Alison.”
I sat down at my desk. “Who and what is the problem?” I knew if Ray was coming by, there was a problem and that the student must be his advisee. Great. A biology student with an English literature problem. Professors usually don’t get involved in each other’s business unless some student has come whining to us about unfair treatment, what they perceive as too-tight deadlines, or a grade about which they disagree.
“Julie Anne Podowsky.” He looked out the window of my office, a floor-to-ceiling affair that afforded a great view of the cemetery at the top of the stairs that led to the building. He looked back at me. “She’s my advisee and she told me that she’s having trouble in your Modern Lit class.”
She was right about that. “She’s handed in one paper late and gotten a D on the latest quiz.”
He squirmed in his chair. What was that about? I wondered. “See, here’s the thing. She’s taking the MCAT soon and she’s trying to get into a good medical school, so she needs her grades to be tops,” he said. “Preferably As.”
“Well, then she should study harder and get her work in on time,” I said. What the hell was he thinking? I didn’t want to presume that he was asking me to give her a pass, but it seemed like he was heading in that direction. Given what I knew about Ray the philanderer, it made sense, but given what I knew about Ray the professor, it didn’t jibe.
Unless…so there it was. Yep, I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes. But the thought entered my mind and stayed there. I had hoped that Ray had enough sense not to get involved with a student again, but apparently I was wrong. I looked at him. “You should leave. Now.”
People who have been married have a sort of telepathy and now we were communicating without saying too much. “She’s twenty-one,” he said.
I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter.” I stood. “Let’s forget that we had this conversation, Ray. And tell Ms. Podowsky that I wouldn’t want a doctor practicing medicine on me who thinks that Robert Frost was the author of Chicken Little.”
He decided that that didn’t need or deserve a response and he huffed out of my office. Talk about a man who let his johnson do his thinking for him. I shook my head in silent wonder at his lack of judgment.
Kevin showed up at my office a few minutes later and looking at his outfit alone lifted my mood. He was in his “casual” outfit—shorts, a LIFE IS GOOD T-shirt, and sandals. Kevin liked being a priest but hated the uniform; if he didn’t have to wear his Roman collar, he didn’t. Most of the time, he coordinated a pair of jeans to the black shirt/white collar ensemble; other times, he wore black pants and a regular shirt. Tonight, he had gone completely over the top and looked like a middle-aged surfer as opposed to a man of the cloth.
Whenever Kevin and I ate out, we either went to Maloney’s for wings—a local campus hang-out—or to the River Edge Steak House when we needed more sustenance. We headed out the back door of the Administration Building and up the concrete steps to the parking lot. After deciding that walking would be in both of our best interests given the amount of time we spend behind our desks and what we planned to consume, we headed down the avenue and arrived at the Steak House about ten minutes later.
We sat down in the cool comfort of the dark-paneled room, and ordered drinks; me, my usual Ketel One martini (with extra olives…it’s a drink, and an hors d’oeuvre, my favorite kind of beverage), and Kevin, a glass of chardonnay.
After taking a sip of my drink and feeling white heat travel down my esophagus and into my stomach, I started to relax. Just being away from school and out for the evening, even if my date was a priest, was a vast improvement over what I had originally planned, which was laundry followed by more laundry.
The waitress appeared at the table and took our order. Kevin and I both ordered the Steak House’s famous giant sirloins with baked potatoes and asparagus on the side. I held up my almost empty martini glass and waved it toward the waitress. “And I’ll take another one of these, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Kevin asked me how things had been going.
“Eh. Boring.”
He gave