She silently waved back. In the few weeks since she had been working for him, they had settled into an easy routine. She rather enjoyed the research and he continued to be impressed with the volume of notes she produced. They rarely ever saw one another, communicating largely through brief e-mails or notes left in one of his boxes. The arrangement worked well for both of them.
On this day, however, he needed her personal assistance. “Are you busy right now?” he pleaded. As the two women approached, he asked if she knew much about cell phones. “My wife and I got these new phones and I still haven’t figured out all of the gizmos on it.”
She removed the device from his hands, not bothering to introduce her friend whom he already knew. “What are you tryin’ to do?” she asked.
“I just want to change the ringtone,” he said, exasperated, then nodded towards her attractive companion. “Blanca, right? I hope Dr. Stevens isn’t working you too hard.”
“N’sir, she’s really nice,” the roommate answered sincerely. He was shocked to hear an undergrad actually refer to Sheila Stevens as “nice.” He and Blanca continued to exchange pleasantries while Mandy silently assessed the phone.
“Okay, what tone do ya want?” his assistant queried.
“Well, it says that I can download any song,” he explained, “but I can only find five choices on here.”
She observed him with a mixture of amused shock and annoyance. “You hafta download those off the ‘Net,” she chastised, handing the phone back to him.
“Oh,” he replied. “Uhm, do you think you could show me how to do that later? It’ll count towards your work time.” Since she would be getting paid for the favor, she agreed, but said it would have to wait until later as they had a class to get to right then.
As the two women walked towards Payne Hall for their English Lit survey class, Blanca glanced behind her to survey Dr. Burns, who was now walking in the opposite direction. “Cute ass!” she whispered.
“Oh please. He is an ass,” her friend replied.
Later that day Mandy showed up during Lewis’s office hours to help him program the phone. He admitted that he generally did not use his cell phone very much, but he had begun to use it more now that his wife was living in another state. Mandy noticed how he always referred to the woman in the photograph on his desk as “my wife”—never “Laura” or “Dr. Hennig”—as if to remind her that he was married. Mandy thought that he was really trying to remind himself, perhaps to make sure he resisted the inevitable temptations that must come from living across the country from his spouse. Or maybe he was such an egomaniac that he thought Mandy wanted his body and was trying to remind her that he was taken. Dream on, Dude.
Mandy could not believe how ignorant the over-educated professor was about technology. She started with his initial problem, getting the ringtone he wanted, trying to be helpful without talking down to her clueless boss. She pulled up a chair next to him so that they could both examine his laptop screen together, since he was far from ready to access the Web from his phone. It was a tight squeeze behind his desk, causing their knees to keep bumping each other. After Lewis nervously apologized three times, they gave up and just tried to ignore it. She took him to a site that carried popular songs in ringtones and carefully explained how he could set one tone for all calls or set calls from certain people with specific tones. “So, like, if you want all the calls from your wife to have one certain ring, you can program it that way.”
“Oh,” he replied. “Kind of like caller I.D.?”
“Yeah.” She guessed that he probably did not use that function either. After looking at several possible songs, he chose Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” Noticing the bewildered look his assistant gave him, he explained that he always associated that song with his wife because Titanic was the first movie they ever saw together in a theater. Corny, but kind of sweet, Mandy thought.
She looked up at the photo on his desk. “Ya miss her a lot?’
He smiled goofily and sighed as he picked up the photo. “Yeah.”
“It must be weird livin’ so far apart. I don’t think I could do that,” Mandy expressed with the bluntness of youth.
“Well,” he said, putting down the frame to return to a more professorial mode, “you’ll learn as you get older that sometimes sacrifices have to be made in relationships. It’s only temporary. And thanks to technology, we can call or e-mail each other anytime.”
“What about textin’?” she asked. “It’s instant and you can do it anywhere.” The look on his face told her he had no clue how to text.
She spent the next 30 minutes teaching him how to text, including the most common shorthand. “You can text anyone across a room,” she explained. They practiced by sending messages between their two phones. He found it strange for her to be sitting across the desk from him, only three feet away, texting instead of talking.
“Wouldn’t you prefer to just speak to the person?” he asked, further exposing his generational ignorance.
“Well, sometimes there’s times when you might wanna send a private message, like if you’re in class—.” She stopped in mid-sentence, realizing how that might sound to a professor.
“Mhmm.” He gave her a knowing look as she realized her error.
“Not that I would ever text somebody durin’ class. Nooo . . . that would be rude!” She blushed as they both giggled then reached for a better example. “But like, when I go out with the girls, this guy Gus usually goes with us. Anyway, so if some skanky guy starts hittin’ on one of us, we text Gus and he’ll come to the rescue. That way, even if we can’t see him or he’s in the bathroom or somethin’, he knows we need him.”
Lewis was having a hard time envisioning this scenario. “What does he do to the guys, beat them up?”
“Well, usually he pretends he’s our date, gets all flirty ‘n’ stuff,” she explained. “And . . . well, let’s just say Gus can be kinda intimidatin’. Guys won’t mess with him.”
The vision of a linebacker sprang forth in the professor’s mind. “’Must be nice to have your own bodyguard.”
“Well, he’s kinda like an extra housemate, only his girlfriend’s parents don’t know he lives with us,” she revealed innocently.
Lewis gave her a sly grin, intrigued by the student’s other life. “Mhmm, secretly living in sin. I see. And you’re helping. You’re sneakier than you look. Is that the girlfriend I met?”
“No, Blanca’s my other housemate. Julie is Gus’s girlfriend.”
“So how many of you are there?” he asked, feigning bewilderment.
“Just us four. Gus calls us Three Chicks and a Dick—oh, I’m sorry.” Her cheeks turning red once again, he smiled and assured her that he was not offended by such language. Inwardly, he was rather amused by her embarrassment.
Getting back to business, she explained a few more scenarios in which texting could be useful, then offered to give him some tips on sending photos. He confessed that he had taken few cell phone photos, all of which were poor in quality. “I’m pretty old fashioned, I’m afraid. I still prefer 35 millimeter,” he admitted.
“That’s nice for artsy stuff,” she assessed, “but the camera phone is better for convenience. Ya know, like when you just happen to see somethin’ really funny or cool, so you snap a pic you can send out to all your friends. Like, last year I snapped Denzel Washington when he was in town makin’ a movie. I still have it stored on here.”
She held up the photo and there indeed was the famous actor’s image, clear but captured at a strange angle. Mandy examined the photos stored on Lewis’s phone, diagnosing his problem as moving too much when snapping a shot. “You hafta keep your hand steady. Just move your finger, not the phone,” she advised.
She tried to show him the best way to take clear camera phone photos, but his hand still kept jerking at the last second. She finally took his right hand and carefully positioned it around the phone. The skin on her fingertips felt smooth and soft as it rubb
ed against the tiny hairs on the back of his hand. He was aiming the camera at some books, which seemed pretty boring. “Why don’t I practice by taking a picture of you?” he suggested.
She sat across from him and smiled a goofy grin as he clicked. “Very good!” she judged of the results. “Here, let me take one of you. You can send it to your wife.” She grabbed the phone from his hand and told him to smile.
He tried, but the stiff, unnatural pose looked like a driver’s license portrait. She grimaced at the clear but unflattering outcome. “Now do something fun,” the photographer ordered. At first he balked, then after much prodding, he scrunched up his face into a silly side grin. “That’s great! She’ll love it!” Mandy beamed.
He thanked her for taking the time to help him and told her to be sure to note it on her timesheet. After she left, he looked at the photos she had taken of him and sent them both off to Laura. Before clicking the cover closed, he looked at the photo of Mandy. Just as his thumb was about to hit the “delete” button, he stopped himself and hit “save” instead.
When Mandy met up with Blanca and Julie for a late-afternoon caffeine break, her roommates asked her how the cell phone lessons with “the ass” went. “Oh, he’s not such an ass,” she admitted, now regretting her previous word choice. “You should see how goofball he is over his wife. It’s really kinda sweet. Sorta like how I’d want some guy to feel about me someday.”
“Doesn’t she, like, live in another state?” Julie asked.
“Yeah, that part’d suck,” Mandy admitted. “It’s just a job thing.”
“Sorry,” Blanca interjected, “but someday if I got a job in another state, I’d ‘spect the man to come with me. None of this long distance crotte. That don’t even work in college.”
“Well, you better look for somebody who likes Cajun food if you’re plannin’ on draggin’ him back to Nawlins,” Mandy noted, in an exaggerated version of her friend’s accent.
“Cher, if he wants me, that’s the way it’s gonna be!” her confident young friend declared.
Julie agreed with the sentiment. “What’s the point of bein’ married to somebody if you’re not gonna to be together? And you really can’t have kids. That would totally suck.”
Mandy pointed out the exceptions. “But people in the military do it all the time. You said yourself that your dad’s sometimes deployed for over a year without leave. And when you go into the Navy you might be at sea for months. At least these guys see each other every few weeks.”
“That’s different,” Julie countered. “That’s separation in defense of your country.”
“Make war, not love!” Blanca interjected sarcastically.
Mandy continued, determined to test her ROTC pal’s fortitude. “Okay, so someday if Gus becomes a famous director and decides to make a movie that has him livin’ far away for a long time, you’ll just pack up the kids and go on location with him?”
“Hey, it worked for Brangelina,” Julie quipped.
Blanca interjected again. “But that won’t matter, ‘cause she’ll be off fightin’ wars. Gus’ll have to raise the kids himself.”
“Damn straight!” Julie announced.
Their debate about the pros and cons of long-distance relationships continued with no real conclusion other than Mandy’s firm conviction that it seemed to be working for Lewis Burns and his wife. And that gave her hope that, despite the examples in her own family, some married couples could still be happy.
Chapter Five
Confrontations and Avoidance
“The author makes a few good points, but failed to convince me with the comparison of colonial expansion to marital oppression,” one grad student noted.
“Oh, I thought that was one of his strongest points,” another countered. “The British male was trying to suppress the power of women just as he was trying to suppress the independence of colonial peoples.”
Jane was only half listening to this discussion in her graduate seminar on “Gender Identity in Post-Victorian Britain.” Usually she enjoyed this type of banter as the would-be Ph.D.s tried to come up with impressive verbiage to illustrate how well they were mastering the skills of professional historians. Jane glanced around the room, trying to mentally assess how many of these students, if any, might one day be among the privileged few validated through tenure. Or would they be relegated to the masses of overeducated, underemployed minions who could wax eloquently about Descartes in between asking, “Do you want fries with that?” Would any find themselves in the position that Lewis Burns is about to face—a successful career potentially derailed by scandal? One mistake and years of work down the tubes?
The bell rang upon the hour, but none of the students dared move until Dr. Roardan gave her consent. “Alright,” she sighed. “That’s time. Next week, read Smith and think about the continuation of the cultural trajectory leading to suffrage.”
She slowly headed back to her office. As distracted as she had been during the seminar, she dreaded its end, for now it meant she had to confront Lewis.
At exactly 2:07 p.m., Isobel waved Dr. Burns into Jane’s office. The secretary was curious about the meeting, as she could tell that Jane had been rather distracted since her emergency conference with Gary the previous day. The secretary was not sure if her boss’s stress had anything to do with Dr. Burns, but as she watched the young professor enter the office, Isobel recalled Perry’s most recent speculation. Dr. Waters, who still stayed in close touch with Laura Hennig, theorized that perhaps Lewis was still trying to get a job up north, hoping to woo back his ex-wife. “You know he’s got to be madly in love with her still,” Perry had concluded. From Isobel’s vantage point, the young professor did not seem particularly distressed as he entered Jane’s office and closed the door.
Cheerfully oblivious to what was about to befall him, Dr. Burns greeted the Chair. “Sorry I’m late, Jane. So, what’s up?”
She paused. Even though she had been mentally practicing her speech all day, her mind went blank now that the moment had arrived. Following Gary’s example, she decided to stall with friendly banter while collecting her thoughts. “How are you Lewis?” she asked, sounding more serious than amiable.
“I-I’m, good,” he replied, a bit confused by the intense tone of her question.
Jane nodded, carefully taking in his answer. “You know, I’m really sorry about you and Laura. I know the last year has been pretty rough on you.”
“Uh, yeah, thanks” he replied to her expressions of sympathy. “But I’m handling it. You just muddle through, ya know?”
Lewis tried to figure out where this line of questioning was headed. Jane had expressed her sympathy once in passing, but other than that, had never mentioned his marital problems. Lewis supposed now that she was Chair she felt a special duty to show concern for his personal well-being.
Of course, Jane had never had any reason to pry about the divorce. Perry had kept most of the department abreast of every detail from Laura’s point of view. By gossip standards, it had seemed like a pretty amicable parting, with no accusations of adultery, abuse or addiction. According to Perry’s analysis, the talented Dr. Hennig had simply outgrown her less-ambitious spouse; an interpretation that made sense to Jane.
Other sordid tales of loud, cursing telephone arguments did not seem to mesh with the people Jane knew, so she had dismissed those details as typical Perry exaggerations. She had also dismissed rumors about Lewis’s erratic behavior, including allegedly assaulting a grad student, drinking heavily, and being spotted in questionable company at nightclubs. Even if the rumors held a grain of truth, she had convinced herself that they were probably just minor transgressions; certainly nothing serious and within the realm of expected behavior for a man who had just been dumped by the love of his life. Now she might have to re-investigate those rumors in light of this newest complaint. Perhaps they revealed more about Lewis than she realized.
After a few more moments of awkward, meaningless conversation, she dov
e into the true purpose for the meeting. “We have a bit of a problem, Dr. Burns.”
He still looked confused. “Is it something with my tenure application?”
Of course, Jane thought, that should be his first priority these days. Just as quickly, she reminded herself that if tenure had truly been his top priority, he would not have done anything to jeopardize it. “You could say that. An issue has come up recently that may affect your approval.”
“What?” he asked, looking truly concerned for the first time.
There was no more need to hedge. “Lewis,” Jane asked directly. “Do you know a girl named Mandy Taylor?”
The look on his face spoke volumes. Upon mention of the name, he turned an ashen white. He could not have looked guiltier had Jane caught him in flagrante delicto.
“Um, uh, yes,” he stammered. “Of course I know her. She was my research assistant last year. Very sharp girl.”
“She also claims that you two had a sexual relationship.” Jane stared at him intently, awaiting his response.
“S-she does? She told you that?” he asked, clearly taken aback by her knowledge of his personal life.
“Not directly, but her mother has launched an informal complaint with the Dean of Students’ office for violating No Fraternization,” Jane explained. “There have also been some other allegations about you supplying her with alcohol when she was underage—.”
“Now wait just a minute!” he interrupted. “The girl works at a bar! I also know that she has a fake I.D., so that’s ludicrous! Jeez, Jane, this is the biggest party school in the country. Any kid can get alcohol whenever they want. That’s just crazy.”
“Lewis, I’m afraid ‘everybody does it’ is not going to be a helpful defense if it’s still illegal,” Jane gently reminded him. “The mother’s a lawyer; she’ll shred that to pieces.”
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