The feeling of being unjustly treated gives me the courage to look him straight in the eyes. They aren’t blue at all but green, like seawater, with a thin scar running from the corner of the left eye across his temple to his ear. He seems even more Celtic to me, with those light eyes gleaming like the holy wells on Avalon. He has a mercurial energy, a kind of quicksilvery passion that makes him very attractive—exciting, even—but boy, do I see where he gets his reputation for being difficult!
Satisfied, I want to lean back but remember just in time that if I recline on this sofa, I will be practically horizontal. So I smirk sitting up and wait for him to come back.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why the rush?”
Funny. That is what my grandmother, my darling bubbe, also asked when I told her that I was planning to hand in my book within the next six months. She was dying then, and one of her most urgent concerns was to leave knowing that my life was working out. “Will that make you happy?” she asked, anxiously. And I laughed and said, “Yes, of course it will! It’s what I want!”
It is what I want.
“I don’t see anything rushed about wanting to have a book publication to my name by the time I turn thirty! How else was I to stand a chance in the scramble for a tenure-track position? I’m relatively old as it is!” I have to attack him, or the wet film on my eyes will not go away.
“Two book publications.” Well, whaddayaknow. He has looked at my CV. “You’re a workaholic!”
Words fail me. Given that I have spent half my life working toward a job at a good university at a time of economic recession and in a discipline that is notoriously overrun, this is a ludicrous observation.
“Well…duh!” is all I can manage by way of a response.
“So instead of using this summer to recharge your batteries in order to be fit for a new job, you slaved away at your desk to get a book out that could easily have waited another year or two. I don’t see the sense in that.” He shifts in his chair, his long legs twitch, but it isn’t embarrassment at his own audacity to judge what is really no concern of his at all, it is anger. Impossible. He can’t be angry with me.
“I just…wanted it out of the way,” I stutter. “It’s a load off. And I think that’ll make it easier for me, here. Start a new phase.”
“But don’t you see, you—” He cuts himself off in exasperation. “You were sittin’ pretty without this stunt! You have to learn to pace yourself, or you’ll be burnt out by the time you’re thirty!”
Something is very wrong here. This is the second time Cleveland is about to make me cry. And this apart from the fact that he is making me want to climb onto his lap and—do something. I don’t exactly know what. Touch him?
“I’ll be thirty in three months. Thanks for the warning, but I think I’ll be okay. Sir.”
“You should get David Bergeron to have a look at your book.” Scribbling on his sheet of paper again.
“David has offered to review it for the Shakespeare Quarterly.”
“Has he.” Same tone of voice. Scribbling. “And what does David think of it?”
“He thinks it’s crap.” The word and my frosty voice make him look up again, startled. The blood rushes to my head, but I am in a panic of self-defense, too upset to care. “Yeah, he’s going to waste four hundred words panning the book of a total nobody. As one does. You know.”
The seawater eyes, deep-set under their grizzled brows, are glistening with icy resentment.
“Does one? Well, Professor Lieberman, I think we’ve settled the most pressing matters—don’t let me keep you. I’m sure you must be very…busy.”
Well, fine. Not only will there be a snake in the grass in my new-found academic Eden, it has already reared its ugly head. Except—not all that ugly. Squatting on the floor of my li’l office a few minutes later, I wait as the muscles in my body unclench, slowly. I can’t remember when I last received such a pasting. My job interviews, by comparison, were walks in the park. But then if a search committee turns out to be a bunch of jerks, you shrug and delete that place from your list of desirable prospects.