“So you were.” He seems to conclude our conversation by getting up from his chair. “There is nothing you can do to stop these young men from checking you out. And if they are the kind of male that bristles at women in authority, particularly in authority over them, they will seek relief from their discomfort by turning you into a sex object—a pretty little co-ed. If they become disrespectful, keep note of these incidents, mobilize witnesses, and report the offenders, but there’s never any point in throwing a temper tantrum. Send Elizabeth an email about Logan, and then drop it.”
All my tender feelings for him drown in the wave of blood that rushes to my head.
“Temper tantrum? That is so—patronizing! And where the hell do you get off calling me a co-ed?”
“I’m merely stating the obvious. You’re—what, five-three? Five-four? A half pint.” He appraises me dispassionately. “There are substantial benefits to be reaped by pretty, petite young women, as you no doubt know full well. But claiming authority over a gang of twenty-year-old males is harder for you than for some other types of woman. Boo-hoo and all that, but there it is.”
“Will you stop calling me pretty!” I mutter through clenched teeth.
Cleveland’s eyes glisten. He is hell-bent on provoking me, and I couldn’t bring myself to back off if my life depended on it. We are both standing now, on either side of my desk, and the space between us is filled with crackling ice, or crackling flames, I can’t tell the difference any more.
“When we’re alone…I’ll call you anything I like, and you’ll stick it.” He pauses for effect, and into the silence crowds a cornucopia of terms and phrases. “Not because I’m a male and more powerful than you—I’m not, by the way, more powerful than you—but because I’ll not call you anything that I don’t believe to be true. In company, rest assured it’ll be ‘Doctor Lieberman, my esteemed colleague.’”
I open my mouth to rake him down, but he cuts me off.
“And while we are having a heart-to-heart, I’ll just enrage you a little bit further and give you some entirely uninvited and no doubt undesired feedback on your, er, garb. You tend to look like lamb dressed as mutton.”
He pauses, as if he were waiting for me to lunge forward and slap his face. Since physical violence and stunned silence are my only options, I opt for silence.
“Of course I see that you dress conservatively to compensate for your youth,” he goes on. “But in my opinion that’s an error in judgment. It’s quite easy to impress these youngsters, and your Noo Yoak toak and your Columbia degree do impress them, even if they don’t admit it. Many of them are—well, maybe not scared of you, but a little in awe. The cool girl from the Big City. Make the stereotype work for you! You gotta slap them right if they don’t act right…bitch.”
His gaze holds me, and the word—its vulgarity, his low, gravelly voice—is as transgressive as his hand on my body would be. I can only gaze back, torn between fascination and fury, until I eventually manage to rally in my defense.
“Listen, don’t…don’t bitch me, buster. And maybe you can tell me why guys always think that women can be goaded out of the dumps? Because I got news for you: it’s a crap method of cheering us up! It never works, and it pisses me off!”
His face lights up in that way that fools a girl into thinking she is his only joy and delight, but his shoulders do not relax, and our eyes do not unlock; in a moment of panic I lose my bearings and almost my balance, because what I see in his eyes is that he is this close to striding over to kiss me.
My clash with Logan Williams in front of the whole class has me panicking about my end-of-term evaluations, about my prospects at Ardrossan, and about my aptitude as a lecturer. If Giles Cleveland were to come round that desk, grab me, and kiss me, every cell of my body would hurl itself toward him with all the kamikaze force of which I am capable. I would forget all the Logans and all the Madelines in the world. I would even forget about my paycheck.
It would be the end of life as I know it.
Chapter 14
I’M RUNNING, STUMBLING OVER STONES and the roots of trees, trying not to twist my ankle, trying not