Professed

by Nicola Rendell

  I pull out my black skirt and my tights from my closet and put on my battered second-hand Danskos. They’re part of my required uniform. The shoes from last night are still right there. Wouldn’t it be amazing, if, by some astronomically ludicrous chance, he happened to be at the dinner tonight? Maybe he’s a guest lecturer, maybe we could have a torrid romance and fall in love and then he’d whizz me off to wherever he’s from.

  Nope, Naomi. Nope, nope, nope. Danskos and footie socks. That’s reality now and always. I take my white work shirt from the hanger, slip it on, and button it up. As I do, I remember how he sucked on my nipples, gazing up at me with such utter, lovely admiration. They still ache. There are bite marks on my stomach, still tender to the touch.

  Looking at myself in the mirror, I button the top button and feel grateful he didn’t leave any visible hickeys. Ruthless and considerate. My kind of guy exactly.

  I have a few ties for these events. A super boring crimson one with the college shield on it. A blue one I had to wear when I worked a fancy place in Bal Harbor two summers back. But I can’t help myself, and I take out of my purse the black tie I stole.

  I poke my head in Lucy’s door. I return the shoes and say, “Iron?”

  She holds up a finger and drags a Tupperware bin out from under her bed.

  Her room is like a tiny Target. She has literally everything a person could need crammed inside it, from $600 shoes to top-of-the-line irons. She’s from huge new money, and she says her parents show their love by giving gifts. I once said that sounds lovely, and she’d said, “Not when I love you sounds like cash coming out of a wallet.”

  What I don’t do is iron the damned tie right there in front of her. Think of the questions! So I take the iron back to my room. I lay out the tie, nice and straight on the towel on my bed, and run my fingers over the creases, marking the spots where it had been around his neck, my wrists, my mouth.

  Looking at myself in the mirror, I find the tie looks nice, actually. Way better than all the rest.

  The iron returned and one more, “Mmmmm,” from Lucy, I head out my door and clomp down the 72 steps to the quad. I hustle over the grass to the Master’s House. It’s on the far end of the courtyard and takes up two massive floors. In the kitchen, I grab my waitressing apron from the closet.

  “Nice to see you, Miss Costa,” says Dean Osgood. The toupee tonight is sort of kitty-corner on his head.

  “Hello, Dean. How’s the moth?” “Elusive, Miss Costa. Very elusive.”

  I mean, why do I even ask? I could say the answer right along with him, word for word.

  Dean Osgood adjusts his hair. I sometimes wonder about toupee care. Does he bring it in the shower? Put it in with the delicates? Hand wash? Is there a special soap?

  “Be on your toes tonight, Miss Costa,” Osgood says. Whenever he speaks, it’s vaguely menacing. I sometimes wonder if he was in Vietnam, maybe. He’s that kind of intense.

  Osgood is right, though. It’s time to get serious about Durham, finally. We’ve got a scandal to recover from, and Osgood is hell-bent on recovering our reputation.

  “You’ll meet the new Master tonight,” Osgood says, straightening out his tie.

  “What’s his name again?” I ask as I make a bow of my apron strings around my waist.

  Osgood stares off into vacancy and sniffs. “Dr. Benjamin Beck.”

  8

  I put on a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, which I bought an hour ago at J. Crew a block from campus. I stare at myself in the mirror. Which is in the master bathroom. Of my new house.

  What the hell am I doing?

  I’m 38-years old. I’m the guy who believes in nothing. Who needs nothing. In tweed. In a big stone house with two fireplaces, a garage, two sets of matching wingback chairs, a mahogany dining table, and a staff. Me. Who grew up with nothing. I don’t even know what I’m doing here.

  I do know it’s been such a fucking whirlwind.

  Last year, I wrote a book. I called it In The Ashes of Planets. Nobody read it. The running joke had always been that I write books for nobody. Totally fine with me. But my old colleagues, back at UCLA, they didn’t find that so fine. There were two of them, two old crotchety guys who hung on to their Aristotle and Socrates so tight you could see their knucklebones. They said, “Beck. We don’t get what you’re doing. What’s all this nihilism? Who cares? Time to move on.” Which was when they convened a quorum of two and rejected my application for tenure. Poof. Gone. Nothing again. My theory of nothingness? Proved. They gave me one semester to get my shit together and hit the road.

  After the initial momentary shock, I found it didn’t really bother me. Life just throws some punches, and you throw back. You roll or you fall. Either way, it’s fine. It has to be fine, because there’s no other option. So I said, “Alright,” and thought about maybe taking a road trip into the desert. Like an old-school mystic. Maybe take all my books in a secondhand trailer and go off to someplace in Arizona. It didn’t sound too bad. I could live off whiskey, Oreos, ramen, and bananas. Pretty awesome idea, actually. Except then it got weird.

  The night after tenure went up in flames, I was sitting on my couch. I lived in a little place in LA with a leaky faucet and a rattling fridge. I had one cup, one plate, one fork. I slept on a mattress on the floor. I needed nothing. I wanted nothing. I was free of all the tethers of the world. That’s how I like it.

  But so I sat down that night, on the couch that the last tenant left behind. I didn’t feel like reading, so I pulled out my laptop and decided on True Detective. I liked the vibe. Kind of Cajun apocalyptic. Then there’s Matthew McConaughey in the car, talking to Woody Harrelson. And pretty quick he starts sounding…

  Like me.

  Wait. Say again?

  Right. Like me, and not just a little like me. But a lot like me.

  I grabbed my book off my cinderblock bookshelf. Then holy hell, I realize, as he’s saying, “The real question is not whether or not the world will end, but that this horizon of thought can be thought at all…”

  That Matthew McConaughey, as Rust Cohle? He’s quoting me. Benjamin Beck. Nihilist. Nobody. Me.

  I slapped the book shut. I paused the episode. I looked online to see if anybody other than me had noticed what was going on here. Yeah, they sure had. The writer himself, Nic Pizzolatto, he’d been reading my book while he was working on the screenplay. Holy. Fucking. Shit.

  So back at work, I tell Aristotle and Socrates. They said, “Sue him!”

  I said, “Yeah? Why? Doesn’t matter, guys. Doesn’t matter at all. Rust Cohle talks like me. He’s a badass. And as everybody knows, nihilism is philosophical badassery.”

  Aristotle and Socrates weren’t particularly amused.

  Got weirder still. When I started the new term, the very last one I ever planned to teach, enrollment in my mysticism seminar skyrocketed. The semester before, I had two students. Two. But in the new term, the numbers were climbing so fast I thought there was a glitch in the system. I even went to the registrar to say, “You know, they’re signing up for my class, right?”

  The registrar said, “Oh yes, Professor Beck. We know. We’re moving you to the 500-person lecture hall.”

  “The what?”

  “And giving you 20 TAs.”

  Because why?

  Because the cover of my book, my nihilistic pessimistic fuck-it-all-ya’ll book? The one that talks about the end of the world and the emptiness of life? The one with the cover I designed with Photoshop? That cover? My cover?

  Boom. It was on Jay-Z’s jacket in a video he did with Beyoncé. It had dropped earlier that week. Jay-Z, sitting on a motorcycle in the desert, holding a gun, pointing it at the sun. With In The Ashes of Planets on his leather jacket. So just like that, I became the hottest car in the academic parking lot.

  The thing hit the Amazon bestsellers, and not just in “Philosophy Methodology,” of which there are literally five books in the world. No. The actual bestsellers. I hit #3. I got inter
viewed on NPR. I had to hire an assistant.

  Aristotle and Socrates didn’t offer me my job back. They still didn’t understand it. Of course. But someone else did. Yale.

  Yale called me up and said, and I’m not quoting here, but just the gist: “Beck. Come teach here. Design your own courses, go look at ancient texts in our vaults. We’ll give you carte blanche. Come teach about nothing. We’ll even give you a house. We dig what you’re doing. For real. You. Here. Us. What do you say?”

  I thought about it for a while. Reasoned various ways through it. Compared it to wandering through the desert with my Oreos and whiskey. Then decided, for the sake of knowledge, learning, understanding, for the sake of teaching, for the sake of students and mystics and ideas?

  I’d do it. I couldn’t pass it up.

  So now here I am.

  Shit has officially gotten real. The job has started. The tweed is on.

  But I cannot get my mind off Naomi. I found her number when I woke up and texted her a sleepy Hey right away. Then I stared at my phone for ten minutes waiting for a reply but got none. Since then I've texted her three times…

  I missed you this morning.

  Sent 9:56am

  Last night was incredible.

  Sent 1:03pm

  Can I see you again?

  Sent 3:28pm

  … with no response. At all.

  I jam my phone in my pocket. I stare at myself in the mirror. I hear the staff downstairs clattering dishes. I look like a guy who slept for four hours and has never worn tweed until right now, and has no idea whatsoever what the fuck he’s doing. Which is all true.

  But last night I knew what I was doing. Her moans. Her fingernails. The way I fit inside her.

  I might believe in nothing. But Naomi, she didn’t feel like nothing. She felt like something else completely.

  9

  I carry a tray with Costco quiches and cut-up veggies through the fellows. They’re an assorted group, almost all of them over 70. There’s the anomalous young female professor, always in pencil skirts and the most gorgeous riding boots. Also, there’s a young, tall, super-awkward scientist who lingers in the corner, watching everybody from above, like an endangered stork.

  Some Master’s Aides hate working the dinners. I actually love it, because I get to scoot by all manner of conversations without having to add anything. I get to be a perpetual unseen fly on the wall. Secret introvert paradise.

  I often ask myself what I’m doing here. The answer is that I don’t exactly know. I often feel vulnerable, lost, and like the girl who doesn’t belong. Like I’ll never be smart enough or quick enough. Like I’m here by accident. Which is actually true, in a way.

  Four years ago this fall, I was a week away from marrying my high school sweetheart. Joe Riley was—is, I mean—his name. Copper-red hair, big hands, the same age as me. He came from a family of herringmen, and since we were kids everybody in my hometown in Maine said we’d get married, that we should get married, and wouldn’t it be nice if a Costa and a Riley married, just think of the sea in that bloodstock. Seriously. Like Cutler, Maine, is actually Nantucket or ancient Greece. Only worse because we weren’t royalty, we weren’t sea-faring nobility, we were just fishermen’s children, stuck in that crab-filled bucket. I felt so trapped by that idea, ending up a mom to four kids and all my still-unknown dreams gone. But back then—I say it like it was ages ago, because that’s exactly how it feels—I really hadn’t known what else was out there in the world for me. I said yes, because I really had no idea what else to do. I had no idea there was anything else to do.

  Fast forward to that November. The wedding was planned for January, and I remember feeling such dread when I’d see the countdown calendar on my phone. To escape the dread, maybe, I went out to work the boats with my dad. There’s nothing in the world for forgetting your problems like working a lobster glut, getting cold to the bone and so exhausted you can barely speak.

  The wave came from nowhere, right at us from astern. I’d been slightly off balance, pushing traps off the boat, and my feet got tangled in the rope on the deck. I remember the squeak of my galoshes and clambering for the sheerline, then falling and falling for so long, it might as well have been off a cruise ship than portside of the Lady Francesca.

  As I sank down into the water, trying to kick off my boots for no reason other than pure panic, I had one single thought. It was a horrible thing to think, but it’s what swirled up into my head: I wish I could have done something other than become a wife. That was one of those come-to-Jesus moments, I think. Except I didn’t see Jesus. I saw the propeller. And that was when I lost consciousness.

  It changed everything. Recovering in the hospital, with hundreds of stitches lining my side, I realized there was so much more I wanted to do. I felt ancient, I still do. So a year out of high school, having thought for all the world I was going to get married and become a fisherman’s wife, raise kids, with barely enough money to put food on the table, and grow old and gray with only a high school education, I realized no. Not me. For Naomi Costa, there’d be something different. Something more.

  From the hospital, I told Joe I wanted to call off the wedding. He cried at my bedside, and big tears fell off his red lashes, turning the edges of his eyelids red too, and making his green eyes seem glazed and far away. I stayed strong. I knew I would suffocate in that town. I knew that if I ever fell overboard again, I’d have done something to be proud of. So within a year, I was a Yale freshman. It was magic, putting my hands on the dream, studying philosophy to make sense of thoughts and the world.

  But dreams aren’t easy. Here, sometimes, I also feel like I’m drowning, in a way. Surrounded by all this brilliance, I'll always be well under the water line. Never enough.

  Hardly anybody knows my story. Lucy does, and also the little man standing just in front of me now, with his arms open for a hug. I set down my hors d’oeuvre tray on a side table. His name is Professor Sarka, and I have a feeling he was grandfatherly even as a little boy. He’s the world’s authority on maritime literature, and always talks like he’s on a ship. Once, we had lunch, and the only thing we talked about was lobster pots. Another time, he drilled me on the best paint for boats. Once, we had coffee, and I showed him how to tie a rolling hitch knot with a shoelace he had in his pocket.

  “Hello, skipper!” Professor Sarka says into the hug. I kiss him on the cheek, and he smells like cedar. “How are conditions?”

  He’s so adorable, it actually hurts. Ever since his wife died, his wardrobe has been a heartbreaking gamble. He’s colorblind, he confided in me. Today it’s three clashing tweeds and a plaid shirt underneath. He’s about five feet tall and has enormous sailing hands. Somehow, he reminds me of a plump little bear.

  “Conditions, Professor, are good,” I tell him, picking up my tray again.

  “Favorable for progress?” He selects a baby carrot.

  “Mostly.” I give him a cocktail napkin from my apron.

  “Wind in the east?” “Definitely.”

  “Found yourself a boyfriend yet?” He always asks me that, ever since his wife died. Love is on his mind, and he’s missing her. Lowering his head, he says, “Love, Naomi. It’s a good thing.”

  Self-consciously, I smooth my tie. “Not yet. I think they’re all out of my league.”

  Sarka shuts his eyes. “You are out of their league, my dear.” He grins delightfully at me, but then he begins lowering himself behind his whiskey, peering out over the glass. “Broadside, incoming.”

  I slap a smile on my face and turn around.

  The broadside is none other than Osgood again. “Miss Costa. Too much canoodling. Work the room, move those finger foods.”

  Oh, you go canoodle, you fuzzy caterpillar. “Sorry, Dean.”

  But move those finger foods, I do. Everybody is abuzz, waiting for the new Master. Everything smells new, like fresh paint. They’ve done renovations upstairs in his private rooms. Everybody is excited for this Professor Beck. All
the ladies are gathered in clumps. They remind me of women waiting to catch a bouquet at a wedding.

  Vague details about our new Master come back to me in fits and starts. I know he wrote some book that got everybody’s panties in a twist, and they offered him a job and the Master’s position. That’s right, now I remember… He’s in philosophy. A notorious nihilist. Great. Nothing better than someone who believes in absolutely nothing. What fun. I also remember he’s the only unmarried Master we’ve ever had—not even a widower, just a flat-out bachelor. All the girls who’ve stalked him online say he’s adorable, and use the word adorbs, so I know they really mean it. But I haven’t searched for him. Provided he doesn’t fire me, try to convert me into believing in nothingness, or tell me I should go back to Maine to work the boats, I’m pretty sure we’re going to get along fine.

  I return to the kitchen and load up with more finger foods and toothpicks.

  The circulating continues. I bring around a tray of tiny artichoke things in puff pastry that go like hotcakes. I always think about grabbing one for myself but never do.

  As I’m trying to move the last two artichoke puffs, things fall to a hush.

  Bing, bing, bing, goes a fork on a glass. That’ll be Osgood.

  I pass between fellows, and they politely decline my offer of the artichoke puffs. All the attention off me, I turn towards the window and snag one at last, sticking it into my mouth. It’s utterly delicious. Creamy and salty and the pastry both crunchy and soft.

  Dean Osgood’s voice fills the room. He always talks too loud for the space, always. I notice it’s getting hot in here, and a little stuffy. Late August, and all the linen and sports jackets and menopausal hot flashes.

  Everybody’s eyes still off of me, I grab the second puff and jam it in my mouth.

  “Just wanted to say a few words to welcome our new Master,” Osgood says. Compulsory pause. Hand to God, he must practice this stuff in front of a mirror. “So I present to you all, with greatest delight and excitement, Professor Benjamin Beck.”