I might as well just set fire to this whole place and peace out.
So I wing it. I’m good at winging it. Kind of.
Class goes by, I think I might be talking sense or possibly not. At some point, I write the word NOTHINGNESS on the board, because that’s the nihilist mantra. I talk about The Big Lebowski and Turgenev. I talk about papers for the term. I have everybody introduce themselves, tell us what they want to do with their Philosophy degree. Classic icebreaker, but there’s only one answer I’m waiting to hear. So I start with her. “Go ahead,” I hold out my hand to her, pretending I don’t know every inch of her and her name too. “Miss…”
She stands up and turns slightly towards the class. I watch the hem of her dress slide down her thigh, and lean against the lectern for help. Then she says, “I’m Naomi Costa.” Soft but confident. “I’m a junior at Durham. And as for what I want to do with my degree?” She looks up at the ceiling, gets this cheek-pinching smile, and look straight at me, “I’d like to have your job one day, Professor Beck.”
Fuck.
Everybody else introduces themselves. I don’t remember a single name, a single answer. Her, it’s all her. Finally, icebreaker finished, I say, “Welcome to all of you. Thanks for taking my class. And please, come to my office hours.” I manage not to look directly at her. I say I’m the Master at Durham, and I’d love to see you there, anytime, for lunch, for dinner.
I do glance at her, for just one second, and say, “For anything at all.”
Then I ask, “Any questions before I let you go?”
Small pause. Her beautiful arm rises. I’m stuck looking at that curve between her shoulder and her chest. “Yes, Miss Costa?”
“Professor Beck. Is it really true that you believe in nothing? Do you really talk like Matthew McConaughey all the time?”
I can see she’s about to giggle. I love that. It must be a defense mechanism. It has the secondary effect of wrecking my self-composure.
Alright. Bring it, beautiful.
I clear my throat, and looking right into those sea-blue eyes, I do my best McConaughey impression, get that vocal fry going super strong. “We’re nothing. We’re the dust of nothing. Nothing.”
Roar of laughter. I see her snort. My chest feels like it’s going to burst.
And it’s over. They’re off to their next thing, the room filled with the clatter and thumps of 200 brains on overdrive.
After class, a few students stay behind. I actually sign my damned autograph for one, which is pretty much mind-blowing and kind of awesome in the way that super weird things are awesome. But at the end of the line is Naomi. Smiling.
At last, it’s just the two of us. It’s everything I can do not to flip the fucking table over and take her right here.
“Hi,” she says.
The dress is cut just low enough that I can see the very curve of her breasts as they come together. She loved how hard I sucked on them, all the while pinning her down with my body. What I wouldn’t do to carry her back to Durham and do that right now, all over again. “Hello, Miss Costa.”
She slides a book across the table. C.S. Lewis. The Four Loves. “Sorry I was a little rude this morning. That’s for you.” She keeps her fingers on the cover and doesn’t step away.
I’ve read it, but years ago. I remember doubting him, marking up the pages of some library copy with question marks. Lewis trying to make logic of love. Love. The thing that doesn’t really exist. Love is nothing but a chain of coincidence and a mess of thoughts. It’s the confusion of need and lust. It’s nothing. Every pessimist agrees.
Riiiight.
Now, because of her and the way she’s making me feel, I’m interested. I’m fairly sure she could have handed me The Joy of Cooking and I would have been interested, but I like this much better. I see a bookmark poking out. It gives me rush because it’s the ostrich feather. She’s stealthy. Secretive. Symbolic. I take it and put it in my bag with my laptop, my fingers just brushing hers. “Thanks.” Now I make a show of grabbing my bag and getting closer to her, walking out with her. But we’re alone in that huge lecture hall, and I get as close as I can to her without touching her. I’m 6’3”. She’s got to be, what, 5’6”? So perfect. So fucking perfect.
We’re so close, I can feel the heat of her bare arm on mine. I glance back and there’s nobody there, but shit. “I want to touch you. I need to touch you.”
She exhales, a slow, deep calm breath. “I wanted you to say that.”
“You won’t get out of my head.”
“You won’t get out of mine.”
“I can’t believe you’re in this class,” I trail one finger down her hand.
“I need you. I can’t stand this,” and then that exhale again. So deep, it makes her rib cage slip down into her breasts.
It’s then that the big door at the back creaks and I step away. She does the same, and we act like normal people. Professor and student, heading up the steps. Try to, anyway. I happen to have a nearly painful hard-on against my computer bag.
She flips her hair aside, revealing the curve of her neck to me as she puts her bag on her other shoulder. I see these red marks where it was, depressions in her skin from the pressure above. Everything inside me wants to go to Home Depot and buy all the rope they sell.
“Do you have office hours today?” she asks.
Fucking right I do. I’ll make all the office hours that ever were for her. “Name it.”
“Three o’clock? Your house?”
Done.
The next few hours pass like I am locked in a time warp. The first thing I do is open up the book she gave me. I was right. She’s marked the page with the feather from her mask. I emit an audible groan, walking down College. Fortunately, nobody notices.
I read page after page as I walk. I’m utterly engrossed. Everything he’s saying, I’m feeling. I actually nod a few times because everything he’s telling me, I feel I somehow already know. Because of her.
After that, every minute is a whole hour. I try to stay as long as I can in the dining hall for lunch; I talk so much, I feel hoarse. I go for a jog around campus to get my bearings a little better. It takes exactly 19 minutes. Fucking, fuck, fuck. All I want is to see her, to hold her to see what happens next. I want to get sweet and filthy with her. I want to make her shiver and whimper and say my name. I think back to when I’d spanked her, leaving a handprint right across her ass, as she moaned into the pillow, “More. Please.”
This girl. This woman. Let the walls come right on down.
In the shower after my jog, I imagine her there with me, on her knees. I lean against the tiled wall, absolutely throbbing for her from inside out. I let the water rain down over me, thinking of her skin on my tongue, the whiskey welling in her belly button. I need to find out what she’s made of. That bite mark she gave me on my thigh, it’s still there. The impression of her teeth, deep and purple. She’s on her knees in front of me, taking me into her throat, as deep as she can. As deep as I tell her. I come like a fucking river, whispering her name.
At 2:55 pm, there’s a knock at my back door. I have an instant raging hard-on. My heart pounds through in my balls. I open the door.
It’s Dean Osgood. “Good afternoon.”
My hard-on withers with tragic speed.
He looks different. He’s lost the toupee. “Haircut?”
Touching his head, self-conscious now. “It flew away, if you must know.”
Do not laugh, Ben. Do not laugh. “I have an appointment with a student at three,” I say, scanning the quad for Naomi.
“Alright, Beck,” Osgood says, suddenly dead serious and no longer ridiculous looking either. “Here’s the deal. I don’t think you’re a good fit for this college.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Good work, buddy. Way to be combative to your superior.
“For now. I wanted a professor and his wife from Harvard, one of the housemasters there. Nice people. Married for twenty years. She studies plants and he talk
s about Edgar Allen Poe. Those are the kind of people this college needs, and I fought like hell to get them. I was overruled because of you and,” he grits his teeth, “that bizarre burnt planets book.”
Now that’s why he’s so weird with me. He thinks I’m an outsider, which of course, I most definitely am. I’m betting he grew up somewhere like Cambridge, like his dad is some law professor at Harvard still. All locked into the establishment, they can’t stand anybody else inside it. “So much for Welcome Master.”
“You’ve got that right. So just know this: I've got my eye on you. I’m watching you. Any misstep, any shenanigans, you’re out. If Durham gets hit with another scandal, we’re dissolved. They rename us like fraternity and we vanish from the scene. You lose your job, I lose mine. Fucking…” His face turns red as he searches for the word. “…Disaster.”
“Have I given any indication of a guy who likes scandal?”
He rubs his mouth hard. “The problem with a bachelor Master, see, is this whole place is full to the brim with beautiful young girls. That’s why I don’t want you here.”
“Buddy, you’re a bachelor.”
“I’m a widower and seventy years old.”
He has a point. “I’m in Philosophy. I don’t do shenanigans.” The image of her tied to my hotel bed flashes into my head. “I want to be here. I’m not going to get involved with a student.” That’s a lie. I know I am. But she’s not just “a student” anyway.
“I saw you leaving the butler’s pantry, right after Miss Costa.”
Damn it. He’s put something together. Even a little connecting of the dots, that’d be a huge mess. Keep it cool. Channel your inner Kant, Ben. Breathe right through it. “You’ve made yourself understood,” I tell him.
“Consider this: You get involved with her?” he snaps. “Her whole fucking academic career? Gone. It won’t even be in our hands. If anybody sees you, it’ll leak from the Provost’s office and be all over the internet in an hour. So she’s done for and you? Never mind your superstardom,” he snaps again.
Now I just don’t say anything. Even Kant would’ve hit this bastard in the face by now. Holding her over me. Dickhead.
“This is your only warning,” he says, glowering at me. “One fuck up, and you’re out. And remember,” he says, doing that two-fingered pointing asshole move from his eyes to mine and back again. “I’m watching.”
I close the door. God damn it. He knows. He’ll see us. We’re doomed. Right now, and from now on always, surely always, the need to protect her is greater than the need to fuck her. I’m so goddamned furious, I want to break something.
I let loose a hard, straight jab into the wall. As my fist is flying, I think this is gonna be a mess. Drywall everywhere. But the impact of the punch rolls immediately back up my hand, straight through my bones, into my elbow.
“Fuck!” I snarl. Cinderblock made to look like plaster? Are you kidding me?
That’s when I hear the noise of footsteps approaching. I hold my knuckles, throbbing and bleeding a little. God damn it. God damn it, Beck.
A soft, gentle, knock. Not with the knocker this time.
I swallow hard. I wince. I’m pretty sure my knuckles are broken.
I wonder what she’s doing out there. Moving her hair aside. Breathing. Just being. Fuuuuuuuck.
A second knock. A little more urgent this time. Five taps.
There’s no way I can open this door. No way. I've never felt so sorry about anything in my entire life.
One more patter of knocks. This time, more spread out. If knocks could be sad, these are.
“Master Beck?” she says on the other side of the door. That beautiful, kind voice. I say nothing. Fucking nothing. If I open this door, Osgood is going to see her come in and we’re both completely through. It’s that simple. That kind of catastrophe. I have to keep her out. I have to keep her away. For her sake. Give a shit about me.
And then finally, the most beautiful girl in the world walks away from my door.
As a drop of blood splatters from my fist onto the floor.
14
For the second time that week, Lucy’s got her arms around me. “Little lamb,” she says. “What is going on with you? I know you cry at Hallmark ads but not like this.”
Somehow, against all the odds, I managed to get up the 72 steps and crumple against her doorway. Instead of replying, I sniffle hard and wipe my nose on my sweatshirt again.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” She smooths my hair. I feel her get her finger tangled in my mess of curls.
I lower myself all the way to the floor of her room. I grab a bag of almonds. She’s always got almonds. I shove a whole big handful in my hand. “Oh God,” I say.
“Wasabi. Sorry. Listen,” Lucy says, sort of on her tiptoes like she always is when she’s thinking up something devilish. “Jack and Coke, they’re having a party.”
I manage to swallow the hot ball of almond fire. I can feel it up into my eyes. It’s better than crying over Master Beck, who wouldn’t even answer the door. I don’t understand it. He wanted me— he said he wanted me—today in the lecture hall. There was absolutely no mistaking it. But then three hours later, he wouldn’t open the door. I know he was home because I’d heard some kind of racket before I knocked.
Asshole. Asshat. Asseverything.
“Jack and Coke, huh?” I say, and suck down a big gulp of water. Thursday at Yale is the big night for parties. Jack and Coke is an old-school secret society, all boys. Most of them are crew guys, but some just pretend to row crew and instead wear loafers and faded-out red shorts every day. Those guys. Also, there’s a chance Isaac will be there. Normally this would have made me give her a no thanks, but my defenses are decidedly compromised.
She nods. “At the Yacht Club.”
I almost spit my water out of my nose. “That’s in Branford. What? You and me on a bus?”
Now she’s got that you’re so cute look on her face. “Uber, baby. My treat.”
Behind shut eyes, I listen to my thoughts. I want to be alone. I want to yank the covers right up to my eyes and watch the fifth season of Girls until I fall asleep. I want to eat microwave popcorn and wallow. I want to write sad status updates on Facebook that make my friends leave comments that read only, “?” I want to go to the gym and make the elliptical clatter at full speed. But I can’t bear being here. I just can’t. I’d have my nose pressed up to my windows watching for him until I fell asleep. Time for a change, Naomi. It’s true. Time to cheer the fuck up, buttercup. “Dinner first?"
“Now you’re talking,” she says.
And as I open my eyes a polka-dotted navy mini skirt flutters through the air and lands on my head.
We go to dinner at Shake Shack, and I get a smokehouse burger with extra peppers. Lucy, normally the kind of girl that really would prefer her dressing on the side, positively astounds me by ordering the same thing as I do.
“It’s got cheese. And some kind of mayonnaise,” I whisper.
She grinds her elbow between my ribs.
“Two large fries,” I tell the guy at the counter.
“And a beer,” she says. She pulls out her ID. She’s 21 already. She told me she started a year late due to an unfortunate scandal after her senior year in high school that may or may not have ended up with her on that kidnapped-to-rehab-camp show.
Lucy swivels on one leg, cute as a button. “I mean, unless you’d give us two beers. I’m awfully thirsty…”
Deadpan stare in return. “I'll get my ass fired, girls. No way.”
“Fair enough,” Lucy says, and pays with her parents’ American Express.
While we’re sitting at our table waiting for our food, she’s watching the line anxiously. I can’t figure it out. Either she’s planning on getting a milkshake to eat with her fries, or she’s up to no good. I bet on the latter, Lucy being Lucy. Without a word, she gets up and gets back in line. Then it hits me. There’s been a shift change and there’s a new guy at th
e register. She’s going to get another beer, this one for me. Lucy. She’ll either become president or a notorious felon.
I busy myself with my phone. I don’t know why. Nothing is happening. I look at the weather. I look at the news. Nothing registers. My head, it’s with him. I take a deep breath, a sigh. Damn it. Leave it to me to fall for the first guy that I’ll never get to have. The desire to see him, it makes this weight inside me. I’m not even sure I could eat. I’m hungry for him and him alone.
Then my phone buzzes. Number and name blocked.
You like cheeseburgers. You’re perfect.
Ummm. What?
I don’t answer. The face of this weird guy who I met during my one and only foray into Tinder jumps into my head. God, no. The last freaking thing I need right now is a stalker.
Within just a few seconds, another message.
“The lover desires the Beloved herself.”
Oh my God. That’s from C.S. Lewis. That’s from the book I gave him today. My eyes scan every single table. Where is he, where is he? Holy hell. Corner bar table, all alone, not even looking at me. I steel myself. I’m somewhere between freaking out and furious.
I was at your door.
Just as I hit send, I stare at him to see his response to my reply. His eyes close, sadly. His thumbs are still. Until finally he replies with a simple:
We’re fucked.
I feel a flush come up to my cheeks and tears in my eyes. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I know.
And then what does he do?
He replies with the broken-heart emoji.
My whole body rolls in frustration and sadness, which is when Lucy sets down a beer in front of me. I glance over and watch him stand up, and pocket his phone. Tossing his garbage in the bin, he heads toward the door without a glance back at me.
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