‘Actually,’ he said after she’d sucked him dry, ‘when I said “What’s the next step?” I meant what’s the next step in your grand scheme to acquire tenure? While you wait for the journal to give you the green light, I mean.’
‘Oh,’ said Normandie. ‘I hope you don’t regret the blow-job.’
‘Not a concern,’ said Jacob. ‘Technically, though, I owe you one instalment of oral sex. Do you want it now?’ He was already lifting the hem of her negligee.
‘Silly boy. I just had one.’
‘And that’s a problem because …?’ He enunciated the words between kisses as his mouth played around her upper thighs.
‘Oh!’ she conceded. ‘You’re right, it’s not a problem. Mmm, not a problem.’
Thus encouraged, Jacob proceeded. He officially extended his visit from thighs to tender feminine lips, kissing up blushes and tonguing his way into favourite places, where he was welcomed with libations.
‘No, this isn’t problematic at all,’ she was saying in quick breaths. ‘Wow, goodness, Jacob, I’m having quite a remarkable absence of problems with this. I’m having – ee!’ She ended on a squeal.
It was the wittiest little orgasm she’d ever had for him, to date. He clutched her ass and buried his face in her warmth, wetness, and wit.
Normandie had submitted her research, as planned. But she had explained to Jacob that, as with just about anything these days, it wasn’t enough to do solid work. One had to market. Promote. Schmooze.
In addition to making arrangements to appear at some upcoming conferences, this week’s schmoozing entailed a visit to Kate Passky’s office. Jacob had turned in the final revisions on his article, and his only career-related obligation was mulling over an unappealing but lucrative editorial job he’d been offered back in New York. He was intrigued by the very concept of someone so impressive that even Normandie was in awe of her, and he was pleased when Normandie invited him to tag along. She even made a quick call to Kate to let her know, explaining to Jacob that in the backbiting, super-bureaucratic world of academia, even a phone call was really just a shortcut, a memo being the more usual procedure for announcing events as trivial as putting cream in one’s coffee. ‘You never know when some rival will make a stink because his friend didn’t get to sit in on a casual meeting with the chair, and why wasn’t the entire department notified, and how come there’s no paper trail, etc.’ From the exasperation in her voice, it sounded like she might have a particular rival in mind.
It seemed incongruous that one of the most important decisions of Normandie’s life would emanate from such an inconspicuous, insignificant-looking office. Jacob couldn’t have said what, exactly, he’d been expecting, but it was something more along the lines of vaulted ceilings, dancing spotlights, and probably lots of neon that would ask, WILL NORMANDIE STEPHENS GET TENURE? Times Square style.
But the only neon was in Jacob’s mind. And, perhaps, Normandie’s – though she looked cool to the point of seeming blasé. In this dim, bookshelf-crammed room with one window and barely enough floor space to accommodate visitors, Kate sat behind a desk of modest proportions, looking like the most important question on her mind was whether or not it was time to order more paperclips. The cosy array of open reference books, semi-shuffled manuscripts, and rampant sticky notes did not, collectively, give the impression of holding anyone’s career in the balance.
When she looked up, Kate’s personal magnetism was as good as any neon. Though his knowledge of astronomy stopped at the fourth-grade level, Jacob could see why this handsome woman with intelligence and humanity shining out of her museum-quality grey eyes would be an inspiring leader in whatever field she might have chosen. Add to that the exceptional professional genius that Normandie vouched for, and it was easy to see why she had used the word idolise.
The two of them were of necessity squeezed right up against Kate’s desk, and Jacob could smell both the mints on Kate’s breath and the sweet, fresh smell of Normandie. The chair nodded graciously at him, but her first words took him aback.
‘So this is the writer you’ve been fucking,’ she said to Normandie.
Normandie rolled her eyes.
‘Oh, all right. I’m sorry.’ Kate smiled indulgently. ‘Seeing. The writer you’ve been seeing. There, is that better?’ She patted Normandie’s hand, condescendingly. ‘Young academics have become so uptight since my day.’ She looked at Jacob. ‘Don’t you think so –’
‘Jacob,’ he gulped.
‘Don’t you think so, Jacob?’ She winked at him, enjoying the tease around the obvious fact that Jacob had not been old enough to make the scene in her ‘day’. Normandie, whose composure never eluded her for more than a moment, was now chuckling into her hand, and her cheeks were rosy and cheerful.
‘Maybe I’d better wait outside,’ said Jacob, between dry-throated ahems.
‘Oh, he is cute,’ said Professor Passky to Professor Stephens, as though Jacob were already out of earshot.
‘Please stay, Jacob,’ said Normandie lightly. ‘It would be stupid for you to leave after coming all this way, just because Kate used a particular verb.’
Now Kate was chuckling too, and Jacob couldn’t help smiling. ‘Professor Passky, I’m very pleased to meet your verb, and I hope you’ll use it again sometime.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ said the chair of the Astronomy Department, giving Jacob a punch on the arm – an interaction, like the patting of Normandie’s hand, that was made possible only by the small size of the office.
Then she became businesslike. ‘Normandie, I have to tell you that I still can’t swing assigning you a research assistant. There just aren’t enough to go around.’
‘OK,’ said Normandie, with a shrug.
‘You don’t mean OK,’ Kate argued. ‘You mean oh, shit. Because it’s not OK. But there’s nothing I can do about it. And, speaking of things that are not OK but about which I can do nothing: I’ve been given next year’s preliminary budget, and unfortunately it’s looking like I can’t create any new tenured positions. Don’t think I didn’t try. And, hell, I’ll keep trying. But unless something changes …’
Chapter Six
On Friday, Normandie ‘happened’to show up at Jacob’s (technically, Harlan’s) when supper time was approaching. Another non-date restaurant dinner was enjoyed, and the couple drifted to Normandie’s place afterward. It became obvious to Jacob, though, that this was a working evening. He grazed at a novel while Normandie attacked her work, biding his time before trying to seduce her.
After about an hour, he put the book down and stood behind her at her desk, just giving her shoulders a hint of erotic massage. ‘So, tell me again why you have to finish going over this research tonight, instead of letting me nibble your ass cheeks like you ought to.’
‘Because, Mr Asscheek Nibbler, tomorrow is the deadline for submitting results to the journal. If I want them to commission my article for the winter issue, they need to see the research results now. And if I want to impress the pants off the tenure committee, I need to be in that issue.’
‘Oh. I don’t suppose you’d settle for impressing the pants off of me.’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘I’m expected to stand here in my underwear until tomorrow?’
‘Of course not. You can sit down.’
Jacob had always loved intellectual women, had always loved the way their passion flowed as freely for ideas and discoveries as it did for his brown eyes and his soft caresses to their sensuous zones. Sometimes more freely, he had learned in one or two less-than-satisfactory relationships.
He kept quiet, honouring her work time and the privilege of sharing it, appreciating this opportunity to watch her sink into an orgy of intellectual stimulation … and quietly counting the minutes till he could screw her intellectual ass off. He was patient, fully aware that if they could fuck in her lab on a weekday afternoon, it was only fair that she could work at home on a Friday night. She had to go to bed eventually, and tha
t was all he needed to know.
He asked if there were some way he could help her, and she thanked him and said she’d let him know.
When her energy flagged, he made her a pot of tea. When her attention wandered, he read her the funniest bit from the novel. It made for a nice, relaxing evening.
‘Jacob.’
He realised he’d dozed off.
‘Would you do me a favour and proofread this table?’
She passed him a sheaf of documents, fresh from the ink-jet printer.
‘Proofread what? This is just a bunch of numbers.’
‘They’d better be numbers – because if they’re colours or ice cream flavours, I’m a lousy scientist. Just check ’em for alignment, decimal places, etc. Please, that is.’ The smile she bestowed was worth a thousand pleases.
They were just columns of figures – meaningless to him, or by all rights, they should have been – but they became a sacred text, or an inscrutable poem. They were her art, wrung from absurdly distant galaxies by means of impossibly complicated mathematics.
‘Looks good to me,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘Though the 4.793 in the third column could use a little salt.’
‘So, what’s the next step?’ he said on Monday morning, after he’d given himself breakfast in bed between her thighs.
‘The next step is that I do you, I guess.’ She dipped beneath the covers and grabbed his cock, like a swimming-pool diver grabbing a rubber-coated brick.
‘Actually,’ he said after she’d sucked him dry, ‘when I said “What’s the next step?” I meant what’s the next step in your grand scheme to acquire tenure? While you wait for the journal to give you the green light, I mean.’
‘Oh,’ said Normandie. ‘I hope you don’t regret the blow-job.’
‘Not a concern,’ said Jacob. ‘Technically, though, I owe you one instalment of oral sex. Do you want it now?’ He was already lifting the hem of her negligee.
‘Silly boy. I just had one.’
‘And that’s a problem because …?’ He enunciated the words between kisses as his mouth played around her upper thighs.
‘Oh!’ she conceded. ‘You’re right, it’s not a problem. Mmm, not a problem.’
Thus encouraged, Jacob proceeded. He officially extended his visit from thighs to tender feminine lips, kissing up blushes and tonguing his way into favourite places, where he was welcomed with libations.
‘No, this isn’t problematic at all,’ she was saying in quick breaths. ‘Wow, goodness, Jacob, I’m having quite a remarkable absence of problems with this. I’m having – ee!’ She ended on a squeal.
It was the wittiest little orgasm she’d ever had for him, to date. He clutched her ass and buried his face in her warmth, wetness, and wit.
Normandie had submitted her research, as planned. But she had explained to Jacob that, as with just about anything these days, it wasn’t enough to do solid work. One had to market. Promote. Schmooze.
In addition to making arrangements to appear at some upcoming conferences, this week’s schmoozing entailed a visit to Kate Passky’s office. Jacob had turned in the final revisions on his article, and his only career-related obligation was mulling over an unappealing but lucrative editorial job he’d been offered back in New York. He was intrigued by the very concept of someone so impressive that even Normandie was in awe of her, and he was pleased when Normandie invited him to tag along. She even made a quick call to Kate to let her know, explaining to Jacob that in the backbiting, super-bureaucratic world of academia, even a phone call was really just a shortcut, a memo being the more usual procedure for announcing events as trivial as putting cream in one’s coffee. ‘You never know when some rival will make a stink because his friend didn’t get to sit in on a casual meeting with the chair, and why wasn’t the entire department notified, and how come there’s no paper trail, etc.’ From the exasperation in her voice, it sounded like she might have a particular rival in mind.
It seemed incongruous that one of the most important decisions of Normandie’s life would emanate from such an inconspicuous, insignificant-looking office. Jacob couldn’t have said what, exactly, he’d been expecting, but it was something more along the lines of vaulted ceilings, dancing spotlights, and probably lots of neon that would ask, WILL NORMANDIE STEPHENS GET TENURE? Times Square style.
But the only neon was in Jacob’s mind. And, perhaps, Normandie’s – though she looked cool to the point of seeming blasé. In this dim, bookshelf-crammed room with one window and barely enough floor space to accommodate visitors, Kate sat behind a desk of modest proportions, looking like the most important question on her mind was whether or not it was time to order more paperclips. The cosy array of open reference books, semi-shuffled manuscripts, and rampant sticky notes did not, collectively, give the impression of holding anyone’s career in the balance.
When she looked up, Kate’s personal magnetism was as good as any neon. Though his knowledge of astronomy stopped at the fourth-grade level, Jacob could see why this handsome woman with intelligence and humanity shining out of her museum-quality grey eyes would be an inspiring leader in whatever field she might have chosen. Add to that the exceptional professional genius that Normandie vouched for, and it was easy to see why she had used the word idolise.
The two of them were of necessity squeezed right up against Kate’s desk, and Jacob could smell both the mints on Kate’s breath and the sweet, fresh smell of Normandie. The chair nodded graciously at him, but her first words took him aback.
‘So this is the writer you’ve been fucking,’ she said to Normandie.
Normandie rolled her eyes.
‘Oh, all right. I’m sorry.’ Kate smiled indulgently. ‘Seeing. The writer you’ve been seeing. There, is that better?’ She patted Normandie’s hand, condescendingly. ‘Young academics have become so uptight since my day.’ She looked at Jacob. ‘Don’t you think so –’
‘Jacob,’ he gulped.
‘Don’t you think so, Jacob?’ She winked at him, enjoying the tease around the obvious fact that Jacob had not been old enough to make the scene in her ‘day’. Normandie, whose composure never eluded her for more than a moment, was now chuckling into her hand, and her cheeks were rosy and cheerful.
‘Maybe I’d better wait outside,’ said Jacob, between dry-throated ahems.
‘Oh, he is cute,’ said Professor Passky to Professor Stephens, as though Jacob were already out of earshot.
‘Please stay, Jacob,’ said Normandie lightly. ‘It would be stupid for you to leave after coming all this way, just because Kate used a particular verb.’
Now Kate was chuckling too, and Jacob couldn’t help smiling. ‘Professor Passky, I’m very pleased to meet your verb, and I hope you’ll use it again sometime.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ said the chair of the Astronomy Department, giving Jacob a punch on the arm – an interaction, like the patting of Normandie’s hand, that was made possible only by the small size of the office.
Then she became businesslike. ‘Normandie, I have to tell you that I still can’t swing assigning you a research assistant. There just aren’t enough to go around.’
‘OK,’ said Normandie, with a shrug.
‘You don’t mean OK,’ Kate argued. ‘You mean oh, shit. Because it’s not OK. But there’s nothing I can do about it. And, speaking of things that are not OK but about which I can do nothing: I’ve been given next year’s preliminary budget, and unfortunately it’s looking like I can’t create any new tenured positions. Don’t think I didn’t try. And, hell, I’ll keep trying. But unless something changes …’
Chapter Seven
He’d never known anyonewhose personality was quite so revved up. Normandie wasn’t overbearing, she wasn’t tiresome, she wasn’t ridiculous … she was just, it seemed, one hundred and ten per cent herself. Every word and action had a signature upon it – from the crisp way she chewed, to the elongated posture in which she habitually fell asleep, to her trademark laughter, bright
on top with undertones of secret wisdom. Her laughter connoted sex, to Jacob. Not surprisingly, he liked to tickle her all over, and her laughter always tickled him back.
He hadn’t noted the precise day on which his centre of gravity had shifted from speculating about the depth of his attractiveness to her to deliberately presenting himself in the way he hoped would please her; or the precise week when striving explicitly to please her had shifted to automatically, unconsciously being the person he wanted to be for her. By now, his every thought and decision reverberated against an image of her, when the real thing wasn’t close at hand. His idea or ideal of her had become his touchstone.
‘You’re my touchstone,’ he told her one morning.
‘No wonder you touch me so much,’ she said with approval. ‘But just move your thumb down a few millimetres … Oh! Yeah.’
‘Now I understand why you scientists are always pushing the metric system.’
‘Mmm-hmm,’ she purred, with an unscientific wiggle. ‘Push my metric system.’
It felt strange when he had the epiphany that she was, in some ways, like the sister he’d never had. A buddy. A playmate. An ally through life’s uncertainties. He’d never before been romantically involved with a woman who felt so much like ‘home’.
‘Am I the type of woman you imagined you’d end up with?’
‘First of all, let’s dispense with that expression “end up with”, if you please. It sounds so depressing.’
‘Good point. What should we say instead? “Start out with” doesn’t convey the full extent of my meaning.’
‘How about “go around with”?’
‘Deal.’
‘And, to answer your question: No. Do you really think I could have imagined anything remotely like you?’
‘Ha! I’ll try to take that as a compliment.’
‘Please do. And, while you’re at it, you can take this as a compliment as well.’ This was a combination lip lock and nipple pinch. ‘So what about you … Am I the type of man you imagined you’d go around with?’
Merriment in the Museum - Book One in the Rock My Socks Off Trilogy Page 4