having insisted that he hear me, sat at an oblique angle to the panel so that I did not have to look at him during my talk. I force myself, afterward, not to check his face, and once, when my eyes flit over, I see that he seems hunched over. Reading something, possibly.
“I’m glad to see that at Ardrossan they continue their tradition of hiring bright young things.” An elderly gentleman has come up to me, and because I saw him nodding and smiling during my paper, I don’t take offense at being called a “bright young thing.”
“Uh, thank you—” I peek at his lapel “—Dr. Prewitt.”
“That was a very clever little talk, and I mean that in a good way. I expect great things from you, Anna Lieberman. I’ll be watching you!”
Boosted by my success, I walk over to greet Kathleen Murray. We were in grad school together long enough to develop a deep dislike of each other, but personal animosities with colleagues in your field are never a good idea. Kathleen and I will periodically meet at conferences for the rest of our lives; we have to get on with each other.
“I see you’re here with Giles Cleveland,” she says crossly.
“Actually, no, I’m not here with Giles Cleveland. We left the same town this morning and came to the same town this afternoon, that’s all.”
The one positive thing I can say about Kathleen is that she is fully alive to Giles’s brand of attractiveness.
“Anna, you have to introduce me! Come on, he’s standing by himself!”
Groaning inwardly, I allow her to pull me across the room to where Giles is leafing through one of the new publications on the book table.
“Giles, meet Kathleen Murray. She and I were at Columbia together before I went to London.”
“Professor Cleveland!” She beams at him. “I’m so excited to meet you! Your biography of Raleigh is wonderful! I’m going to use it to teach next semester!”
“Kathleen got the job at Brandeis that I also applied for.”
“Did you? I’m so glad!” He gives her his blandest smile, and I have to hide in my coffee cup not to burst out laughing.
“Why do you never tell me things like that?” he murmurs when we file back in again for the third panel. I cast a speaking glance up at him, and he laughs quietly.
“So, are you happy?” He means my paper.
“Whatever,” I grumble. “It’s not as if you paid me any attention!”
“I did!” he protests. “You were very…sexy.”
“Giles, you rotter.”
He laughs, and his eyes are very warm and very bright.
He has come to Indiana to seduce me.
Paul French has a lot of fun with “my pupil, Cleveland, my creature, my single success story as a tutor!” He is a charming, buoyant Botticelli angel of a man, impossible to dislike, but by the time we adjourn to get changed for dinner, he has turned into a rival.
“Actually, Giles, I was hoping to abduct you tonight! I know a quiet little place downtown—we have such a lot to catch up on!”
No! Tonight he’s mine!
Giles accepts. Smiles, accepts, and explains to the bystanders that he and Paul last saw each other in nineteen ninety-five, when they got vilely drunk on Sangria at a conference in Barcelona.
“Sorry—I’m sure you understand—older rights, and all that!” This is not addressed to me but to Kathleen, and I feel as if someone had hit me over the head with a Riverside Shakespeare. Worried that shock and disappointment are written all over my face, I turn away from the group, mutter something about the effect of the coffee on my bladder, and flee into the restroom.
What the hell did I say to make him change his mind about me? I wanted him!
To have dinner with, at any rate, since sex is…should be…out of the question. I’m so disappointed I could cry. Scream. Kick in the door of the cubicle in which I am hiding my humiliation from the world.
Rationally, I understand what is going on. The moment he becomes unavailable, I want him. I wanted him before, I’ve been wanting him—oh, who am I kidding?
But my career…
I want my career more than I want a man. Naysayers, detractors, even haters I can deal with. The more enemies, the more honor. This afternoon I convinced a roomful of scholars of my intricately woven analysis of Renaissance images of dissected bodies. Like a barber-surgeon’s knife through the dead flesh of a criminal, my intellect cut through conflicting layers of discourse, isolated the semiotic codes by