He sits on my sofa with his phone in his hands. “Who’d know?”
“Ma Mayfield knows, for sure, as Dean of Studies, but—”
We stare at each other, overawed at the thought of phoning Elizabeth Mayfield on the little matter of a scandal involving a student, a professor and a count of sexual assault. Then we collapse in a fit of hysterical laughter.
“You call her Ma Mayfield?” Tim asks. “That’s perfect! Why does it ring a bell, though? Ma Mayfield…”
“Brideshead Revisited. The nightcl—”
“The nightclub Charles and Sebastian go to in London, where they get sloshed and pick up those two prostitutes! Ma Mayfield is the proprietress! Oh, that is perfect!” Tim cackles. “Wait till I tell Giles!”
“Oh, no! No, Tim, please!”
“Well, whoever he is, and whatever he did, Ma Mayfield is going to have his balls for this!” he says gleefully. “And God have mercy on his degenerate soul!”
“Actually, whatever he did or didn’t do, God is his best bet, because his career is finished.” As the implications sink in, I’m beginning to feel nauseous, with the shock, with hunger. “Heck, I forgot the pizza!”
I bolt into the kitchen, which is already thick with the smell of burnt dough, though not yet with smoke. I save what can be saved, put it on a tray with two bottles of beer, and find Tim on the sofa, still immobile.
“And?”
He shakes his head. “Don’t know. First things first. Cheers!” He takes a long pull. “The thing is, we don’t want to be hasty here. This may still turn out to be a misunderstanding. I never heard of a sec called O’Neal, so she isn’t one of ours. If she works at the Observatory, I’m sure I’d know her name.”
“Hang on—why is the name familiar to me but you say you don’t know her?”
“O’Neal? Selena O’Neal is one of our students. She’s one of—” He stops dead.
“—one of the new grad assistants recommended by Nick Hornberger,” I complete his sentence.
“Holy shit!”
“Yes, but—no, Tim, that—no, come on! Would the whole family be visiting friends and having beer and barbeque, if the daughter had just come home with the news that her professor had molested her? That isn’t likely. In fact, whoever it is, it’s not the O’Neal girl.”
“You’re right. Anyway, she’s hardly Nick’s type.” Absentmindedly he reaches for a piece of pie and starts chewing.
“Does Nick sleep with students?” I despise myself for using this opportunity to find out the dirt about my colleagues, but not enough to shut up.
“Does the sun rise in the east?”
“With Natalie? America’s Next Top Model?”
Tim grins through his pizza.
“You’re quick. Yes, Natalie’s the current flavor of the month.”
“Current?”
“Nick and I don’t share our weekend score over a beer on Monday nights. But to the best of my knowledge he’s had one on the go most times since I came here. Everyone knows, everyone looks the other way, even Elizabeth, Dancey, and Ruffin, because he has never been reported and because he’s an Ardrossan alumnus and knows all the important people, both on and off campus. Plays golf with the dads and then goes and does their daughters. You gotta admire the guy. In a way.”
“Yeah, right.”
“As long as they’re of age—”
“I keep having this conversation with people! I don’t care who Hornberger sleeps with, as long as it’s consensual and he remains able to do his job efficiently and impartially! But is he? And if he isn’t, is that because he has sex with the daughters or because he plays golf with the fathers?”
“Have you ever…” Tim peters out discreetly.
“Played golf?”
“Noooo…”
“No, Tim, I haven’t! And yes, I’m almost as cynical about it as you are. But this—apparently—wasn’t consensual! And I’m not even sure that I know what consensual means, if it’s a case of a professor sleeping with a student!”
“Nick isn’t the raping sort.” He dismisses my objection and my heat.
“And who, in your opinion, is the raping sort?”
“All right. It’s impossible to tell. Joe Banks had a fling with a grad student, but she left a while ago, and she was good people. And it can’t be any of my brothers in the closet, unless it’s a really, really devious double bluff.”
“Is Dolph Bergstrom in your closet?” I ask, curious.
“Ha! No. But doesn’t Dancey wish he were! Mind you, I have sometimes wondered how far Doofus would go, brown-nosing the alpha male. But that would be self-prostitution, not rape.”
“Hm. I think I’ll decide you don’t mean that. Could it be one of the male teaching assistants, or one of