Look Again

“Have you seen our friend Miss Harker since her visit to her Boston man?” Hank asks.

“Only in passing. She didn’t say anything.” I texted her only once since that day. I’m exercising incredible restraint by not demanding explanations that I have no right to.

“She didn’t say anything?” he repeats.

“We really haven’t talked,” I say.

“But you want to.”

Of course I want to. Who was the man she visited? Her dad? Her boyfriend? A buyer interested in one of her paintings?

Please not a boyfriend, I beg the universe.

“I want to. I’m trying to be patient with her. But she’s so intent on not breaking rules.”

Hank nods. “Some people care about such things.”

I huff out a breath of frustration. “Why can’t Joey just want me, already?”

Hank laughs outright this time. “You are unbelievable.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, genuinely confused.

“Are you not the man who, only a week or two ago, was crying his eyes out over a woman who is engaged to someone else?”

“I didn’t cry,” I say. Pathetic comeback.

The kitchen door opens and Lola steps out in a cloud of steam, holding a basket of naan and two frosty glasses of mango lassi. “Don’t eat all of that before I get your curries out here,” she says, pointing to the bread. She knows us.

Hank picks up a piece of the flatbread and rolls it up before shoving half of it into his mouth. His eyes close in his version of delighted wonder. When he’s done chewing, he says, “Candace is past. You know it. I know it. Move on.”

As I hear his words, my own mind is full of the words, “I have already moved on.” From the moment we kissed, it’s been all Joey. My mind is constantly filled up with her. Candace lingers, but not as an object of hope or even regret. She’s the contrast. Joey is all the things Candace isn’t. Wasn’t. Joey is sweet and gifted and caring and fun and I am crazy about her. I walk campus looking for her. I have a funny thought and I want to text it to her. I wake up in the night with my head full of the fuzzy edges of dreams about her. I love having her in my every thought.

I nod at Hank. “You’re right. It’s hasn’t been so long, but the past is over. Joey’s the future.” I tear a chunk off the edge of a piece of naan. “I just don’t want to wait anymore.”

“That’s kind of what we do—wait for the future.”

“Unless we can make it happen now.”

* * *

Arrivingin my classroom in the morning, I find two messages on my office phone from Michael Carraway, Dr. Moreau’s assistant. The guy is a pretentious weasel, and I hate the necessity of dealing with him. I take a deep breath and return the call, prepared to deflect and defend whatever I have to.

That breath turns into a choking gasp when Dr. Moreau answers the phone herself.

“Dr. Moreau. Hello. This is Dexter Kaplan.” Which of course she knows because all the office phones are connected, and therefore my name is showing in her phone’s display. “Michael asked me to call.”

“Mm. Please make time Tuesday afternoon to come to my office after your last class. I would like a report of where you stand on your three projects, as well as feedback on how you feel you’re working with Miss Harker. Please submit this report in writing before noon on Tuesday so I have time to read through it. Keep in mind that your collaboration with Miss Harker weighs significantly in the decision about the arts chair.”

I nod as she talks, barely breathing. When I realize she has finished, I hurry to scratch a few notes on a page of my Moleskine notebook. “Yes. Tuesday. Thank you, Dr. Moreau.” What is that voice? I sound like a sycophant.

“Good day, Mr. Kaplan.”

“Right. Bye.” Right? Bye? “Have a great day, Dr. Moreau.”

She clears her throat before she hangs up. What does that mean? Was she going to say something else? Is that a throat-clearing of disappointment?

And why did that need to be a phone call? That was not a discussion. She could have demanded all this from me in an email. Now I’m sitting here at my office desk sweating through my shirt.