by Amy Lapwing
Michael looked at his friend, the older man’s eyebrows moving as he thought. He was constant, Charles, no swings into melancholy and then back to buoyancy. Michael saw a smile jerking itself across his mouth as he chewed. “You doing Joyce again this term?” he asked.
“You know it! What fun! I wish I knew computers. I wonder how hard it’d be to spew out Joyce from microchips. Microjoyce!”
“There must be somebody there.”
“In English? I’ve asked. I think it’d take a new kid.” Charles smiled as he mentally enumerated the new kids.
“No,” said Michael. “No, I saw her first.”
“This is business. Nothing like what you’re planning.”
“Right.” Michael did not believe him.
Justina returned to her apartment from the party in a buzz that needed physical exercise to abate. Her roommate had gone to bed, she had no one to talk to. She tried to listen to music and read for a while. She gave up and went to bed, her mind still jumping with post-party impressions. Her usual fantasy lover, Faceless Federico, could not deliver the excitement, so she gave him the night off and brought in Masterful Michael who obliged her with a womb-buster— Gah!— and she slept finally.
As anticipated, she spent Sunday obsessing over the next day’s classes. She got a French One out of Richelieu, but it was an eight-thirty. She wondered how hardnosed she should be about make-up tests. She decided to start tough, and then maybe soften next semester. No one could criticize her for that.
She drove in to campus on Monday morning from her Merrifield apartment, arriving at eight. Cruising in her Honda by the packed student lot she sailed into a spot in the faculty lot right near her classroom building. Pleased with privilege, she walked into class and jarred the roomful of hung-over nerves with a brassy, “Bonjour, tout le monde!” After several tries, she got a satisfactory response from them, and settled down to her job.
She went immediately to her next class, a survey of French literature, beginning with Middle French and Villon, and she was certain she impressed them with her spirited, suggestive reading. It was Villon, after all, and a beautiful vulgarity was inescapable. There were very few eyes not on her. She wondered if she was memorable yet.
Back at her office by eleven, Justina read in spasms, looking up every few minutes to see who was passing by. She got up to close her door.
“Hi!” Pascale Jeanblanc was in the doorway. A petite, plump woman of between thirty-five and forty, she wore a brown knit dress draped with a bright scarf printed in purple, red and ochre. “Want to go to lunch?”
“Okay. Where, is there a cafeteria?”
“Faculty lounge,” said Pascale, her eyes wide. “I’ll come get you in a few minutes, okay?”
A short while later Justina was standing in line ordering a turkey sandwich on wheat with lettuce and tomato, light mayo, no cheese.
“How's it been, your first day?” asked Pascale when they had sat down at one of the long tables by the floor-to-ceiling windows. Justina related her performance in the Villon class.
“They think they invented crude language, of course they were surprised.” Pascale tossed her auburn-dyed hair out of her eyes and leaned back in her chair, her head bumping someone in the hip.
“Excuse me, I’m sorry, Pascale.” Michael stood at their table, holding his tray.
“Salut, Michel!” said Pascale.
“Hi.” He smiled at Justina, put down his tray and exchanged kisses with Pascale.
“Sit, sit,” she said, indicating the place next to her. He sat and looked across the table at Justina.
“Hi, Justina.”
“Hi, Michael.”
“You know each other already?” asked Pascale.
“We met at the Welcome Back thing,” said Justina.
“I missed it!” said Pascale. “Was it exciting?”
Michael looked to Justina. “It was very welcoming,” she said. She was looking toward the doorway.
Is she waiting for someone? Has she met someone already, someone else?
Pascale patted Michael on the back. “How are you, Michael? I don’t think I saw you all summer.”
Justina brought her eyes back to Michael, quickly, then to Pascale.
Michael let fall his shoulders. “I’m fine, Pascale. What did you do this summer?”
Pascale chattered to them about her annual visit home to France, to Paris, with Denis, her Québécois husband. She bragged about the rejuvenation of their love affair, incited by the good food, real food, the wine. “Just, the air,” she shrugged. “It’s in the air, you know. Comme ça.” She showed them the inside of her lower lip.
“Love is in the air, in France?” asked Justina.
“You were there!” enthused Pascale. “Hein? Where was it, Toulouse?”
“Grenoble.”
“Eh ben? Those Arabian men, hein?”
Justina lifted one side of her face. “Just, your normal, French alpine air, I guess.”
Pascale made a sound of disgust. “Probably you stayed in your room all the time, only went out to get a brioche and a café.”
“Did you get your French One?” Michael asked Justina.
“Ah! French One!” Pascale exclaimed and she suddenly got up. “Oh, I wanted to talk to you some more,” she pouted to Michael. “I missed you so much!”
“Me, too, Pascale.”
Pascale smiled at the two of them and left with her sandwich.
“Did you get the course?” he repeated.
“Yup, I did.”
“Good.” They ate in silence for what seemed an entire New Hampshire March, but was just seconds.
“So, what was your—” he began.
“The country kids find each other again!” Charles sat next to Justina, sloshing his soup onto his tray. “Hello, Justina! You’re looking youthful today.” He looked at Michael from under his brows as he said “youthful.”
“Hi, Charles. I’m feeling kind of youthful, actually. I’m supposed to feel fiftyish.”
“Why?” said Charles, surprised.
Justina looked out the window at the passing students, at a boy’s groin, his loose jeans draping the subtle bump. “I just always imagined I’d be a college professor someday, like this woman I saw in the New York Times Magazine one time. She was walking around in a park in early winter, wearing a big warm sweater, with her incredibly handsome fifty-something husband and her two good-looking, sloe-eyed grown sons. And she was fifty. She looked so wise and so content, I just wanted to eat her up. Or maybe her husband, I forget.”
Michael glanced at her, she was drinking her iced tea and looking not at them. She looked back at him when she put down her glass.
“Take my word for it, feeling fifty is a lot like feeling whatever it is you are, only better,” said Charles, inane again.
Michael sat up taller and eyed Charles.
“Oh! I’m interrupting, aren’t I?” said Charles.
“We were just talking,” said Justina. “Michael was about to ask me something.”
“I just wonder what was your thesis topic?”
“Ugh!” said Charles. “That’s not what he was going to ask you.” At Michael’s look, he protested, “You don’t really care what she did her thesis on, do you?”
“Of course I do! I want to know everything about Justina. Is that all right?”
Justina glanced at her watch. “Oh, gah, I got to go! Nice to see you, Michael, Charles.” She took her tray to the trash barrel.
“¡Esta mierda!” Michael snarled to Charles, and he hurried after Justina.
Chapter Three
Enemies
“Justina!” He caught up with her at the door. “Justina, I’m sorry. I just, I guess I’m a little, you know, awkward.”
“I get the feeling you’re trying to— like you’re worried how I’m going to take everything you say. It’s just me. Justina.” She smiled at him as though he were the shyest boy at Junior Assembly and he had just got up the courage to ask her
to dance. “Besides, Charles is the one who should apologize.” She started forward, he walked with her. “Are you two in some kind of competition?”
“Oh— we’re just, very old friends. And sometimes we are—” He mimed extreme exasperation. “Rrrr! You know.” They walked out of the building into the aching fall day. Students criss-crossed the common, graceful in their dark, baggy clothes. Conspicuous among the still-green foliage, the eager young maples were beginning to redden; they would be stripped weeks before their elders. Michael breathed deeply, letting whatever calm he could find enter him. Justina walked in silence.
“I want to hear everything about you, how goes your first day,” he said suddenly.
His expression was hopeful, his eyes like a friend’s. “That’s sweet of you,” she said and took a slow breath.
He smiled, relieved he had finally said the right thing. Wait, he heard Charles’ caution in his mind. But her smile! “Justina, will you go out with me, this weekend? On a date?”
She bowed her head.
“Just spend an evening together, with me.”
She threw her head back and took a shallow breath.
“I just want to talk with you,” he said, “without nobody bothering us and making fun of us.”
She knew nothing about him. She would be very disappointed if he was a Don Juan. But it was just a simple date. Wasn’t it?
“I don’t know you very well.”
“What do you want to know? I’ll tell you anything.”
She looked ahead and identified the Modern Languages building by the overgrown rhododendron bushes obscuring its entrance. “Are you busy now?” she asked him. He shook his head and followed her into the next building. She led him into the control booth of the language lab. There were only a couple of students murmuring in the booths.
“‘Le chat de ma tante est sur la table,’” recited Michael.
“C’est vrai?” said Justina, wide-eyed.
“Oui. Mademoiselle.” He made a grandiose bow.
“Sur,” she corrected, exaggerating the dreaded French ‘u’ sound.
“Sur,” he approximated. “Sur, sur la table.” He tried, but could not satisfy her. “It’s hopeless— eh, sans espoir,” he pleaded.
“You’re just out of practice.” She sat before the control booth.
He pulled up a chair by hers. Should he say he was ready to learn?
“These guys are doing advanced conversation,” she said, looking toward the two students. “So I think we should, too, okay?”
“Okay. I love to talk. Do we have to speak French?”
“Not today. Now, there’s something I’d like to know, if it’s okay.”
“Yes?”
“I would like to know—” The black plastic knobs on the console absorbed her attention; one of them was chipped. “Jesus! I’d like to know if you’re married.”
“No!”
“Okay, well, I didn’t know for sure—”
“That’s okay. And I’m not seeing anyone, either.”
“Okay.” She paused, unsure if she wanted to know any more. “I think I’d like to know if you, you know, if you’ve been involved with anyone I know. I’d just feel better knowing it.”
“With anyone you know?”
“Like, Pascale, for instance?”
“Pascale!” He laughed. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh, she just likes to kid with me.”
“Okay. See, now, if you had dated her, and then I were to date you, hypothetically, since she’s going to be my friend, I think, I’d like to know that.”
So, she's thinking of dating me? Yes, this conversation idea was an excellent one. “Of course, I understand now.” He paused, thinking. “I don’t think you have known anyone I’ve dated.”
“What’re their names and I’ll tell you.”
“Okay. Laura Jeter.”
“What department?”
“English. But she has left now.”
“Oh.”
“And Pam Morgan. Business. She’s married now.”
“Oh.”
He awaited further questions.
“Who else?” she prompted.
“That’s all,” he answered, frowning.
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve been here how long?”
“Thirteen years. What?” he said in response to her look of misgiving. “I was supposed to have more dead-end relationships? Two’s not enough?”
“No, it’s not that it’s not enough. But you must have gone out with them a long time. That’s not dating, that’s a serious relationship.”
“No, eh, let’s see, I dated Laura for a few months. Well, a semester.” He looked at her to see if she was feeling any better about it. She seemed confused. “And Pam and I went out for, lordy, just two months. I guess I thought these could be serious relationships, at the time, but when I look back now, really they weren’t.”
“So, that’s all the dating you’ve done, in thirteen years?”
“Mm-hm.”
She pulled the broken black knob off its spindle. “I feel so stupid asking you these things.”
“No, you’re right. You know nothing about me, except what I’m telling you.” They thought a moment, both knowing what was wrong. “You should talk to somebody else, a woman, probably. Talk to Pascale, she knows what everyone’s up to.”
“I didn’t mean that you were up to something.”
“You never know,” he teased. “No, ask her about me.”
“Okay,” she said, and she put the black knob back on, its white line aligned with the “OFF” on the console.
“There, now that was good.” He tossed his shoulders, his hands between his knees. “We had a normal conversation, didn’t we? I don’t always flirt.”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with flirting,” she said. His smile became more roguish. “There you go again,” she chided.
“You just said—! Besides, I just feel a little—” he wobbled his hands— “you know.”
“So, go ahead,” she prompted. “Your turn.”
“My turn? Oh— no, you don’t have to tell me about, before.”
“You don’t want to know?” she asked.
“I— I don’t think I have the right, you know.”
“But, I did have a right to ask about you?”
“Oh. Whoops.”
“Okay, you don’t want to know, you don’t want to know.” She put on her headphones and turned the knob to “ON,” and listened to the young woman student.
He pulled his chair closer to hers. “I only don’t want to invade your privacy.” She turned another knob, not looking at him. “But you didn’t invade mine.” He sat back and frowned at her.
She felt his look, and turned to him.
“Be fair, now, Justina! I am the one who is asking you out!”
She took off the headphones. He’s right, it’s different, I did have the upper hand on him, I guess, since he wanted something from me. Still, isn’t he curious about me?
“Justina,” he said, “I’m not playing games with you. I do want to know everything about you. Here, I’ll start with something really basic.”
“Okay.”
“How old are you?”
“Oh! You call that basic? I call that personal.”
“Justina, I’m going mad, here.”
She smiled. “How old do you think I am?”
He sighed. It was aggravating the way she played with him. He should just go. That would teach her.
“I’m not teasing you, I want to know how old people think I am, you know, since I’m a professor now and everything. I should seem, you know, professorial. Mature.”
“You seem mature, and slightly maddening.” He could not help returning her smile. “You look, oh God, I’m going to get in trouble again.”
“No pressure,” she said.
He thought she could be thirty, maybe. “Twenty-eight?”
“Twenty-e
ight, you say.” She put on her earphones. “Don’t you have a class now or something?”
“Ah! You want me to go?”
“Not necessarily, I just—”
“‘Not necessarily!’”
“I just wondered if you had afternoon classes.”
“Yes, I do. At exactly three o’clock. Two hours, delightful hours, from now.”
“So what are you going to do till then?”
“I don’t know. What are you going to do?”
“This.” She put on the headphones, turned another knob on the control panel and spoke into the microphone. “‘A-mou-reux.’ Répétez!” Justina corrected.
Michael repeated softly with the student. “A-mou-reux.”
Justina glanced at him. “C’est ça, Kristen, continuez!” She took off the earphones. “I forgot you know French.”
“Très peu,” he said, imitating Maurice Chevalier. “But I know ‘amoureux.'”
She turned her head to hide her smile.
Justina sat back in her chair, her eyes on the room before her. Michael leaned his head against the wall and watched her. Her blue eyes in profile were almost translucent, the lashes light as down. Her cheek was round like a hip; her concentration lent the presage of a line at the corner of her mouth. Her features were still young enough to permit him to imagine how she had looked as a girl and at the same time he saw her stirring, stunning middle-aged womanhood in that one line. I’m not playing with you. Why do I make you uncomfortable? What a donkey I am, I don't know how to talk to you. He wanted to just kiss her. Just kiss her, then they’d see if they could ever understand each other.
He stood and said, “I let you get back to work,” he said quietly.
I wish he’d stay. But he should go.
Michael gave her a “Remember me” look through the glass before going out the lab door. Justina felt her melancholy smothered by a giddy hope. She looked out at the two murmuring students, and felt compassion for their happy simplicity.