“Ah, never mind,” Sheila said. “That question is probably an HR nightmare. Forget I even said anything.”
Alejandro laughed, happy to comply. Mike silently nodded, winking at Alejandro behind Sheila’s back.
“Alejandro,” the student behind the counter yelled, two cups in her hand. “Oh hey, Profé, what’s up?”
Alejandro walked to the counter and smiled at Liliana Juarez. He took the cups of coffee from her. “Lili, where have you been? I thought you were going to be in my ‘Revolutions’ class this semester.”
She shrugged, “I wanted to, but my off-campus job changed my hours this semester, so I had to drop. Maybe next time?”
Alejandro nodded. “I’ll make sure I teach it again before you graduate, alright?”
Liliana smiled brightly. “You’re the best, Profé, you know that?”
“Say that louder,” he teased and tilted his head to Sheila, “Dr. Meyer’s my boss.”
Sheila laughed, and Liliana waved before moving away to make another drink.
Another student handed Mike a cup, and Alejandro nodded his head at his friend. “We’ve got a meeting in a bit,” he said to Sheila. “Have a good afternoon.”
Sheila smiled at him. “Who’s the second coffee for?” she asked.
Mike did a bad job of hiding this burst of laughter.
Alejandro thought about lying, but he hated that. Besides, there was a perfectly plausible reason for this. “Um, Deja Evans in Sociology. We’re co-chairing that new outreach committee for the Dean. Remember?”
“Oh yes, I know Deja.” That was all Sheila said before turning away.
Alejandro and Mike walked out of the coffee shop and through the student union cafeteria. Mike at least had the decency to wait until they were completely outside before he burst out laughing again.
“I hate you,” Alejandro muttered.
23.
Deja closed her office door at exactly two on the dot, and someone knocked before she could even get back to her desk. She exhaled in annoyance, turned, and wrenched the door open again. Her work smile shifted into an actual smile at the sight of Alejandro standing in the hallway, a cup of coffee in each hand.
“Ready?” he asked, entirely too cheerful for this meeting.
She turned around and muttered, “No.”
The door closed behind him. “Sounds like you’re having a great day.”
Deja grabbed her notebook, a pen, and her phone.
“I swear, I haven’t had a moment to rest since…” Her voice trailed off as the smile on Alejandro’s face widened.
He smiled at her as if they shared a dirty secret, because they did, a good and dirty one.
“Since when?” he asked, prodding playfully at her silence. In barely five seconds, his voice had dipped from happy to aroused, deeper and warm, and Deja could feel it across her skin.
“We promised we wouldn’t do that here,” she whispered. Her mouth was suddenly dry.
“Do what? It’s just a question.”
Deja turned to her desk, swiping at the sweat on her upper lip. “I need to turn the heater down,” she muttered to herself.
Alejandro laughed softly behind her.
She grabbed the water bottle on her desk, sipped, and then walked across the room to turn the heater down. When she turned back to Alejandro, she avoided looking him in the eyes. The last thing she needed was to let him make her horny before a meeting where all eyes would be on them.
“Shouldn’t we get to this meeting?” she asked.
He stepped to the side and nodded at her office door. “After you,” he said.
“Alejandro,” she whispered, walking toward the door.
“Deja,” he whispered back as she passed him.
Deja opened the door to Marie’s hand, raised as if she was about to knock.
“Well, well, well, what have we here?” Marie sang as her eyes lifted to see Alejandro behind Deja.
“We’re just heading up to the meeting,” Deja said defensively.
“Mmmmhmm,” Toni replied from the hallway.
Deja rolled her eyes and stepped into the hallway. “You two could have gone to the conference room without us. Why are you here?” She closed and locked her door after Alejandro exited.
“Us,” Marie whispered to Toni with a smug grin.
Alejandro laughed. Deja let out a frustrated breath.
“We went to the conference room, but Mike was there with Layla Morgan. Hard pass,” Toni replied.
“You two left Mike with Layla?” Alejandro asked.
“If he wanted to be saved, he should have said something,” Toni said with a shrug.
“Why is she even on this committee again?”
Deja rolled her eyes and turned to Alejandro. He raised his hands in supplication. “She overheard Dean Ward talking to me about it last month and asked to join. I couldn’t say no, especially not in front of the Dean. No one asks for more service.”
Deja sighed. “What’s done is done. Let’s just go,” she said, a knot of tension forming in her gut.
***
Meetings go south every day in so many ways, but Deja had assumed that a first meeting just to put all the committee members in the same room for a brainstorming session would be the easiest meeting of her day. Certainly, easier than going through a student’s essay draft line-by-line. And while there were still so many things Deja still didn’t know about how the university functioned, apparently expecting a smooth meeting was the height of naivete.
She was surprised into speechlessness. Shocked at first, and then angered.
To be fair, she and Alejandro had handpicked their friends and faculty of color they trusted to be on the committee; Toni, Mike, and Marie, alongside Dr. Keith Tolentino, one of the few full professors of color in the Art department. They were great. But the problems started as soon as the committee veered away from their handpicked members. Layla had spent most of the meeting looking at Alejandro as if she wanted to eat him and wasn’t at all worried that the other people in the room would notice. The Dean had asked for one of the Associate Deans, Martin Stampp, to sit in as ex-oficio. He was less of a problem than dead weight, since he’d sat down, introduced himself, and then promptly dozed off for the rest of the meeting. And then there was Caroline Enwright, chair of the Women’s Studies department, another of the Dean’s appointments.
Deja knew of her by name and had seen her at events around the College. She’d even probably met to her at some point, though she didn’t remember it. As soon as Caroline had introduced herself, Deja knew she wasn’t going to like working with her. It had only gone downhill from there. Caroline was out of touch with student needs, especially the needs of students of color, and she was dismissive of their challenges and downright hostile toward developing programs for their success, which was the entire purpose of this committee. She was also openly condescending to Deja and Marie because they were junior and adjunct faculty. In a nutshell, she was every stereotype of older white women in academia rolled into one thin-lipped, passive-aggressive, elitist form. And in kitten heels to boot.
What should have been a cordial discussion quickly devolved as Caroline talked down to Marie, who just shut down and stopped talking in the first ten minutes. Deja had balled her hands into fists, her body boiling with rage. She wanted to tell Caroline that she should step down from her high horse since Marie, who taught more classes than anyone else in the room, also taught more students of color than them. She was also, as an instructor, overworked and underpaid, and this service assignment was something she’d agreed to because she cared about her students, not because she was looking for yet another line on her CV. But Deja had long since conditioned herself to be deferential to senior faculty as part of her life on the tenure track, so she shut down soon after Marie.
The strain of keeping her mouth shut was too much for Deja to bear. She began to beat herself up internally for not speaking up on her friend’s behalf. Deja thought of herself as a principl
ed person, but she sat in that meeting and had to wonder if that was true anymore. Had it ever been?
Meanwhile, Toni and Mike tried to work through Caroline’s contrary contributions while Alejandro tried to keep the meeting moving along so they could cover the goals he and Deja had outlined, while Layla hung on his every word but didn’t make any meaningful contribution.
It was a mess of a first committee meeting, and Deja wanted nothing more than to back out of this entire endeavor and run for the hills.
***
“Okay,” Alejandro said, a little louder than he meant, cutting Caroline off mid-sentence. “I think that’s enough for today. Deja and I,” he stressed the words while looking Caroline in the eye, a not-so-subtle reminder that they were the committee’s co-chairs, “will go over what we’ve talked about and send the minutes and points of consideration before our next meeting.”
It was only sheer force of will that made his voice sound calm and professional, because he felt as if his head was about to explode. This meeting had been a disaster. A big one.
“Have a great evening, everyone,” he said through gritted teeth.
Associate Dean Stampp woke up right in that moment, placed both hands on the conference table and stood. “Great work, everyone,” he said and turned toward the door.
Caroline darted after him. “Dean Stampp, do you have a second?” she asked in a voice that sounded like nails on a chalkboard to Alejandro.
“I’ve gotta run to class,” Toni said. She grabbed Marie’s wrist and squeezed. “I’ll call you later, okay?” Marie didn’t answer, and it made Alejandro feel terrible.
“Where’s your class?” Mike asked Toni.
“Paul,” she said.
“I’m going that way, I’ll walk you.” Toni nodded and headed for the door. Mike turned to look at Alejandro with tired eyes. “I’ll call you later.”
Alejandro nodded at him and then Keith as they left the room.
In a whirlwind, Marie stood from her chair and grabbed her bag. She mumbled a goodbye to Deja before rushing from the room.
The only people left were him, Deja, and Layla, and Alejandro felt terrible, but he really wanted Layla to just fucking leave.
Instead, she turned to him with a smile. “Alejandro, do you have a second?”
“Actually—” Alejandro started, but Deja cut him off.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” she said, grabbing her pad of paper and cell phone.
“Deja?” Alejandro called, his face almost hurting with the depth of his frown.
She turned to him and put on her best collegial smile, which only conveyed a fraction of the warmth of her real smile, the smile she’d given him just this morning in her bed. “I’ve got some grading to do,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “I’ll email you later.”
Alejandro’s mouth fell open in shock as he watched her walk swiftly and silently from the room.
“So, Alejandro,” Layla whispered in a seductive tone.
He turned to her and had to force himself not to roll his eyes. He knew Layla had a crush on him. He wasn’t interested. He didn’t care. But he’d never been great at letting people down personally. “What can I help you with, Layla?” he ground out.
She smiled at him and leaned forward, laying her breasts on the table for him to see. He looked away.
“Now that everyone is gone, I just wondered…” She took a deep breath, and Alejandro felt his entire body seize. “This might be forward, but I was wondering if you wanted to get a drink sometime.”
“I’m seeing someone,” he blurted out. He’d struggled with deciding whether or not to tell Sheila this fact earlier, but not now, not with the memory of Deja’s sad smile in his mind. He saw Layla’s face crumple, but he didn’t sit around to help her through this rejection; it wasn’t his job. Besides, he stood with an angry heat in his limbs because Layla had kept him from comforting Deja.
He was mad at her and himself and Caroline and the whole situation. This was not how he’d expected this meeting to go.
24.
Friday
One bad day always leads into two bad days. That’s at least what Deja had always found to be true. She could never have just one bad day, but a three-day bad day streak was a little much for her to handle.
The only good thing was that it was finally Friday.
She didn’t have any classes or meetings, but she was still on campus. She had a list of administrative things to do, and with her sour mood, she knew she wouldn’t get them done at home. Nope, if she stayed home, she knew full well that she’d stay in bed and watch Snapped all day. It was a tempting thought, but in the end, she’d decided to go to her office and save the murderous women for the weekend.
Normally, Deja took some care with how she looked when she came to campus on weekdays. She liked to look presentable and professional, at the very least she didn’t want to dress so casually that she could be mistaken for a student, but today she didn’t care. She showered and threw on a pair of leggings, a t-shirt, a hoodie, and sneakers. She threw her laptop and a thermos of coffee in her backpack and walked to campus. She could have driven and not had to interact with anyone at all, but she needed the walk to campus to clear her head.
She pulled her beanie over her ears, pushed her sunglasses higher on her face and felt like a burglar sneaking into her office until she firmly shut her door behind her. She didn’t want to see or talk to anybody, including Alejandro. Actually, the only person that she wanted to talk to less than Alejandro was Caroline. Or maybe Layla. Everyone. Absolutely everyone she worked with was at the bottom of her list of people she wanted to communicate with today, so she was dodging everyone’s text messages and phone calls, including Toni and Alejandro’s.
She felt bad about it. She knew it wasn’t their fault that the meeting had imploded, and her sour mood was squarely on her own shoulders, but this was what Deja did. When she felt bad or stressed or insecure or anxious, she hid away; cocooning herself in her work and her apartment, and she never asked for help. She knew it was unhealthy, but she didn’t know how to break herself of the habit. Toni had, unfortunately, been through this with her before, and she understood. She’d keep texting Deja until Deja was ready to text back. But Alejandro… She didn’t know how to explain to Alejandro what she was going through and explain why she needed space even though she didn’t blame him, which added another layer of stress. Soon enough she guessed that he would get sick of reaching out and break up with her, which only sank her deeper into funk she’d been living in for most of the week, because she knew a way to head that off was to talk to him but... she was terrified that she’d tell him she needed space and he wouldn’t understand.
Yeah. Snapped marathon imminent, she thought as she opened her laptop and got down to business updating attendance scores, easing herself into the boring work she needed to complete before she could write this week off for good with wine and too much sleep.
***
“Come in,” Toni called through the crack of her office door.
Alejandro pushed it open and stepped inside.
Toni glanced up at him and smiled, almost as if she’d been expecting him. “What can I do for you, Dr. Mendoza?”
Alejandro shoved his hands into his pockets. “Deja,” he said simply.
“What about Dr. Evans?”
“Toni,” he huffed.
The pen in her hand froze over the essay she was marking up, and she looked at him. “Dr. Ward,” she corrected.
Alejandro rolled his eyes. “Deja hasn’t been returning my calls or messages.”
“Mine, either,” she said simply.
“I drove by her apartment, but the lights were off. I thought about going to her classes, but I just… Is she okay? Aren’t you worried about her?”
She set the pen in her hand down. “This might shock you, but only if you aren’t paying attention. I’m literally always worried about Deja and Marie, and Cristina in Biology, Annette in English, Sun in American S
tudies, and damn near every other woman of color in the College. Hell, there are some women in the Education and Business colleges I’m worried about as well, because as you know, the university keeps hiring these women of color and then throwing them to the wolves.
They do more service in and out of their departments, on- and off-campus. They teach bigger service classes and get some of the worst student evals. They publish far less, and if they don’t leave before they go up for tenure — and many, many, many of them do leave and are trying to leave right now — they’re denied tenure and have to leave anyway. And the ones that make it through the tenure process are a mess.
They’re anxious and have a bunch of health issues they didn’t have when they came here, or their previous conditions are worse. They’re burnt out. And still, they do more service for little, if any, recognition or support from their departments, the college, or men of color. And on top of all that, they make much less than their male colleagues. Far less. Does that sound like anyone we know?”
“I know this, Toni,” Alejandro said.
“I know you know this, and you’re one of my favorite men on this entire campus. That’s the only reason I’m going to tell you where to find Deja.”
“You know where she is?”
Toni rolled her eyes. “Of course, I know where she is. Deja and Marie are creatures of habit. It’s easier to keep track of them and know how to help them, whenever they’re ready for help.”
“Tell me,” Alejandro said.
Toni raised an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, like a chastised child.
“You know how this university treats its faculty of color, but I don’t think you realized that it treats us differently than it treats you. Not until you started dating Deja, at least. And that was okay. I could always count on you to help faculty of color, especially Latinx faculty, but I haven’t been able to count on you to notice that there are no women of color in your department and bring that up to Sheila when she crows around here on her diversity kick. I haven’t been able to count on you to point out to Dean Ward that while we’re doing better than any other college in the university hiring faculty of color, that’s not the entire picture. We’re doing just as bad in retaining women of color as everyone else. Meanwhile, we teach most of the students of color, and the burden of retaining and mentoring them falls on us.
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