This is different; I really wanted Giles Cleveland to like me. I still do, except it is all a lot more confusing than it was an hour ago.
When I reach for the bottle of water in my rucksack, my fingers are trembling. Okay, so Cleveland won’t be a friend; that is a pity but no big deal. It would have been nice to network with him, but it is not as if I need him to get tenure.
Keep your head down, smile, publish, and everything will be all right.
“What are you doing here?”
I am getting ready to leave when my open door is darkened by an elderly man in a baggy suit and a purple bow-tie. His face is an unhealthy shade of purple, too.
“Pardon me?”
“Up here it’s offices only!” He stares at me with pale blue eyes from under a pair of very impressive bushy eyebrows; in fact, all of his hair seems bushy, including that protruding from his nostrils. I jump up from the floor and wipe my hands on the seat of my jeans, but as I advance toward him to shake hands, he backs off into the hallway.
“All this—” he waves his arms toward the right “—is English literature, and all this—” he turns round and waves into the opposite direction “—is Modern Languages! Classrooms are in the other wing!”
“Um…thank you, sir, I know that. I work here.”
“You do?” The bushy eyebrows wriggle like distressed caterpillars. “You are not cleaning staff—you’re not wearing a uniform!”
“No, sir, that’s right—I’m faculty.”
“Faculty? Nonsense! Which professor do you work for?”
“Professor Lieberman.” Well, it’s worth a try. The sound of that little phrase still makes my heart skip. I wish they would screw that name tag to my office door.
The caterpillars, too, perform a little skip ’n’ dance routine.
“Lieberman? You must be on the wrong floor. Or the wrong building. This is English, up to here—” he actually scrapes his shoe across the floor tiles “—and over there it’s Modern Languages!”
At this point it dawns on me that I am dealing with something more disturbing than professorial eccentricity. A bunch of keys is dangling from the door to the office next to mine; his demonstration of inter-departmental boundaries shows that his office is the last English Lit post on the frontier. There is a big black bag on its threshold, and three open boxes with books and papers are stacked up next to it.
“Yes, sir, I know.” I smile in a way that I hope will calm him down. “We haven’t been introduced. Anna Lieberman. This is my first semester here. Assistant Professor, British Literature.”
He comes forward to shake my hand, but then changes his mind and withdraws toward his office door like a flustered, angry old dog.
“You’re a professor? You don’t look like a professor!”
“Um…”
“Lieberman?”
“Yes.”
“You’re Jewish!”
“That is correct.”
“I knew nothing of this!”
“I’m sorry that I’m coming as a surprise to you, Professor—?”
“No, no—this is wrong! Nick has not spoken to me about you!”
“Well, sir, if you care to mention my name to Professor Hornberger, I am sure he will be happy to verify my appointment. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m actually rather—uh—busy.”
Chapter 4
WHEN I REACH THE COTTAGE after my encounters with Giles Cleveland and the crazy old man in the next-door office, I feel tense enough to scream. I was determined not to go back to writing again until I had my house in some sort of order, but Cleveland’s interrogation has pushed me over the brink into a state of acute withdrawal. I must work. Work, write, publish—the only thing to calm me down. There are the essays of the collection that I’m co-editing and its introduction; there are two conference paper proposals and one review to be written; there is an essay on Ralph Glasser and the Whitechapel Boys to revise for submission to a journal; there is the paper to be presented in November at Notre Dame University. Oh, and there is the class on parody and satire to prep, foisted on me at the eleventh hour by my mentor, who doesn’t think I’m up to teaching Milton. Cleveland is such a jerk!
My early morning walks are during the only cool hours of the day. Now the air is full of the sweet, sticky smells and the insects of a hot summer evening. It’s still a relief to escape across the brook, on the four stepping stones that must have been put there by a Walsh last year or thirty years ago, and into the green