Testing Kate

by Whitney Gaskell

  “Well. That was fun. I guess I better read up for Friday,” Nick said cheerfully, tossing his books into his black messenger bag.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. I felt sick, actually physically ill. Bile churned in my stomach. “I know he only went after you guys because of me.”

  “Don’t worry about it, chicky,” Addison said, shrugging. “It had to happen sometime. He didn’t call on me once last semester, so I was overdue.”

  But Lexi and Jen weren’t so forgiving. Jen had been hit especially hard when she wavered on the holding in Village of Arlington Heights. Hoffman needled her until she fell silent, unable to say anything else. Now that class was over, she stood up and hurried from the room without a word to any of us. Before she left, I could see tears shimmering in her eyes.

  Lexi turned and looked at me. “Jesus, Kate, why did you have to go and piss him off again?” she huffed, and then she left too, tossing her hair as she stomped off.

  “Forget them,” Nick said.

  “Yeah, it’s not your fault. I should never have told you the shrimp story,” Addison said.

  “No, I’m glad you did. It was a good story,” I said miserably.

  It was for my friends’ sake, and not my own, that I went to see Teresa Sullivan again. This time I made an appointment ahead of time.

  “Kate Bennett?” Teresa Sullivan said when she walked into the reception area where I was waiting for her. Her face arranged itself into a polite smile that made me wonder if she remembered me.

  I followed Sullivan back to her office and sat in the same chair I’d occupied on my first visit there. The pictures of her husband and pigtailed daughter were the same, although there was a new one of the family standing in front of a Christmas tree. I wondered if the handsome husband with his chiseled jaw and confident stare suspected that his wife was having an affair with a middle-aged prick. And what would happen to the little redheaded girl if her parents ended up divorcing over Hoffman? Would she be forced to pack her Barbies into a pink overnight bag and spend the rest of her childhood schlepping back and forth to each parent’s house, per the terms of the custody agreement?

  “We’ve met before, correct,” Teresa Sullivan said. It was less of a question than a statement.

  I nodded. “At the beginning of the fall semester,” I said.

  Teresa Sullivan consulted an unmarked manila folder sitting on her desk. “Oh, right. You were concerned about Professor Hoffman’s treatment of you,” she said.

  I nodded. “Unfortunately, that’s why I’m here again,” I said.

  And then I told her. All of it, even the part about Hoffman putting the dot on the cover of my blue-book exam and the stupid story about Hoffman throwing up bad shrimp on Justice Ginsburg’s lap.

  “And now he’s started targeting my friends. In fact, for the past three classes, he’s called on my friends almost exclusively, mocking them, berating them,” I concluded.

  Teresa Sullivan looked at me thoughtfully. While I’d been talking, she’d kicked off her high heels—today they were black crocodile with four-inch needlelike heels—and tucked one of her stockinged feet up under her leg.

  “As unfair as it may seem, Professor Hoffman is free to run his class as he sees fit, even if that means calling on some students more than others. But marking a blue book—that’s a serious accusation,” Teresa Sullivan said. She flipped open the folder and began writing something on a sheet of paper within.

  “I…I know that you and Professor Hoffman are friends,” I said hesitantly. “So if you don’t feel comfortable handling this, I can talk to another member of the administration.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sullivan said, frowning a little as she looked at me. “I wouldn’t say I know Professor Hoffman especially better than any other member of the faculty.”

  “But…I saw you having lunch together that one day,” I said.

  “Oh, right,” Sullivan said, realization brightening her face. “That wasn’t a social lunch. Did you know that Dean Spitzer is retiring at the end of this year?”

  “No,” I said, surprised. “I hadn’t heard that.”

  “Well, he is, and I’m on the search committee to find a new dean. Professor Hoffman asked me to lunch that day so that he could tell me, informally, that he would like to be considered for the position.”

  It took a minute for this to sink in.

  “Hoffman…as dean of the law school?” I whispered. The idea was horrific. I pictured a totalitarian administration, complete with library police and random locker searches. “But he’s evil.” The words slid from my lips before I could stop them.

  A smile twitched at Sullivan’s mouth. “When I was in law school, I thought my Contracts professor was out to get me. He once called on me every single day for two weeks straight,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  “I ended up doing really well in his class. All of that extra studying I did to be prepared for class, I guess. Years later I ran into him at a conference, and we ended up having a drink together and laughing about it,” Teresa Sullivan said breezily.

  “Well, I can tell you right now, Hoffman and I will never, ever end up laughing together over a drink,” I said darkly.

  “No, perhaps not,” Sullivan said. “But in any event, you don’t have to worry about my ability to handle this inquiry with impartiality.” She scribbled down a few final notes on the paper, and when she finished, she looked up at me. “Is there anything else you can remember?”

  I shook my head. “No. What happens now?”

  “Now we look into the allegations you’ve reported,” Teresa Sullivan said.

  “But…you’re not going to leave me in his class…are you? Or my friends?” I blurted out.

  “For the time being, yes. If you have any further problems, please let me know,” Teresa Sullivan said, in a tone that clearly indicated that our meeting was over.

  I sighed, puffing out my cheeks, even though I wasn’t surprised. This may not have been a wise move, I thought. If Hoffman found out about the investigation—as he surely would—he’d hate me that much more. And now that I knew he was going after the deanship, there was even more at stake.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mardi Gras fell in early March that year. We had that week off—Graham and I were scheduled to fly into Miami the day after Fat Tuesday—but the festive spirit permeated the law school the week before the break, and everyone, even the professors, visibly relaxed. Some students began showing up to class with Mardi Gras beads hung around their necks. Even Hoffman was less of a bastard than usual, or, at least, he wasn’t being as aggressively antagonistic. Ever since my meeting with Teresa Sullivan, he hadn’t called on me or any of my friends, other than Dana, but that was only after she volunteered.

  I’d promised Graham that I wouldn’t bring any law books with me on our trip to Key West, so I planned to spend most of the weekend studying. But my friends had a different plan for me.

  “There’s no way you’re studying today,” Jen said, as she swept in through my back door without knocking, Lexi in tow.

  It was the Saturday morning of Mardi Gras weekend, and I was sitting at my kitchen table, eating a carton of blueberry yogurt and contemplating whether or not to shower before I tackled the enormous Con Law reading assignment that Hoffman had saddled us with over spring break.

  “Come on in,” I said belatedly. Lexi poured herself a cup of coffee and Jen rummaged through the refrigerator.

  “You don’t have any beer?” Jen complained.

  “It’s nine in the morning,” I said. “Isn’t it a little early for you?”

  “It’s already nine?” Jen checked her watch. “We’re going to be late. Kate, you better change.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not changing,” I said defiantly, when my friends looked at me critically. I had on my comfiest old sweatpants and my Tulane Law T-shirt.

  “You can’t go out like that,” Lexi said critically. She was wearing a l
emon-yellow T-shirt with short, flutter sleeves, fitted Levi’s, and pink Adidas sneakers, and Jen had on a short-sleeve black turtleneck over khakis and black high-heeled ankle boots.

  “Yeah, you have to change. If you look like that, no one’s going to throw you beads,” Jen said. She leaned out my back door and yelled, “Hey, Nick! Kate doesn’t have any beer up here! Bring what you have!”

  “Jen! Keep it down. My neighbors are going to complain,” I said.

  “No, they’re not. It’s Mardi Gras, dahlin’,” Jen said, grinning. “Now, go shower.”

  An hour later I was standing on the St. Charles Avenue curb, drinking warm beer out of a red plastic cup and getting elbowed by the crowd milling around me. Nick and Addison had walked over with us, and even Dana had come out, leading her little black poodle puppy on a purple nylon leash. There were people everywhere, so many they were spilling off the sidewalk onto the street. Most were drinking out of plastic cups, but some flouted the open-container laws and held cans of beer or bottles of Jack Daniel’s. Many of the crowd were wearing garlands of fat plastic beads they’d scored at parades the night before, and some even wore silly hats—purple and green court-jester hats, towering red-and-white-striped Cat-in-the-Hat hats. I saw a few guys wearing those stupid caps that hold two beer cans with straws snaking down for hands-free drinking. Kids sat above the crowd, perched on seats affixed to stepladders so that they’d have an unobstructed view once the parade floats started rolling by. Vendors walked through the crowd, hawking everything from beads to bags of popcorn. Music boomed from portable stereos, and the crowd sang and danced along, hooting and cheering and waiting to be entertained.

  “Here it comes,” Jen said excitedly. She had brought a disposable camera and dashed forward to snap a photo of the approaching floats. One of the mounted policemen preceding the parade blew his whistle at her and gestured at her with a white-gloved hand.

  “Step back, ma’am,” he yelled. Jen blew him a kiss and ducked back.

  “I got a great picture of the krewe captain on horseback,” she said breathlessly when she returned.

  As the parade drew closer, the crowd began to cheer. The captain and his escorts wore elaborate robes and face masks, and they waved to everyone as they passed by, tossing plastic gold coins, which the kids pounced on. Next up was a high-school marching band and a troupe of teenage girl dancers boogying along in silver-sequined leotards.

  “They must be freezing,” Lexi commented.

  The theme of the parade was “Under the Sea.” The first float was covered with blue metallic paper and cutouts of fish, and the masked krewe members—all male—were dressed up as mermen. They wore shiny green tails and many were shirtless, with glitter rubbed over their hairy chests and soft bellies. Some of the men carried plastic tridents that they waved triumphantly overhead. They were all throwing things down from the float—beads and plastic cups and more colorful coins. The float was taller than I thought it would be—two stories high and holding fifty or more members of the krewe. The kids up on the ladders were just the right height to catch the eyes of the second tier of mermen, and they waved their arms wildly, yelling, “Throw me something, mister!”

  A strand of beads smacked me in the face, stinging the tender skin around my eye and at the top of my cheek.

  “Ow!” I exclaimed.

  “Keep your hands up,” Jen yelled in my ear.

  I raised my arms, holding them protectively in front of my face, and even though I wasn’t really trying to collect them, there were so many beads raining down from the sky, I soon had a dozen strands of them around my neck. The parade had paused while the band and dancers up ahead performed a number, and the merman float had stopped right in front of us.

  “These beads suck,” Jen complained. “They’re just the cheap ones.”

  “What other kinds are there?” I asked.

  “All kinds. You can buy them all over town, but that’s no fun. It doesn’t count unless you catch them,” Jen said. “Like those! I want those beads!”

  I looked up. One of the mermen was holding out a strand of beads shaped like Mardi Gras masks. He shook them at me, grinning broadly. I put my hand up, reaching for them.

  “Let’s see ’em!” he yelled at me over the crowd.

  “What is he talking about?” I asked Jen.

  “He wants you to flash your boobs at him. He’s not going to give you the beads unless you do,” she shouted back.

  “No way,” I said, and I shook my head at him. “Not a chance in hell.”

  “No tits, no beads,” he said, and started dancing like a fool, taunting me with the beads.

  “I want those beads!” Jen yelled. I looked at her, and my jaw dropped open. She’d pulled her black turtleneck up, exposing a red lacy bra that just barely contained the round heft of her breasts.

  “Jen!” Lexi said.

  “Wow,” Addison said, sounding impressed. He leaned in to get a closer look.

  “All the way!” the masked merman said, dangling the beads just out of Jen’s reach.

  Jen shrugged, pulled down the edges of the bra. Her weighty breasts spilled out. They looked vulnerable and pale in the late-morning sun, and the pink circles of her areolas stood out prominently.

  “Tits! Tits! Tits!” the krewe members cheered wildly, and suddenly they were all flinging armfuls of beads down on Jen and, by our proximity to her, on us. Jen grabbed the Mardi Gras mask beads and then held them over her head triumphantly, while she tucked her boobs back into her bra.

  “These are the coolest beads I’ve ever gotten,” she said, grinning broadly.

  The rest of us were all staring at her, openmouthed.

  “It’s not even ten-thirty in the morning,” I said slowly.

  “Jen, I can’t believe you just did that. There are kids here,” Lexi said, gesturing to the children perched on their stepladder seats.

  “And Dana,” Nick said.

  “I’m not a kid,” Dana said. She’d scooped Holmes up at the beginning of the parade, worried that the surging crowd would trod on one of his dainty paws, and she was now cuddling him up in front of her. “In fact, give me a beer. Please,” she added politely.

  “Only if you promise not to get drunk and start flashing your breasts,” Addison said. He popped open a can of Budweiser and handed it to her. “I don’t want to be responsible for corrupting your virtue.”

  “It’s Mardi Gras,” Jen said, taking a swig of beer. “If she’s ever going to be corrupted, now is the time.”

  Three parades later, I was slightly buzzed and tired of standing outside. I also had to pee, and there wasn’t enough antibacterial soap in the world to tempt me into using one of the foul-smelling Porta Potties that were chained in groups to the street signs. Rather than warming up, the day had gotten cooler as it wore on. Low dark clouds rumbled in and hung heavily over the city, threatening to start spitting down rain at any minute. The air was thick with humidity.

  “I’m going to head home,” I said, yawning widely.

  “Not yet, there’s another parade coming,” Jen protested. She’d bared her breasts three more times and was now weighed down with more beads than the rest of us combined. One strand was made up of beads shaped like hot peppers, and another had enormous purple, green, and gold orbs the size of walnuts. Men all around us had stopped watching the parades, instead fixing their bleary drunken eyes on Jen while they waited for the next display of her nipples.

  “No, thanks. I’ve seen enough,” I said. The beads I’d collected—nothing like Jen’s riches, mine were chintzy and small—were heavy around my neck, and I had a stack of cheap plastic drinking cups printed with the names of the krewes that had passed by. Why I was collecting these, I don’t know. It seemed to be the thing to do.

  “But we’re going down to the Quarter,” Lexi said. “You have to come down with us; a whole bunch of One-Ls are meeting up at the Cat’s Meow.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A karaoke bar on Bourbon
Street.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll pass,” I said, yawning again. This time I didn’t bother to cover my mouth.

  “I’ll walk home with you. I need a nap if I’m going to go out later,” Nick said.

  “Me too,” Addison said. “Dana, can you give me a ride home?”

  Dana lit up and nodded. “Sure! I parked right in front of Kate’s apartment,” she said.

  “Cool. Thanks, chicky,” Addison said.

  “Why don’t you just take a nap at Nick’s place?” I suggested to Addison.

  Nick and Addison both stared at me.

  “Um…because that would be gay?” Addison said.

  “Guys don’t nap together,” Nick said.

  “Oh, good grief. Are you twelve? Fine, Add, you can nap at my place if you want,” I said.

  “No, I want to go home. I’m not wearing my going-out clothes,” Addison said.

  “I don’t mind driving him,” Dana said. She wore her hope on her face, shining so brightly, I had to look away.

  “Okay,” I said, shrugging my defeat. It wasn’t like I was worried that Addison was going to seduce Dana on the way home. Surely he had more sense than that, I thought. I glanced over at Addison. He had reinserted his fake nose ring and was talking to a tourist in a fake British accent.

  Okay, maybe not.

  Lexi and Jen wanted to stay for the next parade, so we left them behind as we walked back to Nick’s and my apartment building. We cut over to Fourth Street, and then meandered down the uneven brick sidewalk, passing by the various candy-colored Garden District Creole cottages and Greek Revival houses. Dana had put Holmes back on the ground, and the tiny poodle was mincing smartly down the sidewalk, darting after the odd squirrel that crossed our path. Dana had twisted a pink bow onto the black poodle’s curly head, and it now flopped loosely to the side, giving Holmes a slightly demented look.