Quick Study - By Gretchen Galway Page 0,15

Bonnie stared at her. “Do I need a career?” She looked around the office. “Isn’t this where all the feminists hang out?”

“Don’t be simplistic. You have economic freedom—so use it wisely. Pretending to be a career academic when you’re anything but is dishonest and unfair to those around you who don’t have your opportunities.”

Bonnie swallowed, reeling. “You think I’m dishonest and unfair?”

Prof. Alice took off her reading glasses. “I think you’re avoiding what makes you happy,” she said, then added softly, “to please someone who isn’t around anymore to appreciate it.”

Then Bonnie did have to fight back tears, there in her advisor’s office with her unfinished draft saved useless in her laptop and her life falling apart. Again. “I should go.” She stood up, fumbled for her backpack. “We’ve gone way over. You probably have people waiting outside—”

“I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have spoken so freely.”

But that was why everybody liked Prof. Alice. She was the kind of woman who told the truth, to anybody, big or small. Bonnie stopped at the door and forced herself to turn around and face her. “No, I’m glad you did. But I need to think about it.”

Prof. Alice nodded and put her glasses back on. “Good. I trust you.” When Bonnie stepped into the hallway, she called out, “Send in my next victim!”

He had to see her again. Little things were nagging at him, like when she said there was something he had to know. Like the way she had come on to him, then resisted him, then submitted—with enthusiasm, God bless her—and then freaked out and fled.

Bonnie Angelo, who are you? His sister was starting to get suspicious about him volunteering to bring little Elijah to school every morning, not that he’d seen Bonnie there again on any one of the five days, even when he sat for an extra hour in the parking lot to make sure. Sitting outside her apartment building was tempting, but he’d resisted, fearing it would make him look like a stalker.

Until now. He stared at the intercom and pressed the button he remembered was hers, feeling his heart climb up into his throat, pounding hard.

How else could he talk to her? He did want to talk, too, not just strip off her clothes and lick the backs of her knees and smell her on his hands again—

He wanted to talk. Learn more about her. Go on a date, like dinner and a movie.

And then lick the backs of her knees and smell her again.

“Hello?”

The sound of her voice set his pulse racing. “Bonnie? It’s me, Paul. Outside. Can we talk ?”

The apartment intercom crackled, but she didn’t say anything.

“Do you like Thai food?” he asked. “Let me buy you dinner?”

Silence.

He waited, then jabbed the button again. “I’m sorry I didn’t call, but I didn’t have your number.” He sighed and leaned against the building, settling in for the long haul, vaguely aware he didn’t care how pathetic he looked. Refusing to think too hard about what it might mean that Bonnie alone was inspiring him to risk humiliation and self-abasement, Paul combed his hair with his fingers and smiled at the intercom as though she could see him through the rusted speaker. “Bonnie? Please come out. I’ve—” He tried to think of something tempting. “I’ve heard about a place in Walnut Creek that grows their own galangal root. I don’t know what that is but I’m sure it’s much better than that mass-produced galangal root most people eat.”

The speaker crackled on for a moment, but she didn’t say anything, and then it fell silent.

At least she wasn’t telling him to go. He plunged ahead. “Don’t like Thai food? Maybe you’re like my sister. She says the coconut soup tastes like Lemon Pledge, but she eats Pop Tarts for breakfast so what does she know, but I’m totally cool with anything, really. Though I’m a bit of a pizza snob, I admit. Not that you have to be, I didn’t mean it like that—”

The interior door swung open and Bonnie stood there, arms crossed and smiling at him. He released the button and frowned at it.

“If you’re out here, who’s in there?”

“Both my roommates,” she said. “They made me come out here before you started playing Peter Gabriel on a boombox.”

He drank in the sight of her, too happy to be embarrassed. “You look great.” She was wearing a skirt, short enough to expose her cute knees, and her feet were bare. Little purple nails marked the