“Um, Anna, might I have a word?” Cleveland seems reluctant to talk to me, but he beckons me toward the first-floor hallway and I trail him like I trailed Elizabeth Mayfield five weeks ago. Then the place was flooded with sunlight; now the air is burning where the panes of stained glass add a red glow to the sunset. Cleveland pulls his office door hard into its frame, stretches past me, and switches on the light.
“Now, what’s going on?” He doesn’t even ask me to sit down.
“Pardon me?”
“Look, I know that jet-lag makes me stupid sometimes, but—”
“Oh, well done!” I burst out, remembering. “I read about it in the online Guardian. I assumed you didn’t want me to say anything in front of the others because you didn’t say anything in the faculty meeting, but—may I—now? First prize! Well done, sir!”
He is staring down at me as if he had forgotten who I am or why I am here.
“Don’t call me that.”
The ground is gaping wide in front of my feet. I take my heart into my hands and jump.
“Giles, then. You must be so proud of yourself!”
“Thank you. You’re very…kind.”
I can’t tell whether this is an Englishman’s habitual belittling of his achievement, or whether he finds me over-familiar and over-enthusiastic. Both, probably, and either way, I know I must back off.
“No, I’m not. Anyway, what was it you wanted to—”
“That’s right, you were hoping I’d be trounced!”
“You knew I didn’t mean that,” I mutter gruffly, and I can tell that the blood is shooting into my cheeks. “What was it you—”
He strides over to the sideboard and dumps his books and laptop on it; I hadn’t even noticed that he was still holding them in his hands. “I’m sorry to keep you from your…There is something wrong, isn’t there? In the department? It’s as if everyone is smelling a stench bomb and nobody wants to admit it.”
“What makes you say that?” I ask cautiously, and my punishment is a darkling look across the room.
“Are you telling me I’m imagining things?” he asks bluntly.
“N-No, but I don’t—You should ask someone higher up.”
“I will. Now tell me what you know.”
“All I know is that…well, what I heard is that one of our students accused one of our colleagues of sexual violence toward her. Rape, in a word. A professor from the English department allegedly raped a female student.”
“Good Lord,” he breathes. “Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Now look here—”
“No, honestly, I don’t know!” I give him a short, unvarnished report of the events so far, and he listens without interrupting me.
“So who else knows?” he asks at last.
“No idea. I haven’t spoken to anyone about it.”
“But the students know something.”
“Selena O’Neal must have tattled. Of course—her mother is the fountain from which this muddy water has sprung.”
“Perhaps. But when I went to the Eatery this afternoon, I saw Selena sobbing into her coffee and Tessa trying to calm her down. At the time all I thought was, I hope it’s just a boy, and not that someone has died.”
“Callous!”
“You think?” He strolls to the sofa and rests one buttock on the armrest. I begin to feel silly, standing where he left me, but at the same time I don’t want to sit down. Standing is more formal. Formal is good.
“Sometimes the two feel the same,” I point out, ruining my effect.
“Especially when you’re twenty-three and a virgin.”
“You don’t know that Selena is a virgin! Or—do you?”
“Of course I don’t know it! Perhaps that little crucifix around her neck and the chastity ring on her left hand are just a smoke-screen, and those buttoned-up blouses, and teaching Sunday school to the kids.”
“I taught religious education at my synagogue!”
“And were you a virgin at twenty-three?”
“No, of course I wasn’t,” I snap at him, mortified.
He laughs. “At any rate, Selena is a good girl, and one of these days someone will pay for that. She herself, probably.”
“But Selena can’t be the girl…in question. Tim tried out that idea, and it makes no sense. Her mother was far too collected, and the family would never have gone visiting friends, if—”
“No, no, that’s not my drift.” Cleveland is gazing at me, and I’m not sure it’s because he is waiting for me to catch up, or because he is using me as a screensaver while he is thinking.
“Natalie Greco didn’t teach her class today,” he finally says. Just that, no more. And because it’s late and I’m tired, I forget to