New story: Pomp and Circumstances
Pomp and Circumstances
Chapter 1 - Office Hours
Dr. Ennis Del Mar, newest member of the English Department at the University of the Northeast, slid the last book into its place on his fourth and final office bookcase. He stood back for a minute or two, admiring the arrangement. All his books were categorized exactly the way he liked them: one bookcase devoted to literary criticism and essays, another to drama and poetry, and the final two to fiction-each one alphabetized by author, of course. He stood in the center of the room, his hands clasped in front of him, and reflected with satisfaction on his pristine workspace. The desk was clear of papers-it was only the first week of classes, after all-and he had organized his stapler, jar of pencils, telephone, tape dispenser, notepad, and paper clips in a tidy row along the perimeter. His computer and monitor were free of dust, the mouse resting in the exact center of the mouse pad. He had even spent an hour carefully removing the stray papers and yellowing posters that the office’s previous occupant had tacked up on the bulletin board. Now it bore only the college-issue calendar and a copy of the “Academic Year Deadlines” pamphlet.
Ennis’s watch alarm buzzed suddenly, and he glanced down. It was already 2:00-time for his very first office hours. He’d been looking forward to this moment ever since he’d signed his job contract, even more than teaching his first classes. Those had taken place this morning, and had gone fairly well, but Ennis seriously doubted whether he could impart the wisdom gained over the previous twelve years of advanced education to a group of baseball-cap-wearing, feet-shuffling, iPod-bound, sullen-mouthed freshmen. The real mentoring would take place here, in the privacy and comfort of his office, with students who were too shy to speak up in class but who sensed in him the ability to anticipate and solve their academic quandaries.
Ennis strode to the door and opened it wide, kicking the wooden doorstop until it was firmly wedged in place. He had half-expected to see a line of eager students standing outside when he appeared, but none was in evidence so far. Sticking his head out the door, he could see only a lone female student standing halfway down the hall, her bag slung haphazardly over one shoulder, talking in a fierce whisper on her cell phone. She was wiping at her eyes with a crumpled tissue; Ennis hastily turned away to scan the other side of the hallway. The only other person in sight was a man sleeping on his back on one of the long wooden benches that lined both sides. His head had rolled so far to the side that it seemed in danger of falling off the bench entirely; the backpack lying unguarded on the floor next to him was unzipped, regurgitating sheets of looseleaf paper, folders in an array of colors, and a bicycle seat. Ennis reluctantly withdrew back into his office, deciding to do something productive. Surely his good example would then draw in, if not students, certainly his colleagues.
Twenty slow minutes later, Ennis was sitting at his desk, staring blankly at his computer screen, trying to convince himself that he was interested in checking out the library’s website. Didn’t he have a research project he could be working on? He felt his eyes begin to close and his head drop slowly to one side; he jerked awake and clenched his hands into fists, digging his fingernails into his palms to get his adrenaline up again. But he hadn’t slept much the night before, anxious over new classes and the colleagues he didn’t yet know. Again he felt the slow, luxurious slide into sleep, and decided this time to surrender. If no one had shown up yet for office hours, it was likely no one would. He propped his elbows on the desk and put his chin in his hands, preparing for a more comfortable nap. Just when his eyelids were heaviest, however, and the peaceful blackness was settling over his consciousness, one elbow slipped out from under him-his corduroy jacket no match for the fake wood veneer-and sent the tape, stapler, and box of paper clips flying.
Damn! Ennis, jolted back into reality, found himself staring at approximately eight million gold and silver clips twinkling up at him from the institutional gray carpet. Sighing, he bent and began scooping them into piles. After a few minutes, he spotted one final clip lying far under the desk, near the surge protector, and he scooted underneath to grab it. Just as he reached it, however, he heard a wry throat clearing behind him-addressing, he assumed, his ass, since that was the only part of him visible. Ennis pushed himself backward, twisting simultaneously to get a look at his first visitor. He succeeded in whacking his head on the edge of the desk before catching a glimpse of Dr. Anita Rosenbrand, the chair of his department.
“Ennis!” she exclaimed, beaming at him and extending her hand to help pull him up. “What on earth are you doing down there under the desk? We pay you to teach, not to clean up. And anyway, there’s no telling when these carpets were last shampooed.” She dropped him a slow wink.
Ennis swallowed hard. He liked Anita, but she made him nervous-all those tidy grey and black suits she was always wearing, her get-it-done-now attitude, and the way she had of always turning to smile at him in a meeting or at a happy hour, as though they were particularly special friends. “Just dropped something, thought I’d pick it up,” he mumbled, certain he sounded exactly like the kind of up-and-coming young academic superstar they had intended to hire.
“Well, don’t worry about it,” she said, dropping his hand at last, with one final caress to his wrist. “I just stopped by to see how your first day is going. Are you finding everything you need?”
“Yes, ma’am, no problems at all.” Ennis shifted a little, uncomfortably conscious of his new black dress shoes digging into the tender sides of his feet.
“And the men’s faculty restroom? You’ve found that, I suppose?”
“Ma’am?” Ennis was honestly puzzled. He’d taken the elevator down to the ground floor, just as he’d seen everyone else doing. It was a little weird that there was only one bathroom in a building this size, but he figured the English department would never be pulling in the big bucks at any university. Probably they could only afford one anyway.
“I know it seems as though we’re stuck in the dark ages here, Ennis, but in fact we do have separate restrooms for the faculty. None of the students even know they’re up here!” She seemed very proud of this fact, smiling down at him as she said it and smoothing the seams of her skirt carefully. “Just go down the hallway marked 4523 - A. There’s a men’s room there, across from the part-time faculty offices. Be sure to stay on this floor, though; if you go down to the sociology wing, you have to get a key from the secretary that’s attached to a wooden spoon. So no one steals it, you know.” She raised her eyebrows at him and then, her attention apparently caught by something on his bulletin board, crossed the room to examine it more closely. “What’s this, Ennis? Did you forget something?”
Ennis walked over to stand behind her. He couldn’t see anything amiss, other than a few stray staples that had been overlooked in his earlier cleaning session. “I don’t think so, Dr. Rosenbrand . . . Anita. What do you mean?”
“Why, you don’t have anything personal in here, Ennis! Not a picture, or a poster, or a mug from your favorite coffee shop. Maybe you haven’t visited Perks yet, around the corner?” She frowned at him, her perfectly applied lipstick creasing at the corners.
“Uh, I don’t drink coffee, actually.” Ennis fidgeted, feeling sweat begin to roll down the center of his back. “Water, mostly. And beer. On the weekends, I mean.”
“Ennis! I can hardly believe that. I’m not sure we would have hired you if we’d known initially that you didn’t drink coffee.” She quirked her lips in what might have been a smile, but it disappeared so quickly that Ennis thought she might not be joking. People took their coffee very seriously around here, it seemed. “Don’t you have any friends or family that you want to remember during your long work day? A girlfriend, perhaps?”
Ah, yes, Ennis remembered. He had successfully dodged these questions at the interview, but now the hiring process was over and he was here, strapped into a desk. With his contract signed, sealed, and delivered, she obviously felt that she now had every right to ask him the most personal questions ever. “Ah, no, not exactly. I’ve got my mom and dad, of course, but they’re not much for pictures. My brother Keith, though, I think I’ve got a picture of him around somewhere, riding in the Last Chance Rodeo. Me ‘n’ him, seems like we grew up riding the bulls. You might not expect that, since I ended up here. I’m not totally unpacked yet, but I can find it, bring it in. You’re probably right-it’d seem more like home in here if I did something-” Ennis trailed off, finally aware that Anita was no longer listening.
She had extracted a Blackberry from her jacket pocket and was now fiddling with it, jabbing a tiny stylus at the screen and frowning abstractedly. “Right, Ennis, well, I’m glad to hear that you’re settling in so well. I’ll let you get back to it-seems like you’ve got plenty to do. Don’t forget about the department meeting tomorrow, OK?” And she was gone, leaving a trail of floral perfume in her wake.
Ennis, not given the chance to offer an appropriately collegial farewell, felt his mouth gaping open like a fish and closed it firmly. He’d get the hang of this eventually, no problem. But for now he would allow himself just one short moment of self-pity, just one moment to wallow in the past of might-have-beens. Pulling out his wallet, he folded back the otherwise empty packet of photo slips to reveal one final photograph at the back. He found his desk chair and lay the wallet down on his desk so he could gaze down at the photo in wet-eyed silence. However, before he could really get his sad going full-blast, he heard the tell-tale clack of returning heels.
Anita stuck her head around the door frame. “Ennis, almost forgot to remind you about your first meeting with your mentor. You cannot miss this meeting; we’ve had it scheduled for a month. He’s a hard man to get a hold of at times, so you need to be there. OK? Today at 3 p.m., room 4564.”
“But my office hours are until 4. Can I contact him and see if we can meet a little later?” Ennis put his hand over his wallet and slid it slowly to his right, away from the door.
“Don’t worry about it, Ennis. No one ever comes to office hours. In twenty years of teaching, I think I’ve only had people here three or four times.” She shook her head at him, smiling indulgently. “Anyway. You’ve only got a few minutes before then. Don’t be late!” And she was gone.
Ennis sighed, looking toward the empty doorway, then turned to look at the picture again. After a minute or two, he forced himself to check his watch again. It was 3:01 . . . shit! Why hadn’t his watch alarm rung this time? He jumped up and grabbed the notepad off his desk. His keys and cell phone were in his pocket; he should be set to go. He dashed out the door and yanked it shut behind him, noticing only after he’d turned to run down the hallway that the tall red-haired young woman who sat in the front row of his 8 a.m. class was standing just outside his doorway, a notebook clasped to her chest and a hopeful expression beginning to fade from her face. “Sorry, got a meeting!” he yelled back over his shoulder. “Come back on Thursday!” He sped down the hallway, barely pausing to glance at the room numbers. He knew 4564 was at the far end; he’d seen it when dragging in his boxes of office supplies earlier today, and had felt a quick pang of envy. Some lucky person got to escape any time he or she wanted to without being subject to the scrutiny of the entire floor’s offices plus any classes that happened to be meeting.
Finally Ennis reached the correct door and skidded to a halt, breathing heavily. He took a moment to smooth down his unruly hair-his mother had always sighed over his “brown sugar curls,” but they drove him insane-and wipe his sweating palms on the sides of his pants. Classy, no doubt. Then he knocked on the door.
There was a long pause. Ennis felt doubtful about knocking again, but had just lifted his hand to do so when he heard, faintly, a guffaw from within. There was simply no other way to describe it. It wasn’t a chuckle, a giggle, a snort, a snicker, a titter, a cackle, a chortle, or even a plain old laugh. It was a guffaw. “Hello?” he said tentatively.
“Hello!” The voice was louder now, tinged with hilarity. Much as one might expect a guffawer to be. “Door’s open. Come on in!”
Obediently, Ennis turned the door knob and opened the door. What he was faced by was not at all surprising, given his surroundings: books. Not books arranged in tidy rows on shelves as his own had been, however, but books everywhere. Spilling out of brown paper bags on the floor, stacked on wooden chairs, scattered across the floor, littering the window sill, and filling the shelves of the eight or nine bookcases Ennis could immediately see, in unsteady stacks and tightly packed columns. Almost every book also seemed to be sporting bookmarks and scribbled pages of notes, which stuck out at every possible angle. The chaos was overwhelming-and wonderful. Clearly this was a place where books were loved, perhaps as much as Ennis loved them himself. The office’s occupant, however, was not in evidence. There was a desk and a computer table, both with empty chairs. Ennis took a look around, then glanced behind himself, wondering if he should go out and wait somewhere else.
A head popped suddenly up above the desk. “Hey! Why didn’t you say something?” And a man scrambled up to lean across the desk, hand outstretched.
Ennis found himself gazing into the deepest, the richest, the most beautiful blue eyes he had ever seen. “Hi,” he managed, lingering thoughts of another pair of blue eyes all at once gone from his head.
“I’m Jack. Jack Twist. Resident postmodernist. And you?”
Ennis took his hand, gripped it firmly. His daddy had taught him how to shake hands, and he’d never learned to soften the blow for the sometimes frail academic types he encountered. “Ennis.”
“Your folks just stop at Ennis?” Jack grinned at him and, shockingly, dropped him a slow wink. Ennis found himself not minding this one at all. Not one bit, in fact.
“Del Mar.” Ennis gulped in a quick breath of air. He realized he was still holding Jack’s hand and dropped it like a hot stone.
“Nice to know you, Ennis Del Mar.” Jack nodded, then glanced down, bending to scrabble with something on the floor beneath his desk. “I was just working on something here-”
“I can come back,” Ennis interjected hastily, already backing toward the door. “I didn’t mean to-”
“No, no, no,” Jack replied, still kneeling on the floor. “Been looking forward to meeting you, actually. This whole mentoring program was my idea. I was surprised-” He stood up, a black leather-bound book in one hand. “-to find that there was no mentoring program when I started here. So I’m glad the department’s decided to do it, at last.” He slid a hand into his back right pocket, evidently checking for his wallet. He was wearing a denim work shirt, a corduroy blazer, and khakis. Finding everything in place, he grabbed a pair of sunglasses off the desk. “Ready to go?”
“Where are we going?” Ennis wondered if he had overdressed for his first day.
“Just go to Perks, I guess. You like cappuccino and all those fancy drinks, they make them all there. Sound OK?”
“I don’t really . . . drink coffee, actually. But that sounds fine to me. I’ll just get a coke or something.” Ennis’s ears burned. No way was he going to make it through five pre-tenure years without learning to drink coffee.
“You like beer?”
“What?”
“Beer. Rather go to the Cellar anyway.” Jack looked at Ennis, lifting one eyebrow.
“On a school night?” Ennis’s voice squeaked a little, and he looked away. What was he, a high schooler? “Yeah, that sounds great.”
“OK, let’s go.” Jack followed Ennis into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind him.
Ennis patted his pockets, feeling a growing sense of panic until he realized. “I’ve gotta go back to the office. Think I left my wallet on the desk.”
Jack waved a dismissive hand, holding him back. “Don’t worry about it-it’s on me. I’m supposed to be mentoring you, after all.”
“You sure?” All at once, Ennis was finding it difficult to breathe.
“It’s nobody’s business but ours.” Jack tipped his head toward the exit, and they set off down the stairs.
When they reached the first floor and were going through the double glass doors to the street outside, Ennis pulled off his jacket and slung it over his arm. It was an unseasonably warm day, the sun glinting off the cars parked outside and casting a white-hot glow from the sky. But it was the feel of Jack’s hand in his that Ennis remembered, the rough caress of his callused palm, the warm weight of his flesh that had lit the fire smoldering in his belly. Maybe there was more to these office hours than he had imagined.
Chapter 1 - Office Hours
Dr. Ennis Del Mar, newest member of the English Department at the University of the Northeast, slid the last book into its place on his fourth and final office bookcase. He stood back for a minute or two, admiring the arrangement. All his books were categorized exactly the way he liked them: one bookcase devoted to literary criticism and essays, another to drama and poetry, and the final two to fiction-each one alphabetized by author, of course. He stood in the center of the room, his hands clasped in front of him, and reflected with satisfaction on his pristine workspace. The desk was clear of papers-it was only the first week of classes, after all-and he had organized his stapler, jar of pencils, telephone, tape dispenser, notepad, and paper clips in a tidy row along the perimeter. His computer and monitor were free of dust, the mouse resting in the exact center of the mouse pad. He had even spent an hour carefully removing the stray papers and yellowing posters that the office’s previous occupant had tacked up on the bulletin board. Now it bore only the college-issue calendar and a copy of the “Academic Year Deadlines” pamphlet.
Ennis’s watch alarm buzzed suddenly, and he glanced down. It was already 2:00-time for his very first office hours. He’d been looking forward to this moment ever since he’d signed his job contract, even more than teaching his first classes. Those had taken place this morning, and had gone fairly well, but Ennis seriously doubted whether he could impart the wisdom gained over the previous twelve years of advanced education to a group of baseball-cap-wearing, feet-shuffling, iPod-bound, sullen-mouthed freshmen. The real mentoring would take place here, in the privacy and comfort of his office, with students who were too shy to speak up in class but who sensed in him the ability to anticipate and solve their academic quandaries.
Ennis strode to the door and opened it wide, kicking the wooden doorstop until it was firmly wedged in place. He had half-expected to see a line of eager students standing outside when he appeared, but none was in evidence so far. Sticking his head out the door, he could see only a lone female student standing halfway down the hall, her bag slung haphazardly over one shoulder, talking in a fierce whisper on her cell phone. She was wiping at her eyes with a crumpled tissue; Ennis hastily turned away to scan the other side of the hallway. The only other person in sight was a man sleeping on his back on one of the long wooden benches that lined both sides. His head had rolled so far to the side that it seemed in danger of falling off the bench entirely; the backpack lying unguarded on the floor next to him was unzipped, regurgitating sheets of looseleaf paper, folders in an array of colors, and a bicycle seat. Ennis reluctantly withdrew back into his office, deciding to do something productive. Surely his good example would then draw in, if not students, certainly his colleagues.
Twenty slow minutes later, Ennis was sitting at his desk, staring blankly at his computer screen, trying to convince himself that he was interested in checking out the library’s website. Didn’t he have a research project he could be working on? He felt his eyes begin to close and his head drop slowly to one side; he jerked awake and clenched his hands into fists, digging his fingernails into his palms to get his adrenaline up again. But he hadn’t slept much the night before, anxious over new classes and the colleagues he didn’t yet know. Again he felt the slow, luxurious slide into sleep, and decided this time to surrender. If no one had shown up yet for office hours, it was likely no one would. He propped his elbows on the desk and put his chin in his hands, preparing for a more comfortable nap. Just when his eyelids were heaviest, however, and the peaceful blackness was settling over his consciousness, one elbow slipped out from under him-his corduroy jacket no match for the fake wood veneer-and sent the tape, stapler, and box of paper clips flying.
Damn! Ennis, jolted back into reality, found himself staring at approximately eight million gold and silver clips twinkling up at him from the institutional gray carpet. Sighing, he bent and began scooping them into piles. After a few minutes, he spotted one final clip lying far under the desk, near the surge protector, and he scooted underneath to grab it. Just as he reached it, however, he heard a wry throat clearing behind him-addressing, he assumed, his ass, since that was the only part of him visible. Ennis pushed himself backward, twisting simultaneously to get a look at his first visitor. He succeeded in whacking his head on the edge of the desk before catching a glimpse of Dr. Anita Rosenbrand, the chair of his department.
“Ennis!” she exclaimed, beaming at him and extending her hand to help pull him up. “What on earth are you doing down there under the desk? We pay you to teach, not to clean up. And anyway, there’s no telling when these carpets were last shampooed.” She dropped him a slow wink.
Ennis swallowed hard. He liked Anita, but she made him nervous-all those tidy grey and black suits she was always wearing, her get-it-done-now attitude, and the way she had of always turning to smile at him in a meeting or at a happy hour, as though they were particularly special friends. “Just dropped something, thought I’d pick it up,” he mumbled, certain he sounded exactly like the kind of up-and-coming young academic superstar they had intended to hire.
“Well, don’t worry about it,” she said, dropping his hand at last, with one final caress to his wrist. “I just stopped by to see how your first day is going. Are you finding everything you need?”
“Yes, ma’am, no problems at all.” Ennis shifted a little, uncomfortably conscious of his new black dress shoes digging into the tender sides of his feet.
“And the men’s faculty restroom? You’ve found that, I suppose?”
“Ma’am?” Ennis was honestly puzzled. He’d taken the elevator down to the ground floor, just as he’d seen everyone else doing. It was a little weird that there was only one bathroom in a building this size, but he figured the English department would never be pulling in the big bucks at any university. Probably they could only afford one anyway.
“I know it seems as though we’re stuck in the dark ages here, Ennis, but in fact we do have separate restrooms for the faculty. None of the students even know they’re up here!” She seemed very proud of this fact, smiling down at him as she said it and smoothing the seams of her skirt carefully. “Just go down the hallway marked 4523 - A. There’s a men’s room there, across from the part-time faculty offices. Be sure to stay on this floor, though; if you go down to the sociology wing, you have to get a key from the secretary that’s attached to a wooden spoon. So no one steals it, you know.” She raised her eyebrows at him and then, her attention apparently caught by something on his bulletin board, crossed the room to examine it more closely. “What’s this, Ennis? Did you forget something?”
Ennis walked over to stand behind her. He couldn’t see anything amiss, other than a few stray staples that had been overlooked in his earlier cleaning session. “I don’t think so, Dr. Rosenbrand . . . Anita. What do you mean?”
“Why, you don’t have anything personal in here, Ennis! Not a picture, or a poster, or a mug from your favorite coffee shop. Maybe you haven’t visited Perks yet, around the corner?” She frowned at him, her perfectly applied lipstick creasing at the corners.
“Uh, I don’t drink coffee, actually.” Ennis fidgeted, feeling sweat begin to roll down the center of his back. “Water, mostly. And beer. On the weekends, I mean.”
“Ennis! I can hardly believe that. I’m not sure we would have hired you if we’d known initially that you didn’t drink coffee.” She quirked her lips in what might have been a smile, but it disappeared so quickly that Ennis thought she might not be joking. People took their coffee very seriously around here, it seemed. “Don’t you have any friends or family that you want to remember during your long work day? A girlfriend, perhaps?”
Ah, yes, Ennis remembered. He had successfully dodged these questions at the interview, but now the hiring process was over and he was here, strapped into a desk. With his contract signed, sealed, and delivered, she obviously felt that she now had every right to ask him the most personal questions ever. “Ah, no, not exactly. I’ve got my mom and dad, of course, but they’re not much for pictures. My brother Keith, though, I think I’ve got a picture of him around somewhere, riding in the Last Chance Rodeo. Me ‘n’ him, seems like we grew up riding the bulls. You might not expect that, since I ended up here. I’m not totally unpacked yet, but I can find it, bring it in. You’re probably right-it’d seem more like home in here if I did something-” Ennis trailed off, finally aware that Anita was no longer listening.
She had extracted a Blackberry from her jacket pocket and was now fiddling with it, jabbing a tiny stylus at the screen and frowning abstractedly. “Right, Ennis, well, I’m glad to hear that you’re settling in so well. I’ll let you get back to it-seems like you’ve got plenty to do. Don’t forget about the department meeting tomorrow, OK?” And she was gone, leaving a trail of floral perfume in her wake.
Ennis, not given the chance to offer an appropriately collegial farewell, felt his mouth gaping open like a fish and closed it firmly. He’d get the hang of this eventually, no problem. But for now he would allow himself just one short moment of self-pity, just one moment to wallow in the past of might-have-beens. Pulling out his wallet, he folded back the otherwise empty packet of photo slips to reveal one final photograph at the back. He found his desk chair and lay the wallet down on his desk so he could gaze down at the photo in wet-eyed silence. However, before he could really get his sad going full-blast, he heard the tell-tale clack of returning heels.
Anita stuck her head around the door frame. “Ennis, almost forgot to remind you about your first meeting with your mentor. You cannot miss this meeting; we’ve had it scheduled for a month. He’s a hard man to get a hold of at times, so you need to be there. OK? Today at 3 p.m., room 4564.”
“But my office hours are until 4. Can I contact him and see if we can meet a little later?” Ennis put his hand over his wallet and slid it slowly to his right, away from the door.
“Don’t worry about it, Ennis. No one ever comes to office hours. In twenty years of teaching, I think I’ve only had people here three or four times.” She shook her head at him, smiling indulgently. “Anyway. You’ve only got a few minutes before then. Don’t be late!” And she was gone.
Ennis sighed, looking toward the empty doorway, then turned to look at the picture again. After a minute or two, he forced himself to check his watch again. It was 3:01 . . . shit! Why hadn’t his watch alarm rung this time? He jumped up and grabbed the notepad off his desk. His keys and cell phone were in his pocket; he should be set to go. He dashed out the door and yanked it shut behind him, noticing only after he’d turned to run down the hallway that the tall red-haired young woman who sat in the front row of his 8 a.m. class was standing just outside his doorway, a notebook clasped to her chest and a hopeful expression beginning to fade from her face. “Sorry, got a meeting!” he yelled back over his shoulder. “Come back on Thursday!” He sped down the hallway, barely pausing to glance at the room numbers. He knew 4564 was at the far end; he’d seen it when dragging in his boxes of office supplies earlier today, and had felt a quick pang of envy. Some lucky person got to escape any time he or she wanted to without being subject to the scrutiny of the entire floor’s offices plus any classes that happened to be meeting.
Finally Ennis reached the correct door and skidded to a halt, breathing heavily. He took a moment to smooth down his unruly hair-his mother had always sighed over his “brown sugar curls,” but they drove him insane-and wipe his sweating palms on the sides of his pants. Classy, no doubt. Then he knocked on the door.
There was a long pause. Ennis felt doubtful about knocking again, but had just lifted his hand to do so when he heard, faintly, a guffaw from within. There was simply no other way to describe it. It wasn’t a chuckle, a giggle, a snort, a snicker, a titter, a cackle, a chortle, or even a plain old laugh. It was a guffaw. “Hello?” he said tentatively.
“Hello!” The voice was louder now, tinged with hilarity. Much as one might expect a guffawer to be. “Door’s open. Come on in!”
Obediently, Ennis turned the door knob and opened the door. What he was faced by was not at all surprising, given his surroundings: books. Not books arranged in tidy rows on shelves as his own had been, however, but books everywhere. Spilling out of brown paper bags on the floor, stacked on wooden chairs, scattered across the floor, littering the window sill, and filling the shelves of the eight or nine bookcases Ennis could immediately see, in unsteady stacks and tightly packed columns. Almost every book also seemed to be sporting bookmarks and scribbled pages of notes, which stuck out at every possible angle. The chaos was overwhelming-and wonderful. Clearly this was a place where books were loved, perhaps as much as Ennis loved them himself. The office’s occupant, however, was not in evidence. There was a desk and a computer table, both with empty chairs. Ennis took a look around, then glanced behind himself, wondering if he should go out and wait somewhere else.
A head popped suddenly up above the desk. “Hey! Why didn’t you say something?” And a man scrambled up to lean across the desk, hand outstretched.
Ennis found himself gazing into the deepest, the richest, the most beautiful blue eyes he had ever seen. “Hi,” he managed, lingering thoughts of another pair of blue eyes all at once gone from his head.
“I’m Jack. Jack Twist. Resident postmodernist. And you?”
Ennis took his hand, gripped it firmly. His daddy had taught him how to shake hands, and he’d never learned to soften the blow for the sometimes frail academic types he encountered. “Ennis.”
“Your folks just stop at Ennis?” Jack grinned at him and, shockingly, dropped him a slow wink. Ennis found himself not minding this one at all. Not one bit, in fact.
“Del Mar.” Ennis gulped in a quick breath of air. He realized he was still holding Jack’s hand and dropped it like a hot stone.
“Nice to know you, Ennis Del Mar.” Jack nodded, then glanced down, bending to scrabble with something on the floor beneath his desk. “I was just working on something here-”
“I can come back,” Ennis interjected hastily, already backing toward the door. “I didn’t mean to-”
“No, no, no,” Jack replied, still kneeling on the floor. “Been looking forward to meeting you, actually. This whole mentoring program was my idea. I was surprised-” He stood up, a black leather-bound book in one hand. “-to find that there was no mentoring program when I started here. So I’m glad the department’s decided to do it, at last.” He slid a hand into his back right pocket, evidently checking for his wallet. He was wearing a denim work shirt, a corduroy blazer, and khakis. Finding everything in place, he grabbed a pair of sunglasses off the desk. “Ready to go?”
“Where are we going?” Ennis wondered if he had overdressed for his first day.
“Just go to Perks, I guess. You like cappuccino and all those fancy drinks, they make them all there. Sound OK?”
“I don’t really . . . drink coffee, actually. But that sounds fine to me. I’ll just get a coke or something.” Ennis’s ears burned. No way was he going to make it through five pre-tenure years without learning to drink coffee.
“You like beer?”
“What?”
“Beer. Rather go to the Cellar anyway.” Jack looked at Ennis, lifting one eyebrow.
“On a school night?” Ennis’s voice squeaked a little, and he looked away. What was he, a high schooler? “Yeah, that sounds great.”
“OK, let’s go.” Jack followed Ennis into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind him.
Ennis patted his pockets, feeling a growing sense of panic until he realized. “I’ve gotta go back to the office. Think I left my wallet on the desk.”
Jack waved a dismissive hand, holding him back. “Don’t worry about it-it’s on me. I’m supposed to be mentoring you, after all.”
“You sure?” All at once, Ennis was finding it difficult to breathe.
“It’s nobody’s business but ours.” Jack tipped his head toward the exit, and they set off down the stairs.
When they reached the first floor and were going through the double glass doors to the street outside, Ennis pulled off his jacket and slung it over his arm. It was an unseasonably warm day, the sun glinting off the cars parked outside and casting a white-hot glow from the sky. But it was the feel of Jack’s hand in his that Ennis remembered, the rough caress of his callused palm, the warm weight of his flesh that had lit the fire smoldering in his belly. Maybe there was more to these office hours than he had imagined.