“Cleve, wait—is that the latest version of the application files? I want those.”
Cleveland takes one step further into the room but doesn’t even close the door behind him. While he and Tim are scanning the print-outs, I debate whether I should thank him for saving me from a fate worse than death, or slap him upside the head for making me the center of a faculty quarrel. He turns over the pages and pins a second folder behind the first, lifting his arm so that his jacket hitches up and his shirt tautens across his left flank and lower ribcage.
“So,” he suddenly addresses me, “you’re all right.” That’s a statement, not a question, and since I was lost in very inappropriate thought and no response seems required, I am tempted to shrug and say nothing. But I don’t want to seem peevish, so I rally for an enthusiastic reply and force myself to look up into his eyes. The second I do so, he looks away.
“Yes, I am, thank you. I was grateful for your intervention.”
“Well, it’s closed season yet for rookie-hunting.”
“I wish you’d told me about Adolph, though.”
“I thought you knew. It’s in all the history books.”
“This Adolph! The guy whose job I got, and who is still here as an adjunct! How awkward is that!”
Cleveland hesitates, and I know that I am destroying all the benefits of having shut up so valiantly during the meeting.
“I didn’t think you should worry…” He either falters, or he makes an ironic show of faltering. I don’t know him well enough yet to tell the difference. “You shouldn’t worry your—”
Pretty little head about that? Say it, Cleveland, and I’ll bite your balls off!
“—yourself about Dolph. Ignore him, is my advice. Well, then—” He inhales and straightens his shoulders. “I’ll see y’all next week, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!”
“I hope you’ll be an also-ran!” I fling at him.
He understands at once what I am referring to, but either I’ve stumped him or I’m not worthy of a riposte.
“What do you mean ‘also ran’? Cleve, where’re you off to, anyway?” Tim, at first vaguely interested, notices our silent glaring and becomes attentive. “Oh, secrets,” he says archly.
“Evidently not.” The light in Cleveland’s face dies down, and he rushes off in one of his abrupt exits.
“What’s with you?” Tim splutters into the silence after the door snaps shut. “Sweet and polite, I said! Not snide and pissy!”
I throw myself into one of the steel-and-leather armchairs, feeling like a petulant teenager. “He started it.”
“He has tenure! And he saved your ass in there! You’d be drowning in essays this semester if it wasn’t for Giles!”
“I said I was grateful!”
A knock on the door saves me, but as the electricity tingles in my nerve endings, I have to confess to myself that I’m hoping Cleveland is back. I pissed him off, and I can’t wait to see him again. Something’s wrong there.
“Aren’t you coming to the Astrolabe?” Erin Gallagher has her bag under one arm and a box of diapers under the other; above her shoulder Eugenia Russell’s avid face appears. “We saw you dive in here, so we thought something was up.”
“Follow-up meeting for Anna.”
“Gosh, yes, you almost got Dancey’s blade right between the third and fourth ribs there, Anna!” Eugenia leans against the sideboard, making the wood creak and Tim cringe, but he keeps his mouth shut.
“Giles bailed her out.”
“Well, he didn’t want to let Dancey and Hornberger get away with their little scheme. How did he know, though?”
“You don’t exactly have to be clairvoyant to know that Dancey would get Nick to play gofer for him,” Tim said. “And if you ask me, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
Erin contemplates me from the depth of the second armchair. “What you don’t know, Anna, is that Dolph Bergstrom should have gotten your job.”
“Erin! Don’t tell her that!” Eugenia frowns at her. “What’s she to do with that? Don’t worry about it, Anna. Department politics, keep out of them.”
“Well, I’d like to,” I say.
“No, Ginny, Anna needs to know, because I what I think is that Dancey and Hornberger have it in for her,” Erin insists. “Doofus doesn’t have to teach comp, so why should you? Because teaching comp means one fewer article on your list of publications at the end of the semester, that’s why!”
“Doofus?”
“Dolph. He’s an Ardrossan seedling, bedded by—”
“Hush, now!” Tim flutters his eyelids in the manner of a scandalized aunt.
“—bedded by William DeGroot, our erstwhile Commonwealth Foundation professor, and currently