LITMIR.BIZ

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new colleague than Willie had. Of course, that wouldn’t be hard. Short of tripping him as he walked down the hall, I could hardly do worse than Donald.

      “Aduba,” I said, as he paused at our common office door to insert his key in the ancient lock. I made a mental note to tell him that all the doors on this floor opened with the same key and to be careful what he left in the office. But right now, I didn’t think that was what I needed to blurt out.

      “Yes?” he said, finishing unlocking the door and opening it, but not entering. He turned to face me. There was a single line across his forehead. Either he was frowning, or he was squinting in the bad light of our hallway.

      “Well,” I fumbled. “Well, I was wondering if you and your wife, and your son would like to come to dinner at my house Saturday night.”

      “Our son is only six,” he said slowly.

      “Oh, that’s okay, my twin sons have just turned seven. It will be informal, believe me.”

      “I think that should be fine, but I will consult my wife and let you know. Thank you.” Then he entered the office, went directly to his desk, sat down and turned on his computer.

      I thought for a moment about apologizing for Donald’s behavior, but when I looked at his unyielding posture, I decided instead it would be best to give him some time alone, though the divider that separated our two desks and bookcases scarcely provided any privacy. I turned and looked down the hall at the inviting coffee area Adelaide had set up outside her office when she had become department chair. She had installed a De’Longhi espresso machine with all the trimmings. It made quite a change from her predecessor who might have provided free arsenic to both faculty and students if he had thought he could get away with it.

      I walked toward the espresso machine like I was on a tractor beam in a Star Trek movie. I really shouldn’t have any more coffee, but I kept moving toward it. I was trying to cut down on my coffee consumption. I realized it had become an addiction. I’d already had two cups and the day had barely started. But, I kept walking toward the coffee.

      I felt like I had spent the whole morning so far in one of those tilt-a-whirl things at the amusement park the boys loved so much. You were spun around and around and then the floor dropped out. You hoped gravity would hold you up. But today, I was questioning even gravity. God damn these white supremacists. That was their goal, to make you question whether your commitments would just drop away and let you fall.

      I caved into temptation and got a double espresso. I stood there and took a few sips. I would have liked to talk this morning over with Adelaide, but I knew she was teaching in the smaller seminar room. I deposited my donation in the jar for coffee purchases, cleaned up my grounds from the machine, and turned to head back down the hall. I saw Aduba heading for the stairs. He was leaving the office.

      I unlocked the door and sat down on my own side. I finished my espresso, and really, it was excellent, and then I opened my computer. I checked my email first, by habit, and was surprised to already see a note from Aduba accepting the dinner invitation and asking the time. Good sign? I hoped so. I sat back in my chair and went over a possible guest list in my mind. I would invite Carol and Giles, though talking Giles out of cooking, and permitting a caterer in “his” kitchen, would be a little bit of a struggle. Adelaide would be a good addition, I thought, and then, of course, Tom Grayson, a surgeon at the university hospital.

      I had been dating Tom for nearly a year. He had patched me up after a knife-wielding assailant had made a deep cut in my arm, and I had fallen for his blue, twinkly eyes, his sandy hair that was always too long, and his profound compassion. But I had kept him at arm’s length for months, feeling disloyal, even after six years, to my Marco. It had actually been Marco’s father, Vince Ginelli, who had gruffly told me six years was too a long time to mourn. Tom and I had become lovers this past summer on a delicious trip to Paris. I reminisced about that for a lovely few minutes and then sighed. Since we’d been back, his surgical schedule, and the demands on my time with parenting, teaching, and sporadically working on my dissertation had meant we mostly communed by phone. Less than satisfactory from a romance perspective.

      Still, I picked up my cell phone. I hoped Tom was not in surgery. I had a lot to tell him, starting with the noose and ending up with an invitation to dinner.

      I dialed his cell. Amazingly enough, he picked up on the first ring.

      “Kristin, hold on, I’m just walking out of a patient’s room.”

      I held on. He was probably still on rounds.

      “Okay, I can talk. I was expecting to hear from you. Are you okay?” Tom sounded very concerned, and I was a little taken aback.

      “Sure, yes, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

      “Well, there are photos that are all over the hospital of that incident on quad this morning, and you’re in many of them. I assume you were working with Alice on that? Must have been difficult, that’s all I meant.” His measured voice was warm, but careful. We’d had some struggles over his desire to protect me.

      I realized I had been too prickly about his concern. Concern was warranted. Being prickly was a bad move, I said to myself. I took a calming breath.

      “Thanks. I didn’t realize you’d seen the photos, that’s all. Yes, it was very difficult.” I thought for a moment. I knew Tom kept confidences well, and I needed to work on trust with him. I went on.

      “I was most upset about how awful it seemed to be for Alice, and you know how she is, she kept it all inside, and just did the job. But I was furious about how the whole fiasco played out.” I paused again.

      “I still am. And we just had a ghastly faculty meeting about it.” Then I realized there were voices in the background, probably a resident trying to get Tom’s attention. I tried not to resent it, but I should get off the phone.

      “Listen, Tom, I’ll tell you about that later, but I’ll email you an invitation to dinner Saturday night with my new colleague, Dr. Abubakar and his family.”

      “A dinner? Sure, should be . . . oh, and just hold on, Kristin.” I could hear the buzz of conversation around him.

      He came back on the phone.

      “Sure. Send me that. And can I bring Kelly if she wants to come?”

      Kelly was Tom’s fifteen-year-old daughter. He had been divorced, but his ex-wife had died the previous year, and now he had custody of a smoldering tower of teenage girl, who alternately hated me and wanted to be me.

      “Well, yes, I guess, if she wants to,” I replied slightly less than enthusiastically.

      “Great. Good. Let’s talk tonight.” And Tom hung up.

      I looked at the silent cell phone in my hand. Paris seemed a very long time ago.

      The cell phone displayed the time. It was only 9:30 a.m. I wondered what the rest of this ghastly day would bring.

      Chapter 3

      Dark chocolate may not be proof of the existence of a benevolent God, but it’s a definite indicator.

      —Susan Thistlethwaite

      Monday evening

      I walked home in the early evening eddy of the rest of the university community, all of us streaming down the sidewalks away from work or study.

      To my surprise, nothing ghastly had happened during the afternoon. Not as far as I knew, anyway. I had managed to remain at my desk undisturbed, working on clearing my incessant email and even starting to revise my plan for class the next day. Aduba never came back to the office.

      I had called Alice at about 3 p.m., just to check in and see if there had been any progress in discovering who had hung the noose and the leaflets.

      “Nope,” she said in response to my query, her voice clipped. “Nothing.” She’d paused. “Well, nothing but the yak, yak, yak about those photos and that piece of shit flyer. So

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