because I’m starting to shake and I’m afraid she’ll see it, which would only add to my humiliation.
She gets to her feet. “Thank you for being so good about it,” she says again.
I can’t get to the women’s toilets fast enough. I lock myself in a cubicle, close the seat and sit down. I’m breathing too fast, too loud. I drop my head in my hands and time my breaths, wait for my pulse to slow down. I press my fingers against my eyes. Of course I didn’t get it. I haven’t published anything in years. I just teach, work, sit on useless committees and take minutes. That’s not a track to full professor. That’s a track to full-blown idiot-moron-gofer-errand girl. And what was it she said? A last-minute thing. Geoff suggested it. Why would he do that when he’d already suggested to me that I apply, and there was only one position available?
Except he didn’t suggest it, did he. But he sure didn’t stop me when I brought it up. Quite the opposite, I would have thought, considering all the extra work I’ve been doing these last few months which will make a good impression on the committee, Anna. They love a team player.
At the sink I splash water on my face and dab at my eyes. I recover myself enough to go back to my office, only for Geoff to stick his head round the door a moment later.
“Ah. Anna, can I have a word?”
“Is this about Mila? Because I think it’s great, really great. Wonderful news.”
“Yes, good, so you know.”
“Yes, couldn’t be happier for her.”
“Okay. Good. Oh, by the way, did you type those minutes?”
“In your inbox.”
“Well done, good stuff.”
I want to go home and curl up in my bed, go to sleep for a year or two, but I can’t because I have a class. Maybe I could say I’m sick, ask June to get a replacement teacher for the afternoon. One of the post docs.
No. Mila will know it’s because of her, and then she’ll think I’m upset and she’ll be making cooey noises at me: Oh! You are upset, Anna. I’m so, so sorry. I wonder if Mila will offload some of her classes on me now. Of course she will.
Then I remember I am supposed to go and see Alex. Good. This is what I need to focus on: Alex and the Pentti-Stone conjecture. It sounds like a children’s book title: Alex and the Pentti-Stone Conjecture. I blow my nose, picturing Geoff’s face—and Mila’s—when they find out our paper got published. I imagine Geoff realizing he backed the wrong applicant. Mila’s words echo in my mind: It should have been you.
Damn right it should.
I think back to the phone call from Alex. What is he up to? He sounded… upset? Not exactly. Intense? Yes. Definitely. Should I brace myself for more bad news? Has he found an error? Will he say we can’t submit yet? It would be a setback, certainly, but we’d had those before. Maybe this one is much more serious. But I know the work and I know the paper, and I know it’s ready. Unless I’ve missed something, and considering it was only this morning that I was quietly confident I’d find out any day now that I got the professorship, and I didn’t even twig that Mila was in the running, let alone that she’d beat me to it, maybe I shouldn’t trust my own judgment.
But I need this paper. This is my opportunity to prove them wrong, to laugh in their face, to quit the job and get a better one elsewhere—maybe move the family to Boston so I could teach at MIT.
I grab my bag and snatch my jacket from the back of my chair. I don’t care what Alex’s problem is right now, I’ll sort it out. I don’t care what it takes, either. I just want to see the look on Mila’s face when our paper gets published. I want to get to tap her on the shoulder and say, I think they did make a mistake after all, Mila.
Four
I’ve been to Alex’s apartment a few times before and I park around the corner, turn off the ignition and take a moment. I need to be calm and reassuring. Alex has a tendency to over-react and god knows he can get himself into a state of despair over the smallest thing. He’s twenty-seven years old but sometimes he may as well be twelve. But,