I fuck them, and where I fuck them.’”
“He did not say that!” I gasp.
“Oh, boy, did he ever.” He grins. “The moment had a certain element of grandeur, I can’t deny it. I think he is trying to scare them. And it’s working! Another gem was when they read that passage about moral turpitude, and Hornberger said something like, ‘Son—’ I do believe he called the Assistant Dean of Studies son ‘—there is nothing turpid about the body of a young woman. Turgid, yes, if you know what you’re doing, but not turpid.’ Can I say gross?”
I glance over at Giles and see that he has made a decision.
“Tim, you know that Mandy and I split up when she had an affair, don’t you? Note that I’m saying ‘when,’ not ‘because.’”
“Y-Yes?” Tim clearly doesn’t know where this is leading.
“The affair was with Nick.”
“Oh, Christ!” Within seconds, the blood seems to drain out of Tim’s face. “Oh, my sainted aunt! But how? Why? No, never mind.” He manages to collect himself, but it is with difficulty. He laughs. “Sorry about this. That was…unexpected.”
“I’ll say.” Giles hesitates. Then he bends forward and briefly lays his hand on Tim’s thigh. “Sorry, mate. Didn’t mean to rattle you. I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while and never quite got round to it.”
Tim stares across the table at me. “You knew this?”
“Not officially.” I try to evade him. “I heard something I wasn’t supposed to hear.”
“How does Ma Mayfield handle herself when Nick comes out with bon mots like that?” Giles changes the topic back to Hornberger’s most recent affair. “Or is she not allowed to speak?”
“Oh, she’s a complete dude! Very from-the-hip.”
There is a beat, and we are in convulsions of laughter.
“But why does Hornberger—oh, man…” I wipe some water out of my eyes. “Why does Hornberger provoke them like this? Is he not worried he’ll be fired? Ruined? Publicly shamed?”
“You have to hand it to the man, he is a cool motherfucker. Sorry, Anna. His defense—apart from insisting that he did not force himself on Natalie that